12.12.05 Hotel Cafe

Here are a few numbers from the show at the Hotel Cafe this weekend. We had a lot of photos being taken but I haven't seen them yet, so I'll put some up when I get them. We had a great show, a really big crowd and a lot of love... rock and roll. Thank you to everyone that was there.

click here to listen.

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11.09.05 Vegas

This is what it felt like playing on the roof of the casino in November. Cold. Heat lamps. Lots of neon.

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09.15.05

In September I see boots before

the first rain, vast migrant flocks
flying before the last late sunset
threatens: a strange, nervous pox
which might never find a certain cure
where
the stricken fly in nervous flocks
In September I can't focus, I

am estranged, staring out
at the passional sky so proud
to be falling so many
dreams happily dying and by
each day these old colors flushing out.
Is that not the way, in September

of all things answering to
love? To be sudden, elegant
and trampled like the fallen truth
in September when time is so fast
and every moment is the last

moment of summer

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08.15.05 Write More Songs

The last days of summer in Los Angeles. It's been good to be back.

I have two songs that just made it on a to an Indie movie directed by my friend Ryan Byrne, details to follow.

I'm back in the studio with my friend Babyhead, working on I'm the Gun and Always a Circle.
I'm also sitting in at Room 5 tonight with some friends (Joel Eckels, Jay Nash and Shane Alexander), come by if you're in the area. We're starting at 8pm.

Permanent Friday Night is now available on iTunes .

That's nice.

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07.14.05 London Tragedy = Hope

London is just a gorgeous city, plain and simple. This is a fact.



Being a lover of distant places, my whole experience there was sort of bittersweet because of course it wasn't about me at all. The day after I got there, some bombs went off on the Underground and on a bus, and the whole city went into a state of shock. There was no way to get around the city, all the means of transportation had been shut down, and the show that I had come to do was cancelled because there would have been no one there. Suddenly, my whole agenda as a performer and a songwriter was made to seem very petty, and I was glad to be alive. I wrote a lot of lyrics, and spent some time exploring what is important to me. This ancient, vibrant, aesthetic masterpiece of a city was wounded and I could do nothing. I don't know what I expected to happen, but in the end what I remember is the kindness of everyone I met.

I'm thinking of the city
with its arms around the river
with no end and no beginning

like a chain of stars
It's trying to tell me something
about the light between two lovers
the light that's on your face
all you have to do
shine on for me
if you can't afford to sleep

I'll be the push that brings you back
it's Saturday
and there's something in the air
I don't believe that we are lost
I don't believe that we are lost

And I took a lot of pictures. That first day of the tragedy when the streets were swollen with sad faces and the sun came out in the afternoon I was mesmerized, taking pictures of all the beauty I could fit onto a camera lense. The flowers, the facades, the trees, the monuments - cathedrals tucked away like toy houses, and everywhere the proud and worn face of centuries. I am completely in love with this city.

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06.13.05 NXNE in Toronto and the House of Blues

It was another one of those weekends. It went by in a flash of lights and humidity, the first Spring weather in Toronto and everyone was out in the streets. A beautiful city, alive in ways that we don't see in LA. The streets are packed and there are trams and cobblestones and the whole place has that lived-in feeling like a pair of jeans or an old fireplace.

Below is the Canadian incarnation of Krister Axel, from right - Paul Sheehan / drums, Murray Foster / bass, Alo Paul's girlfriend (who gave emotional support), Mike Freas and I. Lavinia was with us and she took the picture.

We flew in on Friday, practiced Saturday afternoon and performed that night. It was truly inspiring the way we were received. the Canadians we met were all really cool and it was great to have so many people tell us that they really connected with the music. We laughed a lot this weekend. We made many new friends.

Toronto has a pretty unique sense of humor, almost everyone we met had us cracking up. I made some good contacts and I hope to get back over there soon. Coming back was sort of intense because my flight into LAX was delayed and I made it to the House of Blues for my show just a few minutes before Matty D, Mike Forrester and Mike Freas were going to figure out something to play without me.

It felt really good to park the car, walk right up and hit a nice 30 minute set. A good crowd, and I always love playing in the Foundation Room. I saw my friend Curtis Peoples who was there with Josh Kelly in the main room, Keaton Simons was on the bill and we traded cds. I love Can of Jam events, there's always a family vibe. See you at the beach in Hermosa!

be well

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06.02.05 Hotel Cafe Release Party

This was a perfect night.

photo by Timothy Norris


Everyone was there.

It was like a family reunion. The energy of the crowd was electric and
everyone was singing along to the point where I thought I was hearing voices.

Check out this version on my new song I'm the Gun - this is where we had people screaming so loud they got picked
up in the mix from the onstage microphones that were facing the other way...

