Week 10: Thought Patrol

Live at Easy Tiger Beer Garden, Winston-Salem, NC

This week we played as a trio—Jonathan Greene on drums, Joseph Dowdy on saxophones and winds, and me (John Daniel Ray) on bass, synth, and computer. It was one of those nights where everything felt tight and open at once.

We titled the session Thought Patrol—a nod to a world creeping closer to silence. We’re watching power concentrate, voices get punished, truth rebranded as treason. It’s subtle, but it’s happening. And so is this music—an act of resistance, however small. A refusal to stop listening, imagining, responding.

For the second set, we tried something new: asking the audience to shape the night. We invited suggestions—words, images, metaphors—and built spontaneous compositions around them. The first: Thunderstorm, sparked and accompanied by our trusty tropical plant Isodore, patched into a synth and humming beneath the lightning.

The rest of the night unfolded like a dream stitched together from shared awareness:

As Our Government Crumbles, The Dark Spectre Looms, Three Points of View, and Orbits gave shape to an unspoken narrative.

Attunement opened us.

Rudderless reminded us how quickly we lose direction.

All Ends Well (This Time) winked at the idea that maybe, just maybe, we still have time.

And El Viaje del Pañuelo de Jose closed the night like a short film: poetic, strange, and floating away before we could write it down.

Improvisation is protest. Listening is protest. Showing up is protest.

Thanks for being part of this.