theNEWDEAL: Recent Episodes
theNEWDEAL
TND3
Management Mike Polans - 7S Management thenewdeal@7smgmt.com
Booking Hunter Williams & Logan Handelsman - CAA booking@thenewdeal.com
Composed, performed, arranged, recorded and mixed in isolation by The New Deal Mastered by Phil Demetro
Davide Di Renzo - drums Dan Kurtz - bass, sax Jamie Shields - keys Brendan Bayliss - guitar
Composed, performed, arranged, recorded and mixed in isolation by The New Deal Mastered by Phil Demetro
Davide Di Renzo - drums Dan Kurtz - bass, sax Jamie Shields - keys
Composed, performed, arranged, recorded and mixed in isolation by The New Deal Mastered by Phil Demetro
Davide Di Renzo - drums Dan Kurtz - bass, sax Jamie Shields - keys
Composed, performed, arranged, recorded and mixed in isolation by The New Deal Mastered by Phil Demetro
Davide Di Renzo - drums Dan Kurtz - bass, sax Jamie Shields - keys
In the past, “This Deal In History” has featured a cut from a long-ago New Deal concert alongside comments and insights from Jamie. In honour of TND’s return to Colorado next week (first time with Davide!), we here at New Deal HQ asked Jamie to talk about a clip from TND’s May 2008 show at the Mishawaka Amphitheatre.
If you’ve ever been to a concert at “The Mish” then you know what a beautiful place it is to see live music. I can tell you, however, that nothing compares to being on stage playing music there. The water rolling by behind you, the scenery and audience in front of you - it changes your approach to music, or at least it did for me on that night back in 2008.
The cut comes in hot with what i call the “roller skating groove” pumping away courtesy of Dan’s grinding low-end and Darren’s galloping disco beat. It sounds to me like i’ve got the filter on the Nord Lead wide open and set to “stun” while i stab away on the upper reaches of the keyboard. At 0:48 somebody yells out a heads-up (with all of our hand signals and non-verbal communications you sometimes have to just do it old-school with your voice!).
That shout was to tell me to stop playing which I did, leaving it to Dan and Darren. They break it down to some fancy bass and hi-hat until I return with a spacey melody on a keyboard that I apparently had on stage that night but don’t have anymore (can’t place that synth sound!).
By 2:42 we’re hitting pretty hard with a unison line (keys & bass) that eventually returns to that spacey synth phrase (and then back to the unison line) just in time for a HARD LEFT TURN at 4:20 to a different key, different sound and different groove. I’ve mentioned before how much I love those sudden gear changes. It always makes for an interesting scene shift and this one is no different. I’m really having trouble placing which keyboard is being used for that main melody… it might have been this super-small grey thing that I used for a while, resting it on top of the Juno.
No confusion what keyboard that is at 5:30 - the Juno comes in strong and proud with a second melody before returning to the first line played on the other synth. 6:25 has me bringing the Juno back together with the previous keyboard while Darren starts ramping up the tempo until we drop into some good ol’ Drum & Bass at 7:05 with a key change thrown in for good measure.
I play the trigger for “Self Orbit” at 7:25 but we hold back for a while (probably allowing me to wrestle with the tuning of the Moog which appeared to be giving me trouble all night). I like the restraint we’re showing in this section - Darren beatboxes and it’s just drums and keys for a while before I start teasing the Self Orbit melody, letting it simmer until we hit it full-throttle at 10:37.
FUN FACT - Dan is playing the bass line to “A Little While Longer” in the middle section of “Self Orbit” at 11:15. I’m not sure why but it works!
12:25 - Another hard turn and we’re entering Robot Territory. That synth line is definitely the Nord Lead. Special shout-out to Dan’s bass tone in this section. The man has got some serious fuzz going on!
I’d also be remiss if I didn’t point out MSG’s spot-on delay throws and general sonic awesomeness that he’s displaying in this clip (13:10). The sounds are so clean yet so muscular - I don’t know how we’d do it without him there. I’m glad that he’s still with us!
I’m guessing that the lead sound that I dial in at 13:28 is my in-the-moment attempt to emulate the guitar-synth lines at the end of David Bowie’s “Ashes To Ashes”. Sure sounds like it to me, at least.
14:24 you can hear somebody call out a cue for shots (again, the old-fashioned way!) and we oblige with a bunch of hardcore hits before lying down in a bed of dub, cushioned by MSG’s echoes and reverbs.
The Mish was definitely opening me up to some spacier sounds and textures on this night. It does some magical things to the mind, that’s for sure.
Thanks for listening, -Jamie
Live at Asheville Music Hall, Asheville, NC - 11/10/2019 📸: Bain Stewart Media
Welcome to the return of This Deal In History (version 3.0)! In the past, This Deal In History has featured a cut from a long-ago New Deal concert alongside comments and insights from Jamie. This edition will feature a concert from last week (11/10/19) in Asheville, NC - the first #TDIH to feature drummer Davide Di Renzo.
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Last week’s Asheville concert was an exciting one; it featured a lot of improvisation but it also featured what is quickly becoming a hallmark in TND3.0 - patience.
One thing that’s different about TND3.0 is our willingness to sit on the groove for a very long time, letting the body of the piece develop and bloom at its own pace. While the TND1.0 and 2.0 iterations had some very strong musical qualities we were never really known as a “patient” band. This has changed with the addition of Davide as our drummer. Davide’s strength behind the kit has contributed to the confidence that we’re showing in letting the music travel to its natural destination. It’s also showcasing the trust between us in allowing the music to get where it's going on its own.
This Asheville snippet exemplifies that musical trust and patience. It starts with a dark rhythmic mood interspersed with bursts of noise alongside MSG’s delay throws. I introduce a bubbling repeated line (00:18) that sets this cloudy-yet-patient tone before transitioning into a melancholy melody that complements the moodiness we’ve created so far (1:15). All the while Davide slowly, ever slowly builds intensity only to pull back and return to that bedrock groove.
You’ll notice that Dan is playing the same notes over and over - he’s in no hurry to get to the finish line and he’s trusting his bandmates to take the music where we all feel it going. Interesting note - at 1:55 he plays the trigger for “Technobeam” and then incorporates it into his bass groove (almost invisibly). He’s not calling for the song to be played immediately - it’s merely the clarion call to the future.
At 3:33 Davide takes it up a notch with a snare/tom-tom groove (bonus points for his “blink-and-you’ll-miss-it” cowbell bit at 3:56). By 4:08 we’ve somehow managed to take this improvisational piece to a new level of intensity without changing much of anything. I’m still playing that moody lead line and Dan is still playing the same Technobeam-inspired bass line but something has brought the jam to a higher level.
4:39 - I join the Technobeam party and start playing the trigger cue. It’s at this exact moment that Dan decides to mess with his T-Beam rhythm. So, we’ve brought it one step closer to playing that song but at the same time we’ve suspended ourselves in the musical ether, comfortable with “letting it all hang out” (a favourite musical phrase of mine to describe TND3.0) and definitely in no hurry to arrive.
A full 2:30 of tension/build goes by before we finally release into Technobeam at 7:15 - but even then we’re not done. Davide decides to play a teaser-type drum groove over the first part, refusing to give in to the suspension, holding us back until he’s ready to let it all out with the full T-Beam groove at 08:21.
Just listening to this right now gives me chills. Enjoy.
-Jamie
TND3
Jamie Shields - Keyboards Dan Kurtz - Bass Davide Di Renzo - Drums
recorded 11/13/2018
This week’s #ThisDealInHistory is taken from our Oct 18, 2002 performance in Whistler, BC.
Nobody in the band fancied themselves much as skiers but we always had a great time in Whistler primarily due to the fun vibe that permeates the town twelve months a year. This gig seems to be infused with some of that good-time energy.
The clip begins with one of our “standing-start” jams - basically a familiar progression that we would pull from our grab-bag and use as a stepping-stone into less-familiar territory. This particular one usually started with electric piano and featured Dan letting loose with some low-end melodic lines. The interesting bass patterns continue when Darren kicks into the main groove at 0:43. I’m holding back for the most part and repeating some short shots while letting Dan lead the way both rhythmically and melodically.
Subtle changes start occurring around 1:11 as I bring the piano chords down an octave and introduce a Moog line while Darren adds some bongo licks at 1:40. The bass shifts into a support role and the Moog starts driving the jam by upping the rhythmic intensity. It’s becoming clear around 1:53 that we’re straightening things out in order to begin transitioning into something else. Darren kicks it up a notch with his hi-hat work while Dan turns to his trusty filter to help change the personality of the jam. Things are now less bouncy/more driving and we’re moving into more of a 16th-note machine-gun groove.
At 2:31 I trigger the cue for “Ravine” and we subsequently shift to the appropriate key at 2:47. However, note that it actually takes until 3:15 for the proper tonal centre to become evident. Until then Dan and I are buzzing around it, referencing the Ravine rhythm but never solidly landing on it. Even when we do get there at 3:15 I’m still jumping around, adding new chords that drift away from the “usual” Ravine harmonic structure (3:58 - 5:07) until we jump in to the main melody at 5:08.
Things get slightly darker at 6:42 with a minor key change and Darren introduces another interesting hi-hat idea that features a neat little stutter.
At 7:52 we start morphing into a new section that includes a new chord structure played on the Nord complemented by a blippy sequence on the Moog. We move along in this style until 9:14 when we drop into a unison 16th-note motif (somebody must have given a hand signal) that builds and develops using the same progression (but now on the organ and Juno). A long-note Moog melody floats above the busy pattern at 10:18 until we start breaking down the structure with a tension-filled development section at 10:51. I like the random computer-style vibe that’s going down here. It’s a bit uncomfortable but still driving.
Darren triggers the “Glide” cue on the hi-hats at 12:23 and we take the trigger and run with it, culminating in the main section of “Glide” from 13:30 until the end of this week’s #TDIH. -Jamie
“This week’s #ThisDealInHistory comes from our May 26, 2006 show in Boston, MA.
The clip starts with a chord progression that we frequently used as a launchpad for our “standing start” jams (see TDIH 02/20/09 Northampton MA for an explanation). While the theme often remained similar whenever we played this bit it was our approach that would differ from night to night. On this particular evening Darren has decided to incorporate the beatbox from the start while Dan has opted for a crunchy bass tone filtered through his expression pedal. Around 1:30 we shift into a latin-flavoured passage with the keyboards talking a backseat to the comfy groove that Darren and Dan have developed. Around 2:00 it’s clear that we’ve collectively decided to take the music in a different direction. We deftly change keys at 2:04, all the while increasing the tempo until we drop into a surprising half-time swing pattern at 2:47. I’m playing off the rhythm of the delay effect on the keyboard to create a loping, off-kilter feel that both Dan and Darren complement with a trashy street groove. A quick drum break at 4:22 leads into a Drum+Bass section with wah-wah organ over top. I’m moving the organ’s drawbars in and out to create a variety of tones while also adjusting the wah and delay, thereby creating some extreme sonic washes over top of the frenetic rhythms underneath.
