The Finest in Spontaneous Composition  1996 - 2017

"Never touch a drowning woman...  her silver threads of spittle...

Spread across the water -- like cobwebs..."

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                                                      From No Swimming Today by These Are Not My Hands

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"We never play the same thing once." So said Bill Krauss, an early member of These Are Not My Hands -- a semi-ever-shifting conglomeration of Actors, Musicians, Audio Engineers and Advertising Refugees who gathered regularly at Studio "P" in Sausalito, California every Tuesday night for over twenty years to court the elusive Muse of Spontaneous Composition.

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TANMH music could be considered a sonic metaphor for a painting by Jackson Pollack -- an abstract journey for both observer and participant. The players collaborate, negotiate, listen and allow in real time to awaken in the listener emotional responses that could have come from a tender ballad, a gritty blues, or a Beat rant delivered against a soundtrack by John Cage.  It is the Music of the Future - and - the Pasture.

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TANMH compositions were often born out of silence -- spontaneously erupting into a chaotic mix of solos, duos and trios, conversations, and narratives rich with opaque allusions to the impulses of the sub-conscious.   

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"It's not just a line anymore. You can't just  go left or right.

You must take up and down into perspective.

And then there's the whole question of volume!"

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                                                               From The Matrix  by These Are Not My Hands

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Other pieces were composed in the moment via individual lists of printed instructions that all begin with the word "When...";  limiting the number of musicians that can play at any one time; creating pitch-shifted duets between the performer and his or her sampled utterances; even riffing on a listing taken at random from a telephone directory.

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Another creative technique TANMH often employed was the "45-second song cycle" - a series of songs created solely from audience suggestions and cued by the drop of a hat.  Some of the instant classics that came from these collaborations are The Alarming Company of Retired Big Game Hunters, Asparagus Urine, and The Ballad of Joe DiMaggio's Carrots.

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TANMH’s unique sound ranges from responses to and/or renditions of jazz standards and show tunes performed for their own amusement, to moody textures for a number of independent films, to interactions with pre-recorded or pre-written texts.  As longtime friends, collaborators and seekers, they were firmly committed to avoiding the safety net of whatever worked the last time.

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Time, Erosion, Life, Death and the harsh realities of existence brought a bittersweet end to the TANMH experience.  But the ensemble's quest for collaborative improvisational creativity lives on in the souls of all those who ever gathered at Studio "P" on Tuesday night to "make the noise".

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"This is our Archeology.  This is our Geography. 

This Attic.  Hot 'n cobwebbed.  This is the Dig."

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From Define the Divine  by These Are Not My Hands

Over the years, These Are Not My Hands has proudly featured:

Amanda Moody – vocals, text & percussion,  Peter Scott – keyboards, percussion, & vocals,

James Carraway – flutes, reeds, & vocals,  Joe Paulino – drums, keyboards & vocals,

Mike Shea – basses & percussion,  David Cuetter – Theramin, guitar, percussion & live mixing,

Ed Holmes - Coyote Percussion,   Mark Purvis - Bass,   Dan Reich - Keyboards

Richard Weiss - Wrench Guitar,  Dave Pangaro - Bass,  Michael Bloch - Bass

Tim White - Guitar,  Ingeborg Weinmann White - Voice,  Jeff Holland - Voice