JL Stiles on vocals/guitar/harmonica, Rob McLean on stand up bass and Darius Minaee on the drums. They are swell fellas and they can kick your ass to boot but they're peaceful types.
Influences
Blind Blake was the greatest ragtime fingerpicker and singer/songwriter from the 1920's and early 30's. Other influences are Mississippi John Hurt, Jimmy Reed, Bob Dylan, The Beatles, Neil Young, Wes Montgomery, Tracy Chapman, The Rolling Stones, Leo Kottke, Jimi Hendrix, Albert Collins, Reverend Gary Davis, freakin Simon and Garfunkel, Led Zeppelin, the Doors, The Grateful Dead, Leadbelly, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Sonny Boy Williamson--the best blues harmonica player ever, Howlin' Wolf--the best blues singer ever, Willie Dixon, Procol Harum, Scott Joplin, Bill Monroe, The Carter Family
Sounds Like
Uhh I don't freakin know. Ted Hawkins, Bob Dylan, Jimmy Reed, Mississippi John Hurt, Keb' Mo' on his acoustic solo stuff, Leo Kottke on some things though not on the songs here. I admit I sound kinda like Neil Diamond sometimes.
Math & Blues
JL Stiles is a unique animal who for the first time is merging two totally different fields of truth-seeking: Ragtime blues and higher mathematics. Both of these disparate strands filtered through a lifetime on the run, searching for a universal truth from psychedelic Brazilian forests to US college campuses and further into his own unique vision. JL Stiles has a mind that sees music in a similar way to how J.S. Bach saw music. However, Bach never played the blues.
Fact 1: JL Stiles is the John Nash of music.
JL Stiles was born with hardwiring most only dream about, a brain that could look at the most basic picture and convert it to it's numerical basics. All through school in rural Connecticut it was clear where he was going to be, working at the cutting edge of mathematics, as he took to the abstract shapes and numbers as a duck would take to proverbial water, until, that is, a band wearing grease paint, Cuban heels, questionable body hair and several pints of fake blood rolled into JL's particular little town: Kiss. A 12 year old JL was hooked by the devils fishing rod that was rock and/or roll and when his brother brought home a terrible guitar from college and left it when he went back, JL had the tools to begin his assault on the world.
He began fashioning songs using the simple chunking and melody of Jimmy Reed and sub-Rush lyrics about the challenging political world as seen by a 13-year old kid. Quick introductions to the lyrics of Bob Dylan, the power and message of The Who and the space-age ass funk of Parliament, shaped his musical balloon in new ways and JL, taking his John Nash brain and applying it to the one piece of equipment he had at his disposal, a useless dime store guitar, realized pretty quickly that he better maximize the algorithmic potential of the pathetic instrument by learning to pick each and every string independently and simultaneously with the dexterity of a perfect machine and the re-incarnated soul of a genius blind bluesman who strangely disappeared in the early 1930's. That blind genius would be the little known 20's & 30's virtuoso, Blind Blake, who JL heard by accident, floating in from the radio of his father while studying late one night on a mathematical problem involving fourier transformations. He rushed to the transistor just quickly enough to catch the name and his future was born. (He also finished the problem that night in case you wondered).
Fact 2: JL Stiles is the freakiest white fingerpicking guitarist in this great country right now.
Stiles carried on in his twin disciplines, learning Banach spaces and homology at college by day and wearing out his Blind Blake records at night, studying under the tutelage of the great Laszlo Fuchs, pioneer of abelian group theory, whilst writing hundreds of songs, each one getting gradually better than the last. Both strands were equal to him as he searched for the big picture in whatever way he could.
But something began to happen; as the songs got better and began to get attention, especially from the ladies, and JL realized that, Fuchs aside, a lot of academicians can be big dicks with fragile egos, he began to drift toward the more standard methods of soul searching for a young guy in late 20th century America: LSD, pot and anything other.
Hanging out in the blazing heat studying with Chinese Mathematicians, drifting into oblivion on opium and psychedelics, JL knew the music was more than a sideshow to a brilliant career in the outer reaches of theoretical math. It was, in fact, his calling, and one where he could teach the beauty of what is so perfect about math and blues, the abstract.
Imagine a wild-eyed, half-crazed math prodigy with the most dexterous fingers on earth, channeling the spirit of a mysterious blind blues genius who unexplainably vanished, and you are approaching where JL found himself at this juncture in his life.
Fact 3: The search for the fundamentals is the same in music as it is in math: The fingerpicking guitar opens up infinite possibilities
But what would he do with this burden? He wasn't just a singer-songwriter with a cute heartbreak song and a big white smile; he was the walking soul of mathematical fundamental principles driven into the ground by the spirit of the blues. Where could a young boy like this go? To the home of voodoo, New Orleans.
