Creating a Bowie Inspired Costume 2017

It's been an honor to join so many of my local musician friends to play a tribute to David Bowie at First Avenue called Rock For Pussy every year to benefit Feline Rescue Inc. in Minneapolis. This year I worked with local designer Megan Zwack to create a Bowie inspired costume for RFPXIII!

Photo by Tony Nelson

Photo by Paul Lundgren

A person’s fashion, especially a great costume, beams out energy. To me, it’s a catalyst to playing a role and inspires a good performance. Wearing a custom design is entertaining and fun but it can be even more so for the audience. I wanted to pull in a local designer to be a part of the Bowie tribute as collaboration between local music and style scenes. Music and fashion, especially if we’re talking about David Bowie, certainly go together.  His music has such a wide range and so does his style. So many people, both performers and audience members get dressed up for this show.

Megan sewing up finishing touches

Dr. Zwack is Megan’s own clothing brand and we connected on social media first. Music has been a major part of her inspiration.

Photo by Emily Hooper

“I have never been conventional in my approach to design and have always felt like a black sheep in the design community.  As a designer I have always found it difficult to create in terms of industry standards and have been completely uncomfortable with terms like ready-to-wear or resort wear.  Each of my collections or individual pieces is a song, a story, an album, or the soul consciousness of a musician or group ranging from Bobbie Gentry to Black Oak Arkansas.  The Dr. Zwack Lake Street collection is inspirited by the Wolfmother album Victorious.  The creative process starts with a song and I use my design skills, with fabric as my medium, to bring that song into physical form as a musician would use an instrument to create the song itself.  I have known from the start of my design career that my soul purpose is to dress musicians and singers for stage performance. After cutting my teeth in the local fashion design world, garnering skills and expertise, I am fully ready to branch out.  When designing for Chris Perricelli, inspired by Ziggy Stardust, I was very careful to amalgamate and ennoble the soul of both musicians while carefully riding the line of sophisticated design and costume ensuring that the story of both talents were represented.” – Megan Zwack

I had a feeling I should just contact her about making something special for this show. I sent her a message and she was thrilled for the opportunity to create something so we made plans to get together about it.

Hopping over to Eat Street Social we sat at the bar and flipped though one of my David Bowie books for inspiration.  We discussed costume possibilities and she was eager to work on a fun glam rock project.  

This was my first time meeting her and we hit it off quite well talking about music and style. She’s got an early 70’s vibe and a great personal style herself.

Photo by John Botkin

Megan’s first design concept came from her drawing:

 

She bought Italian silk material. One with a kind of a snake skin pattern for the jacket and the other was silvery metallic for the pants. She also scored some red vinyl to be displayed on the inside

and along the back of the collar of the jacket. After measurements and a session of pinning with a muslin pattern she got closer to pulling it all together. The design morphed into a fantastic glam rock costume that seemed to nod to Bowie from his Ziggy era all the way up to his more modern pieces.

Megan also lent me her hand made and cut Bobbie Gentry Stage Coat fringe jacket to be worn with my star pants that she altered along with a crazy full colored vintage polyester shirt. You can find this fringe jacket and more of Dr. Zwack’s hand made clothes at Showroom and she sells also by appointment on-line.

I wore the star pants, shirt and fringe jacket for the first set and then her full custom piece for the second part of the show. The clothes felt and performed really well with me and I couldn’t have been any happier with how it all turned out. On top of that it was a great show!!

Photo by Charles Robinson

Photo By Joe Teachworth

Photo by Danny Contreras Jr.

Soulful Automatic Turns 10!

Released in 2007 Little Man's Soulful Automatic was the band's debut album on Eclectone Records. Our third full length release. It's hard to believe the time that's gone by with this precious gem of an album. It got great press reviews and earned the band alot of recognition locally and bumped us into the national scene as well that continued with with an official SXSW show and a fun tours that hit points east to New York City and back.  Minneapolis City Pages did a cover story as well and named Little Man "Best Rock Band 2007". I couldn't believe the cover story opportunity. It started as a premonition.I practically woke up in a gasp waking up my wife saying "cover of the City Pages!"  I pitched promo info to City Pages as soon as I could get it together and hoped for the best. Eclectone had also put in some good words for some sort of coverage.

