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Household Ink Records has somehow rounded the corner to the ripe young/old age of 25, by fate and sheer perspicacity and the stubborn, ceaseless flow of creative energy. Founded in 1987 as the in-house label for the strange but loveable band Headless Household, it evolved into a self-described “regional, eclectic label” – wherein jazz, avant garde, Americana, rock of the rubbery genre sort, atmospherics, and other stylistic flavors get along. HI now sports a catalogue of about 35 titles… and growing.

As part of the year-long “HI @ 25” campaign and celebration, the party starts with two exciting new additions to the Household Ink Records warehouse: Julie Christensen’s wonderful new “Americana” album Weeds like Us, and Natalie D-Napoleon’s evocative Leaving Me Dry, released in Australia a couple of years ago and now being officially launched stateside on Household Ink. Christensen, whose previous albums on the label are Something Familiar and Where the Fireworks Are, has created a potent new “prairie soul” outing this time out, and is set to reach new heights.

On the live front, gigs are on the horizon, most immediately Julie’s series of CD release parties in assorted locales, including her old sometime hometown of Austin, Texas and Oklahoma City. Around the SoCal area, she plays at The Main/Gallery in Ojai, Calif. on Friday, May 11, and at the legendary McCabe’s in Santa Monica on Mother’s Day, May 13. For details, check out www.stonecupid.com.

Headless Household itself returns to SOhO on Wednesday, June 6 for its annual-ish “Spring Sing” show, with singing and instrumentalizing in more or less equal measure. The musician list this time includes Julie C, Glen Phillips, Tom Buckner, Sally Barr, Bill Flores, Jim Connolly and old Householders Dick Dunlap, Tom Lackner and Joe Woodard from the original posse. The Household is currently working on its ninth album, an all-ballads affair.

Natalie, whose musical life has been in semi-sleep mode in the last bit of time due to her becoming a beamingly proud mother, will have her CD release show at SOhO on Sunday, June 24, joined by her band. Headless “Americana style” Household offers up an opening set.

Stay tuned for more HI business to come this year, including a few projects in the works, and a HI @ 25 microfestival later in the year…

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Headless Household comes out “out of the basement,” with 25^th anniversary (a year late)/CD release concert of double-disc Basemento, at the Lobero, Friday, March 19, 2010

What: Headless Household, 25^th anniversary concert (a year late)/CD release party for the double-disc Basemento

When: Friday, March 19, 2010, at 8 p.m.

Where: Lobero Theatre, E. Canon Perdido

Tickets: $15, general and $10, seniors and students. Box office: (805) 963-0408, or, web-wise, 963-0761, www.lobero.com

Who: Dick Dunlap, Tom Lackner, Chris Symer, Joe Woodard, Julie Christensen, Glen Phillips, Tom Buckner, Tom Ball, and more…

(photos: Kim Reierson)

Time plows forward, as does the urge to make music, for some. Both can be unstoppable forces. So here we have the 25^th anniversary (a year late, thanks to the Tea Fire, and other factors) of Headless Household, Santa Barbara’s peculiar and ongoing, eclectic excuse of a band. Mixing up mixed-up elements of jazz, free improvisation, avant-Americana, Europeana, rock, soul and a new strain of Braziliana (in time for the bossa nova’s 50^th birthday), the band presents its first concert in the historic Lobero Theatre, on Friday, March 19, coinciding with the CD release party for its eighth feature-length album, the double-disc item called Basemento.

As usual, a large and mobile band of players will appear, including the core quartet--Dick Dunlap (keyboards), Tom Lackner (percussives), Chris Symer (bass) and Joe Woodard (guitars). Other kindly “honorary householders” making the Lobero concert include vocalists Julie Christensen and Glen Phillips, saxist Tom Buckner, harmonica wizard Tom Ball, pedal steel player/multi-axman Bill Flores and others, tba. All those artists appeared on the recording, as did famed NYC-based alto saxist Dave Binney—a longtime friend of the Household—and Santa Barbara-turned-New Yorker Nate Birkey on trumpet and a vocal, as well as beloved mando-tarist-singer Kenny Edwards.

Basemento—the latest findings from the Household “basement”(actual and figurative)--is another hard-to-pinpoint musical journey, running through the jungles of genres, a torch song or two, sweet vocals and electro-acoustic ambient constructions. Etcetera. It seemed only proper to make it a two-disc album, one leaning more “inside” and the other “outside.”

In progress for five years, Basemento was interrupted for nearly a year after the Tea Fire threw the process off course. Drummer-engineer-producer Tom Lackner’s “Tompound” studio was in the heart of the Mountain Drive Tea Fire devastation, but miraculously survived (a Basemento session there ended one hour before the start of that fire, on November 13, 2008).

Previous albums to date, all on the in-house Household Ink Records label: Headless Household (1987), Inside/Outside USA (1993), ITEMS (1995), Free Associations (1999), mockhausen (2000), post-Polka (2003), and Blur Joan (2005). More to come, apparently.

What the press has been saying:

(re: Blur Joan)

“Soundwise, it is an eclectic and surprisingly alluring program that covers a variety of genres that, while certainly experimental, remains accessible. The group’s interest in the fusion of electric and acoustic touches is seen from the outset… Overall, a quirky--in a good way--outing from a group that is certainly charting its own course.” --Jay Collins, Cadence

“…solid musicianship and an admirable willingness to toss in whatever strikes their fancy.”

