Pan Pan is an instrumental band from Bellingham, WA.  Sarah Jerns plays piano, trumpet, and fluegelhorn, as well as composing all of the music for Pan Pan.  Sarah has also played with The Love Lights, The Presidents of the United States of America, The Ghost and The Grace, and Rooftops.  These are our questions to her:

1. What is Pan Pan?

Pan Pan is when I decide to record my music or perform it and share it with others. I keep a lot to myself, but I enjoy sharing a bit. I like to try and show you what I enjoy.

2. Why is Pan Pan?

I spent a long time playing in other groups, which is great, but I like doing my own thing. It was fun to be in other bands, but none of them were really my own personal genre. I’ve gotten a taste of what it is like to play on a huge stages to thousands of fans, and now I want to make it there myself. Sure, I could keep latching on to other people for aid, but it would be more fun to rock out on stage knowing that I accomplished it myself. And by myself I don’t just mean me; I mean the rest of the amazing musicians in my live band. They make the music I hear in my head come out on stage.

3. What is your ideal setting for composing music?

Sadly, I normally need to head to my parents house. I enjoy writing on my piano that’s carried me through the years of lessons and homework. But first I have to get worked up or energized about something. I once waited a really long time for the new Ipod touch to come out with a camera…and then it didn’t. I’ve never been so angry with Apple. I honestly headed straight to a piano and wrote the tune “Water Buffalo Run” right then.
I really enjoy studying music theory too. Learning new concepts of how others thought allows me to play around with my music. I once had to write a lot of composition homework assigned for a guy I call the Hemp Wizard. Doing that kind of school work is actually what makes me come up with new songs. Pan Pan is a very academic band. We nerd out all the time about what concept are going to be used and what sound that is going to make.

4. Béla Bartók or Steve Reich?

Bela Bartok all the way, man. Have you heard his Concerto for Orchestra? OMG SET THEORY! Give me some more of those atonal pitch classes!

5. Where did you record your new CD, “New Arms“? How?

My parents house! I also recorded one tune outside WWU’s PAC when it was raining and then finished it off in one of the practice rooms. I once told someone it would be ridiculous to record in a practice room because the pianos are terrible and the sound has no where to expand. Guess I messed that one up.

6. What is your favorite book, film, or piece of music?

Sarah Jerns doesn’t read books, kids…..or really watch movies. I couldn’t name a favorite piece either. But right now my favorite chord to play is E major in second inversion with a minor and major seventh. It can turn out some juicy things. Look forward to that.

7. Have you ever won a trophy? If so, what for? How many?

YES! I won second place in a soccer tournament in third grade, I believe. I also totally won a Drill Off the summer of Junior year. I was with a bunch of drum majors and we had to complete the commands that the squad leader called out. I dominated! Hella nerdy.

8. You are contacted by a race of extra-terrestrial Pan Pan enthusiasts who inform you that in 7 days you will be teleported to a planet in an alternate dimension, nearly identical to Earth, called Bearth. Everyone you know and love will be there, but you will only be known to them as the Canadian singer/songwriter Alanis Morrissette. This future is definite. There is nothing you can do to change it. After arriving on Bearth, how long do you wait before you start planning the “Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie Reunion Tour”?

Dude, right away. I would be so gritty when I did it, though. I’m talking about no showers for weeks. That would make me super angsty. I would probably gig non-stop and demand that all my green rooms be filled with strongbow, sierra mist, and pocky (strawberry flavored).

9. You have the power to stop time,  à la Zack Morris from Saved By The Bell. Do you use this skill to help others? Or do you engage in relatively harmless and often hilarious hi-jinx, either preceded or succeeded by an unlikely series of comedic misunderstandings?

Are you serious? Full on hi-jinx Harry Potter sort of stuff. Some would be harmless and some hilarious. But I would probably also go back to when I was in high school and tell my old self to stop being so lame. Getting asked by your dream boy to Homecoming really isn’t that important after all.

10. What can we expect from the upcoming Pan Pan Holiday EP?

I think I’m going to focus more on just piano recordings. I’m going to share the moments that come out when I’m alone with the piano and I let myself create music as I go. The first song done, “Cedar Crowns & Pocket Noise” is airy and delicate. Tones stick with you and conflict with others. I want to stick your head inside my piano and have you listen to the music that happens inside the strings. It’s not all about notes, its about the sound that the notes leave behind and how they interact. That’s what I am creating.

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VIDEO POST!: PAN PAN LIVE AT THE UCH (10.23.09)

On October 23, 2009, Pan Pan played a CD release show at Western Washington University’s Underground Coffeehouse with Rooftops. Here is the footage:

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10 Questions with Pan Pan’s Sarah Jerns

COMING SOON: ROOFTOPS LIVE AND ACOUSTIC AT THE UCH (10.23.09)

In this provocative Stanford University Presidential lecture titled, “Analogy as the Core of Cognition”, cognitive scientist and Pulitzer Prize winning author Douglas Hofstadter elaborates on the role of analogy in cognitive computation in meticulous detail.

Also, he reminds me of David Byrne.

Recommended Reading:

I Am A Strange Loop by Douglas Hofstadter

The Minds I by Douglas Hofstadter and Daniel Dennett

Scientific American’s Metamagical Themas Column by Douglas Hofstadter

Consciousness Explained by Daniel Dennett

The Blank Slate by Steven Pinker

Also – - – - >  I hear that  Gödel, Escher, Bach is incredible.  It’s the book that he won the Pulitzer Prize for and it’s been on my list for a long time.

