XyloVan began its life nearly 10 years ago as an idea: Let’s build a mutant vehicle so our young kids can ride around even after bedtime and we can all enjoy Burning Man safely together after dark.
The van’s full, rich and musical life ended last month – after so many adventures, mishaps and miracles that I never could have dreamed of – with me stripping off the xylophones and gongs and putting the vehicle up for sale.
It was like building it all over again – but in reverse. (see photos below after the jump)
Deeply bittersweet.
I peeled off the magic, wrenching the hand-made instruments from the 3/8-inch mounting bolts where they had ridden ever since 2010, when my wife and kids and I began transforming a 1985 Ford 350 ClubWagon XLT into the only musically-playable art car I’ve ever met.
I unwired the control pod carrying the digital-delay mixer and Arduino control box, and stowed the electronics and cables for future projects. I put the instruments into long-term storage against the day when I might bee foolish enough to build another musical mutant vehicle. And I turned the van over to … Continue reading R.I.P. XyloVan – 2010-2019→
You read that right: This day had to come. We’re moving, and the time has arrived for me to send XyloVan (1) on to its next incarnation.Â
Underneath the instruments, (and the patina of wonderful music, noise and love that thousands of people have laid on them during its 9.5-year existence), lies a sturdy old 1985 Ford ClubWagon XLT. It is dying to be reincarnated as a new mutant vehicle – maybe yours.
I’m moving soon to a place where I won’t be able to park its 25-foot length, and I’ve been thinking of changing XyloVan’s basic design for quite some time now.
So, it’s time to split the music from the van, and send both on to new lives.
I will mount the instruments on a new vehicle (design still in the works). And I am selling XyloVan’s base vehicle WITHOUT INSTRUMENTS –  asking price $350. Â
Somewhere out there, a fellow Burner with dirt under his fingernails and fire in his eyes needs this van – and can envision a new mutant vehicle built on this beefy, high-capacity foundation. Any questions?
Here’s what you get:
Â
1985 Ford ClubWagon XLT
7.5-L V8 engine, RUNS STRONG
Interior seating for 10, or aninsane amount of cargo room if you pull the benches.
Standing room on the roof (with a ladder and attachable chest-high guardrails!) for 10-12 people
Full-width rear step for easy loading of people & gear
Rebuilt V8 cylinder heads
Rebuilt carburetor
Rebuilt steering box and front end
New water pump
New alternator and voltage regulator
Near-new tires
Stereo/CD player with MP3 jack
Onboard 12V power system with two deep-cycle marine batteries
12V Arduino panel with 12 RGB/LED light circuitsÂ
120V AC power inverter
Extra Flair: Burning Man Department of Mutant Vehicle daytime and nighttime permit stickers and playa vehicle passes for 2011, 2014 and 2018.
FILE PHOTO – roof rack is included
Full disclosures:
Xylophones and gongs are NOT INCLUDED
No AC.Â
Some oil leaks.
Bodywork will have some holes left by removal of the mounted instruments.Â
There is no body rust of any size, but the paint is heavily weathered
Must be jump-started at the moment, as it has a (probably simple) charging problem I’m not qualified to solve.Â
Other than that, it’s a rock with a ton of history and dust in it. It will definitely make thousands of passengers (and a few mutant vehicle builders with fire in their eyes) very, very, very happy.
This is a long way from xylophones and propane-tank drums, but I’ve really enjoyed building cajóns and – for the first time – a marimbula.
Quick demo and walkaround
The marimbula is a Caribbean instrument, descended from the African kalimba, and generally functions as a bass. As you’ll see in the video at the bottom of the post, I first experimented with a 6-key marimbula built onto the back of one of my cajons, just to figure out the basics of construction.
This one is a 16-key marimbula – which I’ve decided has about three too many bottom-end keys and perhaps one too many high-end keys, as the sound quality falls off quite a bit at the ends of its scale. Next, I might try building one like a piano keyboard (with two layers of keys in white and black) centered in the middle of this scale.
The tuning has been kinda challenging – I finally settled on D – but I’m tuning it slowly by ear because the digital tuning apps can’t handle all the overtones it puts out. Anyway, it’s a helluva lot of fun to play – particularly on a nice, resonant wood floor – because it’s easy to play, and the notes send vibrations through your butt and up your spine. I take great satisfaction in building instruments that create physical joy along with pleasant music.
I use white birch finish plywood. I cut the box pieces through masking tape, which makes for clean cuts by keeping the blade from shattering the delicate veneer.
