Norway Performances

I've just returned from Norway with performances at the Fausko Festival in Hemsedal.

This festival has been running for 10 years and I was very happy to have been invited.

The first night's performance was with Norwegian guitarist Erik Wollo, Jerry Marotta and Kuoame Sereba. We rehearsed for about two days and then hit the stage on the Friday night. Bjorn Holte ran a superb laser show on the trees behind, and around, the stage.

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Security Project releases

current releases of The Security Project

 

CONTACT - new Security Project release & tour

The Security Project has once again reinvented itself, this time with vocalist Happy Rhodes. Together with Jerry Marotta (drummer from Peter Gabriel’s first five records), Trey Gunn (King Crimson), Michael Cozzi (Shriekback) and NY keyboardist David Jameson, the group continues reimagining the early work of Peter Gabriel (and also, on this disc, Kate Bush), but with Happy’s impressive four-octave vocals adding an entirely new dimension. This live release comes from shows in the US and their recent Japanese tour. 

to listen or purchase cds and downloads (44.1k and 96k):

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Security Project "Five" - new recordings w/Happy Rhodes

Security Project CD / Live 2 for pre-sale now

We are very happy to announce the release of the follow up to the acclaimed Live 1 cd.

"The Security Project Live is a beautifully reverential and creative reinterpretation of these Peter Gabriel classics!"  – Kevin Killen, engineer of Gabriel’s “So” record  

from reviews of Live 1:

“The Security Project expertly reimagines Peter Gabriel’s groundbreaking early output, creating an immersive experience both in performance and on its debut release Live 1. The group goes far beyond conventional tribute band territory, infusing the songs with new arrangements and elements while staying true to the spirit of the material. Gabriel enthusiasts across the board will be taken by the band’s high-octane approach full of drive, determination and energy.”  – Anil Prasad, Innerviews 

"What Security Project does is accomplish what's been too long in coming: positioning Peter Gabriel's music as repertoire. It's clear that while the band treats Gabriel's music with no shortage of reverence, it's also about a more open-ended approach to the music." – John Kelman, All About Jazz 

"Strong marks go to this unique project that will appeal to Peter Gabriel fans and progressive rock aficionados. This is a live album, but the level of musicianship among the band members makes that easy to forget until hearing the audience applause following the tracks. Writing as a Gabriel fan myself, the telling fact is that I’ll probably play Live 1 more often than I play Gabriel’s own recent reinventions."  – Jeff Elbel, IE Magazine 

Security Project CD - Live 1

I'm extremely excited to present these recordings. We have worked our asses off over the last few years learning, arranging and performing this material. While on our European tour last spring, we recorded many of the shows and now have the audio 'proof of concept' to present this group. I half expected our recordings to have the effect of making you run to the originals. But it just isn't so. The performances hold up as works unto themselves. 

Purchase a pre-sale version now and get an immediate download of "Lay Your Hands On Me" and "No Self Control."

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End of tour reflections and homeward - Road Live part fourteen

March 8, 2015 Liverpool, UK flying home

Many thoughts of reflection about this tour. I must get as much of this down now (in the Manchester, UK airport) before I get home and my regular life returns.

Fripp once told me a formula for keeping a band together. I think he said it was Michael Giles who came up with it. But it might have some other character from his past. It goes like this.

You have three elements:

1. The People

2. The Music

3. The Money

Any two and the group will stay together. Any less than two and it won't. All three is bliss.

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Presence / Silence / Cathedral / Beatle-Action - Road Life Part 13

March 4, 2015 Liverpool, UK

With the last show completed now it was time for several days in Liverpool. Due to the uncertain beginning of this tour we had all booked our tickets leaving room at the end to reschedule some of the UK shows. We were able to only reschedule one of them. So, one of my dreads of the last few weeks was what was I going to do for the four extra days stuck in Liverpool. I wanted to fly home but it was going to cost $1400 to do so. That wasn't possible. I looked into taking the first half of my Iceland Air flight to Reykjavik and spending a few days there, before continuing on to Seattle. This also was cost prohibitive.

So, Liverpool is was then. I will make the best of it. And, it turns out, this was the most awesome choice. I really love it here and am so very glad I had the time to get to know the place. Liverpool is full of life, compacted into a very manageable city center. A ton is going on here and the people are super friendly and bustling with energy. I have been coming to England for 30 years now and, as much I love things about the place, this city rocks beyond any other English city.

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UK shows / Trading Bounderies / Liverpool Arts Club - Part Twelve

March 1, 2015 Uckfield, UK – Trading Boundaries

Great venue. Very similar to some of the Swiss shows and the the French show. More like a theater scene where there is a built in, season-ticket-holding audience who comes particularly to this venue to see what they are putting on. At least that what it felt like to me. Could be that this was a really a room full of Eigenharp fanatics who were suffering Gabriel tunes in order to feed their Eigen-Fevers.

The folks running this are super fans. I saw a poster for Toyah and The Humans for upcoming gig (with fresh Crimsonoid, William Rieflin.) When I met Tracy, one of the owners, she said that Robert and Toyah had come in for tea before.

