Tom Eaton

The whole season is a shot of fresh oxygen, where trees and grasses remember life before they dozed off a few months back, birds and wind delight in frivolous movements, and waking up in the morning is a whole lot easier (unless, of course, your relationship with pollen is compromised). Wouldn’t our New Year’s Resolutions have a better chance of success if we made them in the Spring instead of in January?

What do we do in the Spring? Hair-dying? Knot-tying? Potato frying? Lawn-lying? Ankle-sock buying? Get-in-shape trying?

What spring foods do we eat?
What about Spring music?
What Spring spots do we visit?
What Spring spots do we visit whilst whistling a Spring tune in between bites of Spring food?

Read on for some of our favorite springy things…

Michael Kaufmen:

To bring in the spring…Slo-Ro is flexing muscles, working out at LA Fitness which has a mural of San Diego. Cracks him up everytime he is doing his 10 pull ups. Hey, he is working his way up. Don’t you worry. When not working out, he is “crate-digging” at his public library for lovely music of other territories than the U.S. pop flood. He is learning to identify species of birds and energy bars.

Half-handed Cloud:

Sleeping with the windows open.
Swimming in rivers and lakes.
Bike-riding without gloves or long sleeves.

Megan Slaboda:

Spring line of Mamma Made Clothes
LONG WALKS
The warmth of the sun on my face.
Vacations with the ‘Smith’ family

Dan Zimmerman:

a trip to Longwood Gardens, PA
“The Girl from Ipanema” goes walking..
The Notorious Byrd Brothers
“If Dogs Run Free” then why can’t we?
Care for your mower..
Lila Downs,
New Order,
and oh yes,
“The Santa Cruz River Band”
from lovely Tucson Arizona
(see my MySpace)

Christiaan Palladino:

Lamburgers with your best friend.
Piggyback weekends.
Fleet Foxes on repeat in the car.
Car washing.
Kissing my wife.

Lenny Smith:

I think everyone would greatly enjoy doing what I just did last Saturday and two Saturdays before that. I drove, with my three sons, down to the Batsto River in the South Jersey pines. We had a great breakfast and then went off, with our kayaks, down the Batsto River. It was so peaceful and lovely. The whole 7 hour trip we only saw two other boats: two canoes with couples fighting about who can steer better, branches in the face, and something about spiders! Once we got past them (they did say, “Hello.”), we had nothing for the next several hours but peace, beauty, and a quiet joy. The woods really are “lovely, dark and deep.” NOW we get to the best part: Along the way, while my 3 sons were out paddling and laughing ahead of me, I quietly dropped into the cedar water behind my kayak the following things: any memories tormenting me from the past, any hopes for the future robbing me of the joy of the moment, any regrets whatsoever, any thoughts about wars, floods, earthquakes, famines, shootings and the like, any concern about the election, any considerations about possible invasions by aliens or terrorists. Over the side went my over-active mind, my identification with my mind, my propensity to “take” offense, and so much more. Suffice it to say, when I finally got out of the kayak for lunch on the sandy beach, I forgot that I was not a kid anymore. In fact, I really was a kid again and I remembered that I was allowed to be happy! And NOW I AM. There really must be something magical in that cedar water flowing through the South Jersey pines.

Hi All,

An article appeared in the New York Times this weekend called “The Return of the One Man Band” by John Wray. It’s a great article about Final Fantasy, St. Vincent, and Panda Bear (with a brief nod to Sufjan Stevens), but it also had these nice words to say about the great Half-handed Cloud:

“…in the last few years there has been a gravitation from tried-and-true rock paradigms, driven both by boredom with the increasingly threadbare conventions of indie rock and by a sincere, if playful, rediscovery of experimentalists as diverse as Van Dyke Parks and Philip Glass. And it’s no surprise that many of the boldest of these, like Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti, Half-handed Cloud and Ghostband, are essentially one-person projects that don’t require too much consensus about what a song should be.”

Way to go, Mr. Ringhofer!

For the whole article, click here!

We’re pleased to present this behind-the-scenes look at the creation of the Sounds Familyre logo from Daniel Smith. Enjoy!

This is my first rough SF sketch. I was thinking about horns and sound making machines.







Here’s a quick sketch of some lily’s. I was really interested in the fleur-de-lis and it’s symbolism of the number three and purity. And look, the two together makes a heart at the top… lovely.







Another double lily sketch with the text. Blue ball point pen is classy… but backwards text?







So here’s first attempt at the lyre direction. It’s a small U-shaped harp that to me symbolized the emphasis on “the song.”







Two more lily/lyre failures.







Now it’s really taking shape. Check out the white out edits. The lily’s are there, the text looks good, and there’s those nice wheat stems at the bottom.







I’m trying to sweetly fit in the info. Feels weird still.







The wheat had to go. Right now it’s got curly tips but it’s gonna change.







Yuck, this version looks terrible, but it’s the first incorporation of the SF text. Oh look! This is when it had a D. “copyright” image. “D.” stood for Danielson.







Oh sweet, it’s done. Pink and brown is nice and everything flows just right now. Logo’s done, now what about the music?