Honeybone and Life

There And Back Again

2014-03-08T14:57:00.001+13:00

Since we have just completed a tour of good ol' South Island, NZ, I thought it fitting for this blog to have a middle earthy title. Is it a copyright infringement? I'm sorry, Mr Jackson, if that is the case (resisting the urge to write "I am for reeeeeal" after that. Oh woops I already did).

So how was it?

IT WAS GREAT

We played with some rad bands, sold some merch, caught up with friends and family and even had some relaxation time. Highlights include a keytar legend by the name of Hong An of The Laon rocking Hey Joe, a security guard showing us pictures of his 50 guns whilst doing door duty and fitting all of our gear into a Daihatsu Cirion. Luckily we are small people.

The car is smaller than Drew, almost

This is the backseat. There was a small space for Peter to sit.

We flew into Christchurch on 13th February and after spending half an hour waiting in line for customs we were good to go. That evening we played with The Laon and Stomping Nick and his Blues Grenade. The Laon of course were fantastic, wonderful dudes and we were stoked to play with them. Hong has now gone back to South Korea, good luck to you, good sir. Stomping Nick is a man of many talents, as a one man band he rocks guitar, drums, vocals and harmonica all at once and rules at it. He blew us all away and everyone at Dux that night, if he comes to your town be sure to check him out. You can listen to his music online here

Stomping Nick does his thang

The Laon

We played too

Valentines day dawned bright and early and we set off for our home town, Dunedin, to play a show at Queens that night (not to be confused with Queens High School). Drew and I gifted each other V for valentines, while Peter's gal Tash was in Melbourne, so I assume he sent her a text or something. Romance ay. The road from Christchurch to Dunedin is long and uneventful, but the farmers leaving their muddy gumboots outside the Oamaru Subway made me tear up a little. Good ol' NZ. Never change.

We played Queens along with Bad Juju, Iron Mammoth and Black Sky Hustler that evening to an awesome crowd. Queens is a newish venue in Dunedin (new to us in any case) and it's a perfect little bar with vintage couches and even mirrors in the girls toilets. That gets my vote. Bad Juju are a 'drinking band with a singing problem' and are just incred. Their keyboardist Sarah definitely brings the sex appeal in a crocheted bikini, and you should probably never ever miss one of this bands shows, cause you'll probably regret it. Black Sky Hustler played a set of badass loud as fuck rock and we loved it. Queens loved it. The world would love it. And so would you. And of course the great Iron Mammoth were just fucking awesome. Drums, organ and trumpet/glockenspiel combine to make one hell of a band. We love them a LOT. Melbourne would love them too, so you cats in Iron Mammoth should get over here soon!

Black Sky Hustler

Bad Juju

Drew and Peter and their guitar/bass

About halfway through our set, Drew (in typical guitarist fashion) had some technical difficulties, so Peter and I embarked on our version of Spinal Tap's 'Jazz Odyssey'. One girl did some sexy coyote ugly style dancing down the front to that, so it must have been good.

We played the Waitati Music Festival (in Waitati, a 20 minute drive from Dunedin) the next evening after Drew and I attended a hens night and stag do respectively. The weather was cold, windy and rainy (welcome home, Honeybone) and I was sure people would leave before our set at 10 that night. But not only did people stay, but it seemed more people were around by the time we played (or maybe it was just dark). We finished the night with 'Rocking In The Free World' and got an encore. It came to our attention most people thought we were an Australian band, so we quickly assured the people of Waitati we were from just over the hill.

This kid wanted to punch ALL THE BUBBLES

Crowd at Waitati. All wicked cool people.

The Invercargill and Oamaru shows were both fantastic, it appears that the smaller NZ townships harbour a great love for live music. We played with Iron Mammoth and the Sparrow Thieves in Invercargill at Tillermans and the amazingly groovy Reed St Posse (who swap instruments!) in Oamaru at the Penguin Club. We loved playing both shows (Both venues had a drum riser!!) and the crowds were rad. The Invercargill show included a midnight/very early morning drive back to Dunedin, as we needed to organise things there early the next morning. I believe we arrived back in Dunedin at around 4am, and got up at 8am. Rock and roll indeed. We played Oamaru that night, so we were a little worse for wear, but it ended up being a great evening with the Reed Street girls and some sweet as Oamaru hospitality.

Peter at Tillermans setting up

Doing the door at Tilly's

Iron Mammoth!

The Penguin Club

Reed Street Posse at the Penguin Club!

Behind the drums

The next day we celebrated with Drew's sister Mal and her now husband Geoff as they were married in Moeraki. Drew played at the ceremony, was MC for the reception and we were also the wedding band. It was a wonderful afternoon/night and everything went pretty smoothly. Weddings ay. Tis the season.

After that, Drew and I went up to Alexandra for a few days to spend time with my parents, and it was a very relaxing 4 days. Peter hung out in Dunedin, and he enjoyed his time off too. Drew and I went on one of those paddle tricycle things at Lake Wanaka and two burly shirtless European boys came to drag us out of the water when we were done. Classic.

Romance

The last gig of the tour was 'Who Killed Dr Glam', a final glam rock show by the Doctor of Glam himself, (aka Ian Chapman), Honeybone and Kill Martha (along with Khamzin Tribe belly dancers and poet Proff Goff). It was incredible, amazing, and glittery. Ian is a lecturer at Otago Uni in the music department, so he taught Drew and I a few years ago. I was in the Dr Glam band back then, so when he was organising the last ever Dr Glam show it was awesome that he made it so I could play drums for him again. The venue (good ol' Refuel, where we used to play a lot back in the day) was packed, the beer was flowing and the glitter was being spread by stage manager and sex appeal artist Sarah. Somehow this same glitter is now on my bedroom floor in Melbourne. Glam will never die. Honeybone played directly before Dr Glam, so I played drums for around 2 or so hours that night. I was dirty and sweaty, tired and glittery by the end of it, but I wouldn't have it any other way. I was home.

Glam band - me on drums.

Thus ended our first South Island tour. It was probably the best trip I've ever had. Thank you to everyone who made it possible, our parents/families, the bands, everyone we borrowed gear off, and of course everyone who came to the shows. You are the reason bands like us exist, and we are so stoked to know all of you. I can't wait for the next trip home.

Our next gig is the Red Hill Music Festival on March 22nd. We are so excited about this gig, and it's for an awesome cause, as all profits from this festival go to the Shitbox Rally and the Cancer Council. If you can make it, we'll see you there!

xxx

This still hangs in the Refuel girls toilets. Our second ever gig. Pretty rad.

NB: I tried to change the blog design to reflect our new album artwork, but can't figure it out. Just pretend it's all updated and pretty :)

Happy Holidays from Honeybone

2013-12-22T15:21:00.001+13:00

A very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all!

My Mum's Christmas tree. She rules.

This year has been full of surprises, twists, turns and greatness. Our second year in Melbourne has been absolutely fantastic, and I thought what better way to round up the year than with a End of Year blog, especially since my last one was so long ago.

Of course, the most impressive thing we have done this year is finish the album, Talk Back Baby, which was a labour of love, most of the time. I for one had many moments where I turned into a three year old and whinged 'It's too haaaaard I don't waaant toooo'. Luckily for me my two awesome band mates are not as babyish and sorted me out. And we did it, it's done and released. I am so proud of it, my first ever full length album that I have released, and even if not many people hear it or give a shit, I know that I have done something to leave my mark on the world. The music will carry on after I'm gone, even if I have to make my grandkids play it to their friends (Jeez Grandma, this is old fogey crap).

Other fun things have happened this year. We moved to Coburg, and discovered a delightful little sandwich place called 'Tasty Sub'. All the sandwiches/wraps are $4, and they are awesome. And they're open like SUPER early. Bonus. More of our cool mates from NZ moved to Melbourne, and now we've got our own wee posse of people to come to shows and act like they're impressed. It works I tell you. Hype is everything. Fake it til you make it.

Drew started working at Cranbourne Music this year and has now started doing guitar and pedal repairs. He's moving on up in the world. I am still at my office job, and Peter is still at Daiso, confusing all the customers because he's not Japanese.

Probably the second coolest thing that happened this year was the Amanda Palmer House Party that happened at the 'Bone house back in September, and Amanda telling Dave Grohl about our band. I will probably never get over how awesome that weekend was, even if Mr. Grohl hears about twenty bands per day from various people, and if he never even checks us out, I will still be happy because he (and AFP) knows Honeybone exists. And let's face it, with a band name like that, we're kind of hard to remember.

Lately we've been putting our noses to the grindstone learning covers for Drew's sister's wedding in February. We are the wedding band, so we get to play songs like 'Why Does Love Do This To Me', 'Be Mine' and 'April Sun In Cuba'. Classic Kiwi stuff. What's amazing is how 'Why Does Love' is so well known and loved in New Zealand, and nobody knows it in Australia. I keep getting caught out by things like that over here, Australia and New Zealand seem so similar, and yet there's all these tiny differences in culture and language. You forget most people don't know what 'chur' or 'sweet as' means. Anyway, I digress. We haven't been practicing much of our own stuff, but don't you fret, we're not going anywhere and we're coming for YOU in 2014.

2014 is already panning out to be a rad year. We're going on our first ever official tour, playing Christchurch, Dunedin, Invercargill, Oamaru, Melbourne, maybe even Hobart and Sydney. Who knows what will happen. But I know if 2014 is anything like this year, it'll be awesome.

Keep on keeping on kids. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, from all of us here at Honeybone.
Thanks for all the support, and we'll see you in 2014.

Momo especially hopes you have a wonderful Christmas

love
xxx

IT IS OUT

2013-10-27T17:41:00.000+13:00

So the album is out.

After two and a half years, a lineup change and moving countries, we have finally released our debut album 'Talk Back Baby'. It's been such an incredible, stressful experience, both wonderful and horrible (only sometimes).

ALBUMS

We had our album launch at Melbourne venue Yah Yahs, and it was such a fun night. We played with our friends The Naysayers and The Velvets, who are both really awesome bands and you should go see them or listen to their stuff online when you get a chance.

The Velvets were up first and absolutely blew me away with their badassery, complete with Green Bullet harmonica microphone and loudspeaker vocals. We saw them last year and I was like woah, and this time I was like WOAH. They really are a must see band, fo sho.

The Naysayers were up next, and as per usual they rocked the casbah. They are the best 'non-threatening garage rock band' I know. They even played a Beatles song, after admitting they had recently played a wedding and had to learn a bunch of covers. I accidently spilled some cider on one of their new EPs (Dee Eye Why), but that's no reason not to buy one (which you can get here).

