CD 3: "Knotwork" - Detailed Liner Notes
"Knotwork" features fifteen
instrumental ambient acoustic guitar interludes and remixed arrangements
of new, historic,
and select songs from the Steve Ball Roadshow live
repertoire.
All arrangements by the players.
1
Travis Metcalf: acoustic guitar
Derek DiFilippo: acoustic guitar
SB: acoustic guitar, drum tracks
Graphic Artist: SB
Media: digital painting and collage
Notes: this Belltower ‘song tile’ is inspired by the chiming,
circulated, introduction to the piece. There is a gloriously subtle and
moody two-guitar 'circulation' at the end of the piece (improvised
during the recording by SB and Derek DiFilippo) that is both warm and
medieval, like the surreal stone towers in the image. Each 'stone' tower
has only one small window and yet, together they provide a perception of
strength and protection for the miniscule musicians who live within and
play nearby.
2
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Starship Trooper (Instrumental) 7:09
(Anderson/Squire/Howe)
publisher: WB Music Corp
Travis Metcalf: acoustic guitar
Derek DiFilippo: acoustic guitar
Bob Williams: ebow texture guitars
Tony Levin: acoustic bass
SB: acoustic guitar
Graphic Artist: SB
Media: digital painting and collage
Notes: ‘Starship Trooper’ is a song that was originally written and
recorded in the 70’s by the progressive rock group, YES, arranged
here for three acoustic guitars and bass. This instrumental piece
features NY legend,
Tony Levin,
on acoustic bass, and provides a telescopic, instrumental overview of
the composition without distractions from vocals or complex arrangement.
In the end, even though our telescopes are pointed to the heavens, we
are still ultimately seeking answers about ourselves and our
context within the unimaginably huge universe.
3
SB: acoustic guitars, textures
Graphic Artist: SB
Media: digital painting and photo
Notes: “Cranborne” is a small village in Dorset England where I spent my
20's in an apprenticeship with Robert Fripp and a music process called
Guitar Craft.
The seed of the song ‘Cranborne’ was written in Cranborne, England in a
house on Salisbury Street in 1988. The seed was finally orchestrated and
recorded in 2003 in Seattle. The early years of my apprenticeship and
the time spent in Cranborne ‘colorized’ my now-actualized musical vision
while providing a practical window into the mysteries behind the musical
process.
4
SB: acoustic guitars, textures
Graphic Artist: SB
Media: digital painting and collage
Notes: While studying in England in the late 80s, I spent one memorable
winter all alone, living in Robert Fripp’s unheated thatched-roof
cottage practicing guitar eight hours a day. While I was in there a
large team of guitarists was also working and living in an old mansion
in West Virginia. At the end of my three months of solitude, I joined
the large team back at the at Claymont Court mansion for a
two-week 'special project,' and upon my return, in one particular large
guitar circle meeting, Robert challenged me to stand up and ‘present my
work’ of three months in England. I had spent most of those three months
working on very primitive and boring right hand exercises, nevertheless,
I did manage to discover a small seed of a performable 'song.' So,
nervous and shaking, I stood up in front of 25 guitarists and played a
lame and shaky version of this piece solo, “Claymont Court.”
Fifteen years later, this piece is now fully orchestrated and reminds me
of that quiet, cold winter in England as well as the shaky and
unremarkable, but aspiring performance by a 27-year old beginner that
followed.
5
Travis Metcalf: acoustic guitar
Derek DiFilippo: acoustic guitar
SB: acoustic guitar
Graphic Artist: SB, Media: digital painting
Notes: In 1988, while living at Red Lion House with nine other
guitarists, Robert Fripp asked me to design a symbol to be used on
‘Guitar Craft’ letterhead, documents, and album covers. After sleeping
on it for a day, the next afternoon, I drew three lines interlocking in
a circular celtic knotwork with nine nodes, and a unified ‘alpha/omega’
at the top. This early sketch eventually became the symbol of the Guitar
Craft school and has since been used on numerous RF & LCG CDs. Fifteen
years later, in designing a ‘song tile’ for the SB Roadshow song
“Knotwork,” it occurred to me that someday, the work of Guitar Craft may
disappear, at which point, this symbol may be most appropriately used on
a tombstone. This image is partially designed to be a somewhat shocking
reminder to those of us who have had some exposure to the school of
Guitar Craft, that we each have a job to do if we wish to keep the
ongoing work of GC alive. It is also meant to be a reminder that the
work of GC is not a formula or a method – it is a living breathing body
of principles and practices that may also easily die if we assume we can
“capture” it in a fixed repertoire or book or series of fixed, sleepy,
rote mechanisms.
