Flutter in the Equinox

We begin again, newly balanced. Events have conspired to keep the Flutterboxers on either side of the pond this summer, but summer is drawing down (if only now feeling like summer) and the Return of Flutterbox is nigh. We'll be at Barbes for two shining hours on Monday September 21 from 7-9pm. New songs! Old favorites! My calendar says Sept 21 is also the International Day of Peace. We'll have something to sing about that too.

Come out! Come out!

Flutter in the Zeitgeist II

This just over the trainsom, remarks upon the "flutterbox" (pictured) built by an unknown musician as part of the entertainment at a performance event we're sorry to have missed involving music and textile artists.

"I got very interested in the ’flutterbox’ instrument one of the musicians had made.... The flutterbox was an insane-looking construction, made out of a drum, bike wheel, gurney castor-wheels, wingnuts. The sounds it made I’d never heard before and because it wasn’t a known instrument like a guitar I had no received idea of how it should be played so that alone was fascinating. And the musician was bent over it like it was a loom or something.

It may be that all flutterboxes, at one time or another, bring their players to their knees. This one looks a little like a hamster pram.

Ready ... Steady ... ZOOM ...

Proud possessors of a new H4n ZOOM 4-track (simultaneously!) recorder, Flutterbox will be making some quality living room recordings in the weeks and months ahead, songs which will then be made available, in a delightful running brook of hit singles, on iTunes. More on this master plan as things develop. Meanwhile, watch this space!

One thing we know for sure right now. We'll be at Barbes on Monday, September 21 for two hours, from 7-9pm. Says here on the calendar that Sept 21 is the International Day of Peace. We have more than one song to sing about that.

Flutter in the Ether: Podcast!

Click to hear Flutterbox open and close the May 6th edition of THE KGB RADIO HOUR with your hosts, and Janine's, now also Neill's, friends, Mark Jacobson and Larry "Ratso" Sloman.

This entertaining pair beam smart, smarm free podcasts out of the KBG Bar on E. 4th Street roughly, literally, every month. Mark came to fame in Janine's life as the coach of her son's basketball team, a job he performed with 110% rumpled style and authority, but his calling is as a writer (currently, at New York magazine) interviewing icons, gangsters and saints of all stripes. He's been at this for years and remembers details.

Ratso was maybe the first editor of High Times, the dream job of countless millions. Larry's working with Tyson on the fighter's autobiography now. You should read his book on Houdini. The magician was a spy, you know.

The sound equipment on hand at the KBG falls somewhere between lo-fi and no-fi, but so what? Neill figured out a way for us to be heard despite the odds and the teeming rain 3 feet from the microphone. At the top, you'll hear the hosts wondering where "that sound" is coming from. Fans will recognize that sound ("In my head?" Ratso wonders) as a loop Neill is building, in this case for "The Robin Sings." At show's end we play "Safety Last"; the crowd, having heard "Robin" was authentically shocked at the tempo. Fun to see the surprise on their faces: That's radio, folks!

Some of Ratso's songwriter friends from Brooklyn are on the show, as are Mike Daly of The Daily News and Tom Robbins of The Village Voice. There are also phone-ins with Cong. Anthony Weiner (who had not yet dropped out of the Mayoral race) and the best Mike Bloomberg impersonator anyone could imagine. Jaw dropping. Are you as sickened by the Bloomberg "campaign" as we are?

Enjoy the show.

Flutter In The Zeitgeist

Imitation is the sincerest form of fluttery!

Janine in The New Yorker

We have a fan at The New Yorker! Nice mention for Janine's solo show coming up. Click on the headline for the link. Scroll down to just beneath Mr. Reed's picture, and there Janine is, mentioned in the same breath as Andy Statman. Janine tried very hard to get Mr. S. to play at St. Ann's years ago, but his religion just didn't allow it. In any case, he is a genius of two instruments and if you can't catch Janine, catch Andy!

Coming Soon to Le Poisson Rouge! Sat April 25

Boho Supremo John Kruth, sweet, string-playing veteran of many a Hal Willner project and prodigious music biographer in his own right (Sun Ra, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Townes Van Zandt) was in truth the man who gave Flutterbox its start, with his invitation to me to sing a John Lennon song at the Bowery Poetry Club on the 25th anniversary of his apotheosis. I asked Neill to join me, he suggested I try on his arrangement of "In My Life," and in the length of time it took to sing and play the song a band was born. Johnny the K been an F-box enthusiast from, literally, day one and he's asked us both to open for and participate in his multi-artist shindig marking 40 years since the release of "Nashville Skyline" (a number that refuses to seem real to me) at Le Poisson Rouge, the swank new club in the old Village Gate on Bleecker Street.

Flutterbox opens at 7 with a 40 minute set. Then Neill will have his way with "Peggy Day," no doubt correcting the cocaine-addled tempo of yore. Me, "I'll Be Your Baby Tonight" or "Tonight I'll Be Staying Here With You" with Sam Parton of Be Good Tanyas fame. All will be revealed in the fullness of rehearsal time. We haven't played Manhattan since Joe's Pub in November and we hope to see you out there.