the colloquial orchestra

hello and welcome to the colloquial orchestra archive, here you will find recordings that we occasionally make of the shows we occasionally play. we are a richmond, virginia based, ever changing experimental improvisational ensemble. these recordings may contain things you may love and things you may not love so much. regardless, we shall unapologetically and humbly allow them to exist for you. mistakes, experiments, moments of brilliance and all.... thanks for listening! - THE COLLOQUIAL ORCHESTRA
to download any files please right click and save as

notes: in the midst of a first friday marred by fights and an insane amount of police presence, the courtyard managed to be as top notch as always. attentive and enthusiastic crowd, and two great acts played before us. playing show here always seems to reinforce why i do what i do. we had a nice ensemble of baritone ukulele, keyboard, a whole lot of percussion, violin, everyone expected to show up and play something the key of D-ish as usual, but i instead brought an electric guitar tuned like the dulcitar... but in the key of C-ish because anything is possible in the colloquial orchestra. thanks to Joon for recording this one (and for adding such colorful commentary to the video) i was running sound the whole night and had to bring out a whole bunch of PA gear, and of course in the process of packing i forgot my recorder. this is why i need to stop running sound for almost every show i play.

G L O B E H O P P E R   ~  J U L Y  9 ,  2 0 1 1
(Dave Watkins, Matt Klimas, Joon Kim, PJ Sykes, Jameson Price, Nathaniel Roseberry,
surprise guest  percussion by Melissa Koch and Hillary Langford)

notes: we had another sizable ensemble for this one. the only plan was that we would start off with almost everyone playing completely acoustic, and then at some point start bringing amps and effects. it was another pretty insane set. i think i had the gain on the recorded set higher than it should have been, so the loud sections kind of sound like the world exploding. we had guitar, glockenspiel, violin, didgeridoo, fretless banjo, bass, pitchshifting cassette player, and lots of random percussion. a good time was certainly had by all.

S P R O U T  ~  J U N E   4 ,  2 0 1 1
(Dave Watkins, Matt Klimas, Joon Kim, Will Thompson, PJ Sykes, Kyle Harris)

notes: somehow we ended up playing a 50 some odd minute piece of music, it was loud, crazy and oh so much fun. guitar, violin, dulcitar, baritone ukulele, otamatone, microkorg, accordian, drums, dulcitar, and more were featured instruments. the player contains the entire show (things really get started at about 5:30), the downloadable mp3's are the show split roughly in half to make it slightly easier to deal with.

G L O B E H O P P E R  ~  A P R I L   1 8 ,  2 0 1 1
(Dave Watkins, Joon Kim, P. D. Wilder, Joe Morgan, Zachary M. W. Corsa)

notes: it was the More States / Lost Trail / Colloquial Orchestra super jam! video uploaded by Joe Morgan

S P R O U T  ~  N O V E M B E R   1 2 ,  2 0 1 0
(Dave Watkins, Matt Klimas, Jonathan Vassar)

notes: we played this show completely acoustic, no amps, no effects, just our instruments, and the rumble of the venue. there are a few moments where crashing silverware in the background come in pretty much on tempo.

G I B S O N ' S  G R I L L  ~  O C T O B E R   2 6 , 2 0 1 0
(Dave Watkins, Matt Klimas, Chris Payne and members of Me and My Arrow + Phantom Tails
from the great state of Minnesota)

notes: even though you can't see it there are like 15 people on stage. it was certainly epic! thanks to Heather Hamilton-Brown for busting out her phone to record some of this madness.

T H E  C A M E L  ~  D E C E M B E R  1 4 ,  2 0 0 9
(Dave Watkins, Matt Klimas, Chad Ebel)

notes: this is a video excerpt from the show, once more this was right before the name "COLLOQUIAL ORCHESTRA" was officially adopted, which happened for our listening room performance in february of 2010, which featured this exact lineup (hopefully i'll post something from that at some point). for this show we sort of had had a ridiculous working title for a band name "dulciukezouki" because of instrumentation: dulcitar, baritone ukulele, and bouzouki. 

T H E  C O U R T Y A R D  ~  O C T O B E R  2 ,  2 0 0 9
(Dave Watkins, Matt Klimas)

notes: this is the set that was the catalyst for the creation of the colloquial orchestra. i had asked Matt to join me for some electro acoustic improv goodness to close out the night at first friday's in the courtyard. the combination of baritone ukulele and dulcitar with loopers and other effects ended up turning out really well, and was just a ton of fun so we decided we should do this sort of thing again every now and then....

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this is not a complete collection, some shows earlier on did not get recorded, if you have any content that you would like to share, contact dave and we'll try and get it up here. also, all the download files require some good old fashioned "right click / save as" action. thanks again!

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