The Long and Short Words of Josh Preston

New site and a new show!

noreply@blogger.com (Josh Preston) — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 16:28:00 +0000

MATM Creative overhauled my website yesterday! Poke around and let me know what you think!

I've got a show coming up this Friday evening at Kimbro's in Franklin, TN. It's my first time playing live in many months so there will be a new tune in the set along with some other tricks. Show starts @ 7:30 and Stillhouse Hollow goes on after me. If you haven't seen them live yet, you're in for a treat!

Great Article About The Complex Wooden Heart EP by You Crazy Dreamers

noreply@blogger.com (Josh Preston) — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 16:39:00 +0000

The incredibly kind folks over at You Crazy Dreamers did a great post about my EP The Complex Wooden Heart EP. You should definitely take the time to poke around their blog! Really great stuff! Here's a link!

Monday after Bonnaroo. Hence the short post. See ya soon!

"Fire" on Slowcoustic

noreply@blogger.com (Josh Preston) — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 14:51:00 +0000

Calgary, Alberta, Canada based blog Slowcoustic included a link to my tune "Fire" in a post over the weekend! The post included some great tunes so check it out via the link below!!

:: Slowcoustic - Thinking Warmer Thoughts With "Hot" Playlist: June Snow in Calgary Mix ::

My Interview for The Billy Block Show / New Jazz Tune?

noreply@blogger.com (Josh Preston) — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 15:57:00 +0000

Happy Friday! So when I'm not out making a racket in some club, I'm running a little record label called Me and the Machine Records. I was recently asked to be on The Billy Block Show where Billy and I discussed Twitter and other social media elements as they relate to the record industry. Check it out if you get a minute!

On an utterly unrelated note, per the gentle coercion of Andrew Dolfie of The New Whole Usuals, I might make a jazz record. I've started demoing/writing some stuff and I thought I'd share my first half-baked number with ya. I'm curious to know what y'all think so please feel free to shoot me some feedback. Here's the mp3 for your listening pleasure (right-click on the link below to download it):

:: Josh Preston - "lower case j" ::

Have an awesome weekend everybody and I'll see ya again sooner that you'd probably prefer!!

Muxtape is Back!!!

noreply@blogger.com (Josh Preston) — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 04:04:00 +0000

My new Muxtape page is LIVE!! You can check it out at joshpreston.muxtape.com.

Me and the Machine Records received an invite today and it was like winning the lottery. These guys are absolutely awesome and they were without a doubt my favorite way to discover music when they first came on the scene.

We've built pages for Stillhouse Hollow and The New Whole Usuals as well so please check them out. We'll have pages for the rest of the gang by tomorrow night so keep on the lookout!!

Ugly Mugs Wrap Up!

noreply@blogger.com (Josh Preston) — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 16:17:00 +0000

Thanks to everyone that made it out to the Ugly Mugs show on Saturday night!! I had a great time!! Playing with the big door open was awesome! I'm hoping to secure a copy of an audio recording from that show and when I do, I'll definitely share it with y'all!

So as I've said in previous posts, I'm going to take a break from playing live shows for a bit to focus on writing my next record and to gear up for the Me and the Machine Records' incredible 2009 release schedule. Keep an eye out for Stillhouse Hollow's debut album Dakota to drop at the end of June (but fans and friends will be able to get it at live shows starting next week)! Then near the end of September, keep an ear/eye to the ground for The New Whole Usuals' sophomore release. Many more details on these records will be coming down the line soon and definitely pop over to Me and the Machine and join the mailing list.

While you're waiting for new music from me, check out Words and No Music for exactly what the title describes and also follow @shortandabsurd on Twitter for the other side of my writing.

That's it for now so...

Until whenever!

Words and No Music: An Introduction

noreply@blogger.com (Josh Preston) — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 16:04:00 +0000

I'm spending much more time writing these days so I thought I'd take this opportunity to share what I've been working on. Over time, these words may find themselves in my songs but until then, they'll live here as a collection of written works. One day, I hope to compile these into a poetry book of sorts but we'll cross that bridge once it's on fire.

