New Murder Shoes Single

Today my group Murder Shoes released our three track "Cash On Fire" single. It features the brand new title song as well as two new full band re-recordings of some of our more familiar tracks.

Eel Mansions, Fresh From Canada!

Tom K, publisher of Uncivilized Books must have caught wind of my French Canadian/Dutch/Hillbilly German/Mexican roots and paid me partial tribute by having my book printed up north. Anyhows, advance copies of the collected Eel Mansions have arrived. Pre-order copies and review copies are shipping from Uncivilized Books now, the store copies will follow shortly.

The fine folks at Uncivilized are still selling copies of Eels at the discounted pre-order price until the end of the month as part of their French Canadian/Dutch/Hillbilly German/Mexican tribute sale. If you're of age, grab some whiskey and get ready to curl up with the book that's gonna treat you right in 2015. Well, there might be another book that's gonna treat you right. We'll have to wait and see. Meow.

Murder Shoes At The Kitty Cat Klub Dec. 10th

Once again, we'll be playing at The Kitty Cat Klub in Southeast Minneapolis, but this time we'll be sharing the stage with Monica LaPlante. If you haven't heard her yet, check out the clip, it's the bee keeper's knees. Show starts at 10 pm sharp!

Second Show At The Kitty Cat Klub

Thanks to everybody that turned out for our second outing. We debuted two more songs that night, "I Can Count To Infinity" and "Die Another day", both acoustic songs given an electric reboot. "Infinity" used to sound like The Church, now it sounds like the Stones. I don't know how the hell that happened in translation, but there it is.

Tonight we're working on a new song called "Maybe You Can" for our third Kitty Cat show on December 10th. We've got nearly a dozen new ones in progress, more on that later.

Undercurrent Mnpls taped and posted a song from our second show at The Kitty Cat Klub, it's called "Under The Sea (2)". Black and white, very nice.



2nd Show Setlist:

When You're Dreaming
Under The Sea (2)
Fuck Pop
Die Another Day
Every Heart Has A Fool
Charlotte Manning
Out On My Own
Jenny Says
I Can Count To Infinity
On A Train Or In Your Bed
Sea A Little Louder

Sketches, Studies, Non-sequitors, & Other Madness

Just added a few more items that are now for sale here.

Brooklyn, I Hear Ya Hollerin'

That's right! I'm heading back to NYC, and this time, I get to promote my first full length effort published by Uncivilized Books, Eel Mansions! Two years in the making and 240 pages long. It's a beast to be sure. So yes, I'll be at the CAB festival talking shop, signing books, and meeting all sorts of fine folks. As you know, traveling can be a financial pisser. Seems like a great time to go through the art stacks and offer up a variety of sketches and drawings. Some you may have seen in my art/lit books, some are new. I'll be updating images all week, so keep checkin' back.

Take a gander at today's batch here.

Murder Shoes At The Kitty Cat Klub

Tomorrow night my group Murder Shoes (formerly Marriage At Nevers) will debut in its five piece line up at the Kitty Cat Klub in Southeast Minneapolis. We'll go on around 10:15. Hope to see you there.

New Band Sneak Peek At Public Functionary

Tonight, at Public Functionary Gallery in North East Minneapolis, Riveter Magazine will be holding an event from 7 to 9pm which will focus on women and narratives (fiction & journalism), calligraphy demos, and book binding. Following after will be two sets of music, one by A M Stryker and the other by members of Murder Shoes (formerly known as Marriage At Nevers). The Murder Shoes set will preview our new material in an informal setting before our proper five piece full band set next Wednesday at the Kitty Cat Klub. In between these sets will be vinyl D.J. sets by Chris White and myself. Expect garage rock, yakety sax, and my usual punk faves. Fun til' midnight or so. All this and a mammoth amount of art. Meowsa!

Exhibition Opening Tonight 7pm to 12am

Better reschedule that fondu night and come out to opening of the Edie Overturf and Derek Van Gieson exhibit In Search Of, happening at Public Functionary, Northeast Minneapolis, 7pm to 12am. It'll be a hoot and you'll see damn near 80 pieces of art. Maybe more, I forgot to count everything once it got hung. See you there!

Edie Overturf & Derek Van Gieson Exhibition

This Friday, September 19th, will be the opening of In Search Of, a joint concept exhibition between Edie Overturf and myself at Public Functionary, a gallery in Northeast Minneapolis. Edie's woodcuts and reliefs will join my paintings and drawings in a show that riffs on the creation myths and histories found in folklore, religion, and mythology.

