Steel Bridge Song Fest 2013 and What Not

So over the past few weeks, we were pretty busy in WBC. We played 2 nights of Steel Bridge Song Fest, then played the following Friday at Club Garibaldi. Currently we have no shows booked in Milwaukee any time soon, and the next show we are doing will be in Madison for our good friend Ellie Maybe's brithday.

I've blogged about Steel Bridge before, and there are a long list of concerns that still hold true; that being the local people of Sturgeon Bay, WI and their attitude towards the festival. Those sentiments still hold, and for more details, I recommend reading "Steelbridge Song Fest 2012" (http://wisconsinbeefcommission.blogspot.com/2012/06/sttelbridge-song-fest-2012.html).

This years festival was by far the best organized, smoothest, and easiest Steel Bridge I've experienced (this was my 5th year performing with 3 different bands). pat mAcdonald, and Melanie Jane did a fabulous job with this years event, as well as the extensive list of volunteers that helped. The only issue I saw with Steel Bridge's crew was a lack of people watching for passes. For those not familiar with how Steel Bridge Song Fest works, it's a 4 day festival that goes from a Thursday to Sunday afternoon, offering music from musicians that travel in to Sturgeon Bay, WI to perform at outdoor stages during day hours, and indoor venues on the nights of Thursday-Saturday. Outdoor shows are generally free, but close access was limited to pass holders on Sunday, due to Jackson Brown being the headliner. Passes are required for the night venues (except Thursday, which is appreciation night for the locals), and go for about $20. The $20 goes to the bridge fund (more details of this can be found on the Steel Bridge Song Fest website). The money does NOT go to musicians involved. The $20 gets you access to the night venues on Friday and Saturday. That equals about a dozen venues and over 100 musicians for $20, plus it's going to a good cause.

I've said before, some of the locals go out of their way to scam their way into the night venues, and many act as though they're entitled because they live in town. This year, I noticed many venues had nobody watching for passes, and they were also letting people in through back doors. Granted, this doesn't hurt the bands, quite the opposite, but it's really unfair to the people who DO pay for passes to see the music. During our Saturday night performance at Beach Harbor/Waterfront Mary's we had one heckler; an old fart who looked like a reject from the late 70's was shooting pool who yelled "YOU SUCK!!" and "GO HOME!!". Surprise, surprise, this asshat had no pass, and made a lot of enemies that night. I called him out, made sure everyone knew who he was, and he was refered to as "that asshole" by many people at Beach Harbor the rest of the night he was there. Delaney Davidson had one heckler after his rendition of Lead Belly's "In The Pines". Didn't hear what his heckler said, but Delaney's response in his New Zealand accent was "Sir, that song is an American classic. You should know the words by now."

Aside from that, everything was great. Being a musician at Steel Bridge is something like a summer camp, or a gathering with your really cool cousins that you only get to see a few times a year. We got to see our good friends Melanie Jane, pat, Ellie Maybe, Vee Sonnets, Geri X, Carley Baer, Johnny Lowe, and many others, as well as meeting a lot of great performers that are new to the fest. Gotta say, I'm already looking forward to next year's fest.

The Friday after, we had our homecoming show at Club G. This was with The Living Statues and Greetings From The Impostor. These were some phenomenal bands, and if given the chance, I highly recommend checking them out.

The CD is still available, and has been received quite well. So far, we haven't received any major criticism of the release, and the only snag we've heard is that one of the local clubs was playing the album between bands during a metal show, and apparently one of the metal bands that was going on said they felt "uncomfortable" playing after our album was being played. I take that as an accomplishment.

We'll keep everyone posted on the upcoming events through the blog here or via our Facebook page. Hope to see everyone real soon.

"DRANKIN' SONGS" ON CD!!!!

The CD Release Party for our debut album; DRANKIN SONGS, will be at Kochanski's Concertina Beer Hall on Saturday May 18th. 21+ show, $5 cover. 
CD's will be available for $10.

