T R O I K A M U S I C F E S T I V A L

Folks--

The Troika Music Festival is August 23-27. There are many great bands playing--and Audubon Park! There are two or three shows each night all over the triangle.

We are playing on the 27th with lots of good bands: Portastatic, Work Clothes, Schooner, Bellafea, The Balance, Tenament Halls, Odd International, Polyna, and Goner.

If you see us, here is what you get:

• We've been practicing, some
• We have new songs that we know how to play
• Vigor
• We've been practicing our "humor"
• The Kalb-In-Shorts, as seen on MTV Spring Break Europe
• Ask us before of after the show about the screenplay we are working on: Dadport!
  

Other nights include such treats as: Eyes to Space, Jett-Rink, Hotel-Motel, The Standbys, CantwellGomez&Jordan, Cantwell's whole experimental night, Billy Sugarfix, North Elementary, Strange, Whole World Laughing, the Sames, The Rosebuds, Erie Choir, and America's Top Models. And these are only the one's who's names I felt like typing! So good.

Going back to our band though: I really can't say enough good, or slightly insulting, stuff about us. As previously reported in 'ric's Gaddis Award winning series, we have started working on our full length debut LP. We got 9 songs in the can. Take that as you will. We have three more to go and lots of mixing and twiddling. And diddling (exact science). The LP will be called "Teenage Horses" and I think it lives up to a names like that. Wait, wouldn't a teenage horse be really old? How long do horses live? Maybe we messed up. In our crazed quest for youth we turned oun the spigot of decrepitude.

Mark Lebetkin from Schooner was kind enough to come in and lend us his viola skills and put up with our rather odd behavior and mixed messages:

Me: Oh, Mark--play the chords real smooth, you know (scrawls shapes on paper).
Finn: (Open eyes) Yeah, yeah. Real staccato, just like he said (closes eyes).
Robert: Right. I like that idea--just droning, with no chords of any type.
Me: Yeah, do that. Ready?
Mark: What?
Ben: Oh, I thought of something.
Mark: What?
Ben: Leo Kottke called. It was for Matt. I took a message.
Mark: Excuse me?
Matt: JC Penny called.
Ben: That's not nice.
Finn: (Opens eyes) So, wait, what song are we putting strings on?
Me: So, Mark, you know what to do right?
Mark: Well...
Me: I'm hungry.

Our Love Is Like Woe!

The names of the songs--which you don't know, but I am telling you so you can begin doddling them in your note book--are:

1. Winter Gala (Jesus Wasn't a Doctor Either)
2. Broken Tooth
3. Frightened by the Lake
4. Empty Choir at the Camp Meeting
   
5. Fantasia on Ulalume Pts 1-3
6. Sympathy for Youth
7. Gum Run
8. Ghost City
9. Empire of Towns
   

Let's hope we can keep our strength up.

Go to Troika's webpage for the full schedule.