Jacob Wolkenhauer

So youtube has some really interesting statistical information available now. It turns out the two videos which refer the most people to my music are the following:

Brandon Lee Died Making “The Crow” &
A guy firing a gun into an open field

Well, we take what we can get, I guess… =)

I just took a picture of myself with my new guitar for a friend.  But it looks really goofy because I did the cell phone and a mirror that’s all the rage these days.  Since I think it looks a little goofy, you have to subscribe to my email list to see it.  ;)  Top right corner, y’all.

The Grace Woods Trio has a new album in the early stages of production. While we were all in the studio tracking their first song, I taped some footage of the process. I edited it together this weekend, and think the resulting video is a lot of fun.

Whoooooooo!

I just bought a Breedlove C25 off eBay!  I’ll post pictures as soon as I get the guitar!!!

Michael Johnson, a friend of mine and student over at SFSU, recently did an audio documentary with me as the subject.

He interviewed me and taped me playing live at Blake’s. Click here to download it and give it a listen.

I just wrote a huge blog about the album and deleted it. Twice.

I’ll write more as the process gets further along, but it has officially begun.

You can go listen to me in an engaging interview over at the Bay Area Green Room podcast!

http://www.bayareagreenroom.com

(And I go on vacation in 52 minutes! WHOOOOOO!)

I’ve been starting to read about Glenn Gould lately.  (He’s a fascinating -and dead- pianist.)  He has this one idea, the GPAADAK, the Gould Plan for the Abolition of Applause and Demonstrations of All Kinds.  Basically, never applaud for anything.

The idea behind it is roughly that if a song / performance receives more applause than some other, then it is inherently more worth performing.  Gould’s idea (which I’m not yet sure if I agree with, but is definitely worth mentioning) is basically “Who the hell is the audience to judge whether or not something needs to be expressed?  Just express it, and it will be received.  That is the important part, not the crass noise of slapping hands.”  (A rough paraphrasal, but it gets the idea across.)

I don’t think I’m ready to get onstage and ask people specifically not to applaud when I’m done playing (I’d turn neurotic, at least for a while).  But the idea that we could all just share for the sake of sharing, and enjoy just for the sake of enjoying, is a beautiful idea.

So I tend to play at bars and cafes. Not only do I often feel a bit isolated as an instrumental musician (a rare breed in my circle), but I also feel pigeon-holed by the instrument I play my music on. The whole youtube thing made me realize just how seriously most people mis-understand what it is that I’m doing. Before people even take the time to listen, I’m clumped into a genre of fat old white men that play Acoustic-Guitar-Music. I got some pretty heavy criticism for not living up to my presumed “influences”, namely Andy McKee. (Ironically, I’ve never heard a single song by Andy McKee. But he seems to be very much of that fat old white Acoustic-Guitar-Music genre.)

Granted, there are definitely some people that do get it (namely all of you reading this, I imagine). But people are surprisingly quick to close their ears to something they’re not used to, or something that doesn’t fit requirements they impose on music. As someone who’s trying really hard to make stuff that sounds like Jacob-Wolkenhauer-Music, and is getting heard as Acoustic-Guitar-Music, that’s obviously no good. The “youtube effect” will be really apparent when my album comes out… I’m going to try my best to sound like Jacob-Wolkenhauer-Music, so that people don’t immediately think Acoustic-Guitar-Music and try to lump me in together with old fat guys playing in a long canon of music that in no way includes me.

But I stumbled across this old quote in the liner of Ani DiFranco’s first album:

“i speak without reservation from what i know and who i am. i do so with the understanding that all people should have the right to offer their voice to the chorus whether the result is harmony or dissonance, the worldsong is a colorless dirge without the differences that distinguish us, and it is that difference which should be celebrated not condemned. should any part of my music offend you, please do not close your ears to it. just take what you can use and go on.”

Whoa. Someone who is so powerful an artist and such a symbol in the indie / DIY circuit, someone who actually inspired me to learn guitar, someone who has touched so many lives with her songwriting… this person had to make a disclaimer that I’ve been wanting to make for a long time. That quote lifts me up and makes me feel immensely better. Not to be so audacious as to compare myself to her, but when she was playing bars and cafes doing something new and different, she was meeting that same kind of automatic/closed-minded resistance. She worked past it and turned out alright. Puts a little perspective on my own sense of being mis-understood, and encourages me to just keep plodding on. Maybe even without a disclaimer. =)

Thanks for reading and listening, y’all.