The Gray Catbird Archive

Archive

Everyone keeps asking you for pictures, and after a while you get tired of that. I always say, They are in the archives.
~ Annie Leibovitz

Volume One 2008-2009

Track 1 38:57
May 6, 2009 at Joe's Mill Hill Saloon
TAG (Trenton Avant Garde) Night at Joe's

Track 2 16:54
February 21, 2008
at John and Peter's, New Hope, PA

Volume Three 2011

Track 1 Bengali Lullaby 32:04
New Jersey Festival of Electronic Arts,
March 12, 2011
at The Grounds for Sculpture, Hamilton, NJ

About

The genesis of Gray Catbird

  • 120 BC - 200 AD

    A humble yet lengthy beginning

    Somewhere around 120 BC beasts feasted on bugs, gnats, mosquitoes, worms, dead meat, George Antheil, and Ernie Kovacs. Slowly there evolved a species able to interpret and process the impotent, deleterious, and vain caterwauling of the anthropoids performing at a venue called "City Gardens." One individual rose from that din of contempt, to attempt to restore a natural universal harmony and understanding. His method, the architecture, was to gather all like minded creatures from the Kingdom:Animalia, the phylum:Chordata, the clade:Ornithurae, and the class:Aves, to promote an art festival. For lack of a better name, let us call this brilliantly innovative individual Willard.

  • 1948 AD - 2009 AD

    A Movement is Hatched

    Quickly the evolution of the festival evolves. Through the cigarette smoked, cocaine laced, beer spilt, and free sex parlors of America, Gray Catbird emerges genetically unscathed from a performance at John and Peter's, in New Hope, Pennsylvania. They have procreated and developed into a hardier organism and now embark on a journey back to their homeland, to the banks of the Delaware River. Rising from the mud, like an army of 'peepers', they elicit an innovative new call to performance at Joe's Mill Saloon, Trenton, NJ on May 6th, 2009. The cosmos has resonated and never has it been the same since.

  • 2010 AD

    Cosmic Disconnect,
    Lost in Space

    Absolutely nothing happened in 2010 AD. Anywhere! It was a complete waste, as drummers lost their sticks, guitarists kept dropping their picks, engineers lost track of their tracks, and Gray Catbird lost Volume Two of their recordings. They may be misplaced or never existed at all, regardless if somebody has a copy of Gray Catbird Volume Two, they have something special and they should archive it.

  • 2011 AD & into THE FUTURE

    Exacting a Definition

    Magnanimous man-beings from the acerbic mountain ranges converged on the original 'art festival concept'. Everyone knows that these creatures eat rocks, gravel, new-growth trees, and old railroad ties. This type of diet, plus drinking their local water, effects their state of artistic perception. Of no consequence or importance to Gray Catbird, as they mostly eat bugs, they completed a sonorous celebration on March 12, 2011 at The Grounds for Sculpture in Hamilton, New Jersey. The euonym for this event was 'New Jersey Festival of Electronic Arts'. This was their final recording during this period in the space-time continuum.

GRAY CATBIRD

It is not only fine feathers that make fine birds.
~Aesop

Shane Navoy

Electronics, Synthesizers, Keyboards, Ornithologist

William Constantine Jr.

Reeds, Flutes, Trumpet, Electronics, Assorted Percussion, Ornithologist

Additional Resources

  • Cornell How Nature Works: Catbird Mimicry. A remarkable Gray Catbird mimics dozens of bird species (and a frog too!) in northern California. Listen as Greg Budney, audio curator at the Macaulay Library, dissects the recording and notes each snippet of mimicked song.

  • Monday, May 4, 2009 TAG Night at Trenton's Mill Hill Saloon, an article by Carlton Wilkinson. Carlton, a founding member of TAG (Trenton Avant Garde), is a composer of experimental, chamber, choral and symphonic music and a writer/producer of songs and music in post-pop styles.Carlton Wilkinson He's also a writer/editor and a professor of music at The College of New Jersey and other schools. He is the author of a column on classical music for the Asbury Park Press, and the author of the music blog, The And of One (www.theandofone.blogspot.com).

  • The Cornell Lab of Ornithology, We use science to understand the world, to find new ways to make conservation work, and to involve people who share our passion.