Now that formal introductions of this new endeavor are out of the way, I'm playing my last show for awhile this weekend at Ugly Mugs (6pm, free) in East Nashville. It's a great little room and I hope to see you there!

:: Words and No Music ::

Reinventing the Short and Absurd

noreply@blogger.com (Josh Preston) — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 01:29:00 +0000

It's always fun to try something new. Today I revived a Twitter page I started many moons ago when I was sick and stuck in bed. It's a twitter page and it can be found @shortandabsurd. I'm attempting to compose mini-novels in the span of 140 characters. Some will be funny, some will be sad, but they'll all be short and absurd. Pop over and check them out!

Speaking of twitter, I've spent some time recently thinking through a revised top5albums.com. While it has yet to be fully realized, I think we're on to something. If you visit it now, you will see a page that refreshes every 15 seconds based on a search of the word "album" as mentioned on Twitter. There's a greater explanation at the top5albums blog. If there are any developer among you that would like to help out with this project, please contact me!

Josh Preston's Station on Pandora Radio

noreply@blogger.com (Josh Preston) — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 02:54:00 +0000

Hey this is new! I realized today that I've got a Pandora Radio station. If you've got a free Pandora Radio account and you're inclined to hear bits and bobs of music that Pandora thinks sound like me, click on link below!

:: Josh Preston's Station on Pandora Radio ::

:: Pandora Radio iPhone App ::

Tomorrow Night! MATM Artists and Friends @ Edgehill Cafe Studios

noreply@blogger.com (Josh Preston) — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 15:03:00 +0000

(from meandthemachine.com)

Tomorrow night Adam Burrow, Josh Preston, The New Whole Usuals and Stillhouse Hollow will be coming at you live from Edgehill Studios Cafe as part of the new monthly Me and the Machine Records residency! The show starts at 7pm, it's all ages and it's free!!

If you live in the greater Nashville area, we've made it extremely easy for you to attend. However, if you live further than say, 65 miles away from the venue, we're going to attempt to bring the show to you LIVE via the internet. You can watch the show via Me and the Machine Television. Hell, you can watch Me and the Machine Television now!! Let us know what you think via Twitter or whatever else you crazy kids communicate with these days.

And to keep the LIVE train rolling, Me and the Machine Television will be broadcasting LIVE from South Street Studios on Sunday morning starting around 10am. You can tune in to check out The New Whole Usuals recording woodwind parts for their forthcoming album (due out Fall 2009)!! We'll be chatting with viewers directly so get your questions about the intricacies of the bass clarinet ready now.

Oh, and one last bit about the show: This picture is from the new iPhone app called Bandloop (iTunes Store Link). If you have an iPhone and love live music, this little pocket buddy will change your whole scene. It's still a bit buggy but it will grow and in the process, you will slowly go deaf.

We'll see you or you'll see us this weekend!!

My Reasons for "Going Free"

noreply@blogger.com (Josh Preston) — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 13:00:00 +0000

In a sleepy haze in the wee hours of the morning on Monday (3/9/09), I began pondering the idea of giving my music away for free. So after careful consideration the next day, I changed the status in all of my bandcamp.com players (if you haven't heard about bandcamp.com, check them out. They're the closest thing to the future of music distribution I've seen to date) and took the plunge. At this very moment, many of you are probably thinking I'm crazy. Many of you are probably correct but not for this action alone.

It comes down to this: I've composed these songs so people could hear them and hopefully enjoy them. I've been in the music business going on ten years now as both a performer and as an entrepreneur so I've seen almost everything there is to see on both sides of the fence. Free music just seems to be the next logical step in the evolution of the business for singer/songwriters like me that are a self-contained diy operation. I'm intrigued by the ideas that are beginning to swirl around via folks like Chris Anderson and these ideas are only going to be more finely tuned in the coming months; especially in light of the current economic climate. While it's certainly not for everyone, "going free" just makes sense for me right now.

Some of you may feel as though I'm devaluing my catalog. I view my decision as being the contrary. If people can't easily discover and share these songs, then they would have no value to me anyway. I've never gotten rich from the music I create and I never will. That's not why I do this anyway. I do it because I truly love writing and performing and making people think when the chance arises.

