I’m in a band.

Two weeks ago Andrew introduced me to his new Portland housemates: Mark and Bob. Their band, Harlowe and the Great North Woods, just released a CD in Chico before moving up to Portland. A few of the members stayed in California, leaving people like ME available to fill in the gaps.

We’ve had a few practices and they’ve been great! We played a show Saturday at the home of David Dyas along with Kathleen Grace and Envelope Peasant.

More shows on the horizon.

It feels good to playing with other musicians again.

(photo courtesy of Kim Miller)

I have a couple songs in the works that I’m eager to share, but for this week I’m going to talk about someone else’s music.

Last night Kim and I went to the Laurelthirst Public House here in Portland to attend the CD release show for Kelly Blair Bauman’s new album, Gomorrah. I’m not versed in reviewing music or concerts; my breadth of musical knowledge and ability to describe sounds is unfortunately rather elementary. But I can say that the album sounds absolutely fantastic.

As far as using better words to describe music, it took me a long time to realize what angular guitars meant, and that word confused me at a time when my band was described as angular. At least I think it was. Music journalism is an art form all its own.

Four years ago, Kelly was kind enough to help me with recording a handful of songs. I showed up at his house once a week for about a month and a half. His schedule was always busier than mine, so I appreciated his willingness to share his time. Kelly never asked for anything in return; although I tried to make him happy by occasionally bringing snacks or beer.

The point is this: In addition to being a mind blowing musician and songwriter, Kelly Bauman is an awesome guy. His new album is beautiful and well worth your time. I’ll even attempt to describe it with musically descriptive words: floating, twangy, layered, atmospheric, and wonderful.

The album can be purchased for $10 at the record label’s website

Here are a few pictures from last night’s crowded event, courtesy of Kim:

I just wrote the About Me section and I’m gonna repost it here as an introduction for what this blog is gonna be about.

“Hello Internet,

My name’s Chris Miller and here’s an idea I had: go into the closet and find forgotten, old band recordings to put on the Internet and put up recordings of songs I’ve never released as well as songs I’m recording today.

I guess it’s not that evolutionary of an idea, but here’s the part I’m excited about: I thought it would be fun to share both the polished final products of song writing as well as the rough, early sketches of songs.

One of the things I’ve been trying to do lately, as a creative exercise, is to write and record a song from nothing to final product in one short session. Sometimes these songs are terrible, but sometimes they turn out pretty cool. My hope is that I will post these session songs on a regular basis. I won’t post everything, I’ll be sure to leave the exceptionally terrible stuff on my hard drive.

One other thing. I’ve been writing and recording songs both alone and with bands for over 10 years, and most of the time I’m not always completely proud of the way things turned out. So, I’m here to acknowledge that some of the stuff on the site makes me cringe when I hear it. A specific example: my drumming for ‘my life cinema.’

The point is, I’m swallowing my pride and putting it out there, because it isn’t doing any good in my closet or on my hard drive.

Oh yeah, what is El Gato Guapo? I suppose I’m retiring the Green Hills Alone moniker and picking up a new one. Green Hills Alone was about writing songs on acoustic guitar in the simplest way possible. El Gato Guapo is about writing songs in as many different ways as I can. For those of you who didn’t take Spanish in 8th grade, El Gato Guapo means “The Handsome Cat.”"

SOOOOO,

To start things off I’ve uploaded 3 EPs with more to come in the near future.

2005 Green Hills Alone EP

2003 Mercy Mile EP

2000 My Life Cinema

I have the 1999 Boys of Summer master but it’s on cassette. I have to find a tape player with stereo outs so I can bring that demo into the digital world.

And for something that nobody’s really heard. I present a song I recorded on June 7th, 2009. I liked the music but had no lyrics so I quickly scanned my computer for something and apparently found some stream of consciousness prose about not feeling creative. Awful, right? Since the song was only 40 seconds I just repeated the block of lyrics a second time. Now you know how lazy I can be.

Big Bang (2008)

Thanks for checking this out. The site still needs a lot of work, but I was eager to share what I had so far. I also want to acknowledge the other musicians who share creative credit for a lot of this music. As the site develops I hope to share a little bit about each of these bands and also tell you what these other musicians are doing now.

Oh yeah, thanks to Kim for setting this up. She designed this site and is telling me how to update everything.