Here’s the press release for the Dana-Thomas House State Historic Site “Made for Music” event we’ll be playing on Saturday, April 5 in Springfield, along with a kids-centered instrument-building event we’ll be doing earlier in the day at the offices of the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency ($1 – cheap!).
These are going to be fun events, and we hope to see you there.
The Viper and His Famous Orchestra have just set up our next Milwaukee show for March 7, 8:15 – 10:45 at the Anodyne Coffee Roasting Co.’s Walker’s Point Roastery location, which only began hosting live music relatively recently.
The cafe space itself is a fairly new extension of the roastery, and is nicely done up: “a refurbished warehouse space offering cream city brick, exposed wooden beams, natural wood harvest tables, a raised stage, and a reclaimed 40 foot old-world bar.” Nice, huh? And we’ll be on that raised stage playing our little hearts out.
224 W. Bruce Street, Milwaukee, WI 53204 | (414) 763-1143
$7 cover
Saturday, February 15 (8:00-10:00 p.m.)
House show in Springfield, Illinois — an intimate house-concert setting on a lovely cobblestone street near Washington Park in Springfield, Illinois. Admission is $10 and by advance tickets only, so purchase your tickets here. Or right here!
Sunday, February 16, 2014 (4:00-5:00 p.m.)
Music Under the Dome — Jacksonville Public Library
201 W. College Ave. | Jacksonville, IL 62650 | 217-243-5435
As with all Music Under the Dome concerts, this one is free and open to the public.
$0 cover
Saturday, March 8, 2014 (10:00 p.m.- close)
Mickey’s Tavern
1524 Williamson Street, Madison, WI 53703 | (608) 251-9964
With Madison supergroup, Guided By Puppets. And because we get paid out of the bar take, this show is free! But come thirsty.
$0 cover
New video footage, courtesy of my sister Kristin Jerving-Bernard, who filmed me leading the audience through a round of “Feliz Meriton” at my performance during a Christmas luncheon of the American Association of Retired Persons, Sheboygan (Chapter 338), on December 21, 2010.
“Feliz Meriton” is an orginal composition by my daughter, Irene (as you can read about here), who will be turning 7 in a week. Many, many meritons to her.
Full set list below. “Feliz Meriton,” “The Yodeler’s Christmas,” and “Make a World Brand New” were all new songs premiered at this show, much to the delight and/or dismay of the AARP:
Nino’s Steak & Seafood, December 21, 2010
In honor of the UW-Madison Teaching Assistants’ Association event that The Viper and His Famous Orchestra will be playing this Friday evening, September 3, I’m posting here a recording of one of the Viper earliest performances for the Graduate Employees Organization of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
right click here to download mp3
“I’ve heard of Big 10 schools with representation…”
The exigent occasion for such poetry was — if I’m remembering this right — an attempt by the university’s administration to abolish part of the tuition & fee waiver for graduate assistants not working in their home departments (this would have had a big effect on English, for example, who drew teachers for their professional writing and other classes from places like the Law school) but to soften the blow with the announcement of a new, but kind of rinky-dink, dental benefit.
DETAILS: It sounds like I’m playing a guitar — my singing cowboy one? — rather than ukulele. Carrie Rentschler was a GEO member in the audience. GSAC was the company shop.
Here’s a scratch recording that I made for Edward Burch to practice along with, to get the Run-DMC-style vocal interpolations I want to do with him on the first verse of “Drunk Bus”
http://theviper.wikispaces.com/file/view/drunk-bus-first.verse.mp3/80335421
(click here to download the mp3)
“Drunk Bus” is a song by Macomb, Illinois-based rapper Tre-P, and it falls into my favorite category of songs: namely, songs about the details of local public transportation, particularly buses.* In this case, that bus is the eponymous free shuttle that would take Western Illinois Universities from the clubs back to their dorm late at night. Here’s Tre-P, in full flash animation:
Watch for the secret interpolated shot at 1:46.
* Cf. The Viper and His Famous Orchestra, “Ich Bin Berlin” (on the Champaign, Illinois MTD bus route up North Prospect to the Meijer grocery store, “where parking’s the only sound”) and “Ukulele Rhythm” (about riding on the Blue bus–the 4W bus–that went from my place on Hill St. in Champaign to the International Cafe on Wright St. in Urbana where the orchestra and I would sometimes play of a Friday afternoon in the late 1990s).
The Viper & His Famous Orchestra 