Then we were up, and boy was I itching to get behind those drums after seeing some wicked bands such as the above. We decided to play the album in it's entirety (probably the only time that's going to happen), so there were a few songs we had to practice quite a bit to get them worthy of a Honeybone set. Our poppiest song ever, 'Down My Rhode' was one of these, we have only ever played it once back when we were still a four piece. We had Drew's midi keyboard hooked up to my laptop which was running Garageband and got a really nice dirty electric piano sound. The main issue with this song was Drew transitioning from keys to guitar for the solo, but I think we managed it.

The below photos were taken by Dimi Kostakos, and she is rad. Thanks Dimi!

It was a wonderful sweaty set, probably one of our best we've played in Melbourne. We played for over an hour, yet it was over so quickly. For our last song we did 'That's Alright Mama' (made famous by Elvis and covered by many others) and our wonderful pal Ashleigh got up on stage and encouraged others to also. So we had a bunch of mates and randoms rocking out with us to close the night. So. Much. Fun.

In other news, the deluxe album packages will be shipped out to the people who bought them this week, we had to wait as the T-Shirts were going to take a while to print. We've sent the album off to a few music blogs for reviews (eek) and a guy on twitter likened me to Dave Grohl, which made my day (I was sitting at my desk at work grinning like an idiot for about 10 minutes).

Next weekend (the 2nd of November, to be exact) we are playing Cherry Bar with a cool band called The Modern Age, and another one, The Sand Dollars. It's going to be so very rad to play Cherry, we've been keen since we moved here, as it's such a notorious rock n roll venue. Watch out Cherry, we are coming for you.

We're stoked to hear when people buy and like our album, so let us know! You can use hashtag #talkbackbaby on Twitter and Instagram, or you can post on our Facebook page. Tell all your friends, tell your Mum. And keep an eye out on iTunes and Spotify, the album will be up there soon too!

Yay!

xxx

A Watching Guide for our new Promotional Video

2013-10-13T15:40:00.000+13:00

Hey champs

You may have noticed we have a new promotional video

We worked with King of Comedy Andy Weston on this one, and we think it's tops.

Sure, the first time you watch it, it's a hoot. But what really MAKES the video is when you notice all the hilarious small things you didn't notice the first time. We like to pretend we planned all this out, but we didn't, not all of them.

Honeybone's Hilarious Easter Eggs in the new Promo Vid:

1. The old ladies delayed reaction after the CD is thrown at her (0.15)

GILF

This isn't something I planned to do, this is just extreme bad acting. And since that's what all informercials are about, it makes the video all the more funny.

We recommend watching that over and over. Make a GIF if you like.

2. The random guy with his kid in the background watching Sambo Blissett as he spits out 'blood' at the train station (0.39-0.48)

Since we filmed this in a public place, we couldn't really tell the guy to go away. We thought it would be good to have people in the background, like a real life event. Unfortunately (or fortunately), this guy didn't quite understand his role, and was extremely interested to see what we were doing. He looked very alarmed when Sam spit the tomato sauce out onto the ground. Poor guy.

Little did we know that a train station guard was standing right behind us as we filmed, and he kicked us out after we stopped filming (apparently you need a permit).

Since we're hardly professional film makers, we thought we'd keep this in, as it adds to the hilarity.

This is what it looked like to outsiders. Not that interesting, really...

3. The Backstreet Boys are on our album artwork (1.04)

When we filmed this, we hadn't yet printed the album in it's physical form, so we needed a dummy case.

What better CD to use than the greatest album of all time, 'Backstreet's Back' by the Backstreet Boys (one of Drew's favourites in his large collection).

This one was done on purpose, but out of necessity than comedic value. But it's great.

I hope you enjoyed my little guide to our promo video, keep an eye out for the next one!

Oh and our album comes out in officially 6 days!!!!

xxx

Click 'Attend'

2013-10-03T23:13:00.002+13:00

Hey guys, just a quick wee bloggy blog today.

We have a Facebook event for our album launch, which is at Yah Yahs on Smith Street on the 18th of October (which is a Friday, great news for all you Mon-Fri people out there!). If you have Facebook, you should click on the link below and click 'attending'. If you are a cool kid and don't have Facebook, here are the details:

We are playing with two awesome bands called The Naysayers and The Velvets. It is free entry (yay) and doors will be around 8pm, with the first band on around 9 (to be confirmed). We will have our album there for sale, as well as t-shirts and lots of other fun goodies. The Naysayers will probably bring copies of their new EP 'Dee Eye Why' and you can get one. How exciting.

Here is the link.

This gig is two weeks away and we are very very excited. We're going to play at least one new cover, so it's worth coming to watch us butcher one of the greats.

Here is the teaser video Drew made for the album, he made it in half an hour, like a boss.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s10Ozla01sk&feature=player_embedded

In other news, Drew got a tattoo and I went to Wellington. It was great fun.

And here is a hilarious photo of what happens when I have a rat (Zuko) and a macbook.

AFP, album preorders and promo videos

2013-09-23T22:54:00.000+12:00

Wow what a weekend. I'm still on quite a high from it all. If you 'like' our page on Facebook, you'll probably already know most of what I'm going to tell you but I'll include lots of details so you don't get bored (and if you still get bored, then you don't need to read on and we'll still be friends, maybe).

Warning: this blog contains Amanda Palmer. Here she is eating my face, I hope it tasted good.

I don't really know where to start so I guess I'll let you know about our album preorder while you're still paying attention. Last week, we put our album 'Talk Back Baby' up for preorder on our Bandcamp page. You can order a digital copy for $8, or you can order a physical copy for $15, and we'll ship it to you. It's all very exciting, and your money will go to paying for mastering and printing the album, which is nice because then we don't have to put all our personal funds into it. If you're thinking about getting a copy, have a think about doing a preorder, as you'll be helping us out AND we'll also know how many to print (AND if we get suddenly famous, you're guaranteed a piece of music history). Win win!

This is the album artwork, Kelsie Trainor drew and designed it. Rad!

So some of you may be wondering what 'AFP' stands for. It stands for 'Amanda Fucking Palmer' and she was IN MY HOUSE on Saturday. Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up. Amanda Palmer put a $5000 package on her Kickstarter for her latest album, if you bought it she would come and party/play at your house. A bunch of cities decided to band together and pitch in for a joint party. This is what happened here in Melbourne and when someone pulled out because the tour dates changed, I took their place and paid the necessary contribution. Then they didn't have a venue, I was all like 'I've got a rad little house with a cute backyard' and suddenly I was hosting the Amanda Palmer Melbourne House Party for 2013.

Look at all the people in my yard!

With a LOT of help from my wonderful friends (old and new) we set up for the party on Saturday. We had streamers, signs, pink flamingos and garden gnomes (see example A). We set up a band area, an eating area and a filming area for Guy and his crew who are making a documentary about the house parties. It was a lot of work, but my pals helped me pull it off and I am very very grateful, they rock and I would have been a slobbering jittery mess lying on the ground in the foetal position without them (too many to name, they all know who they are. All the loves to you all xxx).

Example 'A'

Example 'B'

Honeybone played and it was glorious (see Example B). Amanda and her bandmates Jherek Bischoff and Chad Raines liked us, which was totally rad (I, in a weird fit of self-confidence, actually asked Amanda what she thought if the band. I hope I didn't put her on the spot, considering it was in the middle of my interview with Tom Dickens for Guy's doco lol). There were some gorgeous dogs who came and one of them kept barking at my kick drum, which was hilarious (although initially worrying when I first saw people laughing during our set). Some other wonderful people played also, including William Robin, Becca Tilley, Brendan McClean, Tom Dickins and Amanda herself with her band. I got to play snare and brushes for her song 'Want It Back' (see the video at the end of this blog) and the grand finale 'Smells Like Teen Spirit'. I still can't believe she asked me to play with her, it was unbelievable. Also she played with a few other people, who were all stoked to play, including another cool drummer called Lisa who played Blister In The Sun with her.

Here she is with The Jane Austen Argument's Tom Dickins.

As well as asking me to play with her, Amanda also took a photo of me with my drums with 'Hi Dave' and our Bandcamp link sharpied on my hand, and she is going to show it to DAVE FUCKING GROHL when she hangs out with him soon. Since he's done house party things before I guess she'll have a chat to him about it and she will be totally telling him about my band. Squee indeed. I cried on her after she took the picture, what a baby. She's awesome. She also recorded a quick message for our promo videos. She's the bees fucking knees and I'm so happy to have met her and her amazing fan community.

Chad played my drums after we moved them off the staging area

The tarp matches my top.

A sneaky AFP watches the Honeybone set

Passion during The Killing Type

The band minus Thor Harris

The party went so very smoothly, 'Take A Walk On The Wild Side' was played and the neighbours poked their head over the fence (to listen and not to complain about the noise). Amanda played ukelele on the garage roof with Drew sitting by her feet, and I was super happy she didn't fall through the roof, because that would be just my luck for my garage roof to kill Amanda Palmer. Everyone was safe, don't you fret.

Ukelele Anthem on the roof

Drew in awe

Sunday morning was clean up day, and then straight into filming promo videos for the album. I don't want to give too much away but they involve me dressed up as an old lady and our friend Sam Blissett spitting out blood (tomato sauce) at Coburg Station (we were promptly asked to leave after that). And of course Amanda Palmer. But just you wait, it's going to be legendary. These videos aren't music videos, the best phrase I can come up with is 'promotional videos'. You'll see, you'll all see.

I've got the old lady DOWN

Filming at the train station

And now because I really like to live it up and not have any rest, a week of working overtime lies ahead of me and then I fly to Wellington to hang out with my twin sister Kelsie and my awesome Mum (who told me she wants Amanda Palmer to tell Dave Grohl about her too, and how awesome she thinks he is but alas, it was too late). This weekend will be awesome, but Wellington has a lot to live up to considering the weekend I just had.

Bring it on.

So if you want to check out Amanda's music, please head to www.amandapalmer.net and you can find all her stuff there (for pay what you want, which is nice). She's also a rad blogger. Word up.

And if you are new to Honeybone, please go to www.honeybone.bandcamp.com and you can download free music and even preorder our album, if you feel so inclined. You can also like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter (and you can follow me on Twitter too: @raq_hell).

Oh yes and we've started booking shows for our NZ tour next February, keep an eye out, we'll be making the announcement when all the dates are confirmed! Yay first tour ever!

Thanks for reading, and stay classy, world.

Xxx

P.S. here is the video of Amanda Palmer, Chad Raines, Jherek Bischoff, William Robin and I playing 'Want It Back', which is a song off Amanda's latest album. I get a drum solo and I grin like a total noob.

The Weekend

2013-08-14T22:17:00.000+12:00

Hello chums

It's been a while since you've had an update from me, but if you've 'liked' our Facebook page (and I highly suggest you do) you're probably up to speed with all the recent happenings. However if you're not, this is just the place to get up to date with us Honeybone kids.

