Life is fragile so enjoy every sandwich.
On September 2nd 2017, my ObamaCare kicked in for exactly one month, so I went to the Atlantic Terminal Mall in Brooklyn to see the optometrist because my eyes were hurting and my glasses weren’t working.
Speed up 1 week and I’m at home re-learning to walk after emergency brain surgery to remove a tumor I had no idea about, that was in there for at least 5 years, measuring 6 centimeters wide. Speed up 1 month and I’m having a seizure at IKEA while I’m recuperating; speed up 2 and I’m back playing guitar with my band Uncivilized.
WTF?
That’s all pretty long-winded and crazy, and more than you need to know, etc., but — yeah — I have/has/had a rare brain cancer, and things are very different now. (The nomenclature totally depends on your perspective and on my particular biopsy, but, to be scientific: an oligodendroglioma tumor was resected to “99%”.) I have a relatively good pathology, however, it may shorten my life, and I may have some radiation and chemo coming at some point down the line (depending on how you look at things); but definitely MRIs every 3–6 months.
I don’t need to wear my glasses anymore — because the tumor was pushing on my optical nerve before the operation — so I don’t quite look like a hipster anymore, even though I am one.
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In 2015, Ben Ratliff of The New York Times showed up unannounced at one of our shows (I found out later via email). So, he comes back a week later to our residency at a bar in Bushwick (no cover charge) and writes a relatively kind and affectionate piece about my group — renamed “Uncivilized” for the occasion after my first album and the ex-environmentalist Paul Kingsnorth — but the article doesn’t mention that the show was at a burlesque bar, for free, and that I lost money. See, I’ve been working a day job writing recycling reports and literally sorting people’s trash (something called a “waste audit”—look it up) for the last 6 years for a company in Harlem. I’m trying to get out of the corporate environmental field just like Kingsnorth has (too much “greenwashing”—look that up too!), but who knows when it will happen with two kids under two. BUT, I am writing a book about guitar chords, and I am writing this for you right now.
Anyways, somehow I can still play and write music, and I am seeing and hearing things differently since the surgery, no joke. (These days brain surgery utilizes technology which attempts to keep memory in tact, so I can even remember most of the music I was writing before the surgery.)
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We presented an “Uncivilized Plays Twin Peaks” show on the 29th of October, 2017 (two months after brain surgery) at the world music pub Barbès in Park Slope, Brooklyn and it was emotional. We played loose renderings of some classic Twin Peaks anthems, and a bunch of these things called “STOMPS” (stylized in all caps) that I wrote in 2016 and 2017. Some of them are hard to play and involve a mixture of four-on-the-floor grit with fast metric modulations against bluesy melodies (I guess) which are referential to doom metal; Frank Zappa’s freak-jazz; and the Stomp song form from New Orleans—some sort of post-postmodern, Experimental Americana, or whatever. WNYU was there on a whim and recorded it all, playing bits on the radio a few days later (a sort of field recording). I’ve had lots of people questioning why I keep playing after having my skull opened up, but this recording is living proof of my post-surgery return.
The first track is epic, complete with a ramble through John Fahey’s arrangement of Good King Wenceslas (which we played previously at a Fahey tribute show)—my guitar takes a minute to get in tune, and that sort of summarizes the rawness that we’re going for. Nick Jozwiak sounds as prodigious as Jaco on the upright, bringing some monster chops in an unplanned Cadenza after the main theme (he used to play cello for us, and he’s a force there too). Rachel Housle finds the middle ground between punk, funk and Jackie McLean swing (she’s from Hartford). Casey Berman led the way with his reaching clarinet gymnastics on the classic Peaks joint “Audrey’s Dance”. Kyle Wilson is bending notes on the tenor sax like a slide guitar, dropping west-coast cool, and hitting threes from afar (hear him trade bebop rips with me on “Shelby”). Levon Henry takes a heart-wrenching 30-second alto sax solo on “The Nightingale” full of raw twists and turns— ‘nuff said. Sound Designer Dominic Mekky played organ for the gig, displaying single-line fireworks and post-apocalyptic textures with a delay pedal (check out his dark harmonies on the slide guitar outro of “Just Friends”). Julian Cubillos plays the famous palm-muted reverb guitar on the intro (my tone is dry against his) and is the less-jazzy, never-plays-a-wrong note Rock Guitar counter to my own playing. And last but not least, Tristan Cooley’s unhinged bebop flute is the cherry on the top, pushing those classic Peaks melodies into those poignant uppers. Ivy Meissner is featured throwing down some honeyed vocals on three tracks (a new thing for Uncivilized), as well as the closest thing we will probably get to a jam band on Stevie Nicks’ “Races are Run” (from the album Buckingham Nicks, pre-Fleetwood Mac, which helped me heal after surgery). The lyrics are heartbreakingly beautiful and fit for Ivy’s blues-drenched pop sensibilities. That album has an acoustic version of John Lewis’ Modern Jazz Quartet masterpiece “Django” on side 2, which sounds oddly Twin Peaks–ian, except in our version someone plays a double-diminished chord (probably me) where it should be a single! Somehow it’s all O.K., and things came together in a beautiful, strange way that night (a la Peaks). I’m happy that someone recorded it, and happy to move on.
We’re lucky that the team at Barbès allows us to bill things as “Uncivilized Plays Twin Peaks” without playing much of that music at all, plus I love the campy Twin Peaks Badalementi/Lynch soundtrack. I don’t really see the point of a record label in this digital age, so we’ve remastered this twice and it’s being dispersed through my ASCAP publishing company UNCIV MUSIC (not a label, perse—more of a guerrilla distribution organism) via Bandcamp on my 30th birthday (YOLO) and also streamable in full (like an old record, and to reduce the carbon emissions of the “release”) at www.UncivilizedPlaysPeaks.com—with hand-stamped, re-claimed album t shirts available through Bandcamp as well. The recent third season reboot “The Return” (eerily fitting this here story) was perfectly/terribly violent and amazing; the cover art of our album (digital smear scans of torn paper and textiles by high school friend J’ai Lee Egna) references the weird portal that eats people in New York City from the show—you know the one?
PURCHASE A DOWNLOAD: http://bit.ly/2H6ABmI
Cheers to the next phase of Uncivilized, whatever that may be.
— Tom, aka Uncivilized
P.S.
The album is the exact set we played at Barbès in Brooklyn on October 29, 2017—you can even hear the guy boot up the recording device after our break at the beginning of “Audrey’s Dance” (he misses the very beginning of the intro on that song but everything else is there, for better or worse). It is dedicated to my wife CJ and daughter Nina Eames for their unending support and sacrifice during this period, with infinite thanks as well to my immediate family Judy, Sasha, Emily, Mike, Big T, Randy, and niece/nephew Maggie & Jackson, as well as many friends and other dwellers who have supported me through all this.
P.P.S. GJ Gerner is a constant inspiration as we both had right frontal-lobe tumors at age 29. They found a much more complicated pathology for his cancer, and he is fighting a difficult battle. His brother created a platform to donate towards brain cancer research (called #StacheStrong). Please consider donating toward brain cancer research here: https://www.stachestrong.com/.