I know it’s been a while. And I know I said I’d be better at blogging. And I know that I haven’t been. And I know you probably hate me now. But you know what else I know?….I know that our album, From Comet to Calm is HERE! and because I’ve always loved you unconditionally, I want you to know about what we plan on doing with this little guy. On September 12, 2009, you can get From Comet to Calm for 50% off if you come to Birdy’s and let us rock your face off. That’s it. That’s the deal. You come watchus play, and we give you the album for half price! We want to celebrate this album’s release with you after six long months of waiting and revising, and it evolving into what it is today. We’re very proud of the finished product and can’t wait for you to hear it. So here’s the layout for September 12….

You come around 9:00 to see opening bands. At about 10:40, we’ll go on and play the entire album live. You buy the cd for 50% off and we’re all happy! Let’s do this.

If you’re not 21, then the Birdy’s show is not for you. BUT – we’ll have an all ages show on September 26 @ The Warehouse in Carmel where you’ll be able to get FCtC!

Itunes will have FCtC in a few weeks, but for now, if you’d rather buy it online, you can go here – Click here to buy From Comet to Calm.

later,

tb

Come to Birdy’s on Wednesday night starting at 9:00. I’m doing a solo acoustic show. Amy Duke is also playing. I haven’t done a solo show in quite a while, and don’t know when the next one will be, so for all you people who ask me why I don’t do more solo shows, I expect to see you there. I know it’s a week night and people around Indianapolis complain about that for some reason, but what else are you going to do? You’ll be awake until 11-12 anyways. Head to Birdy’s.

Saturday the band is playing at MoJoe’s Coffeehouse downtown. It’s for a benefit show, so it’s all ages (calling all minors….)…I think the show starts at 8. I’d tell you more details, but those are the only ones I know right now.

tb

Like I said, it was our first show in a few months, and we had what seemed to be the biggest and loudest turnout out of all the bands. I think we performed well, but my only judgment came from the crowd reaction since I couldn’t hear anything on stage at all. The one band (us) who got a sound check sounded like someone was mixing our stage mix with their feet.

As soon as I saw who the judges were, I thought the writing might have been on the wall for us. No need to have a pop rock band threaten the Hard Rock image of the sponsor.

I do want to thank the Hard Rock Cafe and Mark Dubec for giving us the opportunity to be a part of a great opportunity. They were great to us all night with the free beer and food revolving door all night.Very hospitable. Thanks to everyone who showed up to watch us play. It’s good knowing that we’re still worth seeing (even though it was free) after taking some time off.

All in all, it was a good night. Good people showed up, and I think I speak for everyone in the band that it was a good “return” for the band – even though we didn’t win.

Next up: I’m playing a solo show at Birdy’s on Wed April 15 with Amy Duke. So come out and watch us.

April 18 – We’re playing a benefit show at MoJoe’s Coffehouse in Indy.

See you then,
tb

For weeks, I heard “you will never get 10 songs done in three days.” Anyone who acted like they knew anything about recording told me that reaching such a goal was impossible. I wasn’t allowing the band enough time, we weren’t tight enough to move fast enough, my voice wouldn’t hold out long enough. I basically felt like the Mugsy Bogues of recording artists in the NBA of studios. I’m currently lying on my couch, and announcing that in fact, we did not get 10 songs done in three days. We got 11 done. Boom.

Monday (our last day) was penned to start at 9:00 am. Heading into the morning, we had exactly 3.85 songs done – Chicago, Wolf, Simple Man, Sound of Waves – which left 6-7 songs left to complete. Which meant that I had to complete the vocals on one song per two hours if we wanted to successfully walk away from the weekend.

The idea was that I’d do one song, take a break and let someone else handle a tambourine or the Rhodes as filler for other songs.

To make things easy on myself, I knocked out “The Rain” first thing in the morning. While I’m happy with the vocals on this song, I’m 100% positive that no one will be listening to the vocals on this song since Phil Keaggy’s awesomeness is now injected into it…which is fine by me.

About 30 cups of boiling Refresh Tea and a bottle of honey later, I finished “In Between,”  “Simple Man,” “More Than a Word,” “So Cold Alone,” “Stir,” and “It’s Okay.”

Before we wrapped up our time, I told Andy that I wanted to do a new song on keys. It’s called Fight in Me, and I thought it’d be a pretty addition and closing to the album. So we tried knocking it out live together. I’m not sure if I like how it turned out or not. Only because I don’t think I gave it enough time. So I’m trying to see if we can record that back in Indy, or if I should just keep it acoustic-guitar-driven.

