Mikael Jorgensen, when not playing with Wilco, makes music with longtime collaborator Greg O’Keeffe and a rotating cast under the name Pronto.
The full story begins all the way back in 1995, the golden age of indie-rock, when Jorgensen was growing weary of the limitations of pop music. Fueled by healthy amounts of art school cynicism and inspired amateurism, Movere Workshop was formed in the basement of a house near Atlantic Highlands, NJ with Paul Finn & Rob DiPatri
Greg O’Keeffe showed up to play with MW for the first time, confronted by microphones and now-outdated digital audio recording equipment. Impressed by the moxie of these muppety oddballs, he continued to play in the group. At a rehearsal he quipped, “I’m so psyched about this,” and promptly smashed his tourist-grade kalimba on the pine timber floor of the loft / rehearsal space. The seed had been planted.
In the summer of 1998 Mikael moved to Chicago and helped construct SOMA Electronic Music Studios (John McEntire, Tortoise), where he was to be employed for several years following. In 2000, Jorgensen and fellow NJ-expat Chris Girard were working on music together. They summoned Mr. O’Keeffe to Chicago to apply his rhythmic sensibilities to some songs, and thereby formed the earliest incarnation of Pronto.
Flash forward to Winter of 2006, where once again O’Keeffe appears and extricates himself to the confines of a Chicago loft where he, Jorgensen, and musicians Matt Lux, (Isotope 217, Iron & Wine), Jim Becker (Califone) and Mr. Russ Arbuthnot (an alumnus of Steve Albini’s Electrical Audio studios) recorded the album, All Is Golden.
In the spring of 2006, Jorgensen moves to Brooklyn, NY.
It is here that the current state of Pronto begins to form. With a rotating lineup surrounding the mainstays of Jorgensen and O’Keeffe, friends such as Stuart Bogie (Antibalas), Kurt Uenala, Larry Brown and others join the fray at various points in time.
While duties in the Wilco enterprise accelerated throughout 2007, Pronto was still able to coalesce and produce what now stands as their Contraphonic debut, All Is Golden. All Is Golden is a 70′s-inspired tome that serves as a record of action. It is the sound of waking up and moving on, cross-country trips to California, black days and blue nights giving way to better times and warmer promises. It’s AM-Radio songsmith filtered through the speakers of a modern-day prism.
After squeezing 30+ shows promoting All Is Golden into 2009, the backlog of new material began to get heavy. In March of 2010, Mikael, Greg and Adam Chilenski on bass, entered The Bunker Studio in Williamsburg, Brooklyn to begin the recording process for what shall be Pronto LP02. Work continues through the summer of 2010 with only two shows – Pianos with Todd Barry and the Solid Sound Festival, curated by Wilco and held at Mass MoCA in North Adams, MA.