Travis Edward Pike's Official Homepage

2015
OTHERWORLD COTTAGE INDUSTRIES
RELEASED TRAVIS EDWARD PIKE'S 1997 PREMIERE PERFORMANCE ON DVD AND AN OUTSIDE THE BOX CD.

Travis owned the rights to the 1997 PAL digibeta recording of his live world premiere benefit performance of Grumpuss for the Save the Children Fund, staged at the World Heritage Site Blenheim Palace, home of the Duke of Marlborough, and birthplace of Sir Winston Churchill. He brought his edited PAL Digibeta cassette to Deluxe in Burbank, California to have it converted for DVD, and it looked fantastic!
Travis met Brent Backhus through New Playwrights Foundation readings where they chatted during the breaks. Brent was also a multi-talent, involved in both film and music, a skilled digital video editor (Final Cut Pro), and authored DVD productions. Travis invited Brent to Otherworld Cottage, showed him the superb Deluxe conversion, and Brent agreed to create the preview clips and author the Grumpuss DVD production.

"Of course, Linda Snyder designed the memorable DVD cover montage, featuring Travis, but blending images of the Otherworld Festival Orchestra above his head, and over Travis's left shoulder, Anna Scott (the Queen of the Sidh), a half face graphic image Grumpuss peeking through the trees over his right shoulder, and at the botttom right the waif n his right, and at the bottom Aimie Johnson, Rose Meridith,and Yvonne Hill, the rhythmic gynastic waifs.

Linda is also responsible for the stunning DVD Disc face graphics, featuring her original heraldic Grumpuss rampant.

Musically, Travis composed "Witch" with an underlying Baroque passacaglia, popular at the time of the European religious wars and infamous witch trials. Travis aasked his friend, David Pinto, to play (for the third time in 50 years) the clavichord and pipe organ parts (with improvised "ornamentation") for his passacaglia to "Witch." David agreed, but insisted Travis play the passacaglia through so he could recapture the spirit of the piece. As Travis awkwardly ran through it, David was mentally improvising the overlaying "ornamentation." Travis had only to mention J. S. Bach's (1658-1703) Baroque passacaglia style, for David to know exactly what Travis wanted, becoming darker as the song and its lyrics progressed to the burning of the witch. But Travis's "Witch" takes a sympathetic view of the witch and her orphaned child, and contains a warning against the persecution of witchs, musically and rhythmically related to Romantic period composer Ludwig Van Beethoven's 7th Symphony, Second Movement (composed 1811-1812), and knowing that, David included it's sensitivity in his interpretation. The lyrics were sung by Lauran Doverspike, Colleen Stratton and Karen Callahan, with Travis voicing the excerpt from Tertullian "On the Apparal of Women," and subsequent sentences by the Inquisitors.)

Three songs currently numbered in Travis's Youtube Top Ten, "Lovely Girl I Married" #4; "Star Maker" #7; and "Flying Snakes" #10, aren't cited in Andy Pearson's April 2018 review in fearandloathingfanzine.com in which he claims Outside the Box is "a selection of songs written in more recent times, with only a couple dating back as far as the Seventies. They really cover a whole spectrum of styles and themes, from the soundtrack-like 'Andalusian Bride' and 'Otherworld March' through to the wonderfully bizarre 'Psychedelic Meltdown' and the hard-rocking 'Gotta Be a Better Way'.'

Travis composed his "Andalusion Bride Suite" in 1974, but it was never played or recorded until now. Adam was interested in the scores he found at the bottom opf the box, but found them confusing when he saw three sections of orchestration, all diferent, but all under the same title, and all starting on page one. He finally sorted out the orchestration when he realized one was an introduction, the one parenthetically labeled insert was a song, and the last number one was the grande finale. But in addition to the orchestration pages, there were a number of white composition pages, also all starting on page one. A few were labeled with an instrument for which they were intended, but where and when the entered the program was unknown, until Adam, a sight-reader, played each piece, and Travis recognized them, and their instruments. The few he didn't recognize, became clearer when the others found their way into the whole. Travis's musical education hadn't come to the part about labelling section alphabetically to indicate where parts entered, for example, at "Letter D."

Adam deciphers the Score

Daniel plays Trumpet

Robert plays French Horn

Adam's digital instrument samples are excellent, but especially when it comes to the horns, a little analog sweetening was in order, to which end Travis invited his grandchildren, both in middle school bands, to record parts to enhance the digital brass. They accepted his invitation, and their playing added a noticable immediate presence to the recording of the 'Andalusian Bride Suite,' currently #4 on Travis's Youtube Top Ten.'

Colleen Stratton

Lauran Doverspike