(above photo by Matt Carmichael)

2006: PDP began writing music and lyrics for what would become the band's 7th full length release due out this Spring. Marco Ferrari was busy filming the writing and recording process for an upcoming DVD.

2007: PDP composed and arranged a re-invention of the music and themes from the opera "Carmen" and performed it live with the Chicago Sinfonietta. PDP founder Frank Orrall & film maker Marco Ferrari collaborated to make a stream of consciousness silent film to accompany the performance. The result was a sort impressionistic mini opera.

(video stills by Marco Ferrari)

Also in nov 2007: PDP composed and performed an original score for the film "Limite" (1930), the preeminent work of the Brazilian silent era,  Directed by Mario Peixoto. This was in conjunction with the Chicago Cinema Forum & Sonotheque.

2008: PDP will release their new record; 7 April 1st and mount a national tour in april and may.

 

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March 29th at the Vic Theater in Chicago - record release show - SOLD OUT April 10th Three Oaks, MI., at the Acorn Theater April 11th Three Oaks, MI., at the Acorn Theater April 12th: Detroit, MI @ Alvin's April 16th Milwaukee, WI., Shank Hall April 17th Phoenix, AZ @ The Rhythm Room April 19th Tucson, AZ @ Club Crawl April 20th Denver, CO @ Walnut Room April 21st Boulder, CO @ Trilogy Lounge April 25: New York, NY...at the Bowery Ballroom    www.boweryballroom.com/ April 26: Philadelphia, PA...at the Theatre of Living Arts April 27: Baltimore, MD @ Fletcher's       www.fletchersbar.com April 28: Boston, MA...at The Paradise    www.thedise.com/ May 7: Seattle, WA...at Neumo's    www.neumos.com/ May 8: Portland, OR...at the Doug Fir    www.dougfirlounge.com May 9: Mendecino, the casper inn    www.casparinn.com/ May 10: San Francisco, CA...at the Great American Music Hall    www.musichallsf.com/ May 12: Los Angeles, CA...at the Troubadour    www.troubadour.com/     JUNE  PDP TOUR DATES: Wed. 6/4 Blueberry Hill St. Louis  Fri. 6/6 Antone's, Austin, TX  Sat. 6/7  Houston, Continental club  Sun. 6/8 HOB Parish, New Orleans  Tues. 6/10 3rd & Linsy, Nashville  Wed. 6/11 Southgate House, Newport KY (across river from Cincinnati)  Frid. 6/13 Lawrence KS free show downtown June 29th: Chicago Il., PDP returns to RAVINIA!

The Poi dog pondering catalogue is now up on iTunes!!! Click here to enter the PDP iTunes music store

