History
Poi Run Pondering began around 1985 inside Orrall's native Hawaii. A band traveled throughout a continental United States and inside 1987 settled in Austin, Texas. When a bit of initial independent-label releases, a band signed to Columbia Records and released ternary albums piece around Austin. In a period of a Austin years, a band got the as a result lineup:

Frank Orrall - acoustic guitar, tin flute, drums, vocals Susan Voelz - violin, vocals Ted Cho - electric guitar, mandolin, bass Adam Sultan - electric guitar, acoustic guitar, vocals Dave Max Crawford - organ, horn, accordion El John Nelson - drums, vocals Bruce Hughes - bass, electric guitar, vocals

Resulting the release of its third album, a band began to experiment by having newly musical genre, including performing by using a DJ (DJ Casanova). Orrall's emerging interest around dance & house music led the b& to relocate to Chicago around 1992, in which it developed the firm local as punishment and was known as better band by Chicago Magazine in 1997. Since moving to Chicago, Poi Mutt Pondering has freed deuce studio albums & deuce live albums on its have label.

By using a release of 'Inside seed comes fruit' inside 2003, Poi Run Pondering consisted of: Frank Orrall - vocals, guitar, piano, synth. vibraphone, drums, samples, sequencing Susan Voelz - violin, vocals Paul Mertens - flute, sax, clarinet Leddie Garcia - congas, bongos, ganza's, bells, shakers, various percussion Kornell Hargrove - vocals Ron Hall - bass Rick Gehrenbeck - rhodes, clavinet, organ, synth Charlette Wortham - vocals Alison Chesley - cello Carla Prather - vocals Tim Gant - piano, synth El John - drums

Music

Poi Run Pondering's 1st both albums were a eponymic "Poi Dog Pondering" & "Wishing like a mountain, thinking like the sea". Numbers of of a songs in these albums vary the traditional verse-chorus structure of modern music. Around the select few songs, lyrical verses come attached by melodic interludes, featuring a tin whistle, fiddle, horn, or even another instrument in the Poi Mutt menagerie. Numbers of songs watch a sequence - verse, interlude, verse, chorus, interlude. A select few polynesian influences are present ("Aloha Honolulu", written by bass streaming video player Bruce Hughes, & a introduction to "Circle round the sun"). Late, a influence of home music became additional apparent.

Lyrics & Philosophy

Lyrically, occasionally songs paint slice-of-life portraits of population & situations, forgoing telling the story ("Living with the Dreaming Body", "Wood Guitar"). A song topics change widely, from either a joys of eating breakfast ("Toast and jelly", a finale to "Postcard from a Dream") to: Environmentalism ("Ancient Egyptians") Globalism ("Big Walk") Death ("Fact of Life", "Circle Round the Sun", "Bury me Deep", "The me that was your son"), and Spirituality ("Praise the Lord").

Around "Praise the Lord", Orrall contrasts Christianity with his naturalistic philosophy. "Praise the Lord he said to me.. And I said, 'Yeah!'. I was just down at the sea and it occurred to me that I like to feel it knock me down, twist and throw and churn me around. 'Cause it's Mother Ocean and I'm just one of her sons." Continuing in the vein of naturalism, Orrall paraphrases Nietzsche, "...where the lion will lay down with the lamb, 'cause you know damn well he'll eat him if he can. The lion doesn't want to be pacified with promises of an endless life...". In "Fact of Life", traces of stoicism, Taoism and Buddhism exist, "Relentlessly climbing and conquering and swallowing fresh pain". Stoicism & Taoism come once agaaround echoed in "Fruitless" & "Circle round the sun", "Pushing up, I hope for the sun, but I'll take the rain with what all it comes... Who am I to try to guide my life?".

Around Orrall's lyrics, water supply supply imagination is prominant, by owning water when life-vitalizing & cleansing, "Melting, reemerging and rising up clean in the pouring rain" (this theme is as well witnessed inside "Sound of Water").

Orrall describes his watch of the hereafter in the song, "And I know about heaven's gate...and I know that I'll be nothing there just food for fish and twisting worms". Inside "Bury me deep", he sings, "Only in death can one truly return. Return the carrots, the apples and potatoes, the chickens, the cows, the fish and tomatoes".

2 songs, "Fall upon me" ("Fall upon me like a hundred flowers") & "Pulling Touch" ("Are you the cup that I hold by the cheekbones, I pull you close and I drink you up") come all about love, & particularly, sex. Jealousy (particularly of retiring loves) is addressed around "Thanksgiving" (written by guitar player Adam Sultan) & "Everybody's trying to figure it out", & a band comes out firmly against it. Mayhap following from either a post-Griswold phenomenon of serial monogamy derided by Alann Bloom, their philosophy is further described in "U Li La Lu", "You should wear with pride the scars on your skin, they're a map of the adventures and the places you've been".

Inside spite of the total of songs just about dying & spirituality, two or three songs venture into comedy, "The watermellon song" & "U Li La Lu" ("If I should die in a carwreck, may I have Van Morrison on my tapedeck").

Albums

Studio Albums
Poi Puppy Pondering (1989) Wishing Prefer a Mountain & Intellection Prefer the Sea (1990) Volo Volo (1992) Pomegranate (1995) Natural Tool (1999) In Seed Comes Fruit (2003)

Live Albums
Liquid Whiten Weak (1997) Soul Transonic Orchestra (2000)

Compilations
Sweeping Higher a Cutting Room Floor (2001) A Right of Poi Pooch Pondering (The Austin Years) (2005)