About Me
The Keith Walsh Experience is a one man band from Los Angeles. The KWE features raw and unique punk-rock-intensity synchronic performances, recorded without overdubs. The KWE is a DIY web that straddles the traditional paradigms of musicians and sounds, pushing the limits of the cerebral cortex's ability to accommodate an overloaded human body-mapping activity. It's the machine of one that unites folk, punk, funk, blues, jazz, psychedelic rock, and noise performance. I did not go to school for any of this, and didn't learn guitar until I was in my thirties. I am also an artist specializing in drawing and sculpture. The KWE began in 1995 in Lynn, Massachusetts. It didn't have a name until a few years later. It emerged from the primordial soup of my previous performance art activities and crude "universe music" events. The first KWE recordings utilized a spaghetti lid tapper, crappy acoustic guitar, miscellaneous kitchen percussion, and (for a brief period) an ancient Casio. Initially inspired by Trio (the '80s German band), it seemed possible that if they could make primal post-punk/minimalist pop with three guys, I could do it all by myself. Things got shaped by the combined logics of Captain Beefheart, Bob Dylan, and Syd Barrett, and later got stretched out through the unhinged boogie of Meat Puppets and Pussy Galore. After a few home cassette recordings made in the kitchen, I started performing a few local open-mic nights around Boston and a mystery appearance on Tufts University Radio. Since then, the KWE has progressively grown to a large hand-built modular and ergonomic kit with several drums, stratocaster, amps, and vocals. While sitting, the drums are played with foot kick-pedals, and the cymbals are hit with bare hands between the guitar work. Backwards-positioned guitar effects pedals allow for activation between drum beats or rolls. The drum kit has managed to go through some sort of re-design every year or so to accommodate different instrumentation or improve the ergonomics. The KWE practices daily in an 8 x 10 foot bedroom. After moving to LA in late 1998 I started performing at small clubs like Canter's Kibitz Room, the Crooked Bar, the Garage in Los Angeles, and the Blue Saloon and The CIA in the Valley, art parties, and Cal Arts. 1999 began a four-year tradition of recording an album on the 4th of July. Up in San Francisco, grad-school pal engineer Dave Greenberg and I would bang out a no-overdubs album on the nation's birthday and mix it on the 5th. Striking a live and cathartic feel, twelve-song recordings such as 2001's Modal Universe were done in three-and-a-half hours (which included nine takes of "War," which which weirdly anticipated 911 two months later). The 2001 era was heavily under the influence of Iggy & Stooges, The Silver Apples, Ramones, and mid-70s Miles Davis--with the KWE increasing its emphasis on breakneck tempos, amplification, unpredictable acoustic-electric guitar feedback, high-speed drum rolls, drones and growling, and occasional guitar bashing at gigs. I got banned from Canters Kibitz Room for throwing myself into the kit, into the screaming microphones. A few cover tunes entered the repertoire around then including Eight Days A Week, Blue Sunday, and Interstellar Overdrive. Several KWE live art performances in 2001 lasted three hours, and in other circumstances children have been documented to break-dance and dervish and invade the kit (see video). Around 2001 I spent a brief time as a member of The Legion of Rock Stars, performing bass and light show. I got kicked out for playing extra shittily. 2002 was the the year of endless gigging, mostly at Zen Sushi and Toppers Tavern on the LA east side, and a live appearance on KXLU 88.9 fm Demolisten, where I went into a hypnotized rant against an airwaves-interfering corporate Christian station. 2002 also saw the limited release of Lost Angeles, an equally ethereal and grinding album of epic proportions (imagine the answer to the Doors' LA Woman if you will) recorded in a suburban house crouched in the misty hills of El Cerrito, near Berkeley. "It's A Sign" and "Superman" come from this album. This was followed by a improvised soundtrack album to an conceptual film that has yet to be released. Around this time the KWE was included in the Roctober magazine encyclopedia of known one-man-bands, with a compact disc compilation that included 1999's "Hate The Sun." In 2003 Greenberg moved to Florida and I pulled back awhile from constant performing to focus on exploring 2-track (!) architecture with Strictly Panasonic, a raw and tribal off-kilter Animal Collective-meets-Serge Gainsbourg-affair that was totally improvised in one June day in 2004 on the floor of my empty Echo Park studio. 2005's Heavy Meta album carried on the tribal vibe through the gothic election season through more elaborate songs on an old 4-track recorder over several months. The folkish reverb-falsetto-mirror of "Nothing Left to Sell" and the space-rap-ish "Get Back to the Flat" of Heavy Meta pointed to the astral poetics of 2006's 4-track release of the You're In My Heaven album, where some lo-fi synth rumblings and vague disco fantasies meet mid-seventies Bowie and Neu, processed through a Kaempfert filter. In 2006 I also wrapped up work with the roots music trio/quartet All Purpose Bucket, which featured a range of covers from Toots & the Maytals to the Doors to Merle Haggard. We performed a handful of high-spirited shows in Los Angeles, a glimpse of which can be seen via myspace video and heard at www.jimovelmen.com. In 2007 the KWE returned to performing a la carte with an outdoor LA art party performance which bounced new material and Jesus & Mary Chain and Joy Division covers off barbed wire, trucks, and brick walls. Since then the KWE has appeared at Mr. T's Bowl, Sea & Space Explorations, L2K gallery, and Suzy's Hermosa Beach. The new KWE album "Back to the Pyramids" is now available on CD Baby. It gathers some of its shine from old blues, 60s-70s Avant Jazz, Universal Congress Of, Dream Syndicate, Minutemen, Devo, and others. I'm interested in a translation of that stuff, about how their powers can be channeled through the KWE's kinetic zone.Some KWE videos:
http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/1118430
http://www.flickr.com/photos/matt_wardell/3153962253/in/phot
ostream/CDs available through CD Baby, Amoeba Records Hollywood, and those old "bootlegs" via KWE.
