Good gravy but were moving along well on this recording thing.  Last Saturday we put in nearly 12 hours in the studio.  We had expected to maybe get in just the basic tracks but instead we plowed through not only the songs for the Summer EP but also got the basic track down for the lead track for the fall EP. Then on Tuesday we got another 5 hours of work done to put us at nearly done and likely being able to mix the EP this upcoming Tuesday.  Pretty impressive by Linus standards.

Running through the tracks here… let’s see… we got most of “The Road” done.  It’s an upbeat poppy psychedelic number that left another band who heard us asking Steve if we were working on a Beatles cover.  I’ll take that as a compliment.  The tracks came together wonderfully and we even got Mlee to add this very nice keyboard part to it on Tuesday that added this sweet quality to the song. The only problem we had was my vocals.  The melody line tends to bend notes up and down in some ways that are somewhat tricky for me.  The problem came in doubling the vocals as my phrasing would never be exactly the same.  Steve went into producer mode and really took me to task commenting that “If you’re gonna Edie Brickell that shit, you gotta hit it right or not at all.” Well, I never got it right that night so this weekend I’ve been having to do something I’ve never had to do and that is actually planning out with a lot more care about how to approach my vocals.   Screaming a Stoner Rock or Punk song is easy; singing, on the other hand, is hard.  Go figure.  With a little help from Clinton and his home studio, we’ll hopefully have it down in time for Tuesday’s final session.

“USA” went pretty smoothly.  It’s an straight-up punk song but the ending was a little tricky for us so we had to do quite a few takes to nail it but we finally got it.  Kudos on Clinton’s Bob Stinson-like solo which still has me cracking-up.  Charlie has to add to the backing vocals and wants to try to add some sax to it but it’s largely in the bag.

“La Jetée” also went pretty well.  It’s a chill number that leaves a lot of space and relies a lot on how we approach the feel.   It turned out pretty swell.  Steve added his dirty John Wetton bass, Charlie added multiple e-bows, and Mlee was kind enough to add in some backing vocals.  Steve or Charlie will be adding some electronics sounds next week but that one is pretty much done as well.

Things went so well that we even got in “C is for Cthulhu.”  Well, maybe not the whole thing but the basic track of Clinton’s guitar, Larry’s drums, and even a scratch vocal track.  The one challenge was to get it under 6 minutes for a 7″ and, as luck would have it, it tracked at 5:50 – just under the wire!  Once we tie up the summer EP mastering in a couple of weeks, we’ll be able to start work on this and whatever we choose to add for the B side.

So there you go.  A lot of hard work but very productive.  Cross your fingers folks and hopefully we’ll have mix-downs done this Tuesday so that we can send off the masters to United Record Pressing before the end of May.  If so, this EP should be out in July.

Cheers until next week and here is a slide show from the two sessions…

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I thought about posting a bit of video I took of Clinton running over his new Stoner rock epic in drop-C, “C is for Cthulhu”, which we will be recording this Saturday but then figured, bah, I don’t want to spoil the surprise for you guys. There is an urge to share what you are working on because you are pretty excited about it but, ya know, you put all this effort into writing, arranging, and recording so why just sluff out some sketchy sketch for folks when in a few months down the line, they’ll get a completed, definitive version?  Helk, I remember listening to Neko Case on NPR not long ago going through some song that was incomplete and remember how, even as someone who owns all her albums and enjoys her work, I was just all “No, that’s OK, Neko. I can wait.”

So, instead, I figured we’d have a little fun here and ask you guys to imagine what you think the song will sound like.

No, We’re serious!  Send us your lyrics and ideally, if you are musically inclined, a demo mp3 of your version of the song.  If we like yours the best, we’ll give you a copy of the 7″ along with a T-Shirt when it comes out in the fall, include you in the video, and maybe, if we are bored enough and have enough time, even record your version of the song for shits and giggles.

So what will you have to work with?  OK, well, you have the title already.  I mean C’mon, “C is for Cthulhu” just writes itself doesn’t it?   Oh and don’t feel obliged to stick with the Stoner Rock style; if you want to do a Country song or a Rap song, that’s cool too.   Just go for it.   Also, you have a pic of Clinton singing and Charlie working the keyboards to inspire you.  And here below is a poorly Photoshopped image of Cthulhu taking a dump that I made last week when I was bored.  Oh and below, though you shouldn’t feel bound by this structure, is page three of my tablature of Clinton’s song showing the structure of the song to help you guys imagine what the song will be like.  Nope you don’t get the first two pages showing you the chords and notes (that would be cheating) but I will tell you that IR = Intro Riff, VR = Verse Riff, CR = Chorus Riff, BR = Bridge Riff, and C = Coda.