Drew, Alex (our new flatmate) and I had a party. It was leopard print themed. It was glorious. Drew climbed things and I joined in on a ukelele jam. The next day (I was hideously hungover), we ventured to Pentridge Prison with our friend Andy Weston to take some Honeybone snaps. We got some good ones, some bad ones and some hilarious ones. Some will never see the light of day (one of me in particular). They'll be put up on the Facebook, but here's a couple of my favourites.

That last one is great. Thanks Andy!

Another cool thing we did was SET THE DATE FOR THE ALBUM RELEASE! Yep, after two years, it's finally happening. We've got my cool twin Kelsie working on album artwork and I have even written lists if things that need to be done. I am so very organised. We're not quite ready to go public with the exact date, but it is in mid October. We'll be doing preorders through our bandcamp and even merch deals. The next couple of weeks are going to be focused on getting mixing done (it's sounding AWESOME), and then all the other fun stuff to do with releasing an album will happen.

This last weekend, we played two shows and both were amazing. Friday night we played at The Retreat on Sydney Road with a band from Perth called the Trigger Jackets. It was rad. We hadn't played the Retreat before, and we hope to do it again, what a cool venue. I especially like the stage. The Trigger Jackets were great, if you're ever over Perth way and want to hear some good music, you should check them out, they have an album and everything (that's one ahead of us). Here is their Facebook page.

Saturday night we played DV8 with Massive and Virtue. What a fucking awesome gig that was. I'm probably going to sound a bit up myself a little but we were TIGHT. Every song we played was great, Drew did a lot of cool rock star moves and I drummed like Animal. Our friend was filming the evening, so keep an eye out for some footage in the near future. Virtue were awesome too, and Massive are truly a band that needs to be seen to be believed. Their frontman Brad was everywhere at once, and they even had a burlesque dancer. They are also really nice guys, and we can't wait to play with them again!

Our next gig is at Penny Black on September 6th with our mates Cotangent. That'll be a great night, and it's free entry! Get amongst it yo

We always do.

I leave you with an amazing video of an amazing woman singing 'Total Eclipse Of The Heart' as 19 different famous divas. Enjoy xxx

Honeybone does Toyland Recording studio

2013-06-22T15:19:00.002+12:00

When I was little , I always thought studio recording was for musicians who had 'made it'. As it was the '90s, this was probably an accurate truth (or you had to have a very rich parent/spouse/cousin/bandmate). I would sing into my little hairbrush pretending I was Sporty Spice (like every other tween girl in the late 90s) and dream about the day I would set foot in a professional recording studio. Granted, that was as part of a Spice Girls rip off girl group and not the drummer of a garage rock band, but nonetheless. Twas a dream I never thought possible.

Fast forward to 2008, I got my first taste of 'professional' recording with my first band in Dunedin 'Captain Dave and The Pirate Hookers'. We did a spot of recording at Otago University's Albany Street Studios, and from there on in I developed a love/hate relationship with recording.

Since then I have been lucky enough to experience many hours recording music. For Honeybone's first EP 'Soul On Fire', we packed up Drew's recording gear and set off for his parents holiday house in Moeraki. Five days later we had the drums and bass tracks down. We finished all the guitar and vocal overdubs back in Dunedin in various practice spaces and bedrooms.

Then in 2011, we decided the time was ripe for a full length Honeybone album (yes, the same one we are working on 2 years later). Drew and I were doing our honours year at Otago University, and both had to record/produce an album. I decided to do my solo stuff, and Drew took on the immensity that is our album. Two years later and we have aaaaalmost reached the end of the recording process.

Why the hell has it taken so long, I hear you ask? Well, first of all, our second guitarist Josh left the band near the end of 2011. Then we moved to Melbourne (and spent all our money). Then we had to get jobs to pay for recording (and the van and rent etc). Finally, two years later we had enough time and money to book in two days at Toyland Recording Studios in Northcote, run by engineer Adam Calaitzis. And what a two days they were! As we weren't completely new to the recording process, we had rehearsed almost every day in the two weeks previous to the booking, so we were tight.

Listening back. Photo by Paul Emery

Still, the Honeybone kids are only human (hard to believe ain't it), and we all made a few mistakes. And this is where having a seasoned, professional studio engineer on hand saves SO MUCH TIME. Back in Dunedin with Drew at the helm, if we ever wanted to redo a drum fill or guitar lick, it would take Drew a while to find the part and splice the new part in, since he was fairly new to Protools. This time, Adam would be all 'we can fix that' and get it done in ten seconds. He does this stuff everyday. He knows all about it.

We got all of the base tracks (drums, bass and rhythm guitar) all done in the first day. We decided to do it live, to save time and sanity, plus some songs just had to be live. We were stoked we did it all in one day, considering one of the songs we were doing was our 10 minute long epic of wankery, 'Espionage', and the first time we attempted to record it, it took a whole afternoon. We got it down in one and a half takes. Our chins were floor level.

Bass tastic. Photo by Paul Emery

I mentioned at the beginning that I have a love/hate relationship with recording. Let me explain ya this. On one hand, I love the atmosphere, smell and feel of recording studios. I love the static buzz and heat that eminates from the preamps. Seeing my drumkit rigged up with a shit tonne of mics sends shivers down my spine. Listening to Drew and Peter decide what amp, guitar, or pedal to use for each song isn't as tedious as it normally is (just kidding fellas). What I do not love is that moment where you sit down in the control room to listen to your take and you hear yourself play. You thought you nailed it. You thought you were the best fucking drummer in the world. Then all those mics rigged to your kit pick up EVERYTHING, and kicks you in the crotch. Ghost notes you thought sounded kickass on the snare now sound like nails in a glass jar being shaken by a toddler. That fill you thought was awesome was slightly out of time, and screwed your face up for you as protools tells you how much you suck.

Drew fixing one part or another. Photo by Paul Emery

Well, usually it's not that bad. I am my worst critic, and an extreme perfectionist when it comes to my work. It's a good way to be, but being this way also makes you want to die a little inside when you hear your takes up-close-and-personal-like. I liken it to one of those little curvy mirrors that make your pores look like sink holes and make you want to rip your skin off. You know. THOSE mirrors. They show you up right close and personal. And these days that's what recording is about. We want to be right next to the singers mouth, we want to feel their breath on our face. We want to hear all of the intricacies that you wouldn't hear in a crowded room. Because when you're on your morning commute on a dreary weekday you want to feel close to someone. You want that intimacy. Unfortunately, like the curvy mirror, you will also get all of the imperfections. You will get the blackheads and the blocked pores. The chin hairs and pimples. And that's what rock 'n' roll is about.

DRUUUUMS. Photo by Paul Emery

I had a hard time remembering that while listening back to our takes. In a world where everything is polished and perfect, it's hard to accept being human. Nonetheless, we got takes we were all happy with and finished the first day.

The first half of the second day was Drew doing guitar overdubs. He is whizkid on that guitar, lemme tell ya. He already knew what he was going to do, more or less, so that didn't take too long. Then onto the vocals. Drew got his scream on and I tried to make my girly voice into something a bit grittier. What resulted was getting stuff caught in my throat and my eyes watering while I tried not to cough onto the very expensive vocal mike. It sounded good though, and that's all that counts. We laid down some keys on 'Touch The Sky' too, which is going to sound badass.

Drew recording vocals.

We got the majority of everything done. This weekend Drew and I will be finishing off the vocals and keys parts for the rest of the tracks, and tweaking things that need redone. Then the recording process will be finished.

And then we get to mix, master, sort out album artwork, etc. There is light at the end of the tunnel. Album shaped light. Maybe in the form of vinyl. WHO KNOWS WHAT WE'LL DO.

Keep an eye out on Facebook and Twitter, and the handy ol' blog. We know this has taken ages, and we thank you for your patience.

Xxx

A New 'Bone House

2013-04-15T21:16:00.000+12:00

WE MOVED INTO A HOUSE

It's pretty cool. It has '70s style orange and brown carpet, aqua green walls and a garage. Peter found a classy as apartment just down the road in a warehouse conversion building.Thus why I have been too darn busy to blog. Yesterday I even bought and found a use for power tools. But now is the hour where I blog again. So don't fret and stuff.

So now we are rid of the terrifying downstairs neighbours, we are free to make noise again. I might just set up my drums and give them a bashing sometime soon. Drew has already turned the garage into his 'man-cave' and set up all his amp building gear, which is great because now it doesn't clutter up our bedroom. Winning.

Drew got a job working at the Blackburn branch of Cranbourne Music, so if you're ever up that way on a Thursday, Saturday or Sunday, call in and say hi. Drew is finally getting paid to talk about guitars all day (something he does anyway) and also gets to make sweet as videos such as this (I especially love the somewhat amplified kiwi accent):

Now that Drew is a man of means he works 7 days a week (since he's kept his other job). This doesn't leave a lot of time for extra curricular activities, or recording. Which means the final stage of recording the album won't be finished for a while, since I work Mon-Fri, Drew is Mon-Sun and Peter is whenever he is rostered possibly Mon-Sun between 7am and 10 pm. Annual leave is few and far between for all of us.

We try to not let life get in the way of art. But at the moment (especially with all the moving/bond paying), we need the cash. To pay for studio time, and less important things like food and rent (and the sweet as organ we're getting for our dining room).

I found this photo whilst going through old HB pics last night. This is at DV8 sometime last year. I thought it was cool.

In spite of the recording hiccup, things are still happening in the world of HB. A few weeks ago we recorded some demos at a practice space aaaaaages away (somewhere in the South East suburbs). The purpose of those is to listen to them and come up with better parts and production stuff without having to practice all the time (a great idea since none of us really have a lot of time). We are also planning a photo shoot sometime soon (Andy Weston, photographer extraordinaire is going to take some snaps of our pretty faces), if anyone has ideas for a shoot, let me know! All I can think of is the dull band-in-front-of-a-white-or-brick-wall cliche. I've been bit artistically challenged lately.

And to top it all off we've got some gigs coming up in the next few weeks. Next Tuesday (that's the 23rd of April) we're playing a gig with Sierra Leone and Karl Leedon at the Brunswick Hotel. It's free entry and we're headlining at 10pm (it's a school night but school is for fools). Here is the Facebook event. We're also playing a warehouse party in Yarraville on the 27th, more on that one to come.

After those gigs it's bye bye Aussie for ten days while Drew and I go on a holiday back to our home town of Dunedin and catch up with all the bros and hos down there. I seriously can't wait, I haven't had a holiday in over a year.

Lastly, here's a piece I wrote for The Factory about crowd funding, it's pretty much an expansion on the last blog. It's got statistics and everything, so you know it's totes legit. Unlike this blog.

Until next time
xxx

A Friend In Need Is A Friend With Jumper Leads

2013-03-06T21:45:00.000+13:00

Sharing and giving and having and receiving.

