News

August 15: John was the subject of a feature story in a recent edition of the Rochester Review; Click here to read it online.  John also presented two academic papers in Canada over the summer; one at a conference in Kingston on 60s rock music, and another in Ottawa on the music of Arnold Schoenberg.  Videos of John performing with Land of Chocolate and the Backbeat, as well as the Norton video podcasts on music fundamentals, can now be found on John's page on YouTube.  

May 18: John's weekly radio show, Radio Rock, enters its second year.  The show can be heard on WRUR-FM, 88.5 in Rochester, New York, every Thursday from 6-8 pm and again on Saturdays, 4-6 pm.  Listeners outside of the broadcast range can hear the show streaming live at www.wrur.org.

January 2: New podcasts on the fundamentals of music are now available at the W.W. Norton site for John's rock-music textbook, What's That Sound?  There are three episodes, one each devoted to rhythm, melody, and harmony in rock music.

2006

September 15: John gave several talks and workshops over the summer, including two in Cleveland--one that included a session with 70s-rockers Styx and another that saw him sharing the stage with legendary jazz trumpeter and band-leader Maynard Ferguson (whose recent passing is mourned by jazz fans worldwide).  Radio Rock has moved into a new timeslot on WRUR.  It will now be heard Thursday at 6-8 pm, with a re-broadcast on Saturdays at 4-6 pm. Those not in the Rochester area can hear the show via Internet streaming at www.wrur.org.  More news soon on the radio front, as the success of the show has prompted some interesting developments. What's That Sound is in use this fall at colleges and universities in the US and Canada, with sales of the book exceeding the publisher's target figures thus far.  New online features will be announced soon at the W.W. Norton site for the book.  Watch for news from Land of Chocolate soon as well.

May 18: John's new radio show, Radio Rock, debuts tonight on WRUR, 88.5, in Rochester.  The program will air every Thursday night, 8-10 pm, through  the summer.  Those not in the Rochester area can hear the show via Internet streaming at www.wrur.org.  The show will feature a wide variety of music from rock's history.

April 2: John's newest book, What's That Sound? An Introduction to Rock and Its History, has been published.  To visit the website for the book sponsored by W.W. Norton, click here.  To visit the MySpace page for the book, click here.  Colleges and universities across the country have already adopted the book, prestigious schools such as Princeton University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the Eastman School of Music.

January 2, 2006: The last months of were busy ones.  John's trip to Italy was a great experience, with his lectures in Bologna and Cremona delivered to packed houses and widely trumpeted in the media.  W.W. Norton has begun to ramp up the promotion of John's new book, What's That Sound: An Introduction to Rock and Its History, a college-level textbook scheduled for publication in April.  Several universities are using special advanced copies of the book during the spring semester and Norton will soon launch a supporting website for the book.  Work continues on the new Land of Chocolate CD--look for the release of tracks from that album in the coming weeks, with the full album slated for a late-spring release.  Other recording projects have begun to come together, so watch these pages for news as these and other projects develop.

2005

September 15: John is currently recording the guitar parts for the new Land of Chocolate CD, Your Finest Hour; the new CD is slated for release in early 2006.  The band has expanded its "legal bootleg" page to include six tracks from Regaining the Feel in the Weed file format; click here to check it out.  John's recent move to Rochester has been successful, and he was delighted to chat with many friends and fans at ProgDay (Chapel Hill) and Prog in the Park (Rochester) in recent weeks.  After participating in an international conference on twentieth-century music in England last month, John is looking forward to speaking at another international conference--this one in Italy--devoted to the study of progressive-rock and scheduled for late October.

August 1: The summer has been a busy one.  In June, Land of Chocolate interrupted work on the new album to perform at RogueFest in Atlanta; the bill also included Izz, Man on Fire, Farpoint, The Red Mask, among others.  In July, John attended NEARFest and had the chance to chat with a host of fans and friends.  Sea of Tranquility interviewed him for their web site and you can check it out by clicking here.  John also gave a talk on the music and career of the early-19th-century Viennese guitarist/composer Mauro Giuliani at the Classical Guitar Workshop sponsored by the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music.  Land of Chocolate's music is now available for download on dozens of online services, including iTunes, Rhapsody, and others.  The band also initiated their "legal bootleg" program recently, offering live recordings on their website for free download.  John will likely pop by ProgDay in Chapel Hill this Labor Day weekend and also greet friends and fans at Prog in the Park in Rochester, New York the following weekend.

