***PART ONE***

Hoss and Jeff (that's what they used to call Freff) were hanging out while Hoss scratched his ear with his pinky. After they finished hanging out Hoss lit up a cigarette. Jeff was disgusted. "Ewww! Now you've got earwax on your cigarette!"

Hoss responded by calmly sticking his cigarette in Jeff's ear. "Ha! Now you have cigarette ashes in your ear!! So there!!"

Jeff screamed, "I can't live here anymore!!! I HATE THIS PLACE!!!!"

***END OF PART ONE***

***EPILOGUE OF PART ONE***

Hoss never found the answers he was looking for. He eventually went crazy and started building little piles everywhere he went. "Because," he would say, "that's what we do, isn't it? Yes, make little piles!! Ha!"

Jeff later changed his named to Freff, and a day later, his mind broke into a million pieces.

***PART TWO***

Two days later Hoss picked up those pieces, but he didn't really know what they were. Hoss put them into a little plastic baggie and tossed them into his cargo pants pocket.

***END OF PART TWO***

***PART THREE***

Freff felt alone living in a cargo pocket, yet somehow he was at home. Luckily, he had brought his Twiddlethum. Twiddlethumb is a game that Jeff (Freff) loved. He could play Twiddlethumb everyday, although his parents never let him.

Twiddlethumb is a basic game involving your thumbs. You twirl them endlessly while you ponder other meaningful events in your life. You don't want to Twidlethumb too much, however; pondering life doesn't really take you that far. Which is where Freff went wrong in the first place. He would dream if a life as a painter. Not one that just painted walls, but one that would paint walls with meaning. Meaning that would mean more than anyone could possibly know what it's meaning was. Meaningful meaning, that's what Jeff would paint. If he painted at all, that is.

But he didn't paint. He lived in a pocket. That's why he plays Twiddlethumb.

***END OF PART THREE***

PART FOUR: The saga Begins

Once upon a time Freff and Ed (that's what they used to call Hoss) were just little babies, like me and you. They were mean babies though. They would yell cuss words at their moms, then laugh about it. They would soil their diapers on purpose. They once hatched a plan to crack open their milk bottles and use the jagged edge to cut people.

The premise was simple. The threat of cutting = financial reward. SO they walked down the street corner with their milk bottles held threateningly, waiting for the victim who would feel the wrath of the sharp, cold glass.

Alas, the plan was dashed when Freff and Hoss got thirsty and drank the milk. Then they fell asleep in a pumpkin patch and woke up the next day on the inside of a giant leaf. A kind old grizzly bear found them and sent them on their way. And I was that grizzly bear.

***PART FOUR EPILOGUE (separate from the overall epilogue):

Eventually I grew up to be a very old bear with a huge vocabulary. People don't really think of bears as being very smart, and ultimately that was our biggest advantage in the Great Grizzly Uprising of '96. It was my catchphrase, "GRRRRRRRAAAWWWWWW!" that inspired a nation to victory. In my later years I became a celebrated literary professor and wrote several books. The most popular was "The Modern Bears' Guide to City Life." In all these years I have thought tenderly of Freff and whoever that other baby was, and all I really know is that those were two of the meanist babies I have ever seen. Go Grizzlies!

I also wrote the lyrics to the Grizzly national Anthem:

Grizzlys are great and we rule the world
The humans used run it but we took control

Now if the other species don't bring us some food
We're just gonna start eating them too Graw Graw Graw!

***END OF EPILOGUE OF PART FOUR, ALL PREVIOUS EPILOGUES AND CHAPTERS***

***SEQUEL***

Twiddlethumb madness swept British waterways last January. British Naval Engineer Clive Stiggy said, "'hoo, me? Well, I took it up right after New years, I did, me dear ole mum showed it to me, and I ain't been the same ever since. Changed me life for the better, it did. Used to be I didn't have nowhere to put me thumbs, why, sometimes I'd just be holdin' 'em out at unnatural angles from the rest o' me body, and where d'y'think that got me in life? Nowhere, that's where. Since i joined the great British Twiddlin' of naught-8, well, it's all been on the up-and-up."

Pathetic! Twiddlethumb is nothing but mindless twirling and inanimate pondering. Introduce that combination is society and what do you get eventually? INANIMATE TWIRLING and MINDLESS PONDERING. Our artists need better inspiration than this constant twiddling. How else are they to paint pictures that will inspire the scientific breakthroughs that we need to survive in the third millennium of the common era? With all this mindlessness we are never going to invent things like electric toothbrushes for bears.

British people must hate freedom. Why else would they want grizzly bears to develop plaque, gingivitis and cavities? I wish all these freedom-hating, British, inanimate, Twiddlethumbing scientific-breakthrough-preventing jerks would just go back to whatever country Britain is in. Away with you, Stiggy! Your strong stance against dental hygiene has been duly noted.

