Category: House concerts

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Awesoming House concerts Recording Uncategorized World Domination

Nekkid concerts? A project with Neil Gaiman, Amanda Palmer, and Kyle Cassidy? Sure!

Jill has been following Kyle Cassidy on LiveJournal and Twitter for a while because he is a freakin’ amazing photographer, a man-about-town, and they have some mutual Philadelphia friends, too. Kyle has photographed some fascinating people, and has been photographing the Dresden Dolls and Amanda Palmer for eons now… and he also shot many of the photos for Neil Gaiman’s book “Who Killed Amanda Palmer: A Collection of Photographic Evidence.”

Kyle’s photographer life takes him to some neat places around the globe, and for the past few months Hot Breakfast! and Kyle were coincidentally in Tucson and Austin at the same time on two separate occasions, yet missing each other by just a few hours each time. We all pretended to be concerned that we were stalking each other. 🙂

Kyle often alludes to “seekrit projects” via his LiveJournal, which naturally makes his readers lean in and read extra-carefully, trying to eke out any clues as to what he’s working on and who he’s working with. The other day he barely revealed just a few small details of his latest Neil Gaiman / Amanda Palmer / Kyle collaboration, and mentioned he needed a few couples of “certain ages” willing to be photographed tastefully naked for this seekrit project. Since Matt and I are of certain ages, we volunteered, mostly because we have been wanting to finally meet Kyle! (And after you hit 40, any concerns you ever had about being naked in front of folks just goes away… we look like what we look like. Having done a lot of theater helps, too.)

This morning we headed up to Philly, where Kyle and his (jaw-droppingly beautiful) wife Trillian so warmly welcomed us and made us feel completely at home. We got down to business after learning more about the project, and we took our solemn oaths of secrecy. As a thank-you for contributing to the project, we snapped a few fun HB! photos covering our jibblies with Matt’s guitar and a strategically-placed tambourine… and hey, since we had the instruments out, we played a bit. Naked house concert! Woot!

We have a show tonight in Wilmington at the Chris White Gallery, but we figured we could do a quick living room concert. What a beautiful life we have… we are surrounded by people who are doing what they were put on this earth to do. Damn, it feels good. We don’t need a ton of money in the bank account when we have the ability and opportunity to create and share art.

Here’s a video of us singing “Defender” in Kyle’s living room. Hopefully you can see from the preview that we are indeed clothed for this rendition.

Life is pretty awesome.

Your pal,

Ji11

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Ass-kicking Gigs Awesome-sauce Awesoming House concerts Uncategorized

Thanks, Amanda Palmer

Our mantra for 2012, courtesy of Amanda Palmer:

“Always ask. You never know.”

What this means to us is: We’re not gonna sit around wishing we had something… whatever it is. If we want something, we’re gonna ask for it. Someone might say yes!

We never would have played a kick-ass house concert all the way across the country in Arizona this weekend to a home packed with 50 friends and strangers if we didn’t ask someone to host it. It was a little scary asking (“What an imposition!” we thought), but the worst the potential hosts could have said was, “No, thanks.” But instead they said, “HELL YES!” and during the show they said, “HOLY CRAP! WOOOOOOO!” and then after the show they said, “Wheeee! We should do this more often!” And we all smiled and giggled and hugged and drank wine and were (and are) all very happy having created and shared something so awesome.

So join us in making 2012 the year you ask for what you need.
Don’t be upset if people have to say “No, thanks,” since you’re no worse off than if you hadn’t asked.
But don’t be surprised when they say “Hell YES!” with a fistpump.

Let us know how this works out for you, and we’ll do the same.

Your pals,

Matt and Jill

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House concerts Uncategorized

House concerts: We haz them.

We’ve got some house concerts coming up, and we’re really excited about them!

House concerts are pretty popular these days. They’re a neat way for audiences to hear music up close and personal-like, and it’s a neat way for artists to play for people who are interested in digging the music rather than playing Quarters in a bar. (Does anyone even play Quarters anymore?) In a nutshell, the house owner invites their friends, people show up and nom on tastysnax and/or tastydrinx, and eventually people sit down to hear the concert. We’ll play one or two sets depending on what y’all have arranged for us to do, and then we’ll pass a hat, and then we might have one more snack, and then we hug and say thank you, and we hug some more, and then we pack up our stuff and say goodnight. And then your friends post on Facebook and Twitter about what an awesome time they had, you feel terrific about bringing dorky-good music to your friends and family, we make some new friends and fans hopefully… everyone wins!

People really like house concerts.

You might worry your house is too small; it’s not! House concerts don’t have to be in houses, either. Apartments are great, community centers are spiffy… wherever you want. Dorm rooms even work!

You might worry your house is too messy; it’s not. Have you seen my office?

You might worry that strangers will be coming to your house; don’t worry. The event can be private if you want, so you control who attends. Or, if you trust us, we can publicize it for you.

You might worry your neighbors will be annoyed about the noise; they won’t– just invite them and then they can’t complain because they’ll be having too much fun. 🙂

If you live near Mesa Arizona or near Wilmington, DE and you’d like to come to one of the house concerts we have coming up in January, drop us a line at awesomesauce@hot-breakfast.com. We’d love to have you!

Your pal,

Ji11