May 15: Work on the new Land of Chocolate CD continues, as the band also prepares for the RogueFest show in Atlanta next month.  John will also be greeting friends and fans at the Land of Chocolate table at this year's NEARFest in Bethlehem, PA, in July.  John's college textbook on the history of rock music went into production this month and is scheduled to be published in the spring of 2006 with New York publishers W.W. Norton.  The editors at Norton have been working hard at pulling together pictures for the book, and the copyediting department is meticulously polishing the prose.  In the meantime, John is preparing for his move to the University of Rochester and the Eastman School of Music over the summer.  

March 15: John's classical guitar music will soon be published by Michael Lorimer Editions and edited by Lorimer himself, who is a world-renowned classical guitarist and was a favorite student of the great Andres Segovia.  Two sets of pieces will appear in 2005; check back for details as they become available.  John will be delivering a pair of talks at Trinity College, Dublin, in early April.  Land of Chocolate will appear at the Rogue Independent Music Festival in Atlanta in June.  Plans and rehearsals for the new CD continue.

January 15, 2005: After a short hiatus owing to Wes injuring his arm in an accident, Land of Chocolate has returned to work on the new album, expected to be released in the late spring or summer of this year.  The band has lined up a series of shows, and these will be announced once all the details are firmed up.  Kenny Solomon and Swiss Navy Productions have joined the Land of Chocolate organization to help coordinate the band's increasingly complicated activities.  Work also continues on John's solo album, though other projects have delayed the progress somewhat, including the recording of a demo with The Katy Hunt Band.  John has been discussing re-recording the music of his prog-rock band from the late 1970s, Jester, with original members Jeff Jurcisin and Larry Cunningham.  No firm plans have yet developed, but it seems likely the almost fifty minutes of original music the band used to perform will be available in some newly recorded form sometime in the next year or so.  This album will probably include pieces that were never entirely finished back when the band was active, but that John will return to and complete in the coming months.

2004

December 1: John has been working on his new solo album, Land of Chocolate has begun rehearsing material for the band's third CD, and Poor Valentino is finishing up the writing for the band's second album.  Recording for the Land of Chocolate CD will begin in mid-December, and the band tried out some of this new material at shows in Raleigh and Baltimore in late October, where the reception was fantastic.  Reviews of Regaining the Feel have begun to appear in magazines; Progression Magazine and 20th Century Guitar both praised the album, as did the Durham-based Independent Weekly.  Several reviews have appeared on the Internet as well and more are expected in the coming weeks.  

September 15: Land of Chocolate ended the summer with a bang, playing very successful shows in North Carolina (ProgDay weekend) and Rochester, New York (Prog in the Park).  The tour with the Erik Norlander Trio in August was also a great success for the band.  John has begun working on his new solo CD (planned for an early-2005 release), while Land of Chocolate has begun writing the band's next album, which will available in the summer of 2005.  Poor Valentino will play Raleigh's famous Sparklefest in early October, and then take a break while lead singer Katy Chamis fills in with Tres Chicas on their west coast tour during November and December.

August 1: Land of Chocolate completed the first two shows of their east coast tour in support of the Erik Norlander Trio this weekend.  The band heads back out to Boston for a show at The Brewery in Lowell on August 5, and then back to Highpoint, NC on August 7 to play Hartley's House of Rock.  The show at the New Jersey Proghouse on July 30 was an enormous success and garnered rave reviews (it was also sold out).

July 9:  Land of Chocolate released its second CD today.  Entitled Regaining the Feel, it is the first full-length album from the band to feature John's guitar playing.  The EP, Assorted Nonpareils (released in August 2003),  was actually the first Land of Chocolate CD to feature John, though that disc contained only four