Week 11: Journey to the Center of the Sun
Journey to the Center of the Sun is Week 11 of the Vintage Astronaut Sonic Explorations Residency, featuring live, fully improvised experimental jazz shaped by audience suggestions, modular synthesizers, and real-time plant-generated music using PlantWave. Recorded live at Easy Tiger Beer Garden in Winston-Salem, NC, this performance includes drums, saxophones, flute, and analog synth, with musical prompts like Jewish Space Lasers, Butterfly Nebula, and an epic tale of weasels vs. mall cops. Explore the full archive at www.vintageastronaut.com.
Week 10: Thought Patrol
Thought Patrol is Week 10 of Vintage Astronaut’s Sonic Explorations Residency, a fully improvised experimental jazz trio session exploring themes of government control, media suppression, and dystopian surveillance. Featuring Jonathan Greene on drums, Joseph Dowdy on saxophones and flute, and John Daniel Ray on bass, synths, and electronics, the performance includes an audience-suggested improvisation and live plant-generated music using PlantWave and a Roland Juno synthesizer. Recorded live at Easy Tiger Beer Garden in Winston-Salem, NC, and available in the full archive at www.vintageastronaut.com.
Week 9: What Has 17 Arms
What Has 17 Arms is Week 9 of Vintage Astronaut’s Sonic Explorations Residency, a fully improvised live session blending experimental jazz, modular synthesis, and plant-generated music via PlantWave and a Roland Juno synthesizer. Featuring Chaisaray Schenck on drums, Joseph Dowdy on saxophones and flute, and Ryan Hsu on modular synth, this performance was recorded live at Easy Tiger Beer Garden in Winston-Salem, NC, and explores deep textures, surreal themes, and interspecies collaboration. Hear the full archive at www.vintageastronaut.com.
Week 7: Millennial Falcon
The critics are raving about Millennial Falcon. “Why don’t more musics be sound like this?” says one (human) satisfied customer. “Where can I leave a tip to support the band?” says no one. “This band obviously knows at least 12 notes and I bet I heard them all tonight!” said a definitely real person who was there.
This week’s session soared through deep space and dipped into chaos. We named it Millennial Falcon—a tribute to generational drift, analog guts, and the sense that everything is falling apart and still somehow flying.
We were joined this week by Michael Anderson, on piano and synthesizer. His playing was next-level—virtuosic, emotional, and full of fearless harmonic invention. Joseph Dowdy traveled across tenor, soprano sax and flute, summoning voices from every direction. Jonathan Greene was locked in as always—fluid, responsive, and propelling the whole thing forward like a calm engine beneath a shifting sky. I held the low end with bass, synth, and computer textures.
A tropical plant named Brianna played with us again via PlantWave, this time delivering the warm, rhythmic pulse of a piece that bloomed in real time.
Somewhere in the second set the cops showed up, responding to a report of music that was “too excellent to be legal.” They hung out for a minute, then our fearless bar owner David used his majestic beard to ease the situation and the cops back to their station.
Thank you for flying with us. Full archive at: www.vintageastronaut.com
Week 6: Dr. Levers and the Voltage Villain
Analog dreams, reed spells, and a plant on piano—Week 6 bends voltage into feeling.
Week 5 - The Modular Cowboy
The Modular Cowboy is Week 5 of Vintage Astronaut’s Sonic Explorations Residency, a fully improvised live session blending modular synthesizers, experimental jazz, ambient textures, and surreal sonic storytelling. Featuring live modular synth, saxophones, guitar, drums, and electronic bass, this performance captures the essence of spontaneous music-making in a vibrant, plant-filled venue in Winston-Salem, NC. Listen, subscribe, and support the full session archive at www.vintageastronaut.com.
Week 4: Gas Giant Super-Leviathan
Week 4 of the Sonic Explorations Residency features a spacious trio set with Jonathan Greene, Joseph Dowdy, and John Daniel Ray, joined by houseplant Phoebe on PlantWave synth during a special second set collaboration. Titled Gas Giant Super-Leviathan, this session explores deep textures, playful improvisation, and ambient resonance in a room full of plants and possibilities.
Week 3: Plants in Your Eyes
Week 3 of the residency, Plants in Your Eyes, featured a packed room, deep improvisation, plant-generated soundscapes, and a killer band coming together for the first time. Visual artist Daniel Fox Johnston captured the whole session with live effects and prisms—watch the video and feel the energy on the session site.
Week 2: Benevolent Sky Creatures
Our second installment of the weekly Sonic Exploration Residency featured an all-star alignment of cosmic collaborators. We were joined by the incomparable Michael Anderson on keyboards and synthesizers—a wizard of music, a modern-day Bach whose improvisations seem to flow directly from a higher harmonic dimension. Jonathan Greene returned to bend time with his drums, and Joseph Dowdy painted the air with saxophone and flute. John Daniel Ray navigated the low-frequency continuum with bass, electronics, and computers. Though the neighboring terrestrials once again summoned the law in protest of our volume (three times, for those counting), we countered with a series of beautifully hushed improvisations, whispering our way through the void. The venue’s plants—stoic, leafy, and highly attuned to vibe—swayed gently in approval and joined us in the jam. All in all, a lovely evening under the influence of benevolent sky creatures, both seen and unseen.
Week 1: Arcadia 5-0
This album captures Week 1 of Vintage Astronaut’s residency at Easy Tiger Beer Garden in Winston-Salem, NC, kicking off our Weekly Explorations sessions with some bold musical adventures. The goal of this session is to create something new, to improvise with computers and analog synths, and to create something beautiful - a portrait of this moment in time. We don't play any covers, only improvisation and some original compositions. The session was so killing, even the cops showed up to shut us down early—proof that the music was definitely hitting all the right frequencies.