To date, I've made my records in my house with very little overhead. I'd much prefer that, if you like what you hear, come to a show and buy a t-shirt and say hello. Hell, if you want a CD, I'll still sell you one because those cost me money to manufacture. I put stuff on CD as a convenience more than anything. If you're completely and utterly freaked out by this and feel the need to pay for my music online, I'll probably attach a PayPal "donate" button in the music section of my website down the road.

In wrapping up this little diatribe, I do want to stress that my decision to make my own music free online has no bearing on Me and the Machine Records or the artists other than myself on this label. The artists on Me and the Machine Records are creating music that they're passionate about and there are expenses involved in the creation and distribution of their art. If for my next record, I go into a studio I need to pay for, I'll re-evaluate my need to charge something for whatever it is I create in that environment. We'll cross that bridge if/when we get there.

If you've ever had the urge to buy one of my songs (or have this urge moving forward), download my music for free from my website and then please consider purchasing music from another Me and the Machine artist. If you have any questions that I haven't addressed here, certainly feel free to follow me on Twitter and I'll be more than happy to continue this conversation. Thanks to everyone that is reading this right now for your continued support and I hope to see you again soon!!

Introducing Me and the Machine Television!!!

noreply@blogger.com (Josh Preston) — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 15:00:00 +0000

(from meandthemachine.com)

Sometimes, completely frustrating experiences lead to brilliant results. Let me back up and give you the story...

On Friday February 20th, we decided to conduct a test to stream live video/audio on the web via Ustream. We did this test because we were preparing to broadcast my show from Asheville, NC on the following night. For the test, we posted a status update on Facebook and essentially said that we were going live in 3 minutes. By the time we turned on the broadcast, 20 people were waiting to view it. That's right: with 3 minutes notice, 20 people tuned in. Needless to say, Bean and I were freakishly excited!! I played a few tunes live from MATM Studios and we had a blast.

The following night in Asheville, we got to the club early, set everything up and the broadcast continually dropped out. I believe people were able to see roughly one minute of that show. We were bummed but we chalked it up to a strange wi-fi connection.

On February 24th, we attempted to broadcast my performance from The Basement here in Nashville. Again we got to the club early, set everything up properly and again the broadcast failed. Instead of showing the performance, Ustream continually broadcasted commercials. We were super bummed because again, a bunch of people showed up to view this performance online and again it crapped out.

We returned to MATM Studios after this second bust and felt pretty defeated. Bean put out a request on Twitter to get suggestions about an alternate streaming service we could use. A friend from my TVT days, Tom Mullen, recommended we check out Mogulus. From the second the page loaded, we were completely blown away...

Over the past few days, we've begun to compile video footage from the vaults and create production spots. After many long days and sleepless nights, today we are launching Me and the Machine Television. I can honestly say I haven't been this excited since we launched the label. Me and the Machine Television will feature videos, interviews, behind-the-scenes documentaries, concert footage AND LIVE BROADCASTS!! We'll also feature videos from friends of the label and MATM's Video of the Week. Over time, Me and the Machine Television will grow and evolve with the label and we'll continually add content. We've spent the past two years recording nearly every live performance from every Me and the Machine artists so we'll have plenty of material!!!

I'll step out of the way now so you can check out Me and the Machine Television for yourselves. Please feel free to chat on the page but also send your comments and critiques to us via email or the social network platform of your choosing. We're incredibly new to the world of television so any help from you will be greatly appreciate. Thanks again for your support and enjoy Me and the Machine Television!!!

Josh Preston
Me and the Machine Records/Television

:: CLICK HERE TO VIEW ME AND THE MACHINE TELEVISION NOW!! ::

TONIGHT!! Live @ The Basement (New Faces Night)

noreply@blogger.com (Josh Preston) — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 17:55:00 +0000

live performance at Westville Pub in Asheville, NC

Thanks to everyone who came out to the Westville Pub in Asheville, NC on Saturday night and a special thanks to Leo johnson & The Space Heaters for allowing me to open the show!

