Holy Mother / Lucky Kids video collaboration

December 11th, 2018
Wow, when I was first asked to do this video with old friend Emilie Stark-Menneg I was taken by surprise.  When we first met over ten years ago, she and I had discussed collaborating on a dance / music piece which never took form, I think because our friendship blossomed and we simply enjoyed each other’s company so much we forgot about the collaboration!  She’s a bright spirit in my life, and we will always be friends, I believe.
Anyway, they booked me a flight out to Boston the day after I finished my Loop Painting series and had the art show / album release.  It was a wild couple of days, kind of a blur since things were happening so fast.  I arrived late in the evening by cab to a house in Boston, not sure if I was in the right spot or not, but soon Emilie came out to greet me and we were on our way up many flights of stairs to a room filled with men and dogs.  Emilie’s partner, John Bisbee, has a very commanding and comedic personality, says things that cross the line quite often.  Made me laugh repeatedly and inspired me to be myself!  He and Emilie co-directed the video which took place the following morning.
We awoke early and gathered our things, got in a couple cars with a couple more people and were on our way to a farm somewhere close to RISD (Rhode Island School of Design).  A couple of the art professors from the school had offered their little goat farm for this strange expedition.  Immediately, the assistants started digging holes and John and Emilie started discussing the shoot.  I was left to my own devices and started working on my guitar playing because it wasn’t quite clear if they would be using the recording of Holy Mother or recording me doing it live during the video.  I’m glad they used the recording.  We all did our own makeup and costumes etc.  
Once the shoot started they went through a shot list like a machine gun.  John shouting directions to all the folks involved.  They were capturing a moment, putting it all on just one or two takes of each scene, creating something wonderful because it was live, not well rehearsed or glossed over with effects.  They captured the present moment.  
The hole they dug was for Emilie to lay in.  They had grown clover sprouts in all different shapes.  One large piece was to cover Emilie’s body as she lay in the half frozen ground, nearly naked.  The rest of the clovers were made into masks that sat in water, which we all wore in a later scene then ate off of each other’s faces!  At one point John, who was the “director” of a commercial for this food you grow on your body actually snorted a couple lines of these clovers all chopped up finely.  I think it hurt, but art!

New Song! Purple Peaceful People

July 17th, 2018

Hello lovely people! I’m hoping you are all quite well.  I’ve been hard at work on a few things, the main thing is the synopsis for my film, which you all know about.  I should be sending you Act 1 sometime next week and Act 2 by the end of the month.  Then my plan is to get the actual second scene of the movie to you before I leave for a European Tour August 14th (See accompanying photo or go here to see where I’lll be).

In addition to that, I’ve started a handful of songs.  All this writing of the movie synopsis has opened the floodgate and a bunch of tunes seem to be popping out!  haha. It’s great.  I’ve decided since I’ve developed this whole long set of soft songs that I’ll start writing some up tempo tunes.  That is what I’m sending you today!  I wrote this song a week ago and have had it stuck in my head and have been developing parts for my band.

So what I’m sending you today is a scratch track.  If you don’t know what that is, basically it’s a sketch for musicians to work from.  I have scored out the music for flute, trumpet, trombone, tuba, electric guitar and bass.  Then I took the weird synthesized audio from that and added a couple guitars and a few voices so that my band can have an idea of where I want this tune to go. I have a really good feeling about this upcoming cluster of songs.  This one feels great to me playing solo, so with a band it’ll really rock hard.

Here’s the score if you’d like to take a look or play along…

MUSIC SCORE

Here’s the audio of just the score:

SCORE AUDIO

… and here’s the audio of the scratch recording including my parts:

SCRATCH RECORDING

That’s it for now!!  Much love from overly hot Rochester!!  Let’s live our lives to the fullest!!

hugs,

Seth

MY MOVIE! FIRST WEBISODE IS LIVE!!

June 28th, 2018
Hello fine feathers!  Today is a day of celebration.  A huge day in our work together here on patreon… When I say “our” I mean you and I because the movie I’ve been talking about making for years has finally begun.  I’d like to say it has taken me about 3 months of work just to get this first minute and a half thing completed, but really it’s taken much longer… I started writing this piece of music and poetry in 2005 while living in Ithaca, NY, healing from a terrible illness.  At the time I was meditating very often and digging way deep spiritually, I think because I was facing up to death.

 

More and more bits about that time in my life will certainly come out as I progress with this, but for now I’d like to talk about the actual creation of the work.  After I wrote the original structure on guitar with voice in 2005, I formed a small band of singers and wrote the secondary vocal parts.

 

Following that time, in 2007, my daughter was born.  During her first couple years I spent time digging into the music and scoring out parts for percussion, melodic instrument and bass… and over the past 6 years I’ve been recording the audio for the first act of this three act opera / tone poem.

