Tuesday, August 30, 2005

No Time To Type!

Well, there's been time to type, but it's been mainly PROMOTION and other forms of crazy-work. A lot's taken place since the last post, a lot of various permutations, some drama, new material, some gigs on the horizon, and we've got rehearsal tonight. I've spent quite a lot of time working on the mix from our Hard Rock Live show and marrying that to the video we've got from one front-of-house camera. When the other photog who was present can get us his footage, we'll have a nice two-camera shoot that'll work nice in our DVD reel until Vision TV hands us their own broadcast version.

In the meantime, if you're a member of the Tribe and haven't joined up with MySpace.com yet - click the little blue and white button on the right side there and come on along! As J.D. has pointed out, we have over 500 friends and lots of neat comments from folks who have been enjoying the music. Hopefully I'll soon have the "Down To Earth" video from Hard Rock up for viewing - it's taking every ounce of ingenuity to crunch it down into a size that's palatable for watching. Currently, 84 mb is just not palatable!

The band's been working on a couple of very surprising covers which I will not divulge at this time and another cover's been added to the list. We don't do them that often, but when we do, we like to make it count (and twist things around a little.)

Hope everyone's doing great out there and recovering from the weather - my thoughts and prayers are with the folks suffering from Hurricane Katrina - this weather situation is starting to make me wonder even more about global warming. There must be something we can do!

Saturday, August 13, 2005

What a blast!

Last night's show at Hard Rock Live was just fantastic! The crowds rolled in slowly and we ended up going on later than we expected, having to cut two songs out of the set, but we still had a blast. Vision TV was out in full force, and I mean FULL force. With big t.v. production trucks backed up to the dock and three cameras on stage with another stationary one somewhere, they weren't hurting for coverage, that's for sure. It was quite a sight to see: the normally huge Hard Rock Live stage looking crowded with each band sharing space with six camera crew guys (two for each camera) zipping around. During our set, we had an additional two people on stage, photographer Laurel Edwards and videographer John Fernandes. With Matt Agnesi also recording sound off to the side of the stage, we were totally covered in the media department!

All the bands were excellent - The S.E.A.D. put on a rousing opening, laying down some crazy grooves and warming the crowd up (although some reports put them at ten minutes over their alloted time.) The Goldminers were great, as usual, and snackdaddy brought some spectacle with them as they all dressed up in jammies and had a model on-stage in a theatrical tableau. What was really mind-blowing was the band had asked us to be out in front by the fourth song of their set. Having no idea what to expect, lead singer Ed Altom prefaced the tune by explaining why some bands played covers. Then they began jamming out a song that was vaguely familiar and then suddenly became hugely familiar as he began to sing "I am a black indian..."

What a cool, freakin' trip! It was as high a compliment that Mohave's ever been paid, to have a band actually learn one of your songs and then rock it out. Of course, we love snackdaddy anyway - and they continue to grow and expand and plus their material, but it was just incredibly killer to see and hear their take on "Black Indian", because they didn't merely cover it - they re-invented it. I had the biggest smile on my face - I totally love these guys!

After finding out that we had to cut our set short, I was prepared to axe "Black Indian" because snackdaddy had done such a masterful job with it, but J.D. said, "nah - we gotta play that, besides, I want to play my fifteen minute drum solo", so we cut "Ring-A-Ding" and "Georgia Peach" (and still managed to play a 44-minute set). It felt really good, we opened with "He's Gonna Blow", and by this time, the crowd had begun to thin out, it had gotten pretty late. But a core group of our friends and fans hung out, along with some folks who I don't think had ever seen us before - they were dancing and swaying and made a whole lotta noise, which just made the whole set sparkle. The guys from Vision TV were highly complimentary as was Christian, the owner of Dreamscape Records, who came out with some people to see the show. They'd like us to work with them - which is something we'll all discuss this week.

Particularly satisfying to me was meeting up with some folks from the Everything Dulcimer site - John and Yoko, Ken (KWL) and his co-worker Mike all came out - John and Yoko had seen us before, and I've known Ken from the board, he actually pointed me towards a case for Halcyon when I first got her in April. I had wanted to jam a little with him, as he was down here on business, but got too busy during the week. So, during a break between bands, I brought out two dulcimers and we went looking for a quiet place to play. Yeah RIGHT - at the Hard Rock? Well, we did find a place, in a broom closet near the offices, but we were sort of in the way of employees trying to get in there and do stuff. Finally, one of the managers poked his head in and said, "what are you guys doing?" I explained that we were just looking for a quiet place to play some music since I couldn't take them backstage. He returned shortly with backstage wristbands for the whole group, which was just simply the NICEST thing ever (they didn't have to do that.) So, after the Goldminers' set, I took them all downstairs to the Mohave dressing room - tuned up Angelique for Ken to play, and he blessed us all with some beautiful tunes from memory. After giving them a little tour down there, we went back up to stage level where we watched snackdaddy from the wings for a little bit, and then I had to start getting ready for our set. But it was nice to have some time to share with them, I don't get to hang out with dulcimerists every often! John also bought me a beer and Ken gave me a super-cool Mel-Bay dulcimer book of solos - so it was just all about the love! The group really seemed to enjoy themselves and hopefully we can do it again sometime soon.

All in all - just an incredible evening, and it makes me happy when others are happy. There was a whole lot of happiness in stock last night and it seemed that no-one went home empty-handed. For our first show back from summer break, this was most definitely a success!