City Pages sent out writer Pete Scholtes to spend a day or two following me around with band and day to day stuff. City Pages art director Nick Vlcek invited me over for a photo shoot. I had no idea this was to be a cover story up till maybe a day before it was published and I didn't know what the cover would look like either. I was thrilled!! I scooted off to City Pages the morning it came out and watched pallets and pallets of this magazine get loaded out and picked up to go all over the Twin Cities and beyond. My first look at the magazine... "Next Big Thing" it said! "Little Man Singer Chris Perricelli Takes His Shot." WHAA??!! That's quite a statement. A tall order there. My goodness this is crazy! A big flood of happiness overwhelmed me. "Go forth and do your work well!" I yelled at all my faces. Pete and Nick did an amazing job with it capturing an honest look into myself and what I do. So grateful for the opportunity to get the music I created with a cool bunch of people out to so many more people and to be supported by the label and the city as a band, songwriter and musician.

Eclectone Records was a Minneapolis based label run by Scott LeGere and Martin Devaney. It was awesome to have a team behind you helping with promotion, direction and support. The record was already recorded and I wanted to get it out as soon as possible.

I shopped it out to many national labels prior. There was even an interest at Atlantic Records for a short time up until my A&R contact got laid off. Eclectone was new and local run by good friends and I couldn't wait to release this record.

I worked with four different producers to fully realize songs from demos I had previously recorded. I wanted to work with producers I had admired and wanted them each to record specific songs. At this time, along with myself, Little Man included Ryan Otte on drums and Ben Foote on bass as the core band. The Soulful Automatic sessions used many more musicians to help.

Here's some thoughts on the making of the record:

Producer/Engineer: Ed Tinley
Songs: Come Undone, Prize Fighters, Tire Fire, California Baby
Ed has been recording Little Man since early on. He recorded a bunch of Ike Reilly music as well as Liz Phair who I'm also a really big fan of. He's a great friend and we've built alot of trust regarding Little Man music over the years. Recording with him is one of my favorite things. I traveled down to the Chicago area to record with Tinley over a few days at Ike's Diamond City studio, which was formally an old hunting lodge. A really cool big wood cabin of a place. Opening track Come Undone evokes a Led Zeppelin III vibe. I sing falsetto and use a twelve string guitar here and also added the air organ and xylophone.  Ed also suggested we string my guitar with all high strings (Nashville tuning) for a couple of these which created a more chime crisp tone. I loved it. We tracked from the guitars up adding layers of guitars and vocals for this session. Ed played bass and another longtime friend and former core band member Dave Cottini played drums on these tracks. Dave and I gel like musical brothers having an unmistakable, nonverbal, musical connection when we play. Very creative player. These songs have an openness, breathy, velvet character to them. Just beautiful. I get choked up hearing these back sometimes.

Producer/Engineer: Chris Dorn
Songs: Out For Miles, Soulful Automatic, Light Years
Chris Dorn plays in a band called The Beatifics. My wife introduced me to them back before I moved to the Twin Cities and I really dug the songwriting and production of their records. I wanted these songs to be slightly more modern sounding and I also needed help finalizing the songs themselves. Chris Dorn has a great sense of rock/pop songwriting sensibility. He offered great advice and additional parts to these songs. Dorn was also quite creative and meticulous when it came to mixing these. In particular the title track Soulful Automatic. After the song was just about mixed and finished he went back and tracked a compelling background vocal as well as an acoustic guitar. I heard it back and knew I didn't play or sing those parts but man I loved it! Ben Foote's melodic bass line on this song is so memorable. Ben is smart and quite accomplished in the study of bass and offered a modern touch and subtle uniqueness to these songs. In Out For Miles Ryan Otte's drum intro is perfect. Dorn made that huge. Ryan's playing is earthy, rock & roll. He has impeccable timing and feel. We also accomplished getting those Harrison-esque harmonized slide guitar hooks to sound just right. Dorn came up with the chord change modulation at the end of the song.

Listen to my home recorded demo of the title track:
 
Producer/Engineer: Mike Wisti
Songs: Shag If You Want To, You Love It, Shimmering Stars And The Moon Majestic
Mike Wisti recorded a great local band called Faux Jean and I was fond of the band and their recordings with him. I wanted the songs we recorded with Wisti to have more of a garage rock feel and I knew Mike could do this for us superbly. His studio is called Albatross in Minneapolis. We recorded live together to tape. Ryan Otte and Ben Foote for this session. This was my first time working with Mike. He's very much super knowledgeable about his studio room and the sound we were going for. Very interesting person and has kind of a mad scientist creative energy about him. I played Vox Continental keys on Shag which was pretty sweet. We recorded some backwards guitar for Shimmering Stars and Wisti lit up with excitement mixing this song in particular saying it was so MAJESTIC! Hence, that's where the title came from. Also I should mention that I met our current bass player Brian Herb at this session because he transferred the tracks from analog tape to digital. Good friends ever since.

Producer/Engineer: Jacques Wait
Songs: Undertow, Ride
Jacques was also in The Beatifics with Chris Dorn playing guitar and he also recorded Beatifics music, which I adored, so he was someone I was desperate to work with. Alot of people in town suggested him to produce. He could really understand the classic/modern combination I liked. We recorded at It's A Secret in Minneapolis owned by Dave Russ. Ryan Otte played drums on these and Jacques played bass. I also brought in Pete Hofmann to play electric Wurlitzer piano. Jacques is very precise and calculated in getting great tones and laying down tracks. I think we recorded the basic tracks to tape and overdubbed digital. We did harmonizing lead guitar parts in Undertow and recorded guitar through a rotating Leslie speaker cabinet in Ride. These tunes are clean, sharp rock/pop goodness. So happy to have finally worked with Jacques. Undertow became the popular radio single.

Very different sounding tracks but with the perfect track listing (which took quite a while to figure out) and expert mastering by David Gardner it combined to make a very cohesive, well balanced album as a whole. A great album to hear and experience in it's entirety. This is classic Little Man.

Little Man will be performing most of these songs March 4th 2017 at the 331 Club in Minneapolis. Come help us celebrate!

You need Soulful Automatic in your music library. Here are some options:

Get it on CD at CDbaby
Download it at iTunes
Download it at Bandcamp 

Little Man albums Of Mind And Matter, Orbital Amusement and Original Face followed Soulful Automatic. We are just about to hit record for our next one. Stay tuned!

Bandmate Appreciation: Thanks Guys!

photo by Becca Sabot

With the Thanksgiving holiday around the corner I wanted to give a special thanks to my current Little Man band mates. While the band name is Little Man and could be associated with just myself, I couldn't do it with out my band mates. There is nothing like the sonic power and and energy of playing in a rock band. Drummer Sean Gilchrist and bass player Brian Herb have been a part of Little Man since 2010. They have been the longest running bass/drums band mates I have ever had. I started Little Man back in 1996 and have been lucky enough to have alot of talented musicians be a part of this band over the years to keep things going. This family, extends out to all the other musicians that have been in the band as well as fill in players, engineers and producers or anyone who has helped on an album. That's alot of people over the years!
Thank you!!!


