Uke of Spaces Corners

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Uke of Spaces Corners

POSTED: Friday, March 20, 2009, 2:00 PM

Filed Under: Music

Standard tuning was out of the question.

Uke of Spaces Corners mainman Dan Beckman says the people he meets on tour inspires him even more than the bands, so he'll definitely appreciate this Songwriters Showcase at the Philadelphia Institute for Advanced Study. The palatial fake-real university of Port Fishington and the young thinkers and scholars who inhabit it are one of the most inspiring lots in town, and the evening will also hook Beckman up with the left sideways pop of locals Lux Perpetua and I Begged, as well as the art of the Institute's current resident-on-loan, Germany's Jana Kreisl.

The Uke quintet will include everything from sax and French horn to good old-fashioned guitar 'n' keyboard, sounding a bit like an all-grown-up version of the non-standard tunings and radio fuzz symphonies Beckman used to pen as a child.

Uke of Spaces Corners plays Sunday at the PIFAS Songwriters Showcase at 8 p.m. Their fifth album, Flowers in the Night, will be released by Corleone Records next month.

After the break, a quick conversation with Daniel Beckman of Uke of Spaces Corners.

His musical upbringing

I began playing music in my bedroom while living with my parents at the age of 12, roughly 20 years ago, by removing the smallest strings on an acoustic guitar, and playing it like bass as a way to simplify the process of sound making. Standard tuning was out of the question. I recorded multiple tracks of sound on a small handheld cassette recorder, layering them and playing them back live in the room with various stereos, as a means to create a multitrack recording effect. I would often scratch records to make loops, and play AM radio fuzz, singing along to this wall of sound. Other instruments used were notebook drum pads, tin cans, harmonicas keyboards and amplified voice.

With this sonic pallet I was able to temporarily escape the mundane existences of growing up in a town of 450 people. I have been making music ever since.

The band name

I picked up the name Uke of Phillips while living in southern Minneapolis in 1996, without giving it much thought. The Uke part stood for a truncated duke, a headless figure head' The 'Phillips' part was added because I was living in the Phillips neighborhood at the time, which was named after the late Socialist Wendall Phillips.

In 2005 I changed the name to Uke of Spaces Corners, mostly to avoid being confused with the great songwriter/poet Utah Phillips, but also because I no longer lived in the Phillips neighborhood.

The Village of Spaces Corners is a small rural community just north of Pittsburgh. On long drives through those enchanted hills on several different foggy nights I found solace and comfort passing through this mysterious village, in a similar way that one might find comfort, solace and peace in the depths of a corner.

His live band

Uke of Spaces Corners is equipped with a revolving door of sorts. Currently the band consists of...

Amy Moon Offermann-Sims: processed keyboards and voice.
Dan B: electro-acoustic guitar and voice.
Ben Grubb: mandolin, percussion, sax, and vocals.
Caleb Gamble: electric guitar, percussion, vocals and French horn.

Amy and I are the primary songwriters in the group although there are an infinite amount of forces at play here, which influence our lives and consequently the music that we create.
When new musicians inter into the fold the sound we make is greatly influenced, and we are allowed to grow together, influencing and altering the language that we create together.

Philly

I began playing shows in Philly roughly 6 years ago, mostly in West Philly. Eventually local musicians Johnny 'Cornwawg' Fritz, Jimmy Cousins and Dale of Need New Body invited me to play at show at a wherehouse space in South Philly, known as Saturn Mountain, I believe. This lead me to meeting a songwriter named Matt Gibson, who offered to set us up a show in either South or North Philly.

Being into spaces and how people occupy space, I like to have my ear to the ground about DIY and underground performance spaces around the country. PIFAS is one of those names you hear about all over the place. It is revered in the underground music scene as a great place to come together and hear and see good art and music.

It has a good reputation, so naturally when Matt asked if I'd like to play PIFAS I said yes of course.

Sun., March 22, 8 p.m., donations only, 1712 N. Second St., pifas.net.

Ruth

Posted 2009-03-28 01:23:52

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Featuring everything from event roundups to concert reviews and sex talk, City Paper's Critical Mass is a space for off-the-wall coverage of Philly's A&E scene.

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