As you may have caught on Facebook and through word on the street, DRANKIN' SONGS is now available on CD. This was a lengthy process due to artwork for the CD, we actually went through 2 designers, and the second one was American Radio Police's Aaron Valentine (his company is JWD-Creative). The first draft of the artwork took over 4 months, and the finished product was unusable, so we went to Aaron during his busiest season, and it took time to get the finished product. Our final decission was that it was worth the wait for the perfection of the artwork, and perfect it is. Also, we went with the decission to wait for release until Dana was back from Utah.

We recieved the CDs yesterday, we had them pressed by Sooper Dooper out of Madison; great guys with great turnaround time. This is the first album to be distributed through Sealed Juvenile Records.

The CD has been brought to 91.7 FM WMSE (local college station here in Milwaukee that's part of the Milwaukee School of Engineering), as well as 88.9 FM Radio Milwaukee (independent station here in Milwaukee), so all our local fans (and not-so-local) can request songs on these stations and listen to them on air, or through the interwebs.

DRANKIN' SONGS is also available for download through iTunes, Amazon Mp3, Google, Zune, and xBox.

Again we like to thank Shane over at Howell Street Recordings, Mike at Redline for mastering, Aaron Valentine at JWD-Creative, and all our fans who have supported us to this point. On a personal note, this is only the 2nd professionally produced album I've been a part of, and this is by far the most effort that's gone into any recording I've been a part of. I have to thank Mike and Dana for letting me be a part of it, and putting up with my creative rants.

We're in the process of amassing material for the 2nd album. The idea is a double album entitled On The Wagon, and Off The Wagon. I don't want to give away too much on what the project will entail, but I will say we've been talking to some friends in the music scene, and we have a few surprises for all y'all!!

SEE YA ON MAY 18th!!!!!

And The Fun Continues

So Saturdays show ended up being a bit of a train wreck for us. The day started with a 10 hour shift at work, from where I hauled ass to get home, change, eat, and make my way to The Monkey Bar. I was feeling really tired before the show, but thought it was because of the 10 hour shift. I had one beer when I got to The Monkey Bar, and switched to soda right away because I needed something to wake my ass up. When it came time to set up I started feeling weird. As we were playing, my stomach started to knot up, and I had this pain shooting through my back. I wasn't able to move as much as usual during our set, I stopped doing my backup vocals, and when we got to "That's the Life", I told Mike "Let's skip it, or I'm going to throw up all over the mic." 2 songs later, I told Mike I can't go on, then ran out the back door of the stage which goes outside, and I threw up. A lot.

I went back in, packed up my stuff, got it into the car, and the wife brought me home where I went to the bathroom, and laid in bed shivering for the next 2 hours. I remember thinking I was part of some social experiment, and convinced I wasn't sick while I was sleeping. Until 5:00 last night, I only got up for the occasional trips to the bathroom, and until this morning had only consumer some 7-Up. What we figure is I either had some kind of flu, or food poisoning.

Apparently, after I left, everyone was convinced I was just that drunk. Not the case. I never get drunk before a show. Renee who is the soundchic at The Monkey Bar was even telling people "He never gets drunk before a show". Generally, I never get drunk until my equipment is back at the practice space, and I know I don't have to drive anymore.

So sorry for the shortened set, and I'm REALLY sorry for throwing up out in the lawn at The Monkey Bar. We're really batting a thousand there, last time we played there, a table got broken, this time the bass player throws up. At least the crowd was decent.

Thanks to all for coming, and we'll see you again in May.

Dana's Out in 30 Days!!

Sorry I haven't been posting much over the last few months, but there really hasn't been much going on. We've played Livewire in Chicago just before Christmas which was an awesome show with some great bands, we did my birthday show, and had one show at The Blue Pig since Dana's been locked up in Utah. The 2-piece incarnation of Wisconsin Beef Commission is weird, and we've gotten some real shit reactions. Every show we've done, people have said "Wow, you guys are really missing something without Dana". NO SHIT!! It wasn't like we really had a choice in the matter. Dana was locked up, and we tried our damnedest to stay relevant in the scene, especially with the album coming out (CD will be released soon, but the album is available on iTunes, GooglePlay, Amazon Mp3, Zune, and xBox). So the only option we had was the 2-piece Wisconsin Beef Commission. That said, the last show of this type will be this Saturday at The Monkey Bar.