There is that unexplainable feeling when you play with a drummer that is just right. I'll have it no other way when having a drummer play in this band and I've been grateful for playing with a good handfull of such folks over the years. Sean Gilchrist is one of them and has become a good friend and a great person to work on ideas with. We got to dig in while traveling to Chicago together to record Orbital Amusement. Driving in the van, spending long days working out parts and recording. His rock drumming style reminds me alot of Black Crows drummer Steve Gorman which I really dig. We work out parts together trying different things until I feel he's got the groove and he's been capable of coming up with so many drumming variations. Recording with him is a snap as he nails entire passes of songs in a take or two.

I first met bassist Brian Herb when I needed someone to transfer audio from analog tape to digital for the Soulful Automatic sessions. Just about the friendliest person you could meet. Brian, foremost, is also a really good drummer but he offered to play bass or drums for me when I met him if I ever needed the help. When I did need help on bass, I called him. He's great on bass! Brian has an awesome energy and stage presence and his own signature fashion style - always wearing overalls.He also built me a killer pedal board which I am forever thankful for.

photo by Becca Sabot

Us three playing together for the first time was so relaxed and right on. You get that feeling. And I know musicians know what I'm talking about but for the non musician, it's like pedaling a three person tandem bicycle or something like that. When playing a song, we communicate in a different way. Listening to each other and not just or own parts and watching for for subtle physical cues. Sometimes we'll all travel together on a jam in a particular direction just magically. It's a cool thing and that's the feeling you get when playing in a band.

Both Sean and Brian communicate with me very well, no one's egos get in the way. They come up with some cool arrangement and harmony ideas too but never get angry if things don't make the cut. They never take anything personally and want what's best for the song and the band as a whole.

Touring with them is a blast. We get along really well together like brothers. Van conversations have been both honest and hilarious. They love to seek out awesome food stops and help out with driving and tour managing. Brian is a long time tour specialist, so I feel especially at ease having him along.

These guys are great, not to mention, as you can see, they're both big guys which works well in contrast to me and the band name. That just happened of it's self in a good way! Excellent musicians and hard working guys. Being all together to record Original Face was a wonderful experience as well. Thanks for being a part of this band and helping me express the music! I appreciate you every rehearsal and every show.

photo by Charles Robinson

"V" is for Vinyl - Little Man Launches Kickstarter Campaign for a Vinyl Pressing

Little Man has got this new album called Original Face and it's already recorded, mixed, mastered and ready to go. We even have CD's coming. The album is just the right length for an LP and it's something we have dreamed about doing but never have because of the high cost. Luckily through the website called Kickstarter we can have that chance. In return for a pledge we can offer you the lowest cost digital download, signed LP's and some really cool premium rewards, like home pizza's made by me delivered to you, a "vintage shop hop" with me to local vintage stores Up Six and Everyday People in St. Paul with a %20 discount, hair treatment at the new HiFi Hair & Records at a discount plus many more.

A vinyl pressing is a very special thing to us and with Kickstarter you can connect with us in a special way.

Please take a moment to visit our campaign through the link below and help us reach our goal of $4000 before Feb 13, 2014:

 https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/littlemanmusic/v-is-for-vinyl-little-mans-new-album-original-face

Little Run: On the Road with Little Man

Little Man got out for a little tour run this past week hitting Milwaukee, Madison and Chicago trying out new songs and promoting Orbital Amusement. Here's what all went down.

DAY 1: A van of drummers and me.
My old Little Man drummer Sean Sauder came along for tour help. It's great to have someone to help with driving, moving gear and to sell merch. Happy to have him along. Then there's my current drummer Sean Gilchrist and my bass player Brian Herb who is also an accomplished drummer. Packed up gear and drove to Milwaukee. It wasn't until a couple hours in that I realized that the van conversation was all drums and that I was surrounded by - drummers. I have to say drummers are usually interesting characters. You probably know some crazy folks. They might be drummers. These guys here in the van are great. I love 'em. Thankful to have them help me out and be a part of this band.

It's a beautiful drive across Wisconsin from the Twin Cities in the summer. We made it through just fine with a stop at the good ol' Subway. Swarmed in the parking lot by an entire high school cheerleading squad. I so wanted them to spell out the band's name. L-I-TT-LE...M-A-N! That would have been fun.