Some interesting chords start popping up from 5:30 onwards (with bonus points for Dan and his bass harmonics at 5:41). I’ve got some sort of minor/major thing going on up above while Dan picks his low notes carefully (GREAT choice at 6:01). Darren comes in with a tambourine-led vengeance at 6:32 and we drop some new chords around 6:50, these ones led by Dan. Around 7:09 one can hear me voice my approval with a whoop of delight.
Somebody clearly called/played the “VL Tone” trigger cue because we abruptly change gears at 7:42 and begin the intro section. As is our wont we take our time with this part - Darren plays with the meter (probably trying to confuse us) and has a couple great drum rolls to lead us into the main segment of “VL Tone” at 9:47.
Do I hear a small tease of Europe’s “The Final Countdown” at 11:18? I think I do! That probably explains why I mess up the descending line that immediately follows… I regain my musical composure to ensure that this week’s #TDIH wraps up semi-cleanly with the standard “VL Tone” ending.” -J
“This week’s #ThisDealInHistory is pulled from our May 24, 2006 concert aboard one of the Rocks Off Concert Cruise boats. Founded by our good friend and OG tND associate Jake Szufnarowski, The Rocks Off Concert Cruise would feature bands playing on one of their many boats that would venture off on a cruise through the various waterways surrounding Lower Manhattan. It made for a pretty fun time and this week’s audio cut captures some of that energy.
Note the bass tone that leads off this week’s opening jam - it’s part rock/part fuzz but All Dan. It was around this time that Dan really started turning up the “rock” in his bass sound, much to our delight and encouragement. I would even bring some bass picks and surreptitiously leave them on top of his amp in the hope that he would use them (which he would from time to time).
A key change at 1:10 leads to a new Moog-led segment and ANOTHER key change at 2:05, this time with the cue for “Sub Sky” getting triggered at 2:09 by yours truly.
The other guys had something else in mind, though, so Sub Sky gets waved off in favour of some more jamming (you’ll never hear a complaint from me about that!). In fact, there aren’t any tND songs played in this week’s cut; you get nothing but in-the-moment musical exploration.
Things speed up until the new section begins at 2:19. Some groovy Juno chords slide in at 2:59 to help change the sonic personality and take a little of the aggressive edge off of the feel. Note that Dan has continued to keep the rock bass tone going until 4:10 when he drops a severe filter on it. That definitely contributes to taking the edge off a little bit - a conscious decision to help increase the dynamic flow.
ONE more key change at 5:27 is followed by another trigger cue at 5:40, although it’s probably one of the least-noticeable ones that I play. If i’m using that blippy Moog tone and start playing random notes over many octaves then that’s a cue for Dan to cut out and for Darren to start playing like he does at 5:51. I will eventually change my patch to what we hear in that section and it becomes a Jamie/Darren duet. This would often become the transition into Technobeam but not for this show. We instead return to the previous theme, incorporating a new motif from 7:11 until another Darren/Jamie breakdown at 7:38.
A new progression/motif is established here; this one featuring an aggressive filter-bass/drums combo supporting a thick keyboard chord pattern with a simplified synth melody. I love the little bass turnaround that Dan throws in at 9:51 - it totally adds another harmonic ingredient to the recipe that we’re creating on stage. Someone gives a cue for the unison offbeat shots and with that we stop/start our way to the end of this week’s #TDIH.” -Jamie
This week’s #ThisDealInHistory is a continuation of our look into tND’s February 20, 2009 show in Northampton, MA.
The clip begins with what is effectively a “standing start” - one of us just playing something (anything, really) and off we go. No discussion beforehand, no planning - just put your hands on your axe and dig in.
In this case Darren steps up with the beat and I join in shortly thereafter with a Nord pattern. I’m definitely getting elastic with the time signature in the first couple of minutes, changing from 4/4 to 5/4 and 6/4 and then back to 4/4; something that I tended to do with our standing-start jams and often just for fun or to see if something new (melodically or harmonically) would arise from this meter change. Darren and Dan would usually just keep to the standard 4-beats-to-a-bar directive while I dart in and out of the 4/4 framework.
We build the theme until Darren brings in the deep groove at 2:15 and I introduce a main Moog line at 2:45. This new melody, rather than serving as the focal point for this jam, acts as a transitional section into something deeper, darker and faster at 3:45. Dan establishes the theme with a fresh bass hook and a dirtier tone while I “up the aggro” on the Nord. As discussed in previous #TDIH’s, I’m also deferring to the prominent bass melody by limiting the keyboards to short chord stabs and the occasional long-note melodic line.
The bit at 6:55 features a busier keyboard part along with some chordal/harmonic modifications. Dan has put the bass melody aside for the moment and is now supporting the main synth motif which has evolved in complexity and detail since it was last heard two minutes earlier.
At 8:45 we decide to pull back a bit, thereby allowing space for some echoed organ stabs and Rhodes chords. Slowly but surely we’re opening ourselves up to some type of transition - the likes of which we’re not quite sure yet but you can definitely hear us downshifting and expanding the parameters of potential direction. Between 8:45 and 10:15 we become almost free-form, letting the musical dust settle as we wait and see where we’re going to go.
At 10:15 it appears that we’ve decided on a tighter house groove layered with mellow Rhodes chords, a high Solina string pad and a jazzy synth solo. I reintroduce the Nord stabs/melody at 12:15 as we redevelop the intensity on the path back to the previous jam.
We drop into a completely new bag at 14:15 via a key change and some fancy bits courtesy of Dan and Darren. They’re confidently in control here so I decide to sit back and limit my contribution until 16:00 when I play some fuzzed-out Juno lines - still in the background but adding some texture and flavour while Dan and Darren do the heavy lifting.
MSG joins in the fun at 16:20 with some well-placed echo effects that advance the rhythmic complexity until the beatbox section at 17:40. We close out this segment of the jam with an interesting synth solo over top of some Drum+Bass. Keen ears will note that at 18:54 Darren briefly triggers a rhythmic cue which we all hit at 18:59, using this rhythm to transition into “VL Tone” at 19:31.
The simplicity of “VL Tone” works nicely as a landing pad for the improvisational intensity of the previous 20 minutes. With that concept in mind we keep the middle section short and get on with playing the recognized “VL Tone” structure to close out this week’s #ThisDealInHistory. -Jamie
This week’s #ThisDealInHistory is the second one taken from our 10/17/2003 performance in Ottawa, Ontario at Barrymore’s Music Hall.
The clip starts with the transition out of what sounds like the end of a “Birds In The Ocean, Pt. 2” jam into a Moog and (spacey) Nord-led build that intensifies for 90 seconds before landing on the main section of “Glide” at 3:07.
I believe I may have been playing the trigger cue for “G-nome” but upon repeated listens i think it may have just been a similar melody (which the sharp ears out there will notice that I also repeat at 3:18 in the middle of the main “Glide” melody).
A quick key change at 4:16 and we’re into a signature “James Guitar Shields Delay Pedal Adventure”. 4:16 - 4:56 is pretty far-out but I eventually settle into a new melody while keeping the delay high in the mix. It sounds like I’ve got the rate going super-short with a LOT of feedback, creating a super-glitchy/bent synth tone. It’s pretty cool how, with a little experimentation, one can get some interesting sonic results with a minimum of hardware.
We stumble into “Billy Jean” at 6:42 - this version featuring some filtered Moog in conjunction with Darren’s beatbox. This tease usually only comes around if one of us hears Dan playing a similar bass line.
This evening’s “Billy Jean” is quick as I trigger the cue for “Sub Sky” at 8:09 and eight seconds later (8:17) we’re into it with the precision and focus of a mercenary strike force.
Or are we?
It turns out that the other guys didn’t quite catch that cue so what we have here is the New Deal’s tribute to the composer Charles Ives as we play two very different songs simultaneously. Dan’s playing the intro to “Back To The Middle” in C-minor, I’m playing the intro to “Sub Sky” in F#-minor and for the uninitiated - those are two very different keys.
BUT - as I’ve mentioned many times in the past, these mistakes sound pretty cool to us… so not only do we decide to roll along with this train wreck but we actually turn it into a musical passage and continue to hammer away at the two different songs for over a minute before arriving peacefully at “Sub Sky”. Those 70 seconds of tension actually helped to intensify the resolution into “Sub Sky” at 9:24. That’s why we do what we do…
The next section starts with a key change at 12:34 and Darren triggering the “Glide” return cue at 12:44. This whole #TDIH cut is taken from somewhere in the middle of a “Glide” jam so what we have now is a move towards the second half of “Sub Sky” followed by the end of “Glide”. Sort of like having parentheses inside other parentheses - you gotta remember to close them all out!
So we crash into the second half of “Sub Sky” with the trigger cue at 12:47 followed by the second half proper at 13:00, but then something interesting happens. As we build our way into what would usually be the ending reprise of the closing “Sub Sky” melody we instead take a left turn and dive into “Glide” at 16:43.
After we sort out the rhythmic confusion at 17:23 we wrap it all up in a nice bow and close it out with the final “Glide” notes still echoing in the hall. -Jamie
This week’s #ThisDealInHistory is one of a handful of clips excerpted from our Feb. 19, 2003 show in Philadelphia, PA.
The cut starts in the middle of what I’d describe as a “dirty-sounding” jam; a result of the combination of fuzzed-out Juno, super-square bass tone and a fairly intense hi-hat pattern. At 0:55 we transition into our next section by ramping up the tempo and switching up tones and motifs. I keep the fuzz-Juno going but now introduce the Moog while Dan softens (and deepens) his tone. From 1:50 - 2:15 I’m teasing the 1980 dance-punk track “Papa’s Got A Brand New Pigbag” (a favourite throw-in of mine). I proceed to hack up that melody into various bits as we begin our build section, finally landing on “Receiver” at 3:20.
“Receiver” was a long-time favourite of ours (haven’t brought it back yet w Joel but we will). We sort of stopped playing it as other songs came along but it definitely holds a special place in our hearts as one of the first “big and popular” tND themes.
I like the one-beat break at the drop of the main bit (3:20) - It helps build up that tension beyond the first beat of the release which is not an easy thing to do with most songs!
The jam at 4:28 starts immediately with Darren’s deep half-time groove, incorporating some ambient wah-wah’d organ chords on top of Dan’s dub-style bass. It was around this time that we started to approach our sets as a series of colours and angles, if you will. For example, if we started to feel that much of the set had been high on the intensity level (“jagged”, “bright”, “intense light”, etc. etc.) then we would endeavour to soften it up by rounding out the edges and incorporating some deeper hues and shades into our tones and melodies. It sort of sounds like a bunch of New-Age malarky when I describe it like that but it worked for us on stage. It was a lot easier than trying to explain (onstage, no less) something that can’t really be explained except, in our opinion, through colour!
With that concept in mind one can feel a “warmer” and “rounder” musical environment appearing around 4:50 as we jam our way through some ambient-based mellow grooves. I play some long one-note synth tones while Darren channels his inner Stewart Copeland at 5:45 with a “Steppers” reggae beat.
The melody and chord progression is being kept ridiculous simple on purpose, giving everyone’s brains (and ears) a chance to just sit on this scene for a while and soak it in without having to think about it. At 7:22 we switch keys into a cool chord pattern that leads to the intro chords of “Then And Now”. This is a much harder version of “Then and Now”, most likely serving as a musical exclamation point for the ambient jam that preceded it. The jam/solo section at 10:48 is played in regular-time (as opposed to the usual half-time) and takes on a disco flavour with some jazzy supporting chords. It sounds like I’m teasing something from 11:38 - 11:59 but I don’t know what it is. I would often play a snippet of a track we heard at dinner or something that one of us was talking about that day, but in this case I can’t place it.
A key change at 12:14 introduces a new section which we develop over a descending progression that includes some cool “slash chords” played by yours truly (and supported down low by Dan The Man). We turn this chord sequence into a build at 14:01 by keeping the bass note the same still continuing to play the chords over top. Sharp listeners will hear the trigger cue for the second half of “Receiver” being played at 14:12. Sounds like the other two guys on stage also heard it because we slip into the second half at 14:28 (known to us as “the shot section”) and finish the clip off with the return of the “Receiver” main theme. -Jamie
This week's #ThisDealInHistory is one of three clips taken from our concert in Northampton, MA on Feb 20, 2009.
Something to note about this week's epic 21-minute cut is that there are no standard tND songs in it. Rather, this clip features nothing but jams created in the moment and turned into songs (to the best of our ability) in real-time on stage.
We start in the middle of what sounds like an old-school UK Garage-style jam. We're keeping it pretty sparse with only the echo of the Juno stabs spilling over into the next beat. Dan and Darren are locked into a super-clipped staccato groove until 1:00 when we morph into a Latin House vibe. I solo along for a while, pouring on the jazzy vibes (especially that ascending lick around 1:40!) until we settle into a main groove at 1:54 and ever-so-subtly change the key signature (C- and B-flat minor progression switching to G- for those keeping score at home) at 2:08 in anticipation of our next move. Dan's rocking a dirty bass tone as we amp up the intensity courtesy of Darren's hi-hat and some harmonized twin-lead synth lines. The breakdown at 4:30 features me playing the same melody on two different keyboards but with one of them offset by (I think) a dotted-sixteenth note. Intellectual!
We briefly visit an interesting halftime feel before exploding (at 6:24) into a balls-to-the-wall section topped off with an angry Moog solo. This whole bit is on fire but we seem to hit our groove from 7:06 onwards as we explore that descending synth line and increase the intensity until the tempo and key change at 9:25. I don't think we initially had dub on our mind when we kicked in to this bit although we quickly jump in with both feet by 9:35. A nice change of pace from the intensity of the previous ten minutes.
I like the patience we're displaying here in letting this downtempo exploration unfold. We don't seem in any rush to get anywhere which, in my opinion, is the way to approach it - if I'm thinking too far ahead I lose focus on what I'm trying to do in the moment.
At 13:40 we transition out of the dub and into an entirely different jam - this one heavy on The Bounce. The offbeat bass and the blippy Juno create a refreshing alternative to the previous jam and help point us in a new direction. I've got a pretty intense sound coming out of the Nord at 16:00. This is a good example of the "Random Patch Generator" concept that i've touched on in the past. Basically the idea is that i press any button on the Nord to bring up a random sound which will usually inspire me to play something i normally wouldn't have played using any of my "go-to" patches. I'll sometimes tweak the sound but more often than not I'll keep it as is. It's definitely an exciting way to make music on stage! -Jamie
Continuing with our study of 2003 tND shows (we'll showcase other years as we find and transfer them), we present a #ThisDealInHistory excerpt from our July 4 performance in Portland, Maine.
The strongest memory I have from this run is of the band basically exiting our Toronto studio and walking out the door right on to the tour bus. We were in the midst of recording "Gone Gone Gone" and had booked some shows thinking we'd be done by early July. Little did we know we still had another two months to go!
The cut begins with a Rhodes progression that transitions between minor and major. The Moog accentuates this switch up top but steps back at 0:30 to let the bass line lead the way, both rhythmically and melodically.
The Moog returns and slowly changes the shape of the jam by increasing the intensity until 2:23 when we dramatically drop into a new and exceptionally dissonant segment.
My guess is that we called the change to "I Feel Love" but one of us who shall remain nameless (Dan) didn't catch it and continued on in the previous key. True to the tND style we took that mistake and turned it into a pretty interesting section that otherwise would never have existed.
We stay on this startling discovery for a bit, enjoying our mistake, and then make our way into "I Feel Love" followed quickly by "Juno" at 6:23.
"Juno" is one of those tracks that would pop up now and then in our set. We'd play it for five shows in a row and then not touch it again for a month. The jam out takes a heavier detour via a super-FM Nord patch coupled with Darren's beatbox as we slowly transition into "G-nome". Two key changes later (10:18 with a cool A-Minor/Major bit and 10:46) we initiate an extended intro that has the shaker and high-register bass leading the groove right up to the main drop at 13:26. We keep this particular jam short (we were probably approaching the end of our set) but still manage to throw in some interesting ideas following the shots at 15:48, including Darren's snare work and Dan's LFO bass tone. -Jamie
This week's #ThisDealInHistory is one of two clips excerpted from our 10/17/03 show at Barrymore's Music Hall in Ottawa, Ontario. Besides being Our Nation's Capital, Ottawa has long served as a must-play concert destination for me and Dan (through all our various pre-tND musical partnerships dating back to high school) and with good reason — there are a lot of music lovers in Ottawa.
We begin with a quasi-hypnotic echo-soaked intro jam to "G-nome". Dan's got some synthy filters going on and he's complementing the spaciness with some short bursts that increases in intensity at 1:25 when he and Darren pick up the pace. As noted in previous #TDIH posts, Dan is leading the harmonic progression over the build while I step back and improvise variations on the G-nome theme. We're definitely treated to a wide variety of bass tones before the main section kicks in at 2:47.
The middle jam in G-nome is always a wild card for us, stylistically speaking. It can run the gamut from pumping electro workouts (as heard on our "LIVE: LATE NIGHT 08.27.05" release) to the type of murky dub that we hear here. "Space" and "Echo" seem to be the recurring themes as I immediately return to my trusty delay pedals at 4:36. I like the sense of musical restraint and sonic sparseness here — every so often I play a few organ notes but for the most part the spacey atmosphere is dictating the jam's vibe.
I introduce the Fender Rhodes at 5:29 but quickly abandon that in favour of a lush Juno pad in support of some Moog and organ lines at 6:09. I probably decided that the Rhodes would busy things up too much and instead chose to keep the sparse, dubby environment intact. This whole section is a good example of the band endeavouring to create a musical statement while simultaneously containing themselves within the previously established stylistic parameters. We've always felt that changing scenes simply to change scenes was a bit of a cop-out; one should try and complete whatever musical mission one initially sets out to accomplish.
Dan triggers the return cue at 8:24 (actually he only plays half the trigger but we obviously got the hint) and we riff on that for a while as I incorporate the delayed keyboard bits from earlier in the jam. Those keyboard lines serve to conceptually link the previous jam section with the upcoming reprise. Dan might have also teased The White Stripes' "Seven Nation Army" at 9:03. From there we take that half-trigger to its natural conclusion by employing it as the stepping stone into the final section of "G-nome".
I should also note MSG's (our long-time sound engineer) contribution throughout this clip and particularly in this build. His imaginative use of reverbs, delays and filters (10:20 - 10:42 for example) definitely heightens the drama and tension prior to the final movement at 10:43. -Jamie
This week's #ThisDealInHistory takes us to Dallas, TX for our show at Trees on 11/3/2003. Texas never gets enough love from tND - the distance prob has a lot to do it with, as it certainly isn't the vibe that's a problem. Every visit to Dallas (and Austin) invariably ends in a memorable night, both onstage and off. This date was no exception.
The cut starts with "Then And Now", featuring some interesting bass pitch-bending/whammying from Dan and some super-groovy shaker work from Darren - both parts adding new dimensions to a tND standard.
"Then And Now" is an interesting piece of music: It utilizes a grand total of one chord, contains an incredibly basic four-note melody and the groove is contained within a repeating bass and drum pattern.
That being said, it's a huge fan (and band) favourite and can often be one of the more powerful tracks in a show. I chalk this up to both its hypnotic vibe and the anthemic solo section that usually follows. This version contains both of these elements but instead of building the solo to epic proportions we choose at 3:26 to take it in a different direction, briefly exploring a 1970's jazz/funk angle via some slippery Rhodes chords and spacey Moog bits.
A key/feel change is called at 4:50 and we eventually introduce an odd-meter chord progression (at 5:20) that we enjoyed playing around with at the time. We never really turned those chords into a proper song, instead preferring to throw them in here and there and see what would come of it. In this instance we take it in a bouncy disco direction before i trigger the cue for "Ravine" at 6:49.
We subsequently fall into the "Ravine" intro at 7:02 but choose to extend that for a while with a filtered Juno 106 rhythm over top of the repeated "Ravine" bass line. Check the bit at 8:12 when Darren switches over to the ride cymbal for an awesome synth/ride cymbal duet. Dan switches up the bass part to develop the drama building into the main section at 10:21. Gotta love those bass filter sweeps! When the filter resonance overloads (like at the beginning of "Episode 7" on Gone Gone Gone) my heart just goes all a-flutter!
At 11:05 Darren breaks out the beatbox and I start adding what sounds like ring modulated rhythms on the Nord before laying down some double-keyboard melodies on the Rhodes and Moog (in harmonized intervals, no less).
For whatever reason we decide at 13:08 to play "Subdivisions" by Rush (like you need a reason to play that song?). It's apparent that we didn't discuss (or practice) this beforehand as our interpretation of the song can only be described as "liberal"...
After about 75 seconds of that we decide to get it together and close out with something a little more straightforward, in this case "VL Tone" without a jam in the middle. -Jamie
This week's #ThisDealInHistory is one of three clips selected from our 10/15/2003 concert in Kingston, ON.
Kingston became a regular concert destination early in the band's life. Its relative proximity to Toronto plus the large student population at Queen's University were key ingredients in helping to develop our sound through regular (and increasingly well-attended) shows there.
The track starts with a repeated two-chord keyboard line played over an ostinato bass pattern and a minimal-yet-driving drum+shaker groove. This section typifies our attempts to, through the course of a jam, explore a variety of interpretations via a single core musical idea - in this case the opening two-chord statement. It seems like I'm also trying to mess with the positioning of these two chords (particularly at 0:48 and 0:55) but eventually decide to stick with what we originally had going. Either that or I'm reaching for my drink and lose my place...
At 1:16 Dan switches to a descending bass riff as Darren moves into a slightly swung beat that we use to grow into a grander rendition of the original theme with the inclusion of an electric piano line at 2:49. Dan lays down the trigger for "Deep Sun" at 3:43 but we either shake it off or naturally allow the music to take us elsewhere, using that electric piano theme (and key changes at 4:44 and 5:20) as a new departure point. A hand signal must have been thrown up because we build our way into "Glide" at 6:20 with no audible evidence of a trigger being played.
