Mister Nervous returns from hiatus to launch Memorial Day weekend at the Old Town Pub in Pasadena

Yeah, it is a bit hard to believe that our last Mister Nervous show was back in January.
We’re back this month and it is time to party like mad: We’re playing the Old Town Pub in Pasadena Friday May 27th.
We’re closing out the show preceded by The Sundowners and Jinsai... and I’m headin’ to the weddin’ of the head-banging bassist for both those bands Michael Harpel to his gal Tanya the very next day. Yep: Michael is doing double duty on stage the night before he’s to be hitched (so you gotta know this’ll be a raging party).

The show opens at 9pm with Amanda Jones & The Sugartits 3
then it’s
JINSAI @ 10:00!
The Sundowners @ 11:00!
Mister Nervous @ 12:00!

Amanda Jones & The Sugartits 3

JINSAI

Min Siegel d. 2007

I’ve lost more than a few people and things over the years for which I held a nearly indescribable affection. The first truly epic love of my life ended four years ago when I lost my Min, the one woman I thought I would always have in my life. That loss didn’t dim my belief in love, but it shook my faith in my ability to survive this world and what I held to be true about life. I have written many songs about this experience during these last few years. I sincerely hope I have written all that I need to on that subject.





Today I find I wanna talk about a more joyous perception of existence. This year I feel myself coming back to life, and after 4 years of unrelenting darkness of the soul that’s one hell of a jolt.

WES & CHELSEA in the breakfast nook of "The Fifi" at the Hicksville Trailer Palace

You see: a few months back a young woman walked through my door and stole my heart right out of my chest in a matter of hours. I am not at all sure she’s gonna appreciate my shining this spotlight upon her because she doesn’t share my obsession with spilling my guts in public as a form of art. But as a writer of songs it’s my primary goal… to be as honest and true as my limited abilities will allow. I believe that it’s instantly possible to separate the bullshit artifice from the genuine article when you listen to a song. If it doesn’t ring true it belongs in the circular file. Well, the truth is I have been smitten by this girl in a way I never expected to feel again.

For my recent birthday this adorable creature took me out to the desert to a destination called the Hicksville Trailer Palace, a wacky motel comprised of vintage auto-trailers all tricked-out in hilarious/bizarre themes. We stayed in a purple and gold trailer with chandeliers, a bar, a femme vanity, three glowing wig mannequins (their disembodied plastic heads floating above the bed) and a glorious silence beneath a star-studded desert sky. I can barely remember the last time I was this… happy. So thank you Chelsea, for waking me back up, for renewing my faith in my own worth, for giving me something other than grief to cling to, for reminding me what it’s like to feel that need to cherish and protect another human, for being the new great love in my life.

Mister Nervous' God of drum thunder KELLY and Monthlies.' guitar gal JANA were recently wed.

As I look around me I see many other examples of love’s power to triumph over the daily grind of life on earth. Our awesome drummer Kelly was just recently wed to his lovely and talented lady Jana at a small ceremony, they have moved into a new home and look how joyous they appear. In the coming days our friend Michael (from The Sundowners, a band already near & dear to the heart of Mister Nervous) will be wed to his betrothed Tanya…

It's wedding bells this month for Sundowner MICHAEL and his gal TANYA!

and bandmate Dennis will officiate. More on that awesome weekend kicked off by a public pre-wedding party in Pasadena with The Sundowners, Jinsai and Mister Nervous later on.

I’ve been mostly absent from this space, this blog, for several months now.  I was busy being happy and reacquainting myself  with that sensation privately. Mister Nervous has not hadda night on the boards since our show back in January with The Monthlies. That’s all about to change Memorial Day Weekend.