I'll be playing a few tunes tonight at The Basement in Nashville as part of their New Faces night. There's no cover and there are always some great bands on the bill. The show starts @ 8pm.

More shows are being booked now so check back often!!

Edgehill Studios Cafe - 2.13.09

noreply@blogger.com (Josh Preston) — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 21:01:00 +0000

(from meandthemachine.com)

(The New Whole Usuals, Josh Preston, Stillhouse Hollow)

Thanks to everyone that came out to Edgehill Studios Cafe last night! The place was packed, the sound was great and the bands (in my humble opinion) were awesome! We will let you know when we do it again, but until then, here's some additional dates for the bands that played last night:

Feb 17, 2009 :: Adam Burrows :: Dan McGuinness Pub :: Cool Springs, TN :: w/ various artists

Feb 25, 2009 :: Adam Burrows :: Cafe Coco :: Nashville, TN :: w/ various artists

Feb 21, 2009 :: Josh Preston :: Westville Pub :: Asheville, NC :: w/ The Space Heaters

Feb 24, 2009 :: Josh Preston :: The Basement (New Faces Show) :: Nashville, TN

Mar 10, 2009 :: Stillhouse Hollow :: Dan McGuinness (Cool Springs) :: Franklin, TN :: w/ various artists

Mar 13, 2009 :: Stillhouse Hollow :: Utopia Coffee House :: Spring Hill, TN :: w/ Josh Dragoo

We'll see you again soon!

New Song!!

noreply@blogger.com (Josh Preston) — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 04:32:00 +0000

<a href="http://joshpreston.bandcamp.com/album/josh-prestons-perpetual-bin-of-demos-and-other-sods-you-may-have-heard-live-but-are-not-live-now">streetlights by Josh Preston</a>

I finally recorded a new song I've been working on for a week or so this evening called "Stretlights". You can download it free via the bandcamp player in this post. There are a bunch of other free songs in this player as well so go nuts. I decided to post the song using this player so that way, you can pick the type of file you'd prefer. Enjoy!!

A Quick Thanks!

noreply@blogger.com (Josh Preston) — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 05:30:00 +0000

I just wanted to post a quick thanks to everyone that came out this weekend!! I had a great night @ both Loudhouse Coffee in Greenbrier, TN and Ugly Muggs in E. Nashville, TN.

I've got more shows coming up and I hope to see you there!!

LA Times Story About Warner Music vs. YouTube and my friends The Whappers

noreply@blogger.com (Josh Preston) — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 17:56:00 +0000

(Originally posted on meandthemachine.com)

Imagine our surprise this morning when we read about Will Chatham of The Whappers in the LA Times! The LA Times wrote a piece about the on-going and fan-alienating battle between Warner Music and YouTube. You can grab the details from the story link below but in short, Warner Music is issuing take down notices for any videos containing music that they (Warner Music) publishes. After you've finished the story, don't forget to check out The Whappers site and definitely see them play whenever you can because they're amazing.

:: LA Times - Warner Music vs. YouTube casualties include a banjo-playing 'Star Wars' fan ::

:: The Whappers ::

My road-trip mix tape

noreply@blogger.com (Josh Preston) — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 22:35:00 +0000

Giving plinky.com a shot and thus fair it has inspired me to generate this post.

Big Trucks by Pedro The Lion

It's about the journey not the destination...

German Motor Car by Margot & The Nuclear So And So's

The title of the song is "German Motor Car" silly computer.

Effington by Ben Folds

It's loosely about a town seen from the highway and every time I hear this tune it reminds me of the small towns I've seen when driving around the country. Plus, this dude is just a brilliant writer.

Do You Remember The First Time? Bullz-eye's First Concert Memories

noreply@blogger.com (Josh Preston) — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 16:00:00 +0000

So for those of you that don't know, I sometimes write reviews for Bullz-Eye.com. It's a great place for incredibly honest and often side-splittingly funny music reviews (although, it truth, it's been a long damn time since I've written any reviews). Anyway, they asked their writers to write about their first concert experience a few months back so I jumped at the chance!! My story is near the bottom of this post but definitely check out the other stories as well. They're great!! Below is the link. Have a great weekend everybody!!

