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Beat Circus This Weekend
By Brian Carpenter on October 23, 2009 7:49 AM
Get
tickets now for Saturday night at Middle East Upstairs! We'll be
performing several new songs with a revamped instrumentation plus a few
favorites from our latest cd Boy From Black Mountain. This will most likely be our last Boston-area show of the year. The Boston Herald wrote a story on the band which came out today here.
On this show is the incredible Blood Warrior from
Brooklyn, led by O'Death front man Greg Jamie. This band must be seen
to be believed. Compelling songs featuring Greg's signature voice
combined gorgeous and haunting vocal harmonies. Also performing are
two of our favorite Boston bands, Mr. Sister, featuring Amelia Emmet and Mike Fiore (Faces on Film), and Guillermo Sexo, a dark Latin-tinged psych rock quartet also from Boston.
Also, tune into WZBC 90.3FM this Friday at 5PM EST for a live set by Guillermo Sexo followed by an interview at 6:20 with Beat Circus. You can win free tickets by calling in at 617-552-4686 or IM'ing wzbcdj. Tickets on sale at the Middle East Box Office and through ticketmaster here.
We recommend Boy From Black Mountain on
CD! The CD was mastered by the great Fred Kevorkian at Avatar Studios
in NYC and the booklet features illustrations by the very great Carson Ellis and gorgeous photography by Amy Higgins, and lyrics to all of the songs. The Boston Phoenix raves "Boy From Black Mountain is the prettiest darn dark Americana record in recent memory". Purchases from our online store go directly to the band!
http://www.beatcircus.net/
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A Weird American Gothic Story - Part 2: A Boy From Black Mountain
By Brian Carpenter on October 7, 2009 9:44 AM
Boy From Black Mountain began as a way of continuing a trilogy of
"Weird American Gothic" albums began in 2006 with Dreamland. If
Dreamland used the mythologies of the American circus as its backdrop,
Boy From Black Mountain used Southern Gothic mythos and storytelling,
inspired by my father's life growing up as a watermelon farmer in the
rural Bible Belt. As so often happens, what I set out to do was only a
small part of what I actually ended up doing. In December of that year
my son was diagnosed with autism. I stopped writing music for a year.
And over the next 18 months Caroline and I spent our days helping our
son overcome many obstacles.
I. Clouds Moving In
We saw early symptoms such as stacking and repetition but several trips
to so-called "experts" did not yield a diagnosis. He wasn't talking
much at age 2, either, but when he started the temper tantrums when his
routine changed, we knew there was a serious problem. While Caroline
was reading every book under the sun about autism, I was writing music
in an attempt to release what I was feeling and document the phases of
what we went through from diagnosis to recovery. I'll never forget
coming home one Halloween night and seeing all of these happy families
walking their kids along the streets. And then getting home and seeing
my son fast asleep, in his Superman cape, and asking Caroline what
happened. They walked less than half a block and he started screaming
because he wanted to go a different way. There was nothing she could
do, he was just terrified and upset. And I just broke down because I
wanted him to experience Halloween like other children were
experiencing it, but mostly because I knew something was very, very
wrong.
II. The Sound And The Fury
I was distraught and I felt a lot of dread every day coming home to a
screaming child who couldn't talk with me, who couldn't explain to me
how he was feeling or what he was so terrified of. I've told Caroline
(years later) I remember walking up to the house at night and hearing
his screams from outside on the sidewalk, and I would stop at the fence
and look up, my briefcase in hand, the street light shining down on me.
And I often felt like Father Merrin in The Exorcist coming home every
night. "Saturn Song" came out of seeing my son getting teased on the
playground and wondering why the parents of these snotty, spoiled
little Cambridge brats didn't step in to do something. I was so angry
at just about everyone.
III. The Course Of The River
After finally getting the diagnosis of austim in December 2006, we
began battling with the public school system to get services. In 2007
our son moved into an ABA classroom in Cambridge taught by Moira
McNabb, who we are convinced is either an angel, some kind of miracle
healer, or just one of the best darn preschool teachers for special
needs kids around. She was able to bring out his personality in a way
other teachers could not. She went into his world, and if he was
nervous about something she got silly with him to make him laugh. With
Moira's help, an intensive schedule of ABA, and of course one-on-one
with Caroline and me, he slowly started talking and making eye contact
and he was on his way to recovery.
IV. Boy From Black Mountain
After he overcame many of the obstacles, I was able to write about the
experience through some of the songs on this album. Black Mountain (a
mountain and progressive school in North Carolina) became a metaphor
for autism. Today my son is the most gregarious and creative little
social butterfly. He loves to read books and never stops talking about
all of his creations and stories and friends. His repetitive behavior
is gone and he never screams anymore. His friends are very important to
him. "Boy From Black Mountain" is a love song to my son, a boy with a
hyper-creative mind whose obstacles disappear in his dreams and whose
exceptions provide a unique path to fulfill his dreams.
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