A New Project

A funny thing happened on the way to releasing all the backlog of material and upcoming albums we've been working on and preparing to release...

- When I Was Your Age (recorded 2009)

- The Best Of TheSongOfTheDay.com (Double-Album!) 

- So Much To Rock About (recorded 2010) 

- Remixes (In A Heavy Syrup) (recorded this year)

A completely new music-related writing project just knocked two of us in the band upside the head (Randy and me, Jason). So, he and I are focusing all our energies that way so we can “give it our all” like we did with our IndieGuide.com site and our books, The Indie Band Survival Guide and The DIY Music Manual.

If you're a musician who follows us, you may have noticed that we’ve put the IndieGuide.com blog, some of our social media (Twitter, Facebook, Google +, etc.), and the free How-To’s on “pause” for the time being. That’s because we’re changing things up going-forward as we share our research from this project. Of course, we’d like to hear your feedback as well as we work to elicit ideas, get your success stories, thoughts, and ideas.

A big thank you to all those who have written to us with their comments, suggestions, and compliments regarding the book. We definitely appreciate it -- it keeps us motivated and it’s the very reason why we’re rolling up our sleeves now and diving into research and writing.

Oh, and in between writing, we'll continue to master and prepare the above albums. There's a lot of us in this band, you know.

It's A Trap!

We saw this cute video...

...and couldn't help but think about "Star Wars (A Film Like No Other)". Third verse, the good Admiral says his immortal line. (It's goes by quickly!)

Beatnik Turtle CDs and MP3s at Your Fingertips

The good folks at CDBaby have extended their store -- allowing us indie musicians to sell directly from our website. All our albums are available in their new widget -- Sham Rock, All In A Day's Work, The Cheapass Album, the 12 albums of TheSongOfTheDay.com, and more!

Go on, give it a try! We need people to test the purchasing functionality. :)

RPMChallenge 2011 -- We Did It!

We just completed our 5th RPMChallenge!

We kept it primarily under wraps -- only because we didn't know if we could pull it off this year with the band split between the US and Ireland. But, about 14 days into February, we rolled up our sleeves and gave it a go after being encouraged by many friends and fellow RPMers.

Besides, how could we break our run of 5 albums?

We couldn't.

So, with the band split across the world, we opted to boot up the hard drives and try our hands at making an album that would require very little recording -- a remix album.

We'd never done a remix album before, so it was quite a challenge. We opted for more of an old school "80s long version" type remixing rather than a "techno dance, thump-thump-thump-thump" type of remix.

To do this, we found that it was far easier to try new things to those songs in our back catalog that were more off-the-beaten path such as The Love Notary, Mr. Brown's Daughter, and Lies Make The Baby Jesus Cry. That said, we also tackled a couple of our more popular songs found on our albums such as others from our albums like Under The Radar and My Cereal.

Looks like we'll be doing what we usually do with these RPM albums -- keep working on them and release them in the future.

All in all -- another fun project! If you're a musician, consider trying your hand at the RPMChallenge next year. We hope to be there for our 6th!!

RPM 2011- To Be Or Not To Be?

With our band split across two continents, we're debating what to do for RPM. We officially surrendered two weeks ago, thinking we wouldn't be able to do anything. But then, a fellow RPMer, Strummindude, suggested we do a remix album. "You've got an awsome catalogue. Use it, tweak it, twist it, abuse it!"

So that got us thinking. And you know what that means.

Behind-the-scenes work is happening at a mad and frantic pace as we see whether we could pull off such a challenge. We only need 10 songs...