Endless "nudes"

Streaming Soon

I'm not doing much more than teaching school online, reading, and writing songs. I need to stop writing songs; I really need to up my theory game, but in the meantime, they keep coming.

I hope I don't look too much like a whore if I release a twenty-minute mini-album every four months or so; it just seems to be how the stuff is coming out (Obsessives/Insomnia/Nudes).

I've been passing my recent creations (are they pastries?) to a circle of musical friends both local and international, and I'm liking the results. 

Without ever studying harmony or much music theory, I can plonk out some rudimentary guitar parts, basslines, and melodies, and then hope my more talented friends can paint over my sketches. 

For the past year, it's mostly been Greg Odell (Portland) on drums, Paulo LePetit (São Paulo) on bass, Kevin Cerovich (Washington, D.C.) on trombones and drums, and Leon Gruenbaum (NYC) on keyboards. I think we've done 40-50 songs and now they just have to settle down and I have to figure out if I know what they mean and how to sing them. 

(I occasionally wonder what a real guitarist would do and have cut some tracks with Ivan Julian, Marco Raaphorst, and Junior Tostoi, but these take longer to settle into.)

And Sean Flora. Mixing. I've known Sean for years and as we've both gotten old, I feel like we know our ways around each other well. Sean knows a heck of a lot more about harmony than I do and can really straighten stuff out. 

So "Nudes" is coming and it's eight songs that sounds a bit like if Flying Nun (NZ indie record label) was Brazilian. I was listening to a lot of recent (00's) Caetano Veloso records and thought I just make this sort of indie-bossa noise.

I hope you like it. It should be ready by the turn of the new year. 

(Images by Hilda Hoekstra)

Soon On Bandcamp and Streaming

Second Guessing

Sunga on Bandcamp

https://bobgaulke.bandcamp.com/album/sunga-remixed

Second Guessing- 

This can often cripple a work. The inspiration of the moment lost and now the editor’s running wild with his hammer and scissors. I moved to Salvador da Bahia around 2002 and just left the mind on record. I couldn’t change a lot of my wiring, but I felt a lot of my songwriting misconceptions drop in the ocean. I brought a set of songs back and tinkered on them for some time and released Sunga in 2016. 

And some things worked and some things didn’t. My friend Marcos Kuzka created a best-selling beach-themed surf soundtrack in “Pasti” and I thought he might be interested in remixing it. 

He heard a lot of technical shortcomings that he didn’t want to mess with. I had recently reconnected with Sean Flora, who beyond his mixing skills has a pretty good ear for harmony. 

Sean went to work on the tracks and a few back and fourths have brought Sunga back into shape in 2020. Enjoy. B

Bandcamp Link: https://bobgaulke.bandcamp.com/album/sunga-remixed

Even Later Music

Another short hommage

I'm hoping that this is the last of a death triology started with The Record Man. Obsessives was for my father, and this one is for my mother. I don't think I could directly address either loss as I had a spotless childhood and their unconditional love saw me through my early middle age. So staring directly at the son would leave me blind. Here are some thoughts while viewing the reflections that love has cast.

Insomnia on Bandcamp

Latest Music

Obsessives

8-song mini-album

8 tunes written after my father's passing. Meditations on who I am and why I do what I do. Ably assisted by Matt Carrillo on saxes and keys, with the usual cast of thousands completing the work. Streaming on all platforms. 

Obsessives review from "Off The Tracks"

By Simon Sweetman

New York-based poet and musician Bob Gaulke is a prolific force. I loved his Transportation album of less than a couple of years ago – and now, already, he’s followed it with Obsessives – a mini-album really, 8 songs, 22 minutes (as I like to say, EP-length but LP-quality).

I hear a touch of 80s Lou Reed to his voice (Questionnaire) and a nice line in Tropicalia-infused adult pop music (Traffic Islands). Here he has a couple of guest vocalists to assist him in writing for different voices than his own. Opener, Greatness, features Vivian Benford and Peri Mason doing their read on a Wendy & Lisa vibe over slinky saxes (Matt Carrillo) and Gaulke’s own warm, empathetic, guiding bass. Emilia Cataldo also assists with lead vocals on the title track and harmonies for Traffic Islands.

Where this album really succeeds is in the lounge-y feels (Ohmyfatherfatherfather) where a samba sway is conveyed across the meter of a pop song; the integration of ideas is seamless, never jarring.

Gil Oliveira and Kevin Gerovich’s subtle, controlled drumming sets up the framework for the waft of Carrillo’s saxophones (My Favela is a standout) and some of the more ‘pop’ music shapes take me back to the music Laurie Anderson was making in the 1980s (Excellent Birds).

This is yet another charming, intriguing set of songs from a restless creative spirit.

Recent Hits

13 tracks o' whack

These songs are things I wrote over the past two decades and sort of wanted to get out of my system before I started putting out more recent stuff. They're mostly contemporary to the first 4-5 albums. Because I moved around the world a bit in my thirties and forties, I've got sort of a backlog problem going on. The 13th track, "Your Practical Heart" was just reworked and edited in Feb 2020 by Sean Flora. It's a bit of a full-circle thing as I think there are contributors on it from almost every phase of my musical life in Rochester, Portland, Bahia, Yokohama, and The Bronx. 

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33 artist salute

Remembering Ronald Patrick Kane

I was a 17 year-old kid stuck in suburban upstate New York when MTV first came on the air. They played weird shit then and I really liked the band Split Enz, amongst others. I was well-versed in fandom from my previous existence as a comic book geek, but now that puberty had hit, I spent my summer job earnings on music.

Mr. Kane had placed an ad in the back of The Trouser Press, offering rare NZ pressings of Split Enz and its associated acts, so I sent the money order off. When nothing came back, I hunted down the bastard. It seemed like he was out of the country.

When he came back, we talked and then the records started coming. From all over the world. Then the mixtapes. Then the videos.

Before the internet, Ron was the internet and my suburban basement life was looking up as I offset the humiliations of attending college locally with virtual escapes by way of music.

Ron continued to have an impact on listening for years to come and through his mentorship and friendship, guided my tastes through some very formative years.

This album represented a chance for me to return the favor. A little late; not perfect, but I'm proud of it.  

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