And I have to say, I’m feeling pretty damn good about it.  These last few weeks have been very busy, no doubt, most days spending every spare moment outside of work and sleep planning, promoting, emailing, assembling, designing, etc…but today, the day of, I have only one non-essential production task left, last minute promotion (A.K.A. the much-appreciated day-of-show text message), and then just warming up and getting over there and doing it.

So first of all, the album is, in fact, available, over at http://shareefali.bandcamp.com/album/holy-rock-roll.  You can stream that whole record online, with the exception of “No Second Thoughts”, which I didn’t really want to pay streaming royalties on.  BUT, when you download the album, you better believe that badboy is on there, nestled right between “Nothing, I Just Love You Is All” and “Red Balloon”.  Non-local folks, hurry over and get yours right now!

Just to whet your palate a little bit more, local folks: here are some pictures of the album art, as well as the first every Radical Folksonomy APPAREL, which will also be on sale tonight!  Hot dog!

Cover design is by our friend Krissy Smith Verplank; additional design and silkscreening is by Guy Brown.  I did the booklet, which is twelve little pages (six sheets) and contains the lyrics to all the songs.

Can’t wait to see you all tonight.  Love,

Shareef Ali

Earlier this week I was paid a huge compliment by the amazing Bridget Canfield when she recommended this blog to folks on Facebook.  I am truly humbled, and I’ve learned a few things as well:

1. People do actually read this, or at least they very well might, so I shouldn’t view that as a completely remote possibility;
2. Despite having been compelled (albeit by consensual contract) to keep up a weekly posting schedule, I have actually managed to record some insight of some interest to persons other than myself;
3. In interest of being respectful of these folks’ attention, I should be even more conscious to offer something of value, and do so with regularity (the latter is important to keep in mind for me, because as soon as Cyrus fell off the wagon and ended our challenge, I followed).

So, what to write about this week?  I won’t bore you with how I’m continuing to chug along with promoting for the CD Release, or how you can still get an advance download by buying your tickets in advance and emailing me the confirmation–you’ve heard all that already.  Instead, maybe I’ll share a little bit about what I have in mind for the blog in the future.

There are a number of topic that I’ve talked about previously that I could plumb deeper, like my personal musical history, or the stories behind certain individual songs.  The last one there seems a bit self-indulgent, so I’ll wait until someone actually says, “Man, such-and-such song really does it for me.  I gotta know what really happened from the man himself.”  But also, I’m thinking maybe I’ll start writing some music review/critique stuff; possibly of new commercial releases, but I’m even more interested in reviewing other local folks.  I have so many talented peers whose music I would love to share with more people, and I think I’m as equipped to write a thoughtful review as anyone.  Anyone interested in being reviewed?  I’m looking at you, Andrew.  And you, JJ.  You too, Fancy.  Before you say yes, know that while I probably won’t review anything I don’t already basically like, I won’t spare any honest criticism either.  I mean, there are journalistic ethics at stake here, right?

Anyway, all that’s to come after April 9.  Have a good night kids!

No, it’s not spam, I promise!  This is a blog anyway, don’t you know anything?  Seriously folks, the CD release is a mere two and a half weeks away, and tickets have just gone on sale, which you can get here.  We really, really want to sell this thing out.  That’s why there’s a limited time offer: the first twenty people to buy their ticket and email me the confirmation at shareef@shareefali.com will be sent a code to download a free advance copy!

Let’s talk briefly about good consumer decisions.  If you were planning on coming to the CD release (and who isn’t, really?) you’ll be paying $8 at the door.  If you’re planning on buying the album, you’d be paying $8 for that as well.  So if you buy a ticket now, you’re getting an almost 100% increase in value!  I say almost ‘cuz there’s like a $1 service fee, plus you don’t get the physical album, and that makes the math a little less obvious…but still!  But still.  Great value folks.  A real bargain.  ACT NOW!  Christ, you don’t know the meaning of heartbreak!

I’m’a do this MoveOn.Org style and hit you with that link again:

http://ticketf.ly/holyrockandroll

Remember, only the first twenty people to buy their ticket online get the sweet deal!  Love,

Shareef

I was sick last weekend and most of this week with a nasty sore throat.  Tuesday afternoon and evening I slept a total of fifteen hours (fact: sleeping pills do work, but they give you a hangover like any other drug).  Wednesday night, another twelve.  Prior to this, I can’t remember the last time I slept more than ten hours in a night, but I don’t think it was in the past five years.  Crazy.