2nd SEQUEL

Stiggy had a nightmare, then cried himself awake. No bear could crush him.

 (alphabetically) Louis Armstrong, Air, Aerosmith, Agents of Good Roots, Bach, The Band, Beck, Beethoven, The Beatles, The Beach Boys, Bon Jovi (the band), Jon Bon Jovi (the solo artist), Count Basie, Mr. Bojangles, Sam Bush, James Brown, John Cage, Chick Corea, John Coltrane, Ray Charles, The Cars, Miles Davis, Def Leppard, Claude DeBussy, BoB Dylan, Earth Wind & Fire, Duke Ellington, Dr. John, Faith No More, Flaming Lips, Ben Folds, Flatt & Scruggs, Trilok Gurtu, Marvin Gaye, Herbie Hancock, Micheal Jackson, Jazz Mandolin Project, Jamiroqoui, Little Richard, Led Zeppelin, Lenny Kravitz, Kongar OOl-Ondar, Jerry Lee Lewis, Living Colour, Motley Crue, The Monkees, Bob Marley, Medeski Martin & Wood, Willie Nelson, Nirvana, Harry Nillson, Prince, Phish, Pink Floyd, Elvis Presley, Louis Prima, Queensryche, Queen, Radiohead, Sigur Ros, Sufjan Stevens, Talking Heads, Ween, Weezer, Whitesnake, The Who, Frank Zappa... As well as some of the amazing musicians I've had the blessing to perform/record/write with:  Charlie & Bruce Robison, Ryan Bingham, Jimmy Dean, Joe Morello, Shadd Scott, Joe Woullard, Shawn Nelson, Joe Faulhaber, PJ Herrington, Mooke, Sam Pulley, Nick Chambers, Adam Raven, The Portal, Graham Wilkinson & the Underground Township, Jessie England, Escalator, Schwill, Micah Berry, 40,000 Flies, Trey Pollard, Davy Tyson, Paul Tressel, Amanda Holt, Aaron Parker, Patrick Turner, and Shaun Dickerson.

I want to make special mention of some of the female performers who have influenced me...Erikah Badu, Bjork, The Cardigans, Ani DiFranco, Ella Fitzgerald, PJ Harvey, Emmylou Harris, Billie Holliday, Sarah Jarosz, Sarah MacLachlan, Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstandt, Jill Scott, Nina Simone, Gillian Welch...

I've also been greatly influenced by all the sounds I have ever heard and all the experiences I have ever had.

I was hugely influenced by the music of my dad, James Landry (originally from New Orleans). He has played piano for over 50 years and still surprises me every time I hear him play.
I was also blessed to study drums for two years with Thomas Howard Curtis, a man who politely blows my mind away with the knowledge, wisdom, craftsmanship and artistry he displays on the modern Drum Set (it is impossible to use lowercase letters when he plays it)

If you ask me, some of the greatest American musicians of the last 50 years are Art Blakey, Johnny Cash, Jerry Garcia & Phil Lesh, Bela Fleck, Gregg & Duane Allman, Jack DeJohnette, George Gershwin, Charles Mingus, Bruce Springsteen, Igor Stravinsky (born a Russian but embodied the spirit of American classical music so well), Allen Toussaint, Tony Williams, Crosby, Stills, Nash, Young, and Regi, Rudi, Joseph, Roy (Future Man), and Victor LeMonte Wooten. These are all folks who I unfortunately did not discover until high school, college, or recently.

My guilty pleasures are Christina Aguilera and Huey Lewis & the News.

 I have been slacking off bigtime.  Between touring with Charlie Robison and performing around Austin and Houstin with The Invincible Czars, I should be blogging my brains out.  But I haven't blogged since I don't know when.  Well, that's a fixin to change.  First I'm gonna re-post some old blogs from myspace and other miscellaneous sites.  Then we'll see.  Ok then.

your friend,
LL 

 Czar life

By Louie Czar on June 12, 2009 – 12:41 PM


On the eve of the biggest Czars show I’ve done to date, I thought it would be a good time to reflect on the time I’ve spent with this amazing group.

About a year ago, I was sitting at my old house in south Austin, probably eating some Torchy’s tacos or having a smoke, when the phone rang out of nowhere and suddenly Josh Robins was talking to me. He said that The Invincible Czars were looking for a new drummer and Dan Barrett (vocalist/guitarist for Porterdavis and co-owner of Red Leaf School of Music) had given him my name.