I was excited to hear that Biagio Biondolillo’s tour homecoming show was going to be in downtown Bellingham at Temple Bar because:

1. I know and love the employees at Temple Bar.

2. It’s the most comfortable bar in Bellingham and has some of the best food and drinks.

3. It’s is less than a block’s stroll from my house.

4. And, most importantly, Biagio’ s music is intimate and warm; perfectly suited for a venue such as this.

When the day of the show finally came, it was Sunday and it was cold.  As I entered the bar and found my way to the second room where the show was taking place, I was struck by all of the familiar faces illuminated by radiant and ubiquitous candlelight.  The place was completely packed.  As I was trying to find a place to sit, I was momentarily paralyzed in semi-satori; overcome with the realization that summer was over and far away, that fall had arrived in orange and brown, and that I could already see winter creeping up with a dagger in it’s teeth.  It was as if I was suddenly aware that the speed of time is FAST and, little tugs of longing for the past aside, I couldn’t help but feel okay with it.  Snapping back into focus, I sat down on the floor in front, leaned back against a booth, and watched as Biagio tuned his guitar while Kat and Anna warmed up their strings (fiddle and ‘cello, respectively).

After small amounts of banter and welcoming, they began to play. All of the chatter from tertiary conversations immediately died down and everyone’s attention was focused on the three kids in front who were picking, plucking, bowing, and strumming the strings of their instruments like old masters while crooning in impassioned harmony.  It was obvious that weeks of tour, playing with each other day after day, had greatly improved the cohesiveness and communication of their performance.  Mainly playing from Biagio’s new CD, Alone On This Here and Now (Corridor Records), themes of hard work and love, lost and found, consistently found their evocation.  The pauses between songs were peppered with tour stories of leaking brake lines, lost debit cards, drunken beach singing, pop-tart crumbs, and the #1 Motel 6 in the country (apparently in Roseburg, Oregon).

Biagio is a mechanic, by trade, and works at Gundie’s Automotive Recyclers.  His songs sometimes employ metaphors about tools and engines and this has led some reviewers to label it as sort of a music for the working class.  He’s often described as a combination of Bruce Springsteen and Elliot Smith.  I think his sometimes subtle, sometimes blazing, but always precise finger-picking style has a lot more in common with John Fahey, Elizabeth Cotten, or Leo Kottke.  While his sometimes playful, sometimes somber, and always sharp lyricism is more akin to Basho, Billy Collins, or Edna St. Vincent Millay than to Elliot Smith.  Now, I don’t think Biagio minds being called The Boss and it is music for the working class, but it’s more complicated than that.  Yes, his songs speak about labor, love, and loss, but they speak more about the arduous and agonizing internal struggle to be a respectable, honest, and genuinely good person, while soberly realizing that this is not a battle easily won.  He articulates this struggle clearly, coherently, and without guile.  And I suppose that while this is is what makes him disarming and easy to relate to, it’s also probably what gives rise to the Springsteen analogies.

The set went on and I was ecstatic when they played some old favorites of mine like “Dirty Old Toolbox” and the completely derailing “Goddamn Radiator” (both of which, I believe, were originally All Creatures Of Good Heart* songs).  Biagio kept emphasizing how happy they were to be home and how lucky we all are to live in such an incredible community.  As I looked around at the faces of my friends, almost monochromatic, but golden in the flickering light, I couldn’t help agreeing with him.  When the encore came it was like absolution and everyone seemed enraptured by the lightning speed and howling climax of “Lone Wolf.”

Then it was over.  I stepped out into the cold, feeling edified, with a single thought on my mind, “I hope temple bar keeps having shows.”

*All Creatures Of Good Heart, you should start playing music again.

Full disclosure: Biagio Biondolillo is a friend and is also the brother of Mar.

Sunset Riders (Complete Recordings):

Sunset Riders was a recording and songwriting project of mine from 1998 to 2005.  It was mainly an avenue to pursue spontaneous creativity; writing and recording as recklessly as possible, preferably in one session.  Often, however, it devolved into overly-sentimental catharsis.  Apparently, it’s hard to be in your 20s.  Most of the songs were recorded in my bedroom or in my basement on a Tascam 4 track recorder*.

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01 there is magic in the future

02 whatcom falls (a sandcastle still)

03 lost lady of the marble

04 your singing softly stops my heart and i’m quietly covered in sweat because i can’t stop my hands from shaking

05 breaking little sticks

06 you are a crude drawing

07 wonderers and wanderers (lands farther east)

08 toad lake

09 asleep (the smiths)

10 sunnycrest

11 why i storied

12 run into a wall

13 sewing patterns

*Songs 11-13 were recorded by Ryan Soukkala at Fairhaven College, late winter, 2004.  Ft. Jonathan McIntyre on acoustic guitar & Ryan Soukkala on drums.

Songs in chronological order.

In this era of information overload we are subjected to an almost constant cognitive dissonance, to which we often acclimate without comment. We compartmentalize ourselves and rationalize our misunderstandings. And, most of the time, we do this unwittingly. We are in desperate need of compassionate, consilient, and clear communicators of science.

Carl Sagan excelled, not only at explaining the intricate workings of nature, but at always expressing a wonderfully transcendent and humbling awe toward the paralyzing majesty of the cosmos; fully embracing existence with its myriad of uncertainties and in all of its absurdity.

How lucky we are to live in this time………….indeed.

And how lucky we are to have weirdos on the internet inadvertently doing beautiful things.

I miss Carl.

-Mark

Recommended reading:

The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan

The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan

Billions & Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium by Carl Sagan

Cosmos by Carl Sagan

Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space by Carl Sagan

The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence by Carl Sagan

Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan