Preparing for Burning Man – the Thing in the Desert – consumes you. You sacrifice all your time to it, and much of your sanity. I’ve been too busy to even blog about this year’s preparations, which have included a slew of new instruments and a complete teardown/rebuild of the Arduino-controlled canopy-light system. As I’m …
XyloVan’s Light Fandango comes home to BRC in 2018
YES! “The Light Fandango” will return to Black Rock City this August in full dress. I just got my invitation from the Department of Mutant Vehicles. To say I’m excited is a bit of an understatement. I learned a lot in 2014, the last time she flew. The chief lesson was – assemble the chandeliers …
Tonepod 2 – A new, more-portable hank drum design
(edit: I quit Facebook in 3/2018, which accounts for the missing videos.) So, I make these musical drums out of up-cycled propane tanks. Click through for a demo video (and the build log) for Tonepod 2, the new model. Making this one, as with the others – gave me tremendous joy – which is good …
#7 – the Rat Rod
I’m not much of a player, but here’s a demo of a drum in C-minor – This is the seventh drum I’ve made out of a 20-pound propane tank. The discarded tank came into the shop in a thrashed, rusted-out pale blue, which looked amazing. So I kept much of the original paint, cleaning off …
Fireball XL-5 – Tank drum video demo
Here’s a quick demo of Fireball XL-5, which I made on commission for Burns. I’m not much of a musician and iPhone isn’t much of a sound-capture device, so the clip doesn’t quite do justice to how resonant it sounds in person. It’s glorious. If you would like me to make a drum for you …
Fireball XL-5 – the build log
I made Fireball XL-5 for Mykal Burns, a video producer, roller derby enforcer and erstwhile percussionist. The build went something like this: If you would like me to make a drum for you on commission, the price is $300 – $250 if you bring your own empty propane tank. Contact me for details.
Demo video – “Green Destiny” tank drum
A little demo of Green Destiny. Full build log here.
“Green Destiny” – How to build a propane tank drum
If you would like me to make a drum for you on commission, the price is $300 – $250 if you bring your own empty propane tank. Contact me for details.
The XyloVan Repair Fund: Handmade xylophone and gongs for sale!
Hey, friends! If you’ve ever dreamed of owning a handmade full-octave xylophone like this one – or an ornate custom-engraved ceremonial gong for announcing dinnertime, kickass achievements or the arrival of Friday, now’s your chance. But first, a story: So after our epic trip to Burning Man 2014, XyloVan’s transmission finally blew out and we’re …
Video: XyloVan at Burning Man 2014
A little sampler of the hundreds of people who played XyloVan at Burning Man, 2014.
Skipping the Light Fandango at Burning Man 2014
Here’s the finished product – lightbars strobing through the rainbow, chandeliers all aglow. Never thought we’d make it (all things considered), and the Light Fandango came out about 9 times as lush-looking as we could ever hope for.
Passing inspection at the DMV
I’ve often said, because I believe it to be true: A mutant vehicle is a hole in the playa into which you pour money, blood and tears. But it’s still a goddamn mutant vehicle. There’s nothing so thrilling and rewarding as crawling through the inspection line at the Department of Mutant Vehicles at Burning Man, …
Rebuilding The Light Fandango on playa
The trick with a mutant vehicle like XyloVan is that you have to disassemble everything you spent many weeks building, and then rebuild it on-playa in Nevada’s unforgiving Black Rock Desert in a reasonable amount of time. Last time (when we built Janus) the build crew was, um, me. I had a few hours help …
Our bumpy, gnarly, hair-raising road to Burning Man 2014
I’m writing this months later. The dust has settled. XyloVan and crew have made a truly epic appearance at Burning Man in late August. And we have survived. It’s only now – after taking time to unpack, clean up, de-stress, re-enter the default world and process all the wild stuff that we experienced – that …
This wiring business is complicated ‘n’ stuff
As I mentioned before the only way to build a really interesting mutant vehicle is to either be a genius or work with geniuses. Lucky me, I’m in the latter camp: Spencer and Rina continued hooking up the elaborate Arduino-run LED array this week. The trick was bringing the mass of wires coming down from …
Sex-appeal – Installing the wheel covers
As I write now after the burn, aware of what was to befall them in our tumultuous trip to the playa, it pains me to see these gorgeous wheel covers. But at the time they were gorgeous, and once we get the wheels rebalanced and the covers reinstalled with plenty of insulating/gripping silicone caulk, they …
Time to refresh the mallets
Our mallets are made from fiberglass rods, which we secure from a company in Georgia that supplies whip antennas for dune buggies, patient among other things. The hard mallets – best used on the high keys and gongs – are simply dipped multiple times in PlastiDip, a liquid vinyl that needs to be refreshed on …
Life in the Chandelier Factory
It took us a couple of weekends and some help from excellent friends to do it, but Chuckles (my loving and long-suffering art-car widow of a wife) and I built 14 chandeliers with the help of dear friends Lee Vodra and Christefano Reyes. We began with discs of 1/2-inch plywood that I designed by using …
Sewing, skinning and draping your own art car
It pays – and I mean *really* pays – to have experts among your friends. Robert DeHart – a wonderfully talented clothing designer and expert human – stepped in again to help finagle the rough fabric patches onto the body. And lo and behold, it’s starting to resemble my sketches!
Illuminating XyloVan: Why do ya call this thing “Light Fandango?”
Well, it’s like this. I’m an old hippie at heart – though I’m technically Generation X and more of a punk (I once broke my nose moshing at a Hüsker Dü concert – true story.) But it’s inspired by the opening line of Procol Harum’s amazing A Whiter Shade of Pale: “We skipped the light …