Still forging ahead on getting ready for the release.  Finalized the lineup for the night, which is both a relief and totally exciting: a very solid bill of American rock and roll for the night.  Slow Motion Cowboys and the Fancy Dan Band will kick things off, and the Hypnotist Collectors will close it down after us.  Other than that, the promotion machine whirs away.  Asking my graphic design friend to help us come up with cover art, which will also be used on the poster.  Asking blogger friends to review the album or feature the show.  Asking the film friend to make a video.  Sometimes being a musician feels like being a professional favor-asker, and being self-conscious about that fact doesn’t change either the fact that it might possibly be annoying or the fact that it needs to be done.  So, I’m not complaining.  I guess I’m trying to say thanks.

What else?  I spent the better part of the afternoon writing up a one-sheet for the album release, which is like a resume that will get read even less than a real one, because you can’t actually point to any objectively measurable skills or credentials, and your application was only just barely welcome in the first place.  Still, I’m pretty proud of some of the copy I churned out in the meta-, pretend-someone-other-than-the-artist wrote-this voice.  So check it out; it starts out similarly to my current bio but then goes off.

Shareef Ali & The Radical Folksonomy perform deeply lyrical songs against a rich tapestry of American traditional music from folk to jazz to country to rock & roll.  On April 9, they will be releasing their first full-length album, entitled Holy Rock & Roll.Hailing from St. Louis, Missouri, Shareef Ali studied music composition at Oberlin College and Conservatory.  In 2008 he recorded the solo acoustic Music From And Inspired By Our Doomed Love Affair and began performing original folk songs around the Bay Area, his poignant and revealing verse drawing comparisons to Leonard Cohen and Conor Oberst.  In 2009 Shareef assembled his outstanding six-piece backing ensemble, the Radical Folksonomy.

In July 2010 Shareef Ali & Radical Folksonomy embarked on a Northwest tour, visiting Seattle, Tacoma, Portland, Eugene, Ashland and McKinleyville.  Seattle music blog Mid By Northwest praised their “orchestral-indie-punk-folk…sound built to showcase Ali’s heartfelt songwriting but with enough dynamics and edge to keep even a casual listener engaged.”

On September 1, the Radical Folksonomy released The Once & Future Boyfriend EP, a six-song debut that saw the band equally at home playing bittersweet country ballads, anthemic rock with a sardonic bent, and “autobiographical folk boogie” (Pirate Cat Radio).  East Bay Express lauded the album’s “cute, funny, frustrated lyrics”; PCR noted that “the thoughtful lyrics here don’t insult my intelligence.”

Holy Rock & Roll contains over forty minutes of music and explores ever more eclectic terrain. As the title suggests, the group dives further down the rock-and-roll-rabbit-hole into sultry, pounding garage rock (“Holy Rock & Roll”), haunting minor blues (“You’re A Fox”), shoegazer rapture (“Sunken Treasure”) and a distinctive Tom Petty cover (“No Second Thoughts”).  Still other tracks feature the band’s trademark blend of rich vocal harmonies, Telecaster twang and cascading piano textures distilled to an even greater potency (“If My Love”, “Red Balloon”).  The band flexes their improvisational chops on tunes like the stately, jazz-and-soul-tinged “Nothing, I Just Love You Is All”.

Holy Rock & Roll will be released on Saturday, April 9 at the Hotel Utah Saloon in San Francisco.  Also appearing will be Slow Motion Cowboys, the Fancy Dan Band and the Hypnotist Collectors.

What do you guys think?  Does it make you want to listen to the album and/or attend the show?  Man, I sure hope so, ‘cuz if I can’t persuade my own blog audience then I’m a sorry excuse for a shameless self-promoter.  Oh, you folks are too patient, putting up with me rambling like this.  Why don’t let’s have a diphenhydramine and call it a night?

Hey, check out http://www.myspace.com/shareefalisongwriter, tell me what you see.  Error message?  Huh.  Try http://www.myspace.com/radicalfolksonomy.  Same thing?  Good.  That’s because I have officially left MySpace, I hope for the last time.

Like many, I had a personal MySpace back in 2006 before Facebook emerged as the clear frontrunner in social networking sites.  Back when there weren’t really any functions, just simple friend connections and profiles.  It was tolerable then, plus there were some friends I had that only used one or the other.  Anyway, I deleted that profile long ago.  But somehow when I started making music again in 2008, I was lured back.  I’m not sure why; maybe because of the free music hosting, even though I was already doing that on my site, or maybe because I wanted to network with other musicians but didn’t know any of them well enough yet to friend them on Facebook.  Anyway, things had definitely taken a turn for the worse; the site was ever more cluttered with ads and awful design, and despite my computer having gotten better it ran way way slower.  But I tried to suck it up and just deal, because there was this notion that you just had to have a MySpace as a musician, as exemplified in this CD Baby article (whose opinion I tend to respect).

