THIRTEEN HURTS

Thirteen Hurts is a recording artist named Richard Adams who has performed at Denver Noise Fest a few times, as well as Norcal Noise Fest, and in one instance, he drove over 2,000 miles to play St. Petersburg Noise Fest. At that time, he lived in a solar powered home in rural Colorado, 6 hours from any form of civilization. I imagined him in some sort of geodesic dome listening to numbers stations and Coast To Coast AM with only the cold, dead air of winter, and hitherto useless power lines in the distance to accompany it.

Thirteen Hurts live was also quite a surprise. Whenever I see about 30 pedals sitting on a table, I always assume that there's going to be a great deal of muddy, buzzing garbage to endure, but not in this case. Each time I saw this phenomena, there was such a level of control and focus, also accompanied by a casual, playful demeanor, that it looked like that of a practiced, serious scientist, or maybe a "rocket surgeon" would be a better term. The assurance that this person could fix a car or save a life while laughing, chatting, and gesticulating, came to mind. The man was like a ninja with his pedals, building little ditties and then destroying them with epic blasts of clearly articulated, yet cataclysmic, disastrous noise.