-- Interlude --

Check out yesterday's post -- which stands as today's substantial post (part 2 of the essay tomorrow, folks), since it was posted so late in the day yesterday.

However, just a note: my son Daniel called at 7 AM this morning from the car he'd been sleeping in. Dan and his Mooneye compatriots Sam Phillips and founder Jeremy Latch were catching zzzzzzs outside of Louisville, KY. They're doing fine and have had a great trip thus far. Among the highlights was their Asheville, North Carolina venue playing for 200 people (biggest crowd yet outside of their local Brattleboro, VT gigs) and three glorious days spent with

Laura Carter (who plays on the Neutral Milk Hotel CDs Dan turned me on to recently, but I see she's also part of Elf Power)

in Athens, GA. They savored the 150 acres at the Orange Twin Conservation community and their time there (it used to be a Girl Scout camp, now converted to musician's paradise); they'd met Laura in Brattleboro earlier this year, and had been invited to visit.

OK, enough on that -- Mooneye is on to Bloomington, Indiana later today, and I hope to see Dan in time for Thanksgiving with Marge and me and family here in Windsor later this month.

Mooneye factoids: The mooneye is a medium-sized fresh-water fish (11 to 15 inches in length, 1-2 pounds ) with a silvery, almost flat slab-sided body. This fish's name is attributed to its big ol' reflective eyes, which enable 'em to see at low light levels; note that its teeth bristle from the tongue and roof of the mouth. They used to frequent large streams, rivers and lakes, including lakes Erie and Ontario, but the only population of mooneye in NY and VT resides in Lake Champlain and is dwindling.

Hey, they're predicting snow in the north country hereabouts tomorrow.

Have a mad Monday, Bunkie!

Congrats to Colleen Frakes!

Colleen, center, beaming at the CCS table at SPX this weekend. Photo (and the one below) by Joe Lambert.

CCS graduate Colleen Frakes has won a Xeric Award!!! Well deserved, Colleen, and big-time congratulations all around! More info later this week, along with links, etc. Congrats, Colleen!

Joe Lambert, cartoonist extraordinaire/CCS senior/Sundays co-founder & co-editor/One Percenter and oh so much more, has posted

this great photojournal of his SPX weekend, including the beard-o video!

And yes, I had a great time last night at the Main St. Museum, listening to Mooneye. My son Dan sang two of his songs to wrap up the set, and then I gave Dan, Sam and Ruth a tour of CCS. Much of the CCS community turned out -- you'll have to ask them what they thought of the evening, though, as I'm prejudiced on this one. Though the microphone didn't service the band's lyrics well, it was a grand evening and this poppa's heart soared. Bought a copy of everyone's CDs and will be drawing to their music all this and next week and beyond.

They're now on the road -- as you read this! -- and I'll post their schedule later today.

I'm sorry, though, that I've missed 2+ years of CCSer music at the Main St. Museum. It's a marvelous space, and I know Sam Gaskin, Gabby aka Ken Dahl, Cat aka Cayetano Garza and many others played there many times over the past two years, when I still lived 90 minutes away (three hour round trip) and just couldn't attend. Damn! Well, I'll be able to make it now...

To
Night
Moon
Eye
De
Light

Tonight's the night I get to see/hear Mooneye -- Jeremy Latch, Sam Phillips and my son Dan Bissette -- at last. Marge and I will be there!

I'll be getting the scoop on their upcoming schedule later today. Marge is feeding the lads jambalaya tonight before the performance, making sure they've packed on some pounds before packing the museum with sound. Thereafter, they're off to Burlington, VT for more adventures and music-making.

Yesterday's Myrant post (see below) has the most info, linx and pix I can offer just now, and here's David Fairbanks Ford's announcement circulating the White River Junction community:

____________

Mooneye will be splattered all over the museum stage tonight from 8 to 11pm

it'll be a night of great music and more

free to all, but a hat will be passed for the band!

join us!

main street museum 58 bridge street white river junction, downtown
rio blanco, vermont

"may it please you" --the management

The Tinder Box Rox: Sam Phillips (member of Mooneye) is among the folks that co-founded and keeps the Brattleboro-based Tinder Box space rocking!

Sam Phillips, Tinder Box, Elliott Street, Brattleboro -- one of the spaces in which Sam and his Mooneye compadres make music, magic and madness
_________________

We're starting to hear a bit about SPX here in Rio Blanco from the CCSers home from the show, but

the first public post from our cartooning community has just been posted by Trees & Hills co-founder Daniel Barlow, which you can read here.

Heck, I still don't know how Dead Man's Hand did, sales-wise or other-wise...

__________________

Have a great Tuesday, you know I will...