For at least the last year, I’d held onto these two MySpace pages, but dreaded the thought of having to deal with them, and with good reason.  Every operation on the site was a huge ordeal, and I’d often spend upwards of an hour just trying to add my latest shows, tweak my bio or upload a new track.  Then, in August, I changed the name of the page to something like “Shareef Ali EP RELEASE Sept. 1st w/ Mark Matos” or something like that, which people do all the time.  However, months after the release, I found it impossible to change it back.  At this point, I decided that having a MySpace page that would be forever promoting a show that happened over six months ago was more of a liability than an asset.  So fuck it, I said.  Unsurprisingly, deleting my MySpace page was a lot more difficult than it needed to be.

There is no function that MySpace performs that another free site or service doesn’t do better.  I am connected with just about every other local musician I know on Facebook, and have a nice clean artist profile there.  I use Bandcamp for all the heavy lifting when it comes to free music hosting as well as digital music sales.  I host images on Flickr.  I blog here on WordPress.  And a Google search for either “Shareef Ali” or “Radical Folksonomy” easily returns the right results (nevermind that other Shareef Ali in New York, who beat me to the punch on myspace.com/shareefali anyway).  The CD Baby article says that many venues and press folks will use the MySpace page over the official website–but see, I don’t want them to do that, because MySpace looks like total shit, and they can’t if there isn’t one.

There is just one circumstance that gives me pause here and makes me wonder if I made the right decision.  A few months ago, an apparent stranger bought both the band’s EP and my solo demo off of Bandcamp.  I emailed my sincere thanks, and asked where he heard my music, as I am frankly unaccustomed to selling CDs to people I’ve never met.  Turns out he had randomly seen me perform at Bazaar Cafe right when I was first starting to play out again.  He didn’t know me, but looked me up later, found my MySpace and bookmarked it.  A year and a half later, while clearing out his old bookmarks, he followed the breadcrumb trail to Bandcamp and bought the albums.  Needless to say, I was surprised and gratified.  I’ll say this much: I’m glad I didn’t delete my MySpace before this happened.  Still, I highly doubt there’s another person out there who has my MySpace bookmarked and who would have bought my music but won’t be able to now that I’ve deleted my profile.  And if a similar circumstance arises in the future, I feel pretty sure that someone who looks me up will end up bookmarking one of my other online presences.

Would I ever go back?  The only reason I can imagine is in order to be able to message other bands/venues etc. that only communicate through MySpace, though honestly that’s becoming less and less common, and eventually I hope it will just come to an end.  It’s just so abundantly obvious that MySpace couldn’t give two shits about artists’ or any other users’ experience, so I’d really rather not contribute to them having any advertising value at all.  There are venues that I choose not to deal with because of how they do business, so why should websites be any different?  Fuck ’em, I don’t need ’em.  At some point, artists just have to say no to incompetence.

ADDENDUM: Just one more thought.  For those who would advocate keeping a MySpace profile, remember that there is an opportunity cost.  There are about three thousand other things I could be doing for promotion that would probably be as or more effective and that don’t end with me tearing my hair out.

Hey there folksters,

This’ll have to be a quick little update.  The last week was spent on finishing the album: adding a few last lead guitar tracks, perfecting the mixes, etc.  Now it’s all done!  The record is here!  Final run time is 43’36”.  See?  Full-length!  Although for anyone out there who’s still scratching their heads all like, “But still, it seems like a full-length ought to have ten songs, at a bare minimum“, well, somebody forgot to tell Michael Jackson when he made Thriller, or Marvin Gaye when he made What’ Going On, or Bon Iver when he made For Emma, Forever Ago.  Or John Mellencamp when he made Dance Naked, for that matter.

Anyway, I’m still getting this ball rolling on promoting the April 9 release at the Hotel Utah.  Folks, this has got to be the biggest one yet, ya heard?  In coming weeks, I’ll be announcing some sweet incentives to get you and your friends out the night of the show, including possibly advance leaks of the album, sweet new t-shirts, etc.  Can’t you just not wait?

Also, I’m excited to announce that the first talent to join the bill with us are the somber, wistful Slow Motion Cowboys!

