A couple months back I wrote a lengthy entry about a new instrumental shred project, and took a dive into my personal history and connection to this music and these artists. At the end of the entry, I noted that I wanted to call the band Finger Wizard, but I couldn’t get the other fellas to agree. Well, I’m pleased to announce that they accepted the name, and we are officially operating under the name Finger Wizard.
As with any project, there is a mandatory process of throwing dozens of names at the wall to see what sticks. There were a number of twists and turns in names before I arrived at the name. I was noticing my fingers getting into rough shape while building my chops up practicing songs for the band’s repertoire. I wrote out a number of names to do with dirty strings and shredded fingers before this one came to me. I realized quickly after that I first heard the phrase in an obscure sketch by Metalocalypse creator Brendon Small — a parody of guitar instructional videos in which he plays a character called Thor Von Clemson teaching a course called “Thor Von Clemson’s Advanced Fast Hand Finger Wizard Master Class” I was a teen when I last watched it so not sure how it holds up.
Soon after the band name came to me, I was on the road through central and eastern Oregon, playing a series of solo gigs around Salem before making my way out to Bend and back to the coast. It was during those travels that I started to imagine Finger Wizard not just as a funny band name, but as a character and a mythology. I really wanted the name to refer to something more than just simply the band and so I began to develop a vision of a cosmic wizard who listens to sounds from Earth and plays along. I started to think of the songs we were doing with the band as being the kind of material that this figure would be excited to listen to and play on his guitar.
And so my mind began with a series of questions: Does the Finger Wizard dream up the sounds that we play here on Earth? Are we playing what he plays? Does he give us the power to shred? When we perform, is he listening/watching as if he was part of the audience? If that’s the case, do we speak to the wizard? Do we conjure him, or are we conjured up by him?
Before I even got approval or denial from the band, I was on the road asking these questions and writing notes in between stops around Sisters and Bend. Travel was suddenly cut short as an unexpected stretch of heavy rain descended upon the region — expecting summer in the high desert, I hadn’t brought any boots or other rain gear, and I was camping out of the van, planning to hike and camp for another three or four days at least. Following the weather, I decided to cut the trip short and started heading home. I was driving along highway 242 — McKenzie Highway and came upon the Dee Wright Observatory.
In the middle of a huge lava field, surrounded by cascade mountain peaks in every direction the Dee Wright Observatory stands. This structure was built in the early 20th century and it is made OUT OF LAVA! How cool is that? I felt so inspired as I explored the structure and soaked in the surroundings. It seemed like exactly the sort of structure where Finger Wizard would dwell! I started to develop a concept for the location and world where this cosmic being would call home. I took video to use for visual reference and inspiration:
On top of the observatory there is a large bronze disk which points to each of the surrounding cascade peaks — listing their names, distance and height. This inspired the idea of Finger Wizard’s ‘all hearing orb’ — which is conjured to project sounds from around the universe. I had a clear image of the wizard on top of his tower, listening to music from our planet with his magical orb.
Here are some better photos of the observatory I found online:
Leaving this site I was bursting with ideas, a mythology was beginning to form. I took a ton of notes and made my way down the mountain pass, from the lava fields and into the forest where I spent the night in a lonely campground. I didn’t see or hear a single car for the rest of the evening. By the time I got up in the morning, it was pouring rain and I headed for the coast.
Days later I was with the band and pitched the name — they shot it down before I had a chance to explain my feverish vision of the Finger Wizard mythology. I had even saved a folder of different wizard images to reference for character design ranging from clip art wizards, to Adventure Time’s Ice King and black mages from Final Fantasy IX. I was disappointed, but I let it go.
Until the next gig…
Above is the video flyer I made for our late July performance at Mr. Eds Underground Pub in Port Orford. It was during this performance that I talked about the name, bringing up Finger Wizard again, which had a positive response from the crowd, and then I noted that our next gig would be in Crescent City, CA at a renaissance festival… what better name for a renaissance shred band than Finger Wizard?! In that moment the fellas agreed to adopt the name and that was it. That very night I stayed up til the sun came up creating the design for Finger Wizard and his world.
As I began to collage and design the character, experiment with fonts and logos and piecing together the world of FW. I really should learn to use photoshop because drawing, editing and collaging some of these elements took way too long. Zooming in and drawing each pixel with the touch pad long. The image above has around 50 layers of images including clip art, a cut up and duplicated paper image, photograph of the Dee Wright observatory and heavily edited photos of the cosmos from NASA. By the end of this overnight graphic session I felt great about the designs and laid the groundwork for the simple zine/comic I would put together in time for our next performance. Here are all eight panels in full detail:
The pocket sized comics move from an introduction to the character on his home planet, to a band introduction here on earth, doubling as a booking and social media card. I’ve got some ideas for future comics, so keep an eye out at future gigs. I printed out a bunch of these to give out along with t-shirts and stickers. We are now all merched up.
Our main collaborator in merch is Emily Jackson who hand printed all of our shirts. We worked together to refine the designs for the t shirts and she has been handling the merch table at our last shows.
[I will add photos of the merch here later]
By the way, here’s a video of us playing Zomby Woof by Frank Zappa at Mr. Eds
Crescent City Renaissance Festival
Our first official gig as Finger Wizard was on August 22, 2026 at a Renaissance-themed block party hosted by Enoteca and One King Entertainment. We got the gig thanks to our friends in Antique Dog, who were on the bill and got word from the promoter that one of the other bands had dropped out.
We played an hour set outside and the sound was huge. On the coast we’re often expected to set up our own sound for gigs, relying on friends to advise us on the mix, but in this case we just showed up, plugged in, and within a few minutes we were rocking with great sound on stage and out front. The reception was warm and we got very high compliments from the promoters, stage crew and folks in the audience.
This was also our first time playing a gig where we had merch. Right before I arrived at the venue I went across the street to pick up thirty printed copies of the zine and frantically folded a few just before taking the stage.
One of the great things about performing as an instrumental project is that we don’t need to spend much time on the mic and I don’t need to be any kind of frontman — although I have been the one mainly addressing the crowd between songs. In general when performing I like to have fun with the crowd and tend to come up with intentions and concepts going into a performance. For this one I started repeating the line that we had merch — that we had T-shirts, stickers and comic books — and after repeating it multiple times between songs as the set went along, I decided to just keep saying it to the point where it became like a mantra. There were even people in the crowd repeating the words back as I spoke them.
This would come back in a big way for our next performance at Hog Field.
Here is a snippet of the solos from “Love Is The Saddest Thing” I found on facebook posted by Kenneth Hower on Facebook
Here’s a nice comment I got from a local shredder who was in attendance.
Hog Field Sixes Summer Sound Off!
Our last gig was at a day festival up Sixes River Road on a property known as Hog Field. This event had been in the works for a couple of months so we’d had it on our calendar all summer. I participated in one similar event there years back — probably seven or eight years ago — but that was a one-off, and we didn’t know how this one would go. The day we arrived I was happy to see that the organizer was pleased and there was a big crowd in attendance. It was a hit.
The night before, Emily had printed a bunch of T-shirts, so she had a huge stock prepared just for this day. Elaborating on repeatedly mentioning the merch in Crescent City, I got the idea to lean even more aggressively into the idea of selling merch — to take it to the point where it felt like playing music was only secondary to our goal of selling merch, like the band was just a vehicle for moving product.
I take this as a parody of the reality that in today’s day and age bands have a better opportunity making money from touring and selling merch than they do selling recordings. The idea was turning that on its head and blowing it up to absurd proportions. We are so about selling merch that I would mention it during every break.
The last thing I did before leaving the house was write up our setlist for the gig and print out copies for each of us in the band. I had already expressed to Ryan my intention to really lean into this merch-selling bit, and while preparing the setlist I was testing out fonts and found one that looked like some kind of hard rock or heavy metal font. It was upon viewing that that I got the idea to offer setlists at the merch table — and as I told Ryan about it, we had a laugh taking it further. What if we were offering signed setlists with our merch? We both found it hilarious considering that we’re pretty much nobodies performing obscure shred guitar instrumentals. So I printed out ten copies and packed them with the merch and a Sharpie before we took the stage.
The three of us signed the setlists, and I came up with the first words I would say to the crowd. Before any introduction I just told them: first things first, we’ve got merch. We’ve got T-shirts, stickers, comics, and signed setlists.
I told a few people — friends and other folks — about my concept for this bit before the performance, but most of the people there didn’t know us, so in hindsight they probably just thought I was somebody obsessed with selling merch. The reality is I am god-awful with business, commerce, making money, selling things. I am a bad capitalist. Regardless, every chance I had between songs I would mention the merch, even checking in with Emily directly, who was set up at our very well-stocked merch table. I don’t think I’ve ever played in a band that had so much merch, and just seeing the table itself was such a laugh and brought me much delight.
The performance itself was great. Antique Dog, whose members were putting on the event, play very loud hard rock music, which isn’t too far off from the kind of material we’re doing — but otherwise the other acts were playing more classic covers and mellow originals, so we stood out from the previous entertainment and served to set the stage for the heavier music that was to come later in the day.
There was a handful of people I could feel were really enjoying the music. One woman in particular came up with her elderly little dog in a stroller, thanking us deeply for the music. I had noticed her rocking out the whole time, along with a few other people who were jumping around, bopping their heads and cheering enthusiastically.
At some point, Tony Houck (singer of Antique Dog and organizer of this event) told us that Finger Wizard was his guilty pleasure. I asked where the guilt came from, and said “there’s no shame in shred.” Here’s a photo he sent after the event:
We actually did sell a good amount of T-shirts, and I told Emily to just give away the rest of the stuff I had made. Again — I’m a bad capitalist. I don’t have much of a mind for business, and I had already received my payment in just doing the bit. I was surprised that we gave away most of the signed setlists, and the T-shirt sales from that gig alone quickly got us to break even on the cost of the shirts and printing. I guess it’s all green from here on out.
Ryan and I have come up with further ideas to push the merch bit to even more absurd heights, and I feel compelled to increase the variety of merch we have at the table. So look out for more Finger Wizard merch and memorabilia coming to a merch table near you. Emily told me that people were disappointed the comic wasn’t a full comic book, which got me excited to continue elaborating on the story and world of Finger Wizard.
One thing I’ve been feeling strongly for years but finally integrated into the performances we’ve been doing lately: I’ve grown majorly fatigued of the performance culture in our area. Most events have one band playing two hours of music. I enjoy playing a lot and long performances can be fun, but I feel that two hours is pushing it, especially if you’re playing regularly with the same act. I see the same bands coming through Mr. Ed’s playing very similar sets month after month, and it’s something I’ve been feeling for the last couple years that I actively want to avoid.
I’ve found a tendency with projects to start up with a lot of steam, building up a set, and then once the expected amount of time is prepared, the steam disappears and we fall into the routine of just playing the same material gig after gig — with rehearsals dedicated to keeping that material in shape rather than developing new music.
With the members of Finger Wizard and some other collaborators I’ve been playing with over the last year, we’ve been doing many different performances with different lineups, different setlists, pushing ourselves basically every month to come up with a new concept. Finger Wizard was born out of this idea — I believe I talked about it in my previous entry, The Finger Wizards.
With that said, we’ve got a solid one-hour set and we could keep playing this up and down the coast and wherever else we book for the next few years. But I think we all had the sense after the Hog Field performance that we’re ready to change it up. Since our first short performance at the end of April we’ve performed some of these songs about a half dozen times now, and we’re ready to build up new material. Both Ryan and I have been contributing original ideas in this style of technical shred rock, and we’ve begun developing this material as a band. Our goal is that by the time we perform again — which looks like it will be late October — we’d like to have at least half of the set swapped out with new material, looking toward all originals.
I’ve found it very stimulating and rewarding to return to this type of material. It still challenges me. In the week leading up to the Hog Field performance I played more guitar and bass than I probably had in years, and the night before the performance my fingers were fried as I practiced the set. I could feel that I was really pushing my technique to the limit. My fingers were so sore, calluses worn down — I had saved the largest hurdles for the very end of a marathon, when I was close to the point of collapse. Still, it feels good to be getting my chops up, because I know my technique has improved in the quest to get down this very challenging material.
As far as the composer brain, it’s been liberating. I’ve returned to a style of writing I haven’t done much of for many years, but it’s basically where I started — imagining melodies in my head and orchestrating them on the computer, specifically using an application called Guitar Pro. It was with this very program that I began notating my first musical ideas when I was just a young teenager, and I still have some of those files, preserving some of my earliest musical ideas from before I was actively recording and keeping voice memos and demos on the computer. In the last entry I mentioned a piece I had written called Crazy Stuff, which was most certainly notated this way as I was figuring out how to play those melodies on the guitar.
With the new Finger Wizard material I’ve been writing, I haven’t been too concerned with the practicality of actually playing these guitar parts. I’m leaving those duties up to Ryan, who is a seasoned super shredder. I don’t need to consider the practicality of playing these lines or how to notate them on the guitar — that’s his problem. Instead I’m focusing on writing interesting grooves and movements, with melodies that carry the piece, trying to create pieces that hold their own amongst the set of shred classics we’ve been performing. I’m very excited to bring these ideas to life and to the stage, and I look forward to sharing them here soon.
Our next performances will be in the last week of October and I’ll announce those dates soon.
By the way — right after the Hog Field performance, Ryan and I took a trip out to Redding where we watched Mike Keneally perform in a small venue no bigger than Mr. Ed’s. It was a mind-bending performance with a stacked lineup: a band called Beer For Dolphins featuring Bryan Beller on bass and Joe Travers on drums and Rick Musallam on guitar.
If ever there was a figure embodying the character of the Finger Wizard here on earth, it would definitely be Mike Keneally.
That’s all for now.
Remember: There’s no shame in shred.
