2014
OTHERWORLD COTTAGE INDUSTRIES FOCUS WAS ON RECORDING AND RELEASING TRAVIS PIKE'S MUSIC, BUT WE DID PUBLISH ONE BOOK . . .

Harvey Kubernik's It Was Fifty Years Ago Today
THE BEATLES Invade America and Hollywood
     When Harvey Kubernik told Travis Pike about the illustrated Beatles book he was writing, Travis offered to publish it. A deal was struck on the spot, and in January, Otherworld Cottage Industries distributed books for review, resulting in this Jim Kaplan, March Record Collector News magazine cover story interview with author Harvey Kubernik.

     Ray Trakin, in Hits Daily Double News, Saturday, May 14, 2014 wrote, "For my 29 years as a New York transplant in Hollywood, venerable L.A. cheerleader and pop culture historian Kubernik has served as my soulful guide to all things SoCal... Kubernik's focused, tirelessly completist approach to the Fab Four's Hollywood connection offers firm proof of how important this town was to their eventual world conquest." Read those reviews HERE, or read the July 2014 Glass Onion Beatles Journal review.

. . . SCHEDULED OVER 100 DAYS TO
RECORD, MIX AND MASTER MUSIC CDS
Inasmuch as Travis Edward Pike's Tea Party Snack Platter was intended to convey the music and spirit of its time and place, apart from the fact that Travis and Adam performed and recorded all the songs by themselves, it sounds remarkably like Travis Pike's Tea Party. As for the rest, the brothers continued to get by with a little help from their friends . . .
Fans familiar with Travis' songs would expect "If I Didn't Love You Girl," You Got What I Need" and "Oh Mama" to be in his current Youtube top 20, but "What's the Matter with Your Mind" was a complete surprise, second only to "Loup Garou," the surprise hit from last year's Stories in Song, his original novelty song collection. Of the Tea Party Snack Platter, Goldmine magazine's Lee Zimmerman wrote "All of the songs included herein are radio worthy. Timeless and tuneful, these re-recordings compare favorably with anything offered up by The Monkees, The McCoys, The Standells and others of that ilk.

EMERGENCY INTERRUPTION . . .
LONG-GRIN'S EYESIGHT WAS FAILING!

Was it an infection, an inability to adjust to artificial light, or possibly the result of atmospheric pollution? Billy Bryan stayed cool. His vast experience with creatures both real and imaginary made him one of Hollywood's finest diagnosticions and healers. It wasn't easy holding Long-Grin's head still while Billy shined a bright light directly into his alligator-like vertical eye pupils, but with Travis's help, Billy managed to see enough. Of course, Travis wanted to know what the problen was and whether or not Billy could fix it. Billy said the cause was uncertain, but apart from Long-Grin's failing wyesight, he seemed to be healthy enough, and that suggested the most obvious solution would be to replace Long-Grin's green, alligator-like eyes, with yellow, eagle-like eyes. After all, dragons and eagles both evolved from dinosaurs, so Long-Grin's auto-immune system woule not necessarily reject the new eyes, and furthermore, eagles have both monocular and binocular vision, which allows them to use their eyes independently or together, depending on what they wish to see. Billy's explanation was more technical, but the bottom line was, if it worked, Long-Grin's visual acuity would be enormously enhanced, and he'd be able to see more colors than humans do. It would be a delicate and dangerous operation more for Billy than for Long-Grin. The date set for the operation was less than a week away.

Click this link to see an illustrated report on the procedure!

. . . AND THEN IT WAS BACK TO BUSINESS AS USUAL

Reconstructed Coffeehouse Blues is a collection of songs already unique when Travis and his brother Adam began arranging and recording this latest triumph in their on-going efforts to reclaim the best of the songs and music from Travis's mid-sixties catalog. The songs have evolved over time, and the brothers added some instruments and harmonies, but the eleven songs on this album capture the essence of those early performances and the spirit of those musically exciting and socially turbulent times. (Travis's cover photo was taken at Boston's legendary Unicorn Coffeehouse in 1968.)
Travis did the finger-picking on his Taylor guitar, and multi-instrumentalist Adam played everything else and sang harmony parts, too. "Mesmerizing, Tantalizing Hazel-Eyed Jane". was inspired by the waitress at The Sword in the Stone coffeehouse on Charles Street in Boston's Back Bay. "She's Gonna Be A Woman Someday" composed then, was never performed until now, when Travis recruited his friend David Pinto, to play the twenties-style piano part, knowing David, an extraordinarily talented pianist, composer and arranger, could improvise his part from the guitar chords on the lyric sheet. David was game, but insisted Travis sing along and record his vocal at the same time. The result is genuinely inspired. "Don't You Care At All?" is a Vietnam-era composition Travis wrote shortly after the Tet Offensive, now featuring audio clips of helicopter gunships, 50 calibur machine guns, jet fighters and napalm rockets in its instrumental release. The singing protestors, building in numbers and volume, then fade the way memories do, and that recording inspired Travis to write and record "Sing a Song of Blues," to honor all veterans returning from overseas war zones.
Session photo     |     Travis and Adam Pike (standing), and David Pinto (seated).
Lauran Doverspike
Barbara Jordan
Mildred Lewis
Kris Snyder
RECONSTRUCTED COFFEEHOUSE BLUES
"Don't You Care At All?" Lauran, Barbara, Mildred, Kris

Feelin' Better features new recordings of songs Travis performed with the Brattle Street East in the 1966 movie Feelin' Good. "The Way That I Need You" and ""Things Aren't Always What They Seem"," his retitled version of "Watch Out Woman" are in his current Top 20 list. "Cold, Cold Morning," "Rock 'n' Roll," and "End of Summer," also made that list, but were not in the movie. Travis wrote "End of Summer" for his German fans after he returned to the USA. They may never have heard it, but its music became the theme for The Second Gun, a 1974 Golden Globe nominee for Best Documentary about the investigation of the assassination of Robert Kennedy.
Chris Woodcock
Jon Dufresne
"Feelin' Good" the movie's title song was performed by the Montclairs. Most of the songs Travis performed in the movie he originally wrote for The Five Beats, the International Showband Travis fronted in Germany in 1964, which is why these recordings feature saxophone parts never heard in the movie arrangements. Adam brought in Chris Woodcock to improvise the saxophone parts for Travis, and a few days later, brought in Jon Du Fresne for the "sixties" lead guitar improvisation for "Rock 'n' Roll," and the jazzy "jam session" guitar licks in "Cold, Cold Morning."

Linda Snyder designed the Feelin' Good CD cover, placing a 1966 photo of Travis taken in Portmouth, Virginia, in a 1993 photo Travis took of the driveway and gate at Croxteth Hall, Liverpool, England, when scouting for a planned UK film production.

And Linda, a charter member of the Otherworld Cottage Creative Coalition, also designed the program and graphics for Travis's 1997 live performance of Grumpuss at Blenheim Palace, created the original graphic now shown on the audio version's heraldic shield, and created the DVD cover.  She also did a number of color illustrations for an as yet unrealized Grumpuss book,  and created the magnificent 3D Morningstone Mosaic, incorporating the sympathetic magic explored in that book, since photographed and used for the book and CD covers, and crafted our "faux fossil" Baryonyx skull and claws. A gifted illustrator, graphic designer, and modeler.
(Left) Linda displays her 2014 Otherworld Cottage Catalog Poster.

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