Michael Owcharuk Sextet

Live @ The Upstage
June 20, 2008
Port Townsend, WA



Beth Fleenor and Jim Knodle



Nate Omdal



Michael Owcharuk and Brandon Gibbons



Group Shot!
photo taken by jesus

The F#%K Chronicles: Volume One

Fuck #1: I’m sure if I actually manage to keep this up this will only be the first of many in the FUCK Chronicles. Can you even swear in a blog? In fact I don’t even think this is an actual Fuck. It’s more of a practice Fuck. Or even an obligatory Fuck. That kind of Fuck you force yourself to have because you instinctually feel as though you should be having a Fuck but you’re not. Will blogspot.com exist when I’m 70? Probably not in any recognizable form, but let’s imagine that it will. I see myself sitting next to a wii fire place, holding in one hand my wireless controller, which is more likely at that point to be a computer chip implanted under the skin, leaving the hand free to hold a beerijuanaproteincokepluseverythingyaneed future shake, placing logs in a virtual woodstove for ‘exercise’ gaining points for the amount of cyber-heat-degrees I can produce to run the power plant in my virtual 2nd Life third world while my ‘1st Life' first body sits in front of my air purification conditioning device in my lower level living cubicle in Capitol, the last clean city on Earth. Sitting there reminiscing of the time in my late 20’s when it was still safe to go outside and when sometimes it got cold and we had real fires in real fireplaces producing real heat for no purpose other than the fulfillment of our selfish desire for physical comfort. ‘Capitol’ is of course a reference to a world in an Orson Scott Card novel and heat of course is a reference to something we used to need before Global Boiling became the environmental issue that united the world under one common goal…the unconditional survival of the human species, back in 2017. The other hand is typing our daily blog entry. This particular one is called Fuck Chronicles: Volume 83,157.

Never mind. That’s obviously a drunken ramble of sorts. Not based in any sound facts. Of course there won’t be any kind of ‘keyboards’ in existence in any year after 2017. They’ll be eliminated along with anything else that might require the physical use of any part of the body in the Technology Because We Can Revolution of the year 20nottoolongfromnow. Silly. I nearly rambled myself into forgetting the point of this whole entry. Yes, I believe there was one.

Leaving…that’s it. It started with this conversation with Alex tonight, walking through the neighborhood after the barbeque. He asked me how I was feeling about ‘all this’…It might be the first time I’ve been asked. The roomies flipped me the tiniest bit of shit I could ask for and have been cool. But they don’t ask and anytime I may try to talk about it…which usually starts with, “This is weird” or “I may be a bit freaked out” all I get is the “You’ll do fine”. In fact that’s probably the only feed back I’ve gotten from anyone…anyone. At the moment, though this is the first time I’m letting it all out, I want to yell some shit like…”Of course I’ll be fine, I’ve always been fine, through everything, all of it. In fact I usually do better than being fine…especially in the last year and a half and ESPECIALLY in the last 4 months…but that doesn’t change the fact that it feels fucking weird and I may be a little freaked out! Fuckers.” But usually I don’t think that…out loud…in my head…like a thought.

It’s natural and fitting that he would asked. It made me think of the fact that I’ve been here for four years, and that I moved out here a lot because of Alex, and all the growing up we’ve all done, and how he’s one of the few people here or anywhere that have been here for all of this most recent leg of the journey. And that that is exactly what it’s been. A leg in the journey. Even if I come back here and settle in to something…meaning getting a place again and staying here and working again…maybe a year will have gone by, maybe three and I’ll be different and it will be a different time. I’ve lived in this house for four years. It’s the only place I’ve lived in Seattle. And I can’t remember myself before I lived here. I was different.

And now I’m packing up to move out and be gone for…a while. It feels like a strange sort of limbo. I feel like I never really came back. I didn’t. I knew it right along. I just sent my body here to get my ‘stuff’ as rid of as possible and dealt with otherwise. I don’t live here anymore already. I just…live here sometimes? That’s what I’ve been saying in my head. It works for me.

Not having a home. I need that for a while. I remembered what I wanted when I came here. Just a music stand and a mattress. It’s funny. I have a music stand and…I have a mattress. But I never got what I wanted. Not yet.

Sunday Mornings

It was early Sunday morning. When I say early, I mean by musician’s standards. The gig starts at 11am. When thinking of Sunday morning, you must also consider Saturday night…which more often than not turns into Sunday morning for these guys. Sometimes things can get a little tense here at Café Bambino.



