by Traci Nubalophotos by Jami Mills
rez Magazine - April, 2012
Chemistry.
Wikipedia: “chemistry is concerned with atoms and their interactions with other atoms”. But the science of chemistry also tells us that when certain substances come together under certain circumstances the result can be explosive - literally. It’s a fitting description for the fireworks that take place in the Second Life live music laboratory when Mulder Watts and Voodoo Shilton take the stage together.
Each is a definitive solo artist in his own right. Seeing either name in Search sends me to the teleport button post haste. And on the rare occasion when they are going to dual-stream onstage - fuggeddaboudit - I’m there! When Watts and Shilton are playing together the musical chemistry can be both volatile and magical. The packed houses in music venues everywhere across the grid will attest to that.
My friend GarGraVarr Rau, owner of The Source (one of SL’s premiere music venues) approached me with a suggestion that I consider doing a story on Mulder and Shilton. Gar (as his many, many friends call him) has been presenting both performers in his club regularly since late 2011. He helped put these guys on the map and seems to get into continuing to help them as they move up the success ladder of the SL music scene. Thanks, Gar!
Mulder She Wrote
He tells me that he’s 38 years old and makes his home in the Twin Cities area of Minneapolis. I’m thinking that maybe he just stops there to pay the rent once a month - it looks to me like he might actually live on YouTube. Mulder Watts has one of the best collections of performance videos that I have encountered among inworld performers, if one factors in both quality and quantity. There are a bunch of them - some with Mulder playing live on-camera - and some with his beautifully-recorded songs gracing either still photo slideshows or static visuals. And there are several with one Voodoo Shilton, who himself has a major collection of videos online. This treasure-trove of visuals was my starting point.
In some ways Mulder is the quintessential singer/songwriter if you’re interested in straight-ahead excellence in craft. The songwriting and performance quality is first-rate across the board, with a growing catalog of superb videos being viewed and listened to globally.
On “Fool’s Gold” we are treated to that powerful Mulder voice in a closely-mic’ed recording situation. He sings each line with emotion and clarity, the voice laid on top of a chugging tremolo guitar.Another great exposition of Watts’ singing acumen is displayed on “Just Get By” which features a great raw-and-nasty guitar part behind those powerful pipes.
After watching videos until my eyes looked like a chihuahua’s I decided to interview both Mulder and Shilton. I found each to be in his own way fascinating and very interesting to talk to. For this reason I have decided to let them do most of the talking in this piece. Mulder and I sat down together and I asked him about his musical background.
Mulder Watts: I started out as a drummer and then took up piano. Eventually friends would leave guitars at my place and I picked that up. I started writing at an early age, but most of my RL live playing has been as a sideman playing keyboards. But I've always done a lot of demos at home and eventually started putting more of my own stuff out there. SL has been good for stepping out and doing more of that.
Traci Nubalo: Was your guitar welcome at home growing up?
MW: Oh yeah, my folks were and still are as supportive as one can ask. They put up with loud drums at any given point in the day. The guitar was probably a nice relief to that thunder.
TN: *smile* What kinds of bands were you in?
MW: My first band was in high school, mainly a good friend and I from then. We wrote a lot and had a few gigs and I learned a lot from that. In my early 20's I played keyboards in a very theatrical band, kind of a Peter Gabriel meets Nine Inch Nails meets Pink Floyd thing. It was an interesting time and I learned the importance of atmosphere from that group. As an adult I've done stuff for more the singer/songwriter types.
TN: Awesome. When and how did you find SL?MW: Around 2006 Duran Duran were talking in interviews about how they were going to do shows in this virtual world called Second Life. So I checked it out. I always liked video games so it sounded like a fun thing. I don't think they ever did a show in SL but I believe they have a sim inworld here. It took me a bit to decide to do shows myself in here but I'm glad that it got rolling.
TN: What kind of act did you bring to SL back then?
MW: I think I started to play here in about 2008. I played at Voodoo Shilton’s "Catcher In The Pie" which was a fun place and in looking back the timeline leads to meeting Lingual Markus and Gar and some others I'm still in touch with. The show was kind of the same format as now: singing, and playing guitar or piano. I keep trying out new songs but there are still a few pieces from back then I'll bring out.
TN: Excellent. You seem to have led us right into Voodoo Shilton. It must be fun to jam with him. He’s a guitarist just as good as you but in a totally different style.
