Playing lots of music this month up and down the East Coast. Friday I’m doing standup in my old stomping ground, Washington, DC then doing a recording session with the amazing Be Steadwell all weekend. I recently started playing regular solo gigs at 2637Brew in the Brewerytown neighborhood of Philly. I’ve been bringing my RC-505 Loop Station, upright bass, guitar, & Micro Korg synth. These have been super fun so far, I’ve been keeping it chill and trippy. The next ones are Feb 8 & 11. On Feb 10 I’m playing with Michael Arenella for the first time at a venue called Rathskeller in Frenchtown, NJ also for the first time. Frenchtown is a super cute Delaware River town a little north of Trenton. I’ll be bringing my growler with me to fill up at Descendants Brewing for sure. Then I’m doing an amazingly cool run of the Bearded Ladies on Ice. We are making an Ice Show about Climate Change at the Delaware River Rink in Philly featuring Jarbeaux (John Jarboe), Sam Rise, Eric Jaffe, Mk Tuomanen, Messapotamia Lefae, Michael Solonoski, David Devan, Lili St. Queer, Veronica Chapman-Smith, & David Shapiro with Music Director Heath Allen on keys and Jimmy Coleman on drums. This will be really epic! That show runs from Feb 16-25. It will be a little stressful because I’ll be heading to Joshua Tree, CA for the days off in the middle of the run. Come see if I can play the last 3 days of this run after lots of alcohol, hiking, and a red eye from Palm Springs.

There is so much comedy coming up! I started a weekly comedy show at Abyssinia in West Philadelphia with Betty Smithsonian and Jaime Chialastri. Abyssinia is probably the best Ethiopian restaurant in a neighborhood filled with Ethiopian restaurants. Most of the shows are upstairs in what used to be known as Fiume, now Upstairs at Abyss, we’re doing a mix of stand-up, sketch, small theater shows, cabaret, and game shows. It’s quickly becoming a favorite room for performers across the East Coast (we even have some LA folks coming through), it’s super intimate with low ceilings, it kind of feels like it was designed for comedy (that’s what West Philly Victorians were originally built for, right?) We’re also doing some special events downstairs in the big room. Our first one will be Weeding Out the Stoned on December 29. The premise of the show is all of the comedians are high except one, they are given sobriety tests and the audience has to figure out who is the Narc.

In other comedy news, I’ll be hosting at Helium for Mary McCool’s Stress Exorcist and Rose Luardo on January 4. This will be a fun one because typically, I’m by far the weirdest person on every comedy show, but I am by far the most traditional comic on this one at one of the more traditional comedy rooms in the city. This one is not too be missed, it will be super immersive and unlike anything you’ve ever seen in comedy unless you happen to know all 3 of us. I’ll also be back at Quig’s in Plays & Players for Sunday Best on December 18. This is one of my favorite shows at one of my favorite bars inside one of my favorite theaters. The lineups are always fun mix of character pieces and standup and one of the most entertaining shows in town. If it wasn’t going to be a blast, I wouldn’t come back in the middle of my cat sitting stint in NYC just to do it.

Well, Fringe is finally over, hence why I have time to write another thing. It was the first time since the Pandemic started that I’ve had a truly overwhelming schedule. I was in the house band for Late Night Snacks which is the Philly Fringe’s Late Night Cabaret. I think I did something like 20 shows and 22 rehearsals in 25 days. There were 3 different acts for every show with entirely new music. Glad I did it, but glad it’s over.

I’m excited to get back to some of my own projects. I’ll be doing a bunch of stand-up over the next few months. I’m actually starting a new weekly comedy show in November at Abyssinia in West Philly on Tuesdays called Case Comedy (close to the EL and plenty of street parking with the best Ethiopian food an cocktails in Philly). We’ll be doing most of the shows upstairs in the space formerly known as Fiume, now called Upstairs at Abyss, but some of the bigger shows will be downstairs. We’ll be programming a bunch of different styles of comedy e.g. Stand-up, Sketch, One-Person Show, High Concept, Game Show etc… Open format spaces and weekly shows are two things I have long felt Philadelphia has needed so hopefully we can help fill that gap. I’ll be co-producing with some of my favorite performers in the Philly: Betty Smithsonian, Jaime Chialastri, and Alex Yang. Definitely check those folks out if you’ve never seen them perform before, perhaps at Abyssinia on Tuesdays.

It’s particularly exciting to be putting on shows there because Fiume was one of the first places that booked me regularly to play music back in the day. I was 21, I swear. I used to play there with Greg Mervine, Brendan Cooney, and Kimball Brown, some of the original members of the West Philadelphia Orchestra. I actually recall standing outside of Abyssinia while Greg explained to Kimball what Balkan music was, so I guess I watched that Philly institution get conceived. That’s not the first time I’ve seen something get conceived. One time I saw two pigeons fucking at the Denver airport. I actually have video of that, maybe I’ll post it someday, or perhaps I’ll just play it at Abyssinia on a Tuesday so you’ll have to come see it in person.