I must admit something at this point: I hadn’t actually heard the band before then. I had been noticing the name in a few different places - The Chronicle had written a little bit about their version of “Night on Bald Mountain” and association with Golden Hornet Project. After talking to Josh, I listened through an mp3 of “An Ounce of Confidence” and was immediately hooked. Not only did I love the song and the 11/4 and 13/4 rhythms, I thought that this group could possibly be able to help me fulfill some of my life-long musical career goals.

Some of those goals have included playing rocked-out versions of my favorite pieces of classical music. At this date, the following are all in the Czars’ active repetoire:

Noch’ na lysoy gore (Modest Mussourgsky) - A little tune we know as “A Night on Bald Mountain.” I first played this at age 16 in the Roanoke Youth Symphony. I forget which instruments I played - The score called for tympani, triangle, crash cymbals, bass drum, and orchestral chimes, if memory serves me. I used to listen to the opening bass line and imagine it played with a swing feel, adding in some jazzy hi-hat cymbal. One of my proudest contributions to The Invincible Czars has been adding these very soft, jazzy 4-bar phrases in the two spots where I have 4-bar rests. Josh’s charts are very easy to follow, but also indicate lots of opportunities to throw in interesting, unexpected surprises. This piece has a long tradition of being re-arranged, and I like that we have become a part of that …

1812 Overture - I learned this piece on tympani at Salem High School under the direction of a fine musician, Dennis Reaser. Mr. Reaser was a trumpet player for a military jazz band, and allowed young musicians like myself to combine musical study with self-discipline. He also stressed understanding the historical significance of this type of music. I learned how to use music as a way of understanding the emotions that world leaders, soldiers, and citizens of Eurasia must have gone through under Napoleon’s rule and conquest.

Pavane de la Belle au bois dormant (Maurice Ravel, 1908) - Also known as “Dance of the Beauty in the Woods Asleep,” or “Sleeping Beauty,” or “Sleeping Booty.” I learned this piece from Doug Richards, a great instructor at VCU. Around the same time I was studying “The Rite of Spring” and experimenting with playing it on drumset.

The Nutcracker - A whole album’s worth of tunes I have heard and played from a very young age. Playing “Marche” with the Czars feels like playing drums did when I was 6.

Later today, we are going to play most of these pieces for the audience at the OKMozart Festival. I see it as a turning point for myself and for the Czars. To prepare for it, we have worked up about 2 hours’ worth of classically influenced instrumental material. This includes all the above pieces, plus music from “ffortissimo,” our latest CD, and a few nuggets from the first Czars album, “Gods of Convenience.”

We’re also playing “A Cry For Peace,” which I wrote for string quartet in my last semester at VCU. It was written as the Iraq war was looking like it was going to last longer and longer … Like a lot people, I was pretty upset at the world’s reaction to the World Trade Center attacks. We were all terrified on that day, but it almost bothered me more to see how violent people were in their responses. I took Sept. 11 as a sign that we need to slow down, and question wether our everyday actions are hurting someone. People in the WTC were for the most part just there to do their jobs. They had no idea that there were people in the world who were plotting a violent attack against them. I wrote this piece to express that yearning for peaceful resolution which might never come. Josh heard it a few months ago and encouraged me to arrange it for electric violin, guitar and bass, soprano sax, synthesizer and drum set.

On that note, I want to write more about how cool it’s been playing with each member of the Czars, but time grows short and soon we’ll be playing at the festival. I like blogging on my new laptop so get ready for Czar life #2 soon.

Bloggingly,

LL

 Saturday, January 31, 2009

Sustainable positivity manifesto


This is the 21st century, people. Time to get with the program. There is a new mindset in the world today. It is already shaping the 22nd century and beyond. I am a part of the new awareness that is encircling the globe.

First order of business: violence will not be an option in the 22nd century.

Next up: we have got to find love in our lives. We love our families, our friends, our neighbors, our elders. We open ourselves up to love and the universe shows us more than we can imagine. We love people from all countries, all religions, all races. Love is our protection, and in the nonviolent 22nd century love is our only weapon.

We are just discovering how powerful individual will can be. When you pick up an instrument of destruction, you destroy a part of yourself. When you pick up an instrument of peace you are directly contributing to the common good of all humanity.

When you waste energy you are hurting yourself. It is no longer a question of whether only a little bit of energy is being wasted. You might say, "I'll just leave the tv on, it's only using a nickel worth of electricity." Nope. You're either helping or hurting.  It's now a question of whether you are using energy or wasting it.

If your religion tells you to hate, fight or destroy other people, you might want to wake up to reality.  Does it feel right?  Or is just something rotten that's gotten passed down to you through your family, gang, political party or church?  When you hate another person because of what they believe, you're hurting that person, yourself, and the world.  STOP IT !

We of the new consciousness are dedicated to staying healthy. Statistically we have a lower life expectancy than the last generation -- Ultimately the earth cannot support this population. The people we love will eventually die. It is our practice to show others love as much as we can, then let them go peacefully when it is time.

