Last week Colt Vista played a Tuesday night gig at one of our most favored local Portland music venues Someday Lounge. The show was well attended for a Tuesday night, and we really played a great show, it was to steal a quote from our drummer Ryan “super fun times”. The reasons we like Someday Lounge so much are quite simple, professional soundguy (he’ll give you a great recording of the show for $20), good soundsystem, free beer chilled in the back room, and great food. The additional perk is the live streaming feed that actually works, so friends and family in far away places can view your show (they even archive them).

After we played we were treated to a live performance from local Portland one man band Cars and Trains. Cars and Trains is constructed and fronted solely by musician/designer Tom Filepp standing behind a large enviable collection of electronics and musical instruments. I spoke a bit with Tom before the show and we conversed a bit about writing performing with Ableton Live and how it is really opening doors for musicians. Tom later sent me a copy of his latest release titled “Rusty String” which you can purchase here.
His live performance was very interesting to watch as he takes a loop and overdub approach building his layered songs and switching to other parts using live. I have wrestled with this approach a bit myself, as I feel it tends to take you away from the interaction with the audience, and while it is interesting for a musician such as myself to watch, I think the general audience member might need more…I’ve tried adding extra visual accompaniment in some of my projects, but that opens another can of worms…not to mention the time you need to create visuals that don’t come off as just being distracting from the music. Tom breaks it up a bit by adding other instruments to the mix nicely, it’s most impressive when he steps away and picks up a trumpet, or violin etc. and starts playing along with the constructs. He did one song that featured song great vocal overdubbing, creating a nice human textural element.
The CD recording of Rusty String is really where Tom shines I think. He does an amazing job of crafting a CD that uses a variety of electronics and still maintains an organic feel to it. He plays all sorts of instruments, and uses Live’s effects and sequencing abilities (Tom corrected me, he uses Logic to record, Live only as a performance instrument) to construct and manipulate the parts. The music itself is an excellent blend of folk and electronica, and while I feel it’s easy to have this come off as cheesy, Tom manages to combine them together into music that feels naturally seated in itself. Check out Cars and Trains on the Circle into Square record label. Here is my favorite cut off the Rusty String recording…

Cars and Trains- …and all of us, as well