“Listen man, I’m sick of you bitching about Maiden Voyage. I like that tune and I want to play it. By the way…you smell like beer and you look like crap. Why don’t you do your hair for me the way you used to??”



“Oh man…here we go again. Every week it’s something else. It’s amazing they haven’t killed each other yet.”
“Yeah. Last week when you were on vacation they got into it about who was going to get the last spinach and feta croissant. Kevin whipped out the bow and started beating the crap out of Brandon. I had to throw iced coffee on the both of them just to break it up.”



“No man! If I’ve told you once I’ve told you a thousand times…I freaking hate that tune and I’m not playing it. Don’t make me tell you again or so help me…”



“Okay, okay just relax. Since we only have two more weeks together before you leave again, I’ll pretend that you’re still in charge, even though last week you clearly relinquished all the responsibility for this gig over to me. We can play whatever tunes you want. Okay Mr. Cranky Pants!”

“Thank you Kevin…that’s very kind of you.”

The beginning of the End

ME: Well, isn't it a bit early for you to be up and about?
MYSELF: Why yes. Yes I suppose it is a bit early, though I do play at Cafe Bambino in an hour from now.
ME: Ah yes. So what did you do yesterday?
MY: Well let's see...I slept quite late. Friday night was a failed attempt to take it easy and go to bed early. Usually when I try, it's worse of than it would have been had I just gone about the partying. So...Friday night lasted until after 6am Saturday morning...though the last hour or so of that was spent organizing some things in the room after everyone else had fallen. I often have difficultly sleeping after surprise summer blizzards like we had that night. So I slept until 1pm.
ME: Wow! 1pm. That's quite late for you.
MY:: If now is quite early then I'm not sure if 1pm could possibly be quite late...I just don't think there is enough time between them to necessitate the use of a word of such extremity as "quite". But whatever. After a while Rob got up and cooked us breakfast. Did a lot of sitting in the sun and reading and writing yesterday. Then I got some stuff at the place of shopping and then did a bunch more organizing in the room. Almost there. Last night I went through most of the Cd's. That's a huge project in and of itself.
ME: Yeah and one that hasn't been done in quite sometime. Say, how's the coffee this morning?
MY: You know how it is with that little coffee pot. The first cup is always good...then the next always taste like ass. I think it's too small and so it burns fast. If you grab a cup now it should still be QUITE good!

Lost at Sea

So I planned on writing to you world...truly I did, but on my third day aboard the MS Sensation there was this terrible storm! Lightning strikes surrounded the ship, and the waves! Oh, the waves...we tried to fight them, lord knows we tried...but the ocean is just too powerful for men, her arms came up over all sides and swept it clean.

After that it was dark for a long while. It seemed I lived a thousand years in blackness, each moment taking an eternity and passing in a instant. Eventually I awoke, coughing up sea weed and salt water, face first in the sand, skin on my back raw from over exposure to the sun...



On a beach that extended only a few miles in either direction before turning back into itself and revealing the endless blue canvas where the ocean meets the sky meets the ocean meets the sky meets the...

Many days and nights I waited. Of course during the days I explored the island, gather food, made a nice little shelter near the beach and chased monkeys through the jungle, and during the nights I sat alone around a giant bond fire on an empty beach trying to stay within the circle of light cast by the flames. It seemed that the dark spirits of the island were afraid to cross into the light. Sleep only came in tiny fragments here and there, mostly through the day when the spirits were away.

I discovered many ancient buildings...ruins from a lost civilization...a lost...time.









And then finally, just as I was starting to get settled in and making friends with all the demon spirits of the night, just when they started to let me play in the demon games...



...I saw it out there, in the distance. Slowly, as the sun made it's journey across the sky, it grew larger and larger...until there was no denying what it was, but how could it be...it was impossible but it was happening right before my eyes. I did consider for a moment the fact that I had been washed overboard, unconsciously swept through the sea and dropped on my face in the sand on some deserted island and had been living off of bad pizza and coconut rum juice and hadn't slept for weeks? Months? Years...for fear of my new found friends, the scary demon spirit monkeys...yeah maybe I was a little insane...and it occurred to me to not believe it, even though "I" was "seeing it" with my own "eyes"...I even thought for a moment that I had died at sea...and this was a sort of purgatory...a place to sit a go crazy thinking about nothing but sand and jelly fish and how my only pair of boxer shorts had just the other day been swept out to sea as a was frolicking in the waves!...but no...it was there, it was real, they had come back for me. I was saved!