2011 in Music: My Friends and Myself
This is the penultimate in a seven-part series on my favorite music from 2011.
- Favorite Albums
- Favorite Songs
- Last.fm Stats
- Favorite Sounds
- Favorite Music Writing
- My Friends and Myself
- Miscellany
I am lucky beyond belief not only to be able to create and play music with my friends and on my own, but to have so many friends doing the same. Here are the highlights of this year of music from my friends in Hawaii and beyond.
Promoting
- As a first-time independent promoter, I brought Toro Y Moi out to Hawaii and put on a great sold-out show. They were wonderful people and it was a lot of fun.
- I sort-of launched (and then took down because I couldn’t maintain it) a website called I’d Go See, a tool for local promoters to gauge the potential audience for a show. (I’ve had no time to develop it further but intend to do so in 2012.)
Clones of the Queen
Writing, practicing, and playing live shows almost every week with two of my best friends in the world as Clones of the Queen is one of the most important new things in my life in the last five or ten years and I don’t think I’ll ever get over it.
- This year we opened for Little Dragon, Menomena, Toro Y Moi, and Warpaint.
- The Boston Phoenix named us the Best Band in Honolulu for their 2011 Best Bands in America feature, and we were runner-up for the Honolulu Weekly’s Best of 2011.
- We’ve written a ton of new material since last year’s EP, and in July we released a demo of the song ‘Rapture’ from our upcoming LP:
Welwing, née Lapwing
- I finally put out an EP of my solo material called Live Start. People liked it.
- I opened for Baths!
- I produced the score for the Hawaii International Film Festival 2011 trailer, remixing taiko drummer of international renown Kenny Endo.
Friends Local and Beyond
- The long-germinating Painted Highways EP finally came out on Saturday. Mike, Mark, Kai, and Jack are great people, this is a great batch of songs, and I’m very happy that they recorded it and that it sounds good. You can download it for free and you should do that now.
- Mike and Kai from Painted Highways along with Grant put out an EP too of Mike’s increasingly less-than-solo work as Pink Mist. It’s good, download it. ‘Trying to Stay Home’ is one of my favorite songs this year.
- Stephen Agustin and The Fourth Wall have an LP (on vinyl!) coming out on January 10th of the year, and they just kept getting better and better and better. The band is tight, the songs are astonishing, and the maestro Stephen is incredibly talented. I cannot for their 2012. The entire album is streaming at Bandcamp.
- My friends Leah and Jay put out a wonderful EP as Mighty Moon. Go see them if you live in Brooklyn; they’re playing shows. ‘Love Ocean’ is one of my favorite songs of the year.
- My friend Malcolm put out a beat tape and an LP as SHORE, both of which are very worth your time. Can’t wait to hear what’s next.
- At Sea got back together and started playing shows. There are stirrings of a release in 2012; here’s hoping!
- Gnarwhal kept on rocking. Being part of an entire bar full of people singing along is an incredible thing. Can’t wait for the vinyl they’re working on.