Wow, it’s been a busy month and it’s continuing through the next week! If you’re in Southeast PA, Delaware, or Lehigh Valley come see something! I just got back from doing a bunch of shows in Portland, OR and MusikFest. I have 5 shows in 3 days this weekend including another 2 comedy shows at MusikFest in Bethlehem, PA on Sat. I’m also headlining a comedy show in Wilmington, DE at Bootless Stageworks next Saturday, which is a beautiful theater in Trolley Square. I’m playing at the legendary Newtown Theatre in Newtown, PA this Friday with Hot Club of Philly. Next week Hot Club will also be back at Bookstore Speakeasy in Bethlehem and Dinner en Blanc in Philly for their 10th annual event. Dinner en Blanc is sold out, but if you can figure out where it is (they don’t disclose the location til the day of), I’m sure you could crash it. In years past, I’ve played for Dinner en Blanc at the Philadelphia Museum of Art & Rittenhouse Square. Then at the end of the month I’ll be in Brooklyn at Young Ethel’s again on 8/30. Anyway, it’ll be nice to have this run of gigs all over the place before spending most of September in one spot playing in the House Band five nights a week for Late Night Snacks which is the Philadelphia FringeArts Festival’s Late Night Cabaret produced by the Bearded Ladies. That will be in the location of the old Voltage Lounge next to Franklin Music Hall which was formerly the Electric Factory.

I’ve been working with my new Boss RC-505 MK II Looper in preparation for the upcoming workshop with Pig Iron Theater Company. All of the devisers were given the assignment to learn three Aimee Mann songs before next week. Lead vocals are admittedly not one of my strong suits, but arrangement is, so I’m hoping this room full of transcendent singers and performers will be fooled by my creativity toward covering up my lack of singing skills. Unfortunately technology isn’t a strength either, but I have plenty of time due to a rare and fortunately light week. I’ll be spending the next week learning how to use this Loop Station and going to Six Flags Great Adventure with a comedy gig in Delaware and a Memorial Day parade with members of the Sun Ra Arkestra in New Jersey in between. As I learn how to use this Loop Stations, I’ll probably throw some stuff on Instagram and Youtube. Coincidentally, I have another gig coming up for which I was asked to bring my Loop Station with Heath Allen, so this work will go a long way. I love when I’m getting paid and learning a new skill at the same time. Does anyone else want to pay me to learn something new?

I took a look at my calendar for the next few weeks and realized that I’ve inadvertently booked a comedy tour. It’s been a while since I’ve been on the road for comedy (or at all for that matter; last fall and summer I think) so I’m really stoked. I’ll be at Copacabana tonight for Cry Baby DC. This production team has been killing it around DC lately. I think they’re producing like 5 shows a week now. DC might have the strongest comedy scene outside of NYC & LA, they just have a ton of great shows every night of the week. I booked this show because my buddy Eric Lawry of Dirty Dollhouse & Kalob Griffin Band fame is a Middle School English teacher in Northern Virginia and booked me and some other great musicians to do a live action review of their Figurative Language segment of his English class before their final. It was super fun, his 7th graders were blown away and were clamoring for autographs after class (some on various body parts)! Anyway, I’ll be at Punch Line Philly next Wednesday which is one of the best comedy clubs in the country. Then Sunset Auditorium on Saturday in South Jersey; never been there, but this lineup is excellent. Then I’ll be at Phantom Power on Sunday in Lancaster County which is one of my favorite venues for music or comedy on the East Coast. Finally I’ll be at Bootless Stageworks Comedy Corner in Wilmington, DE on 5/28 and the lineup is filled with all my best buds in comedy! Whether the audience likes it or not, we’re going to have a great time hanging out! Again, I don’t really know who the hell is reading this blog (I can tell some folks are because of the analytics), but I hope to see some of you at some of these shows! Also, check the Shows page for all of the music stuff I’ll be doing in between these comedy shows; again, this tour was inadvertent so I didn’t go all out with dates or book them in a row.

