😱 No paywall this time! Welcome newcomers. Pause for Effect is Slaughter Beach, Dog’s monthly newsletter, demo dump and freewheeling personal essay repository.
🚐 The band has freshly announced another batch of tour dates for the fall, with support from the great Rich Ruth. Tickets are on-sale Friday at 10am local time. This is on top of the already announced run of August shows with support from Fenne Lily. Grab your tickets now!
🎵 I’m sharing a cover of Lefty Frizzell’s “Saginaw, MI” as well as words on the transformative experience of a drawing workshop.
🛒 Merch is stocked on our store, grab something and look forever cooler 😎
xo
Jake
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UPCOMING SHOWS
8/15 - Musikfest - Bethlehem, PA #
8/16 - The Rockaway Hotel - Queens, NYC #
8/17 - Levitate Backyard Outdoor Concert Series - Marshfield, MA #
8/18 - The Stone Pony - Asbury Park, NJ #
9/20 - Spirit Hall - Pittsburgh, PA ^
9/21 - Deluxe - Indianapolis, IN ^
9/22 - Riot Fest - Chicago, IL
9/23 - The Roxy - Lakewood, OH ^
9/24 - Bijou Theatre - Knoxville, TN ^
9/26 - The Burl - Lexington, KY ^
9/27 - Haw River Ballroom - Saxapahaw, NC ^
9/28 - District Live - Savannah, GA ^
9/29 - The Bier Hall at Intuition Ale Works - Jacksonville, FL ^
10/01 - The Beacham Theatre - Orlando, FL ^
10/02 - Vinyl Music Hall - Pensacola, FL ^
10/04 - Proud Larry's - Oxford, MS ^
10/05 - The Blue Room at Third Man Records - Nashville, TN ^
10/06 - The Loud - Huntington, WV ^
10/07 - 9:30 Club - Washington, DC ^
10/21 - Ardmore Music Hall - Ardmore, PA %
# support by Fenne Lily
^ support by Rich Ruth
% support by Hurry
see you soon,
xo
Jake
MERCH
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in may, i came home from a tour and enrolled in a drawing workshop at the community arts center. there wasn’t any particular improvement i wanted to make, rather, i was attracted to the possibility of finding quiet, focus, time.
there were eleven or twelve other students in the class the first day, mostly retired, seated around the sides of four long tables arranged in an empty square. the teacher, a dark-haired woman slightly older than me, led us through introductions and put us to work. she’d already set up a display of vases, busts, skulls, and various cloth, in the sun-lit center of the second floor of the old armory. her instruction was to plant oneself before a part of the display, and then to begin drawing that part.
as we worked, she moved around the room. she offered encouragement and constructive, child-proof criticisms. when she noticed a man fighting proportion, she explained how he might begin a composition by drawing large, generalized shapes instead of details, solidifying each part’s position on the page, refining later. a wide-bottom vase with a tall, thin neck, for example, might start as a large rectangle lying on its long side, with a skinny rectangle shooting straight up from its center. once you’ve got the rectangles right, you can begin describing the vase’s curves within the boundaries of your boxes.
we were further instructed to think in terms of axes. even before describing a form with simple shapes, we should establish a vertical center to work from, then impose horizontal marks at important points—the very top of the vase’s mouth, the bottom of the bowl, the pinch in the neck. to borrow an idea from a handbook* i found more recently, we were constructing scaffolding that would support parts of our picture as we pieced together the whole.
within the first two weeks someone proposed that we were learning to see. in your mind’s eye, you search for scaffolding hidden in the form. as you define curves and suggest depth, you investigate the truth of shadow, and of light. soon i was seeing all sorts of things: valleys in dark folds of rumpled cloth, curved axes of tree branches heavy with fruit, bending toward a trunk.
i saw with my ears, too. singing over lefty frizzell and connie smith records, i heard myself incorrectly assuming melodies. where i’d previously heard a phrase moving up from a root to a second and then a third, i suddenly heard it hang on the root for two beats, then sweep all the way up—no second.
one night at the kitchen sink, listening to the beach boys, i saw the scaffolding in “do it again.” it was fundamental 50’s rock + roll, just the way little richard, sister rosetta tharpe, and jerry lee lewis gave it to us. now i can’t stop looking. it’s alex katz’s oil paintings, summer flowers, evening shadows, country waltzes, funk rhythms, blues under modal jazz meltdowns. folktales and screenplays and william carlos williams poems. much to do here—
*the anatomy of pattern by lewis f. day
saginaw, mi (lefty frizzell) b/w learning to see