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Belgium/Switzerland(again)/France + Survival with Aikido - Part Eleven

Their bus is nicer

Feb 25, 2015 Verviers, Belgium – Spirit of 66

Woke up to another shower and then descended into the sadness of knowing I would be leaving my hotel room. I stayed in there until 1:59pm, with our late checkout arranged for 2:00.

Tonight was our best gig to date. No question. Though it is amusing to us that each gig we do is “the best gig to date.”

Fantastic crowd. Really took us by surprise. I had the observation that the performance wasn't about nostalgia this evening. Meaning, people were 100% with us – inside the moment of this particular music taking place. They were not listening to a memory of Peter Gabriel from their own past. The first thing that tripped off this noticing was that no one was taking any pictures or video. (Well, there was this one guy filming Jerry the entire night. Look for it online if you want to dissect his backbeat.) But aside from “Drummer Documenter”, everyone else seemed more interested in what was unfolding between us rather than spending their energies capturing it for later.

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Three (stupidly long) Days Off + The Story of the Bus - Part Ten

Brian's bunk with TG

Feb 22, 2015 day off

This is the first of three days off. Not something that anyone would ever plan during a tour. And not one that this group can afford.

We began with 15 hour drive, then 24 hours in a German truck stop. We spent over 8 hours in the truck stop's McDonalds. Our standards are so low, we loved it. Cheap food and free wifi. Though, clearly we are hitting the wall here. While trying to have simple, regular conversations you could see our brain cells retreating and swirling down the drain. Thoughts and, even, words that we were able to access just a few days ago have slipped away to the unreachable realms.

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Milan/Verona, Italy -- Part Nine

Feb 20, 2015 Milan, Italy – Cusano Milanino Teatro Giovanni XXIII

Old-ish theater. Crazy scene around the soundcheck. We are filming and recording tonight. Well, we are recording every night thanks to our amazingly awesome Berhinger mixer/monitor system. You can record the whole mix to an internal two track recorder that looks like an old cassette deck. Or you can hook up a laptop via USB and record the whole show in a multi-rack session. We are doing 32 track outputs!

But tonight we (meaning mostly Roger Salem our promoter/guardian for many of these shows) are filming because we have some guests in the performance Two drummers from Cameroon and a dancer. Added to this mayhem is the general Italian backstage mayhem that can appear at these bigger theater shows. For some reason tonight there was a crazy amount of traffic backstage. All sorts of people coming and going. Walking around the stage during our soundcheck and coming in and out of the dressing room while we were changing or practicing.

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Rome, Italy - Part Eight

Feb 18, 2015 Rome, Italy – Planet Club Rock

Ezra joined us on drums for "Intruder" tonight. Kudos to Jerry for bringing him up and getting him on it. This is slamming drum part, originally played by Phil Collins of Gabriel's third record (the Melting Face cover.) He got to play the fat snare. This is one of Jerry's signature drums. He has a regular snare and then a low tuned snare off to the side. And by low-tuned, I mean the nuts are hand-tightened. Super loose. For “Intruder” Jerry alternates between the two. Ezra nailed it, I have to say. Super fun and quite moving to be onstage together.

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Florence, Italy -- Part Seven

Feb 15, 2015 – Florence, Italy – day off

My son Ezra is here. Now part of the Security Gang. Due entirely to timing, he has never been out on the road with me. And so, at 17, he is finally here. Only for one week but still very, very cool.

We couldn't get right into our AirB'nB place so we went to lunch with friends of Julia Hensley  (badass artist/graphic designer who did the cover on my new disc). Classical guitar luthier John Weissenrieder and his wife, baroque harpsichordist Anna Clemente.

What a treat this was. It is so rare to have the right kind of space to be with people while on the road. Oftentimes, socializing on the road can be discordant. Road life puts me in a strange, hypersensitive space. It doesn't quite work hanging out with folks for more than a short amount of time. My focus is either on the show in the evening or, on a day off, taking care of all of the things that I haven't been able to deal with due to the traveling and performing. But this afternoon was wonderful. We had a lazy lunch full with lots of interesting conversation.

Afterwards we went down to Anna's workspace and met her harpsichord. What an amazing instrument. So many strange acoustic phenomena with this thing. Firstly there were only single strings per key, unlike the piano's three. And all the strings are single steel – no wound strings.

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Pratteln, Switzerland - Z7 -- Part Six

Feb 14, 2015 Pratteln, Switzerland – Z7

Hands down our best performance to date. Sadly, possibly the worst day of the year to be doing a gig here. Carnival is on, plus it is a national holiday. So attendance was piss-poor. And couldn't have been otherwise. But again everyone there was crazy enthusiastic. There is no doubt that every single person in the room with us, for every single show, has become a fan for life.

We somehow pushed even deeper into the material tonight. “Lay Your Hands On Me” – stunning again. Getting even stronger. “Here Comes The Flood” is taking some interesting twists, as Brian and I are getting very comfortable with the phrasing of each line. In our first few shows last year there was a kind of baby-stepping through the phrases to make sure we were together. Now we just flow with it. Sometimes slowing the end of a line, sometimes leaving an extra small gap. Like real music. Actually playing music! Not tapping out notes on a continuum.

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