Music – Maxwell Butler

Looking for hi-fi in all the wrong places

I’m not sure which is the more embarrassing interest of mine to admit to, automobiles or audio. Tell someone you’re a Car Guy, and folks automatically think you’re the held-back twat backfiring on the overrun out the driveway every morning at 6:30, or one of the legions of stunted children teeming in Instagram and YouTube comments sections, simultaneously loathing BMW owners and anyone else who loathes BMW owners. It’s why I’m more of an old fire truck kind of guy anyway.

Leslie 51C restoration: For the love of an albatross

At the risk of sounding like the dreaded involuntarily celibate teenage Nice Guy that blames his dearth of female prospects on the archetypal douchebag “Chad,” we always fall for the ones that hurt us.

Vallury & Butler hit high water mark in history of jazz, or at least tomfoolery

Further to the earlier post on Joey Clift’s Our Fifty States Project, the collaboration between one R. K. Vallury and myself rolls on like a Deltic diesel locomotive, belting through the countryside night in a blue haze and dusting the sleep from the gentry’s eyes. Or something.

The 50 States Project, or: Why I can never show my face in Chicopee, MA

This quarantine situation has somehow both stifled my will to do anything and also jump-started a long-dormant creativity. Some days I don’t want to get out of bed, some days I do the best work I’ve done in over a decade. LA comedian Rama Vallury and I have found ourselves in a songwriting partnership that went back to his days as half of the comedy duo George & Vallury, writing songs for their sketch comedy shows at the Second City.

Shop Update: The Wild, The Innocent, and the C-3 Shuffle

At the end of January I caught a wave of impulsivity. One night after a gig with Bobby Bluehouse I decided that my current road organ, the chopped C-2, was good, but not great, as a live rig. It lacked the responsive key feel and screaming, spitting fury of my other organ, the “studio” A-100. That thing will just cut your coolyans off. That one, I felt, should really be for live use. But the chop wouldn’t be ideal for my recording purposes, owing to its clunky ratcheting drawbars that make smooth timbral transitions nigh on impossible–something that would be very noticeable on a record. Yes, I could always swap out the drawbar rail, but good luck finding a good set of smooth drawbars for less than a car payment, if at all, and the money and time spent on the conversion would be better spent on a -3 series organ, I believe. It was time to do the organ shuffle.

New music for the apocalypse

Yes, times are strange and frightening. But in the spirit of the Italians who are persevering through song, I decided to put out another single from the All Ages Record. From Disney’s 1963 classic “The Sword in the Stone,” I present the folk-opera-funk arrangement of “That’s What Makes The World Go ‘Round (To and Fro).” Featuring:

Sean George: lead vocals
Shannon Rose McAuliffe: lead and backing vocals
Jordan Gravely: acoustic guitar
Brian Weiland: hammered dulcimer
Bunny Butler: electric pianos, Hammond organs, organ bass, synthesiser
Vinny Monya: cajon and other percussion, backing vocals
The Hondu Choir: backing vocals

Go wash your hands then take a listen.

On the significance of a gone dead Ampeg and the Old Vineyard Way

“But then the fire in my boiler up and quit before I came/there ain’t no empty cellar/need a gone dead train.” –R. S. Newman, 1970

Long before I could drive, or really even play, I fell into a collection of instruments that would make the Silver Lake $100-undercut mavens of vintage skip a collective heartbeat. I was given more cool gear before I was 12 than I would be able to afford until I was in my 30s. Such was the benefit of living among the cabal of doting Vineyard hippies with leaky barns and mildewed basements full of things that hadn’t seen the light of day since Nixon.

Shop Update: Tallboy Leslie at last fully operational

Tonight I put the finishing touches on the internal restoration and modification of the Leslie 31H, with the completion of the lower motor reconfiguration scheme. It is now a proper two-speed cabinet, using classic two-speed motor stacks and not the—in my opinion, hacky—electronic two-speed conversion kits that are easier but don’t have the right speed and acceleration characteristics. See the video below for a demonstration. Cabinet cosmetic restoration to be completed.

All Ages Record takes dose of high art, Tall Leslie makes recorded debut, also please stop sharing that “the bee is declared the most important creature” article

Last week, my old friend and Boston’s hardest-working soprano Shannon Rose McAuliffe JetBlew into Tinseltown to lend her trained larynx to the digital wax of the All Ages Record (still as yet unnamed). Since the rest of the album will be performed by a bunch of “far out” ne’er-do-well rock and rollers on the hep “mod scene,” having a true classical musician on board adds a whole different dimension to the project that I could only otherwise dream of. It’s been a long time since I crapped out a Bach Invention at the West Tisbury Congregational Church. On one track, her voice serves as the counterpoint to that of coquettish crooner and known oaf Sean George, whom I’ve been writing and performing music with since before iPods.* His barrel-chested bellow contrasted with her lilting melisma is just a delight, if I do say. This record will have everything: insistent groove, cerebral weirdness, electric disco, folky-dolky sensibility, operatic moments, tender balladry.

Shop Update: Will it go ’round in circles? Talljack Leslie 31H rotor reconfig

After the amplifier rebuild/modifications, the trickiest part of the Leslie 31H project has been figuring out the most elegant way to reconfigure the rotors so that they’ll work with two-speed motor stacks. Here’s what I came up with.