Anyhow, have at it and send your entries to hellokitty2399 (at) Gmail with the subject line ”C IS FOR CTHULHU CONTEST”

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Steve, who was out the rehearsal before, added some amazing distorted, feedback-laced bass on “La Jettee” which really helped round that song out and “Road” and “USA” have been largely worked out for some time so I would expect with one more rehearsal on our plate before next week’s session, we should be able to knock these tracks out pretty easily…at least the basic tracks. Meanwhile, “C is for Cthulhu” is coming together pretty well. It was raining last Saturday so I took some time to transcribe all of Clinton’s riffs (see pic). The one issue I see right now is that the demo runs 6:30 but a 7″ can only really handle 6 minutes so we may need to trim it by 30 seconds. Luckily, Clinton already trimmed a bit of it on Tuesday after we ran through it with vocals so we’re on our way and, hopefully, we’ll get it down to the time we need.

It should all be a lot of fun. Stay tuned. We’ll update you guys next week on how it all goes.

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First off, fans of our heavy stoner rock fare will have to wait until the fall for the heavy to drop but meanwhile this summer, we have a 7″ EP coming out called “Find What You Love and Let it Kill You” which will be lighter fare. The title, for those of you wondering, comes from some advice I got from Texas legend, Kinky Freidman and he was kind enough to not only let me quote it for the EP title but also gave his blessing to quote it in the lyrics of one of the songs. So, thanks Kinky. The tracks will consist of three short songs – a garage/punk track called “USA“, a poppy psych track that had the working title of “George Harrison” for a while but currently has the name “The Road” which may change, and a mellow folky track called “La Jetee” which takes the Chris Marker French film classic as a kind of jump-off point. (We hope to have Mlee contribute backing vocals on this track which would be pretty cool.) If you’ve not seen the film, you can see it on Vimeo.

Click here to view the embedded video.

This 7″ will have a limited run of only 100, will be pressed on red vinyl, and (while I had hoped for a first week of July release date) United Records said if we get the masters to them by the end of May, then we’re really looking at the end of July. Not sure if we will have a video for this project. More than likely, we will save that when we pull out the stops in October.

October 31 that is. That’s when we drop “C is for Cthulhu” which will be our second 7″ EP of the year. This one will have a larger run of 200 and will definitely have a video with it. Stevie Sims, of Burn the Boats who you last saw in the “Assault on the Vault of the Ancient Bonglords” video will take over on lead vocals. It’s (appropriately enough) a monster of a Clinton Heider track and has so many parts that I myself plan to hunker down this weekend and rehearse all the changes until I go stark raving mad. Not sure yet what the other track or tracks will be for this one but we’ll let you know as we go along.

Oh yes and we will make these available as digital tracks as well a vinyl.

Until next time
Keep on rockin’ in the free world!

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Our last two practices were perfect examples of what they bring to our music.  In one practice, I had a new song I had written out for the upcoming EP.  It’s a pretty chill song written on an acoustic guitar which was arguably somewhat dour and so it needed some balance.  I actually couldn’t imagine it with drums but Larry started playing and when he hit the bridge he added this beat that really added this lovely hopeful feel to the song that was exactly what was missing.  Not only did Larry move the song in a different direction but it also helped shape the lyrics for the bridge which I had been having trouble with.  Genius!

In the other rehearsal, Steve was out because he was busy closing on a new home (congratulations Steve & Shelly).  That meant no bass and while we were able to run through the songs, his not being there made the songs sound… well… stupid.  Without his frequencies filling in the low-end and without his notes playing off of what we were playing, everything sounded thin, incomplete, and hollow.  Also, the feel that Steve adds to the songs are just so critical to what’s happening that the material loses all its heart without him there.

So that’s the thing about truly working as a band.  Each member is essential to the band and who we are.  You couldn’t take away Steve or Larry and expect us to function any more than if you were to rip out your heart and brain.  So, here’s to our bassist and our drummer – Steve and Larry – without whom we’d be lost. Skål!

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If you ask  any one of us, we’ll likely just shrug at the idea of what our “sound” is.  We really have no clue.  We just kind of do it.  Our albums seem to have a feel to them sure but that feel can vary from album to album.  Put “Ashes in the Bong of God,” “Horns of Ammon”, and “Bag of Hammers”  side by side and they are quite different in tone.  People who may enjoy the lighter fare of HOA may find the heaviness of BOH off putting and the stoned out jams of ABG may just confuse both of the other two fans.

Lately though, because of BOH, we’ve found ourselves in the Stoner Rock category in many people’s minds.  I love Stoner Rock, so that’s totally cool but it also puts us in an odd place when we veer from that.  Take the upcoming summer release.  That’s gonna be as far away from Stoner Rock as you can get then, only a few months later, we’re gonna release a brain crushing heavy track about C’thulhu in drop C.  Will the Stoner Rock crowd abandon us in the summer?  And then, when we return to the heavy stuff in October, will it come off as calculated and/or be referred by this same group of fans as a “return to form?”  Will the folks who may like the summer release be off put by the fall release?  Etc.

