'Fifty thousand didgeridoos!' Get into the spontaneous art of The Amber Herd
Plus, more on the Fresnan festival watch.
The Amber Herd can be taken myriad ways.
It started as a jam-session lark and morphed into this collaborative art project that is also a cross-generational thing aimed at ending cultural ageism.
Also, it’s all improvised.
“I prefer the word spontaneous,” says guitarist Tom Walzem in advance of The Amber Herd’s first performance piece, “Growth and Death.” It happens 9 p.m. Thursday night at Goldstein’s.
“The band’s mission is to create ‘vibe.’ And instead of adding vibe to a piece of practiced music, our goal is to express the vibe as music.”
Walzem runs a music store/hangout called Mystic Music, which Brandon Freeman (Cloudship) would often stop by to do a sit in on drums. “We would just jam. It was completely spontaneous and sounded great!” Walzem says.
The pair floated the idea of getting a gig at the Tower Farmer’s Market playing as a farcical band under the name Amber Heard (which had been topical, to give you a sense of the timeline).
That gig never happened, but Walzem and Freeman did collaborate on set for a Spokeasy Public House fundraiser last November.
“It re kindled our desire to play again,” Walzem says.
They added a permanent bassist, in Greg Baisch.
Amber Heard became The Amber Herd and “that is it so far.”
In one sense, this is music (or musical performance) as art.
“All three of us are artists,” Walzem says. “The idea of thinking of our shows as performance art has always been in the discussion.”
This first performance is a Freeman piece, in which his drums keep getting altered throughout the set, forcing him to change his approach to each song.
Future shows will have new concepts and possible collaborations with other artists, “adding video lighting or whatever to the experience,” Walzem says.
It’s also just a whole lot of fun.
Because this is a vibe and the vibe is spontaneous, The Amber Herd allows Walzem to really play, like in the childish-wonder-joy-and-imagination sense of the word.
“I have zero restrictions,” he says. “We can go from surf to country to metal to jazz even ambient music on a whim. I can treat tones like musical toys and just let go.”
He’s running his guitars (he uses a double-neck for this project as he is want to do) through a looper pedal, which is something he’s been doing on and off in project and his solo work since the ’90s.
“My approach has been to improvise one part, then react to it as another musician would,” he says. “It is good training to write parts on the spot, which is the essence of The Amber Herd. In a band setting it allows me to make huge soundscapes with layers that wash the stage like ‘fifty thousand didgeridoos!’ ”
Fresno festival watch with Bel, Artificial Language
Last month, we reported on Los Angles singer Bel, who landed a spot on the lineup for this year’s BottleRock Napa Valley.
It was big moves for the Clovis native, who spent the pandemic splitting time between LA and the Central Valley while writing her debut EP.
Now, she’s confirmed a slot at Ocean’s Calling, a three day festival in Ocean City Maryland with a lineup of artists that includes headliners Green Day, Noah Kahan, Fall Out Boy and Weezer, along with Lenny Kravitz, the Black Crowes, Vampire Weekend, Modest Mouse, DEVO and Michelle Branch. See the full lineup here.
This isn’t a festival I’ve heard much (or anything) about, but that doesn’t mean too much. If you’re up for a trip, tickets went on sale Friday.
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Staying on the festival front, Fresno prog-metal band Artificial Language landed a spot on the Kill Iconic Fest.
The one-day festival happens Saturday, May 10, at the Observatory in Santa Ana and features headliners The Fall of Troy, paying tribute to its 2005 album Doppelgänger. Others on the lineup include A Lot Like Birds and Foxy Shazam. See the full lineup here.
This is the third year for the festival, which is curated by the Los Angles music magazine/record label/fashion brand. If you’ll remember, Artificial Language released its “Distant Glow” Ep in March.
That’s it for this week. Remember you can now hear me on the Homegrown Show Sundays at 8 p.m. on New Rock 104.1 FM. I got sick (womp, womp), so The Hammer is filling in for me tonight. Follow my other writing at The Fresno Bee. If you have anything you think I need to be looking at or listening to, feel free to let me know: jtehee@gmail.com