I don’t know exactly who’s been coming to this website generally or specifically to read this news/blog section, but I appreciate it. It’s been interesting because this is decidedly not social media so there’s no reactions or comments here to give me any sort of instant dopamine hit, I’m just writing into the void and it’s a bit cathartic (feel free to write me if you’d like though). If anyone reading this follows me on social media, you know I’m almost never earnest and rarely informative, so it’s nice to keep whoever is stumbling on this section abreast of what’s going on and sometimes sharing a bit of my world view. Anyway, because I wasn’t using this section until recently, I’d like to share a piece of writing I was invited to do by Magnet Magazine last year about my experience as a performance based artist living through the pandemic. It’s nice to re-read this for my own purposes as we’re getting back to pre-pandemic levels of performance to remind myself to maintain the clarity I found during that time. Also, there were some really nice photos Chris Sikich took of me for the piece; there were a number of other Philly based artists who were a part of this series, called Isolation Drills, as well. I’ll leave a link to the original article with pictures below the text if anyone wants to explore. Well, without further ado:

Over the past few years, I’ve done about 200 shows per year, but including Zoom shows, I have done about 15 in the last 12 months. I don’t know why I’m including Zoom shows; they’re terrible, and I never want to use Zoom again. So I guess I have done five shows in the last 12 months. 

But the quarantine has been transformative for me. Once the initial quarantine hit, I knew this pandemic was going to last longer than the few weeks that many others were predicting. All of us had to find a way to cope with a world-altering event and more free time than we could have ever imagined. Some spent more time with their families, some took a much needed break from their grind.

For me, as a bass and tuba player, when the world is normal, most of my time is spent collaborating with or working for others, so my coping mechanism was to try to make up for 20 years of never putting my own creativity first. I dusted off my list of ideas for projects that I hadn’t gotten around to; it was a long list. This was a revelation.

In the before time, I would often have an idea, write it down and tell myself I will get to it between gigs or projects. In isolation, I realized I had put nearly all of my own ideas on the back burner for my entire adult life. I love helping creative people I admire bring their ideas to life, and I think I am good at it. But for the better part of two decades, the cost of my commitment to others has been an ever-expanding backlog of my own ideas. So, with all of my obligations on indefinite hiatus, I was determined to accomplish everything I’d always meant to do but didn’t have time for. (Spoiler alert: I didn’t get everything done, but I got a lot done.)

I started by building a small home studio and Marie Kondo-ing my possessions. As I settled into seclusion, the isolation started to do weird things to my brain, and I wrote more than I ever had in my life. Along with writing a bunch of music, I solidified what my first stand-up comedy special would be (if anyone actually wanted to produce my special) and even wrote a good chunk of stuff that could go in a second special, as well as a ton of material that won’t make any sense as soon as the world returns to normal. Here’s a good one I’ll never be able to use again: I’m really starting to regret wishing for more free time on that cursed monkey’s paw.

With time, things got complicated, and my bedroom got crowded. Last summer, I realized I was missing an opportunity by working on things that would either only work after the pandemic or on shows during the pandemic. I knew that I wanted to do some sort of video project, that I had a talkative cat (who was constantly interrupting Zoom performances/meetings) and that I’ve always been drawn to forced perspective (as evidenced by the many pictures of me online drinking waterfalls and holding mountains in my palms). Within an hour, I had ideas for two different web series: Josh Matchstick: Tiny Cruiseship Comedian and Josh Machiz Destroys Cat Heckler. I quickly gathered some of my favorite comics in the world to help write them, and I essentially turned my bedroom into a TV studio.

Josh Matchstick, about a divorced cruiseship comedian who was recently shrunk in an accident and is continuing his career as the world’s smallest comic, is weirdly production-heavy and a little dangerous to make because I need to stand on my radiator to create the forced-perspective illusion.

In September, I was hired to do an outdoor solo-music gig, and playing solo gigs is not something I’m accustomed to. So, in order to rehearse, I brought my PA system into my bedroom to simulate a concert venue. By that point, my bedroom was a recording studio, TV studio and now a concert venue. I couldn’t really walk around my bedroom anymore; it was more of a delicate dance among a cornucopia of fragile gear. (I broke a few things.) So much for the Marie Kondo philosophy. I truly became as busy as I was before the pandemic, but I was focusing on my own endeavors for the first time in my life.

Although I’ve actually felt pretty good in seclusion, I’m immensely grateful to those who were able to make collaborative projects and live performances happen during the pandemic. Because the opportunity to collaborate with others and perform for a live audience was so rare, the shows I was lucky enough to do were truly some of the most magical and memorable experiences in my life.

Molly Murphy and Greg Rigdon hosted a socially distant concert series in their backyard where I played with Heath Allen and a rotating cast of friends a number of times, including a performance for NPR and PBS’s Jazz Night In America. I got to be in the house band for a wonderful online international cabaret festival hosted by the Bearded Ladies and produced by FringeArts and the Public Theater. I was also fortunate to do a handful of livestreams and public outdoor shows with longtime collaborators Hot Club Of Philadelphia.

Those experiences gave me the extra energy and inspiration that it took to complete so many of the projects that I started in isolation. Without those reminders of what it feels like to be in front of an audience and playing with others, I would’ve had no motivation to make art in the first place.