6
Curt Golden: slide guitar
Dean Jensen: slide guitar
Bob Williams: acoustic guitar, horn arrangement
Jaxie Binder: acoustic guitar
Chris Gibson: acoustic guitar
Derek DiFilippo: acoustic guitar, bass solo
SB: acoustic guitar
Graphic Artist: SB
Media: digital painting and collage
Notes: RV appears in two forms on the 3-CD, 45-song SB Box Set. A vocal
version, subtitled “Relation Vacation” appears on CD1 and there is also
an instrumental version of this song, subtitled ‘Recreational Vehicle,’
featuring the Seattle Guitar Circle on CD3. The music was written
at a time when SGC live repertoire consisted of mostly modern, often
unsettling and serious compositions. RV was born out of a need to
provide some ‘recreation’ between our ‘heavier’ pieces. The vocal
version was born at the same time, and unfortunately, it accurately
captures the flavor and essence of the longishly stagnating ‘relation’
that I was in at the time. The song tile captures the essence of the
line from the song: “I thought that we both were leaving the station,
but I’m on a freight train, she’s on an airplane.”
7
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Wave (Instrumental) 3:53 (Sylvian)
publisher: EMI Blackwood/ Opium Arts
Travis Metcalf: acoustic guitar
Travis Hartnett: acoustic guitar
SB: acoustic guitar, solos
Graphic Artist: SB
Media: digital painting
Notes: “Wave” is a David Sylvian song that the SB Roadshow
learned by request to play at a wedding in 2002. For the SB Box Set, we
recorded both a vocal and instrumental version of the song. The image is
designed to capture the simultaneously fluid color, intensity,
distortion, and beauty that can saturate the early days of a new
relationship.g
8
Curt Golden: GZ slide guitar, Dean Jensen: BE slide guitar, Bob Williams: GM acoustic guitar, Jaxie Binder: JL acoustic guitar, Chris Gibson: DS acoustic guitar, Derek DiFilippo: RF acoustic guitar, SB: acoustic guitar
The Vicar: spoken over-exposure aphorism
Graphic Artist: SB
Notes: In 2000, I left a career with a large software monopoly
and started a media technology company with Robert Fripp and David
Singleton called BootlegTV. Our original mission was to create
distributable products based upon libraries of recorded live shows. In
early 2000, after meetings with members of Pearl Jam, Phish, the
Grateful Dead, among others, we raised $6M of Valley Venture Capital
just before MP3 and Napster were sued by the RIAA. Suddenly, it became
very uncool to be a music technology start-up. Our VCs became nervous,
so we shifted gears, and two business models and 18 months later, we
closed BTV. At one point in our early days, GZ, one of our VCs asked if
we would like to be the subject of a documentary on start-ups. I said
no. That documentary became ‘Startup.com” Instead of
documenting the history of BTV on film, I decided to write wordless
mini-opera where each guitarist plays a specific role in telling the
non-verbal, musical history of BTV. If you listen closely to the
individuals parts, you can clearly hear the dissonant VC voices clashing
with the early employees as the mission morphed from one designed to
serve musicians to one designed to monetize assets of the Turner Cartoon
Library.
9
Curt Golden, Dean Jensen,
Bob Williams, Jaxie Binder,
Chris Gibson, Derek DiFilippo,
SB: acoustic guitars
Graphic Artist: SB
Media: digital painting and collage
Notes: “Cheeseballs” is a twisted ‘waltz-in-5’ that appeared during the
League of Crafty Guitarists 1990 tour just as a body of
repertoire by JS Bach began to show up in our live shows. It was
designed to be a light-hearted circus sideshow complement to some of the
otherwise serious and stoic repertoire that the League was playing live
at the time. It acknowledges the growing Bach influence via the
11-measure middle mini-psuedo-fugue section. The ‘song tile’
acknowledges my light-hearted attitude I have regarding the
oh-so-serious enneagram-driven processes surrounding certain sister
schools of Guitar Craft, while illustrating the juggling I do between
ongoing work and play with serious musicians, mediums, and monopolies.