:: Do You Remember The First Time? Bullz-eye's First Concert Memories (contains explicit language) ::

From toothpastefordinner.com

noreply@blogger.com (Josh Preston) — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 22:07:00 +0000

toothpastefordinner.com

It's Friday and I'm wondering where the nearest Chuck E. Cheese is...

Have a great weekend everybody!

Thank You Loudhouse Coffee

noreply@blogger.com (Josh Preston) — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 17:22:00 +0000

Josh Preston @ Loudhouse Coffee, Greenbrier, TN

I just want to take a second to thank Loudhouse Coffee for inviting me out to play last night. I had a blast and I look forward to playing there again soon.

Also, check out the folks I played with last night: Josiah Jones and John Davey.

More dates are being all the time so don't forget to check the tour section on joshpreston.com.

Last Minute Show @ Loudhouse Coffee TONIGHT!!

noreply@blogger.com (Josh Preston) — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 19:50:00 +0000

I'll be performing at Loudhouse Coffee in Greenbrier, TN tonight @ 6pm. It looks like a great venue and I'm really excited to be playing there. So excited in fact, I'm going to go take a shower and trim my beard. Hitting the road in a bit and I hope if you're in the neighborhood you'll pop by!!

The Longest Soundcheck Ever!!

noreply@blogger.com (Josh Preston) — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 23:18:00 +0000

Josh Preston @ 169 Bar, New York, NY

(Written 12/18/08)

It has been an incredible couple of days!! The show at 169 Bar was absolutely incredible! It was so amazing to see so many friends and the fact they came out in the middle of a blizzard was just awesome. Thank you so much and it really made the trip to see all of you!!

We left New Jersey at around 10am on Wednesday and got to my sister's house at around 7pm last night. Most of the trip was really straight ahead but the last few hours got super hairy. It actually got so cold our windshield wipers froze and the cars and trucks were slinging freezing sleet onto our windshield.

Check out this great article in the Bangor Daily News about the tour and Me and the Machine Records!!

:: Bangor Daily News - Musician from Maine wants to make most of visit home ::

(Written 1/8/09)

Wow. That was a long sound check...haha. I started writing this post just before my sound check in Portland @ the North Star Music Cafe and just never got back to it until now. The show at the North Star was great except for the fact that I broke a string during my first tune! Luckily, I was only a few bars in, I stopped the show, changed the string with the agility of a NASCAR tire changer and dove back into the set. Everyone was incredibly receptive and the food there was incredible!!

Mike Prescott and I performing @ Mountain Valley High School, Rumford, ME

The final performance of the tour was in Rumford, Maine @ Mountain Valley High School with my great friend and brilliant teacher Mike Prescott. We closed out his Christmas concert by playing my tune "Please Tell Me You'll Be Home For Christmas". It was a really special way to close out the tour and Mike's students are amazing. I was shocked by some of the tunes they played.

I spent the remainder of the week with family and Bean and I drove back on Saturday the 27th of December as well as that Sunday. It's a 24 hour drive from my folk's house back to Nashville.

So, I'm back in Nashville and enjoying the warmth. I'm adding new dates now for 2009 and I can't wait to see all of you again very soon. Thanks to everyone that let Bean and I couch-surf over the few weeks we were traveling!!

A recap of the goings on thus far!!

noreply@blogger.com (Josh Preston) — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 17:01:00 +0000

Hey everyone! I think the last time I had a chance to sit and post was Saturday in Huntington, WV at Java Joint. I've been posting little bits on Twitter throughout the run but it's nice to be able to sit and recap using more than 140 characters.

So after the Java Joint show, Bean and I hung out with Nick's friend Russ at his place for the afternoon. We were pretty damn tired from the lack of good sleep from the night before so we just watched TV and Nick told us the story about his snake Lamar from college. Really good stuff.