MW: He was a big part of getting me going on SL musically and still is. He's a true guitar player; I couldn't imagine playing as well as he does. When we do the dual shows he brings a higher level of credibility to the musicianship for the tunes. I grow a lot musically by listening to him and it pushes me to learn more chords.
TN: Mulder, I’ve been on your YouTube channel recently. There’s one I really like; it has a superb guitar solo - “Dime A Dozen”. What’s behind that song?
MW: Thanks! It took a few takes to get that solo going. I finally turned the wahwah pedal on and it seemed to do something. As far as the song, I was thinking of images I'd been seeing at that time in the news. The tsunami had just happened in Japan, which lead to the line about an “old man holding his head at the floodline”. I started thinking of other events like that that can change a person's life instantly, during the life of a soldier, etc. So in looking at images I wondered what their stories would be. I saw a common thread among all these folks: I imagined they would all be wanting to get home. Or to find a home.
TN: Wow. Great imagery in that one. You also have several excellent YouTube clips with Voo. “Calamanda’s Broken Watch” is one of my faves.
MW: Thanks. It's one of my oldest songs and it keeps hanging around the songbook. That one fits Voo's style so well.
TN: By the way, I love how Voo begins “Calamanda” in an interesting related mode with an F# note on the guitar. I plan to ask him about that.
MW: Totally. That's what Voo does; he finds interesting scales and theories behind the song. He'll explain what key and scale type the songs are in and I'll have had no idea.
TN: So what's next for you? You already play the best rooms in SL; you're taping great pieces for YouTube...
MW: I do feel pretty lucky knowing Gar at The Source, Gmetal and Thea at Ground Zero and of course Lingual at The Roof. They give a great home for folks who wanna play a few tunes to whoever wants to listen. I think that's what is next for me, the next song, or the next recording. Trying to bring something new to the writing process. Trying to get better at playing and singing and hoping those who lend an ear go away feeling entertained. It's a simple approach but one that keeps getting me up in the morning.
That Voodoo That You Do
It’s the laugh that really tickles me. Well, that and the fact that I’m talking to one of those rare musicians who seems to understand, and can intelligently discuss, the arcane wheels-within-wheels machinations of musical theory. Voodoo Shilton is also one of those extraordinary modern players who prefers to exclusively play nylon strings. This gives his sound a significant first layer of authenticity. This is an important thing for Voo because his solo set focuses on pieces that represent a number of authentic genres: gypsy jazz, finger style, flamenco and several others. And he approaches each of them with an impeccable loyalty to the original forms and with maximum charm and flair.
An example of this authentic styling: at one of Voo’s live sets he announced a Paco De Lucia number called “Between Two Waters”. He proceeded to tear the house up with a massively passionate and complex solo in which his plucked attack was so fierce that I was forced to turn down the volume on my Bose noise-reduction headphones. He chuckled again in a voice both soft and expressive; a friendly, welcoming sound. And then proceeded to destroy the room musically.One of his stronger suits is his ability to play gypsy jazz. On this night he was so spot on that it dawned on me that if Django Reinhardt had possessed all ten fingers, he might have sounded something like Voodoo Shilton at his peak.
Seeing Voodoo live and on the solo stage is like taking a tour through a historical exhibition of jazz/swing acoustic guitar styles. That same evening he graced his audience with an original flamenco composition called “Stately Dance” which could easily pass for the backing tracks on one of Springsteen’s southwest USA yarns.
One endearing thing about Shilton’s live persona is that he truly has a good time doing his job. In the middle of a solo he’s known to shout “Here we go” and kick the action up another few notches. And his version of “Voodoo Child” would be something to write home about - if anybody wrote to anybody anymore.
Shilton then devoted the final minutes of his set to an inventive and accurate reading of Chick Corea’s syncopation-dusted composition “Spain”. The piece was packed with gorgeous fast-yet-precise solo moves and brought the house down. After his set I was able to ask Voodoo a few questions similar to those I’d asked Mulder a night earlier.
** ** **
Traci Nubalo: May I ask your age?
Voodoo Shilton: I'm 36.
TN: Where do you stream from?
VS: I'm from New Jersey, not far from NYC. Well, I haven't lived in Jersey that long. I've lived all over. My mother is from Chile in South America (my name is Juan in RL). That’s where the latin influence comes from.
TN: How was it for you growing up? Was your music accepted by the family at home?
