String Theory was and is the only fully committed band I was in since I've played mandolin or should I say since I began playing instruments tuned in 5ths primarily. The band was born on my front porch in 2003 with me on my acoustic mandolin, Steve Bifani on acoustic guitar, and Chris Herr on upright concert bass. We played everything from Duke Ellington to Stevie Wonder, from Django Reinhardt to Bill Monroe. We were a favorite at parties, but when we really started considering playing shows with the variety of music we had put together (over 30 originals and 50 covers) we decided to look for a drummer/percussionist and a piano player, the result was String Theory. Featured on drums was Jack Rinca (who I'd known since 4th grade) who had earned a B.A. in classical percussion from UNF and was the perfect man for the job; besides he was seriously like the number 3 yo-yo player in the world at the time, he was sponsered by Duncan Yo-Yo's TM, and on their pro team and everything. On the keys we featured Stewart Bombedeus. He was the classic blues style lounge singer and brought some swank to our movement. We were committed to being able to play diversely, virtually any style of music. Eventually Chris Herr would incorporate electric bass on certain types of songs and I would play a solid body 5-string electric mandolin on tunes that called for that sort of sound. I think this made us one of the more diverse bands I've ever seen. Towards the end of String Theory we featured Corey Birch on tenor sax, flute, bass clarinet, clarinet, and percussion. Unfortunately we never made any recordings with Corey.
String Theory only survived a year and a half of giging in Jacksonville with very few recordings. What is listed is mostly from a demo we made for our press package. I have included a few other pieces that were recorded in my bedroom.
STRING THEORY 2003
Aaron Abrams : Recording and Producing 1 - 6. Thanks Aaron!
After String Theory fell apart I realized being in a band was analagous to being married to four people simultaneously. What.........., for real!
My solution was to have a GK roland synthesizer pick-up installed into my electric mandolin. This would allow me to emulate the sounds of other instruments with my mandolin. I then began playing all of the 'sounds' on my music projects. I began focusing on school more and didn't have the time to practice for hours everyday which is what it took for me to be able to keep up with the guys in String Theory. Vassar Clements told me once that, " If I don't practice for a day then I will notice and if I don't practice for two days the audience will notice."
After String Theory I was taking more courses each semester and doing some side work for a fledling record company Real Vibe Productions where I was able to use my digital mandolin and a drum machine to make some cash producing some hip-hop and neo-soul vocalists. Being slightly disapointed with much of what I saw in that scene I decided to do my own hip-hop album the way I imagined it.
All of my productions since then have gone under the name of AVATAR, which is a Hindu word denoting a descendent of the divine for the uplifting of all of humanity.
If you are interested here are some pictures of my primary instruments. 8-string Acoustic Mandolin; 5-string Electric Cyborg Mandolin Synthesizer; Converted 6-String Mandocello; 12-string Acoustic Guitar.
Here are some other typical accomplices. My Drum Set; My beautiful LP Conga; Ancient Hammond Organ also a Lego Base.
RISE was my attempt at sparking some strange instrumental (electric mandolin) hippie style of hip-hop = hippie-hop? I could never really sing so well but I did some spoken word poetry and at this time in my life I had a lot to say, so this weird white-boy hip-hop seemed the best way to combine my music studies with my spoken word writing capabilities. Keep in mind I was working on an undergraduate degree in Philosophy at the time and anyone who is active in philosophy always falls into the trap of thinking that they know what they are talking about from time to time. This album also features some tracks from a spoken word album that I had recently finished for Lady G.
AVATAR - RISE 2004 (warning white boy rapping!!)
Chris Herr : Acoustic upright concert Bass 4, 8, 16; Electric Bass 13,15
Klob : MPC 2000 beat on 7, thanks Kip!
All other sounds are mandolins, a drum machine, and hand percussion instruments (drums,didjeridoo,etc..).
The Instrumentals is my attempt of making an entire instrumental album using only my electric mandolin synthesizer to emulate the sound of a real band. The album also features a 5-string single strung Mandocello that I used to emulate the sound of an acoustic guitar. There is plenty of percussion, didj, etc. but all non-percusive sound was made by an instrument that is tuned in 5ths!!!
This album explores many different styles including Jazz, Calypso, Reggae, Blues, Fusion, Funk, Afro Cuban, and many weird in between kinda stages. Enjoy!