Dry-fit the pieces, then drill for pegs. I cut my own from 5/16″ dowels, which makes for cleaner joins than you get with factory-made pegs.
Glue all the plywood points, then add some glue to the peg holes …
… and drive them all in. I’ll sand off the excess to make them flush with the surface when everything is dried.
Being short on (pricey) carpenter’s bar clamps, I use the two I have, then augment with ratchet straps. The vertical chunks of scrap plywood keep the straps from damaging the veneer.
This is deeply embarrassing as well as horrible-looking: I failed t set up the router correctly, then dragged it straight through the face of the box instead of nicely rounding the corners. After much cursing and shouting, I just capped the whole gashed end with another layer of plywood.
The bridge is a strip of red oak. I clamped a ruler to it to guide the router, which I used to cut a groove for the bridge’s nut bars (terminology?) to sit in.
The completed bridge pieces – red oak, stainless-steel nut bars (which the keys will rest on) and a carefully-drilled-out rod of aluminum for the bridge, which will clamp the keys down to the nut bars.
I cut a piece of 1/8-inch birch ply for the face, then drilled it out and mounted the bridge assembly (traditionally called the harp) to it with machine screws and wing nuts.
Here’s a comparison of the 16-note bridge with the 6-note bridge I mounted on the cajon that I used as a test mule.
After masking the face to prevent splintering, I laid out the sound holes, then cut them with a keyhole saw (for the smaller ones) and a roto-zip bit on my knockoff Dremel for the two largest ones.
Next, I drilled all the holes for the screws – way too many, it occurred to me way too late, but the large number of screws actually wound up helping the overall visual design.
I masked off the edge for painting.
Earlier, I cut the shipping strap chunks into rough lengths with an angle-grinder, then ground the corners round …
and smoothed them with a wire wheel.
Shot the masked instrument body with red enamel (a favorite)
… and screwed on some little rubber feet to protect both the floor and the wood, since you’re meant to sit on the instrument to play it.
To add a little bit of drama (and filter out toys, crayons and Cheerios that younger musicians might be tempted to insert in the sound holes, I spray painted some metal fabric and glued it to the backside of the face with Liquid Nails so it wouldn’t buzz when the instrument is played.
The old-timey title for this post could have been:
The Wisdom and Benefits of Contemplating a Temporary Shift from the Traditional Norm for This Institution in Materials, Methods, Design and Construction of Multi-Purpose Acoustic Percussion Instruments:
Or, a “Box to Bang On”
Because this post is about a kick in the head. A total world-shifting creative non-sequitur from all this demanding, burly, unforgiving metal I’ve been working with for so many years.
All of a sudden I’m building cajóns. Out of wood. Where did *that* come from.
Lemme back up a bit.
I’ve been goofing around with the idea of combining disc gongs with a sound box like the one I built a million years ago for my very first xylophone. I wanted to explore: disc arrays, resonance, materials, instrument playability.Here’s a sketch: —->
And then it occurred to me that the cajón (a sit-upon box drum with  roots in Peru and on loading docks everywhere) is such a perfect blend of structural integrity and resonance – like musical furniture – that if I could build one strong enough, it could do double duty as both metallophone and drum.
Gee, that sounds like a lot of work.
Maybe just start with building a good cajon to see if it’s easy enough. So, after digesting half a dozen how-to’s on YouTube and stealing some of the most interesting design ideas into my plan, I started my first.
Here’s a ragged build log:
Here I’m cutting pegs. I pegged/glued together the box from 1/2″ plywood, then braced its front and rear openings with 1×1 square dowels (You’ll see these later in the log – wish I’d taken more photos of that process).
I cut sound ports into one side of the box – the bottom for bass and the top-rear for high-end (the little hole in the center-right is for the snare mechanism)
I then installed 1/4″ plywood divider panels the width of the box, dividing bass from high-end. I inserted this dowel, collared at both ends to hold it in place, so that it pivots in the little holes to allow the snares to move.
I screwed the snares (the cut halves of a whole 14″ drum snare) to the dowel and lined them up so that when the dowel rolls forward in its holes, the snares brush the inside of the playing surface.
Screwed an old propane-tank valve-knob to the end of the control dowel
Tested it
Stained (red maple!) and varnished the box and screwed on some li’l rubber feet
Screwed on the nicely-varnished tappa
I wedged coins behind one corner of the tappa so that it warped outward a little bit (and removed them after a few days.) Now, that corner of the cajón delivers a nice “crack” note when you slap it.