Last week's #TDIH also highlighted "Glide" but, as most of you know, our songs are never the same from night to night and, apart from the 90 seconds that feature the main theme, these two versions could just as easily be two completely different musical pieces. The same goes for most of the tracks in our canon. While the setlist on paper may sometimes look similar, try playing two shows simultaneously and see how long it takes before they stop sounding identical!
Things get interesting around 7:45. I'm giving the Juno pitch-wheel a workout while adding a minimal Moog line on top, but Dan's creating the chord changes underneath as we slip into a half-time downtempo jam. At 10:37 we start messing around with the tonal centre - again I'm laying on one chord (albeit a different one than before) as Dan creates new changes which I complement via the added organ melody.
At this point I'm totally following his lead - a role switch that we developed through years and years of playing together. At any moment in the show one of us either steps back and follows the other one's direction or takes the reins and directs the jam into new territory, usually with zero advance notice and nary a hint of preparation or overt communication.
Dan introduces the trigger cue for the "Glide" reprise at 11:38 and, via some hard-tremolo electric piano lines, we end up back there to close out this week's #ThisDealInHistory. -Jamie
This week's #ThisDealInHistory is the first of two excerpts from our 08/10/2002 set at The Berkshire Mountain Music Festival (Berkfest) in Great Barrington, MA.
With the possible exception of our very first concert as a band (which begat our This Is Live album) there is no gig more important in the history of theNEWDEAL than our first Berkfest show in 1999.
For starters it was our first real gig in the U.S. as theNEWDEAL - that itself would make it an important venue to us - but it's the circumstances surrounding our set that cement Berkfest near the top of theNEWDEAL gig list.
Rewind to '99 - somehow we had managed to wangle our way on to the Berkfest bill. We had been passing out This Is Live to anyone who would listen and I think that The Wetlands' Chris Zahn had forwarded it to Andrew Stahl, the man behind Berkfest. Andrew decided to give this weird instrumental trio from Canada a chance and offered us an afternoon slot at the festival.
What we didn't know was that our afternoon slot would be INDOORS on one of the sunniest days of the summer, in a lodge tucked away from the main stage and far apart from all the other bands. The chances of people hearing us were slim and, with zero name recognition, we were preparing to play to nobody. We were pretty depressed about that - we knew that all we needed was for people to hear us and they'd be hooked... but with an indoor gig at an outdoor festival, your odds are tough.
Until three minutes before our set when it started to rain. I mean POUR. Thunder, lightning - the whole bit. Huge summer storm.
There were only a few covered venues where all the festival goers could seek shelter - guess where they ended up?
Five minutes into our set the place was jammed with people and every single one of them was still there 90 minutes later when we finished, despite the fact that the rain had stopped 30 minutes earlier.
If it hadn't been for that rainstorm, who knows what would have happened to tND?
That experience always seemed to give a little boost to our Berkfest sets. This one from 2002 is no exception.
The cut begins with an interesting Drum+Bass version of the "Homewrecker" intro. What I like about Darren's drumming here is that he's managing to play quite minimally in a style (D+B) that usually screams for maniacal drum fills. His tasteful grooves eventually lead us into the regular "Homewrecker" beat at 1:00 or so. Note Dan's meaty stabs throughout the main melody section - he would often combine the main bass part with innovative "soloettes", each one different than the last.
The jam at 2:16 displays some interesting elements - we were, as mentioned in previous #TDIH's, focused at this time on maximizing the hypnotic element of repeated musical lines slowly morphing over time (through tempo or harmony) until they would no longer resemble the original musical statement. I always enjoyed listening to Steve Reich and I was attempting at times to mimic that same slow sonic metamorphosis.
We shift this motif via tempo and tone, eventually landing on a filtered bass/organ/Moog/Hi-NRG drum build that leads us at 5:26 into a super-abrupt shift (have I mentioned before how much I love those?) featuring Rhodes and Moog.
Sounds to me like Dan's playing the trigger cue for "I Feel Love" at 7:56. We might have been heading in that direction but the music took us somewhere else and we never looked back.
We hit a pretty cool break at 9:48 - me on the Moog Prodigy and Darren and Dan NAILING it at 10:01 with a balls-to-the-wall two-pronged attack. Dan is WAAY up on that neck.
I play the trigger for "Glide" at 10:50 and again at 11:02 (this time w/Dan joining in) but, as is our style, we don't get to the track for another three minutes or so, preferring to let the music breathe a little with a short ambient jam (note the bass providing a repeated muted rhythm underneath). From there it's into "Glide" and the end of this week's #ThisDealInHistory. -Jamie
This week's #ThisDealInHistory comes to us from theNEWDEAL's concert in Boulder, CO on 01/19/2001. Boulder is one of those classic old-school tND haunts - somehow we (along with all my side projects) always ended up there.
When the band decided to start touring early on in our career, "BoCo" was near the top of the list of places to play - hell, the original title of our track "Sub Sky" was "Boulder" due to the song's creation on stage at the Fox.
So... what better place to kick off our 2001 Winter Tour than in one of our favourite venues (The Fox Theatre) in one of our favourite cities, right?
The cut begins with some early-era tND-style Drum+Bass. Note that the bass is being played on the keys (prob the Juno 106) while Dan is playing a repeated line with some evil tremolo above it.
From 0:10 - 0:20 there's also a tease of Joe Jackson's "Steppin' Out". At 1:24 i add some fuzz to that Juno sound and we bust along until the abrupt shift at 1:54 (i always love those) into a midtempo swung groove (probably the polar opposite style of the frenetic Drum+Bass that preceded it).
The next three minutes features a prototypical early tND jam. The bass takes the lead in defining the groove and the keys eventually morph into big open chords played with a big open sound. There's some serious musical patience going on here - none of us are in a hurry to get anywhere and we're all very comfortable with letting the vibe develop at its own speed and in its own time. It's almost hypnotic in its own way and proves to me that if you're confident in and committed to what you're playing then all time constraints melt away.
Dan plays the trigger cue for "Deep Sun" at 4:43, eventually turning it into the main groove as Darren and I start increasing the tempo and sliding into a Deep Sun Intro jam.
Here's another example of the trigger cue getting played but the band taking their sweet time in actually getting to the song proper. Five minutes will pass between the initial trigger cue and the first notes of the "Deep Sun" melody. This section features all the hallmarks of an early ('99-'01) tND jam. The emphasis is definitely on the groove with chord changes and melodic elements taking a back seat. This was chiefly due to our desire to further develop our aforementioned "musical patience" but it was also due in part to the conscious decision by the band to stay away from what we felt was the standard platform for the jamband scene at that time: playing a bunch of solos over the same rhythmic bed and calling it a "jam". We never saw the value in that and felt that it was counterproductive to the natural development and expansion of musical ideas. We had yet to work out our concept of actually writing songs on stage but the kernels of that musical plan were definitely present in our early ideas about improvisation and development.
Note the bass yet again taking the musical lead at 10:04, defining the rhythm and harmonic direction. Clearly somebody sent up some hand signals because we drop in some shots, returning to a new groove at 10:48.
Even in this section i'm playing off what Dan is laying down in the bass - taking his ideas and complementing them with my own parts as we build into the reprise of the "Deep Sun" theme that closes out this week's excerpt. -Jamie
Welcome to the return of theNEWDEAL's #THISDEALINHISTORY series! Once a week tND releases a clip from a past show and Jamie walks us through it, all the while pointing out interesting musical tidbits and bringing us up to speed on what was going on inside those three pretty little heads on stage!
This week's #TDIH clip is taken from our set at the Bonnaroo Music Festival on June 15th, 2003. It's the first half of what appears to be a 40-minute jam. The second half will be posted as another #ThisDealInHistory clip at a later date.
I remember the following from this show: drinking Budweiser at 11:30 AM (the 11:30 beer isn't so surprising, but Budweiser?!), getting blown away by the North Mississippi All-Stars, and me and Dan modelling our new bucket hats that we bought at Wal-Mart the day before. We had decided that it was going to be Bucket Hat Day at tND Central, for some reason. I never wore the hat again, Dan didn't stop wearing his until 2007.
The clip starts with some jazzy synth chords accompanied by the classic Dan Kurtz "super-octaved" guitar-style lines played on the bass. I always loved when Dan dialled in that crazy tone and started funking away like Ray Parker, Jr. circa '76. As far as I'm concerned he never stayed with it long enough, but i guess there was a need for some low-end because we quickly jump into a full-band groove. Note how we're treated to three signature Dan Kurtz bass sounds in the first 45 seconds of this clip. There's the high-octave tone, the standard bass tone and his awesome sub-synth bass sound.
Around 1:05 I switch over to the Juno blip and we jam away until i play the trigger cue for VL Tone at 2:10. Clearly there was some on-stage hand communication because we also change keys. We were in the process of recording the "Gone Gone Gone" album at this time, so we were for sure interested in getting these tracks some onstage service time in case any interesting ideas popped up mid-set.
Without much delay we end VL Tone and dive immediately into another GGG track, in this case Homewrecker. Darren rocks the beatbox as only Darren can while Dan lays down some more funky mid-1970s lines. This set has an "afternoon performance" feel to it, which is probably because we were indeed playing an afternoon set. Those types of sets are a little heavier on the funk and a little lighter on the crazy Techno and House. That's because we know what it feels like to be listening to music in the afternoon on the third day of a festival - at that point your brain and ears are looking to get into a groove and not just get electrified with fast dance jams. Homewrecker leads into a smooth house jam which, following Dan's trigger cue at 12:37, slowly develops into "Deep Sun". As discussed in previous #TDIH's, just because a certain trigger gets played doesn't mean that we'll get to that song any time soon. In this instance it takes us another four minutes of development before we play the first note of "Deep Sun" proper. There are many instances where a cue might get triggered but we end up never getting to the actual song because the jam that followed ended up taking us in an entirely different direction. We kick into the main part of Deep Sun at 16:47 (spot the "Inca Roads" micro-tease from 17:50-17:53?) followed by a key change and some drum+bass exploration at 18:10. The beatbox section also features what sounds like a theremin solo but is probably me rocking the resonance filter on the Moog Prodigy.
At 21:17 I play the trigger cue for G-nome (don't blink or you'll miss it). Clearly the band didn't blink because we immediately start making our way into G-nome.
Stay tuned for Part 2 of the New Deal Bonnaroo #ThisDealInHistory!
This week's #ThisDealInHistory is the first of a few clips that I've edited from our Feb 19, 2003 concert in Philadelphia, PA.
Philly is another one of those cities that took to tND very early on in the band's life. Somehow we managed to finagle a gig at the Khyber Pass back in early '99 and i think that was our first Philly show. Fifteen people probably showed up... Aron Magner from The Disco Biscuits being one of them, if i recall correctly. Love those guys...
This cut starts in the middle of an elongated "Moonscraper" intro. It sounds like we're just jamming in G-minor until 0:36 when i play the trigger for Moonscraper (in the key of D-minor, no less - sounds good, though). I start playing the MS chords at 1:08 (also in D-minor haha) and we keep the elongated intro going, slowly moving our tonal centre to F-major with dan playing a descending bass line that eventually lands on our target key of D-minor right on the drop at 2:30.
