Happy Un-Holidays! Santa Doesn't Like You 2019

Happy Un-Holidays from your friends at Beatnik Turtle -- even though Santa doesn't like you.

Yep, just in time for the holidays, we've put together a new extended version of one of our live show favorites, Santa Doesn't Like You. Hear it now -- available on Spotify, Apple Music, Google, YouTube, and more.

Beatnik Turtle Turns 20! TheSongOfTheDay.com Turns 10!

Happy 2017!

The band is celebrating 2 things this January 1, 2017. First, Beatnik Turtle turns 20 years old January 1st. Second, the band is celebrating the 10th anniversary of TheSongOfTheDay.com.

That's right -- 10 years ago tonight at midnight Beatnik Turtle launched its boldest project to date: releasing 365 songs, one song for each day of 2007.

The site is still alive and well. It's been kickin' tunes weekly since January 1, 2008. And, we're leaving the site "as is" so it's an artifact to the world wide web circa the mid-2000s. So, if you visit it, prepare to step back in time. Before iPhones, VR, AI assistants, self-driving cars, and Uber.

Happy New Year! Here's to a music-filled 2017!

The Best of The Song of the Day -- Completed!

Over 7 years in the making, The Best Of The Song Of The Day is completed and on it's way to digital stores and streaming services everywhere.

With the band back in the US (a couple of them went to Ireland, remember?), they regrouped to revisit, remix, and remaster 44 of the most popular and best geek-rock songs from the band's TheSongOfTheDay.com project. That's 12%of a year’s worth of music, man. 

Here's the official story behind the double album:


Beatnik Turtle, dubbed “remarkably prolific and fiercely independent rock group” by NPR, has created 19 albums and produced countless compositions for TV, commercials, films, podcasts, and theater productions (including Disney, Viacom, and Chicago’s world-famous Second City). But in 2007, they decided to take on a major creative challenge: release one original song for every day of the year. They succeeded, and the result was 365 songs totaling 14 hours 57 minutes and 22 seconds of music that crossed genres, topics, and styles, all based on their horn-powered geek rock sound. 

Beyond the hundreds of thousands of song plays the project generated from it’s TheSongOfTheDay.com site, many of their songs found lives of their own outside of the project. For example, their song and video for “Star Wars (A Film Like No Other)” got played in heavy rotation at StarWars.com and AtomFilms, culminating in SpikeTV highlighting and broadcasting the music video in 2008. Other songs were licensed to documentaries and other creative works, featured on radio stations, videos, and played on podcasts all over the world.

After their massive project finished on December 31st of 2007, ending nearly two years of constant in-studio work and songwriting sessions, Beatnik Turtle decided to take some time off -- a month. Once February of 2008 hit, they were right back at it in the studio recording what was to become their award-winning celtic rock album of Irish pub songs, Sham Rock. 

Since 2008, the band continued to produce. Beyond writing, recording, and releasing new, original music via the Web, Beatnik Turtle took on many other projects, including releasing three music business books with major publishers (Macmillan, Random House) -- including the second edition of The Indie Band Survival Guide (Remixed and Remastered) -- traveling to Europe to perform, composing commissioned theme songs for TV shows, and, of course, writing even more music.

With The Best Of The Song Of The Day, the band wanted to take the time to revisit fan favorites from the project and give the music the studio time and mastering the very best songs deserved. In this album, you’ll find 44 fan and band favorites. But it’s not just a remastered album -- Beatnik Turtle went back to the studio to revisit the songs, energize them with new vocals, additional instrumentation, and other parts that they always wanted to include but didn’t have time to during the brutal schedule the project demanded. This album allowed them the freedom to go back to the masters and “put on the polish” that some of top and most popular songs deserved.

The result is The Best Of The Song Of The Day, containing songs about machines trying to take over the world, odes to coffee and going commando, a nine part rock opera about ordering a pizza, and much, much more.

Buy the best of a year's worth of music, all in one double album: “One band. One year. 365 songs. 44 of the best. 12% of a year’s worth of music.”

Randy Interviewed on The Intrepid Songwriter Show

Randy, our band's sax player, recently got interviewed by The Intrepid Songwriter Show and in part two talks about our band's songwriting approach, TheSongOfTheDay.com project, and more.

