The cafe at night

Chilling in Cafe Bocado sipping Pinot noir. Bout to play some tunes. Progress on the new record is going well. Tracked a bunch of guitars and synths, looking at a spring release for the finished CD.

I think I might try posting segments of my novel again. I tried it before, but I dropped the ball and stopped posting things. I think I'll do a sort of intermittent blog post with sections posted and then taken down after a period of time. They won't be huge segments, but just enough to move along in the story without posting long and involved sections.

Stay tuned. B-sides for free coming up as well. Free music is good, right?

Much love
RDO

Look out behind you, it's Halloween

So I went to see a scary movie in the theaters this week. I figure, with the horrendous jargon that is the current scary movie, at the very least I'll get the big sound and screen. But it does seem today's films attempt to skate by on violence and hype.

Right now I'm sitting in my house watching old Milton Berle stuff for class, and it's great! No blood, no sex, no cheap scares, but still substantial. What's wrong with thinking about what people are saying or doing? I don't know...I'm rambling. But I spent more time last night looking for something on Netflix that isn't crap than I did watching something. Okay...done.

Today I spent time recording percussion tracks for the new album. I'm working with unorthodox methods this time around, so I played pretty much everything I could find that made a cool sound. A couch, water bottles, table corners, whatever.

Got a few new microphones and managed to get some good acoustic guitar sounds. Should be a fun album.

Not much interesting to say right now. Hopefully something really awesome happens tomorrow I can talk about. I'm going to squish a wasp nest in the rafters. So that will be fun...but something else more exciting will happen also, I hope.

Hmmm...

Is this thing on...?

Wow. Been awhile since I hit up the blogspot. The auto correct on my phone just wanted to turn "blogspot" into "blitzing", but that's not what I meant at all. Silly phone.

So I'm sitting in Cafe Bocado right before my show, anxiously awaiting my frenched chicken breast with gorgonzola polenta, an thought I should communicate.

As of tonight, recording of the new album will officially be underway. I have a bunch of new, fun toys that I can't wait to mess with, and lots of cool ideas for the new tracks. Well, I think they're cool.

So, if anyone is reading this and hasn't yet checked out my Facebook stuff, please do. There's a band page and also a "Fans of RDO" page that are cool ways to connect and also good ways for me to get the word out about shows and stuff.

I'll be playing shows in Pinetop, AZ for the month of October and a show in Phoenix, so check those out if you're around. Stay tuned for album info:)

Much love

The up and coming White Mountains

If you had asked me, even 2 years ago, what might be going on in the White Mountains of Arizona, I would most likely laugh a little bit, maybe roll my eyes, and say, "Nothing". But in recent months it seems there has been an influx of businesses, people, and energies that are changing my mind. We're starting to see restaurants and bars that support live music AND have good food. There are folks starting festivals and events that combine community, the arts, commerce, and goofy fun times.

It's good to see. When I lived in New York, this type of thing happened everywhere, all the time. When I lived in California, it happened all the time. Hell, when I lived in Tennessee it pretty much happened all the time.

I guess my point is that the mountains of AZ are coming up. Look for us in your world. We're comin' to gitcha:)

Lovely Wednesday

The bulk of today was spent insulating and drywalling the small cabin I'm building. It was the most strenuous physical labor I've undertaken in a cool minute. I was on my back, in the loft, holding sheets in place with my toes and one hand while the other hand was loading screws and drilling. Nutty.

But it looks like there will be a good turn out for my show this weekend at Torreon in Show Low. I'll be playing at the clubhouse for about 4 hours, so that should be fun.

Much love to all. I hope your summers are shaping up smoothly. Peace:)

-RDO

Hooray for the locals!!!

Once again, I was glad to see so many awesome faces at my last show. It was a house concert in Prescott, AZ, and it resulted in a big group of friends and families coming to experience music they never had before. I love it when people put forth the effort to find new stuff happening in their area. Some folks even came up from Phoenix and over from the White Mountains. Wicked cool!
Indie musicians like myself NEED awesome people like that to make it possible to keep traveling and pushing our tunes to new places and people. So thanks to all who made the effort.

This summer I'll be hanging around Arizona, playing some local shows and house parties, and starting the next record. I'm really excited about this one. Stylistically, it will end up being a mixture of all the albums I've made so far.

In the fall I will start my last year with Arizona State University and finish my degree in film/media and business. So hopefully next year I'll have a film to promote:)

Much love, y'all!

PS - that last review I posted was from Music Emissions Mag online. Forgot to throw that in there. :)

News!!!!!!!!

THIS IS A RECENT REVIEW OF "MORDRED THE QUARTER KNOWN". IT'S MY FAVORITE THAT I HAVE GOTTEN SO FAR. CHECK IT OUT:

The very first track of this album, "If You Want Love", immediately shakes the listener out of any complacency. In the first few seconds it was blues rock. Then it quickly morphed into funk rock, and finally changed into a distinctive style somewhere between rock and alt. country, a style that I have been forever unable to pin down. Welcome to Mordred the Quarter Known and are you in for some journey!

If there was one word to describe the album it would be eclectic. What any of the songs have to do with the eponymous anti-Hero or Arthurian legend, I have been unable to fathom. But then I have been unable to fathom so much about the album. By the time of the second track, I am utterly confused. "Hope and Fire" has a delightful guitar line, but the acoustic intro and the overall feel of the track as something which might have come out of an early eighties power ballad, and yet is nothing of the sort. Already track two and I am completely unable to get a grip on this.

And that is good. Oh yes, that is good! Already, I want to hear more. How much more can be delivered? What are we in for now - a kind of Buffalo Tom-lite soothing indie rock comes up next in "Where the World Is Waiting for You" but, true to form, the first impression does not last. Just how does Ryan David Orr manage to cram so much, such diversity of style, feeling and music into such a short space? I am not ten minutes into the album and already I have to stop. I cannot take much more of this without a break. Damn I need a cigarette.

************************

Cigarette break over, I settle down to listen to the rest of the album. A seventies style hard rock drum flourish opens "April, I Am Sure the Stars Understand" and then it settles down to a Groundhogs style blues rocker with a refrain that is softer, kinder, more gentle before closing with an almost Blue Öyster Cult solo. This album does not let up. If anyone wants an easy ride, full of comfortable and consistent sounds then you are not going to find it here. Mordred the Quarter Known parades before you what could almost be a complete range of guitar based musical styles and virtually invites you to pick your favourite. But you can't. Barely has one track finished its tapestry of styles and then along comes another with yet more colours added to the palette.

Still to come are tracks which remind you of seventies Eric Clapton, Average White Band, Boz Scaggs and who knows who else. But there is not just guitars. "Woman" makes masterful use of a soulful clarinet. There's a fiddle on "Write It on the Wall". "Scream at the Clouds" begins with a distorted gospel choir and has a recording of children shouting forming part of the vocal arrangement. Do I hear Peter Gabriel in "The Ocean I Bleed Before"? And what a way to close out an album with "Butterfly"!

This album is certainly a journey. But it is in no way derivative. It is far too diverse for that. Orr manages to wrap his fingers around music which shows off probably the broadest range of talented style I have heard on a single (non-compilation) album before - or am ever likely to again. He takes his various influences and varieties and melds them together into something that is uniquely his own. There is enough here to keep you occupied for months. And there is certainly enough to draw you back time and time again. And if that isn't a recommendation, then I don't know what is.

And I really need a physical copy of this album!