Hello Suite 300
Drifting Past Present Time
Mark Rushton’s Abundant Spare Time is a weekly email on Substack where I talk about my ongoing work as a recording artist and visual artist. This is my 165th weekly email.
This week’s topics:
Hello Suite 300
Jon Harnish Interviews a Robot
Damien Jurado - “Heaven’s a Drag”
Hello Suite 300
Kim Hansen and I moved into Suite 300 of the Fitch Building in Des Moines this past week (304 15th St). It’s a small studio, a little over 200 sq ft.
There will be a fall “open studio” on Saturday, November 8th from 6pm to 9pm for all the artists who wish to participate and the public to attend. We’ll be there, along with snacks and my music, although the weather should be cold and lousy. Meters have to be plugged until 9pm, although the spots a block west on 16th are the cheapest, 25 cents an hour.
Kim wanted a studio space outside of her apartment to paint. I wanted a display gallery for my visual art, and maybe a place to record quietly with Jon every so often. It’s two blocks from my day job. We’ve been cleaning and changing light bulbs and moving furniture and things. From here on out, it’ll be her space when she wants it, and my space when I need it.
Jon Harnish Interviews a Robot
Jon was messing around with Alexa+ and made an excellent interview with the robot. I find it humorous, cheeky, and informative. I barely edited the interview beyond dead spaces and added our music underneath it. The ending is kind of an inside joke, but in another way it’s a critique of how these things can go.
Mostly, we had fun with this. Jon sent me the audio. I made the podcast. He absolutely loved it.
Understandably, I had to use some cheesy “AI cartoon” featuring Jon and cats as the cover art.
Damien Jurado - “Heaven’s A Drag”
Jurado has been on a “Rumspringa” lately, as he put it, recently said on Substack.
“Private Hospital” is a different album from Jurado’s usual guitar-based recordings. It started on the piano, had some electronics added, as well as extra singing by Lacey Brown (the Seattle-based musician who engineered the album, not the Texas-based singer with the same name).
It’s beautiful, and the cover art continues his theme of old photos. I like the inclusion of the track, “Hospital Prayer”, only 40 seconds long. That’s the kind of thing I would record and save. But you can seek that out on your own to appreciate it. I’m going to play “Heaven’s a Drag”.
If the weather is OK late in February 2026, I’ll probably drive over to Omaha and see him play live.
It’s good to see artists releasing often, and independently. I’ve been doing the “releasing often” for over a decade and I’ve always been independent. Keeping a busy release schedule has helped move me into musical areas I never thought I’d go.