Our idea was to develop five tribes and for each of us to elaborate upon and document two of them. We worked on these separately and shared our progress halfway through the show's development in order to gain access to each other's story lines for use in repeating and overlapping motifs. Each tribe has a unique way in how they depict themselves and others in their history, in this way, we also riff on our own history and the history of other nations.

In Search Of Exhibition
Opening Friday, September 19th 2014 7pm to 12am
Closing Friday, October 17th 2014

Public Funtionary

1400 12th Ave NE, Minneapolis 55413

(The corner of Broadway and Buchanan)

Production Sketches Part1

Cat Stacking Part Two

One of 50 or so pieces in production for an upcoming viewing.

Gonna Make You My Bisquits

New outlet for my brain. Details soon.

1997 With Badges On Our Knees

THE VAN PELT Imaginary Third
La Castanya Records


My review of The Van Pelt’s “Imaginary Third” begins with another band, All Natural Lemon Lime Flavors. They had come to Kalamazoo to exhibit their own special take on the My Bloody Valentine/Swirlies funnel cloud fuzzy psychedelic tapestry of sound. They play in a ruined space with dangling drop ceiling. They sound good in there. A lot of people did, it was the latest in a series of venues put together by the scene elders who made our lives so much better. Anyways, I start talking with a man named Alop, who came with the band. I ask him about The Van Pelt. He says he just recorded them and that their second bass player was moving to California or something of that nature and that they needed somebody. I immediately left the show, ran into the house and dubbed a quick copy of a three year old studio session with a band I used to play bass in called The Paraguay City Rollers. I write what is most likely an embarrassingly earnest letter saying I will move to New Jersey in a hot second if they’ll take me on as a replacement. I give it to Alop to hand off to The Van Pelt and life moves on.

Fast forward to 1997, I’m in a new band, The Roman Invasion Suite, and we’re on tour and about to record our full length album at WGNS in Washington D.C. Along the way we play a string of shows and we cross paths with The Van Pelt twice. The first time at a skate park in upper PA and the second time at a church in Philadelphia. At the skate park we were both unloading our gear and I couldn’t resist. I approach Chris Leo with a sort of abstract ice breaker- “Did you get my tape?” He stops and looks at me, puzzled and I finish with “it was an audition tape for your vacant bass player spot” Toko hears this and also looks a bit puzzled. Chris lights up and says “That was you?!” We laugh and he explains to Toko what had happened.

They play a bunch of new songs that night. They keep getting better. The songs just lock together and come out hard coal turned diamond nuggets. Chris and Brian’s guitars intertwine DNA strand like, and for a time, I’m in a jingle jangle bliss state. We play that other show together and then my band breaks up and so does theirs. I only get to hear a couple of the new songs on an Art Monk E.P. called The Speeding Train. The rest appear on Chris Leo and Toko’s new group’s Lapse debut. I’m glad I get to hear them finally and sometimes I’d make tapes of the Lapse songs and the Van Pelt E.P. songs together to form what would have been their third album. It goes without saying that it’s a very nerdy thing to do. Up there with personally curated Beach Boys Smile tapes (guilty) and imaginary Beatles albums culled from solo albums and bootlegs (guilty). I managed a record store and hosted a jazz & punk rock radio show. I live eat and breathe music.

I see Chris later at one of these Lapse shows. I’m living in New York and we exchange emails to try and figure out a time to sit around and play jangle guitars. School consumes me and he’s a busy fellow.

Fast forward again to yesterday. I’m flipping through albums in Minneapolis, kinda shaking my head at all these $20-25 dollar new releases and there it is. The Van Pelt’s “Imaginary Third”, an album with unreleased tracks from their last sessions. Instinctively my hand reaches into my pocket for loose dollars and the transaction is complete. I’m walking down the street with the sun on my back holding some new Van Pelt. New old Van Pelt. The circle of life is complete. I smile, world peace happens somewhere, in some universe, and birds chirp, and the ants do their thing. I love the Van Pelt and this is unquestionably their finest work. The sharp, stabby trebly bits from their first album mixed with the sad single note solace of their second, fused together with additional Bo Diddley and a ridiculously funny chant on top. The album has a seething anger to it. It's a timebomb of a listen. The kind of thing that makes for great listening but takes a toll on the participants. I’m still mad they broke up. Chris, Brian, Neil, Toko, you’ve done some beautiful work here on this imaginary third album. I kind of always knew it was going to be great.

Further Studies

Fashion Shoot Inky Doodle

Not long after I had moved back to NYC I found myself doing backdrops for a fashion shoot down at Milk Studios. There was plenty of downtime so I doodled. This is one of my faves. It was later used in my New York Years art & fiction roundup, Enough Astronaut Blood To last The Winter.

Milk City

New page from a story inside a story inside a story. Yes, more meta absurdist behavior.