Some bands labor for years in obscurity before writing an album that makes people take notice, while other bands find a sound early on that resonates well with listeners. Oklahoma City’s Red City Radio are a band that came seemingly from out of nowhere this year with a stellar EP titled To the Sons & Daughters of Woody Guthrie and began attracting attention from many people, including the fine folks at The Fest.
Recently, Red City Radio toured in support of their EP, and RJ Cresswell had a chance to chat with guitarist/vocalist Paul Pendley at a construction site in Austin, TX across the street from Snake Eyes Vinyl.
Artists need to make money to eat and to continue to make art. Artists used to rely on middlemen to collect their money on their behalf, thereby rendering themselves innocent of cash-handling in the public eye. You’ve surely noticed that artists ALL over the place are reaching out directly to their fans for money.
For the last 10 years, i have been working my ass off in a different way: tirelessly making music, traveling the world, connecting with people, trying to keep my balance, almost never taking a break and, frankly, not making a fortune doing it. I still struggle to pay my rent sometimes. I’m still more or less in debt from my last record. i’ll lay it all out for you in another blog. it’s just math.
If you think i’m going to pass up a chance to put my hat back down in front of the collected audience on my virtual sidewalk and ask them to give their hard-earned money directly to me instead of to Roadrunner Records, Warner Music Group, Ticketmaster, and everyone else out there who’s been shamelessly raping both fan and artist for years, you’re crazy.
Cave In will be supporting their newly released 12″ EP, Planets of Old, with two sets of dates. There’s a pair with Coalesce in October as part of the Scion Metal Show series, and later in November an east coast romp with Trap ThemNarrows.
Gatorface have posted another new song from their upcoming album, Wasted Monuments, due out November 10, 2009. Gatorface features ex-New Mexican Disaster Squad members Richard Minino (Horsebites) and Alex Goldfarb (Alex Goldfarb). Both are also pulling double duty in the No Idea super-group No Friends.
Toronto’s Hostage Life have released their new full length Centre of the Universe via the Juicebox Recording Co, and they’ve released it for free. The record can be downloaded in either high quality MP3 or lossless FLAC format at the label’s website. A vinyl version is on the way in November as well, with details to be found at Juicebox.
The album follows up 2006’s Underground Operations released Walking Papers. It was recorded by Donny Cooper (Cursed). The group blogged in depth about the rationale for releasing this album for free after the relative success of their prior full length (particularly in Canada). In that article they commented:
1. I steal music. You steal music. We all steal music. That’s how things work these days. Providing you with a free digital download prevents this from happening.
2. Pressing CDs hasn’t really helped us financially. We sold quite a few CD copies of Walking Papers but are still in debt to our old record label. The current structure of the music industry is not artist friendly, and we have all but abandoned the notion that we could subsist as a band on album sales alone. Some artists and groups are able to do it, but Hostage Life is not one of them. As a result, it makes more sense to just give the shit away and hope that people will like it enough to come see us live and help us out that way.
3. Let’s not bullshit ourselves…any CD we press is eventually going to end up in a landfill where it will take decades, if not centuries to biodegrade (if it ever does). The last thing this planet needs is more disposable Hostage Life merchandise that nobody wants.
Dropkick Murphys have announced US and Canadian tour dates. The run will largely be supported by The Flatliners but also feature The Insurgence, The Mahones, Mark Lind, Bryan McPherson and Youth Brigade on various stops.
Justin Pierre of Motion City Soundtrack and Davey Havok of AFI are among the voice talent recruited for the adaption of the Godkiller graphic novels. The series is about human beings caught in the crossfire of warring fallen gods and is being adapted into a series of limited-edition, bi-monthly episodic DVDs beginning October 6th, 2009.
Along with Pierre and Havok, the voice actors include Lance Henriksen, Bill Moseley, Lydia Lunch, Katie Nisa, Nicki Clyne and Tiffany Shepis.
1208 will be performing with most of their original lineup, except Deviates drummer Donald Conrad will be filling in for original drummer Manny McNamara.
Dashboard Confessional and New Found Glory are apparently working on a split together. Very little is confirmed so far, but the bands will be covering each others material, based on a Tweet from Chad Gilbert who said:
In the studio recording our Dashboard Confessional covers for our split 7 inch. Can’t wait to hear the NFG songs that Dashboard covers. Waiting on the rough mixes of the 2 dashboard songs we covered.
Sunny Day Real Estate celebrated the remastered reissues of Diary and LP2 with an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live. The band is also in the midst of their reunion tour.
Some bands labor for years in obscurity before writing an album that makes people take notice, while other bands find a sound early on that resonates well with listeners. Oklahoma City’s Red City Radio are a band that came seemingly from out of nowhere this year with a stellar EP titled To the Sons & Daughters of Woody Guthrie and began attracting attention from many people, including the fine folks at The Fest.
Justin Pierre of