VS: Oh sure. Before I discovered guitar my instruments consisted of a Casio keyboard. It was my mother's idea that I take a guitar class though. And my father was always a classical guitar aficionado as well. I think he was less supportive when I grew my hair long and started playing electric guitar. But he came around.
TN: Your latin heritage, is this where you got the nylon stringed guitar influence?
VS: Right, my first guitar was nylon. But then I did a full spectrum of instruments and styles: electric, acoustic, and others and then came home to nylon. Even on nylon strings I can't seem to stick to one style.
TN: I really enjoy your work on YouTube. “Calamanda’s Broken Watch” - quite an impressive performance on that one.
VS: Thanks. That's a great tune of Mulder’s. We've really found an intuitive mesh on that tune. And also on “Broken Carousel”; we usually play them back to back.
TN: Ahhhh.
VS: I’m such a big fan of his songwriting. That’s part of why we work so well. I know his songs well; not just as a performer but as a fan too.
TN: I think that the tightness between you guys shows very well in your performances together.
VS: He is really the best songwriter in SL in my opinion; and he’s very much out of the public's view. Has been for a while. He's not a big self promoter. He wins you over by just doing his thing. I’m constantly getting the word out about Mulder because I think his shows should be packed wall to wall.
TN: Were you raised on the radio as many were?
VS: You know, oddly I discovered music a little later. I just had ambient latin music around. My mother listened to a lot of South American folk music when I was young. She plays guitar herself and can still do some fancy strumming things that I don't quite know how to duplicate. My father admired and studied classical guitar as well. It was sort of just magic that I ended up with similar tastes since we didn't talk about it much when I was young. But yes, I inherited the old classical guitar that was under the bed as my first guitar.TN: Lucky you. Nylon strings. I had to shred my hands on metal strings to get my calluses.
VS: I did awful things to my hands, too. At one point I restrung my guitar with steel strings and even an electric bass string. Then that guitar was lost when I was robbed. I was sixteen and my stuff was robbed from the minivan.
TN: Oh no.
VS: It was an educational experience in not being attached to material things. Music is very meditative for me, too. Absolutely
TN: How zen of you, Voo. So - musically - how did you get started with bands, performing, etc.?
VS: Well, of course I did the obligatory high school rock jam thing. Then in college I really discovered the styles that would make the foundation of what I do today. And that is jazz, bossa nova, and interestingly, Indian music. I played in a few different groups in college but always some kind of jazz or world music.
TN: Interesting.
VS: Yes. I was also in a duo for years with my best friend on tabla - north Indian drums. We performed a great deal of original Indian fusion music.
TN: So at last night’s solo gig I caught something...
VS: Oh yeah? What's that?
TN: I noticed that you not only played a lot of different styles (as you had told me that you would). But each approach was precise and true to that form; accurate and authentic, in other words. wtf? LOL
VS: Hahahha! There are definitely different tones of voice to each style, but also some commonalities too. Take for example two things that seem different on the surface, like funk and gypsy jazz. Both styles employ "off" notes to grab the ear; they both use syncopation and chromaticism to play. Both are really playful styles.
TN: Excellent observation. I also noticed something on YouTube; on "Calamanda’s Broken Watch".
VS: Yes, with Mulder.
TN: Right. The song seems to be in B minor.
VS: Correct.
TN: Your guitar enters on an F# note, through the back door, as it were. I loved that.
VS: Hehe. Well, the song has a overtone of F# phrygian dominant which comes in all the way in the second part, "Broken Carousel". That's where it has an almost “flamenco” feel.
TN: Yes, it seems to cross over some musical turf.
VS: Yes. That sound is fun to work with. I think in “Calamanda” I go between bluesy, jazzy melodies to that sort of phrygian dominant Spanish feel.
TN: Jerry Garcia was very adept at slipping in and out of the various modalities. But it's a technique that many players only find accidentally while soloing. I love that you have such a grasp of the mechanics of the chordings and the related modalities.
VS: Oh, I totally geek out on music theory.
TN: Yes, Mulder told me that about you.
VS: If I let myself I could ramble about all the modes and things.
TN: Let’s go in this direction: how did you find SL, YouTube and Mulder?
VS: Well I started SL ages ago, six years now. Originally my main motivation in SL was as a builder. I've been a builder and designer in SL for years. Mulder and I met before he was even a performer. I hate to take credit for it but I actually persuaded him to start performing in SL. I had heard his music on recordings and was really impressed. A few years ago I had a small cafe venue in SL, an arts café “Catcher in the Pie” and I invited Mulder to play there several times.