This intro perfectly demonstrates one of the key tND elements being developed in this time period: the use of shifting basslines over repeated chord progressions as a means to create meaningful harmonic structures and increased melodic tension. As the band developed its sound we slowly moved away from solely utilizing fixed chord progressions over static basslines and started to incorporate varying basslines over fixed chord progressions (as well as varying basslines over varying chord progressions) - all done, of course, without prior planning. Sometimes the random bassline changes clashed with the random keyboard chords, but more often than not the sum of the parts created a fresh musical statement that we never would have arrived at had we kept to some pre-planned agenda.
With that in mind, listen again to the Moonscraper intro and hear how the bass shifts underneath the familiar (and not-so-familiar) keys lines, thereby creating something that we had probably never played before (and have never played since). It's these types of things that, in my opinion, keep the New Deal musically interesting to both listener and performer. The jam starts with Dan playing the MS keys rhythm on bass underneath some new blippy chords played on the Juno. Somewhere along the way i turn that Juno patch into a distorted guitar-type sound as we shift keys into a dirtier exploration in A-minor. The chords that start at 8:20 are part of a favoured progression that may or may not have been regularly incorporated into the Moonscraper jams in those years (i can't remember specifically - it's been a few shows since then...).
At 9:13 we double back to the original Moonscraper key with an eye towards returning to the second half of the song, but as is our wont we take our sweet time getting there, preferring to explore the outer limits of the Juno-106's pitch and mod wheels in combination with MSG's effects. A patient but intense build eventually gives way to the Moonscraper reprise at 12:17. Somebody clearly calls the "hard-stop" cue at 12:44, at which point we play out the ending melody. -Jamie
In honour of tND's Halloween throwdown last week at New York's Playstation Theater (available for download HERE: http://bit.ly/1NvAVa0), this week's #ThisDealInHistory is pulled from our 2002 NYC Halloween Special at BB King's.
There's a lot of interesting stuff in this cut, starting with this early take of "Gone Gone Gone". We were just beginning to get the tracks together for the GGG album and the title track was one of the first to develop.
This initial version isn't fully fleshed out - it's missing the main synth melody (having not been written yet) - but it does feature Dan pitched way up and doublng the intro melody with me. We get into some neat counterpoint around 0:28 until we kick in to the next section at 0:55. It's weird to hear GGG without that signature synth melody, but since we were at our creative best in front of an audience it was never daunting to take a half-finished track and try and develop it live.
We seem to have the middle section worked out just fine, though. This section on the studio record was typical tND - take an idea and just jam it out in various forms while letting the tape run. We'd then pick the best version that we liked and edit it into the rest of the song.
In my opinion, this whole TDIH excerpt really invites the listener into the tND creative process - at 5:00 we switch gears, move into some Drum+Bass and start working out another future GGG track - in this case it's "A Little While/A Little While Longer". Dan starts playing the "A Little While" chorus at 6:32, mixing in a little "Self Orbit" at the same time. I can be heard working out some early keyboard parts that eventually made it into the finished song, including the electric piano segments from 7:29 - 8:39 and the synth line starting at 8:02.
Settling back into "Gone Gone Gone" at 8:40, we stretch the intro a while with some more high-pitched bass from Dan at 10:28, some serious drumming from Darren at 10:41 and a build back into "Gone Gone Gone v.1.0"
PS: For those keeping score at home, we dressed up as the Dixie Chicks for this gig. -Jamie
This week's #ThisDealInHistory is pulled from our 10/10/2003 show in Ann Arbor, MI.
There was always a LOT of energy in the crowd whenever we played in Ann Arbor -- we're definitely feeding off that audience energy in this #TDIH cut - it opens with a favourite chord progression of ours that never really morphed into an actual song but was still performed frequently as we experimented with different styles, sounds and ideas.
In this case I'm laying down the changes while Dan riffs on a super-high melodic lick. Sounds like he's got his whammy pedal (or equivalent) cranked to the "Max Pitch Shift" setting. I always enjoyed when Dan got way out there with tones like this, hence my intermittent whoops of encouragement that are heard in the background. He plays that awesome octave line at 0:30 and then inexplicably stops and returns to his regular bass tone (prob much to my disappointment at the time). Darren takes over in the "cool sounds" department with his funky bongo work at 0:55 (all the while keeping a drum groove going).
Following a key change at 2:30 we begin (from 2:57 - 3:24) weaving in and out of this dissonant harmonic relationship that I've mentioned before - in this case Dan returns to the key of C while I'm playing various licks that incorporate a lot of C-sharps, A-flats, etc. - obviously in a different key (and definitely not planned) but interesting sounding nonetheless. We eventually settle in to a chord progression that takes us to the trigger cue for "Glide" somewhere around 4:45 with Dan locking into the trigger at 4:58.
Alert ears will hear me briefly tease a snippet of "Ray Parker Suite Pt II" at 5:08 - i might have been suggesting that we play that instead of "Glide" but was clearly (and correctly) waved off, so into "Glide" we go at 5:40. Somebody called the "halftime" cue for the bridge section at 6:20 but we quickly return to the regular tempo for the rest of the main head.
This jam starts off with a SERIOUS left-turn key change (E-flat to A-minor) which is always enjoyable to my ears, as abrupt key changes often serve to jumpstart new melodic and harmonic ideas.
Dan takes the rhythmic lead while the keys play sparse chords with a simple synth melody - part of my attempt to reduce the number of notes i was contributing to the groove.
A super-cool section at 9:18 - hypnotic bass line, a driving drum pattern and a weird string bit on top.
Note - at 9:58 Dan can be heard repeatedly playing the guitar lick from Ozzy Osbourne's "Crazy Train". Placed so completely out of context, it sounds pretty great!
11:05 finds us in a quasi-dub/halftime groove which develops majestically over the next six minutes. I really dig that syrupy shaker part that starts at 12:25 as well as the spacey synth that follows shortly thereafter.
It appears that there are just drums, bass and synth solo (very little background keyboard) until the chord change at 13:29 which, to my ears, has succeeded in creating a very dark, sparse and dramatic musical scene until that big synth pad opens things up on the change.
The melodic idea at 16:01 becomes the cornerstone for the build and transition back into "Glide" at 17:38, which takes us to the end. -Jamie
This week's #ThisDealInHistory is taken from our performance at UVM on Sept 25, 2004.
This gig carries a little weight as it was our first show back from our self-imposed nine-month hiatus. We chose to take this break in order to give us a chance to reset and to work towards developing new stylistic approaches and musical ideas on stage and in the studio. We had begun to feel that our creative development was stalling a little bit and we didn't want to find ourselves in a musical rut, so we stepped away temporarily.
The break served us well and we came back with fresh concepts and sounds, paving the way for what we consider to be the "third stage" in the New Deal's creative development.
The start of this clip offers a perfect example of what we were now shooting for - less emphasis on strictly dance grooves and more emphasis on taking chances, varying tempos and moods as well as expanding our palette of "sonic scenery".
The jam fades in with an ambient dub jam complete with a spaced-out synth melody and lots and lots of empty spaces. We were consciously holding ourselves back from constantly hammering away at the groove, instead preferring to try and create something special out of sparser musical scenes. When we do eventually enter into a dancier groove at 2:08, it's far more intimate and (to me, at least) part of a fresher harmonic and sonic realm that wasn't spiritually available to us before the hiatus.
I also began to place a lot more faith in my "Random Patch Generation" concept, where i basically close my eyes, pick a random sound from one of my keyboards and just start playing it, tweaking it along the way until i'm satisfied. This concept has spawned innumerable memorable jams throughout the years, directing my performance creativity to areas i never would have thought of going otherwise.
It's tough to pin down specifics sections in this jam that point towards our development - rather it's the overall vibe of the performance. We're looser, freer, less concerned about what's happening or what will happen - preferring to play in the moment and let it all sort itself out somehow. For example, from 7:25 to the start of "Back Off" at 8:51 you'll notice that we're just sort of ambling our way into the track. Dan plays the trigger cue at 8:18 but before that there's no real hint that we're making our way to "Back Off". There's no definitive build, no "hey, check this out - we're now going to consciously develop this transition until we hit the song". Of course, we continued to utilize that concept throughout our jams, but we decided that it won't be the only way to get into a song. In this instance we repeat half of the lick over and over until it sounds like the record needle's stuck, and then boom we're into the main part of the song.
For those keeping score at home, at 9:06 i mess up and go to the key change a whole section early - hey, it was nine months since i had played the track last! I guess that's what you get when you never rehearse...
Check out the start of the "Back Off" jam at 9:49 - it's just me and Darren taking it wherever we're feeling. He wants to stop playing the groove at 10:07 and just hit the snare occasionally for a couple bars? Cool. He wants to bring it back and hit some shots here and there? Cool. Dan wants to come in for one note every two bars? Cool. It makes the section where we all join back in at 10:57 that much more meaningful. The transition back in at 12:07 is basically a cool drum roll from Darren with Dan repeating that half a line again until we just jump right back in to the main track. -Jamie
This week's #ThisDealInHistory is one of a couple clips that we've pulled from our Dec 1, 2007 concert at Colgate University in Hamilton, NY.
It starts out with some sort of 1970's "futuristic"-sounding jam (think "Close Encounters Of The Third Kind"). As I listened to this, I thought mostly of giant tape-reel computers and storage warehouses full of computer punch cards... until around 2:15 when things seem to take a turn for the darker (perhaps the computers are taking over society?).
I've always been a fan of keyboard tones that lean towards the "pure"; basic waves (sine, saw) or sounds that don't have a lot of schmutz (yiddish for "dirt" or, in this case, needless effects and shininess) on them. Of course, those of you who have listened to tND for a while will know that I do reach for the big shiny sounds when the situation calls for it, but i'm always sucked in by a pure wave. This opening jam features one such basic synth wave as the main melody (of course, with a schmutzy filter pad in the background!).
At 3:20 we speed it up but check out how Dan, who has been intensifying his performance of this repeated 16th-note bass line since the beginning of the clip, is also slowly but surely amping up and opening up the bass sound until it has morphed from regular bass into some glitchy monster from 3:45 onwards. I swear it sometimes sounds like the dude is playing a TB-303, but it's all fingers and strings.
Darren must have called "Deep Sun", because we launch into it at 5:05 without any audible trigger. Cool tom-tom break starting around 5:45, which he uses to great effect to lead us into the main head at 6:45.
The main synth melody of "Deep Sun" is another good example of a "pure" synth tone - in this case two saw waves in sync and not much else...
As the jam begins I quickly dive in and out of a little delay pedal workout (8:00 - 8:22), only to give way to some more big bass sounds. I'm making an effort to not clutter up the jam with a bunch of chords, preferring to stick to one keyboard at a time and lay down some unison melody lines. It's a neat effect - pretty sparse, letting the bass and drums come to the fore. Another example of a pure synth tone at 10:36 - in this case it's the Juno 106 with a modified version of the "VL Tone" sound, which is basically a one-oscillator square wave.
I'm definitely committed to the non-chordal approach for this jam because at 11:45 i return to the lone keyboard playing a single-note melody that sounds like one of those old 1970's cheap European units that i used to find in every pawnshop.
