Music from the archives: Different Lens: Rarities and Demos, 2019-2022

For the month of September only, I'm excited to share with you a deep dive into the creation process for Familiar Ground and Tourist. Different Lens: Rarities and Demos, 2019-2022, is available now, via Bandcamp.

A compiled collection from the digital and analog archives, Different Lens contains a selection of the countless demos, b-sides, alternate takes, and sketches created during the years 2019-2022. Written and recorded across the American southwest, Sierra Nevada, Oklahoma, California, and Texas, each track is a brief travelogue that takes from the geography and the itinerant state of mind I found myself in.

Many of these songs became the roadmap that lead me to craft Familiar Ground and Tourist, two records that have boundless concepts and motifs in common with each other, not to mention they were captured and finished as I was in motion between places more often than not. If you listen close, you can hear the songs taking shape and their first steps as I stumbled through the dark and the southwest, towards the coast.

After 9 months of vocal rest, surgery and convalescence, this month has also seen me cleared to sing once again, without worry. I'll be celebrating with a handful of shows this fall, and on into January where I'll be journeying to Europe with Wild Child. Dates are below, more to come.

As always, thank you for listening. I hope you'll check out Different Lens, and I hope to see you out there somewhere!

John

2023

9/16 Petaluma CA - House Show

9/22 Reno NV - 7th Street Station

10/19 Little Rock AR - White Water Tavern (Isaac Alexander opening)

10/20 Bentonville AR - Bloodbuzz House Show

10/21 Oklahoma City OK - House Show

10/26 Tuscaloosa AL - Druid City Brewing Company

10/27 New Orleans LA - Chickie Wah Wah (supporting Andrew Duhon)

2024

1/12 Brooklyn NY - Music Hall of Williamsburg (supporting Wild Child)

1/17 Dublin IRELAND - The Grand Social (supporting Wild Child)

1/18 Belfast UK - The Deer's Head (supporting Wild Child)

1/20 Manchester UK - The Deaf Institute (supporting Wild Child)

1/21 London UK - Oslo Hackney (supporting Wild Child)

1/24 Berlin GERMANY - Privatclub (supporting Wild Child)

1/26 Rotterdam NETHERLANDS - Rotown (supporting Wild Child)

1/28 Groningen NETHERLANDS - Der-Aa Theater (supporting Wild Child)

Wild Child album release tour, featuring JCA on guitars

Strung high and tuned low, my backpack reassembled, this spring and summer I am back on the stone ribbons of US interstate with my guitars, riffing for the incendiary Wild Child for the The End of the World Tour.

4/13 Cambridge MA - The Sinclair

4/14 New York NY - Racket

4/15 Washington DC - 9:30 Club

4/16 Philadelphia PA - Underground Arts

4/18 Asheville NC - The Grey Eagle

4/19 Atlanta GA - Vinyl

4/20 Nashville TN - Blue Room @ Third Man

4/22 Chicago IL - Thalia Hall

4/23 Minneapolis MN - Fine Line

5/5 Austin TX - Emo's

5/6 Fort Worth TX - Tulips

5/9 Santa Fe NM - Meow Wolf

5/11 Denver CO - Bluebird

5/12 Denver CO - Bluebird

5/13 Fort Collins CO - The Aggie

5/14 Aspen CO - Belly Up

5/16 Boise ID - The Olympic

5/18 Portland OR - Mississippi Studios

5/19 Portland OR - Mississippi Studios

5/20 Seattle WA - The Croc

5/21 Eugene OR - WOW Hall

6/20 Salt Lake City UT - The State Room

6/22 Reno NV - Cypress

6/23 Sacramento CA - Cesar Chavez Plaza

6/24 Santa Barbara CA - Soho Music Club

6/25 San Luis Obispo CA - Live Oak Music Festival

8/9 Phoenix AZ - Crescent Ballroom

8/10 Solana Beach CA - Belly Up

8/11 Los Angeles CA - Regent Theatre

8/13 San Francisco CA - Outside Lands

Come witness the mystery and history.

John

Instrumental Projects: Storm Variations and Departure Nocturnes

Greetings from the highways and low roads of middle America,

Over the last few months I’ve released two new instrumental projects that I wanted to share with you.

Storm Variations

February 3rd, 2023

This ephemeral exercise came into form as a compositional experiment in piano, tape manipulation, layered improvisation, and field recording. In February 2021, a catastrophic winter system enveloped Texas and all but disabled the electrical grid and infrastructure for weeks, sparking the initial inspiration and leading Abney to record weather patterns across northern hill country.Silence and isolation are juxtaposed with the busy nature of human travel and gathering, as desolate gales fade in and out of the places and structures where people move. In “The Places They Gather And Speak” parts I and II, Abney recorded the atmosphere of the departure and arrival areas of the Austin International Airport, as well as a calm day at Barton Springs recreational area before a storm, as an ambient canvas for his soft-pedal piano, a manipulated music box, and steel guitar played by ZDAN. The coming and going of the modern person, intimately tied to the temperamental shifts of weather and climate, vice versa, are also captured by the field recordings of Rebecca Sarkar, spanning from the rain-inundated hills of Shropshire, England to the tropic coastal showers of Jamaica. Without voice, without lyric, the tracks held herein are temporary, shifting in nature, and a reason to rest and hold fast at the port until the storm and stress passes.

The album visuals were conceived and skillfully executed by musician and painter Drew Carman (https://www.designcohort.com).

Departure Nocturnes

April 7th, 2023

My third instrumental record, exploring geography, weather, memory, and loss, was set upon the world on my birthday - Friday the seventh of April.

A collection of prepared piano and electric piano works focused on the dust, the lost, and the items that are forgettably strewn about our lives and spaces we inhabit. The junk drawer minutiae, the loose nails, batteries, sandpaper, cables, and coins, bolster the strings and wooden angles of the piano, forming a spacious awareness of what has disappeared into the corners of where we exist. A series of synth modules and digital delays transformed the sounds created by these ubiquitous items into a painting of households in motion and workplaces in transit.

The captivating, encompassing album art is “Luck Worn” by Ruth B. Loveland, a visual artist from Norman, Oklahoma (https://www.ruthloveland.com).

Both projects are available now, exclusively on Bandcamp. All proceeds go towards my upcoming vocal surgery and recovery.

Today I embark on my 3rd tour of 2023, playing guitars with Wild Child. I hope to see you somewhere along the way.

Thanks for listening,

John