In the end, it’s a moot point because we just kind of do stuff and see where the chips fall.  We don’t tour, we lack a cohesive easily marketable sound, and we sure as hell don’t have any plan to conquer the world (with the exception of Clinton’s obsession with Alien Arena). Locally speaking, we’ve been in Houston for 20 years now and everyone has seen us so many times that it’s no surprise that we hardly draw these days.  So, in the end, it’s kind of simple curiosity to wonder how people react to our amorphous nature because it’s not like we have people pounding on our door waiting for the new material.

Who we are is reflected in what the band is and what are we?  Just a bunch of dorky dudes from Houston with day jobs and that’s what we’ve always been – dorks.  That’s a point of pride.   We’re not rock stars, just dorks.    And even if we were total calculating business obsessed douchebags in the Gene Simmons mold, we’re frankly too stupid and stubborn to do things any other way but to follow our whims and be what we are.

So to get to the original question of what is our sound? The answer is it’s the sound of dudes getting together once a week, occasionally with friends, drinking beer and other mind influencing substances, and playing music together for fun.

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Now, How these will these new songs be released?  Well, that is an interesting question.

We have had a lot of fun making videos to go along with the songs and also we have come to abhor the long breaks between albums.  It seems we build all this momentum only to lose all of it as we hunker down for another three years working on the next album.   So we thought about it and have come to this crazy scheme to move past the album every three years or so cycle.

The idea is to release a few songs – two or three at a time – every three months as a digital single and one song would be picked as a video.  Which means you’d get a few songs and a video every three months.  Then, the songs would be compiled as one album – kind of like say in the “Singles Going Steady” mode.   Inspiration for the video idea should go to Jef Withonef of The Ghost of Cliff Burton whose early critique on the rough edit of the video to “Crom” was indispensable.  His ambition for his own band was to make a video each month but that’s a bit too ambitious for us so we took his idea and scaled it back a bit to something more workable for us.  It should prove to be a lot of work but also a lot of fun and we wouldn’t disappear into the studio for years on end.

So what do we have on the plate right now?

Well first up, I have three songs that are thematically linked that I am shooting to have released by July 8th.  They range from pop-punk, to pop-psych, to the folky.  So, don’t expect heavy-ass Stoner Rock from those songs – it’s the kind of stuff Steve jokingly calls “The Many Moods of Linus.”

After that, the big one is Clinton’s epic “C is for Cthulhu.”.  We have it planned for the fall because I’m looking at some stop-motion animation and a lot of crazy stuff for the video. Not only would October give us enough time to do it right but we’d also release it just before Halloween which would be pretty appropriate.  Clinton has another untitled rocker we’ve been working on which has some resemblance to GRRRL! from “Ashes in the Bong of God.”  Charlie has one called “Ghost Witch” as well that is pretty RRRRRRROCCCKKKK!  So a mellow summer release and a heavy fall release.  Of course, we have a lot of stuff kicking around the floor in various stages of completion as well that we are busy trying to assemble but those are the ones I can remember at the moment.

Short of it is that while we may be posting less here and on our Facebook, it will be merely a hiatus.  If our plan works out as we hope, you will see more frequent releases each year and shows with a more varied set-list.

In the meantime, please enjoy Clinton’s lyrics to “Dwarf Planets.”  We were joking about doing a show at the planetarium and the discussion turned to a song about the dwarf planets and well this is kind of what we end up when we get into these discussions.  The sad thing is that stuff like starts off as a joke then actually becomes a real song.

Eris
Paranoid Asteroid
Discord is thy name
Astronomers
Gutting one another in their labs
PLANET?  NO!  DWARF PLANET? YES!  DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE

Haumea
What the hell are you
You are shaped like a potato
A Space Potato
SPUDNIK 
You have two moons but why?  They are not moons.
BECAUSE YOU ARE NOT REALLY A PLANET SO HOW CAN YOU HAVE MOONS BITCH?

Pluto
You used to be one of the Nine
Now, fallen, you wait upon your icy throne
to wreak vengeance on astrophysicists
by confusing people eternally

Ceres
You are named after cereal
That isn’t really that cool
But like the Death Star, you are no moon
And that is cool
But you don’t have Darth Vader or a superlaser
So you are not cool any more
You are just a big piece of rock

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I know a lot of people bitch about SXSW. “It’s too hipster! It’s too commercial! It’s too much work! Austin sucks! The People suck!” Blah Blah Blah! I say FIE unto ye naysayers!