AVATAR - The Instrumentals 2005 ** All Mandolins **
Acoustic is a current project that I've been working on this summer(2006). I've finally had time to wipe the dust off of my mandolin, after a hardcore first year in the Applied and Computational Mathematics, PhD graduate program! The idea came to me once I arrived here to Tallahassee and FSU. When I told people that I played mandolin and then they would here my music and ask where the mandolin was! Even people that were already familiar with the mandolin seemed to be puzzled.
Every song on this album features a standard acoustic 8-string mandolin. All other intruments that are being emulated through my electric mando are all strictly acoustic. I am using a six and a twelve string acoustic guitar on some of the songs here. So this is really a semi-acoustic album but 100% acoustic in spirit! The project is ongoing so that I may be adding pieces as I finish them. Enjoy!
AVATAR - Acoustic 2006
Well, I was given a very nice Korg Poly61 synth to look after by a good friend of mine in grad school for the lack of space in his appartment. At the same time I was learning a new piece of recording software so I thought I would take the opportunity this summer to kill two birds with one stone, learn how to use the synth and the new recording software. This crazy electronic album is the result of that venture. The album is mostly just jacked up covers of some popular tunes with one exception, "Memoirs of a Dying God" is the only actual original song recorded. I wrote this partly as a protest to all of the religious propaganda being used to insight violence and how we have destroyed the meaning of our religious institutions by abusing rhetoric to the point of making it empty. The song is written from the prospective of a god explaining it's death to us.
All these songs are using the Korg Poly61 synth, an acoustic guitar, electric bass, electric mandolin, drum set, drum machine, and other percussion. I had a lot of fun playing with many tracks of vocal effects as well. Enjoy!
AVATAR - Electronic Project 2007I use to be very involved in performing spoken word poetry and so I thought I would try to get some of it recorded this summer. Didn't get as many done as I would have liked but here is what I have. Enjoy!
AVATAR - Spoken Word / Poetry 2007
These are some of the recent recordings that I did with my 13 year old cousin who is just learning music and becomming a really good drummer. I was teaching him how to record tracks and even got him to sing some. We had a blast making these so I hope you can enjoy some of it! We even got my son Youth to sing some backup for us.
AVATAR - Cuz Project 2007 - 2008
These are some recordings that I did here and there with no project in mind, usually to uplift my spirits and get me through some troubled waters. Although it has now become a full album, can't fit anything more on an 80 minute CD (that's how I know I have a finished album, lolol). There is a mixture of styles going on here. With most of my album projects I usually have a theme in mind before hand. I didn't do it on purpose but here I think I was going for that small 3 or 4 piece band sound focusing on mandolin as the primary rhythm and lead instrument, sometimes electric, other times acoustic. If I had a rhythm section, i.e. a drummer and a bass player I think I could actually take this album and do live shows.
AVATAR - Odds and Ends
This seed was planted during the spring semester when the Chinese New Year (Spring Festival) was approaching. I had been Studying with Qin and she was teaching me some Chinese and she new I played music so she asked me to play one of my songs at the celebration being held on campus. I told her that I would do it if and only if she picked out a song and sang it while I played. I was suprised at how quickly she agreed and I was a bit nervous. When we finally sat down to practice/learn the two songs Qin wanted to do I was doubley suprised at how angelic Qin's voice was when she began to sing. I was then quite excited to do the show. I knew I had get her on 'tape' and ever since I've been doing my part in bringing the funk to China!
The first two songs are the same ones we played at the Spring Festival, except it was only Qin, myself, and our friend Matt Bosworth playing Guitar. The next three are western songs being done in english. Redemption song features two of Qin's friends Yi and Ji on backing vocals. They weren't familiar at all with Reggae and had a fun time with Bob Marley's Jamaican Accent. It turned out nicely though and we had a really great time making it (After the session Qin and Yi made an authentic, Chinese, vegetarian feast featuring Tofu Hot Pot!).
The Li Qin Experience 2006
In Jacksonville I had a great and diverse group of friends who would frequently get together and play music and discuss music with each other. My closest allies and most frequent accomplices were J-Sun/FLARF who played guitar and Ms. Lindsay Pruett who played violin. At the time when we all met Lindsay (who was always the superior musician in the group) was coming from a classical background and was just begining to learn to improv and jam. FLARF was doing solo gigs with his loop pedals and stuff and I was coming from playing with a bunch of Jazz guys who were teaching me to improv and jam, so that we had a whole lot to offer one another musically.
We were never a fully committed group but played together weekly and were well known for crashing parties and providing entertainment. From time to time Flarf would book gigs opening up for various acts coming through Jacksonville. After he booked the gigs he would scramble together whoever he could get to come out and sit in on the jam. I never missed one of these opportunities and Lindsay was always there as well, except for in the following recordings she was busy in Nashville. Unfortunately, I lost my copies of the shows we did with Lindsay present. Chris Herr from String Theory would usually sit in on upright bass.
