It’s been way too long. I miss them as I’m sure some of you do. Thankfully, our friends over at Vulcan Army Booking have lined us up with Good Night, States. The show will be Friday May 17th. I’ll work out the particulars later and update the House Concerts page. I don’t have the time it takes to do this band justice in a post. They did a tour with the Lumineers this past summer and I really need to read up a little bit on that before I go any further.  So for now, I just want to share some of their music with you. Hope to see you there!

This is my favorite song, so far…Ceilings. I hate to make comparisons, but makes me think Pixies. There, I said it.

Image via http://popdose.com/

Growing up, at least the part where I was learning to play guitar, I was a huge REM fan. At the time, their music was completely original to me. It was low-fi, melodic, angry, happy, and just plain original. I didn’t even care what Michael Stipe was singing about. I just enjoyed the music and the melody of his voice.

Having spent the majority of my young life listening to heavy metal, it was weird to me that I would gravitate toward something so completely different. But I did. And it really changed everything for me as far as music was concerned.

So like I do from time to time, I did a youtube search for REM and came across this video of Pilgrimage performed by the Long Players in Nashville. If you are unfamiliar, the Long Players are a loose group of mostly studio and touring musicians that get together every so often and perform a classic CD from start to finish and have guest singers step in to perform various songs. A friend and school mate of mine, John Deaderick plays with these guys. Whether you know it or not, you’ve heard him play with just about anyone who is anyone and I’m really proud of him for all he has been able to accomplish in the music biz. It never ceases to amaze me at who he has shared the stage and studio with.

This particular song, the Long Players had Don Dixon, the producer of REM’s Murmer to sing. As I’ve mentioned on here a time or two, Don Dixon played bass and produced RJ Cowdery’s first CD One More Door, which was recorded here in my house.  It still hasn’t quite sunk in to my brain that I got to share my house with the producer of REM’s Murmer as well as RJ, Todd Burge, and a couple members of the Mountain Stage band. Maybe it never will, but I can tell you it was so incredible and uplifting to walk into the house after work and hear the beautiful music that was being made.

Seeing this video this morning just brought a rush of emotion and tied several distinctively different parts of my life together all at once. It’s cool, and I love it!

If you can’t make it to SXSW, you should go check out CBCW (Couch by Couchwest). Stay at home and check out all the great bands and artist that didn’t get to perform at SXSW. Everyone uploads a video/videos made especially for CBCW to Youtube and the folks at CBCW make the playlist. If you are looking for a way to find some new artist, this is it.

I figure I got time for just one this year. Maybe more. We’ll see. I did Muse, recorded in the attic with one of the stage lights that pulses more the louder you get. Thanks for listening/watching!

Don’t feel out of place, though. I haven’t had much of any time to work over at The Smoking Musket either. Considering how the football season went and the basketball season is going, that’s not really a bad thing. But my love of WVU sports is a strong one and I do miss it. I miss the hours I would spend dreaming up and making animated GIFs to go along with my posts. For example:

From the WVU-Iowa State basketball game…yeah, we lost.

Oh hey, I play music too! So, quietly, I’ve been working on songs and an absolute ton of graphic things I want to do when the next CD is complete. My only real question is whether to make physical CDs, or to just release it as a download. I tend to want to lean more towards doing one song at a time in the future. The way the business side of things currently stands, I think an artist doesn’t do themselves any favors by releasing a CD. Fans wait to hear the next set of songs instead of having a regular stream of songs released. I’m just thinking of you guys. Matter of fact, I’m thinking of just finishing the songs I have demos for and just releasing them. Thanks to Hardy and Joseph, a couple of those are near done. If ya wanna listen, the player on the right called, Demolicious.

It’s a tough thing, the lack of production. But I’m looking forward to the baby making his grand entrance into this world, and the ways it will change me. I’m thinking I’m going to have a lot of time to play for him. I’m interested how that will effect my songwriting. I have thoughts about songs all the time, a melody in my head. I hope those come out. Maybe not the heavy ones, though. Ha!

So anyway, happy new year. It’s warm somewhere.

John

Did it live up to any of the crazy expectations I had? Nope, not even close. But it did live up to most of the realistic expectations I had. It was a hard road, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. It was fun, and I can still go back and listen to it without too much second guessing about things I was never completely happy with. So I got that going for me…

To celebrate, I’m going to knock the price of the CD down to $5 on the BandCamp page as well as the actual CDs I have with me at shows. I’m also going to be playing at the Adelphia Thursday, November 1st as part of Songwriter Night with Todd Burge. It’s a free show and there will be a ton of great songwriters performing: RACHEL FIGLEY, CAREY MURDOCK, BRUCE DALZELL, DAN CUNNINGHAM, WORMZ   HAYFIELD AND CROW, JUSTIN ARTHUR, and MICHAEL IAFRATE.

I’m really really happy that Carey Murdock will be here. I had to cancel on a house concert with him for October. So I’m happy I’ll get a second chance to see him perform and show him the hospitality that we try to offer every house concert performer.

Hope to see you there!!

For me personally, Freek is an incredible influence. He’s such an artist about what he does, and if you follow the link above, he’s also way more modest about his talents than he should be.

“If people don’t like it, I don’t want to say he takes it hard, but it bothers him,” Hall says. “It starts off as a joke but it becomes something he wants to do well. I think he worries about the details.”

There is a pause.

“He has no clue how gifted he is.”

I had the pleasure to work with him on some video projects back in 08-09. I had wanted to get away from writing posts and start concentrating on music. So I started a webpage called Songbook Sports. I let it die when I got tired of writing songs about college football. In this day and age if you don’t have something within 24 hours of something happening, it really is irrelevant. So the process of writing and recording a song and getting it into video format was just near impossible. But when we did get one done, it was just pure beauty.

Bobby Bowden’s Swan Song (via OFFSIDESwithLSUfreek)

Clearly, if I could make a living doing stuff like this with someone as talented as Freek I would be lucky. Things don’t always work that way, though. I know I reached a point in my life where nothing was funny and I had ambitions of putting out a CD of music I had written. Stuff that had nothing to do with sports. He also has a life and the position of worlds greatest Gif animator. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that either.

So I went about making my CD and also found my way to The Smoking Musket. I started trying to improve my Photoshop skills and wanted to do more. So I asked him for a few pointers about making Gifs. Being the awesome person he is, he sent me all I needed to get started. It really speaks to the kind of person he is.

I’ve been really lucky with the people I’ve come across in my life. If you do anything artistic, you’ll run across a million people with the talent. But it’s rare that you meet someone so talented that is also grounded and down to Earth. Those are the special ones. So that’s why I feel compelled to write something about LSUFreek and follow up the article on Yahoo. He deserves every good thing that happens to him. So this one is for you Freek.

The house concert series is going to shut down for a while. We hope to be back in the summer of 2013. We are so very thankful to all the artist that have played for us and so incredibly sorry to the artist we’ve had to turn away or cancel on. But it’s something that had to be done.