Dana in under the 30 day mark for her incarceration. This being the case, we are ironing out the details for her homecoming show. As of now, it'll be at Kochanski's Concertina Beer Hall on May 18th, which was where we had one of our best shows last summer. I'm in talks with some bands to play with us, and so far our labelmates Billy Dreamer are on board.

We are planning on this being an EPIC show. I've decided that the shows I'm going to set up from here on out are going to be with bands that not only sound great, but are fun to watch. The standing around playing thing that you see in a lot of the hipster scene is getting old, and I have made the decision to not bore our fans with these bands anymore than I have to. Those who've seen Billy Dreamer, know what a show is, and they BRING IT!! They are a tough band to follow. We have already sent event notices out so everyone can schedule accordingly. This is everyone's chance to get out and show Dana how much she means to all of us.

So here's where we stand, Mike and I are playing one last show sans Dana on Saturday at The Monkey Bar, then we'll be getting Dana back to speed and playing our next full show at Kochanski's on May 18th, then in June, we'll be up in Sturgeon Bay WI for Steelbridge Song Festival for our 3rd consecutive year. The CD should be available for sale at some point in that time, but can be purchased now online.

If anyone has any questions for us or what not, feel free to contact us through our Facebook page, as it gets checked quite regularly by Mike and myself. Dana can be found on FB too, but has limited time to respond, and to my knowledge, she doesn't check the band page too often. Her access is limited to her time of work release when she's not actually working.

2013 is Here...

So we're into a new year, still without Dana. As some of you may have noticed, we've set up very few shows in Dana's absence. We (mainly Mike) hear from her quite regularly, she gets out on work release, allotting her time to get out of jail, but not a lot of time to do anything else. She can't exactly get back late, for fear of jeopardizing any chance of early release. Occasionally on the social media sites, people leave disappointed messages because Dana hasn't hung out with them. AGAIN... DANA IS IN JAIL!!

I know this seems like a running joke, but we're still waiting for the artwork for the CD's. The album; "Drankin' Songs", is available on iTunes, Amazon MP3, Google Play, xBox, etc. We are currently working on some new songs for the next album. "I Like Guns" is a new one Mike and I premiered at the show for my birthday, but with the Connecticut shootings, we opted to shelf it for a while, and thus didn't play it in Chicago when we played there. The Chicago show was a musician party, where Leilanni Frey from Miss Fists and the Astro Zombies (the Misfits tribute band we played with at my birthday show) and former Maybenauts singer invited all her musician friends. The event was rather successful, and it looks like the event will happen again next year and possibly be sponsored. The next one looks to be open to the public.

The weirdest thing about the holidays this year was not seeing any of the bandmates in that span. New Years, I was in Chicago to see Naked Raygun (one of the bands that influenced me the most as far as my songwriting goes, extremely noticeable in the song "Panhandler"), and The Dwarves. The highlight of the evening was meeting Pierre Kezdy, who was the most notable bass player Naked Raygun ever had (recorded on all their LP's except "Throb Throb", and "Basement Screams"). Had a great conversation with him, and he seems to be doing great since his stroke a couple years ago.

                                                    Me with Naked Raygun bassist Pierre Kezdy

For Chrisrmas, I was up in Sturgeon Bay and got a chance to talk to Melanie Jane from Purgatory Hill, and one of the promoters for Steel Bridge Song Fest. We have been confirmed to play for Steel Bridge Song Fest 2013. This will be our 3rd consecutive year in the festival, and my fifth consecutive year participating. At this time, this is the only show we have booked in the future. We are in talks to get a couple more Milwaukee shows booked, and we'll let all know what is forthcoming. Last I heard, Mike's been in talks for a possible tour, but to my knowledge, nothing has come to fruition.

So that's where were at now. In the next year, expect more music, more shows, and more drankin'.