 

This year I finally decided that I needed to finish it.  It’s been on the back burner for way too many years, getting picked away at while I have had time between band engagements and tours.  Now I’m focusing primarily on the making of this.  I have a few folks helping me here and there but am primarily doing everything, which involves set up of video shoots, puppeteering, camera work, editing, animating, color correction, etc, etc, etc.  It’s extremely intimidating, and I’ve considered giving up on it numerous times.

 

This one and a half minute clip took so many hours I can’t even count!  I’m proud of it.  I’m sure when I get to the end of the movie I’ll want to remake this beginning, but part of how I work is to have regard for the moment of creation as a sort of holy thing, something dear, so I may just keep it as it is.

 

I don’t know what to expect in the coming two years.  I know it will most likely take me that long at the very least.  I hope more people will subscribe as it progresses, so if you have the time to invite a couple friends to subscribe to this it’d be a great help.  Some people have thousands of subscribers and can easily pay a staff.  That’s a dream to me. DIY seems to be my path, but I would love some help, so please spread the word.  In the end, I’ll be including all your names in the movie credits and will certainly release the full length film, try to get into film festivals, etc.

 

Let’s see what comes of this leap of faith!!!  Weeeeeeeee!!!!!

People With Power video…

April 1st, 2018

I’d prefer to let this video speak for itself.  I will say this, I’m very very proud of the giant crew of people involved in the making of this and inspired to no end by the progress we are making as a team over here.

This video is meant to be empowering to the people in a difficult time, bring inspiration to others to not only continue on, but to thrive in the face of adversity.

After this month, leading into April, I am planning on releasing the first 2 minutes of my puppet opera movie.  I know 2 minutes doesn’t sound like a lot, but in order to get this stuff up there, I need to record and mix a 10 piece band on music which I’ve previously scored out (see earlier post), then take that music and film my giant puppets, my small hand puppets still need to be made, and the two dimensional painting puppets need to be animated.

To make two minutes will probably take the full month of April, but I’ve been scaling way back on the public performances so have a bit more time.

This is now my priority, so be expecting much from me in this realm.  I’m calling this one of my great masterpieces.  When it is complete (probably two years down the road if I hit no roadblocks), I will put the full thing together into one singular movie and release it independently, start sending it around to film fests and theaters in order to gain some notoriety for it and potentially take it on the road.  The name of this immense project is noneother than 23 Psaegz.  I know, a bit confusing, but such is life!

all my love dear ones,

sethy

Winter European Tour

January 9th, 2018

Seth Faergolzia will be making his yearly round of Europe this Winter (Jan/Feb 2018) with his new album “Loop Paintings”, this time with a different sort of concert…

Jan 5 Bugjar (Sendoff Show!) – Rochester, NY
Jan 17 East Side Tavern – Dublin, Ireland
Jan 19 Black Box – Belfast, Northern Ireland
Jan 20 House show – Galway, Ireland
Jan 21 Waggon – Offenbach, Germany
Jan 24 TiG7 – Mannheim, Germany
Jan 25 House Konzert – Bochum, Germany
Jan 26 House konzert – Kamen, Germany
Jan 27 Haldern Pop Bar – Haldern, Germany
Jan 28 Private Show – Cologne, Germany
Jan 30 Die Wohngemeinschaft – Cologne, Germany
Jan 31 Molotow – Hamburg, Germany
Feb 1 Franzis – Wetzlar, Germany
Feb 2 Grüner Baum – Ottersweier, Germany
Feb 3 One of a Million Festival – Baden, Switzerland
Feb 4 Urgence Disk – Genève, Switzerland (1PM Brunch Show)
Feb 5 White Horse – Morges, Switzerland
Feb 6 Bad Bonn – Düdingen, Switzerland
Feb 7 Kleine Werkraumgalerie – Rosenheim, Germany
Feb 8 Kain Autohaus – Bad Ischl, Austria
Feb 9 Villa Nachtanz – Heidelberg, Germany
Feb 10 806qm – Darmstadt, Germany
Feb 11 Shorty – Bärenbach, Germany
Feb 12 House Show with Choir – Weimar, Germany
Feb 13 Subbotnik – Leipzig, Germany
Feb 14 Schokoladen – Berlin, Germany
Feb 18 Folk City @ Photo City – Rochester, NY

He will be performing a varied cross-section of music spanning his 20 year songwriting career with Dufus / Multibird / Forest Creature / Heck Yup / 23 Psaegz. Seth will also be showing some of his new work involving:

• Live Looping
• Loop Painting
• Soft Songs
• Fresh Cuts written this past year
• Music from his earlier repertoire
• On some special occasions he will even take the time to write and record a brand new song with willing audiences.

