CT Indie House Show

Thanks to everyone who came out to my house show on Saturday, and thanks to everyone who performed. We had an awesome turnout, with good tunes, and some great food! Thankfully the rain stopped, and it was the perfect temperature for our fireplace. I'll host another one of these sometime soon.

For those of you who missed it, you're in luck. We managed to record everyone's set, and the recordings came out amazing. Thanks to Jason for doing an amazing job on sound, you can hear every cricket, whisper and hiccup - it's crazy. I've made all the recordings available to download through MediaFire, so listen freely, and spread these around.

Blind Charles was up first, he played some really great solo acoustic fingerpicking tunes. He did a cover of Fahey's "Requiem for John Hurt," a traditional on the banjo, and closed out with an original. His music was meditative and pensive, and started the night off with a quiet, relaxed feeling.

Download the Blind Charles set here.


The Cartography Division went on next. For those of you who don't know, it's my band from long ago. We were a bit out of practice, this was the first time we played together in 2 years (no rehersal!). Anyway, check out our set, I think we did ok. Our harmonies weren't as sweet as they once were, and I forgot some lyrics; but as Matt said before the set, "don't blame us, blame time - time has rusted us."

Download The Cartography Division's set here.



Indra Zen Versus the World was pretty quiet before the show, but when he went on, he was explosive and intense. He thrashed through his set, shouting out his melodic punk songs with a ton of passion. I thought he kicked a ton of ass - he was up there giving it his all and it shows. At one point, he muscled right through a harmonica failure and rocked out a killer solo. He still maintained a great sense of humor (self-deprecation and sarcasm) the whole time. I was really impressed - I didn't know how he was going to be live, but it was awesome.

Anyway, he'll be playing some shows coming up soon, including Billy Baloney's in Danbury on Sept. 25th. Don't miss that show, he's really great live, as you can tell if you listen to the set. He'll be doing a few more shows later this year, so check out his myspace site for details.

Download the Indra Zen Versus the World set here.


Petite Mal sang some very quiet songs, which complimented the nighttime sounds very well. It was almost like an intimate poetry reading, with her reading out of a book as she sang. It was almost like she was belting out tiny anthems and stanzas with a quavering voice. It was impressive how quiet everyone was while she was singing. She ended with two covers - a Daniel Johnston cover and a Neil Young cover, both of which were sung like nothing you've ever heard before.

Download Petite Mal's set here.

Jesse Tobias closed the night with a great set. In addition to being a super nice dude, his music is fantastic. He started with a traditional song called "Silver Dagger" which was phenomenal. He played mostly acoustic, going from whispering lyrics to full on belting out melodies. He closed his set out with a few tunes on electric, which were just as great. He played a really reverby electric, which I was totally digging. Towards the end of the night, he was playing some noisy experimental things with a beer bottle, which was really cool. He was damn good.

Download Jesse Tobias' set here.


We'll be posting some videos on Youtube sometime soon as well, so you'll be able to check out some footage of the show. I'll keep you posted. Since things went so well, I think I'll be hosting a few of these in the near future (Halloween, anyone?) so expect some good things to come. If anyone has any suggestions or wants to play just let me know.

- John

Thanks to The Beat, Brian W. and Elodie E. for pictures! And thanks to Matt B. for doing interviews and being M.C. for the night.

Also, here's a link to download each piece of the show, if you're lazy like me.