This, coupled with the snares on the opposite corner and the bass notes you get when you hit the center of the instrument help it live up to its name as “drum kit in a box.”
It’s been four years since I first mutated XyloVan as “the Light Fandango” and cruised the playa dressed as a glowing ballroom ceiling.
This year’s journey to Burning Man proved just as magical as the 2014 outing, thanks to amazing new campmates at OKNOTOK who helped me build and light it, a couple of excellent percussion cruises, and an endless stream of beautiful people who came to play the instruments.
More thoughts – and a question for you – below the images and videos:
Building OKNOTOK
View of OKNOTOK’s tower, our bistro and our 4-foot-diameter disco ball
The body: draped. The bones: Passenger cage made of recycled security grates; a framework of 1.5-inch EMT bolted to the top.
The business end of things.
Adam and Bunny help bolt the wheel cover frames into place.
Finished and ready for inspection
In line at the Department of Mutant Vehicles
Day permit – approved!
Chatted with this excellent guy, Reckless, who spent some happy time working out scales and rehearsal tunes from when he played vibes back in school.
Portrait with the world’s largest disco ball, AKA The Orb.
Baba Yaga’s House – gorgeous.
A couple of windy afternoons kicked the hell out of the canopy and connections. I spent a couple hours rewiring snapped chandelier leads, yanked LED strip connectors and redraping the entire ship’s bow.
At one point it was so dusty I pulled up next to a half-dozen art cars just to sit out the blow. Turns out it was a formal portrait of Las Vegas-area mutant vehicles. So XyloVan inadvertently photobombed it.
One of the many robots posted around The Man
KillBot and Elmo
A little night music – chandeliers only
With chandeliers and LED strips lit.
With our mutant-vehicle campmates – Torch
Torch touches down briefly at home – OKNOTOK
Mesmerizing
Enjoying the view of 3:00 and A and the entire playa from OKNOTOK’s epic 3rd-story observation deck.
The Man Burn – the world’s gaudiest fireworks show – climaxes in massive fuel explosions.
Sunrise in the Sierras en route to home base in L.A..
Random notes from the keyboards.
Brief clip of art cars in line for night inspection at the Black Rock City Department of Mutant Vehicles.
The gorgeous RadiaLumia.
People question Burning Man – as they should.
Why bring millions of dollars of art, energy and resources into a godforsaken desert, run around like maniacs, burn a lot of it to the ground and then go home?
Why not put all that power and cash into solving problems, feeding the hungry, educating the young, improving humanity?
What the hell is all this for?
I think that, at some deep, cellular level, humanity needs to Burn. The immediate purposes – entertainment, inspiration, provocation, cross-pollination – are obvious, but the Long-Tail benefits remain hidden.
As a species, burning is a collaborative effort to evolve in some way as a species.
Whether it’s through living Ten Principles culture of participation, inclusion and immediacy, or trying to survive the brutally Darwinian process of designing an art car that won’t be kicked to pieces by 60mph winds or drug-crazed revelers, we’re trying to Go Somewhere Different with all that we bring to Burning Man.
Is Black Rock City’s increasingly global culture spiritual exploration, artistic experimentation, radical interaction, human stress-testing or just blatant, party-brained fuckery?
The answer is yes – all that and something more.
The question remains – why?
Your thoughts on this are welcome. (Just register to comment).
A percussion cruise is a pretty simple pleasure: Invite people onto the roof to play the drums and gongs, and drive across the Black Rock Desert.
As I drive, happy sounds drift down – people lazily striking the gongs, and chatting passionately about their burns.
The first part of this clip is the sound of a cruise we did on Tuesday afternoon, and the latter part is part of XyloVan’s set at Sonic Runway – friends from Liminal Labs joined random Burners on the roof and around the xylophones to play.
Unfortunately, the mixer crapped out so the roof percussion drowned out the xylophones, but the sound was enough to trigger some beautiful patterns on the Runway.
I built XyloVan to give others the joy of playing music. More often, they give me the joy of hearing amazing talent. This guy – who told me his name was Austin – really brought it.
Preparing for Burning Man – the Thing in the Desert – consumes you. You sacrifice all your time to it, and much of your sanity. I’ve been too busy to even blog about this year’s preparations, which have included a slew of new instruments and a complete teardown/rebuild of the Arduino-controlled canopy-light system. As I’m probably overfond of saying, a mutant vehicle is a hole in the playa into which one pours money, blood and tears.