Obligatory Friends reference.

I'm sure all of you have had to ask a favour of a family member, friend or stranger. When you ask in a polite, non obtrusive manner, whoever you have asked will generally help you out (unless they are a dick, or genuinely can't help). Asking for help is something a lot of people struggle with. No one likes to be vulnerable. The fear of hearing 'no' is always there, the fear of failure and rejection will always rear its ugly head.

Today the subject of the HB blog is asking. Specifically, is it ok for an artist (by that I mean musician/writer/performer/visual artist etc) to ask for financial help to further their art/career.

I know I probably harp on about her a bit, but this is something EVERYONE should see. This is what I hope to be the future of the music biz. Amanda Palmer's talk 'The Art of Asking' at the TED conference in California last week was inspiring and full of hope for the young buck musicians like your friends at Honeybone. The speech has gone viral.

Please watch it, its 10 or so minutes of awesomeness. Even if you dislike her music, she's one hell of a public speaker.

If the above video doesn't work, here is the youtube link

The basic gist is: the question isn't how do we make people pay for music, how do we LET them pay for music. In 2012, Amanda Palmer made global headlines by raising almost 1.2 million dollars (US) through crowd funding website Kickstarter for her new album 'Theatre Is Evil'. About 25,000 people backed the project, including yours truly.

Crowd funding has opened up an entirely new way to distribute and pay for music. Amanda (we're on first name basis now she's retweeted me) used the Kickstarter as a kind of preorder for the album, with rewards ranging from $1 digital downloads to an artbook, vinyl packages, 'mailbox invasion' art packages and the list goes on. That's right, we could CHOOSE how much we wanted to pay for her music. And you still can on her bandcamp. And you can on ours.

By not having a hard sticker price on our music, both Amanda Palmer and us kids at Honeybone have found that people have an overwhelming streak of generosity when they are given the CHOICE to pay for something or not. When we put our single 'Don't Need You' up on our bandcamp, we made it a 'pay what you want' option. We knew we wouldn't get many downloads if we made it a set price, so we decided it should be free. And guess what? People paid for it! Mostly they were our mates, but one lovely lady whom I have never physically met paid for it, purely on the basis of the music. And that feels good. Because we didn't MAKE her.

Think of that feeling you get when you give your last $2 coin to an awesome busker or street performer. Knowing the money goes directly to them makes you feel a bit good, doesn't it? No one's making you pay. So is it shameful that they are on the street, performing for passersby and loose change?

Amanda Palmer says her days as a Living Statue in Harvard Square, Boston taught her a lot about being a professional musician. Especially how to deal with the people that did and still do yell at her 'Get a job!!' from their cars/computer screens. She copped a lot of criticism for raising so much money on Kickstarter, and then asking her fans to come play onstage with her for tickets and beer and hugs. People thought now she's a 'rich rockstar', she should pay everyone who plays. Which is a fair enough point, to the people that don't know the relationship she has with her fans. She connects with them directly, through her blog, Twitter and her shows. She asked them to help her, and they did. Because she helped them. In so many ways.

An illutration form of Amanda's talk for those of you on the go. By Fever Picture

So Honeybone had a crisis (in my opinion, I was FREAKING OUT) on Saturday night. We had a gig and oops, we left the van lights on. Classic error. Everyone does it once. Not many will do it twice. My mind was running over the possible solutions. We didn't need to take drums or a bass amp, so we could get a taxi? Shit, Drew's massive amp cab is in the van, parked 5 blocks away, not exactly feasible for a taxi (that may or may not show up). We had a battery charger, but there wasn't enough time to charge it up before the gig. And we don't have jumper leads. Fail.

Thus I proceeded to the depths of my phone contacts, feverishly scrolling, trying to remember who has a car, who would be home and who would have jumper leads. Enter drum extraordinaire and vintage radio collector Tom Hendry. What a champ. I called him up and ten minutes later he was jump starting our van. I asked for help and he helped us. Of course, he's an awesome guy so it's not a huge surprise he came and helped, but it's still fucking great. His band is called Son of Set, and they're playing tomorrow night at the Vineyard. You should go see them, they are awesome. We got to the gig a sneaky 5 minutes before we were supposed to start. Luckily the boys from headliner Cotangent (one of the best freaking bands in Melbourne) didn't mind in the slightest. And we played. And it rocked. And everything rocked.

Said rockage. Photo by Heath Gillespie of Cotangent

We wouldn't have been able to play the gig if it hadn't been for Tom. Amanda Palmer wouldn't have been able to release her album if it wasn't for her fans. One example is small, and one is on a scale I can't even comprehend. But both have the same basic principle. Ask and you shall receive. Be a good person and you will receive goodness.

Asking for help, or monetary remuneration for artistic services shouldn't be seen as begging. Busking isn't begging. Playing gigs isn't begging. Crowd funding isn't begging. Let's stop thinking of it as begging. Let's think of it as what Amanda Palmer would think. ASKING.

And also we should all probably think about investing in a nice set of jumper leads.

Sunday is a day for a blog post.

2013-02-24T17:54:00.001+13:00

Currently I am sitting on our Cowch (a sofa with cow print, it's as awesome as it sounds), listening to Drew mix 'Edge of The Sun' after we finally finished recording all the vocals. And my oh my, it's sounding pretty nice. So I thought I should probably do something productive. Why not update the blog with what we've been up to in the last two weeks, I thought to myself. And yes, that's what I'll do.

Amazing Cowch

We've played a couple of gigs, recorded some stuff, had some band practices. It's been a busy couple of weeks. And this next week coming up is even busier, with Peter's 'season' of concerts (he's going to an average of one a week for the next six weeks I think) and SOUNDWAVE! I'm really very excited, as I'm a bogan from way back and finally get to see Metallica, who have been on my bucket list since I learnt 'Enter Sandman' on drums when I was 14. And I missed out on tickets when they came down under last time so I owe it to my 14 year old self. Plus I'm a bogan. I'm gonna headbang the shit out of Soundwave. If I could, I would grow a Handle Bar moustache. But as I am a woman, I'll have to settle for a makeshift mullet and Metallica tshirt (black of course).

Bogane Chic

On Valentines Day we played a gig on Sydney Road. It was fun, our mates got their own special private show, as the other bands we played with decided not to watch our set, and took their crowd outside to listen to the DJ that was playing out there. It was a pretty loose set, there wasn't a lot of foldback and I didn't have time to set my drums up properly (and I played badly). I decided it was a good thing no one watched us, and we got paid (which was funny cause all our mates got in for free so I don't know who's money that was). There was also one girl watching who I didn't know who caught the whole set, and got a download card afterwards. Whoever you are, random girl from that night, you are cool. All it takes is one person to come up afterwards and say they liked it, and everything seems a bit better. It's a shame that none of the other bands even came in for one song, especially as the first band were talking about 'supporting local music' all throughout their set. That's not really a good attitude to have. They were a good band though. But if musicians aren't supporting their fellow musicians, what else do we have?

On Friday we played the Valleyarm Showcase at the Vineyard in St. Kilda. And what a turn around from our last gig! The place was packed, all the bands were awesome and supportive, and Honeybone were tight.
We gave away 24 copies our newly printed single (more on that later), with the help of Ashleigh and Rory from Valleyarm. I cannot emphasise how awesome the guys from Valleyarm are, they were so helpful in getting everything organised (they even brought us drinks). If you or anyone you know get asked to play at this monthly gig at the Vineyard, do it. Very lovely, helpful people. Valleyarm Distribution are an digital music distribution company, who distribute to 200 online music stores, and they also do publishing and online marketing too. Check them out here.

Here's a picture of Drew from the gig. Badass.

One of the bands that played at the gig were amazing. Their name is The Ugly Kings, and they are a three piece (drums, two guitars) who play dirty garage rock. And their drummer is the vocalist. Awesome. Their facebook page is here, go and click on that 'like' button.

As I mentioned before, we now have physical copies of our single 'Don't Need You' We also chucked 'All My Sins' and 'Soul On Fire' on there from the Soul On Fire EP, for the people who haven't heard the old stuff.

Since we're not rich people, we decided to do a stripped down version of the original single design, and make the CD covers ourselves. So last Saturday night was spent folding (and folding and folding) paper CD cases.

And we also had tea. Because tea.

They turned out really well, so if anyone wants to do this themselves, here is the link to the website that taught me this wonderful skill. Step 5 was a bit tricky to start with but I got there in the end. We printed the artwork (see top of picture) on gloss paper, so it looks pretty professional. And if you can afford colour print it would look even better (it was going to cost $80 for 100 colour prints so we went black and white). We got the CDs printed and duplicated at Implant Media on Lygon Street who do lots of cool affordable cd/merch/vinyl printing and replicating/duplicating. We at Honeybone recommend their services.

So now that we have physical copies of the single, come down to our next gig and get one! They're free and handmade with love by yours truly. Our next gig is on Saturday 2nd March at the Dancing Dog in Footscray. Keep an eye out on our Facebook for more details.

Love
xxx

New Live Releases!

2013-02-05T21:50:00.000+13:00

Hello friends

Today we released the live recordings from our very last gig in Dunedin, New Zealand. Recorded at XII Below by master of sound Iain Sweetman of Livesound Engineering, these are the first live recordings we have received EVER that sound great AND the playing of instruments isn't abominable.

You can download the bunch for free (or you can name a price, up to you. We recommend FREE) here:

http://honeybone.bandcamp.com/

Tell your friends, your mother, your baby and your cat. Share that link with everyone you can, because who doesn't like free stuff?!

For all my new readers, here is a blog I wrote about the gig itself:

http://honeyboneandlife.blogspot.com.au/2012/01/fare-thee-well-dunedin-gig.html

The night was awesome, we had a huge jam at the end of our set with our wicked cool friends Kitten Surprise and we played Rockin' In The Free World by Neil Young (sadly we couldn't release that one as the license fees were a touch pricey).

Here's a photo from the night:

Drew had SHORT HAIR

Have another:

Us kiwis sure know how to pash a guitar

It was one of our more unforgettable gigs, and we're forever thankful for all of you who came down and gave us your support. We'll be back one day Dunedin.

Anywho, onwards and upwards. On Saturday we played a gig at the Empress Hotel across the road from our flat. We drove our gear there. We are lazy (except Peter who carried his. Manly). We didn't get thrown out for being too raucous and loud-like, but that doesn't mean we didn't have fun. Our mates came down, we made some cash at the end of the night, it was all rather swell. I didn't play so great, so now I endeavour to practise more and play better. No one likes a shitty drummer. Let's face it, no one really likes drummers.

What you all secretly think when we sit down at a drum kit

We've got some gigs coming up, 22nd of February at The Vineyard in St. Kilda and March 2nd at the Dancing Dog in Footscray. More details TBA.