POI DOG PONDERING HISTORY ROUND UP

Past history round up: 1987: The original Hawai'i line up of PDP (including Abra Moore) came to the mainland and traveled across north America for a year playing on street corners for gas and food money, and camped all along the way. (Click here to see silent 8mm footage of PDP at CBGB's in 1988) 1988 - 1991: PDP re-located to Austin and released 3 records:  "Poi dog pondering", "Wishing like a mountain..." & "Volo Volo". Toured heavily in the States, Canada, Europe and Japan. 1992: PDP relocated to Chicago and developed it's big band Rock and Soul sound. 1995: PDP release "Pomegranate". 1996: PDP performs the album "Pomegranate" from start to finish with the Grant Park Symphony in Chicago's Grant Park. (Susan Voelz, Paul Mertens and Max Crawford score and arrange for the first time on this large scale).  1996:  "Electrique Plummagram" (re-mix e.p.) 1997: PDP release "Liquid White Light" - a live retrospective. 1998: PDP release "That's the Way Love Is" (re-mix e.p.) 1999: PDP release "Natural thing" 2000: PDP release the live album " Soul Sonic Orchestra"  which captures the band re-inventing itself once again. 2001: Band Front-man, Frank Orrall's interest in electronic music led him to become a member of Thievery Corporation's live band as a percussion player and singer, along with PDP percussionist El John, (which they continue to this day, when not playing with PDP). 2001:  PDP release " Sweeping Up the Cutting Room Floor"  a collection of previously unreleased studio out-takes from 1987 to 1994 2003: PDP released their 6th record "In Seed Comes Fruit". 2004: PDP release the Marco Ferrari filmed and produced DVD "Audio Visivo" detailing the present history and recording of "In Seed Comes Fruit". 2005: PDP / Chicago Sinfonietta collaboration of Dvorak's "New World Symphony". 2007: PDP / Chicago Sinfonietta collaboration mini opera "Carmen" and the composition and performance of an original score for the Brazilian silent film "Limite" by Mario Peixoto. 2008: PDP finish and prepare the new record ("7") for release. 20 plus years down the line there is a bolstered sense of history in the band now. A swagger with 2 fingers up in the air (backwards) to the "industry". It is quite apparent that PDP has always been, and ever will be in it for the love of it; creating and performing. Line up changes are par for the course. PDP is an organic entity, it changes like life does. But there is a core with strong roots, open to new ears and ready to experiment. That's what keeps it vibrant. A WHOLE LOTTA FOUNDATIONAL HISTORY: Prologue: 1984 PDP Started from a cassette of 5 songs I recorded on my brothers 4 track. Two more cassette albums followed in 1985, and then in 1986 the 1st version of PDP formed and played it's first gig at the Honolulu Arts Academy: Photo: Jean Francios Berneron But the real adventure started when we left the stage. and played on the streets. It all really began in a banyan tree in Honolulu. After an evening of playing music for spare change on the street, we climbed up onto the tree limbs with cans of Foster's lager and conjured an imaginary travel trip across the mainland where we would have adventures and make our gas and food money by street playing. We liked the sound of it so much we decided then and there to make it real. Photo: Jean Francios Berneron We sold our belongings for airline tickets, flew to California and bought an old GMC Suburban truck; loaded the accordion, marimba, tin whistle, guitars, mandolin and sleeping bags in the back,and drove up to canada,   Photo: Jean Francios Berneron down to mexican border towns and across the states playing on street corners and in front of collegecoffee houses - sleeping on hay stacks, grass fields and carpet floors, and a year later we washed up on the beach of New York city with no transmission left in the gmc.  Exhausted.   That was the end of the Hawai'i version of PDP. This experience, however, forged Poi Dog Pondering. The beginning of the AUSTIN YEARS   Texas Hotel Records offered us a contract in 1988 -  and  we relocated to Austin  to record  because we had met some of the best musicians there while traveling, and we wanted them in the band. Also,  it was easy to live on nothing in Austin. Local studio engineer Mike Stewart knew how to get a good warm sound from all the wooden instruments... really cared for the sound. We tracked it in a fist-full of days, and when the e.p. came out,  we played on the street and sold it out of a card board box. We were a self sufficient organism, knew how to sing for our supper, ready for anything, and free to cross a whole country for a single gig. We got one in NYC - opening for Hetch Hetchy. A lot of label people where there. We brought our scrap on stage and started a buzz. Soon there where six major  labels after us. We let them all take us out to dinner.  When you are used to subsisting on coffee and bread you take all the free dinners you can. We listened to their pitch and ordered  the most expensive bottles of wine on the menu. Max used to joke: "Who ever takes us to the best restaurant - that's who we sign with." I didn't want to leave Texas Hotel Records, but it was just meant to be. Managers and lawyers have a way of making sense. We had enough label interest to demand a fair contract, full of creative control. We signed with Columbia/Sony and a whirlwind began. Now we had a manager, booking agent, and a tour van named "Isabella"  (after Isabella Rosallini). We took out the van's passenger seats, put mattresses down, and laid down like sardines. There were gambling card games, typewriter clacking hammering-out new songs, people trying to read or sleep - all at once at 80 miles per hour down some interstate towards the next town, or towards someone's houseboat or farm who had invited us to spend the night after a show. Plugging our espresso machine into gas station outlets along the way, we criss-crossed the country too many times to count. Even made it to Europe a few times. Japan too. Visual artist Luke Savisky was with us now, bringing his beautiful slide and film loop projected imageries to the live shows, transforming them - making them multi-dimensional.   