In an out of the coffee houses and clubs of New Orleans and Mississippi, JL spooked the audiences up and down and left and right, he cut a solo set of songs, just him and a guitar, that rang as clear and true as Blind Blake had 80 years earlier and he knew he had to get out there and spread the theory around.
He traveled to Mexico and Brazil, Amsterdam and Scandinavia, he lived in the woods for weeks at a time, writing new songs and trying to define a unifying mathematical and musical theory in homological algebra, he went to the brink and stared at the abyss and then he came back with songs in hand to deliver the message back to us dear souls who hadn't made the journey.
He found a spiritual home in san Francisco and immediately picked up on the musical community there. He played with Etta James in front of 6,000 in front of the courthouse in Riverside, he opened for the great Keb Mo, Leon Redbone, JJ Cale, John Hammond, he knew he was in the right place at the right time, and so, here he is.
Fact 4: What JL Stiles is writing now is the best he's ever written and is closer to the fundamental truth of bringing the past together with the future into a musical singularity than he's ever gotten.
Fact 5: JL Stiles believes he has come up with the algorithm for the pure heart of music.
JL Stiles is a unique animal (as we have stated before), he believes that the soul of 1920's blues, c.400 BC Greek mathematicians and 21st century artists like Animal Collective (get ready for JL's incendiary cover of AC's "No More Runnin") can all be unified into his singular vision. Can he do it? With his head for numbers, I certainly wouldn't bet against him.
Bonjour Thanks for the friendly add I really appreciate your so good guitar sound and music Best wishes from France (Follow me on twitter.com/pascal95 ) Pascal
Que pedo guei? How's everything going there? any plans to come to Europe? Ahora vivo en Berlin, you know, lotta stuff to do here, I love this place. Un abrazo Aracajú. PAX.
The new True Margrit CD - The Juggler's Progress - is now available for pre-order, along with t-shirts and artwork, photo and drumheads, as we get ready for our monthlong tour of the Great Northwest! Check it out here: http://bit.ly/7Cu8J
Look for us in Washington, Oregon and California between October 15 and November 15, when our tour wraps up with the big show at San Francisco's best rock club, Bottom of the Hill! For the complete show schedule, check here: http://bit.ly/1UgGqQ
Bonafide Sound and Casbar present... Biggest Reggae artist to hit the West Coast all year!
Buju Banton and Gramps Morgan Live with The Shiloh Band
Wednesday October 14th
also Bonafide Sound DJS representing to the fullest with Special guest DJ Stepwise (Galang International)
The Casbar (inside the Days Inn) 3345 Santa Rosa Avenue Santa Rosa, CA 95407
Doors open at 8pm Show starts at 9pm 21+ with a valid ID
$25 limited presale tickets available now @... http://www.inticketing.com/evinfo.php?eventid=55706 Backdoor Disc and Tape (Cotati) Last Record Store (santa Rosa) Days Inn (Santa Rosa) Abyssinia Restaurant (Santa Rosa) Ticket prices subject to increase after 9pm on show night!
Thanks for the add. I really love your music. Look forward to seeing you again live. If you need any help recording of producing a live event, I'm more then willing.
Hey, JL! I'm playing a show with KFOG Local Scene Volume VI artist Mike Gibbons at Red Devil Lounge in San Francisco this Friday, August 21st! Tickets are $8.00 in advance at http://www.ticketweb.com/t3/sale/SaleEventDetail?dispatch=loadSelectionData&eventId=2419994&pl=reddevil or $10.00 at the door. Come on out and support some local music! It would be great to see ya there. Doors open at 9:00pm. Music starts at 9:30pm. Thanks!
We're trying to get the final showcase slot at the 'Big Sound' Summit in Brisbane this September. They're offering the final slot to one act on Triple J's Unearthed, so if you like our music we have decided to give a free download @ http://www.triplejunearthed.com/Artists/View.aspx?artistid=14312 And we ask you in return if you can rate & leave a review of our tunes as these two things are what they will be looking at when deciding. We'd really appreciate it!
We're trying to get the final showcase slot at the 'Big Sound' Summit in Brisbane this September. They're offering the final slot to one act on Triple J's Unearthed, so if you like our music we have decided to give a free download @ http://www.triplejunearthed.com/Artists/View.aspx?artistid=14312 or just click on the banner below. And we ask you in return if you can rate & leave a review of our tunes as these two things are what they will be looking at when deciding. We'd really appreciate it!