The following recordings are from a show we played at Jackrabbits in 2003, opening for Luther Wright and The Wrongs, a Bluegrass Pink Floyd band! We had a very special line up for this show featuring some great players: Flarf; Acoustic Guitar, David Lynch; Banjo Chris Harden; Acoustic Mandolin, Chelsea Chason; Acoustic Upright Bass, Brian Jenkins; Drum Set. David Lynch was/is one of the premier Banjo players in Jacksonville, Chelsea had already earned her BA in Jazz Bass from UNF, Brian was a well known drummer in town, so that we were very lucky to have this star studded line up. We only rehearsed together once so we're not as tight as a committed band but I think you can hear how much fun we're having, Enjoy!
Flarfadelic Gypsy Caravan - Live at JackRabbits 2003
When I was 15 I joined my first band. It was a band that had already played shows so I thought it was really cool that I was in, what seemed like at that time, an established group. They already had a guitar player but he wasn't punk enough for their image so they decided to replace him with me. At this point I had never really played guitar before and didn't even own one. They didn't seem to mind, the singer let me borrow his guitar and taught me all the songs by just showing me where to put my fingers. The name of the group was, "The Necropheliacs", very punk sounding name I thought at the time. A few months later I got my own instrument but instead of a guitar I got a bass which brought on a power play between me and the other bass player cause I wanted to play my bass and have him play guitar. This was the beginning of the end for The Necro's. Little did I know that me and the drummer, Adam Fuderer, would form a lasting musical bond for the rest of my punk rock career. The real falling out of The Necro's came when it was clear that the singer and bass player wanted to take the band in a slower more emo kind of direction while me and Adam wanted to go more in the hardcore, punk rock direction.
Adam and myself, now playing bass, then formed our next group which we called "Officer Friendly". In the first incarnation of the group we recruited a female vocalist Brenda and had the singer from The Necro's, Rusty Johnson come and play guitar for us whenever we had gigs. This lineup only lasted a few months and a couple live performances. I wasn't happy with Brenda's rhythm as a vocalist and we needed a dependable guitar player. I took over as the main vocalist which would be the case for the rest of my punk rock band days. We recruited a kid from the art school we went to who was there as a guitar major, his name was Isaac. Isaac would probably be the best guitar player that Adam and I would ever play with. Now that we were a 3 piece though Isaac not having the punk image would eventually push us to get rid of him. Aside from his lack of punk rock cred I was unhappy with his guitar palying because it was really too good for punk rock. It lacked that raw edgy feel that I was looking for.
Now I decided to switch over and start playing guitar so that I could produce the sound I was looking for. At this point we were tired of going through band members yet we needed a bass player. I found what seemed to be the perfect solution. I made my girlfriend at the time, Jenny Gates, learn to play bass and I taught her all of our songs. This would be the final lineup that lasted for a couple years until the end of our punk rock days. With a secure bass player, and a female at that, we all decided on a new name for the group, we became, "The Boner Brigade". Towards the end we all started getting a bit more conscious politically and otherwise and started writing more positive thinking type songs and we found our name to be a bit corny so we changed it to "Missing State", an affirmation of our growing anarchist political understanding of social theory on the surface, but many interesting multiple entendre's as well. This would be the final incarnation which ended when Adam moved away for college and Jenny and I eventually broke up. Unfortunately we didn't make many recordings as Missing State which was when we were the tightest musically and I was at the peak of my song writing as a punk rock lyricist.
I recently borrowed a tape deck and have been going through many of our old recordings, mostly all done off a walkman with a little mic on it placed in the middle of Adam's garage. I mixed down the stuff that wasn't too bad and tried to clean it up digitally the best I could. The funniest part of this whole endeavor is all the banter and arguing in between all of the recordings. I included some of this in the beginning and ending of many of the songs. It will most likely sound corny or silly to most but it puts me right back there in that moment.
Avatar - The Punk Rock Years (1991 - 1995)
SORRY, THEY LOWERED MY STORAGE CAPACITY AND SO MANY SONGS HAD TO BE REMOVED! If you see a song that is not posted email me and I can either email you an mp3 or post it for you. If you would like a copy of any of these albums in their entirety then email me and I'll give you an address that you can send me some blank CD's and a self addressed stamped envelope and I'll be happy to burn copies for you to have.
