Day One: Saturday – featuring Deer Tick, Titus Andronicus and a host of Albany area bands went off without a hitch. A huge turnout coupled with nice weather, great beer and fantastic music made for an unforgettable day.

Day Two: Sunday – roared in with Hurricane (well, by then Tropical Storm) Irene dumping high winds and heavy rain all over the Capital District. While my B3nson pals swiftly handled the back room flooding that occurred at St. Joe’s overnight, I tried to keep in touch with all twelve of the other Undone Ensemble members – almost all of which were already preparing to make their way to the Ten Broeck triangle!

Plans had to change for the festival, since Sunday’s two headlining acts – A Hawk and a Hacksaw and The Music Tapes were coming from out of town by plane and by van, respectively. Both bands bowed out early due to the weather, so after bailing out buckets of rainwater, the B3nson crew decided to make Sunday’s RestFest “pay what you want”, shove the schedule back two hours and open the doors wide for anyone who could make it to downtown Albany. A move which Harith over at The Rev Recs blog calls “SO ALBANY” – to cobble together something out of nothing and fight for what we believe is beautiful.

As the rain and wind abated, Paul Coleman (drummer in Undone Ensemble!), Mrs. Matthew and I packed up the banjo and the drums and headed down to Albany. We noted that the “Emergency Travel Only” warning signs were appropriate in this case – this was a musical emergency that required our presence!

Arriving just in time to witness Slender Shoulders coming off stage at the end of their set was a bummer, but feelings were assuaged by the presence of their debut EP.

The next hour was a flurry of text messages and phone calls to track down the rest of the ensemble members who were not present. Thankfully everyone arrived with plenty of time to prepare and to even enjoy some music in advance of our set. Swamp Baby turned in a widely dynamic set filled with new songs and old songs that were given new life with We are Jeneric‘s Eric Krans playing drums for the entire set!

By the time We are Jeneric hit the stage, I was a bundle of nerves. Thankfully they were in the middle of performing the best set of their career, enrapturing everyone in the building while no one noticed that I was pacing in the green room!

These were tactical nerves – will we set up the stage quick enough? Will Sooze’s crack stage team be annoyed by our “first show” newbieisms? Will I drop my banjo like I dropped my mandolin at TulipFest?

via Flickr user BVCPhoto. Used with permission.

Luckily, only one of my fears came to life (I kind of forgot some of the words to the first song – “Brooklyn or Bust”) and the first and only Undone Ensemble show came off without a hitch!

Here are the songs we played:
Brooklyn or Bust
Infinitely Red (from Kentucky)
Modest Birds (from Kentucky)
Neighborhood (from A Book About the Rest)
Mustang Walk
O My Luck
Poughkeepsie (from Community Balloon)

The Matthew Carefully Undone Ensemble – ‘Poughkeepsie’ from Bryan Thomas on Vimeo.

Major thanks are in order here: to all ensemble members for their dedication and energy towards this project, to all the ensemble member’s wives, girlfriends, dogs, cats, babies, pets, and families for to SwordPaw for the availability and awesomeness of their SwordPaw HQ for our rehearsals this summer, to Frank Moscowitz for some crucial advice and cobbled together rehearsal sound fantastics, to Ben Karis-Nix and Taylor Gillis at Design it Together for some fantastic band apparel, and to everyone at RestFest/B3nson for giving us the opportunity to put this show on.

Over the next few weeks, I have a few more posts relating to the Ensemble that I want to share. Stay tuned.

This is the beginning.

This past weekend saw the opening of one of the most impressive displays of art Albany has ever seen, HEAVY.

The event lived up to its name, completely transforming St. Joseph’s (and the surrounding neighborhood, even!) into an art playground.

Pal Sébastien Barré covered all kinds of bases with this blog post and photo set from HEAVY.

Here are a few images from the weekend that don’t necessarily overlap with some of the other images I’ve seen; including a few from the Dwell/OneUnit “Fireflies and Night Skies” room (that you had to look to find…) and a few outside shots.

