ORIGINALLY from San Jose, Thollem McDonas occupies a unique place in the pantheon of trained pianists. He can effortlessly glide from classical to free improv, from teaching to performing, or from basement gigs to concert halls. These days he tours almost perpetually, migrating from one town to the next—almost always in Europe or North America—and participates in numerous musical projects across the sonic spectrum.
One of those adventures, an international avant-punk collaboration by the name of Tsigoti, hits the Blank Club this Saturday and then the SubZERO Festival on June 4. In the band, McDonas plays a beat-up piano and sings his own politically charged words while Italians Jacopo Andreini, Matteo Bennici and Andrea Caprara assault the guitar, bass and drums, respectively. Tsigoti means “I see” in Cherokee language, as McDonas is part Cherokee. Like McDonas, the three Italians have each performed in a hodgepodge of musical scenarios for years.
A few years back, McDonas met Andreini at the annual Experimental Music Festival in Olympia, Wash., and the guitarist invited McDonas to come do gigs in Italy. While he stayed with fellow musicians and hung out at a co-op recording studio in Tuscany, the idea for making a quasi-improv punk album emerged. Caprara, even though he now primarily plays the saxophone, grew up playing drums in punk bands, so the idea just made sense.
“We had three days in the studio,” McDonas recalls. “I had a bunch of words written about war, because I was frustrated and sick of it. So I said, ‘Why don’t I just take these words and make songs out of them?’ So in three days we made an album. … It was just kind of a project for us to do and express ourselves with our disgust for war and totalitarian regimes and religious extremes of all kinds. And it kinda caught on.”
The resulting piece of work, TheBrutalRealityOfModernBrutality, was released by Edgetone Records in September of 2008. The band played several gigs in Europe and decided to continue the project.
Last year’s release on ESP-Disk, titled, PrivatePovertySpeaksToThe PeopleOfTheParty, added 16 more tracks of raw, in-your-face electro-acoustic, spasmodic, acerbic, tragic-comic, eccentric, kinetic, poetic and predominantly optimistic music to their repertoire. It takes an antiwar stance and combines raw visceral guitar-punk energy with elaborately incongruous piano attacks and screams.
“We’ve called ourselves a bunch of different things because nothing really fits,” McDonas says. “Our intention is not to make a particular sound. We come with lots of different ideas and they go in lots of different directions, and we let ’em go on that way, as long as it has a certain attitude. So we’re after attitude, not sound.”
The attitude is an unabashed hatred of war and religious extremism on all sides. The band’s music exemplifies this in all of its contexts.
“The attitude can release itself through many different types of sound,” explains McDonas. “But definitely, we’re loud. And hard. And at the same time we have a great time onstage and people have a great time watching us. I’m a firm believer that politics and talking about politics and this kind of stuff should be fun, ultimately. Otherwise, it ain’t going to go anywhere. People are just going to sit around and brood about stuff.”
Being a San Jose native, McDonas is delighted to finally return to his hometown after so many years of being on the road. He fondly recalls the heyday of the late ’80s and early ’90s.
“I remember the days of Marsugi’s and Cactus Club and Upper Lip,” he says. “In those times, there was really stuff happening. It was attracting people from outside. A lot of artists were living downtown and doing stuff and there was definitely outlets for weirdos. I think it kind of vanished when they cleaned everything up for awhile. The city has all these grandiose ideas for bringing more money and more money into the city and disregarding artists. But it comes in waves and there’s always a push in the other direction. We’re planning to be a part of that push-back—which is clearly happening with places like Anno Domini and Blank Club.”
TSIGOTI
Saturday, May 22, 9pm
Blank Club, San Jose; $7