Mooneye
Tuesday
Night;
&
A
Sunday
Anniversary...

Before I get to the big news:

Yesterday was a momentous day, though I'd forgotten:
Marge reminded me that it was precisely one year to the day yesterday that we first laid eyes on what is now our new home in Windsor, VT! Yep, one year ago yesterday, we first tapped a pair of local realtors to check out this place -- and now we live here.

Just FYI.

Now, on to the big news --

_______________________

MOONEYE is COMING to TOWN!

The band my son Daniel is part of is comin' to White River Junction!

Yep, Jeremy Latch, Sam Phillips and Daniel Bissette -- the threesome now known as "Mooneye" -- will be in White River Junction, VT's famed Main Street Museum (compliments of the amazing David Fairbanks Ford) tomorrow night, Tuesday, October 16 at 8 PM to open their ambitious October/November US tour.

Here's the scoop on the Main Street Museum, including contact info, schedule, link for directions, etc. -- see you there!

(For more on the Museum, click this link, too.)

Getting info on the Mooneye tour has been like pulling teeth, but I've got blood and molars on the carpet, so hopefully I'll know more in a day or two. Stay tuned, hopefully they'll be playing near you sometime soon.

Can't wait to hear/see them play with my own ears/eyes -- I won't be missing a nanosecond!

Mooneye has yet to record commercially in any venue, so I can't steer you to anything tangible/importable into your homes yet -- much as I ache for some for myself!

However, Jeremy Latch has some music available on audiocassette now, though it's not listed on the Yeay! Cassettes website as yet --

nevertheless, go ahead and pay Yeay!'s site an immediate visit, tell the deadbeats to update ASAP, and place your order.

Here's how -- and I know Jeremy's tape exists, I've held the cassette in my own hand! You want to request Yeay 019, entitled Love Letters for Everybody, and you can order it for $7 postpaid (I think) from
Yeay! Cassettes, PO Box 7, Turners Falls, MA. 01376.

To order, you just have to read this link's info first,

and then email kayleen@suchfun.net to make sure my $7 price quote is correct -- PayPal is accepted, so don't let these necessary steps delay your ordering today!

Here's an archival post of a spring/summer 2007 performance of the band (in its earlier incarnation) --

Check out "Vipers in the Tires" by the Jeremy Latch Love Always Love Band, recorded June 13th, 2007 at the Brickhouse Community Resource Center, Turners Falls, MA -- the very performance CCS grad and Pizza Wizard creator Sam Gaskin saw/heard and wrote me about back in June.

That's Dan on the left of the sidewise Brickhouse sign, playing bass. Circa June 2007, The Jeremy Latch Love Always Love Band featured Jeremy Latch (voice/guitar), Cory Bratton aka "Corey Mule" (drums), Sam Phillips (guitar), & Daniel Bissette aka "Pretty Danny" (bass). The YouTube video is described as a "lousy one take shot!," so keep your expectations in check, but it's a taste -- just a taste...

And finally, a short bio of the Mooneye members, cobbled together by yours truly from scant info coaxed, at forkpoint over breakfast, by this wayward father:
_______________________

Jeremy Latch is from Turners Falls, MA, and Mooneye is the latest incarnation of Jeremy's The Love Always Love Band. He spreads music and joy everywhere he goes, including the bathroom. Jeremy (guitar, Casio keyboard, vocals) has written numerous songs and toured the US playing 'em, including "Spider Jones," "Mr. Whisperwalk," "Vipers in the Tires," "Alive and Dead," and more. As noted above,

Yeay! Cassettes has just issued Jeremy's solo audiocassette Love Letters for Everybody -- order Yeay 019, via this link and an email, per instructions.

Also note that Jeremy likes to skateboard and to draw graduated circles for hours, among other things.
______

Sam Phillips (guitar, clarinet, vocals) is an artist/photographer and a native of Brattleboro, VT. He co-manages The Tinder Box on Elliott Street in Brattleboro, loves to skateboard and create music and forms, and struggles with what might be tendonitis.

Visit The Tinder Box venue on MySpace for more info, pix (including 'Zombie Tag') and insights -- here's the short form overview, folks:

"The Tinder Box is an art 'collective' with no collective organization, a music venue, and a lot of weirdos smoking cigarettes on some front steps.... Located on the third floor of 17 Elliot Street, it might be best described as a space for things to breathe--things that are too often suffocated and pushed out of a world geared towards money and the people who have it. We are motivated by a desire to create a place where rock shows, dance parties, and creation can exist for their own sakes. A large ballroom functions as an outlet for all kinds of public events, from bands to film screenings..." Kudos to Sam and his amigos for making this a happening place! Also note Sam's uncle, Bill Phillips, is the fellow who scripted feature films like John Carpenter's adaptation of Stephen King's Christine, There Goes the Neighborhood (which he also directed), The Beans of Egypt Maine aka Forbidden Choices, Fire With Fire, El Diablo, Rising Son, and many others.