Thursday, August 11, 2005

Vroooom!

I just wanted to take a moment to thank our extended tribe (which is how I like to refer to our fans - "fans" seems too far removed...) for their love and support - we mailed out quite a few tickets to folks who wanted to come out tomorrow night and that's just the coolest thing ever! It will never cease to amaze me that people enjoy the music and want to keep coming back, so we do our best to keep it interesting!

Speaking of interesting - Tuesday night's rehearsal was a good one, we missed Bunky (she's been working hard and out of state, much like Jae has) but got in a good solid punch-up of tunes old and new. I revised the setlist for tomorrow night because it was too long for one, and something in my gut said that it needed to be a little different. As a result, we're opening with a song tomorrow that we've NEVER opened with before - and it should be a real humdinger!

Later in the evening, Natalie Wright stopped in, she's the violinist that laid down tracks on "Cuckoo Tom", which will be on the next album. We worked on a couple of songs, "Floatin' Wally" and "Down To Earth." Now admittedly, she says she's not much of a fiddler, so the country feel of "Wally" sort of eluded her, though she had some great textures to add. "Down To Earth", she said, was more her style, and she added a screamingly good solo section in the hardcore breakdown that was chillingly appropriate - and I can't wait for us to break that out live. She won't be performing with us this Friday, I think we need to rehearse a couple more times, and she's down with that. But we're looking forward to working her in as another utility player, not only on violin, but also on keyboards and vocals!

In other news - Bareft Podcast played "Ring-A-Ding" on their most recent show and Audio On Demand played "Down to Earth" this week as well. Thanks to the podcasters who are helping get the word out about clear blue trickling!

We've got rehearsal tonight (with Bunky) and in a little while here, I'll be talking with the graphic designer at Total Tape Services to resolve a color-matching issue (whoa! The phone just rang and it was him - how WEIRD is that? Happens a lot around here...) and the color-matching issue isn't an issue - so the album is now officially in PRODUCTION! Which means in about fifteen days, the official version of clear blue trickling will be ready for shipping! Remember, you can order online now in the General Store on the Mohave website (now equipped with Pay-Pal for easy, secure online ordering!)

Lunchtime - gonna fry up some tilapia and wait for a phone call to pick Jae up from the airport. I've got a video project to finish today - so I'll sign off for now. Hope to see everyone out at the show tomorrow!

Monday, August 08, 2005

Rippin' and Roarin'

I haven't checked in because life has been tres' busy - had a few video projects to get finished, was on the road this weekend stirring up new business, but last Thursday's rehearsal was fantastic - we got a lot accomplished, including working through the set list for this Friday's show at Hard Rock. Talked through our upcoming shows and discussed ideas for the CD Release Powwow, which will happen in probably October or November.

"clear blue trickling" was sent off to Total Tape Services this morning - so it's all over but the waiting! I did some very last-minute adjustments to the CD insert, deciding not to repeat the outer tray card design on the inside, so I removed all of the lettering and added the picture we've been using of the "next gas 58 miles" sign. I haven't been able to check lately to see who's been playing us, but after I get this article written today, I will check around for new leads. Things are definitely on the move!

Tuesday, August 02, 2005

An Orgasmic Rush

Okay, maybe not total climax, but that's only because the "awkward sex" had to do with an little blonde girl who somehow got invited to our rehearsal tonight and proceeded to chatter, play songs on the piano, improvise Alanis Morrissete songs, dance madly about and proclaim that she was there to audition. We were all very polite, at first, and then became more firm as she basically annoyed the crap out of everyone in the room. Who was she? We still don't know. But we got through our first rehearsal back from break despite her distractions. Bunky wasn't there, but that was because of a miscommunication - we missed her, but worked through our proposed set of songs for the upcoming Hard Rock Live show. For not having played for about a month, everything sounded killer! Well, except for lack of Bunky, y'know. We're just not completely orgasmic without her. (Did I just write that?)

A cool sidenote to the upcoming show - Vision TV has asked if they could have clearance to tape our performance for their program on local television. Jae and have watched the show and were wondering how to get on there. Well, cease the wondering, eh?

A new podcast called Alt.Cast has included us in their newest show. Thanks to Chris Choi for picking us up from the Podsafe Music Network - a cool little network (okay, a cool BIG network) of podcasters and artists, seeking each other. It's so five minutes from now, like, perpetually. Why am I talking like the weird girl from rehearsal? It's catching, whatever it is.

Thanks to my dear friend Tina DeMasi for working the podcast circuit, contacting folks about playing Mohave, the results are coming in!

Monday, August 01, 2005

The Chosen One

Nah, it's nothing like you're thinking! Actually, after much shopping around and bargain-hunting, it looks like we've settled on Total Tape Services in Clearwater, Florida. This is the company that sent "70mm" through in 1994 - they still had my information on record from back then (tho' most of it was horribly outdated.)

We got a great deal (not gonna tell ya...) and after the paperwork is filled out, we basically ship clear blue trickling off to be duplicated on Wednesday morning. Due to the fact that we're all peanut-butter and cracker-eatin' PO', I had to make some compromises on the insert design - so we're going with just a basic four-page book, with acknowledgements and a vista of Nowhere, Nevada with the El Rey Drive-In Theater sign and a picture of the band melded with the summer sky.

J.D.'s been picking up some cool links that I'm going to send some material off to today. We're hungry, baby, hungry!