We are commited to responsible choices concerning our environment. I manifest this at every level of awareness, from sorting the recycling to helping choosing leaders who support our global environment.

We are commited to sustaining the personal, local, global and universal benefits of positivity.

Devin and Slade threw a killer party last night at my old house in South Austin. They invited me to play some music, so I called Shadd first, who quickly called Joe and Kris, who unfortunately was out of town.

Luckily Shadd and Jow agreed to throw down, which was a real treat for me since the three of us hadn't played together as a trio in many months. Joe recently got his baritone sax up and running, so there was a huge low end to the group. He also busted out his effects system for the first time in a long time. Shadd played a scaled down kit with ferocious precision.

My set-up included a gong, wind chimes, a lap steel guitar, melodica, the Korg microsynth and my old Roland Ep-3, the keyboard that went on most of my gigs with Shawn Nelson and the Ramblers from 2005 to 2006. I got this keyboard for free when 3 of them were donated to Brook Mays Music from a nearby school. Joe Faulhaber, Shaun Dickerson and I took all three apart, then reassembled two working boards.

Back to last night ... we started off with about 45 minutes of improv, beginning with a slow crescendo on the gong. After a single, slow, sustained drone in G, we riffed on some other tonal centers, including an uplifting Eb major progression. At one point there was an abrupt break in all three of our voices, which stuck me as very funny. Shea whispered something in my ear, and after a brief pause we shifted into a disjointed blues before settling on a funky Em / A7 groove. After that we paused to figure out which songs we still remembered. We pulled out a short setlist of:

First Steps of a Long Journey
The Lone Ranger
Indefinite
April

All four had some kind of improv at some point in the form. Don't remember exactly when Joe was on bari and when he was on tenor -- a testament to his natural ability to speak through whatever instrument he happens to be holding. Shadd's playing was a little restrained - who wants to flail their arms around when it's still 90 degrees after dark -- but to me felt very relaxed and focused. I think of myself as a very lucky person to be able to create musical experiments like the one we created last night.

Thank you so much to Devin, Slade, Shea, Shadd, Joe, Shawna, and everyone who put a dollar in the tip jar -- an unexpected bonus near the end of the night.

Thanks everybody who listened and hung out last night. We are planning to play again, with Kris, at another party this Saturday the 5th at Shea & my new house in NW Austin. Please call me if you need directions.

Louie

 

December Deals
A lot of great deals have been coming my way lately. For example the universe and I agreed to stop hating each other and try to coesxist peacefully. This is the shakiest deal (there have already been minor breaches in the agreement), but potentially the biggest.

Another deal is between me and God. I agreed to go play at a church Sunday mornings and Wednesday evenings. In return God will pay my rent. To sweeten the deal He also agreed to buy me a Nord NE73.

The State of Texas and I finally hammered out the terms of our deal. I stood against charges of Making Left Turns, Parking the Wrong Way in Front of My House, and Driving a Car Which Pollutes the World and Kills Baby Polar Bears. So it was decided that I will go into the Schools and teach the Children what I know.

Other deals are with people who want to learn to play the various instruments. I show these people how to play and they, in return, pay for my Groceries, Utilities, Phone, Internet, and the Electricity for everything except the fridge.

I truly beleive these are good deals for everyone involved. Me, God, the Universe, Texas, the Electric Company, the Children, are all big winners here.

Last but not least, Shea and I have the best deal there is: We love each other!

 11.10.07 Club 115
Current mood: calm
I.
All We Want is Your Money,
Sugar^,
Lone Ranger^,
Tomorrow Never Knows/Within You Without You,
Clip,
Lately^

II.
Echoes*
April^

lineup: Louis Landry-keys,vox/Joe Woullard-tenor sax,flute/ Shadd Scott-drums,vox/ Kris Greenwood-bass

*Pink Floyd song, only time played live by Partyboobytrap
^ w/ Josh Dossett- acoustic/electric mandolin

 April,
First Steps,
Indefinite>
Where Your Mind Goes,
Clip,
Last Train,
Bebop Sonata,
Night On Bald Mountain

lineup: Louis Landry- p,v /Joe Woullard- ts /Shadd Scott- d,v/ Patrick Turner- b

Comrades- Toast and Dimitri's Ascent

 First Steps of A Long Journey*
Indefinite>*
Never
Voodoo Chile>
Where Your Mind Goes
April
Daedalus ^>
Lately
Last Train@
Lone Ranger%

* Louis Landry song
^ F.M. Turner song
@ Allen Toussaint song
% faded out with Louie on melodica and Patrick on violin
playing acoustic in the audience

lineup: LL- p,v,m / JW- ts, f / SS- d, v / FM- b, v, violin