Look, I ain’t saying that there isn’t stuff to bitch about and all that but if you take SXSW on its own terms, it can still be fun…a lot of work but a lot of fun.  Trust me, if I could have fun at this last SXSW, anyone can.  I honestly had a lot of personal misgivings about returning to SXSW when we were asked to showcase again (our 4th time).  I won’t get into any specifics but they have nothing to do with having had a bad time previously - quite the opposite.  To make matters worse, I arrived much later on Thursday because the maid of one of the tenants in my 8-plex (yes, someone hires a maid for a one bedroom apartment) decided to take out my laundry and replace mine with his.  Then finally, by the end of the day a chicken sandwich from Buc-ee’s made me ill.  So let’s wrap that up as emo, cranky, and violently ill.  You’d think that would be a recipe for a bad SXSW but no, it wasn’t and that’s my point in bringing all that up – SXSW is fun if you can somehow get past being a jaded, uptight, snob and just have fun. 

In SXSW, you roll or you don’t.  We rolled.

The show itself went great.  We had a good-sized, energetic crowd and we returned the favor with an equally enthusiastic and energetic set.  I’m pretty critical of our performances but I walked away pretty damn happy even with all the mishaps.  And there were a lot of those.  For example, the band before us, Austin’s Boy + Kite, played over its time which is a pretty self-absorbed and dick move on their part but I don’t think it was intentional.  I have to assume that this was their first festival and maybe they just didn’t think beyond themselves at that moment.  If you play enough festivals, you learn pretty quickly that it’s not just about you and that you have to consider the bands as well. Whatever the case, they cut easily into our set and we nixed “Cannonball” but I knew we’d lose at least one more and, as it turned out, we lost 3 songs (about half of our 40 minute 8-song set).   Half of that was the other band running over, the other half was setting up our gear (which we hauled down from a flight of steps onto an 9X9 stage) with an already reduced set-up time.  The epic fail came when we forgot to turn on our lights!  Yes, after all that hassle of bringing them and setting them up, we totally forgot in the frenzy of setting up gear to just plug it in and had a pretty good laugh over it after.  Oh yes, and we started getting all these phone calls and messages from people not being able to get in.  Turns out that the legendary Steve Earle was playing upstairs and this was a badge only event or some such thing and the doormen were just turning away people.  Eventually we got that cleared-up but if you tried to get in and were turned away, sorry.  Just one of those SXSW things.

So no trippy light show, a truncated set, people being turned away in error, us playing on the ground with our cases and crap haphazardly strewn in front of us, and you know what?  We still played with a joyful abandon until our brains were literally reduced to a gray, pulpy goo from playing so damn loud! I broke a string on the first song, I fell of the edge of the stage, and I’m sure we fucked-up a note here or there but we took that shit down…  “Assault”, “Waiting for the Axe”, “She did not Know”, and “Crom” just plowed through in a way that would do Rowdy Roddy Piper proud and then to cap it off Mlee came on stage and sang “Rust” and blew us into outer space.  Then we asked how we were doing on time and the soundman made the “cut-it” gesture. OK, Done! 

Of course, the crowd expressed their displeasure vocally about the short set and asked us to play more but when people came up to me and asked us to play more I just had to explain that we had to be considerate to the bands that followed and they understood.  I for one would have loved to have played on.  There was a new song we were going to play and, given the subject matter, SXSW would have been THE prefect place to debut it.  Then of course, the energy in the room was such that “Stonebringer” would have been an awesome coda but in the end, closing with “Rust” was no less a great way to close and leaving people wanting more is a nice way to end matters.  So it was a great experience and I can’t say we had a bad time in any way. In fact, this may have been our best SXSW experience as a showcasing band. 

Thanks to all who came to see us and kudos to the excellent SXSW crew at the Parish Underground as well as Audible Treats, who were hosting the festival (super awesome as always).  Turns out that Gavin of Audible Treats has this band Lightouts who were playing.  I was too sick to stick around but the rest of the guys caught them and came back with thumbs way up on their live show.  Those of us that weren’t sick were able to catch some other shows like ST37 but being under the weather, I headed back to the cabin to rest up for the next day.

As for the rest of my SXSW?… Well, like I said earlier, I was kind of ill so I missed out on a lot but I soldiered through and I’ll just sum it up how it turned out with this image below. 
Party Hard, my friends. 

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For the MP3 downloads, please use this password:  ELOAE

Direct link to the Blog of show: http://theelectriclounge.blogspot.com.br/2013/03/who-was-she-maypole-daughter-of.html

The entire show directly can be heard here:
http://www.mediafire.com/?u5numcn4a00euc1

(download password ELOAE)

The interview segment only (which has a longer interview and an extra song) can be heard here:
http://www.mediafire.com/?92i123ddkdrquip

(download password ELOAE)

If you want to check them out on Facebook, here is their link:
www.facebook.com/TheElectricLoungeShow

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Here is the poster:

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