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.

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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!

End of the tour and wonderful holidays:)

Hey y'all. I just got back from traveling around the West Coast and had a great time playing shows and seeing people. I got to play in Utah and Idaho, two states I hadn't played in before. I camped for a few days and it was super freakin' cold. On Halloween I bundled up in my tent in Pendleton, Oregon and ate candy and watched scary movies on my phone after walking through town seeing all the families trick-or-treating in the streets. That was pretty sweet.

I got to see a bunch of family I hadn't seen in years. I stayed with aunts and uncles and cousins and a group of good friends. I played at Occupy Seattle and a great house concert in Everett, WA. I got to eat kick-ass seafood with some good friends and ride the ferry across Puget Sound.

It was good to stay in Oregon again, also. I got to attend the West Coast Songwriters Exposition in Portland and hear some great panels talk about different aspects of the music industry. I stayed in Corvallis for a few days with my dad and had fun lounging. When I drove south to California it snowed over Siskiyou Pass and I just barely made it through before they made people use chains. I had a great show in Camarillo, CA at the Studio Channel Islands Art Center where a few musicians sat in and we rocked the house.

Good to be home now, waiting for snow and Santa to show up. I'll be out on the road again in February or so doing another West Coast run before hitting up the East and the South in late Spring. I hope everyone has lovely holidays and eats too much:)

Much love
RDO

Got some shows coming up in WA, OR, and CA in the next couple of weeks. I'm hangin' out up on the Bangor Naval base with my cousin and loving the WA weather. Playing at Forza Coffee Co Thursday. Playing a house concert tomorrow on base. Pretty soon it'll be time to get to work on booking the East Coast stuff. More to come!
Much love
RDO

Slow Tour Start

It's been a bit rough sealing up this tour, but I will be heading out in a couple of days. I play a show in Coeur D'Alene, ID on the 1st. If you know anyone in that area, let them know. New dates for the West Coast will be added in the next week or two as they get solidified. I'm working on getting free downloads added to my newsletter so I can toss in some b-sides and rarities each time I send out a newsletter from the website. I hope all is well with everyone. Much love.
RDO