How We Spent Our Summer Vacation
Like all teachers and students, The Bushwick Book Club Seattle also takes the summer off. We love summer vacation! And now that summer is over, and our 6th season is in full swing (our next show is on Halloween night, original music inspired by Stephen Kings’ Carrie) we checked in with some of our Bushwick artists to see what they were up to this summer. We asked them what they read, listened to and what projects they worked on or having coming up.
Here is what they had to say.
Aaron Shay
“I’ve been doing a lot this summer! I attended Oregon Country Fair and the Subdued Stringband Jamboree, both for the first time. Soon, I’ll be bound for the Broken Strings Music Fest in Sacramento, accompanied by my charming and wonderful girlfriend! As soon as I get back to Seattle, I’ll be performing a one-man sci-folk storytelling show, called “Apocalypse Songs,” at the Pocket Theater.”
— Aaron Shay
MoZo
(Aimee Zoe, Moe Provencher)
“MoZo had a busy summer! We toured for two months as the rhythm section for Bushwick artist Ian McFeron, as well as finished up our latest album, The Neighborhood Has Changed. We’re celebrating the album release November 20th at Columbia City Theater, along with Julia Massey and Richie Aldente. You can listen to the title track below and read all about our travels on our website.”
The Neighborhood Has Changed (Single) by MoZo
“Aimee read and loved The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz, Mycelium Running by Paul Stamets, Finders Keepers and Carrie by Stephen King, and I read Weed the People by Bruce Barcott, Finders Keepers, Should America Pay?: Slavery and the Raging Debate on Reparations by Raymond Winbush, and The Good Rain by Timothy Egan.”
— Moe Provencher
Sidenote: Good work Aimee on reading Carrie, the book for of our Halloween show already. You’re ahead of the game!
Amanda Sue Winterhalter
“My favorite summer read, and new all-time favorite, was Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie. The characters are flawed and gorgeous, and their stories are varied and complex. Whether through the satire of the protagonist’s blog posts on race, the sense of longing in the love story, or the desperate moments of the immigrant experience, this book richly broadened my understanding. In Americanah, Adichie expertly proves her argument about the danger of a single story.”
— Amanda Sue Winterhalter
Evan J. Peterson
“I just graduated Clarion West, a prestigious writer’s workshop for science fiction, fantasy, and horror authors. I’m now writing more frequently for The Stranger, and I’m teaching a Women of Horror Film series at Scarecrow Video in October and November. Most importantly, I was offered a book deal to write a memoir about my experiences with Truvada PrEP, which I’ve been covering in the Stranger and beyond.”
— Evan J. Peterson
Wes Weddell
“I read West with the Night by Beryl Markham which had great writing and storytelling that blew Hemmingway away, suggested by a guitar student of mine. I also read Wait Till Next Year by Doris Kearns Goodwin, a baseball-tinged memoir, given to me by the founder of the artist residency I attended last summer.”
Sidenote: Wes wrote two articles about his artist residency. Be sure to read both Part 1 and Part 2.
“Finally, I read The League of Outsider Baseball: An Illustrated History of Baseball’s Forgotten Heroes by Gary Cieradkowski. Many summers, I only read books about baseball or country music.”
“I listened to a lot of mixes from my just-out album, Nobody’s Flag, which features 10 songs I wrote for Bushwick Book Club Seattle performances!”
— Wes Weddell
Mike McDermott
“I actually did have a very busy summer. Most notably I’ve just completed my band’s next album. The new collection by Silverhands is called Three in the Foot and has Bushwick staff and artists helping out all over it. It was produced by Moe Provencher and features performances from Aimee Zoe, Joy Millls, Tom Parker, Annie Jantzer and Geoff Larson, along with lots of other notable Seattle musicians. There will be a two-band, dual album-release show on Friday, November 13, at Hale’s Palladium, with the Wes Weddell Band.”
Three In The Foot by Silverhands
— Mike McDermott
Alice Howe
“This summer, I re-read one of my favorite books, Narcissus and Goldmund by Herman Hesse (1930). The story follows the life of Goldmund, a man living in the Holy Roman Empire in the Middle Ages, as he wanders throughout the land on his quest to experience all the pleasures and hardships of human existence. An artist at heart, Goldmund appreciates good and evil alike, savoring love, death, sex, adventure, desire, cruelty, and fear as equally essential elements of life. It is a profoundly moving book, and one that I know has inspired me in many ways. It will surely continue to find its way into my songwriting.”
— Alice Howe
Levi Fuller
“I just finished reading Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies, by Nick Bostrom, a super smart philosopher at Oxford. Basically, the book delineates the problem of how to create artificial superintelligence that won’t destroy the human race and turn the universe into fuel for its own computational power, and makes a convincing case that this is an important issue we (or computer scientists, anyway) need to be thinking about now. Being somewhat dry, technical, and academic in nature, it was slow going. I didn’t read the endnotes (and I usually love endnotes) and it still took me all three weeks of my library-allotted reading time to get through it, but still fascinating and terrifying. Honestly, what I found at least as disturbing as the prospect of being enslaved or obliterated by robots was the author’s obsession with humanity’s alleged “cosmic endowment,” basically, we must save the observable universe from the machines, so we can have it all for ourselves. Hmmmm. . .”
“In other news, I was hard at work on the Summer 2015 volume of Ball of Wax Audio Quarterly, which came out September 18th and includes a rocktacular recording of my song, “You Could Have Died” from the Wild Bushwick performance.”
Ball of Wax Volume 41 by Levi Fuller & the Library
— Levi Fuller
Geoff Larson
“I spent the summer working with STYLE’s Summer school program with the Bellevue School District. There was a ton to read and write with those crazy students. I read Here I am by Patti Kim, Why do Mosquitoes Buzz in Peoples Ears by Verna Aardema, Glass Slipper, Gold Sandal: A Worldwide Cinderella by Paul Feischman and Julie Paschkis and Niño Wrestles the World by Yuyi Morales. I also read Carrie and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao for upcoming Bushwick shows.”
— Geoff Larson
Sidenote: We support this preparedness, Geoff. Great work reading ahead!
Chris Poage
“I read Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk by David Sedaris this summer and I’ve been listening to Courtney Barnett, Tame Impala and Bill Callahan. My band, Mts. & Tunnels is doing a West Coast tour November 16-23 and I’ve been recording songs with a new band that I’m not supposed to talk about yet.”
Mts + Tunnels by Mts. & Tunnels
— Chris Poage
As you can see, our Bushwick artists had a busy summer. Now we want to know what you were up to! Drop us a comment with your favorite book or album from the summer.
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