Hi and Welcome to J Lee Arts and Music, Dateline 1/13/26 I am finally able to catch up with the site after a long holiday season of friends, family and music! Despite this country hitting new lows in chaos and cruelty, it’s important to remember to be your most maximum free in your daily humanist expression be it art, activism or just peace, love and kindness. Always lend a hand to the oppressed, marginalized and brutalized in our society. That is the only politics. Everything else is just word mincing abstraction. Ok, so what else…I would like to thank Martin and the staff at the Make Out Room (Cal & Justin) for hosting Starry Skemes late last month. We played alone and were able to run through both of our previous NYC sets. We recently moved into our own West Oakland studio and are cultivating it as our new inner sound sanctum psychedelic basement. We have several new songs on the chopping block for 2026, some dreamy and visceral sonicisms* (*surprisingly not flagged by spell check!). A couple nights ago Warm Spell had the pleasure of playing the Make Out Room as well. I had a great time and was inspired by the Lodestones and Ava and Sharkiface’s sets. WS went pretty far out. The gig was recorded by Tom Scharff and Tony Jenkins. I will post it here when it drops. Thanks again to the MOR and Ben Rogers of Agnes Martian and Tessellations for sitting in with us on cello.