Dan's bass has been chugging along the whole time, but at 12:13 he takes it to a new level with some crazy filter work that, to me, is the sonic equivalent of an evil robot clawing across my face with giant metallic nails.
Interesting sounds at 12:55 - only two lines going on (one filtered bass up high, one weird-sounding synth), but it takes up a lot of sonic real estate. I also love the entry of the big fat synth line at 13:37 - it starts down low and never strays too high, thereby staying out of the way of that percolating synth line up top.
We're clearly giving hand signals (and no audible trigger cue) because we all change scene/key together at 14:45 back into the "Deep Sun Reprise", with a little bit of audience participation at 15:00 and 15:07 before taking it home. -Jamie
This week's #ThisDealInHistory is taken from our April 27, 2002 concert in New Orleans, LA.
This gig was a late-night affair (3AM - 6AM) that occurred in the middle of our tour w Page McConnell and his "Vida Blue" band. We had already played an earlier set with them at the Orpheum Theater, so we were warmed up and ready to rock until sunrise, which we happily did.
The cut opens in the middle of a melodic Drum+Bass jam. Darren must have called the cue for "Self Orbit" as we change key at 0:37 while Dan immediately launches into the track's signature bass part.
At 0:56 I start a sirenesque Moog bit consisting of two notes repeated over and over, creating an almost-hypnotic groove that's broken only when i intermittently add the third note of the "Self Orbit" melody. Sirens seem to be the theme of the night, as i return to playing them at 3:03.
Interesting tidbit - in "Self Orbit" and "G-nome" i tune the the Moog to two separate tones so that i'm simultaneously playing two different notes in the melody. You can hear me detuning the synth at 2:25-2:30.
Usually when the melody is finished i retune the keyboard to play just one note at a time, but i guess i was feeling frisky in this jam and decided to keep the board in the "interval tuning", thereby creating spacier, more harmonically interesting parts. Great drum groove at 5:15 and dig that bass line from 5:25 onward.
I like the spacey section at 7:49. The ambience is enveloping, but the insistent low-end rhythm keeps the jam moving along until the drums return at 8:28.
At 8:44 i trigger the cue for "My Head, My Head" and we waste no time getting into it at 9:03 - but the thing to notice in those twenty seconds is that Dan and I are playing (again) in completely different keys. In previous weeks I've talked about how we would often try and throw caution to the wind, harmonically speaking, and not get too tied up in the rules about harmony, theory, etc. - All of us are trained musicians and our knowledge of harmonic theory is fairly advanced, but we almost never apply any of that during our performances. It's fun to talk that language, but we tend to keep it locked up when it's time to play - it's just too restricting.
For those keeping score at home, I'm banging out a D-Major chord while Dan is repeatedly playing C-sharp and D-sharp in the bass register. So wrong and so good!
We kick into "My Head, My Head" at 9:03 and at 10:20 shift into this wonderfully sparse section. I love the groove that Darren's got going alongside Dan's one-note statement. I took a cue from that and just laid down some short Rhodes chords for a while, letting everything settle before we decide to busy it up a little. Dan's hauntingly melodic bass line at 11:20 sets up the next section beautifully while i provide what feels like a funk-guitar-picking synth behind it.
13:28 introduces what was a favourite sound of mine around this time - the short blippy Juno 106 video game tone. This became immensely popular in dance music a few years later, so i probably dialed back its prominence in response to that as the years went on. Still love that sound, though. -Jamie
This week's #ThisDealInHistory is the second cut taken from our Nov 18, 2004 concert in Ithaca, NY.
This 22-minute piece starts with a downtempo dub-influenced groove featuring Dan playing two notes simultaneously that are a fifth apart ("in fifths" as we say in the business). Pretty sonorous stuff...
Sounds like a Moog lead with some Rhodes chords providing support, complemented by some interesting bongo work from Darren (being played while he also kept time on the kit) and a Solina-like string note held on the Juno. This is a nice combination of sounds for this type of feel. We had been working out these arrangement ideas over the past number of years in order to try and expand our sonic palette and paint more colourful musical scenes. It appears that grooves like these (partic from 2:27 - 3:45) were bearing the fruits of our labours.
We change gears at 3:47 and move into something a lot more reminiscent of EARLY ('99) tND. This was one of our fundamental styles back in the early days and we reference it before we continue on into something faster and more intense. We start slowly changing it up, and at 5:52 i play the trigger cue for "Ray Parker Suite" - first on the Korg organ, then on the Juno at 6:05.
After the trigger we quickly shift into the "Ray Parker" tempo and feel but actually don't get to the track for another six minutes, preferring to jam our way into it.
This section (6:05 - 12:53) features some pretty far-out moments. I won't bore you with the details - it's best to listen and enjoy! I will say that I love the spaciness experimentation from 10:00 onwards (with the bass in the background still givin' it).
Eventually we do drop in to "The Ray Parker Suite" at 12:52, speeding up into a drum+bass jam at 14:55 (with accompanying key change) - this was a track we were experimenting with at the time, but we never recorded it. I do like the delay effects i'm throwing on the Moog lead starting at 18:09.
Around 19:30 we start moving into "Back Off" to end the set - Darren must have called it because i don't hear a trigger cue. -Jamie
This week's #ThisDealInHistory is taken from our March 6, 2003 show in Peterborough, ON.
The cut begins with a midtempo three-chord progression and an LFO-heavy Moog line. Some of the band's early influences (Thievery Corp, Kruder & Dorfmeister, Nightmares On Wax) are evident in these types of jams, and to this day you can hear these influences whenever we delve into this style.
At 1:12 we remain on the tonic note while we get our musical bearings. With the "Moonscraper" trigger cue played at 1:42, we begin adapting the feel and tempo to eventually get us there. I like the LFO nuttiness that i'm laying down on the Juno 106 - sounds to me like i've also thrown on the flanger pedal.
One can hear us attempting to expand (in breadth and depth) the ideas behind our builds and ramp-ups - something on our minds at this time as we collectively advanced and developed our musical personality.
We play around with the build until we drop into "Moonscraper" at 2:50. At times we ran the risk of playing this track too fast, but this version sits nicely and grooves along at what i feel to be a good tempo.
Great bass tone at the start of the jam at 4:15. Feels like it's pulling the screws out of the bass cabinet with all that low-end. 4:28 - One thing i miss from my old rig is my Fender Rhodes Electric Piano. The thing just became too bulky to carry around and while we all loved its tone, the reality was that as a touring band one has to find ways to make room for everything, and unfortunately the beloved "Number Four" (as we referred to it) had to get dropped. In this section the Rhodes is providing tight accompaniment to the squeaky Moog lead line. I'm also digging the really square bass tone that Dan's got going on underneath - we're in sympatico (sound-wise) in this section w the bass matching the Rhodes quite nicely.
I start playing a Rhodes lead line at 6:20 that quickly gets picked up by what i think is the Moog. An interesting harmonic mood shift occurs at 6:48 when i switch one or two notes in that melody line, opening up a whole new set of chord progressions for us to explore. Another mood shift at 7:46 - throw in a couple different notes and change up the chords again. It appears that Darren must have triggered "Glide" as i don't hear a cue in the bass or keys.
At 9:01 we hit "Glide" and from 9:45 onwards i play a bastardized version of Wham's "Careless Whisper" on the Moog, with everybody joining in the fun at 10:10. We're heading off into another jam at this point, but that's for another #TDIH! -Jamie
This week's #ThisDealInHistory is the second clip taken from our 09/07/02 show in Kingston, ON.
Kingston was an early destination for tND - it's a big college town only two hours down the road from Toronto and we had lots of friends there. They enjoyed getting down and never missed a chance to do just that whenever the New Deal came to town. This show is no exception.
The clip starts out with a heavy funk beatbox+drums groove from Darren while Dan channels his inner Stevie Wonder with some pretty insane synth-bass sounds. I like how his playing style actually resembles a synth performance as opposed to a bass guitar performance. - he's definitely committed to the bit. Around 1:15 we take it out of the funk jam into something more dance-oriented. Last week i talked about how i began applying the "less-is-more" approach to my playing in order to not step all over everything all the time. I seem to be partially applying that lesson, particularly around 1:45 where there's more silence than sound coming from the keyboard department. The cue for "The Ray Parker Suite" gets triggered at 3:40 (and some people hear it and cheer) but, as usual, we take our time getting to the actual track. I endlessly repeat the chords with my left hand, eventually adding some right-hand Moog while we get into the three-way syncopation, all the while building towards the main track at 5:03.
I either forgot to play the Moog section at 5:28 or we might have been going through a period where we were leaving that soaring melody to appear later in the song - even money on which one it was.
I do eventually get to it and off we go at 6:37 into one of my favourite Juno 106 sounds. The moog eventually joins in with harmonized melodic lines. I dig the sounds going on at 8:47 - those hi-hats are killer and the flanged white noise is being played by me. We tease the hell out of VL Tone, eventually landing on it around 10:10. This would be an extremely early version of VL Tone, as it was written on stage at our NYC shows in May, 2002 (as documented on our "Live:NYC 5/31+6/1" double disc release). You'll notice that we haven't worked out the "regular" ending yet, choosing to pick a spot and just flop down to signal the end. -Jamie
This week's #ThisDealInHistory is the second excerpt i've pulled from our Feb 21, 2003 concert at the Palladium in Worcester, MA.
The clip starts out with the intro to "Receiver" - this time in a smooth downtempo style (with the bass playing the lead melody!). I'm improvising a bunch of dense jazz chords underneath that completely change the harmonic tone and character of the original melody. Often times we would do this for fun and to see just how far away we could get from the original piece and still make it sound good. This opening section is a perfect example of that. Side note - I love the chord we land on at 1:05...
Things start getting dubby (note the bass shifting slowly into dub around 1:15) until 2:00 when we shift gears into the familiar "Receiver" vibe. The Juno 106 (w flanger) provides a single-note drone which the bass guitar circles around for a while until we build up and change key right on the drop at 3:46.
"Receiver" was an immensely popular song of ours for a number of years. We haven't played it in a long time, although we've recently been considering bringing it back. Fun fact - The Disco Biscuits' Marc Brownstein refuses to call this song by its real name - instead referring to it as "Bong Bong" (because of the big hits that we play in the main melody).
We drop into some weird robot synth jam at 4:53 where, i guess, we decided that our chakras weren't in alignment with that key (or we just made a fast change) because ten seconds later we modulate to a new one. Great interplay here between the drums, bass and synth - everybody filling in different parts of the bar. Journey (the band) has had a spot in the New Deal's heart for as long as I can remember. I'm not really sure why that is, as none of us are really fans of the band (although you can't really deny the catchiness of their hits) - i think it probably has to do with their general over-the-top musical demeanour, the whole early 1980's-ness of it all, and the fact that we watched their "Behind The Music" about 35 times on our tour bus. There have been a handful of shows where we've tried to cram as many Journey covers/teases into a show as we could... In this instance I break out "Separate Ways" at 6:05. We never really knew how to play their songs, so you can hear us quickly processing whatever musical memories we can while we're jamming it on the spot. I start to get it (sort-of) right around 8:48, just in time to switch back into Receiver, which we do through a bunch of atonal synth licks coupled with some angular beats courtesy of Darren. We go into halftime for the B section but only for a short bit before we speed it up and take it home. -Jamie
This week's #ThisDealInHistory is from the final night of our three-show run at New York's Bowery Ballroom in support of our "Gone Gone Gone" release.
