hello, hello, hello

Nice review of Hello the Damage! (posted here) by Nicholas Hunt at Stride Magazine. My favorite part of the review is where he describes his favorite part of the album (near the end of the first track on disc one):

This builds to the moment that really sold me on this group, despite my limited experience of free jazz; 22 minutes into the track it creeps into what I assume is the third and last movement, 'The Mactavish Rag'. This is, plain and simple, fun. A nursery-like, jaunty tune, it shows quite ably that these are musicians who are in it for enjoyment, not some highbrow standard of 'appreciation', and that's all to the good.

I've been waiting for someone to pick up on that. "The Mactavish Rag" is indeed "fun" music; it's a pseudo-ragtime that I wrote for my dog (who was named Peter Mactavish by his first owners, orphaned at three months old, then we got him and named him Braxton), at the request of my wife. I was studying some of James Reese Europe's early recordings at the time; the conjunction of syncopated dance music and hyperactive terrier just seemed to make sense somehow.

The brief recording linked above was made during the sessions for our upcoming release Stratostrophic but won't be included on the album (the other guys decided it just didn't fit... ouch...). Supposedly there's a Tony Datillo short film in the works based on this recording as a soundtrack. Hello, viral video!