As far as music goes, I feel lucky to have been able to perform a sixty minute improvisation featuring looped samples, vocals and affected mandolin. There were two moments during that time where I felt terribly connected to the space, despite being completely insular and uncommunicative with beings in the room.

If you had to miss the opening weekend; well, you’re in luck! It was announced yesterday that HEAVY will once again be open starting this Friday (7/30) at 5PM (again on Saturday as well) with no less than 10 new installations/artists collaborating on more work!

I’m happy to announce that I’ll be performing a similar set of drone/improvisation on Friday along with Sean Rowe and Pete Edwards. Much more music to be added…

This show was special for me as I spent the past month writing music in mind for the outdoors. I was proud to debut four new songs, along with new arrangements for some older songs. My favorite part of the night was the late-night improvised instrumental set I played as the sun went down. A truly enjoyable evening!

The lovely folks at The Hidden City have an amazing set of photos from last night’s heARTS aligned event in Cohoes, N.Y. The above image is the card designed by Jason Antonelli that represented the song “Forest & Dive“.

Thanks to Matt Durfee for putting on such a rad event!

Thanks to those who made it to Caffé Lena last week! Sorry to those who were turned away at the door; apparently advanced tickets will be highly recommended for nights like this. Both Horse Feathers and myself were honored to perform in front of such an attentive, and in my case malleable crowd!

There are THREE(!) videos (‘Helen’ is above) from Horse Feathers’ set available to view on the internet. I was lucky enough to be able to play five songs with these lovelies at Caffé Lena and in Burlington on Halloween. I hope to join them again for more in the future…

Links to the other two videos and my setlist below.

Horse Feathers videos:
‘In Our Blood‘
‘Working Poor‘

Matthew Setlist:
For Buffy the Vampire Slayer
(new instrumental)
Inside My Grin
Modest Birds
Right Behind You
Infinitely Red
Offering
Caramel Hands
Rebuild
“Tabatha”
Only Memory

Driving home in the rain alone listening to “Unbroken Chain” by the Grateful Dead on repeat somehow made me think about some of the other folks I’ve “sat-in” with throughout the years. I went ahead and updated the “ABOUT” section of this site with a slight third person bio and a brief history of some folks I have shared a stage with, literally.

(Image courtesy Nicole K.! Thanks!)

Quite a surprising and amazing turnout. Thanks to all who were present and willing to succumb to my show-leading wiles. I must admit that I had a helluva time preparing my solo opening set. There are certainly plenty of old songs I could’ve worked up but the challenge and surprise of playing mostly new / unheard material was more my style. Thanks for bearing with me and being an amazingly attentive and malleable audience. We had fun, didn’t we?

Also a huge thanks to Frank, Martha, and Olivia for their patient rehearsing and gorgeous voices. Viva la Choir!

Last night was pretty incredible…

Above are the freshly finished ‘kerchiefs that the lovely Erin Schrader designed and made for the Upstate Kentucky Choir. Despite my “wardrobe malfunctions”, they put the perfect stamp on our little performance last night. It felt amazing to come out into that beautiful room to a packed house. Thanks to all that attended! Word is there were some folks who couldn’t get in — sorry! (Although I think it was said that this was a “one time only performance”, I have a sneaking suspicion we all want to do it again sometime…)

It seemed that everyone I spoke to had the best time – one of those “magic” nights that will be remembered forever. There is magic at Amrose, and I’m so glad that we were able to harness that – if only for a few hours. We Are Jeneric was adorable, endearing, and excellent as ever – playing a nice mix of songs from their new “In the Parlor with the Moon” album, and some from “Hansel & Gretel“. Swamp Baby took their performance-pop to a new level with some new songs, tricks, tribulations and Michael Hotter on BASS, no less!

Here are some images from the event, taken by Erin Schrader. (I think) Audio was recorded for the whole night… so perhaps stay tuned for that.

Thanks to everyone who was involved.

We Are Architects – Building One – Blanket Fort City from We Are Architects on Vimeo.