Things are slowly easing into the new normal now. I got the vaccine. I’m deep into the development of an augmented-reality, alternate history of Philadelphia with Pig Iron Theater Company and Rosie Langabeer that will go live in early summer. I’ve be performing shows with the Bearded Ladies Cabaret, taking their box truck (which they converted into a stage) on a traveling medicine show-style tour around Philly. I’m planning a summer tour for a remounting of my second collaboration with BalletX. I did an online Groupmuse with Hannah Nicholas and Gregg Mervine. My average number of days per week wearing pants has increased by one. So, one. It’s one day now. 

Quarantine allowed an opportunity for the pendulum of our lives to swing in the other direction and for us to pay attention to the parts of our human experience we were neglecting. As the pendulum swings back, I’m excited to reconnect with my friends, family and collaborators, and I’m grateful to have my calendar fill up again.

But I learned so much from taking time to work on my own projects that I know that postponing my own ideas indefinitely is not sustainable anymore. So, my new goal is balance.

But I also want to play at Lincoln Center again.

https://magnetmagazine.com/2021/05/17/isolation-drills-josh-machiz/

I got to spend the weekend playing and recording with Dirty Dollhouse, a band I’ve been in for about 5 years now. On Friday we did a sold out show at the Newtown Book & Record Exchange, which is owned by Chelsea Mitchell, the singer and songwriter of the band, where we debuted a bunch of the songs off the new album. Then we recorded at a studio in Bucks County on Sunday and Monday (I performed Standup at Helium on Sunday night, so it was a long, but rewarding week), and knocked out 9 songs. The songs are brilliant and the album sounds amazing. I’m guessing it will be released sometime in the fall, so definitely keep an eye out for it. In the meantime, check out all of the older Dirty Dollhouse recordings wherever music is found, but I prefer Bandcamp, because they take by far the smallest cut from sales. Chelsea is a true genius and has one of the most incredible voices on the planet. The band also includes Eric Lawry on drums of Kalob Griffin Band & Hurricane Hoss fame and August Lutz of Levee Drivers fame. We’ve all played together for a long time in various projects so this band really has a sound that’s been cultivated for about a decade even though this specific lineup has only been together for 5 years.

It was my first time recording with my brand new electric bass, the Fender Ultra Jazz Bass V. It sounds ridiculously good and is currently the fanciest thing I own. I wasn’t really in the market for a new main bass when I was shopping (I still love my old Peavy Cirrus, which I’ve had for about 20 years), but this thing just checked so many boxes. I’ve had a 5 string with active pickups since the beginning of college and was looking for something with passive, but this Fender has a switch that can toggle between the 2 settings. I didn’t expect to prefer the passive sound, but Fender really perfected that classic Fender Jazz Bass sound for the 5 string and I find my self using that setting more often than the more modern active sound. I also played some upright on the album, but that bass is old news. Around 70 years old really.

I will be performing on the line-up for Cassandra Dee’s album recording at Helium Comedy Club with a night full of killers. If you’re in the Philly area, I can’t recommend this enough. Cassandra is one of the funniest humans on the planet. She won Philly’s Phunniest in 2018 and performs all over the East Coast. This is an opportunity to see a classic album live, as it’s being recorded at one of the most legendary comedy clubs in the United States. The night will also feature two of my favorites, Tan Hoang & Jillian Markowitz. Sunday, April 10.

Apparently, according the Squarespace analytics, people are actually reading this section, so I will try to post more here. I just signed on to do a workshop for a new Pig Iron Theater Company project featuring Dito van Reigersberg aka Martha Graham Cracker, Directed by Eva Steinmetz, Co-Written by Dan Rothenberg, and Music Directed by Alex Bechtel. I have no idea what the project is yet and likely they don’t either because the way Pig Iron’s process works by building theater through improvisation. We call this Devised Theatre. So we will play games and receive prompts for improvisations throughout the process which will turn into scenes that get written down by the writers and set by the director. This process has been used time and time again to produce wildly successful and innovative works. I will be one of the “devisers”, which doesn’t necessarily mean that I will be involved in the final work, just in the development process at the moment. I’ve worked with them many times in the past, both as a deviser and a performer, most notably in Twelfth Night, or What You Will and Franklin’s Secret City; and this process is always exciting! I can’t wait to start working with this ridiculously talented crew.

I have a new web series available on Youtube called Josh Matchstick: Tiny Cruise Ship Comedian about a divorced Cruise Ship Comedian who was recently shrunk in an accident and is continuing his career as the world’s smallest Comic. It use forced perspective to create the illusion and is kind of dangerous to make, so watch it in case I die making the next episode. Then my death won’t have been in vain.

I released my first single under my own name! You can find it on all the streaming sites. It’s called Murakami’s Ghost and it’s based on a short story called the Mirror by Haruki Murakami.