So that’s it. We headed home and arrived back in Indy at 3:00 am on Tuesday morning – which also happened to be my birthday. Gotta say, it was the most anti-climactic birthday ever. All I wanted to do was sleep. Drinking green beer was the last thing I wanted to do…besides sing. But we made it happen. 11 songs.

Rumor has it that Jason will have all of the songs mixed to our liking sometime in May. The plan, as of now, is to throw the album up onto Itunes first, and then get some money to print tangible cd’s later. Not sure if I’ve ever heard of anyone doing that, but I’m also not sure we have another choice if we want to get these songs out on a reasonable date.

So now, we can look forward to scheduling more shows and trying to expand our name into different markets. First things first – I think we’re playing in an Indianapolis Hard Rock Battle of the Bands contest starting in early April. So stay tuned for more on that.

Once again, thank you to everyone who kept up with us throughout our time in Nashville. Whether you were watching the live stream or you were sending us texts, it was good to know that you were out there rooting us on.

Later,

Tyler

The recap of Day 3

The alarm came way too early, and yet, nobody moved for the first 20 minutes. ..Jon the Graybeard came into the room to gentle nudge Tyler’s shoulder, and the rustling sound of his sleeping bag on the air mattress sounded like a pile of leaves blowing gently through the wind…and I knew…I was ready for coach to put me in the game…Then J Gray came and nudged me in the shoulder to yank me out of the Chicago Bears Offensive huddle, and brought me back to the sidelines of reality… I had only one dream in life, and it was to play for the Chicago Bears, and when I was about to fulfill my lifelong dream within my dream, Jon ruined everything. Love you Jon. Mean it.

Tyler showered. FINALLY. 

Our breakfast was infinity times not as good as what the ladies made for us yesterday (toast, blueberry and WILDberry muffins, and eggs),

but it worked to get us going. I got my coffee, 2 creams, and 4 “cancer-causing artificial sweeteners” as the guys called it…aka Splenda (for the record, there is no official correlation linking Splenda and cancer…Just Sweet’n'Low in a minute # of mice). 

Plan for the day:

Simple Man

Stir

In Between

Simple Man seemed to take 8 hours, though it was probably more like 2 or so…I have developed an affinity to the song over the last year…but mind you, that my approval of the song “in no way acknowledges or endorses such behavior”. I’ll help you decode the legal jargon included in my recording contract…Just substitute “behavior” with “country music”. Love you Tyler. Mean it. Song is tight though, for sure, or as they down here in Tennessee…FoShorizzledizzle. I’ve never actually heard anyone really say that, but I’m pretty sure my stereotypes are spot on.

Speaking of stereotypes, they say that BBQ in Nash is amazing…and that IS spot on! I missed out on bbq on night 1 since I was driving from Indy after work, but they promised some good BBQ, and they delivered! We went to Bar-B-Cuties.

…which was next to “New Famous”…which I’m sure you figured out was a Chinese Restaurant. They had some of the best pulled pork I’ve ever had…but now that I think about it, it’s not the pork that was amazing (though it was good), it was some of that sweet sweet bbq sauce…Ridiculously flavored, with ingredients listing as follows: “Tomato Paste, Vinegar, Awesome Juice, Brown Sugar.”

Also of note, they have a publication called “The Crime Times”, loaded with photos and profiles of criminals…Either they have TONS of crime here, or they are uber-vigilant about catching their criminals. Anyways, it made for good reading as we waited for cornbread (that came in the form of pancakes) and the rest of our awesome food (I had Brunswick Stew…invented by Mr. Brunswick of Bowling fame…I don’t know if that’s true, but it sounds good..).

After lunch we returned to the studio (3p-ish), to knock out Stir, which ran a lot smoother than Simple Man.

The guys were really rolling with the tracks, and Jason was Sir Mix-A-Lot on the spot…baby got back…to working hard at mixing stuff! Admittedly, that sounded a lot better in my head…

Oooh, I almost forgot…Tara Bender came in to lay down some vocals in Chicago, and was AMAZING! We had tons of comments on the chat asking who that awesome voice was recording in the other room! Those Benders are ridiculously talented! Chicago is going to be 1000 times better than the Super Bowl!!! I don’t want to oversell it though, so you can judge for yourself.

Meanwhile, our chat room was filled with tons of friends and well-wishers from across the country (Florida, Arizona, Pennsylvania to name a few)! Thanks you guys! You are the epinephrine injection to the heart that is our recording. If you followed that analogy, you may continue reading. If not, please return to the beginning and slowly read out loud.