I'm the Gun

For those of you that aren't musicians, it is rare that you actually hear the crowd in a live recording
unless you specifically put a microphone out in the crowd. In this case, everyone was so loud that
that it didn't matter where the microphone was. :)




It was an honor to share the stage with Sally Jaye, Kyler England, LOONER and Jay Nash.

A special thanks to all the guys in my band:

Matt Delvecchio - bass, vocals
Mike Forrester - drums
Mike Freas - guitar
The Mighty Chet Dixon - harmonica, vocals
Curtis Byrd - drums

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05.17.05 Hermosa Beach, San Diego and Los Angeles

They party all day in Hermosa. For real. This was my best weekend ever.

Highlights

- my amazing girlfriend Lavinia who won't let me take a picture of her

- Selling out of cds in San Diego (always a good feeling)

- Accepting my songwriting award at St. Elmos Village for Ordinary

I submitted for a songwriting competition, and got invited to accept this award on the day after my birthday.

The St. Elmos Village / OG3 Records / Simply Songwriting Music Award. A show, a paperweight, and a cash prize. It was a great success, I felt really good about my set and the place was sort of magic. It was really warm, not just the sunshine but the people. Everyone should know about this place, it's a center for creativity and positivity and they gave me this honor.

The whole weekend was a hit, from the 2 sets at the Lighthouse in Hermosa Beach to Sunday morning in San Diego and the afternoon in Los Angeles. The cds are selling. I love it. The guys in the band are so cool, we're just having a good time and working it out. We have a sweet sound, with Chet on harmonica singing harmonies with Matty D on bass and Mike Freas on guitar. Forrester was on vacation this weekend. Curtis Byrd played drums with us at the Lighthouse. Yeah.

06.02.2005 at the Hotel Cafe

Krister Axel - CD Release for Permanent Friday Night

w/ LOONER, Sally Jaye, Kyler England and Jay Nash

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05.08.05 Summer Begins

5 dates. Nashville, Fayetteville, Columbia, Kansas City, Fayetteville. Missouri and Arkansas. Cornbread country.

This is what the sunsets look like.

For me it was like stepping outside myself. Life unplugged. I was up all night, no sleep before we left and then it was over. Time became road signs and gas prices and snack food decisions. Highway coffee, my favorite. I wrote a few poems out there. Getting ready to publish my first poetry manuscript.

I will wear it so well when I
make it into the sunlight.
Cold red lights
a ghost

in the room. singing
It's a hard love
sketching these thoughts
at midnight in Nashville
the smoke and the voices
laying over me like

old brown paper

krister axel | April 23, 2005

It was good to be on the road with my friends Zoe and Angel, and their little dog Ruby. We drove probably 5000 miles in 10 days. I sold a surprising amount of t-shirts and had a lot of fun playing solo, especially at this record store on Fayetteville called Sound Warehouse, I just brought my guitar and played on a bar stool in the middle of the store. That's what songwriting is all about, I felt like I was selling apples at a fruit stand. I walked into that place and the first thing he said was 'I have some vodka' so I could tell he was a friendly guy. He mixed me up a stoli and pop and I got to feeling pretty comfortable. A piano would have been way too loud for that little place so the guitar was perfect. Nice and simple.

This is the golf course we got to have our way with because our friend works there. Arkansas is beautiful. We had it all to ourselves because it was closed that day. We drove around in golf carts drinking beer.

Fayetteville was my favorite because the people there are so cool, I made some good friends out there. Thanks Ryan!

I've got the Permanent Friday Night release scheduled for June 2nd at the Hotel Cafe, and I'll be getting back out on the road again pretty soon. Next weekend I'm in Hermosa Beach, and then San Diego in the morning and Los Angeles in the afternoon... I will be accepting a songwriting award for my song Ordinary. In a few more weeks, I'll be in Toronto, showcasing at the North by Northeast Music Festival.

enjoy the summer

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04.10.05 The Knitting Factory

It's just a great stage, it reminds me of !st Ave in Minneapolis, the second tier with black steel handrails and very sparse lighting. Mysterious.

I didn't know we were playing in the main room until just before we started, and it felt great to have such sweet sound. We had space, we had eyes, we had sound. We had a reason.

The album goes out for printing on Monday, and I've got some amazing musicians on stage with me at my shows now. I started out playing solo at Highland Grounds and now I'm playing my songs with a 6-piece band at the Knitting Factory. I am blessed.

The Spring tour is booked except for a few dates, I'll be all over the US, mostly the Southeast and the West Coast. Some solo shows, some stripped-down band stuff. We'll just have to wait and see. The right things always happen at the right times.

