Clocking in at around 1670 frames this quirky video sees a baby picture (of yours truly) that we had hanging comically in our studio take on a life of its own.

I can’t express how happy and excited I am to finally unleash this quirky beast on the world!

In retrospect, I guess this is the answer to the age old question of “how do you follow 100 drawings of Batman?”

Also, the drawing for the poster was sketched on my iPad. It originally had stronger colours, but I actually prefer the monochromatic version as a drawing. In the end it stands out a bit better with a bit of colour…

The good news is, Dog Is Blue is a two-piece that lives together, so rehearsal/writing is as easy as turning off Game of Thrones (which is actually really hard to do) and turning on the amps.

If nothing else I just wanted to share the above photo so you know just how much stuff we’re going to try and fit into our apartment!

Songs that were recorded here include our Big Star cover, “Thirteen” :

Our Gordon Lightfoot cover, “High & Dry”:

Not to mention our combo Stan Rogers/Flaming Lips Christmas song, as well as yet-to-be-released tunes like a ukulele version of “Raise Your Dead” and several gazillion attempts at The Replacements’ “Can’t Hardly Wait.”

Our good friend and amazing artist, Tom Yeo, created this poster (along with a ton of other excellent images we’ll be sharing with you eventually) to test out some print methods he’s working with. This one in particular has also been selected as part of a juried show of concert posters at The Robert McLaughlin Gallery in Oshawa. The show opens on Friday, May 4 and you can read all the details here.

You really should see the 15″ x 19″ poster in person though, as my poorly taken photo doesn’t do it justice at all (I love the little ghosts coming out of our instruments!). Needless to say, we’re rooting for Tom to win the jury’s vote—He’s the Andy Warhol to our Velvet Underground!

Besides, with no year on the poster there’s still a chance we can use this at a real show at Massey Hall with Anna Atkinson down the road. How does 2022 sound?

UPDATE: Tom’s poster won second prize in the juried show! Awesome!

It’s been just over a year since we spent a few long, scotch and coffee filled days at the revered House of Miracles (when it was still in London, Ontario) recording Tortoise with Andy Magoffin and special appearances by Anna Atkinson. To commemorate that milestone here’s a little slideshow of all the photos from that session set to the song “Handcar.”

I put it all together using the Avid iPad app while stewing on finishing touches for the animated “People” video that is coming very, very soon (I promise)!

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The photo to the left shows the initial prototype circuit boards we had fabricated that even include our band name (that’s limited to first few pedals only)!

More details to come, but just like the limited run of custom paintings we sold after …Makes Ghost Noises came out, these would be available at shows with download codes for Tortoise (and maybe more).

Expect some new pedals, a few ukulele appearances and a new Replacements cover! We’re on at 8:15pm.

I’ve been building a few crazy pedals lately, so expect a lot of video demos in and around things like our upcoming animated music video for “People”.

Case in point, the very versatile and useful Paramix circuit from Guitarpcb.com (designed by Tonmann). This sort of pedal can be a bit difficult to explain (as you can no doubt infer from my nonsensical ramblings in the video demo), but, while it’s no in your face fuzz or swirly phaser, it adds new options to how things like your fuzz or phaser can interact. You can almost think of it as allowing them to live beside each other instead of mashing on top of one another.

Just trust me when I say it really is an awesome pedal. I wouldn’t steer you wrong, would I? Also, that oranges and lemons tin is pretty great anyway…

Check out the build documents at the forum here (where you can also buy the circuit board) and the mods I did are here.

Here are a few stills from this lo-fi magnum-opus that I hope to have finished soon. That cute little stud is yours truly (Laura’s a lucky girl….) and I’m putting him through all kinds of zany stream-of-consciousness situations.

Suffice to say this video has been consuming most of my waking hours for the past few months (aside from semi-aborted attempts at a Replacements cover—more to come on that). We’re hoping to bulk up our Youtube channel with a few other videos too (not to mention a gazillion more pedal demos for all my fellow gear-heads). Stay tuned!

UPDATE: It’s Done!