New EP! ‘2 + 2 + 4 + 0 – 1’
Released June 27, 2025
Listen on Bandcamp!
https://jadedazurites.bandcamp.com/album/2-2-4-0-1
Losing is okay, we all do it eventually!
Our new video is the first to feature Karen and Mike!! We paid them handsomely to appear.
Watch the video for “inshallah,” featuring train footage by Karen and Gaza footage by Shorouk Abu Deeb.
“inshallah” is a standalone track on bandcamp! 100% of the $5 purchase price will be donated to Shorouk and her family, to help them obtain food, water, shelter, medical supplies and other basic necessities while Gaza is under a complete blockade.
https://jadedazurites.bandcamp.com/track/inshallah
About ‘2 + 2 + 4 + 0 – 1’:
“Inshallah” (إن شاء الله) is an Arabic word, usually translated as “God willing,” that I learned from Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha. In November 2024, Mosab posted on Instagram about the death of his teacher and mentor, Refaat Alareer, a poet and scholar, lamenting that they would never again pick strawberries together, as they had done many times in Gaza. I commented, “Mosab, come to Columbia County, New York, where I live, in June. We will pick strawberries together in Refaat’s memory.” “Inshallah,” Mosab responded.
I hold onto this word as a token of my ability to overcome isolation—the tight room of my own mind. If I can learn an Arabic word, as a middle-aged white American woman swimming in weaponized patriotism, then I have the potential to work more effectively in communal systems that promote humanism, common decency, respect, and love. This kind of growth wasn’t the intention when Mike Watt and I started working on the seventh Jaded Azurites EP. Mike sent me the bass compositions in December of 2023, but I held off working on them while I focused on a different project with contributions from multiple collaborators. That project helped me become more adept and confident as a vocalist. I figured out how I like myself to sound and began to experiment with multiple vocal tracks. When I finally got to these Jaded Azurites tunes, in early 2025, I brought new experiences with me. I had forgotten all about these poems. I had no intention around them anymore. I didn’t care what they were “saying.” The words were just material, like paint or clay.
Once I recorded the vocals, Mike spent days producing and editing the tracks—longer than you might think five simple bass-and-voice songs would demand. He didn’t specifically say this, but I suspect he too approached Jaded Azurites in a new way and worked assiduously to push these compositions into a new realm, adding subtle vocal effects and honing the spaces and silences inherent to our project. In the past he has encouraged me to think about negative space as an active element in our work, and I think that emptiness, which isn’t really empty, is powerful here.
In the past I’ve felt the urge to explain the ideas or origins of the poems, but that has also gone by the wayside. The numeric title is also significant. Bass plus voice plus words plus music minus the things we don’t need: this is one way I interpret the seventh iteration of our project. Add a little, take something away. Memory plus material plus what we love minus what we lost. A word, a tray of strawberries, a month of futures, a minute already passed.
Bio
Karen Schoemer is a poet, spoken word performer and author living in Columbia County, New York. She graduated from the Writer’s Foundry MFA program at St. Joseph’s College in Brooklyn and is vocalist for Sky Furrows, Karen & Peter, and Day for Nights. Mike Watt is a founding member of the Minutemen and fIREHOSE and a former bass player for the Stooges. An author, photographer and host of The Watt From Pedro Show, he composes and performs with dozens of bands, including mssv, Il Sogno Del Marinaio, Pelicanman, SLW cc Watt, and Sock-Tight.
On Tour
Jaded Azurites is not on tour and probably never will be.
Videos
Some people think real poems don’t need music and real songs don’t need videos. That’s why you should Subscribe to our Youtube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/@jadedazurites6357/videos
Mike Watt!
We all love him. Visit his Hootpage to read tour diaries, hear about other new projects and find out about decades worth of amazing stuff he’s accomplished:
contact:
jadedazurites@gmail.com
Jaded Azurites 