Nick Shelton @ Shamrock's Pub, Huntington, WV

We left Russ's around 8pm for load in and then just hung out in the club. When we first got there it was cold as hell in the back but they had this thing that looked like a flame-throwing canon that they fired up for about 45 minutes and it warmed up really fast. The performance space at Shamrock's Pub was incredible and the sound was awesome. Nick started playing a short time after 11pm and I think I went on around midnight or so. I was really floored by the response of the crowd and it was the perfect way to kick things off.

Josh Preston @ Shamrock's Pub, Huntington, WV

After the show, Bean and I loaded up the car and drove through the hills of WV. We pulled off the highway around 3am (so help me god, I still have no idea where we were) and crashed until they kicked us out at 11am. Being as tired as we were we really didn't sleep at all.

We finished the second half of the trip to DC and pulled in around 4pm. Along the way, we kept telling ourselves that as soon as we saw a Starbucks, we'd pull off and grab coffee. I'm pretty sure that we found the only 200+ mile stretch of road in the universe where there wasn't a Starbucks.

Josh Preston @ The Wonderland Ballroom, Washington, DC

We stayed with our friends Para and Emily in DC. They turned us on to all kinds of incredible stuff like royal jelly and raw chocolate and goji berries. The show in DC was at The Wonderland Ballroom which was really close to their place. The room was packed!! It was our first time in DC apart from layovers at the airport and it was cooler than we could have ever imagined. In our typical turbo-tourist fashion, we blazed by all of big ticket items and headed for NYC.

We arrived in NYC in mid-afternoon and spent a much-needed day of relaxation with Fabrice. Their place in Jersey City is gorgeous and when Jerry arrived home from work we ordered some of the best damn Chinese food I've had since Bean and I moved to Nashville four years ago and checked out pics and videos from their recent trip to Venice. I laughed so hard it hurt. They should have their own travel show. Really, really funny shit.

We drove over to Williamsburg for the Pete's Candy Store show around 9pm and we had a chance to check out our old neighborhood. Architecturally, the changes that have occurred in that part of the world in the last 4 years is nothing short of miraculous. Our old apartment building was still there but next to it in what used to be an abandoned lot was this gorgeous new modern building. While it was pretty shocking, it's really great to see how much attention is being paid to building design in this area.

The show at Pete's was fun as hell and equally as hot as seen in the picture below. Pete's was the first room I ever attempted to do the "guy w/ acoustic guitar" thing in so it was really special to play there again last night.

A wildly gross and sweaty post-show Josh Preston @ Pete's Candy Store, Brooklyn, NY

I guess that's it for now and I'll have another post very soon. Thanks to all the friends that have let us crash on their couches and all of the venues that have let me yell into their microphones for 30-45 minutes. See ya tonight at the 169 Bar in NYC!!

Night One and Show One: Check

noreply@blogger.com (lisareedpreston) — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 18:31:00 +0000

Wow. It's been a lively 24 hours. We pulled into Huntington around midnight or so I guess. The roads were really starting to get slick but we avoided the bulk of the snow. Ok, boring. Moving on.

Before we left Nashville, Bean and I bought zero-degree sleeping bags for our trip. Very brave and rustic and whatnot, I know. We had this romanticized picture of the trip in our minds of maybe sleeping in the car in a Walmart parking lot and just being hippies and subsist on the granola we bought at Target. Real American Pioneers.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that that probably wouldn't work out given we are in a Toyota. We clearly mismanaged the leg room situation and the sever lack of television. We really gave it a shot though. We managed to find a Walmart after Willis (our GPS thingy) struck out on the first set of directions we plugged in. We got into our sleeping bags and tried like hell to sleep but it simply wasn't happening. Around 2am we peeled our sleeping bags off and hit the Quality Inn down the street which was across the street from two gentlemen's clubs. I had no idea the demand was that high in this down economy.

Let's just say the the word "Quality" in Quality Inn at this particular franchise was nothing short of completely misleading. We ate our vitamins, caught a little Law & Order and slept in our clothes.

Ok, show one is done and we're off to see the town. Thanks to the folks that hung out and listened and we'll see ya in a few hours at Shamrock's Pub up the street.