The acid rock band SuperTrout featuring The Merry Pranksters will perform upstairs at the Vet’s Club, located at 1626 Willamette St. in Eugene, on Halloween night Saturday, October 31, 2009.
Tickets will be available at the door for $10. Doors open at 8 p.m. The ‘Experience’ will begin at 9 p.m. and will feature a light show by “Sweet Lights.” Scott Huckabay, and Brown Chicken Brown Cow String Band will open the show.
To listen to Supertrout music examples and for more information, please visit http://www.myspace.com/supertroutjams. To listen to Scott Huckabay music examples and for more information, please visit http://www.scotthuckabay.com. To listen to Brown Chicken Brown Cow music examples and for more information, please visit http://www.myspace.com/brownchickenbrowncowstringband.
Known for combining tight instrumentation with “pscho-acoustic” spaces using the best musical gear available within an intense light show, SuperTrout concerts create an “Experience.”
A healthy experimental experience always starts, as Timothy Francis Leary used to say, with ‘set’ and ‘setting.’
SuperTrout applies the concept of ‘set’ and ‘setting’ to each concert, creating a visual and musical “Experience” featuring musical spaces in which sound blends with light that combines with the audience to create a safe, inviting space.
In the spirit of the Merry Pranksters, everyone from the band to the sound techs to the person selling CDs is definitely “on the bus.”
And there is a bus. From Canada to Argentina, Supertrout travels to every gig in Elvis Presley’s used touring bus, unless the concert is in Fiji or Hawaii, as will be the case in late January 2009 as the band travels to Maui for a shout tour.
Initially conjured by John Swan, SuperTrout is a Eugene, Ore.-based group of musicians that deliver the highest quality sound, visual, lyrical and ritual experience by combining psycho-acoustics with light.
“Nothing can raise your spirits more than a ritual event where the lighting and music and people and energy just builds into a magical place to eject us from the ordinary,” John says. “SuperTrout is not just the music, but the culture of a common environment, a safe place for enchantment and experimentation.”
Of course, everything first begins with the fish, a symbol of life, spiritual change and motion: Fish were considered sacred to the Greeks and Romans. The first Christians represented trinity by three fishes. The fish is also one of the eight sacred symbols of the Buddha.
The fish moves freely through water - a symbol of life which is honored in many cultures. Water is constantly flowing and the fish totem is an excellent teacher of transitions through life.
“We are all really connected to the land and the indigenous spirit of the fish, which is very important to the Pacific Northwest Native Americans, and leads us to the fertile grounds of the mystical SuperTrout,” John said.
Known as “Swani,” John first discovered his appreciation of unique spaces after meeting Ken Kesey and becoming a second generation Merry Prankster. Traveling throughout the United States and to Europe on Furthur II, the second generation bus based on Further, the bus used by Kesey during a cross-country trip detailed in Tom Wolfe's “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test,” John learned a lot from Kesey about creating magical spaces during their long friendship.
In SuperTrout, John is the lead vocalist and plays lead/rhythm guitar, as he has for years in various bands, including the Magic Swan Band, The Dreamers, The High Rollers, The Revelators and The Thunder Machine Band, which toured with Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters during the performances of a musical play Kesey wrote about the millennium called “Twister: A Ritual Reality.”
John also owns Smartlites, a company that provides professional lighting event services. His experience with casting light during a wide variety of events and concerts enhanced in him the importance of combining light space with music.
SuperTrout enjoyed all the healthy trips in 2008, with the bus roaming the highways with the band ready for the next “Experience,” such as the Merry Prankster July 4th Party. when the band jammed with Bruce Hornsby, who happened to be in town for the Olympic Trials in Eugene, Ore.
Another cornerstone of SuperTrout, Joe “Spose” Croce, plays a vintage Alembic Series One bass and assists with creating the necessary pscho-acoustic spaces. Joe moved to Eugene from the East Coast after years of generating sound based on quality tone and the technical aspects of refining instrumental output.
“The music and space of SuperTrout works on a sub-sonic level where there is more going on that’s sublime and impossible to explain, where some listeners can feel the sound and others can hear the sound,” Joe said. “We use technology to create music that’s inviting and doesn’t assault the listener.”
Living and playing music for years in upstate New York, Joe lived in Woodstock, moving from jam to jam, including some famous events at the “Cloud House” in New Palz. He moved for awhile deep in the Santa Cruz mountains and lived in Bodhi Pacific, a commune located at the highest peak.
Joe moved to Eugene to participate in the unique culture of the area, where creativity is multi-dimensional and defined by the environment as much as the participants.
Rich Sellars and Paul Biondi are now both “On The Bus.”
Biondi, who plays saxophone, is an icon in Eugene, Ore., not only for his amazing brass chops, fills and solos, but also as a true supporter of music and musicians. Biondi is a founding member of the Musicians Emergency Medical Association (MEMA). Mena is an organization designed to help out musicians in times of need. When a medical emergency strikes and all other resources have been exhausted, MENA’s goal is to provide financial assistance to musicians and their families.
Sellars has been pounding the drums for many a year, touring with a variety of bands, including the Floydian Slips and his own duo Reotch. |