Sadly in the midst of  this love-fest I must absorb the passing of one of my favorite bands in Los Angeles. The aforementioned Monthlies. appear to be no more. This saddens me because I loved that band beyond expression. The bandmates themselves appear to be doing well: Wes O’Lee and Chris Hall have lovely girlfriends, Jana married Kell, and Nick’s already found another band to apply his sweat and savage beatmaking to. I will miss the Monthlies as a band not only because they are my friends, but because the intensity of emotion called up by some of their songs was/is overwhelming (how many nights did I spend where at some point or another during the set I actually felt I had to keep it together as one or another of the band’s songs brought on a lump in my throat or a moistness to my eyes(?)… whatta sap I can be!). So if The Monthlies rise again I will be standing stage front once more. And that is how I judge what music, to which performers I unashamedly pledge my fandom… you gotta kick my butt with your ability or break my heart with the heartfelt truth of your songs. Nothing else will do.

Yeah, I’m actually a huge cornball: “I wear my heart on my sleeve”… but what the hell’s the use of keeping it in a lockbox? I am still too cynical to believe that songs, or love, will change the world. But they can change your little corner of the world, or – at least – love can change mine.

-WES D

Hypnogogia, is a term coined by Alfred Maury for the transitional state between wakefulness and sleep (i.e. the onset of sleep). The equivalent transition to wakefulness is termed the hypnopompic state. Mental phenomena that occur during this “threshold consciousness” phase include lucid dreaming, hallucinations, out of body experiences and sleep paralysis.

(apparently I don’t know everything – AHHH-HA-hahahahahahaaaaaaaaa!!!)

TUESDAY NOVEMBER 16th
2419 N Broadway
Los Angeles, CA 90031

We’d sure like to see you there.

Mister Nervous plays the GOOD HURT on Wednesday October 6th @ 11pm. We don’t play the westside very often so here’s your chance (especially if you’re one of those “never east of Bundy” type of people). Our shows at the Viper Room, Bordello and Cranes Tavern rocked pretty damn hard and confidence is high for a kickass set over at the Good Hurt. Contact us to get on the FREE list and save yourself the door-charge   (   misternervous@gmail.com or over at FACEBOOK) !!!!

We’ll be playing the DRAMA cd in full so if you haven’t seen us do it live here’s your chance (we may be pulling out a surprise or 2… we’ll see… ). Pick up the cd from us (if you haven’t already done that) or get a cool Mister Nervous t-shirt at the show.
We’ll be adding more new stuff to our shows this fall: Wes has new songs that he’s anxious to get up on the boards.
THE GOOD HURT
12249 Venice Blvd.
West Los Angeles, CA 90066
WEDNESDAY
OCTOBER 6 2010
11pm 21+
FREE
(if you contact us to get on the list)

Hard to believe: but last September we were working on the DRAMA cd and played those songs for the first time in public over at Cranes Tavern. Now the cd is out there and the set sounds better every time we play it. Ask anyone who was at the Viper Room or Bordello shows if you don’t believe me.

Tonight we’re heading back over to Cranes to blow the doggone doors off. Yeah, confidence is high. You should probably come on out and see, pick up the CD or a really cool T (yeah, the Mister Nervous t-shirt is the fashion element to be seen in this fall).

It’s the ongoing event HOMEWORK MONDAYS! DJ Ned Casual will be doing his usual thing: spinning roots rock, vintage RnB and blues with impeccable taste (seriously, the guy never plays anything that is not awesome and essential)… and THREE bands:
10pm – Bad Apples Blues Band
11pm – MISTER NERVOUS
12:00 – The Downtown Train

FREE!    21+

CRANES TAVERN
1611 North El Centro Ave
Los Angeles CA
90028

Amanda Jo Williams at the Unknown Theater

“Country girl from outer space” Amanda Jo Williams has been winning over Angelinos with her uncanny ability to project an unfiltered open heart through her cartoonishly vulnerable voice and her spare elemental compositions. She also comes across as disarmingly endearing in many of the bizarre videos on her myspace page. You can see her for free tonight, Thursday Aug 26th at the Mountain Bar. Live shows feature her freaky tribal hilbilly folk band careening through her simple rollicking  country grooves with wild unfettered abandon while Amanda sits centerstage with her tiny guitar and big drum unselfconciously doing her thing. Paper Magazine describes a show saying,”Williams strummed A-minor for fifteen minutes straight while her band stomped rhythmically around her backwoods muppet ballideering.”