So go download our music off bandcamp (here's that link again http://www.honeybone.bandcamp.com) and tell EVERYONE. The kids'll LOVE you for it.

This is a joke only a limited few people (New Zealanders) may or may not get.

Love to all xxx

A New Year

2013-01-29T20:22:00.000+13:00

Well hello there my friends!

I hope you all had a safe and happy holiday season! Us kids in the Honeybone camp had a great time, Drew's sister and Mum and Grandma came to visit, Peter hung out with his sister and I drowned my sorrows in Lindauer (NZ wine ftw) to stave off the homesickness. It was a pretty top notch holiday season had all round, made all the more raucous thanks to our very first Australian New Year, jello shots and all.

Things have been busy as bees in the Honeybone House. We've already played this year at a great venue by the name of Bar Open with some great bands including Son of Set, whose drummer Tom sat next to me at my office job for a small while. Everyone were great, and there was even a mirror on the roof so everyone could see my mad drum skillz (too bad I didn't wear a lowcut top). I also broke a drumstick (badass) and didn't have a spare one. Rock 'n' roll indeed.

While still getting over the starstroke (starstrike?) of hanging out with The Datsuns last month (see last blog), we've been getting our shit together. This even included having a meeting about getting our shit together. Productive indeed. Our amazing business manager Ash sussed us an ABN, so we can invoice people when we play, so now we also have to be all responsible and pay taxes. Honeybone is now all Grown Up. We've been doing heaps of overdubs for the album, and are on the lookout for recording studios to get the other 5 tracks recorded. If anyone knows somewhere good/affordable, let us know and we'll... I don't know.... bake you a cake or something. I can bake stuff because I am a Woman and Good At Life.

Upcoming in the Honeybone camp is a gig this weekend, playing at the wonderful venue Empress Hotel. The great part about playing here is that it's RIGHT ACROSS THE ROAD from our house. Convenient! What may not be so convenient is that when I emailed their booker for a gig a few months ago, they knocked me back because we 'looked too loud'. I have a feeling it has something to do with this picture we had recently posted on our facebook:

They ALL go to 11!

They have a limit of 100 decibels, as they are in a residential area, so hopefully the boys control their toys.

(By the way I wasn't being sarcastic about this venue being wonderful, we've had some great nights there, it being our local and all).

We're playing with some great bands (headliners are City Sound) and we're on at 9pm, nice and early if you have to head to a party or something else like that (I don't really know... whatever normal people do on a Saturday night), so you can still catch our set. It's $6 entry also. Nice and cheap for all those on a budget.

We also had our first experience of Australia Day this last weekend, and I think I'm still recovering (nb. more jello shots were had). Here's a cute wee pic Tash the Jello Shot Queen took of us.

The Aussies put an Australian Flag on Drews forehead.

Rightyho Joe it's time to practice our slightly quieter set for Saturday.

See yas there peeps
xxx

Happy Holidays from Honeybone

2012-12-24T15:54:00.002+13:00

Hey guys

The time of year has come to wish you all a very happy and safe holiday season. We've been rather busy in the Honeybone camp, with two of our fav bands playing within one week of each other, we're a bit worse for wear. Not too tired to write an entertaining blog however. Lucky for you.

On Friday, 14th Dec we headed down to the Espy in St. Kilda to see Shihad rock the Gershwin Room. This was the first gig we've been to there (apart from playing there ourselves), and the Espy really lived up to it's reputation. One thing I was quite excited/shocked to see when we arrived was the lack of crowd barriers before the stage. This was the first Shihad gig I'd been to (and I've been to about 7 or 8 now) where I was being pushed right up onto the stage and hanging onto the foldbacks so I didn't lose my place. Fucking awesome. Shihad rocked, and they played 20 songs (I know, because I got the bass player's setlist). My knees got all kinds of banged up, and I shook Karl and Jon's hands. No biggie.

That's Karl the bass player behind Drew.

We took another week to recover, then went back down to the Espy to see THE DATSUNS (one of our main influences and fav bands eva) play for FREE two nights in a row in the front bar. Wicked awesome tastic gigs they were indeed. On the first night, some guy tried to take my place in the front and I ended up ripping his shirt in two to get my place back. Sorry bro, if you're reading, but I'm like some crazy bitch when someone tries to take my spot. Don't, you know, mess with me, or whatever.

Drew brought his 'Death Rattle Fuzz' pedal along to the show on Thursday (which is a custom pedal made by Christian, gat player for Datsuns, it's the same fuzz they used on the new album) and was hoping to get it signed. We hung out for a bit after the show then casually walked up the stairs into the band's green room.

Drew and Dolf - lead vox and bass

Dolf and myself. Best pic ever in my opinion.

We got our stuff signed and had a wee chat, it was pretty cool. The next night (after about 2 hours sleep) we headed back down to St. Kilda to do it again. The Datsuns played amazingly again (even though half of them had food poisoning), and the crowd was incredible. I didn't stay up the front again, my poor knees couldn't handle the jandle and I didn't want to ruin another guys shirt. I snuck round the side and I had this awesome view:

Spot Drew

These two Datsun's gigs and the Shihad one were probably the best gigs I've been to all year. What a way to end 2012.

From all of us here at Honeybone, have a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

The Night of Idgaff (where everyone gave a flying..)

2012-11-26T23:43:00.000+13:00

Thursday night the 22nd of November was EPIC!

We played at Idgaff bar, which I'm sure you all know is an acronym for 'I Don't Give A Flying Fuck', or my other favourite 'I Drink Goon And French Fries'. It's either one or the another...

The venue was dirty, the crowd was drunk and all the bands were wicked cool. We had Polygasm and The Naysayers on the bill with us, and they were both incred. Please check these two bands out, they are both destined for greatness. Polygasm also did a mega-jam and got their mates get up and play (they even did a drummer-swap) and Drew got to jam with them. So. Much. Fun.

Drew jams

Polygasm's facebook is here.

The Naysayers facebook is here

Check em out mother'uckers.

We finally remembered to bring the t-shirts we printed last year to the gig, and half-way through our set I dumped them on the front of the stage and watched the crowd go nuts for free t-shirts. Everyone immediately put them on, and suddenly we had a Honeybone Army. It was probably the coolest moment in Honeybone's career.

Totes Amaze, Kels^

We even got paid. Which was nice, and slightly unexpected. Oh yeah, and I did a drum solo, which was okay too.

We also unveiled a new song that I wrote a few weeks ago. I don't often write for Honeybone, so it was very cool when we pulled it off. The song is called 'Talk Back Baby' and is a duet between Drew and I, basically having a fight onstage. Unfortunately I still have to play drums so we can't make the fight physical, but it's still a cool song. Who knows, we may play it again at our next gig...

Which is:

23 Angles of Attack and Honeybone at the ROCHESTER CASTLE! Our good mate Tash's favourite watering hole, the Rochy is a perfect blend of $5 shots, hipstery cool kids and good tunes. We went there one Friday night and if you took a photo of the dance floor, it would have seemed like any other bar. Except they were dancing to Nine Inch Nails, the Rolling Stones and Joy Division.

It's this coming Thursday the 29th of November, come on down for a good time!

Facebook event is here

xxx

Competition!!!

2012-11-19T22:28:00.000+13:00

Hey guys

We posted this on our facebook page the other day, but I thought I would make it just that extra bit more official and post a blog.

As you might know, we have a gig on Thursday night at Idgaff Bar on Hoddle Street. The lineup is sussed (Naysayers and Polygasm), the sound guy is booked and the posters are up. So, the competition is thus:

The deal: We spent the weekend doing a 'ninja-style' poster run with the help of our amazing mates, Paul and Ashleigh. We went round shops and (in the midnight hours) postered up quite a few lamp-posts around Brunswick/Carlton/Fitzroy/Northcote. We reckon we put up HEAPS, so hopefully some people should see them, right?

We want YOU to let us know if you've seen a poster round! So, the first person to post a picture of a coloured copy of the gig poster on our facebook page, we'll BUY YOU A DRINK at the gig, AND give you a free Honeybone t-shirt.

There are posters up in Melbourne CBD, Fitzroy, Carlton, Brunswick and Northcote!

Here's a pic of what you're looking for:

We're also unveiling a NEW SONG, so don't miss this gig, it's going to be wicked cool!

xxx

A Much Needed Update

2012-11-08T23:15:00.000+13:00

Holy shitballs

I'm not even going to bother apologising, as I've done that many a time before, and I will never be a regular blog poster, unless I get mega rich and can quit my job.

(But I am still sorry).

I have so much so tell you all about, let's start with the least recent.

Don't worry, it won't be THAT long

Most of you will already know this (as our friends/facebook fans), but I know you want to hear this story again. It's classic. In the last blog I told you (in a rather excited fashion) that we had purchased a van. I should not have been so excited. When we bought it, the guy (holding back on using stronger language here) said 'you will not have to spend another cent', as he'd sussed the road worthy cert and registration etc.

I should have smelt the pungent aroma of underwear burning, because his pants were DEFINITELY on fire.

Drew, Peter and I are not what you would call 'motoring enthusiasts' (which is ironic since I work at a car leasing company). Needless to say, we didn't notice much wrong with the van until it stopped completely. Which is a hilarious story...

One Saturday morning Drew and I decided to drive out to Bunnings in Coburg to grab a trolley to put amps and heavy stuff on. We had a practice room booked for that afternoon and thought it would be a great time-saver. I should also mention this was AFL Grand Final Day, which is really, really huge for Melbourne. On the way to the practice space from Bunnings, we thought it would be grand to drive down Sydney Road. While plodding through the 5km an hour traffic, Drew and I began to get light headed from the fumes leaking through the engine into the cab. Then the van began to smoke. People were looking. I was beginning to feel faint so we turned down a side street so we could get some fresh air (the van's temperature gauge was so far to the right it looked painful). We missed the turn off to the practice room so Drew did a U-Turn. After we got onto the right side of the road, the van died...

Long story short, we figured out how to access the engine, discovered there was no water or oil and had to pay $30 to cancel practice. We let the engine cool down for a couple of hours and bought water and oil from a service station. Then we managed to drive the van home.

So Drew took the van to the mechanic. We figured it was an oil leak, nothing major, maybe about $200 to fix. The final bill: $1350.

Yep. Anyone who knows me well can imagine my reaction to that news. Let's just say I didn't find the entire contents of my handbag for a few weeks (because I threw it lulz).We had screwed spark plugs, majorly cracked radiator hoses, one buggered cylinder etc etc. In a simpler time I wouldn't have known what any of what I just said meant (and I envy all who don't, because you probably have more money than me).

However, we managed to scrap the money together and get our van back (after reverting back to our old trick of taxi-ing to gigs we had for two week), and now she runs smooth.