Painting? While singing? Singing while painting? Seth brings the vastness of his life’s work seamlessly and effortlessly to the stage, creating an experience for those who are “here for it”. Seth is an artist’s artist. Building a community that huddles together against the storms of modern life and mentoring other artists along the way, Seth brings a verbose and verdant body of work in 2018 that includes new work from his live vocal loop painting series and “Seth Sings Soft Songs” series. Fans can expect old favorites as well as new tunes and that characteristic Seth experience that is at once childlike fun and deeply moving.

Tour Poster and Video

December 16th, 2017
Happy Saturday!!
I’m happy this Saturday because I just finished this new video to promote my projects and upcoming tour. I’m pretty excited about how it turned out. There was a lot involved in the making of it, actually. I had to learn a new technique to make some animations using After Effects. It’s pretty fun and very intuitive. I think once I’m back from tour I may really get down into some animations, it’s the direction I’m leaning with my puppet opera, though I do also wish to shoot live footage of the large puppets. Whew! I’m rambling!!!
https://youtu.be/6AJ9Inf_mpE
I can’t believe I’m headed out on another month-long jaunt. It’ll be my first tour since baby Albus was born. I’m pretty nervous to be leaving my family like this, but also very excited to see friends in Europe and to get to try out this new format for my shows. I’ll be having a playbill, which will tell everyone what I’m performing and give info about what’s being performed, and I’ll be playing a wide variety from my various interests, giving a cross section of my life as a tree.
This video would not have been possible if not for the amazing assistance of my partner Laura Lee Jones. She made the puppet which comes originally from the tour poster design…
 
… and she has offered endless help with my bookings and other business work involved in this tour. Thank you Laura…
Thanks to Brett Gobe, Traci Westcott and Dr. Frank Raymond for their video work
Thanks to Emily DiPaola, Shaun Jones, Caitlyn Bober, Laura Jones and Brett Gobe for participation in the Grande Scheme video.
Thanks to Dufus for their musical work on Fun Wearing Underwear: Grahm Dion, Rick Snell, Jack Dishel, Jerome Morris, Phil Timbakis, Mark Ospovat, Mike Pan and Babs Soft (there may be a couple other voices on there, but I can’t remember at this point since the recording was 20 years ago now!
Thanks to John Ludington of Forest Creature.
Thanks to Dominic Marini, Shaun Jones and Stan Martinelli of Multibird.
Thanks to Stephen Reardon for his photo of Multibird.
Thanks to 23 Psaegz members Shaun Jones, Emily DiPaola, Caitlyn Bober, Stan Martinelli, Anthony LaPenna and Dominic Marini for the Rubberbands video.
Thanks to Noah Estrella for the press photo and to Arthur Gold for the space in which to record the final loop at the end of the video.
Please share this around! The tour is not yet fully booked, but I can’t wait any longer to release this video because I’ve got two albums I’m trying to finish up before I leave in just under a month!! OH EM GEEEEEE!!!
hugs y’all!
Seth

Loop Painting #10 – Series Complete!!!

December 10th, 2017

Hi Everyone, thanks so much for sticking with me through all this time on here.  It’s been a meaningful endeavor, and I’m absolutely thrilled to be able to try all kinds of things artistically that I probably wouldn’t be able to without your tremendous support!

Loop Painting #10 is done!  I set out to make 10 and now I have.  They got bigger and bigger toward the end.  This one is 15 feet long!  I got to work on it in this really cool space which is springing up called Kaleidoscope Collective here in Rochester.  It’s a huge industrial space that is presently being turned into a tea bar and music venue.  Arthur Gold allowed me to use his space, he even helped me build the frame for my canvas!  My friend Noah Estrella also helped out by shooting video while I ran my camera on automatic stop motion.  It was super fun, and all the beautiful reverb on the recording is naturally occurring in the room.  It was an easy audio mix!  Here are the versions of audio:

Small  OR  Small (alternate version)

Medium

Large

For the video, just click on the picture at the top of the page.

As always, please give me your comments, put a heart down there if you love it, and spread the word if you can.  I need more subscribers!!

The art show is tonight! I’ll try and remember to take pics of all the stuff hanging around the room. It’s looking quite nice!

big hugs,

Seth

Loop Painting #9

December 10th, 2017

I’m most happy about this one.  It took a lot of work to get to this level, doing multiple paintings while looping, learning my method for editing and mixing this music and making the video coincide.  My new friend Traci Westcott shot the video footage for this one, and I think it looks great!  Check out her website.  I feel very strongly about this one so will say no more in hopes that you will click the link to watch the video and spread it to all your friends!

Your audio files:

Short Version

Medium Version

Long Version

… and remember!  Subscribers get a discount ticket for the art opening on December 1st!!  Next and last Loop Painting is 15 feet long!!!

many many many thanks!

your friend,

Seth