KS#39 Orca Age, Mass Wasting

This is the first Kitchen Sessions that I ever went to.  You can read a little bit about how I came to be at the Kitchen sessions in the previous post.   It’s a long story and I’ll probably talk more about it in detail 

 

right now.  

 

I was very uncomfortable when I first arrived at the kitchen sessions.  While normally I’m a pretty chatty and outgoing person, like most human beings I get nervous when I go someplace new that’s filled with people I’ve never met before.  Luckily there is a porch at the kitchen sessions filled with laughing faces drinking various drinks and smoking various cigarettes or abstaining from these various habits with a dignity that all inebriates like myself wish we could have.  It was on this porch that I got to know some of those people, convincing some in bands to play a show with my own band for my own selfish goals of getting all the folks who attend the Sessions to come out and see my own band play while weaseling my way into Steve’s good graces, thusly coming into my position of power writing these various reviews/rants about the shows/whatever comes to my mind.  

 

What was I talking about?

 

 

Mass Wasting comes to us from the wild and free state of Maine, I remember him mentioning in his set that all his songs are about drinking and fishing and he’s got the voice and image of a man who is good at both of these things.  I’ve mentioned my perfect world before and the kind of people I would call upon to play in my home whenever I wanted to shuffle my real-life singer/songwriter Ipod.  I need people on that playlist who can sing like the tide coming in during the morning hours when I’m not quiet awake but am ready to be, waiting on the sun to be bright enough to light the sea enough to see the fish jumping up at flies.  

 

If you read the last post you’d know what I’m talking about.  

 

My favorite song of the evening actually involved Mass Wasting and the other performer of the evening, Orca Age.  Sometimes the only thing better than a singer who can perform all by himself, providing all the sound one needs from guitar chords and vocal cords, is when you add an electric guitar to provide ambient wailing over the acoustic crooning.    That’s what happened when both of them played together and I remember it was the moment of the night when I said to myself, “Yes.  I like it here.  I will come to as many of these as possible and hopefully write all the reviews for the show on the website I can only assume exists.”

 

 

That’s not what I really said.  I didn’t actually say anything I just bobbed my head and tried not to sway around too much to the music while trying to maintain my coolness as much as possible.

  

I wish I had that song to show you.  Maybe I'll make Steve put it up on his Vimeo.

 

Onto Orca Age.

 

 

 

Have I ever told you I really don’t like ambient music?

 

Yes I might’ve mentioned before that I like everything from Pop to Roots Rock to Dubstep to Musicals but I will probably never put ambient on this ever changing list of music that I like.  Not that I hate it, I know it's awesome, or atleast my cousin Steven tells me so, and that’s the word I’d have to use to describe what Orca Age was doing on his guitar.  I have no idea how someone uses an instrument in a way that creates notes they don’t have a letter for, double-sharps and slides that becomes something that sounds more like what I imagine the future sounds like; computer and space and voyages into black holes and Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, but Orca Age used his guitar past the limit of its intended capacity.  He also played a cover of a song from Les Mis which I thought was pretty cool.  I may not like ambient music but I do love me some musicals.   He also wrote a song about Firefly.  Which is the best show ever and that’s as much detail as I’ll go into that so as not to reveal what a giant nerd I am.  

 

Orca Age played an ambient set that night but he is not confined to that genre, His bandcamp shows he can rock an acoustic with calm sincerity or with moments of passion and verve.   He is based out of Brooklyn and has shows regularly at Union Hall and Pete’s Candy Shop and a bunch of other cool places with cool names in cool New York City.  

-ER