I'm super happy, cause taking gear on trams like ^this^ SUCKED.

Moral of the story: Don't be a dumbass. That's actually the best I can do (I'm not so hot on morals).

In other news, we have exciting news!

Our amazing friend Ashleigh Dunn is going to be our new business guru/role caller/general awesome help lady! She's going to do heaps of cool stuff for us, like suss an ABN (Australian Business Number) so we can invoice people like pros, she's going to help with ideas for gigs, sort out tax shit and just basically be awesome at life (Ash is a PRO at life. She BAKES THINGS).

That's her on the right, with our other awesome mate Tash. Model-central, am I right?

We also have some gigs coming up, the next one is at Yah Yahs on Smith Street on 15th November (that's next Thursday folks). We be playing with some cool bands, 23 Angles of Attack and The High Drifters. Not sure if there's a door charge... here's the Facebook link. It'll be rad. RAD.

Our next gig is the VERY FIRST gig we've organised and are headlining at. We are playing at Idgaff Bar on Hoddle Street on the 23rd of November with the Naysayers and Polygasm, who are both wicked cool bands that I dig (and you will too). This gig is special for TWO reasons (minus the headlining thing):

1. It is the night before Peter's birthday so we might be playing when the clock hits midnight. I'm calling a 'Let's embarrass Peter and sing Happy Birthday to him' kinda thing (he'll probably hate me for suggesting that. Sorry mate).

2. Two of my FAVOURITE people in the world (except you, my wonderful fan-people) are going to be there! Kelsie Trainor, design-extraordinaire and my twin sister who fucking rocks the entire world, and Alex Meijer, another design extraordinaire and fellow hell-raiser in the Sex Pit flat of 2010. They also bring with them their boyfriend boys, Andy and Kris. Who are also way cool.

SO Melbourne people who want to come to a cool gig AND see/meet someone who looks A LOT LIKE ME... come to Idgaff on the 23rd! (Facebook link here). And also it would be rad if you came to the Yah Yahs one too. We like people to come to all of the gigs.

Best. Poster. Ever.
Thanks to Kelsie Trainor, who is a mega legend

Single Release/Honeymobile!

2012-09-17T17:50:00.004+12:00

It has HAPPENED! Our single from our upcoming album has been RELEASED! You can download it for FREE (I'm so into emphasing words with caps lock) here: www.honeybone.bandcamp.com. Thanks to everyone who's downloaded it so far, and some cool cats like our mate Ryan even gave a wee donation. Fancy that.

Check out the artwork by our good mate Paul Emery:

Paul is amazeballs (I can officially use that word cause it's in the dictionary) and his beautiful GF (and our other very good mate) Ashleigh Dunn was the official 'lighting director' for the 'photoshoot'. She rocked at the lights and stuff. I told Ash she could have a whole paragraph in this blog so there you go. Thanks Ash! (And Paul).

It's terribly exciting that we finally have some new music out. We recorded the main tracks for 'Don't Need You' in Albany Street Studios, Dunedin NZ last year (sometime around July) and we recently reworked some of the vocals and guitar parts in our bedroom here in Melbourne. The b-side 'Down Into My Grave' (acoustic version) was recorded by Drew and I on a cold rainy Saturday night in our lounge. We used my new AKG kick mic to mic our feet stamping the floor and the 12 string acoustic Drew bought not long after we moved here. It's so much fun to play, it works both in an acoustic and non-acoustic setting. We played it at our most recent gig in Footscray, and people seemed to enjoy it. That's always nice. Look out for it at our next gigs!

In other news...

Drew and I are now the proud owners of a Toyota Hiace 2000!! Drew picked it up on Friday night and apparantly ended up driving through the city at 7.30pm as he missed the turn off to Punt Road. I can only imagine the hilarity that would have ensued, but alas I was in Wellington, NZ getting some much needed company from my wicked cool twin sister Kelsie. Now we can finally bring our own gear to gigs and I get to play my drums! I haven't played them since February which is a little bit ridiculous and if they had feelings like real people, I'm sure they would be a bit hurt at the neglect.

Here are some photos of the Honeymobile:

Drew is Proud

It's got fish on it...

Back of the Van

It's absolutely unbelievably amazing these two large events happened on the same day. I have never owned a car before so it's a bit surreal. Needless to say there's going to be some awesome times ahead!

On another note, thanks to everyone who's read my post 'A Strongly Worded Blog'. I've had some great feedback and there are so many bands out there who have been stung by these types of gigs before. It's so awesome to see everyone sticking together and supporting each other in this! Cheers!

xxx

Things are Happening

2012-09-08T15:17:00.000+12:00

Hey guys

Just thought I'd post up a wee update about how things are looking in the Honeybone world. Sooo much has been happening lately it's been hard to get any time to sit down at my disgusting dirty laptop and write something of interest.

We've played a couple of awesome gigs recently, and been to a few more. Highlight of the last month? THIS:

Yep, that is Drew and I in the front bottom left (I'm the fangirl with my arms out like a tard). Yes that is Karl and Jon from Shihad. They ROCKED the Hifi on Thursday night and I am now unable to move my neck much as I am a total bogan and have whiplash from too much headbanging. Rock 'n' Roll.

We had a band meeting (slightly interrupted by van-viewing, more on that later) to discuss the new album. Basically, we had to decide which songs we were keeping, which to scrap and what needed done/redone. I think I posted last year when we recorded in the 'big kids' room of Albany Street Studios in Dunedin? We recorded five songs in a live setting, bass, drums and guitars all at the same time. One of these songs was 'Espionage', our 10-11 minute epic prog jam. We listened back to the recordings the other day and unfortunately, only ONE of these songs is worth keeping (and it isn't Espionage). I'm gutted, because we got such a good sound out of that studio (plus the kit I played was worth a LOT and sounded wicked cool). But we really want to put out a record that is fucking awesome, and if we put out something that is average, we will be kicking ourselves in a year or so (plus it's not really fair of us to ask you for money for a product that isn't as good as it could be).

The impact of this decision means we won't be releasing the album for another couple of months, so just sit tight you pretty little things, once it's done it's going to be FUCKING EPIC.

Meanwhile, we've been redoing as much as we can without going to a studio (recording guitars,bass and vocals is pretty easy in our pokey wee flat). We're also working on a few new songs, and reworking old ones.

ALSO we're currently working with our good friend Paul Emery on the design of the 'cover' for the our upcoming single. He is a rockin' cool guy, and he's come up with a wicked concept. While we're on the subject, if anyone has an SLR camera we can borrow to take pics for the cover, Honeybone will be so happy we'll do any kind of favours in return.

We also have almost bought a van, which is super exciting! We'll be able to play shows with OUR OWN GEAR! Which means I get to play my kit which I haven't played since February. It must be missing me, the poor thing. We'll have enough money to pick it up next weekend, and I'll post a pretty picture of the Honeymobile once I get back from my weekend in Wellington.

Tonight we are playing a gig in the city at a place called DV8 and it's going to be awesome so I suggest to all the Melbourne peeps that you get yo asses down there! I hear there's cheap booze also. We're headlining, so we'll be on around 11.30. And then tomorrow we are playing in Footscray at The Reverend Hotel with some AWESOME bands by the names of Children Overboard and The Perfections. I have already had a total fangirl moment on this blog about Children Overboard (see blog: Band Love), and now allow me to have a fangirl moment about The Perfections.

Errrrmehhhhgerrrrd Therr Perrfeshehhrrns Err Sehrrr Errsehrrm!

They are seriously, if you were humming and ha-ing about coming to tomorrows gig just to see us, they will make it totally worth your while. Soul, horn sections, a totally babe'in front woman and wicked cool grooves.

And it's FREE. What more could you want!?! So there you have it, tonight at DV8, doors at 10pm. Tomorrow at the Reverend Hotel, doors at 3pm.

xxx

A Strongly Worded Blog

2012-08-13T22:36:00.000+12:00

I promised my twitter followers (@raq_hell, if you haven't already, come on guys) a strongly worded blog. Now, I'm not too sure how strong I should make these words, and whether I should use them for their swearing/shocking power or just be STRONG in my words and opinions. As my Mum reads this blog (Hey there Mumsie), I think I shall go for the latter. But I may drop an F-Bomb, be warned. But never the C-Bomb, as, despite what Drew will tell you, I am a lady of class.

CLASS^^^

Since we've moved to Melbourne, we've played five gigs. Most have been well played (by us) and well received (by the small-medium amount of people at them). However, one thing we are now going to avoid as we have had two unfortunate brushes with them, are any gigs with the words 'Artist Showcase' 'Showdown' or 'Bands sell Tickets' in the gig description (or run by X or Y Promotions company). Our first gig of this nature was the first one we played here, which I booked on March 24th-ish, about three days after we got here. Honeybone don't muck around. I mentioned to the organiser we couldn't sell a lot of tickets, as we had only just moved here and (at the time) knew a grand total of about four people. She was like 'that's fine, just whatever you can manage'. We sold fifteen, and when we went to settle the tickets/money at the start of the gig, the organiser turned to her helper and said 'Ohhh they're from New Zealand and they sold FIFTEEN tickets, isn't that great?'. My thought was 'They can probably smell your condescension in Darwin'. Nonetheless, we made them $150, and we got the pleasure of playing a 'real' gig for a grand total of twenty minutes. We were asked back, needless to say I turned it down.

The other gig I was referring to was yesterday, and we played really well, which was nice. We sold a total of FIVE tickets at $12 each, and ended up having to pay the promotions company $40 for their sound guy (well, that's what they said it was for...), because we didn't sell fifteen tickets or more.This is the standard practice for this weekly running gig. In the run sheet, it said we were not allowed under any circumstance to provide our own sound person, so there goes that loop hole. What I thought was better about this gig than the other one was that, if we sold more than fifteen tickets, we would got $3 back from each ticket sale. So, say if we sold fifteen tickets, like the other gig, we would have $45 to put in our hot little pockets, and the 'promotions company' would have $135. BUT if we sold fourteen tickets, not only would we miss out on $42 for ourselves, we would lose an extra $40 to pay the sound guy, even though the promo company would have made $168 from the tickets. So that's $208 for the promotions company and $0 for the bands (the attraction of the day). So it's really no wonder that the 'promotions company' didn't do any promotion (that I saw/heard) for this gig, as they profit MORE from an emptier room.

With our five tickets sold, we made them $60, and paid them an extra $40, which makes $100. We gave up our entire afternoon (1-8pm), which Peter had to get off work for, so he missed out on at least another $100 (I'm not too sure how much he gets paid). Since Drew and I don't work Sundays, we didn't lose any money, however we probably could have done more productive things like record/mix parts for the new album, write new material or practice at our respective instruments. So that's a joint monetary loss to Honeybone of at least $140, which doesn't include travel costs (we had to tram it) or lunch/dinner. Not to mention the 'rider' we were provided with was bottled water, so we paid for our own drinks also (which probably came to another $100, although that would have gone to the venue, not the promo guys). We PAID $140 to PLAY a four song, 25 minute set. All for the honour of playing on a real stage. Awesome.