We played a place called Club Garibaldi in Milwaukee. Cool spot. Very Minnesota "nordeast" feel. Carved wood, brass and vintage looking stuff about the place. Very nice staff. We really enjoyed hanging out and having dinner outside over at The Palomino.

The Cactus Club is just next door. First night out was slightly rag-tag for me starting off, but then we rolled right into the set real good. Plus I got try out a guitar pedal from ZVEX I brought along straight from their office called the Machine which gave me some inspiration. Big room, meet some real nice people here. The night ended at The Sleep-In. This hotel was really great. Plus we got the big handicap room to pile into. Whiskey party.

DAY 2: Celebrate with The Mel's and the ghost's.
Headache. Perfect place for lunch was Glorioso's. An amazing Italian deli in Milwaukee. You HAVE to go there.

It poured rain at this time. Hop in the van and on the road to Madison. We got to spend the afternoon at Sean's sister-in-law's place not too far from the club. It was really nice to have a place to chill out, sit on the porch, grill and nap. Beautiful day.

Here's me at the cool little shed out in the back yard.

The club was The Frequency. We had played here before not too long ago. Love this place. Great rock & roll club. Staff is awesome. So I'm sitting at the bar with my feet tucked back on the stool rung and I thought someone's foot bumped into mine. No worries. Then it happened again about 2 minutes later and I look back to see who's kicking my foot and NO ONE WAS THERE!!! Here's when I asked the club manager Darwin about paranormal activity. "Oh yeah," he said, "this place used to be a funeral home." He's seen a couple strange things including a little girl. That could have been who was playing with me. He's also heard voices as clear as day in the basement. Pretty neat stuff.

Our friends from back home, The Melismatics where on the bill to celebrate the release of their new album. It sounds great. All of the people in this band are really very cool folks and it's always great to be on a bill with them. They put on one hell of a show. Fun to get in a slot hockey game with bassist Mark in the haunted greenroom basement. 5-3 me. I love those things. Also Garbage guitarist Duke Erikson was in the club and we got to talk a bit about guitar gear. Very cool.

We played a great show here and it was a fun audience. After bar we shared a bottle of Prosecco on our host's deck till the very wee hours. Salute and bouna notte.

DAY 3: My old residence, Chicago!

After a great home-made breakfast we headed to Chicago, Illinois. Sometimes I miss this city and it feels real good to roll in with the band back to the place I lived for about 8 years. Tonight we play at Reggie's Music Joint for their 6th anniversary bash. Real cool to be a part of that. We played with some great bands including The Ghost Wolves out of Austin.This is a fantastic place with a great vibe. Lot's of people here all night. Got to meet up with some great friends. Some old friends even from way back when I lived here, and most of them saw Little Man right at the very beginning of getting the band started in the late 90's. Real strong show hear and I loved every minute of it.

After the show we checked out The Dictators next door for a few songs. Then we loaded out and headed for my good friend Dave's place. You know Dave? He was one of my drummers with Little Man when I lived in Chicago. He plays with Ike Reilly now. We're musical brothers. Our beer run on the way to Dave's took us four tries at the late hour, but we found some. At Dave's apartment we got to listen to new mixes of ours and Ike's. Great to hang out with him, but yes, now I'm hanging out with four drummers. Old Style (hey we're in Chicago!), PBR beers all around and more whiskey.

DAY 4: Travel
Continued party till 4, up at 8. Drove home to the Twin Cities. Construction was hell. It took us an hour to get to the freeway. We couldn't even make it onto the free way before the guys wanted to stop and rest at the Dunkin' Donuts. Construction still on the freeway and tolls on a very hot mid 90's weather with no A/C made for a longer trip back, but boy what a fun time. Great run. TOURRRR!!!!!