But it’s still a mutant vehicle. And I’ve got a schedule to keep.
So here, this’ll catch you up:
I’ve been BUSY.
I cut two new tank drums, to be mounted to the left side the van, fore and aft of the 2.5 octave keyboard.
New eyebolts in strut ends from which to hang the chandeliers. Also, set up the speakers for easy slip-on-and pin-it mount/dismount.
5 coats of clearcoat enamel and later a bungee wrap for the new tank drums.
Checked all the chandeliers and rewired some of the non-working ones.
Drilled and dipped in liquid vinyl a couple-dozen new mallets and sticks.
An experiment with a helium tank.
Took time out to enjoy the L.A. River.
Got smashed into by an inattentive driver, who stove in the iron framework of our tailgate – a critical piece of equipment for letting people mount to the roof deck during the burn.
Unbolted the damaged tailgate frame from the underside of the van.
Cobbled together the Helium Bongoes
Took a trip to Alaska.
ALASKA.
Alaska is ravishing.
Returned home to find the maximally awesome Matt Rogers had repaired the tailgate frame by cutting off the crushed third, and re-welding it from scratch (and the materials I picked up at IMS)
Bolted that mofo back onto the underside of the van. BUT GOOD.
Replaced and painted the plywood decking
Masked it off
Peel off the masking ,and voila – an exceptionally noticeable tailgate so that people can mount the ladder safely – and so inattentive drivers will be less likely to smash into it again/
Oh, and tonight, thanks to the unstoppable Shea Sullivan, who brought our Arduino lighting system back online. MUCH GRATITUDE AND RESPECT, SIR.
And I finished mounting the upper deck cage and hippie-proofing it with pool noodles and safety signs.
I might not be blogging again till after the Burn. Should be a doozy (see schedule below) Thanks for following!
2018 Scheduled Cruises:
Flag me down if you see me and I’ll give you a ride if there’s room!
If I’m not cruising the playa, abandoning XyloVan briefly to volunteer on GATE, enjoying the insanely inventive events at home at OKNOTOK at 3:00/A, I’ll be doing one of these things.
Tuesday 8/28
12 noon: BAIT route from 3:00/L to the Temple and back
2:30 pm: XyloVan Robøtik Perkussion Jam Cruise departs from OKNOTOK (3:00/A)
3 pm: BAIT route from 3:00/L to the Temple and back
Thursday
12 noon: BAIT route from 3:00/L to the Temple and back
2:30 pm: XyloVan Robøtik Perkussion Jam Cruise departs from OKNOTOK (3:00/A)
3 pm: BAIT route from 3:00/L to the Temple and back
10 pm: XyloVan plays the Sonic Runway in deep playa – Come bang on the van with us and make the Sonic Runway go wild!
The chief lesson was – assemble the chandeliers with lock washers instead of flat washers so they don’t keep unscrewing and sending the delicate handmade fixtures crashing to the playa while driving (thus requiring me over and over and over and over again to haul the 10-foot A-frame ladder down from the Cloud Deck, set it up, clamber to the top, screw everything back together, re-crimp all the destroyed electrical connections, clamber down, and put the ladder and tools away).
Oh, and Velcro wraps are no substitute for zip-ties.
A more valuable lesson was this: an on-playa build crew is worth more than water, gold or any precious commodity you can think of, and deserves a spot on XyloVan’s roof on burn night, along with all the just-thawed Gatorade I can give them.
I’m looking really looking forward to working with the good folks at OKNOTOK, the brilliant camp that has graciously agreed to host XyloVan this year.
(edit: I quit Facebook in 3/2018, which accounts for the missing videos.)
So, I make these musical drums out of up-cycled propane tanks. Click through for a demo video (and the build log) for Tonepod 2, the new model. Making this one, as with the others – gave me tremendous joy – which is good because the process takes about 40-60 hours and fills our basement shop with dust and noise. And yes, I might be able make one for you. Inquire here.
At this point, I have already safely emptied the tank of propane and washed out the residue of methyl mercaptan (the nasty stink agent that lets you know when odorless propane is leaking). (Seriously, don’t use any tool on metal until the propane is safely gone). I’ve cut off the handle from the top and the base ring from the bottom, and ground off the welds, and now I’m grinding off the rest of the paint before cutting … Continue reading Tonepod 2 – A new, more-portable hank drum design→