I do realise that this promotions company will have costs to cover. But considering there were about eight or nine bands on the bill, I'd say they're making a rather substantial profit, and comfortably covering their asses if the bands don't get enough people through the door.

Now, had we put this gig on ourselves, organised the promotion, sound guy, backline, lineup and venue, I would understand such a loss. That's what happens when you organise a gig. You prepare for loss, especially if you are a young, new band. I'm pretty sure we lost about $100 putting on our last gig in Dunedin, but everyone who came had such an awesome time that it didn't matter. We didn't mind. But gigs like these, where you have absolutely no control over who you play with, who does sound and what kind of promotion is used (apart from the promotion you do yourself) should not be done at a loss.

These types of gigs are aimed at young, inexperienced bands looking for easy gigs with little organisation/work on their part. We did these gigs as (at the time of booking them) we were unsure of how to go about getting our own gigs in this new town. What is ironic is how the people running these gigs call themselves 'Promotions Companies', yet do no promotion on their part, and rely entirely on the bands to sell tickets.

How I see it, is that there are two major problems with this concept of a 'gig'.

1. Bands who do these types of gigs aren't going to be headline acts. They're probably just starting out, they have only a small amount of fans usually consisting of family/friends. Honeybone falls into this category only because we are new in this town, not because of lack of experience. At both gigs we did, the average age of the musicians was probably 18-19. How are these kids supposed to sell a large amount of tickets when no one has heard of their band? And these companies say they are helping young, local, unrecognised acts??

2. We live in an age of a diminishing attention-span in most people, with technology getting faster, lighter and smaller, many people are used to getting results in seconds, not minutes, hours or days. No one wants to wait for anything, they want it instantly. Getting people to commit to a decision like buying a ticket for a workmate/friend/family member's gig days or weeks in advance is a difficult task. I encountered this trying to sell tickets to my workmates. No one wants to commit to a decision like that. It's not a major decision, but it's not an instant reward, like downloading the band's music off Bandcamp for free which would probably take about a minute. No one wants to give up their weekend time in advance. It's all 'maybe', especially if you're in the same boat as my band, where not a lot of people have heard us, so they are reluctant to make plans and spend money in advance. There's no instant reward, so they don't see the appeal. PLUS paying $12 to see a band play for twenty-five minutes is a little steep. Especially on a Sunday afternoon, when most young people are still sleeping off the night before.

I'm sure these kinds of companies can justify what they do in many, many different ways. But I don't see how they can justify ripping off young, inexperienced bands and still have 'support local music' on the back of their event crew hoodies. I for one would like to know what promotion they put on for these weekly 'showcase/showdown' gigs. The first one we did didn't even have our band name on the poster outside the venue. The second one didn't have anything outside the venue, as there was another gig on the same day in a different room (which I think was free),which is a bit of fail on their part.

I might sound like a total whining bitch, but the gig wasn't a total loss. About seven or eight people went away with a free copy of 'Soul On Fire' EP, and we met some cool cats by the name of Polygasm (who are freaking amazing). We're putting it down to an experience, a chance to practice loudly, and some extra 'likes' on our facebook page.

And we LOVE having more 'likes'. Maybe one day we'll even have enough to apply for an NZOnAir Grant. LOL.

At said gig. Why WOULDN'T you like us?

Last night I was fuming. Today I am mildly annoyed. Tomorrow I will probably be indifferent, or even nonchalant. Basically I want to get the word out, in case there's some hot young band thinking doing these kinds of gigs will be a fast ticket to fame and fortune reading this. Value your music and your integrity. These kinds of gigs promise everything, and deliver nothing. They're off laughing to the bank, while you slave away at a supermarket checkout/ office desk/ cleaning mop/ another cliche musician day job to pay for the next EP recording, a van to get your gear around or a decent guitar. All you need to do to get gigs is be good at what you do and network. DON'T be an up-yourself asshole, be nice. Be friendly. That's all it takes.

Hey wow, no F-Bomb.

xxxxxxx

Oh screw it. Fuck.

'Soul On Fire' Two Year Anniversary Release!

2012-07-15T21:58:00.001+12:00

Sometimes I think two years is a REALLY long time. Then sometimes I think it's a very short time. It doesn't seem like two years ago that we released our EP 'Soul On Fire, but tomorrow it will officially be two years ago. And that makes me feel a little lazy, as two years without releasing anything is kind of bad, considering we've got about 15 songs that were written since then.

But never fear! The next few months is going to be release-central, as tomorrow we are re-releasing the EP on bandcamp for FREE in a special two-year anniversary pack. With the original package comes an extra track that was on the dunedinmusic.com download pack called 'Hotshot Stereo', bonus track 'Mouse and The Beetle' (included on the physical copy of the EP as a bonus track) and for all you hipsters out there who liked us before we were cool, a very low-fi, slightly amateurish demo of 'I'll Be Your Devil', recorded by Drew about two weeks after the song was written.

Recorded when we looked like this. What teenyboppers!

To download the anniversary edition of our EP, go to www.honeybone.bandcamp.com after 8am Monday 16th July (that's in Sydney/Melbourne time).

Yay!

The next exciting news in Honeybone World (sounds like an amusement park lol) is the fact that we have a single that is ALMOST ready for release! Yay! Considering we recorded it about a year ago (oops lazy fairy has struck again), it's been a long time coming. It is called 'Don't Need You', hopefully you Dunedin cats will remember it as a fairly catchy number that graced many a setlist. Drew is currently mixing the track and altering the guitars, we'll master it and sort out some sort of artwork (anyone who would like to contribute art/ideas is most welcome, we all suck at art) then it'll be RELEASE time! E.T.A will be within one month hopefully. Keep your eye out, it's gonna be wicked cool.

This is a photo of one of our gigs, doesn't it look fun?

Surely the most exciting news we have as a band is the fact that we have GIGS! Yay! Specifically, a gig next SATURDAY 21st July (so soon!) at a place called Blue Tile Lounge on Smith Street in Fitzroy. We are on at 8pm and the entry is free. There are three awesome bands playing with us, go to this page https://www.facebook.com/events/433612420016245/ for more information. But you know, its FREE. There's not really any kind of excuse not to, since it's the first gig we've played here that isn't on a school night. Come on down and have a beer with us, even my Mum is going to be there.

Our next gig after that is August 12th at Espy in St Kilda. We have a ridiculous number of tickets to sell (well, 50, it's not really that ridiculous) at $12 each and we get $3 back from each ticket sold. We'd love to sell a lot so if you want to get your hot little hands on one, give me a bell at rachel@honeybonemusic.com.

Remember: 8am Monday 16th July 2012!
xxx

We Are In Band Love

2012-07-10T21:29:00.001+12:00

If Honeybone was a 13 year old girl, we'd be all 'OMGGGGG HE IS LIKE, SOOOOOOOOOO HOOOTTTT' (Well, it's been a while since I was 13 and I don't know any, but I assume that's what they're like).

Tis not a bieber-boy we love, but a band. They are Children Overboard, and they rock all of our socks. And our ears. (PS guys if you're reading this, don't be scared. I'm not gonna stalk you or anything... probably).

This is them, they are cool.

They played with us at our gig at The Tote on July 1st and blew my mind. Twas a rainy, cold Sunday evening . Not a huge crowd which was a shame because every band that played (The New Savages and Howard also) was amazing. Children Overboard played a bluesy, soulful, rock 'n' rolly mixture of musical goodness and I was like 'woah'. And they like us too! It's like, meant to be and shit.

They have an EP online that you can download for FREE here www.childrenoverboard.com. I recommend you do it now. They moved here to Melbourne from Wollongong not long ago, so they're in the same boat (so to speak) as us. We're hoping to do a ton of gigs together and be band friends. Yay!

Their facebook page is here: www.facebook.com/childrenoverboard go like them NOW. Well you know, if you want to. I don't want to be pushy. I just recommend it.

Our gig at The Tote was really fun, even though there wasn't a ton of people (we're used to that). Our mates came down and watched us which was cool as. We played for an awesome 40 minutes, which seemed like so long compared to our Revolver 20 minute set. I hear The Tote is an 'iconic' Melbourne venue (Jack from 'Low Speed Bus Chase, fellow Dunedin band living here in Melbourne, told me that), so it was pretty wicked to play on that stage. Hopefully we get to again!

I also want to mention another band that blew my mind, on Thursday last week we headed down to Yah Yahs to watch Children Overboard (we are total fans) and they played with a band called The Velvets. They are EPIC. They played a Black Keys song that I love, and I really wanted to rock out but I was in danger of having a coughing fit so I just hung back and bopped my head a bit. They like The Checks apparantly, which is crazy, cause so do we. Funny that. We want to play with them too so hopefully we'll suss something out.

Their facebook is here: www.facebook.com/thevelvets.

This is Us at The Tote, cheers Ashleigh Dunn for the snaps.

In the moments between falling in love with the various bands of Melbourne, we've been keeping fairly busy. Drew is getting back into making pedals and things like that, hit him up if you want something made. We're all working at our jobs during the day, writing and rehearsing at night. We've got a couple of new songs on the grow and old ones being played again (Dunedinites, remember that epic 11 minute song we used to play?). Once I get over my hatred of anything I create, songs will probably be coming out me ears.

Drew soldering something to something.

Off to practice now, ya'll come back now y'hear!

xxx

The First Australian Gig

2012-06-21T23:07:00.001+12:00

Our first gig (not counting the Open Mic performance) in Melbourne was on Tuesday 19th June 2012. This coincided with the biggest earthquake in Victoria in 109 years.

Oh, and it was during OUR FUCKING SET!

Seriously. Passes to the Cool Kids Club can be handed out now, thanks.

We didn't feel anything, and our mates didn't either, but the judge man did and decided to hop onto the stage after our last song and proclaim it to be the most awesome thing he has experienced, and allude to the fact that Honeybone's rock 'n' roll manner caused said quake.

I thought he just really dug our tunes, but then I checked facebook and yes, there was a quake.

This came up on my mate Ashleigh's facebook feed after about 5 minutes

So that's a pretty cool story. Although that's the whole story, so it's a short one. But a classic nonetheless.

THE GIG:

(Chur to Ashleigh Dunn for photos)

Stance

We played at 'Melbourne Fresh Showcase' at Revolver Upstairs in Prahran, Melbourne. It was a hell of a mish getting there, as we had to tram then train then change trains, whilst carrying gear and during rush hour. FUN. We had our mates Ash and Paul to help (who were total troopers cause both had worked all day and Ash was a bit under the weather), I don't know what we would have done without them. They're full on Cool Kids.