It’s the emotional whallop her music delivers that makes her more than just another freak in the freak kingdom.”Listening to Amanda Jo Williams’ rough-shod country-folk is like eating a squirrel stew supper before falling into bed,  her primal music is an open maw to the mysteries and fears of the world. With a twang-heavy voice that sometimes breaks into manic gibberish, she sounds like an unruly, sometimes lonely little girl left to her own devices.”says the L.A. Times

“My music is basic and simple”, Williams says in her interview with  Daiana Feuer on Tumblr, “I do stuff that’s more from space, channeling how aliens would tell us to be when we’re more evolved. Anything is possible. You can see what you want to see when you want to see it, when you are ready to see. When your will is aligned with the universe and what you are born to do, when those things are aligned, you can find the place where you belong.”

"People need music where the artist is honest and themselves."- Amanda Jo Williams

Jeffertitti’s Nile will also bring their “hypnotic river of sound” to Chinatown on the same bill, providing some riffy Beatlesque melodicism and heavily effected sonic extrapolations.

also a live set by Latin Meds (josh charney of le switch is in latin meds)

and DJ  Hey Okay!

The Mountain Bar

it’s a DRAMATURGY production

Jeffertitti's Nile

The LA FOLDAWAYS are finally entering intense rehearsals in May. A side project from the Mister Nervous band, Wes and a dedicated crew of misfits will be pulling together a repertoire of “classic” rockNroll including numbers from The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Chuck Berry, The Kinks, Van Morrison, Shocking Blue (!), The Who… and more stuff including some interesting takes on old blues and RnB songs. A core trio is working as the lynchpin – and a large pool of  singers and players will rotate as the “front” or songleaders in many performances.

Not quite a tribute, “Classic Rock” or jam band – more a combination of all three. Shows will often feature completely different band line-ups, as available players will work in different combinations making each show completely unique. The LA Foldaways mission: to treat many of our favorite vintage songs as vibrant living things to be joyously jammed (as opposed to reverently copied).

We’ll let you know more soon.

Every Tuesday at the Airliner is a different theme, like the 60s night here

This Tuesday’s event at the Airliner is GO FOLK YOURSELF and features Pierre de Reeder (of Rilo Kiley), Pete Covington (from New South Wales, Australia), Homesick Elephant and Mister Nervous (hey that’s us, we’re opening up this weeks show at 8pm with a bang… well we can get kinda loud…) and 6 other musical artists. With 2 (or more) stages running at the same time wandering through the large funky building allows you to check out many different artists in a single evening.

I had a chance to interview Vince Munoz, he’s the guy who puts these Tuesday things together, so instead of me raving away let’s see what the man who makes it all happen has to say.

“Every Tuesday I do is a different monthly event”, says Munoz,” For example the first Tuesday of every month I do an indie-electronic event (Tektonik LA). Every 4th Tuesday we’ve just started doing a ’60s night. We normally have DJs spinning ’60s soul, mod, motown, etc. downstairs, while upstairs we’ve been getting some really good local acts covering different bands from the ’60s.”

“The fact that my job is getting to listen to good bands is very cool.  With Go Folk Yourself what we want to do is turn the venue into more of an experience. We want the event to be a place where artists, musicians and vendors can network and get their name out. The goal is to get really good acts that not only make the show strong and fun but also we want to give them an opportunity to come back every month and build their fans. We’ve been  getting vendors and artists to setup their products, paintings, sculptures etc. in our back patio.”

“The plan for all of our events is to branch out to a bigger community”, Vince stresses,” we want to do more than just be another show with a bunch of bands.”

GO FOLK YOURSELF

APRIL 13th 2010 – 8pm

THE AIRLINER

2419 N. Broadway

Los Angeles CA 90031

- WES D

(hit the  link below and read my complete interview with Vince!)

HERE’S THE COMPLETE INTERVIEW