Where was I…oh yeah, so after our laying down Tara and Tyler’s vocal tracks for Chicago, and all the instruments for Stir, we began our work on In Between…Jon added a sweet effect in the end of the song…well worth the wait through the song just to hear the cool new effect! 

The rest of the night involved Tyler working it out on vocals- doing vocals on Simple Man, Wolf, and Sound of Waves.  We grabbed Wendy’s for dinner, because everyone was scared of unfamiliar food. I voted for Jack In the Box (since there aren’t any in Indy), but was overruled. Instead we ordered through Wendy’s drive through, as a busload of 30 kids or so were ordering inside the store. After 20 minutes in the drive through, we returned to hear Tyler killing it on vocals, while sipping on tea. Meanwhile, we attempted to entertain our friends on the chat/live feed…

If you were lucky enough to catch us in between cuts while doing Chicago, you may have caught a glimpse of the Brian and Andy version of Chicago…a sampling of what will come on our 2nd album…haha…maybe. 

So it’s Monday morning, and after our 2nd consecutive day of McDonald’s breakfast (as described at the beginning), Tyler began warming himself up by singing The Rain (for you Rain fans, you’re going to LOVE this version with Phil Keaggy’s additions!!!). We finished an overdub on their sweet Rhodes electronic piano for Chicago after that, and it looks like Tyler JUST finished In Between! Next up…Brian on the tambourine for Stir and Simple Man…my idea of sleigh bells and cowbell has been repeatedly denied…so if you really want to hear them bells, send us some requests on our chat! 

Okay, back to work! Thanks again for all of your encouragement and support!

If you don’t know what those two boxes are on our homepage, then you don’t know that we got the streaming component up and running. I don’t know about you all, but watching 5-6 dudes standing around a computer, or sitting in a room by themselves waiting to play an instrument is riveting stuff. I glue myself to the screen. The best part is, is that I’m totally not kidding. You should watch us on here. 

We finished tracking instruments on It’s Okay, So Cold Alone, Chicago, Wolf, Sound of Waves and More Than A Word today. Our goal for our time in Nashville was 4 songs per day. I still have to try and sing to these songs, and I understand that will take time and dignity from me. 

Phil and Patty Bender stopped by with about $200 worth of groceries. They brought stuff that singers need, like Reese’s chocolate eggs and string cheese!

Quite a few people popped in and out of the studio. We were all glad to see fresh faces. However, I could not see anyone because I was shoved into a room the size and temperature of my refrigerator for 10 hours. 

Tomorrow we’re hitting it hard, starting at 9:00. We’ve got 3 full band songs to do

• Stir
• Simple Man
• In Between

And the other goal is to vocalize the mess out of the aforementioned finished songs. Tara Bender is coming in tomorrow to sing on Chicago

Phil Keaggy just turned my simple sad song into a piece of sad song art

The Rundown

I’d post more photos, but I feel like the weight of my skull is going to carry it off of my neck if I don’t go to sleep right now. I promise there are more photos coming. Keep checking back. and Watch the stream! 

Tyler

Jason, our tour guide/recording engineer, took us to the best BBQ Nashville has to offer at Jack’s.  

Despite the rainy weather, we still took to the streets and dropped by the Buy 1 Get 2 Free boot store. No one had the walnuts to buy any. When we walked back outside, we decided the rain was too devastating to walk around any longer, and headed home to sit. 

Most of Friday night was spent waiting to head over to the studio to unload our gear. Time-passing-activities mostly included watching B and Jordan playing Oregon Trail or listening to Ryan play piano like he had wooden hands. 

Oh yeah, also, we left Andy behind, because he’s Asian. Actually he came down late because he had to work, but you’re not visiting the page because you want to hear about Andy…so back to the blog… 

Mindy is getting into town early Saturday morning from California. She’s currently running for best friend/fan ever by coming out to support us in the studio and documenting what we’re doing the whole weekend. 

Everyone is excited to get down to business Saturday and start tracking our first songs… and we want you to be there too.  Join us live via ustream.tv tomorrow and see and hear what we are up to.  Check back here at 11:00 AM EST to see the live feeds and leave a comment so we know you stopped by. 

The setlist for Saturday includes:

• It’s Okay
• Sound of Waves
• So Cold Alone
• More Than a Word
• Chicago 

Check out the rest of our photos from the first day.