Little Man in the Studio

Over the past many years here in the Twin Cities, I've always wanted to record at Flowers. It's an uptown recording studio owned by Ed Ackerson. I've admired Ed's work and the many popular bands he's played in as well as his Susstone record label. I also had the chance to check out the studio a couple times and had tried to set something up in the past, but things hadn't quite worked out. Kris Johnson, who fixes amps and electronics at Twin Town Guitars, engineers at the studio. Timing had been right with him and me seeing each other out and about at shows and such, talking about the studio and the new music I've been writing. He's been a fan of Little Man and was always enthusiastic about the possibility of recording us. After a good conversation with Ed and KJ at The Triple Rock I really started to lean into make this happen.

The studio is one of the coolest I've ever been in. They have a very tall ceiling live drum room, all sorts of vintage gear, instruments and guitar amps, a Trident mixing board and a neat atrium decked with a fountain, plants and places to sit and relax in between takes. Lots of orange and yellow colors everywhere and kind of a 60's mod space age decor.

Not only is KJ in a guitar player couple local bands and is the go-to guy here for repairs, he also builds his own guitar amps and outboard gear (KJAudio). For me to be especially particular with guitar tones, I thought KJ would be a good fit for these recordings. We're using alot of his own gear and things are sounding great.

Our first session together was just him and me at his own modest studio tracking acoustic and electric guitars for four specific songs. A week later we got the band together, with Sean Gilchrist on drums and Brian Herb on bass. These guys have been with me for a couple years now. We've been doing very well with our live shows so we wanted to track live in the room all together. For most of the songs we tracked without headphones (an interesting process we hadn't really done before) to really play together and capture alot of that live energy. It felt as comfortable as a rehearsal. Our goal was to track 9 songs together as a band, bass, drums and one rhythm guitar and then to track bass and drums to the pre-recorded stuff we did the week before.

We all worked really hard on making this happen. It was a great success as we achieved that goal! The next step is to overdub more guitars and add in the vocals. These are very interesting songs. Some of them are songs the band has been playing live for a good while but have never recorded, some are a bit more acoustic, delicate with alot of background layered vocals and others are rocking real good. Very excited to be working on these. Can't wait for you to hear them, but that might take some time!

Buy Original Face on Bandcamp. Also available on iTunes. Get a hard copy on CD.

Little Man at the Minnesota State Fair

The Minnesota State Fair (also known as the "Great Minnesota Get Together") is one of the biggest events in the country and puts a big stamp on all things local. Scott Herold a huge local music touter and head of Rock The Cause asked me if Little Man could be a part of their state fair line up that would be hosted by Rock the Cause and the Cities 97 radio station. I told him absolutely and that it would be an honor to play.

Scott said the stage was small, outside and that they wanted a sort of stripped down, more personal vibe so we decided to play an acoustic set as a band. We've only really done that sort of thing a couple of times. Usually I prefer to do a solo acoustic performance with that sort of request. It's great to have the band with me.

Sean Gilchrist (left) was on drums and for this show we asked Benji Conklin to come along to fill in for Brian. Benji helped us out on a two-setter a couple months back so he knows alot of songs and adds a nice touch to these acoustic numbers. Alot of these songs we don't normaly get to play in the full rock show. Our albums Soulful Automatic and Of Mind And Matter have lots of acoustic songs on them, so it was great to bring these into a set. If you haven't heard them, please check them out.

The fair is just a blast. Every food you can think of on a stick, the smell of fried food, rides, booths and a lot of color and sounds and things and people to see and watch. My wife printed us out "Fair Bingo" cards to play as we walked the fair, checking off boxes when we saw "adult with fair hair," "teenage make out," "child on a leash" etc. Pretty funny.

We played a really great set. Very cool to play outside at the fair next to these big orange tractors. We rocked out as much as humanly possible. We even got an on- air interview with the radio station. People were very attentive and loved the show.

Afterward we headed over to the Luminarium. This space-age blow up oasis of sound and color that was really quite interesting. All together a super fun time. You betcha.