The new single from Kirby Krackle's sophomore release E For Everyone is out today. It's called "On And On" and it's about — wait for it! — Wolverine.
You know, Wolverine. The X-Men guy. Hugh Jackman. With the claws? What, I have to explain everything?
(NB: I don't play bass on this tune. I play with the live band when circumstances require.)
Congrats to Kyle and Jim for getting this out the door so quickly. Let's see if this Reverbnation Flash player thingy works here:
A digression:
If you follow rock/metal at all, you probably know that Alice In Chains, one of the "big four" rock bands to break out of the Seattle scene as part of the whole "grunge" thing in the 90s, has a new lead singer, William DuVall. They're currently touring with a new album.
I was reading a little bit about DuVall online. He's from Atlanta, he's founded and played in a bunch of notable hardcore bands, and he's worked with some decidedly non-hardcore artists like Dionne Farris and Michael Tolcher.
Wait, Michael Tolcher? Didn't I see him play a gig at the day job a few years back? With a band? Didn't I snap a phonecam pic? I did a quick search through my Flickr stream:
That's DuVall on the right. Yeah!
Posted February 15, 2010
Two new songs, a photo shoot, a video shoot, and a website relaunch. Big week for Explone! Gonna be hard to go back to reality tomorrow.
(Feed reader? You may have to visit the post to see these pics and videos.)
Posted February 8, 2010
(Feed reader? You may need to visit the post to see these videos.)
Posted February 6, 2010
I love this photo! MOAR AMPS PLZ.
Explone is at Studio Litho this weekend to cut one final song for the new record and finish any overdubbed parts. Mixing starts in March. Yes, we're already writing tunes for the next one. So?
My sources tell me we're also going to record some sort of performance video thingy that weekend. Also, a website redesign (confidential: ASP makes me weep).
Kirby Krackle just finished up a new CD titled E For Everyone and it drops just in time for the 2010 con season. The new record -- it sounds huge. No nerdcore act rocks harder than KK. Unless maybe you count Blöödhag. I'll be playing some live shows with them this year starting with the Emerald City Comic Con in March. There are also shows scheduled for Chicago, Phoenix and possibly elsewhere.
Also: it's time for RPM and FAWM! Good luck to everyone participating this year. I've never done so myself, but there always seems to be residual creative energy crackling across the tubes that makes February one of my more fruitful months for songwriting. Shame-based productivity: it's the best!
Remember Pat DiNizio: ass in chair. And stay the hell away from the internet.
Coming soon: a long-belated recap of Explone's show at the Crocodile last month.
Posted February 4, 2010
Here's a quick demo of "Note To Self" (I posted a video of this song a few weeks back):
[audio:misc/Scott Andrew - Note To Self (acoustic demo 128k).mp3]
One guitar, one shaker, a few overdubs, some flurbled chords and the roughest of rough vocals. And a hippie guitar solo I spent all of five minutes composing. Also, my first recording done with REAPER.
Read on for lyrics...
To whom it may concern: it's time to call your bluff the hardest thing to learn is you don't want it bad enough
so lay the pen to rest and commit to saner things leave those strings to rust another busted set of wings
and you fall behind waiting for some planets to align so what are you gonna do with your time? tell me what are you gonna do with your time?
daylight slips away and you feel it creeping in in the faces and the names of every place you've never been
and conscience is a curse that you've never understood but it won't add up to much and always nothing good
but there's no crime deciding where you want to draw that line so what are you gonna do with your time? tell me what are you gonna do with your time?
cutting corners to find a shortcut to some truth part the curtain put this daylight put this daylight to some use
[ instr. ]
and I think it's fine deciding you don't want to change your mind so what are you gonna do with your time? yeah what are you gonna do with your time? tell me what are you gonna do with your time?
Posted January 11, 2010
Here is news: my band Explone is playing the famously famous Crocodile Cafe tomorrow night (that's Thursday 1/7) with a stellar lineup of fresh local bands. (I'm especially keen to see all-girl prog rock outfit Eighteen Individual Eyes.) It's one of KEXP's Recommended Events this week.
The Croc has long been on my list of A-list Seattle clubs to play before I die (score so far: Neumo's (done, solo), the Showbox (done, w/ Kirby Krackle). I thought I missed my chance when it closed down a few years back, but new ownership and a sweet remodel have restored it to first-class status. The stage has been redesigned, sight-line-blocking support beams removed, a Via Tribunali pizzeria installed in the former back bar area.
Can. Not. Wait.
Posted January 6, 2010
Last week I tweeted about rediscovering some song ideas I had written in DADGAD tuning almost ten years ago. I first learned about DADGAD when Megan forwarded me a page of alternate tunings used by Richard Shindell. Since then I've tried to work DADGAD into my own songs:
If you haven't tried DADGAD, you should. It's fun. Especially if you get bored with standard chord voicings as I sometimes do. Tons of video tutorials on YouTube.
Here's a video draft of "Blood Of Eden" by Peter Gabriel, in DADGAD tuning. I kinda want to record this song for a future EP, maybe later this year. The spot where I start grinning and my eyes pop out of my head is where I start running out of breath. That's what I get for trying a five-minute-long tune after months of no singing.
Posted January 4, 2010
Here's another compter-nerd post for you artists who use both Wordpress and iLike. If those words make no sense to you, you probably have a life, and have actually been outdoors in the past few days, and would never spend countless hours hunched over a laptop working on something called a "Wordpress plugin." You are excused. The rest of you, follow me.
I've been neglecting my iLike page because it's such a hassle, but now that iLike is being favored by Google in search results, it seems like a good time to get that house in order. So I wrote a Wordpress plugin that re-publishes blog posts to my iLike account.
Unlike the plugin I made for MySpace, this plugin will send your WP content to iLike automatically once it's published. So you don't have to remember to push a button.
Once the plugin is installed and activated, you can configure the plugin with your iLike info and options:
Once configured, post edit pages will display a status box:
That's basically it.
Posted January 3, 2010
Time to stick a fork in 2009 and call it a decade. Just think, this time ten years ago we were all bracing for the Y2K bug to destroy civilization and send us spiraling into barbarism.
Wuz gonna write a bunch of stuff here about resolutions, but I think we all know that's a bunch of horseshoes. My motto for 2010 is: Keep Trying.
Happy new year everyone :)
Here's a blast from the past:
Posted January 1, 2010