Another big breakthrough for me was when I discovered websites where you can perform via webcam, particularly TheStage.tv. I ended up playing there for months and really increasing my exposure dramatically, because many SL artists play there.
TN: What's it like to play with Mulder? I see you each as profoundly talented, only in different
modes.
VS: Mulder is a very intuitive musician. He understands song creation and structure in a fundamental way that few do. His songs have a huge spectrum of styles too. What he does as a bandmate is he intuitively knows how to share the musical space. It's hard to overestimate the challenge of playing a duet with someone you can't hear. I've only just started to learn this as a result of a new collaboration I’m working on where I am the first member of a duo, so I can't hear the other person.
TN: Can we go there a minute? Could you explain the dual stream predicament to the readers please? Many do not know how this works.
VS: Sure. There is a fundamental limitation to how quickly information can be transmitted across a distance. The higher the quality of sound, the harder it is to transmit it accurately and quickly. The way streaming works in general is with a "buffer"; you're always behind time-wise, which allows the computer to "save up" "packets" of sound to dispense to the listener. Imagine a stream of little packets. Now in real life when you jam with a friend you hear each other instantly, but online, if you want sound with any degree of quality you gotta wait for it. But this creates a fundamental problem; the way you get around it is you declare one person to be "primary" and one to be "secondary". The primary person starts the stream and sends their packets to the second person. The second person listens to the primary and adds his music into the mix. The mix is then streamed to the audience.
TN: So, the "primary" cannot hear his musical partner?
VS: Not until after the concert. The painful irony is that the primary is the last person to know how the show sounded. The entire audience is saying, "Wow what a great show!"
You Can’t Tune A Fish
They were stacked up inside The Source, and I could feel the expectant buzz as we waited for show time. Gar and his team at the venue (including his ever-present and always-friendly partner Dark Rau and his SL bro and host Grunt Popstar) know how to take care of both their performers and the audiences who follow them. As a result The Source has become a room of choice for discerning music lovers across the grid. This success has led to the recent opening of a gorgeous adjoining performance space. It’s called The Source Damari, a sort of cream-of-the-crop venue featuring the very best in SL artists, including classical piano or guitar performances.
Mulder and Voodoo appear onstage and within minutes prove that they are, indeed, explosive and capable of knocking listeners on their dancing asses. At The Source they feel at home and it shows on this particular night.They simply tear up on one of Mulder’s songs called “Cracks”. He introduces it as a song which he wrote in his 20’s about his childhood. It’s a John Mayerish free-wheeling romp with an ecstatic latin guitar-tinged opening. He’s such a clear-voiced singer (especially live), that each vocal melody line can be heard - in key and lovingly placed precisely where it should for maximum effect.
I fall down every day as I walk out the door
I bang my head on the wall every night
I wonder when I’ll remember to miss those cracks in the ground.
I bang my head on the wall every night
I wonder when I’ll remember to miss those cracks in the ground.
After a wide-open hellacious Spanish solo (in which Shilton uses every linear inch of his fretboard, including the harmonics that float lightly and mysteriously along the tops of the strings), Mulder sings the kicker line “Me and Chewbacca were howling at the wind”, Chewbacca being a boyhood dog.
As “Cracks” closed down it dawned on me that this was not ONLY an explosion. That might imply simple random destruction. This is much, much more. Watts and Shilton together are musically akin to a detonation in which a pair of extremely strong talents smash into one another in a way that sees everything thrown together in exactly the right way.
Toward the close they killed the house again with yet another crowd pleaser, “Higher Ground”. Their amazing vocals power this tour de force composition through several adroit musical changes, a journey in rhythm and song.
One thing I love about this duo is their extreme commitment to excellence. They don’t step on one another musically despite working with the technical limitations of the streaming process that Voo described. They listen to one another.And I love it when one or both guitars goes out of tune. They look at one another and one will say, “Tuning is respect”. The other might answer “Tuning is love.”
Then Voodoo laughs and warms my old school musical heart.
Tuning is respect.
(c) Copyright 2012
Traci Nubalo.
All rights reserved.
April 3, 2012 at 9:13 AM
Voodoo is one of the most entertaining guitarists I have heard in my 68 years on this planet.His mix of genres and techniques is truly amazing.