We played for 20 minutes. Our set was:

Can't Feel Your Love

Don't Need You

Edge of the Sun

Outta Time

You may or may not know these tunes as none of them are on our EP. We gave away about 10 EPS after our set, Aussies seem to like free stuff. If you would like an EP, please email me at rachel@honeybonemusic.com and we'll suss out some sort of deal.

Highlights:

- Fellow Otago Uni ex-pats Oli and BB headbanging raucously whilst all the young Aussies got out their smart phones and videoed them, as if they'd never seen anyone mosh at a gig. Apparantly headbanging is not something often done at Melbourne gigs.

Headless Headbangers Oli and BB

- Being able to PLAY REAL DRUMS. My electronic kit is beginning to get tiresome. I was terrified I'd screw up the start of Outta Time since my electronic kit won't let me play snare rolls that fast (rubber is not the same as a real snare in terms of rebound)

-IT WAS A REAL GIG. I could hear myself, and everything else! This is a rare event, but I had a huge foldback speaker next to me and the sound guy was one of those awesome ones who actually knew what he was doing. Kudos to you, my good man.

Drew Glows

I would let you in on the lowlights (is that a word?) but I cannot think of anything. All the other bands that played were pretty good, or on their way to being pretty good (I think we were the oldest band there in terms of age, felt kinda like Rockquest). The organisers were great and everything ran to schedule. Awesome.

We got through to the next round, which is great. I"ll let ya'll know the deets for that one when we hear.

In other news, we're playing with The New Savages on Sunday 1st July (not this Sunday but next week's Sunday) at The Tote. We're on around 7.30 (methinks), entry is $8. You can find out all you need to know here: https://www.facebook.com/events/344258718978219/

Follow us on Twitter: @Honeybone_ (since Facebook is going to charge us if we want our 700 odd fans on our page to see our posts, pssshhh dumb).

My Twitter is @raq_hell. I think I'm pretty cool, so you guys could maybe follow me? maybs? If you want?

love yas

xxxxx

Things I should have remembered about Open Mic Nights.

2012-06-17T15:04:00.000+12:00

So in my last blog I promised a blog including what my ipod comes up with on shuffle. I have 3053 songs on my ipod, this is going to be interesting. This blog will be about other things also, but I will let you know how this goes. It will be interesting. First song: Lily of the Valley- Queen. Not bad.

So you may have guessed form the title of this blog is that I have recently had some sort of interaction with an Open Mic Night. (Oceans - Evanescence. Judge me if you will, it's really not bad).

On Monday night we went to an Open Mic at Cherry Bar in the city. And here are the things I should really have already known, but neglected to remember this time.

1. There will always be someone playing who plays for way too long, and is generally bad/weird.

This is typical at every open mic, as anyone can play, therefore everyone who can play 'ten guitars' gets up and does their version of Wonderwall. This time, there was a slight variation. This guy I'm talking about looked like a blond version of Robert Smith from The Cure. (All My Love- Led Zeppelin. Getting better). He sang like the singer from Placebo, and played songs (I'm guessing they were originals) reminiscent of The Rasmus. He wasn't bad, but after about 6 songs, we all got a little bored. He played Disarm by the Smashing Pumpkins as his closer, which was rather good and suited his girlish voice. He had a large tall badass looking guy playing the bongo alongside him. That was the funny part.

2. There will always be someone who treats it like their own show.

This has happened at several open mics I've been to. The first one where this occurred was when I was still in high school and my band plus some other musical cats from the year above decided to rock out at Oliver's in Clyde, about 10 minutes drive from my hometown in New Zealand. The guy running it got pissed at us because we brought a drumkit, and played 'too loud'. Typical old-man-who-lives-in-a-bus-with-a-hippie-wife syndrome. He played some country noodling. It was ok.

Cherry Bar was no exception. (Higher Ground- The Red Hot Chili Peppers). There was a girl who came with her whole band (who brought their own gear - wise men), minions and grandmother. She was down from Sydney apparantly, and decided this was the perfect opportunity for a gig without any organisation. Smart girl. She was pretty good, think Pink with an ACDC type band behind her (with a drummer who looked like Mick Mars from Motley Crue). Unfortunately she kept saying how nice it was for everyone to come see her, and got her 'minions' to hand out 'albums' to everybody. This album consisted of a burnt CD with the artist's name sharpied onto it (mine was scratched to hell) in a white CD sleeve with a sticker on it. I had expected more of an effort from a girl who acted so professional in every other aspect. She played for a good 30 minutes. Everyone left after she played, and we were next. Awkward.

This is us at Cherry. Ashleigh Dunn took this pic, she rocks all of the socks.

3. The gear will ALWAYS be shit.

This is something I learned years and years ago, but failed to remember whilst going to Cherry. As always, open mics are generally free, so it's not like anyone's going to go out of their way to provide a good kit or guitar amp. The bass amp was alright. The kick pedal provided broke halfway through our second song, so we had to stop. I didn't bring a drum key, so had to ask into the microphone for one. Awkward. Lesson learned. A drum key is now residing on my key chain. Silly Rachel. We played averagely, as we couldn't hear Drew (I think the amp was broken), and the place was pretty much empty. (Stairway to Heaven - Led Zeppelin). The floor tom sounded very silly also. But thats ok, it's an Open Mic night. Expectations should never be high.

So all in all, 'twas an average gig. Think Honeybone, circa 2009. Like, just after we formed. I blame the awkward situation and the gear. It was one of those cases where all you could hear was your own voice and it's very unsettling. What's good about this is that now I am reminded is that an Open Mic gig for an actual band (not solo singer songwriter types) is never going to go well. Lesson learned. We weren't terrible, we weren't amazing. (Shihad - Ignite). No one remembers the average bands. So I'm hoping no one will remember us, and we have a second chance for a first impression at the Gig on Tuesday.

Kudos to our good mate Ash for coming to watch us, even though she was hungover. She's a champ. Chur bro xxx

Oh and the practice on Saturday last week at The Wick was in-fucking-credible. I played a REAL drumkit. I could HEAR Peter's bass. We played for FIVE hours. It totally rocked. (Stop - Shihad)

Drew being totes badass at practice.

So not too many embarrassing songs came up this time. Next time I will try harder. I do have Nickelback on my Ipod, and Kidrock. Lets hope they come up so you can all have a laugh.

xxx

Make Good Art

2012-06-07T23:12:00.001+12:00

Hello fellow people.

Here is an amazing speech by Neil Gaiman (author extraordinaire) as he addresses the class of 2012 at University of the Arts. I don't expect you to watch it straight away, because, in this day and age of short attention spans, my blog probably wins in the competition of the least-time-it-will-take-out-of-your-day. But seriously, one of these days any one who calls themselves an artist or art lover should watch it.

The moment I decided I would watch this was the most absolute perfect moment in my life for it. Having graduated university with a music degree, moved to Melbourne and 'gotten a real job', I couldn't help but feel lost. What am I doing, working 8.30-5 Monday to Friday, wrecking my wrists typing at a computer all day, then I come home too sore to play drums? I came to Melbourne to make music and make a little money out of it. I was not doing as much of this as I would have liked. As Drew pointed out, not much point in complaining, we've only been here 2 and a half months and had our gear just under 3 weeks. Yet every day that I don't spend playing music feels like a day wasted. It was easy to be nonchalant about it all whilst at uni, because it all seemed so distant. I had no idea what I would do. Now I am here, it's pretty freaky.

So I watched Neil Gaiman's speech, after hearing about it for a couple of weeks on Twitter. Needless to say, I was rather inspired. His words 'Make Good Art' are probably the best words I've heard someone say in a while. 'Cat explodes? Make Good Art'. That was the kick in the arse I really needed to actually stop worrying and start doing it. We had the best band practice last night. I was so excited about everything. Thanks Neil :)

So we've been practicing. Our first few practices were fairly shoddy, but this could be blamed on a number on things. We live on the 2nd floor of an apartment building, so we cannot be loud (for the sake of our age challenged neighbours). So (now that I have an amazingly hip and cool electronic drum kit) we all plug into Drews recording interface and run everything through Logic, then out through headphones. This is pretty cool for a free/quiet way to practice. However, we can't work out how to get mono sends, so we all only have sound going through one side of the headphones. Awkward.

On Saturday we have a 5 hour rehearsal booked at a rehearsal space in Brunswick. They hire gear so we don't have to lug drums over there. That's nice. I'm really looking forward to it, since it'll be the first time I've played a real proper kit since February. I wonder what that will be like. Hopefully fun.

I'll think I'm all:

But I'll really be like:

Exciting time in Honeybone's young life. We recently turned 3 years old (an event I meant to celebrate with a blog entry, but I neglected my post. Soz), and we've got two gigs lined up for the next couple of months. The first is on 19th June at Revolver in Prahran. It is called Melbourne Fresh Showcase, and is similar to a battle of the bands scenario. We have tickets to sell to that, email me rachel@honeybonemusic.com if you want to come support us, that would be so rad.

The second one is a similar deal in the Gershwin Room at the Espy on Sunday August 12th. We also have tickets to sell to that, etc. Email me if you want, that would be rad :)

I can't wait to get back into playing and gigging again. I feel a bit like a 'square' working the typical office job. But I'm using that money I earn to pay for rehearsal spaces, band vans and a new tattoo so I doubt I'm really your typical office girl on the inside. I don't mind it so much, as I can listen to my ipod whilst working, and when it takes an entire album to get to work, and an entire album to get home again, you can bet I'm getting some sweet listening done.

So my new motto is 'make good art'. Or, at the moment, 'make art'. I always seem to forget that for every fucking kick ass song, theres probably 20 or so crap ones. You need to wade through the shit, pay your dues and learn from your mistakes. This is what I've learned from ol' Neil, and it's something we all need to remember.

Make Good Fucking Art EVERYONE

Ok guys?

PS.

With my ipod on shuffle, here's what I listened to whilst writing this blog:

Amanda Palmer: Do It With A RockStar
Amanda Palmer: Want It Back
Katy Perry: California Gurls feat. Snoop Dog (oh yeah)
Shihad: Bullitproof
Jack White: Sixteen Saltines
Princess Chelsea: Goodnight Little Robot Child
Queen: Crazy Little Thing Called Love
White Stripes: Little Ghost
Jeff Buckley: Lover, You Should Have Come Over
White Stripes: Little Room
Led Zeppelin: Since I've Been Loving You
David Bowie: Ziggy Stardust
Shihad: Pacifier

I think my next blog is going to be a list of whatever comes up on my ipod whilst on shuffle. That'll be good for a laugh.

xxx