1989. We had blood in our hearts that flowed with the road and a desire for adventure. Dog-eared copies of "On The Road" & Woody Guthrie's "Born To Win" (along with cassettes of Dylan, the Velvet Underground, the Jazz Butcher, Al Green, Nick Drake, Penguin Cafe Orchestra, and the Pogues), were rolling around in the van with us. Camper Van Beethoven took us out on our first real tour as an opener. We called it "camper van boot camp." They had a guitar tech who changed their guitar strings, good beer back stage, played nice rooms - big rooms, they had a trailer w/ their gear in it hooked to the back of the bus... we wanted that. We also opened for Robyn Hitchcock,  that was great, we'd knock on his hotel room door after the show, armed with a  bottle of red wine for him - just to hear his stories, he even came and played on the street with us. Brilliant. Wonderful man. The heart has always been more important to me than the mind.  I wanted to talk to people's hearts - by-pass the ego. I wanted to write as honestly as I could. I wanted to make soul buoyant music. We knew what the world could do to a soul - we wanted to give people a reason to keep on keeping on. We came off the street, we knew where the life was. It was those people we were talking to. It was their hearts we sang to. We played for them. The circus of journalists mostly missed the point, thought we were neo-folk hippies 'cause we could sleep anywhere,  had acoustic instruments and dared to be exuberant  - dared to play by our own rules. We weren't hippies - we were romantic to the bohemian, wine-haggard,  caffeine-pupiled - and lusty for life. Our hero's followed their hearts. That was how we saw it - how one was supposed to live it. Love it. Embrace it... say "Yes" to the moment. We found saints in every city: Vic Chestnut & Love Tractor in Athens, Howe Gelb and John Convertino in Tucson, Arnie Saiki in NYC, Oneziem in Baton Rouge, Scotti Bolin, Patrice... Endless souls who looked after us, fed us beautiful stories, enriching the song writing. Stole liquor from an R.E.M. house party. Twice. Did shows without band members who went missing from some adventure the night before. It was always about adventure, putting ourselves out there on the road, ready to take whatever detour life brought us. It was the people we met out on the road that made it all beautiful. It was pulling over to swim in a stream 'cause you felt like it. We watched bands try so hard to win commercial radio and MTV; it looked goofy to us, so we just played ourselves. We got trapped into a few embarrassing videos, learned our lesson, decided to roll on the side of exuberance for life, and make a meal of experience. Besides, there was college radio then - it was a force. When you are following what you love - life comes to you, the world breathes with you, that's how we walked it. 1990. We rolled on under the instinct of impulse... Showing up on the David Letterman show in torn jeans, threadbare shirts, and a borrowed guitar. John, Bruce and Dave Max waking up hungover under the Eiffel tower after emptying the mini bar;  in a single night - they were broke for the rest of the tour. Playing the Montreaux Jazz fest and seeing Miles Davis' last performance there, Gil Evan's big band & Quincy Jones (conducting) were on that gig too. Playing all the work horse touring clubs: The Blue Note, Lounge Ax, the Metro, the 40 Watt, Liberty Lunch, Mississippi Nights, the I Beam, Slim's, Cotton Club, Irving Plaza, and the tiny (old) mighty 9:30 Club. Finding clothes you could sweat in, that would dry fast so you could wear 'um the next night and pack light. I had a pair of vinyl pants made, so I could wash them in a back stage sink and wear the next night. 1991. The wave of Manchester dance rock was surging and we liked it. It influenced us.  Ecstasy - I liked it... (not a lot - just enough). Things were on the move musically in the world, There was fresh inspiration now, we started broadening our sound. We had our own discoteque on the bus ("the star kiss lounge") on the Volo Volo tour. Something else was emerging. 1992. Chicago was becoming home base. This was the beginning of the end of the Austin years. Everyone was a bit worn from constant touring, and things were stirring at Sony - we were not  the "next big thing" everyone had hoped up at Black Rock. They released us from contract in '93. We decided rather than sign with another label, to go fully independent and start our own. Thus beginning the Chicago years, but that, my friend, is a whole 'nuther story, and would require another bottle of wine. We'll pick that story up on the 20 year mark of this ever morphing organism called Poi. 'Til the next time, with love in our hearts for all those who have listened, and gratitude for those who let us sleep on their floors, Aloha nui loa, Frank Orrall & Poi Dog Pondering ============= PART 2: THE CHICAGO EFLUORESCENCE (coming soon...) Photo: Matt Carmicael Archives: