Strumming up a tune with the Harmonica Pocket at Seattle's Two Bell's Tavern.

Considering the thought imbedded in his words, I am struck by the intellectual and artistic awareness Keeth must posses to conceptualize his music using the language of linguistics as he strums up a song on his guitar. With a BA in Ethnomusicology from Mary Washington College — a degree whose curriculum he composed — and a day job as "Deputy of Images" at Amazon.com — a job description he also tailored on his own — it is evident that Keeth is a master of creation in whatever context he is placed, especially at the disparate juncture where his professional life interfaces with his artistic passions. While witnessing a gig played by the Harmonic Pocket at Seattle's Two Bells Tavern, a single question comes to mind: how does Keeth juggle all these projects while maintaining a full-time job?

This is an especially significant question to ask an artist caught amidst the technological frenzy of Seattle, a savvy city that welcomes digital sounds into its music scenes like the high-tech industries it welcomes into its economy. With his full-time job at Amazon, it seems strangely ironic, as I resist the natural urge to stereotype, that Keeth is so sincerely invested in the preservation of "organic, acoustic sounds that reflect the simplicity of life" while his day job flings him into the tenuous cosmos of online product image manipulation. Especially in this trendy city of techies and dot-commers, this quest seems a living contradiction. Yet it's this living contradiction in Keeth Apgar, a job that involves image manipulation and a nightly agenda of matching lyrics to a variety of instruments to yield "organic" music, that informs his realizations of inventive aural fusions. In fact, according to him, it is these differences that influence his process of creating a unified flow of sounds from the juxtaposed melodies of instruments.

For Keeth, the juxtapositions between the melodies, as discoursed by each respective instrument, are the essence of the music that adds a distinct texture to each song: "When you put the drums, guitar and sax together, you can hear each one because each takes up a very different space in the room or in your ear. What's important about that is that there's no competition for space. I have selected this instrumentation for the Harmonica Pocket because these three instruments have very different voice rangings that create different sounds — you can hear each of them clearly. When one instrument drops out, it changes the dynamics of the music. For me, this is important because this is how music moves — through dynamics which are crescendos, de-crescendos, raising and lowering volumes coupled with an entrance into a new part. When you move from a chorus to a verse you add some saxophone in and the drums drop down a little bit, and there's an obvious change."

As I listen to him articulate the goals of the Harmonica Pocket, the trio he has formed with saxophone player Jon Ryser and drummer Cor Bader, I begin to sense how the utter spontaneity of life, in addition to the varied elements of it, shape the natural flow of sounds the trio weaves into the patchwork coming-together of its music. "An important element of The Harmonica Pocket is improvisation, which is spontaneous music. You have a general idea of where you're going, but it's not mapped out like a rock song where you play the bridge through four times, go to the chorus, repeat top of the line," says Keeth. "Those song maps, to me, get very boring, and you can see this in the band that's playing them — you can see that the band is playing a rehearsed part as opposed to creating, interacting, with the other musicians on stage."

Keeth has no doubt cultivated his performance methodologies along the 11 years he has been writing, playing and experimenting with musical forms. In some ways, his process entails creative meditation supported by an environment free of all potential distractions. "My writing process is very personal. I always write alone and I like to bring a thoughtful, somewhat finished product to the other players. Sometimes it's very difficult for me to write on the spot, sometimes the shit just comes out like spaghetti out of my fingers. I've found over the years I have been playing and writing music that my best space is home alone, with the door closed, putting together these ideas. That's where I feel I can really get my arms around a song or an idea or a theme that I'm trying to push."

At the same time he is investing a great amount of time and energy in creative isolation, Keeth has also successfully pursued a number of projects requiring collaboration and cooperation, two vital hallmarks of a multi-talented artist with a will to learn from others. One such project is "The Jigsaw Dog," a rock opera he's been working on for over three years that he recently copyrighted. With the help of co-authors Mike Gutheil and Brett Rogers, Keeth wrote and has been adapting the score of "The Jigsaw Dog" for stage and film production. My skepticism spurs another question: how, pray tell, does one compromise the expectations of three different artists on a single musical project? Keeth likens the process to a kiss: "Sometimes you get together with a girl or a guy and you start kissing and it takes a little while to figure out. You have to kinda figure out your roles, figure out their lips. Playing music with somebody regularly is a relationship and people have needs and things they are interested in doing, things they are afraid of and things they have never done before. As in a kiss, there is a delicate balance you have to maintain among the musicians."

Whether it be work at Amazon, collaboration with the HP or construction of "The Impossible Lamp Press" art installation for the Burning Man gathering in Nevada, Keeth Apgar helps us re-think what it means to be a musician and artist by demonstrating that the living of life is itself an artistic process. With all these projects under his belt and plans to make a record in the near future, I pose my initial question to him: how does all this come together? "Some things tie up into a great, neat bow at the end. The pulling and tying can be a long, wonderful, thoughtful, frustrating, disappointing process. But it's funny, with focus and a little patience it can all come together at the most unexpected time. The big picture is part conscious, part subconscious and totally subject to that unexpected timing I may never understand."

To listen to some of Keeth's music, click on www.giantradio.com/keethapgar.html