Simple Machines

Singer/songwriter Kiyenne Light has split time between the North Country and Hudson Valley regions of New York since his teens, fronting, writing songs and playing guitar for bands you've never heard of with varying degrees of seriousness.  He's currently settled into the Hudson Valley and works as a cabinetmaker and amateur European motorcycle mechanic.  Ki's sense for complex melodic composition is the seed from which the Simple Machines sound is able to grow.

'Sauerkraut Seth' Travins makes sauerkraut commercially and plays music almost every other waking moment.  Right now he's playing with Julia Gottlieb and The Blue Ribbon Boys; Chops, Sauerkraut and The Velvet Frog; contra dance favorites The Russet Trio, and of course Simple Machines.  He's been known in the past as the creator and host of Seth's Sauerkraut Revue, raucous evenings of live music in regional venues featuring the best of local talent.

Jonathan Talbott, when not in his rockstar role as lead instrumentalist for Simple Machines, is a classical music composer and violin teacher.  He regularly creates scores for film and theater and also moonlights building and repairing violins.  Jonathan is frequently the host of his own less-raucous evenings of music featuring local composers and classical musicians.  He is originally from Washington state and in addition to all of the above, can somehow play a large number of 80s metal tunes on guitar.

Ray Longstar is a Columbia County native and longtime bass, guitar and technology enthusiast.  He was the recording engineer for Simple Machines' 5-song EP in 2005, and due to being a great guy and good musician, was asked to join the band in 2006.  Ray's interest in music has taken him as far as Los Angeles, where he played around town in clubs and pubs and busked on streets of Santa Monica and Venice Beach.

Ian Solomon spent the better part of the 90s playing for an Albany NY based pop-punk band, which played around 100 shows per year between 1989 and 1997 and ultimately released a full length album.  During that period he took advantage of any free time to play and record with his old friend Ki Light's various musical projects.  He's been playing drums for over 20 years, and has never had as much fun or felt better about the music he was playing than with Ki and Simple Machines.

Spring of 2004 saw the original four members, along with erstwhile 5th member Lee Colter, join up for the very first time in the upstairs of a barn in Columbia County.  during that session they put together the framework of the song 'Sweet Distraction.'  Four years and many live shows later, Simple Machines seem to have fully hit their stride and are playing with more passion and enthusiasm than ever before.  They perform around the Northeast as often as everyone's busy schedules allow. 

There is one non-Machine in the pic to the right.  It's like Where's Waldo except instead of Waldo there's another dude, and there are only five people in the whole picture.

In our usual form, we are:

Ki Light, guitar and lead vox

Jonathan Talbott, violin, guitar & mandolin

Ian Solomon, drums

Seth Travins, bass, guitar and piano

Ray Longstar, bass