Mutual Benefit Spring Shows and Updates
Hello and thank you for being on the Mutual Benefit mailing list. Since I've sent out a band newsletter we've toured the east coast of the USA and most of the UK as well as Paris, Brussels, and Ireland. It was truly moving to be back on the road for the first time since 2020. I wrote about it on my personal writing page.
For the spring I'm mostly keeping the performances local - except if you want to book us somewhere else ;) - with two shows in NYC.
May 17th I will be at The Owl Parlour in Brooklyn with Griffin Brown and Caroline Says. I love seeing shows there and enjoy the informal nature of the room so I'll be trying out a lot of new works in progress and longer piano ideas. Come if you dare! I'm terrified but also I need deadlines to finish things so I gotta do things like this sometimes.
June 15th we will be full band style at Sundown Bar in Queens with Cara Beth Satalino (who has a great new album out) and old buddy luah. This one will be a more traditional Mutual Benefit set although I'm hoping to rope in a lot of collaborators depending on who is in town. Tix are available here
I'm not always the best at promoting my music and wares but my label, Trangressive, recently released the demo versions of Growing at the Edges which I recorded in my bedroom in the depths of 2021. It has a breezier homespun feel from the big arrangements that made up the final version of the album. You can find it for sale digitally on bandcamp or streaming. I wrote more extensively about it here.
We also have a 10 year anniversary edition of Love's Crushing Diamond with additional songs available on vinyl since the original pressing has been out of print for a while. You can find it here.
I'm still at it regularly updating my Stellar Transmissions playlist with favorite songs across all genres with an ear towards people I share community with. There's some real beautiful stuff from collaborators H. Pruz, Gabriel Birnbaum, and Cara Beth Satalino who I am sharing a bill with in June.
Thanks for spending some of your day reading this! I turned 36 recently and didn't feel the same existential dread that I often feel on birthdays so that part of getting older has been pretty nice.
I'm going to plug my monthly personal writing one last time. You can either access the archive by already being a free subscriber of this band mailing list or have it delivered to your inbox by changing your subscription to $1 or more. It really helps!
I think the next one is going to be about the book The Rest is Noise which is about 20th century music by Alex Ross that has been blowing my mind. Those little subscriptions help me focus more of my time on songwriting instead of unrelated gigs. I'd also be open to taking on more songwriting student-peers if that you've ever wanted to write a song but get overwhelmed or just have writer's block. I think the whole process can be quite meaningful!
I hope that you are enjoying some picnics, growing herbs, marching and shouting demanding a ceasefire in Palestine, and logging off to find moments of calm and physical connection.
Very Gratefully,
Jordan