As I've mentioned before, New York has always held a special place in the New Deal's heart and we always did (and do) our best to make our NYC concerts a memorable experience, above and beyond the usual memorable experience that a tND concert usually was/is!
This cut starts off with a more experimental version of the "Back To The Middle" intro, which mirrors the headspace we were decidedly in at that time. As 2003 wound to a close the band was taking its improvisation more frequently into darker places, both sonically and creatively. When we returned from our 2004 hiatus we picked up where we left off and continued to explore new sounds and improvisational approaches, some of which are highlighted in these late-2003 shows.
A couple examples found in this week's track:
1 - The first 90 seconds of the BTTM intro is pretty much a delay pedal solo with me dramatically adjusting the rate and repeat to create some angular and jagged notes and rhythms provided by some short random bursts from the Moog synthesizer.
2 - At 2:28 we start the half-time jam of BTTM, but the bass guitar is anything but mellow and halftime - it's plowing right through with all systems go (both sound and rhythm). Dan eventually softens the tone but continues to push the envelope with that energetic bassline until around 4:00 when he finally releases that tension (brought on by pedalling on the same note repeatedly) and starts playing different notes underneath to help create an interesting chord progression that wasn't there before.
The ambient bit that follows with the spacey organ, bongos and repeated bass is another example of us stretching our ideas and searching for musical landscapes that we weren't particularly familiar with 12 months earlier - my obsession with early-era Pink Floyd (1967-1970) was definitely shining thru.
We're quite patient with keeping the groove going with the same two changes, slowly building in intensity until it naturally unfolds into a Moog solo at 8:00 - all the while playing those two same chords. While we were never strangers to the two-chord jam, we now were looking for ways to make it more interesting to us as well as to the listener.
The cue to return to BTTM is triggered by Dan at around 9:10, at which point we take our sweet time to get back to the track (another thing we were consciously experimenting with - examples abound from this time period where a particular cue might get triggered but we wouldn't end up getting to that track for another 10-15 minutes!).
The build back to BTTM is a continuation of the ideas mentioned above - notice that as we speed up the song i also speed up the rate of the LFO on the Moog until it's just a giant wobbly mass of noise with the lick getting played somewhere underneath. -Jamie
This week's #ThisDealInHistory is taken from our Feb 17, 2002 concert in Burlington, VT.
The cut opens with some pretty interesting harmonic interplay between the bass guitar, my right hand and my left hand! When i first listened to this concert i wondered to myself how i was going to make this harmonic relationship work out, but in true new deal style it works itself out and unfolds nicely around 1:10... i should never doubt tND!
Some subtle harmonic shifts occur around 1:35 and 2:05, maintaining the same tonal footing while exploring some other colours. We jam on these ideas in a quasi-latin style until around 4:45 when we transition into "Exciting New Direction" from our 2000 self-titled album.
This song is based on a phone message that Darren received when the band was just starting out. In the early days he was still working for some e-currency company while we were touring around trying to make a name for ourselves as a band. Turns out they fired him over the phone - via voicemail no less! They probably couldn't reach him because he was busy improvising live house music in front of a frenzied crowd at The Wetlands or something...
We ended up overdubbing that voicemail on top of a live downtempo jam, and "Exciting New Direction" was born. On stage Dan had a cheap little cassette walkman with that message on it, and he would play it while holding the walkman's speaker up to his bass pickups, which would then amplify it thru his rig. He would rewind/fast-forward on the fly, which you can hear in full effect. 8:14 signals a key/tempo change while i play the signal cue for "Then And Now" (the moog line as well as the wah-wah organ chord at 8:36). This track appeared on our "This Is Live" album and was composed completely on stage at our first show. What your hear on "This Is Live" is us writing it on the spot. We would then experiment with that central concept during future performances of "Then And Now". In this version Darren has some pretty heavy drum work going on underneath my decidedly minimalist start to my Moog solo.
The theme of this show must have been to take harmonic chances, as my solo seems to stray pretty far outside at times (but never too far outside!).
Dan triggers the cue for "Moonscraper" around 12:35 and we jam towards that, slowly changing key until we hit the song at 13:59, ending with its second half. - Jamie
This week’s #ThisDealInHistory is from our July 2003 show at Beardslee Castle in upstate NY. This tour took place during a break from recording “Gone Gone Gone” and definitely displays our pent-up demand to get out of the studio and play music in front of a living, breathing audience.
It starts with a transition out of what sounds like a 1980’s-style jam with the trigger cue for “Back Off” getting played at 0:22. Dan continues to play the lick w some crazy bass tone until the actual track kicks in via a key change at 1:15.
Around this time i began utilizing a technique called the “Random Patch Generator” - a technique that became (and still is to this day) a major ingredient in tND jams. Basically i pick a random patch on any of my keyboards, start playing it, all the while tweaking the sound to fit whatever mood we happen to be in. The RPG can be heard at at around 2:40 in the “Back Off” jam. “Ravine” gets cued at 5:22 and we transition into more of a “Ravine” intro, albeit in an ambient style. We eventually land in the key of the tune around 6:15, continuing the ambience until 7:15 when we bash our way into “Ravine”.
This track was named after the hypnotist “Raveen” in honour of the original 1999 downtempo studio recording we had made when we threw some of his slick hypnotist vocals on top. We quickly amped up the sound and speed (and changed the spelling of the title) and never looked back. This was a favourite of ours to play for a long time due to the wide-open nature of the track. “Ravine” prob has the highest number of stylistic and sonic variations out of all the tND songs from that time period.
My guess is that we were in the midst of recording “Episode 7” in the studio and probably wanted to test-drive the track in front of a live audience, hence the mini-version starting around 11:10 and continuing in a loose form until “Back To The Middle” at 16:45.
The BTTM jam takes a big left turn with some downtempo experimentation right out of the main section. As explained in last week’s post, our slower jams were starting to take on greater harmonic and melodic variety in these years. I think i hear myself quoting Jeff Beck’s version of “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat” as well as Herbie Hancock’s “Butterfly”, all within the same eight bars! -Jamie
This week’s #ThisDealInHistory is another look into our 2002 concert in London, Ontario.
Last week i discussed the restraint and patience displayed in our house grooves. This week’s cut begins with another example of that same restraint and composure, however it’s in a downtempo style.
Slower grooves played a big part in the 1998-2003 shows (they’re heavily featured throughout our first concert/record “This Is Live”) and this opening jam is a good illustration of our early-era downtempo style, albeit with the heavier approach that we began exploring in late 2001/early 2002. This shift stemmed from our desire to inject some heft and body into our sound as well as to veer our tone away from the more delicate rhythms and sounds so prevalent in our first three years.
Around this time these slower pieces began to feature repeated chord progressions and melodic lines, a definite development from our one-chord approach in the early years. This enabled us to further develop our song-creation chops and not simply rely on jamming on the groove for extended periods of time.
Around 3:30 we shift gears and bring up the tempo, following with harmonic changes at both 4:10 and 4:38 to lead us into an early version of “G-nome”.
“G-nome” was written on the fly at one of our 2002 Bowery Ballroom shows in NYC (its creation is documented on our Live: NYC 5/31+6/1 2002 release) and the song was still developing at this time (in fact, it continued to develop its basic body until around 2005!). In this clip you can hear us extending the intro and throwing different concepts into the mix, some of which would return over time in future shows, some of which would be thrown to the side - such is the way we write songs!
After three minutes of exploring the intro we finally hit the main head at 7:00. The astute listener will notice that in these early instances we only play the head once and go to an organ interlude before returning to the main melody for a second time (without the shots and stops that eventually found their way into the melody).
The jam at 9:00 is of a distinctly different nature as well - no key change, the same synth sound - but these ideas changed over time and performances. We would listen back to these shows, pick out bits we liked, discard ones that we didn’t like, and then try to remember them, all the while working on creating new bits to incorporate into the piece. Most tND songs were works in progress for a fairly long period time before they settled into any conceptual consistency.
Shout-out to Dan’s bass tone from 11:21 to the end. It veers from crispy and insect-like to downright dirty! -Jamie
This week's #ThisDealInHistory is from our show in London, ON on Nov 20, 2002. The cut opens with what sounds like a classic Set 2 opening jam, circa 2002-era New Deal. Uptempo house music with a repeating electric piano lick and some stellar hi-hat work. Playing this style of house music requires a fair bit of restraint and patience in order to let the groove settle in. We seem to be doing a pretty good job of that on this night, throwing in some short Moog blips here and there with the bass providing rhythmic counterpoint underneath it all. We open it up a little more around 2:40 w some longer synth phrases (still repeated lines, though) while increasing the intensity a shade - the chord changes hint at what will become the first harmonic gear shift at 3:50 which takes us to the intro jam of Deep Sun...
We heard a 2004 version of Deep Sun in last week's TDIH (Ithaca 11/18/04) and it's fascinating to note the difference in approach within the span of two years. While the song was rarely the same twice (w the exception of the main "chords and melody" section), it's readily apparent that our sound and style evolved dramatically in the time period between 2002 and 2004, and one needs to look no further than these two versions of Deep Sun for proof of that.
Part of the reason for this evolution was our 8-month hiatus at the beginning of 2004 - that decision was based in part on the desire to step back from the style of music that we were most comfortable with at the time and to think about exploring other musical avenues while still maintaining that "New Deal spirit". That's not to say that what we were doing in 2002 wasn't interesting and fun - it definitely was - but we all felt that we could go farther and higher, and the break helped us to do just that when we returned in September, 2004.
I enjoy these types of sets because it appears that we're not trying to throw everything into the mix at all times, preferring to let the groove settle and speak for itself. The rest of this cut unfolds in a similar manner - restrained yet energized with a bunch of interesting ideas that breathe and develop over the course of the jam. -Jamie
This week's #TDIH is a 31-minute segment pulled from our 11/18/2004 concert in Ithaca, NY and is definitely an interesting listen.
Ithaca was one of the first places that tND started playing regularly - the fans took to us early on and it quickly became a preferred stop on our tour routing between 2000 and 2006. In fact, it's an Ithaca audience that can be heard singing me "Happy Birthday" (but we reversed the audio) in the background of "Ray Parker, Jr Pt 1" on our 2000 self-titled release.
This cut starts out dark and stays dark for a while. A lot of our show-starting jams often begin in minor keys but the sound, vibe and energy of this opening is somewhat spooky, IMO. Might have something to do with the Moog sounding like a perimeter alarm going off.
The section at 1:50 does nothing to dispel the darkness, courtesy of the bass explosions/sparse repetition of the synth coupled with Darren's intense jackhammer groove.
An abupt gear change at 4:30, always one of my favourite things to do. In this case, we slow it down and Dan's awesome fuzz bass finds its way in.