10
10. Seattle Guitar Circulation 4:35
(Seattle Guitar Circle, improvised by players)
Curt Golden, Dean Jensen,
Bob Williams, Jaxie Binder,
Chris Gibson, Derek DiFilippo,
SB: acoustic guitars
Graphic Artist: SB,
Original SGC photograph by Ingrid Pape-Sheldon
Media: digital painting and collage
Notes: this song tile is derived from the same image used on the first
Seattle Guitar Circle CD cover, “Twilight” and the stunning 4+
minute circulation was improvised one evening in Bob and Jaxie’s living
room for the SB Box Set recording project. I’ve always loved this photo
as it captures a loving interaction between Bob and Jax while Bill
Rieflin is giving me a look of disbelief from across the room, obviously
responding to something ludicrous that I’ve said, while Curt smirks
knowingly and Dean remains content and focused on the photographer. This
image, and this improvised Circulation capture the second generation SGC
in its essence.
11
11. Red Lion 2:06 (SB)
SB: acoustic guitars, guitar synth, vibes
Graphic Artist: SB
Original photograph: Lisa Herrman
Notes: The symmetrical pattern behind song “Red Lion” was originally
written in 1988 while I was living in Red Lion House in England. Fifteen
years later, I orchestrated the pattern with a ‘vibes’ patch on my
guitar synth, modulated it with a classic GC-bridge and recorded it for
the Knotwork CD. The image for the song tile began with a black and
white photograph by Seattle photographer, Lisa Herrman. It captures the
weight, power, and intimidation that sometimes waits outside of the
heavy oak doors that keep us from next steps in our work.
12
(Travis Metcalf / SB)
Travis Metcalf: acoustic & electric guitar, drums
Travis Hartnett: acoustic guitar
Chris Gibson: electric solo
Derek DiFilippo: bass
SB: acoustic & electric guitars
Graphic Artist: Travis Metcalf
Media: digital painting
Notes: The song “Mary is Kneeling Down” is another piece from the
SB Box Set that has both an instrumental and a vocal version. This
instrumental version features a burning guitar solo by SGC guitarist
Chris Gibson. In the spring of 2003, Travis Metcalf and I engaged in a
“Drawing of the Day” process for about three months as a way to generate
raw material for CD cover art. This ‘song tile’ was one that Travis
painted for “Kneeling Down” and captures a certain feeling related to
the other war-oriented events that were unfolding at the time the
painting was made.
13
Travis Metcalf: acoustic guitar
Travis Hartnett: acoustic guitar
Chris Gibson: electric solo
Taylor Sherman: bass
SB: acoustic guitar, drum tracks
Graphic Artist: SB
Original photograph by Lisa Herrman
Media: digital painting and collage
Notes: The song tile for “Mercury Man” is a digital painting over a
black and white photo by Lisa Herrman and suggests a modern, somewhat
synthetic colorized texture that creates a repeating and timeless
connection between the past, present, and future. The song “Mercury Man”
orchestrates a static but slowly morphing textural evolution between a
consonant past that is gradually ascending into a chaotic and dissonant
future. At times, the present and the future (verse and bridge) sound as
if they are a tritone apart.
14
(Metcalf / DiFilippo / SB, improvised by players)
Taylor Sherman: bass
Travis Metcalf: acoustic guitar
Derek DiFilippo: acoustic guitar
SB: acoustic guitar, textures, drums
This entirely improvised piece has no associated song tile.
15
(Kilbey/Jansson)
publisher: Universal-MCA
Travis Hartnett: ebow electric & acoustic guitars
Travis Metcalf: acoustic guitar
J.G. Bennett: introduction
SB: acoustic guitars
Graphic Artist: SB
Original line drawing by Lisa Herrman
Media: digital painting and collage
Notes: The song tile for “Milky Way” captures a quick picture of what it
can be like for a practicing musician who is occasionally transcends the
physical walls, shapes, barriers, and surfaces of their work space to
access the energies and colors that come soaring through their
instrument after a significant investment has been made.
Related Pages
Roadshow - Detailed Liner Notes
Naive Melodies - Detailed Liner Notes