This piece of verse is featured in the layout of Permanent Friday Night, which is taken from a poem I wrote to a friend of mine about two years ago. I spent a lot of time with with my good friend Timothy Norris working on the layout for this album, and I had a whole biography I wanted to put on the panel that I'm using for this poem. You know, 'I first had an idea for this album bla bla bla...' but I figured I'd spare y'all the details and get down to what I really mean.

be glad for that precious pain
there is poetry under your skin;

you are aware
of the human tragedy - that we fall
madly through time
towards death
and truth
in the span of 30,000 sunsets
with only love to guide us

photo by Lucinda Wedge

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03.20.05 The Hotel Cafe

All right. This was pretty serious. Background: 2 years ago I became very good friends with Sally and Joel from Paper Sun. I played with them in their band for about a year, and it was an amazing time. We sang some of the tightest 4-part harmonies you'll ever hear.

Fast forward to present time - we have continued to develop separate projects, and this was our first time on a bill together in some time. Some of my regular band members were out in Austin this past weekend, so I had to scrounge up a line-up sort of last minute and it was entirely dope. Jeramy Gritter on guitar - holy shit. Jazz vibe, great ear, knows exactly what time it is. Adam Marcello - drums, this guy is a legend in the making. The Mighty Chet Dixon - harmonica, backup vocals - the voice of Louisiana. Mike Forrester, percussion (with the sweet touch). Marc Regan, standup bass like a truck full of molasses. I loved this show so much, I am posting the mp3s right here so that everyone can hear how cool it was.

We played 5 songs in 40 minutes. It was beautiful. There's something about freedom, within music especially, that just gains momentum so unpredictably. I felt that on Sunday, like some big iron pendulum swinging across the bar, across this lobby of a forgotten hotel. I was among my own, these are the people I love. Jeramy said it himself, "this is what happens when we get together.'

You see that? At 6pm on Sunday, I didn't even know who was playing. At 9pm, we had just finished our set. It was a gift.

photo by Timothy Norris

The songs

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03.11.05 From Los Angeles, to New York, to San Francisco and back

New York is a hell of a town. I loved it. Lavinia came with me, we stayed on the upper east side and walked through the Gates in central park - reminding me of a time in the 80's when I was a kid in Paris the same guy Christo wrapped up the Pont du Neuf in brown paper...

It was cold and full of taxis and after the show at Opaline we walked down the street to the Avenue A bar and drank too much whiskey the way you do when you know that someone else is driving... and your girl climbs onto your lap in the back of the cab on the way back to the hotel's 19th floor and you think to yourself, this is better than the movies... and then 3am finds you staring at the Queensboro bridge like a big truck outside the window -

and as long as my heart still beats I am alive in these places, where the sun never shines through completely and the shadows look like nothing next to the dark heart of the city.

You can wake up and be at the airport in an hour, waving a cup of coffee at the navy-blue shoes on the tarmac and get off in Oakland next to Laura Dern.

I sang for the airport traffic, sang for the sky-caps and Laura Dern who wouldn't look at me but my ride came first so I never saw her face and it was a hot one that Sunday in March with the taste of a New York latte still in my mouth... and the Hotel Utah, my sister's proud face and my old friends Carl and Chad... My rocker friends from Los Angeles (Janet Robin, Jen Alpert, Saucy Monky) shared the stage with me and it was a home away from home. My friend Jenni took care of us in her house by the ocean and we felt loved. Two down.

We drove home in the mini-van, with breakfast bagel sandwiches and award-winning Russian coffee from a guy named Doug with a shop near Golden Gate park. Los Angeles was waiting for us like a spider's web where we drove around in circles dropping off guitars and we got stuck right in the middle, by the time I got home I had just enough time to get to Room 5 for my show with Chris Pierce and Joe Purdy and Gabriel Mann. Three down.

Two days later, we are out in Santa Monica where we can smell the ocean and it's a beautiful night, a woman buys me a drink before she even hears me play and we sound better than maybe ever... And the song I had written 4 hours before the gig was the best thing we played that night and it occurs to me that I love my Wurlitzer exactly where it is, waiting for me when I get home... and my voice sounds like honey and razor blades and I can't stop singing my own song back to myself before I go to sleep.

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02.23.05

The Viper Room was pretty heavy. Lots of twisting and dancing and artificial smoke. It was as an occasion, to look out at the faces and know the best is yet to come. It rained like it was the end of the world that night, and you still couldn't see through the thick of it.Well done.

I am booking some great shows for this Spring. The future is bright.

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02.19.05

Only a few more weeks and I'll have the album done. I can't even believe it.

It has been, no joke, almost 2 years since I started this thing. I can't possibly say how happy it makes me to have this album almost finished.

Matt Delvecchio has been an amazing help.

All the other guys in my band - Bart Ryan, Chet Dixon, Mike Forrester, Mike Freas, you guys rock. Stsy tuned for more news as it comes in. Right now, I've got the Viper Room to look forward to and in two more weeks I'll be in New York City!

talk to you later

k