______

Daniel Bissette (drums, trombone, vocals) says his music is "fueled by the frustrations of growing up in America." He is a native Vermonter (born 1985) and has been drawing and making music of one kind or another (drums, guitar, etc.) most of his life. His art appears in an Italian book on director Lucio Fulci, onscreen in Lance Weiler's feature film Head Trauma (2006) on its companion alternative soundtrack CD Cursed, and his first self-published zine was Hot Chicks Take Huge Shits (2006). He currently lives in Brattleboro, VT and has a select but exquisite vinyl collection, and has steeped in Moondog, Harry Partch, Alejandro Jodorowsky, vintage jazz and various European traditional and folk musics. Dan and his dad Stephen R. Bissette jammed on a humor piece for the mini-comic Trees & Hills and Friends (2006) and “The Alphabet of Zombies” for the Accent UK anthology Zombies (May 2007). His mother Marlene O'Connor and his sister Maia Rose Bissette-O'Connor are also artists, whose paintings, drawings and photographs have been showcased in various Vermont and New England galleries.

________________

Please note: Many of the graphics on this post are, of course, compliments of the great George Melies.

________

Have a Marvelous Monday, one and all,
if that's in any way possible for ya...

* CCS at SPX *

Well, it's Friday -- SPX begins today, and a major chunk of The Center for Cartoon Studies community is there! If you're in the Bethesda, MD area, make sure to pop in to the convention and pay the CCS folks a visit.

The amount of work that's been pouring into individual comics -- and anthologies, like Dead Man's Hand, which I'm part of -- has been enormous. Diehards like Robyn Chapman, Sean Ford (debuting Only Skin #2), Joe Lambert, Alex Kim, JP Coovert (all debuting new work which I haven't seen as yet), and many more have been burning the midnight oil in the CCS Colodny basement studio and the senior Verizon studio, some for weeks... it's amazing.

One more preview page from my story "Tenderfoot" debuting at SPX this weekend in the CCS anthologyDead Man's Hand; page/story copyright 2007 SR Bissette

Lacking the relatively available lead time we all had back in the spring for MoCCA, there simply wasn't time to rally interviews, graphics, etc. for everyone's comics; the few interviews we did initiate are still dangling unfinished, so the best I can do this time around is steer you to

the official SPX website.

CCS will be at table W22, near the door and registration table, and I Know Joe Kimpel has a table on the floor, too, as does JP and Joe's imprint.

For those who can't be there, I'll be posting followup ASAP, as information, art, links etc. are made available.

Dead Man's Hand has it's own website, here,

and I'll be posting sales links and more info after this weekend, as the DMH editors pull that together (of course, the past weeks have been entirely intent upon getting everything done and ready for SPX).

___________________

For a peek at last Friday's day-trip with my amigos G. Michael Dobbs and Joseph A. Citro -- Mike and Joe -- click here for Mike's overview with photos, scroll down to his "Monday, October 08, 2007" post.

Also note Mike's pix of the Main Street Museum, which I'll be posting more about this weekend as my son Daniel and the band he's a part of -- Mooneye -- will be playing live there this coming Tuesday. More info soon!
___________________

I'm home sick as a dog, so I'll also be posting here off and on the next three days to make up for the slack of this week's posts.

Have a great Friday, one and all, and stay warm and well...

Dan/Sam/Jeremy's Band in WRJ
and
a Taste of Tenderfoot, Too

"Tenderfoot" page 3, copyright 2007 SR Bissette, from the anthology Dead Man's Hand

Here's another peek at my six-pager "Tenderfoot," and for the rest you'll have to wait for SPX and the anthology Dead Man's Hand in a couple of weeks. I'm writing the anthology intro, too, so thar ya go.

Just got the news this week that the band my son Daniel is part of is comin' to town! Yep, Dan, Sam and Jeremy -- the threesome now known as "Mooneye" -- will be in White River Junction, VT's famed Main Street Museum (compliments of the amazing David Fairbanks Ford) on Tuesday, October 16 at 8 PM to open their ambitious October/November US tour, and I kid you not. They're also playing the prior weekend at a Brattleboro, VT venue -- more on that, and this, and everything about it as I know more. Can't wait to hear/see them play with my own ears/eyes!

Have a grand and glorious Friday in this torture-lovin' nation of ours that says it doesn't torture...