--Aaron Steinberg, Jazz Times

“Long-running Santa Barbara eclecto-jazz weirdoes Headless Household have simmered all their exotic flavors into a very palatable goulash called Blur Joan (Household Ink). Joe Woodard,Dick Dunlap and Tom Lackner really orchestrated this one, and with the help of brilliant friends (Dave Binney, Jim Connolly, Julie Christensen et al.), swing and waltz and reggae and sound effects unite — natural, warm and full of protein.” --Greg Burk, Los Angeles Weekly

(other notes…)

--“Music this wildly diverse can never be properly marketed in this age of specialization, but that doesn’t make it any less extraordinary.” --Bill Milkowski, Tower Pulse magazine

--“Headless Household achieved regional cult status by the late 1990s, thanks to their quirky and eclectic kind of new music, their relentless live shows and a string of albums….” --All-Music Guide (www.allmusic.com)

“The first thing to understand about the Household’s music is that when they announce a genre—say, polka for example—that hardly means they will stick to anything much resembling a traditional polka, or even that one of their polkas will sound much like another…. What unites these disparate approaches is a commitment to the sound and values of free improvisation… Everything that gets thrown into this musical blender seems to belong there…Here’s to many more years of this unique Santa Barbara tradition. ” --Charles Donelan, Santa Barbara Independent, re: the 2006 xmas concert

“This is a complex musical aggregation whose takes on various musical forms are fascinating. Each of the members is a solid professional -- a musician whose experience encompasses pop, jazz, classical, rock, and as-yet-undefined musical disciplines.” --Stanley Naftaly, Santa Barbara News-Press

--“Headless Household still seems to think that a mind is a terrible thing to waste..” --Greg Burk, L.A. Weekly

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In the world according to Household Ink, December brings… the Santa Barbara performance debut of musicman David Piltch as leader-concept swingman, the release of Nate Birkey’s yuletide CD gem, the ongoing progress of Zen Horse Repair’s Ghost Brain (the subject of a long, rave review in the current Tricycle magazine) and the postponement of Headless Household’s annual xmas concert/CD release party… the Tea Fire intervenes and brings sadness and perspective-tweaking.

David Piltch, the bassist-songwriter-soundster who has worked with kd lang, Bill Frisell, Holly Cole, Loudon Wainwright III etc., joined the Household Ink family with his debut solo album, Minister of the Interior. The cool, eclectic project is fortified by collaborations with lang, Frisell, Petra Haden, Cole and others. David has been doing periodic Tuesday soirees nights in the small room of the endearingly hip Largo in L.A. since July, and he brings the show to Santa Barbara for the first time on Monday, December 15, at SOhO. Piltch is usually joined by his regular allies Gaby Moreno, on vocals and guitar, and ace guitarist Mark (Jackson Browne) Goldenberg, with assorted guests dropping by. At SOhO, Piltch’s featured guests will be Joe Henry and Brandi Shearer. On the musical menu will be selective covers—from Sly Stone to Kurt Weill and thensome—as well as material from Minister of the Interior.

Disc-wise… trumpeter-vocalist Nate Birkey has gone the route of the season this year, with a warm and wonderful Christmas album, entitled… christmas. It is now available at an internet portal near you (i.e. www.householdink.com/products.htm). This is Nate’s second album in 2008, following this summer’s almost home, his first with a group from his current home of NYC. Tunes like “O Tannenbaum,” the great Vince Guaraldi classic “Christmas Time is Here,” “I’ll be Home for Christmas” and the closing “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day” emerge in treatments both comforting and refreshing on the ear. Just off the beaten yuletide path are Frank Loesser’s “What are you Doing New Year’s Eve” and the Sammy Cahn/Jules Styne song “The Christmas Waltz,” and “Hanukkah, Oh Hannukkah” broadens the seasonal scope of the set.

Headless Household Update: Eclectic new music combo Headless Household, which was working hard towards its 25^th anniversary concert and CD release party at Center Stage Theatre on Monday, December 8, is postponing the event, in the aftermath of the tragic Tea Fire. Updates will be announced. Most likely, the album and concert will occur early in 2009.

Drummer Tom Lackner’s Mountain Drive home/studio—known as “The Tompound”—miraculously survived the blaze, in the midst of some of the fire’s worst devastation. Due to clean-up, helping neighbors and other factors, the Headless Household project has been put on hold.

Lastly, for a sampler of what the label is, was and is becoming, check out the new “HI Radio,” streaming selections from a catalogue now 30 titles deep, going back to the 1987 debut by the founding band on the label, Headless Household.

Live shows and studio brewings light up the Household Ink landscape this autumn, including a new CD work-in-progress by label homeland honchos Headless Household—its 25^th anniversary album, coming along nicely, and in multiple directions (what else?). The CD, featuring multiple guests (what else?), will be hatched in time for the group’s annual xmas concert at Center Stage Theatre in December (date tba), and a Los Angeles gig (tba… what else?)

Also coming to SOhO, on Monday, October 20, is a return visit from Portlander Shelly Rudolph, the “world soul” artist who released the wondrous Household Ink album Water in My Hand back in 2006. Her last show in this room, two years ago, stirred up much interest and heart rates. Up the road apiece, Julie Christensen performs in either duo or trio mode in picturesque Grover Beach, as part of the songwriter’s showcase at The Shepherd's Table, on Friday, Oct. 17.

Disc-wise… watch out for a jazz Christmas album from the much-admired trumpeter-vocalist Nate Birkey this season… coming very soon to an internet portal (i.e. : : www.householdink.com/products.htm) and possibly brick-n-mortar outlets near you. This is Nate’s second album in 2008, following this summer’s almost home, his first with a group from his current home of NYC.