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Session Date: April 2, 2011
Posting Date: September 19, 2011
Artist Hometown: Ft Worth, TX
Links: Facebook, Bandcamp, Twitter
Recorded by: Michael Briggs
Note: The videos are slightly abridged versions of the pieces due to technical limitations with the camera and battery/storage issues. The audio player contains the full versions which are available for free download.
3 QUESTIONS
ONE: What is the desired/ideal response/reaction from the audience during a performance?
Ken Shimamoto: Hopefully not killing us. Or throwing things. Except money.
TWO: What normally goes through your head while performing/improvising?
Ken: It depends. Either 1) Wow, I’m really expressing myself! 2) Where’s that damn patch cord? or 3) Uh-oh, that didn’t work.
THREE: How did HIO form and what has been your favorite show/recording session to date where everything just came together musically?
Ken: Although Terry doesn’t like my saying this, it’s really his band. He came to the final gig of PFFFFT! — the vastly unpopular improv outfit I had in 2008, of which Hickey was a part in its terminal stages — and suggested we do a thang. It took us a year to learn to play together. We started out with way too many players, but gradually circumstances (for example, the fact that all the drummers we played with hated us) winnowed it down to just the three of us. A turning point came when we played the Tommy Atkins benefit at the Kessler Theater in March 2010, when Jeff Liles asked us to do a video shoot with just the three of us playing cigarbox guitars (which Terry builds). To date, I think our best recording is “Sustrepo,” where we just got together at Terry’s house, ate turkey burgers, and watched “Restrepo” — a documentary about soldiers in Afghanistan — with the sound off while we played. I think there are several interesting episodes and we responded well to each other without falling back on the kinds of devices like feedback meltdown that we tend to use when we run out of ideas. Of course, the best show/recording is always the next one.