Pretty good example of 2004-era New Deal - the moody, somewhat heavy repetition that is moving away from House Music and into more intense grooves and sounds. There was never a conscious decision to keep things sparse and grey - we just sort of fell into those types of nights.
"Jagoff" gets cued around 9:30 and its jam from 12:55 to 17:30 maintains a similar vibe with some spooky keys work by Yours Truly. The heavier sounds are definitely finding their way into my solo...
Dan can be heard playing the bassline to "Demolition Man" by the Police while i join in with the melody around 15:05 until 16:55. The "Deep Sun" cue is played at 17:21 but we keep the jam going (transitioning into a pretty ambient section) until the main bit finally kicks in at 21:35 -Jamie
In honour of our upcoming pair of shows at Summercamp in Chillicothe, IL this week's #ThisDealInHistory is pulled from our July 30, 2005 concert at Chicago's Metro. This show was part of the Wicker Park Festival and, if memory serves me correctly, was a very-late-night set.
The set starts out with our homage to the band Chicago (something we tried to do at every Chicago-area gig that we ever played) with an impromptu version of their 1976 hit "If You Leave Me Now". Darren's exclamation at the end of the piece says it all, in my opinion.
"Gone Gone Gone" is the focus of this clip. I like the tempo and the vibe of the middle jam - sometimes we would throw on the afterburners and ramp up the speed in the first section of the jam but we kept it at a steady tempo, which provided a sexier vibe there.
Around 4:30 i throw a cue/trigger in to suggest that we speed it up and raise the intensity, which we do in spades. I'm a big fan of the groove Darren throws down at 5:30 with the shaker and the hi-hats poking out here and there. I also love the abrupt shifts into the shots, etc. - we've been doing that more nowadays and i'm always smiling when that stuff happens. Expect more of that stuff as time moves on. Sometimes we're groovin' so hard that i forget to call that stuff!
After we call (and play) the "Gone Gone Gone" shots, we take it down for a minute to an ambient Rhodes-led jam, where i once again reference the Chicago song "If You Leave Me Now", but this time in a minor key, then it's off to the ending section and out... probably around 4:45 AM -Jamie
"In honour of our upcoming show at the 2015 Glow Fair in Ottawa on June 19th, this week's #ThisDealInHistory features another Ottawa performance from way back: the Ottawa Tulip Festival from May 13, 2002. Perhaps in honour of performing in our nation's capital, I can be heard noodling the end of the "Hockey Night In Canada" theme as this cut fades in. The opening bit reminds me of some very early-era New Deal - the midtempo jams w a slightly swung feel. "Sub Sky" is called and we morph into an energetic version at a faster-than-usual tempo, prob to get our blood flowing out in the cold! (Note to everyone - we recently started incorporating "Sub Sky" into our 2015 repertoire, playing it for the first time in Toronto last week - just proves that you can't keep a good song down!). The jam definitely falls into the style that i discussed in an earlier #TDIH - namely the shift we started to introduce around this time where we slipped away from straight house music and started working in more energetic rhythms and sounds (I called it "nighttime highway driving" or something like that). At 8:22 i can be heard quickly teasing Pigbag's 1981 dance track "Papa's Got a Brand New Pigbag". The second half of "Sub Sky" never materializes (perhaps we finished that chapter at our next show?) because we end up jamming our way into "Receiver" which features a pretty driving middle section. I always enjoyed that abrupt key change into the final part of Receiver (15:10)... who knows - maybe that song can't be kept down either?" - Jamie
This week’s #ThisDealInHistory is taken from our concert at Colgate University on December 1, 2007. This time period finds us further exploring and developing our transition into bolder sounds, rawer structures and a more aggressive musical approach. The first couple minutes of this clip have a nice blend of earlier-era musical ideas coupled with middle-era sounds, groove and direction. To me, this excerpt is vintage 2007 tND. The slower section at 5:31 is a good example of our stylistic evolution during these years; what might have remained a straight-up dub jam in 2004 actually gets twisted in 2007 into some quasi-funk/triphop/Philly Soul concoction… Dan consciously (or maybe unconsciously) deciding to avoid the dub route at the outset of the jam, instead opting for a very cool offbeat/upbeat groove with some great funky licks thrown in, which completely and successfully reshaped the jam into something entirely different. I also love that bass tone around 9:40 - sounds like somebody slashed Dan’s bass speaker cones -Jamie
"This week's #ThisDealInHistory is pulled from our show in Kingston, Ontario on 10/05/2002. This time period finds the band exploring more of an aggressive feel to its jams in terms of approach and rhythm. We weren't quite at the spot where we turned up the overdrive on our sounds yet, but this show definitely showcases our desire to turn up the intensity in both our playing style and our rhythmic style. The straight-up house music jams were becoming less frequent (although they never totally disappeared) and, while house music was still definitely important to us, it was now starting to be performed with more fire and drive. The clip also includes "Self Orbit" from our self-titled record. As was our intent at the time, we elongated the intro, pulling more tension out of the song before we went into the main section. We then segue into "G-nome" which most definitely highlights the rhythmic intensity and drive mentioned above - the bit from 11:30 to the end being a good example of that." - Jamie
"This week's #ThisDealInHistory is from our late-night set at the Creekside Jamboree in June, 2003. The cut opens up with "Back Off" which, at the time, was a favourite launching pad of ours to let loose in the middle section. From '99 to '02 the "Back Off" jam section was usually moderately slower and more funk-oriented, but around 2003 we started shifting into more of an early 1980's repetitive European electro-based style. This version is a good example of that shift - more "nighttime highway drive" than in previous years. We then abruptly change" gears into our version of Pink Floyd's "Breathe". This cover didn't get played too often and often served as a gateway out of the slow interlude into something a little more frenetic, in this case "VL Tone" - i would imagine that we had just laid this down in the studio for the "Gone Gone Gone" album and were excited to play the recorded version in a live setting, hence the absence of a jam in this cut." - Jamie
"This week's #ThisDealInHistory is from our Feb 2003 concert at the Worcester Palladium. This is around the time that we were formulating the tracks for the "Gone Gone Gone" album and this clip features one of the early examples of what became the "classic" version of Gone Gone Gone for that period of time, but also features some variations in the later sections. One can also hear me teasing Jeff Beck's "Led Boots" and "You Know What I Mean" in the opening hip-hop segment" -Jamie
“This week’s #ThisDealInHistory features another early-era show from theNEWDEAL - this one from Hamilton, ON back in September, 2000. Hamilton played an important part in the formative stages of the band - it was one of those cities where we could travel a little out of town and play some regular gigs to work on our improvisation in front of a crowd (and without a net). Because the band never had a rehearsal in our existence (save for one jam session when we returned from our 2004 hiatus), we used these types of shows to just let loose and see where the improv could take us. We’d gauge the reaction of the crowd to know if we were moving in the right direction and we would then listen back to these gigs and pick out little pieces that we would want to extend upon in future shows. This cut is from one of our last Hamiton gigs from this time period, as we started to expand our touring base and weren’t really able to play too many local-type shows anymore, but when i listened back to this show to find some #TDIH bits, i was impressed with how important these semi-local shows were in helping sculpt our style of improvisation and experimentation.” -Jamie
This week’s TDIH clip is from what i believe to be theNEWDEAL's first concert in Baltimore, MD on Nov 1, 2001. I really enjoy Dan’s bass playing and style from this era - he was pushing the envelope with his sound creation, including his signature 16th-note slap-delay lines and his filter moves (as heard from 3:15 onward), plus that high-register fuzz melody at 6:15 ain’t nothin’ to sneeze at! Throughout this cut you can hear the beginnings of some of the MONSTER tones that Dan started to unleash in early 2002 - sounds that have remained an important part of the NEWDEAL arsenal to this day. There are also good examples of the interplay between bass and keyboards - both instruments improvising independent lines and melodies that, when combined, create a musical and sonic whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. Classic early-era New Deal! -Jamie
This week's clip from Northampton, MA is a prime example of 2009-era tND. It was during this time period that we experimented with stretching out the slower jams, increasing our dub intake (and output) and just generally taking our music farther out on a limb, including riding sparser grooves for longer periods of time. The first two minutes provide a good example of the slower style we were trying to expand upon in our sets, while the Deep Sun Intro that follows demonstrates our desire to explore the ambient side of tND - to stretch a small piece of music for as long as we can make it interesting. -Jamie
This week's clip is taken from our very first show ever as a band, performed in Toronto in 1998 in front of four people at a place called The Comfort Zone. We didn't even have a name yet but upon listening back to the recording (on cassette!) after the show we knew we had the makings of something special. This clip features the first "song" we ever came up with (Back To The Middle) as well as the first performance of Holland Tunnel. with the exception of the main lick to Back To The Middle, the entire concert was improvised from beginning to end" - Jamie
Live recording from our most recent show in NYC at Terminal 5! Our sets are now available for download! Buy this set here: http://bit.ly/1D2Liw1
Enjoy your holidays with "MC JGS" throwing down The Message by Grandmaster Flash in Scraton, PA (2010). Happy Holidays from tND!
Here's some vintage New Deal for your listening pleasure. This was recorded live in Chiba, Japan back in 2009. More vintage #ThisDealInHistory to come...happy listening!
Check out a sneak peak of tND's improv heavy, rockin set during this years ROWDYTOWN at Red Rocks. Be sure to check out tND in your town. Tickets+More: www.thenewdeal.com
tND's smokin second set closer "Gone, Gone, Gone" from the 2014 Catskill Chill Music Festival. Get your shoes tied up tight, and never stop dancing. theNEWDEAL 2014. Live, always.
tND's podcast series rolls on!
Check out an exclusive SBD recording of the second set from tND's late night throwdown in Chicago 8.31.14, post North Coast Music Festival at Concord Music Hall.
Subscribe to our podcast/soundcloud for more exclusive looks at #tnd2014!
Setlist: Jam, Glide>Jam>Glide, Jam>Octobong>Jam>Octobong
Tourdates+Tickets+more: www.thenewdeal.com
Preview for theNEWDEAL's Podcast Series 002
Recorded Live in Chicago, Il Concord Music Hall 8.30.14
tickets+more: www.thenewdeal.com
tND's "Jam B" from the 08.25.14 session in Toronto, ON.
TND will be in Chicago this upcoming weekend for our first late night performance since the 2014 return at Concord Music Hall on Saturday, August 30th.
The Following day, TND will make their 2014 Chicago festival debut at North Coast Music Festival in Union Park.
Tickets+more: www.thenewdeal.com
tND's "Jam A" from the 08.25.14 session in Toronto, ON.
TND will be in Chicago this upcoming weekend for our first late night performance since the 2014 return at Concord Music Hall on Saturday, August 30th.
The Following day, TND will make their 2014 Chicago festival debut at North Coast Music Festival in Union Park.
Tickets+more: www.thenewdeal.com
tND is back. Check out an exclusive SBD recording of our second set from The Fillmore in Silver Spring, MD, recorded on July 12th, 2014. Subscribe to our podcast/soundcloud for more exclusive looks at #tnd2014!
Setlist: Jam > Gone, Gone, Gone