Earthwise Productions has released a video, made by Kid Andersen’s Greaseland Studios of San Jose, as part of its Lions With Wings initiative.

The 8-minute video features six performers in isolation, an accomodation to the Covid-19 virus, but is edited and mixed to approximate a band performance.

Earthwise founder Mark Weiss explained that Lions With Wings temporarily replaces his concert series, which was based at Palo Alto’s Mitchell Park Center, and featured shows in 2019-2020 with Molly Tuttle, Elvin Bishop, Dave Douglas and many others. Weiss had 10 confirmed shows and onsales for March, April and May, 2020 when the pandemic hit.

This video includes Nancy Wright (of Oakland), sax and vocals; Bob Margolin (in High Point, North Carolina, near Greensboro), slide guitar and vocals; Mitch Woods, piano, vocals, and spoken word: on top of the original music by Jay McNeely, Woods adds an original spoken word bridge about the effects of Covid-19. 

“I met Nancy at Stanford’s radio station, during the promotion of my Bob Margolin show last summer” Weiss said of the Bay Area blues stalwart, who plays sax and sings. Wright and Margolin both record for Vizztone Records, that Margolin curates.

Weiss said that when Lions With Wings started inviting musicians to create content, he recalled their meeting and invited her in. She had worked with Andersen previously and suggested using the South Bay producer, as well as calling the song, Big Jay McNeely’s “There is Something On Your Mind”, from 1957, which was a minor hit for Bobby Marchan three years later.

Weiss said that he has roughly 20 projects in the works. The songs will be streamed for free on Bandcamp, a new and popular platform on the internet. Other projects set for release, according to Weiss, including a joint release thru Dave Douglas’ Greenleaf that will feature Fay Victor and Camila Meza; a cover by South Bay punk folk icon Mike Park and a debut solo project by Stanford’s Aleta Hayes, who has sung with William Parker. 

It’s a bit ironic because Earthwise Productions started as a response to the proliferation of media and computers, Weiss admits.

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Fact checking my own post modern press release I notice that Dave Douglas ENGAGE  a version of which played The Mitch in a Bay Area excloo just before Thanksgiving was listed in a New York Times “Best of” story nine months ago: did they play “Sanctuary Cities” in Palo Alto? My show featured Dave Douglas, Carmen Rothwell, Jeff Parker and Clarence Penn. Besides the collaboration with Dave Douglas, vocalist Fay Vincent and vocals /guitar Camila Meza, Lions With Wings is negotiating to have original content from bassist Rothwell, and Jeff Parker — who also played Earthwise show with Scott Amendola band in 2019.  Douglas, truth be told, was an inspiration for this project – -he described for Weiss months earlier his interest in his coined term “remotetudes” — remote etudes, or studies; Weiss challenged Parker to do a tribute to Wes Montgomery based on their overlapping West Coast geography. Stay tuned or remotetuded. 

Enthusiasm for the 2018 midterm elections generated a sense of hope for Dave Douglas, a trumpeter, composer and bandleader who says his latest project, ENGAGE,”is a set of compositions dedicated to positive action.” Subscription fees and CD sales from one of the songs, “Sanctuary Cities,” directly supports RAICES Texas, a nonprofit agency that promotes justice by providing legal services to underserved immigrant children, families and refugees. Douglas affirms: “Writing and performing these pieces is a reminder to myself not to get mired in negativity — to stay positive and engaged through music daily.” –Suraya Mohamed

and1: besides providing seed money to musicians and projects, I have been giving to various causes and campaigns — Covid is treating me better than most, I think. I too support in principle legal services for immigrant families. I was also really into Dave Douglas “Witness” and had dreamed of a show here at El Camino Park, like a modern day Be In sponsored by the Hoover Institute on the right and Peninsula Peace And Justice on the left. 

andand: Kid Andersen has recorded more than 100 blues groups in his secret Santa Clara farmland location. He’s from Coastal Norway and ran away from home at age 19 to meet the devil at the crossroads. I don’t know if he votes but I’d feel better having him book bands into the White House than I would be seeing last night’s shit-storm repeated four years from now. And what does the estate of Leonard Cohen say of “Hallelujah” being part of the flagrant Hatch Act violation? Jake Tapper or Wolf Blitzer on CNN said what I was thinking:; was this a “Godfather” wedding scene tribute? Meanwhile andandanand I caught part of Rick Perlstein Zoom gig with Rebecca Eisenberg talking Prop 13 and Reagan.