Okay folks, we’ll talk more soon,

Shareef

This is a bittersweet post for me to write, and here’s why: two of the Radical Folksonomy’s founding members, keyboardist Erika Oba and singer Jay Thompson, are departing from the group in April.  I cannot describe the immense gratitude I feel towards both of them for having been a huge part of my musical vision for the past year and a half.  Not only did their talents add a great deal to my songs, but I think their presence elevated my own musicianship and helped me to build more confidence as a performer.  Thank you, Erika and Jay.

The ‘sweet’ part of the post starts here.  First of all, the Radical Folksonomy will definitely continue, perhaps as a rock and roll four-piece, perhaps adding someone new to fill the sound out.  I think we’ll see what seems right when that time actually comes.  Meanwhile, the current group just spent this last President’s Day weekend recording…A NEW FULL-LENGTH ALBUM!!!  I know, you already knew that from the post title, but I’m excited about it fer chrissakes!  Way I figured, we had all these songs in our current repertoire that aren’t on the EP, and I wanted to make sure we captured the ladies’ contributions to them.  Here is the track listing for the album (in no particular order just yet):

1. Red Balloon
2. You’re A Fox
3. Wikipedia Brown
4. If My Love
5. Holy Rock & Roll
6. Sunken Treasure
7. This Heart Is Not A Home
8. Nothing, I Just Love You Is All
9. No Second Thoughts (Tom Petty cover)

Here is the best way I can describe my excitement: our EP The Once & Future Boyfriend was my baby, and I love it.  And I did not expect to get pregnant again so soon, but life doesn’t always give you warning.  So now there’s another baby on the way and I can’t wait!  And it’s a full-length baby, a nine-song, forty-some-odd-minutes long baby, not like my first baby, who was only six-songs and twenty-five minutes, but whom I love very much anyway.

So yeah, we’re almost done with all the tracking, and it sounds incredible.  I would say it’s somewhat more eclectic than Boyfriend; it goes harder towards the rock side of things with fully electric songs like “Holy Rock & Roll” and “Sunken Treasure”, but it’s also got more quiet folksy stuff, like “If My Love”, “Red Balloon” and “This Heart Is Not A Home”.  I play electric guitar on four songs, which was really fun, and even do a little soloing in there!  Mind you, I’m no Guy Brown, but I can pick a lick or two.

So when does it drop?  April 9, my friends, April 9!  At the Hotel Utah once again!  No better place to release a disc.  Still working on putting the whole lineup together, but you better believe it’s gonna kill!  Mark your calendars!  Saturday, April 9!

Alright lovelies, off to bed with me.

How much do you, any of you, expect truthfulness in songwriting?  I’m wondering specifically about songs that purport (or maybe just seem) to be autobiographical.  Because I’ll tell you that for my part, while the emotional place they come from is sincere, a song of mine will very seldom resemble the relationship (assuming we’re talking about a love song, because let’s face it, they’re all love songs) that inspired it.  Which I think is a probably a good thing.  Some of it is artistic license in crafting a more entertaining drama.  But more often I suspect it has something to do with actually giving myself emotional distance from the real life events.  As Fancy Dan put so well in his anthem “Sing To Survive”, “Some songs will pass judgments / and yell things that you never say”.  Of my own songs, I’m thinking specifically of “World’s Oldest Profession” and “This Heart Is Not A Home”, both very angry songs written in the wake of difficult breakups.  But while I draw on a real, mostly remembered, feeling of hurt for each, I don’t feel so angry towards the people whom the songs address, and I don’t think I ever did.  It’s like the song is a vessel into which I pour the ugliest thoughts and feelings that course through me, so that I’m no longer carrying them around inside of me.

On the other hand, “Chicken Bone” is a completely factual account with no fabrications or embellishments whatsoever.

Hey folks!  This is going to be a strictly ‘news’ and ‘exciting plans’ update.  I have actually two bits of ‘news’ and ‘exciting plans’ (not respectively, but two items that each contain both ‘news’ and ‘exciting plans’ in them), but only one of them is ready to go public.  Ever since the Folksonomy did eight performances in eight days through the Northwest last July, I’ve been positively itching to go on tour again, and thinking about how to make that happen.  All I want to do is explore this country, see old friends and make music.  Well, I’ve figured it out, and I’m incredibly excited.

Around September, I will embark on a month-and-a-half United States tour via Amtrak train.

