I went to see Trace Bundy at DROM last night and he's even more amazing in person than he is on video. The man really is an acoustic ninja. You know the old saw about the farmer using every part of the pig but the squeal? Well Bundy leaves no part of the guitar unplayed. He'll provide his own percussion using various parts of the guitar's body, reproducing everything from a kick drum to bongos. In one piece, he even played a set of cutomized capos. He's not satisfied with just using the capos as capos, he actually works in playing notes with them in the process of moving them from place to place on the neck.

DROM, by the way, is a great, intimate little venue. It seats about 100 people for dinner-and-drinks acts, more if they clear the floor for standing/dancing.

You've probably seen Bundy's rendition of Pachelbel's Canon on YouTube, but that's just the start. He'll kick on his looper and, in real time, lay down three or four tracks layer by layer. He'll play a song you don't know, loop it, then play the loop backwards, at which point it becomes a rendition of something you do know.

Beyond the wizardry, though, his original compositions, like the majestic Elephant King, or the two-guitar Joy & Sorrow, are beautiful examples of everything the acoustic guitar can be.

So two Simon and Garfunkel tunes slammed into a song by Bread at a bad intersection in the left half of my brain. The result was a story called "The Long Happy Death of Oxford Brown" which, I just found out, is going to be appearing in a future issue of Asimov's. I know I'm only like the zillionth writer to mentioning drawing inspiration from music, but so far The Alan Parsons Project, Kansas, and Yes, in addition to the two mentioned above, have contributed inspiration to my stories.

I caught Ponywhip at a free show in the neighborhood yesterday. Awesome sound! Just good ol' butt-kicking rock. Benatar-esque vocals (early, pre-popish Benatar, that is), but gutsier. They did an interesting cover of Foreigner's "I Want to Know What Love Is".

Do yourself a favor and give a listen to their debut EP.