I anticipate blogging a lot about the planning process of this (yes, this will help me actually follow through), plus if I actually pull it off I would like for others to be able to do it themselves if they like.  So I’ll just be very transparent about the nuts and bolts of this whole affair.  Here’s what I’ve figured out so far:

– First thing I did was buy a U.S. wall map and Sharpie-dot every place I’d like to visit/play music, including places I’ve only heard about in songs, like Moab and Cheyenne. Before ten minutes had passed there were already over fifty dots.

– Amtrak has 15-, 30- and 45-day rail passes, with improving value.  The 45-day pass is $749.

– A further restriction is that you only get eighteen legs of travel in that time.  A ‘leg’ is any time you get on and off a train, so if you are going from St. Louis to Cleveland and changing trains in Chicago, even if you don’t stop there, it’s two legs used up.

Well, this morning I woke up at 7:30 and started looking at all the different routes, and I even drew up one possible trajectory through the country:

Bay > Reno > SLC > Denver/Boulder > Omaha > Chicago > Cleveland/Oberlin > DC/Baltimore > Philadelphia > Boston > New York > Atlanta/Athens > New Orleans > San Antonio/Austin > St. Louis > Chicago (the one repeat stop) > Seattle/Bellingham/Olympia > Portland > home.

Of course this is still seven months away, and a lot could and will change.  I don’t know where I’ll be able to line up gigs, where I’ll be able to find places to stay, etc.  Still, I’m very hopeful that I can play music in a ton of amazing places for the first time and visit a lot of good old friends.   The reason I’m waiting until September is that it will give me a realistic amount of time to work hard and pay down some debt and save.  And if it works out as well as I think it could, I could see possibly doing this once or even twice a year.  And finally, yes, I probably will be asking a lot of you to couch it.  Thank you in advance.  I can’t wait to see you!

Lots of love,

Shareef Ali

Last year I wrote a post about my atheism and some of my basic notions about why I felt opposed to religion; I also spoke about this topic at some length with JJ Schultz during our interview on The Utah podcast (Episode 6).  Today I want to talk a little about why there’s some religious music I absolutely love, somewhat in spite of myself.

Not that I think anyone would think this, but just to be quite clear, I’m not talking about any genre with the word ‘Christian’ in it.  I sometimes even find myself rubbed the wrong way by a non-religious, maybe even otherwise good song that makes some reference to or assumption about god that I take to be fallacious.  For some reason, the only example popping into my head is “Born To Be My Baby” by Bon Jovi.  Whatever, it’s a good song, shut up.  Anyway, the lyric I object to is: “Only god would know the reason / but I bet he must have had a plan”.  Not that it ruins the song for me; I mean, if you admit to liking a song like that, you must already be pretty determined not to let anything ruin it for you.  But other times, a songwriter will pen an overtly religious verse, and despite the fact that I can’t relate to the faith aspect of it, there’s something else I feel connected to.

Take the Brother Ali song “Picket Fence”.  Clearly this song has a lot to offer outside of a religious message; it’s a profoundly vulnerable confession about deeply personal trauma.  But the most powerful moments are the slightly varied choruses (the first spoken by a kindly nun who comforts him as a child, the second by his wife):

“You look the way you do because you’re special
Not the short bus way, I mean that God’s gonna test you
And all of this pain is training for the day when you
will have to lead with the gift God gave to you
Grown folks don’t see it but the babies do
And there’s a chance that you can save a few”
And time will prove that, she started my movement
She didn’t tell me to take it – she told me to use it

Now I don’t believe in a divine will being realized or ‘everything happening for a reason’ in any case–not in the case of Jon Bon Jovi’s persecuted love affair, and not in the case of Brother Ali being ruthlessly teased about being albino.  The fact that the latter may have somewhat more emotional credibility perhaps plays a role, but I don’t merely tolerate his mistake.  I actually find something very beautiful about his feeling of there having been a purpose behind his tragedy, leading to an even more honorable outcome, so that he is not degraded but elevated.  And certainly I can relate this to times in my life that I’ve struggled and suffered, except I don’t imagine that my suffering has any intention or meaning other than that which I assign it.

I guess in the end I take a somewhat postmodern view of songwriting: whatever the songwriter may have intended or believed, once the song is shared with an audience it has its own life and anyone can assign meaning to it.  Not that the songwriter’s own commentary on the work doesn’t have a unique authority; it does.  But for me, the speaker in a song like “Picket Fence”–who, in an autobiographical case like this, is not really distinct from the artist himself–becomes a character, with admirable qualities as well as flaws, possibly even tragic ones.  Of course, their faith does not necessarily have to lead to their demise, and in Brother Ali’s case was probably even his salvation.  But in either case their failings add to their humanity and the beauty of their drama.