In the first part he plugs his and Jason's newest book, the second edition to The Indie Band Survival Guide: Remixed & Remastered (St. Martin's Press). You know, he's an author and "the band writes books" so he's gotta plug it! :-)

New Album Out! "When I Was Your Age"

We're proud to say our latest album, "When I Was Your Age" is officially out in finer digital stores near you (iTunes, CDBaby, and more).

"When I Was Your Age" is an entire album of upbeat Beatnik Turtle geek-rock that looks back to when we were kids -- back when phones were attached to walls and video games were nothing but dots and lines. You know, songs about eating cereal, going to school, getting bullied, and wondering "are we there yet?".

Definitely one of the best Beatnik Turtle albums to date and worth getting for the kid in all of us!

"When I Was Your Age" Album Off To The Printers

We're proud to say "When I Was Your Age" will be made available for digital distribution ASAP. 

ASAP? What does that mean?

Well, it means we found the time to finally roll up our sleeves and finish all the detailed work up. Our fine album about looking back to when we were kids is now in the hands of "the iTunes" and other fine digital distributors. 

Yep, given some cool turn of events -- most notably two of the band members temporarily moving to Ireland and the writing of the second edition of The Indie Band Survival Guide (hitting book stores Sept 4, 2012!) -- it's taken longer than we thought to get some of our backlog of albums out. 

But that's past us now. 

"When I Was Your Age" will be available soon. It's an excellent, thematic album with incredible, melodic songs that sound incredible thanks to the additional magic our mix-master, Tom Roper, lovingly provided. And it's coming soon to a digital store near you!

How Did I Google This?!?

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...

Drunk Man's Junk

You can buy all the whiskies mentioned in the song at Heathrow Duty Free. Sweet!

http://thesongoftheday.com/index.cgi?_w=1&_d=090709

The Good, The Bad, and The Geeky Podcast

One of our songs, Ms. Nutcraker-Sweet, is featured on The Good, The Bad, and The Geeky's annual "Extreme Christmas Extravaganza" podcast. Tons of songs, laughs, and holiday extravagoodness!

Some of the other musical guests include: our buddy JT Shea (on uke of course!) and 2 Drunks & A Guitar. There's also a fun rendition of Jonathan Coulton's Chiron Beta Prime.

Check out the podcast here!

Happy Holidays!

Quick "Beer Beer Beer" Video

Beer! from Bret Gerding on Vimeo.

Just discovered this video. Nice camera work, editing, and soundtrack! The song, "Beer Beer Beer" is from our album "Sham Rock" available at CDBaby and Amazon.

More Radio Plays!

Our album Sham Rock has been picked up by two more radio stations! The radio station at Whitman College (KWCW) in Washington state has songs from the album playing regularly on its Global Gumbo show. The show is a multi-genre collection of world music from all corners of the globe. Also, Sham Rock is on medium rotation at the University of Pittsburgh (WPTS) for the next eight weeks! A big thanks to the music directors at these stations for their dedication to playing independent music! 

Dude, Get Your Free Pizza! ("Pizza: The Rock Opera")

Man, was it 3 years ago already when we wrote, recorded and released our 10-minute opus, "Pizza: The Rock Opera" as part of our TheSongOfTheDay.com project???

Wow. 3 years. Time is ticking away. You know, ticking away the moments that make up a dull day. Next thing you know you'll find 10 years have got behind you, you missed the starting gun, there was some new brick in the wall, and all that stuff...

Like all our music at TheSongOfTheDay.com, we released our song under a Creative Commons license. But few realize that we also bundled up the song, the lyrics, and the album cover into a zip file for anyone to download. It's been buried at our SOTD site for awhile. I think it's time to rectify that.

So, here's the free song, linked below for your enjoyment. Better later than never, I think!

Pizza: The Rock Opera (2007) - FREE!

"It's like all of TheSongOfTheDay.com in one song!"

DUDE, FREE PIZZA!

Pizza: The Rock Opera is Beatnik Turtle's 10 minute opus chronicling one man's struggle to order pizza. We've all been there...except this time it's put to music.Written in one song-writing session in summer of 2007, it debuted at TheSongOfTheDay.com on November 2007 after a few overdubs were added. And, it's now available FREE for download.

Download Pizza: The Rock Opera ZIP File here.

You get: "Pizza: The Rock Opera" in MP3 at 256Kbps (that's like really high quality!) Lyrics & Information Sheet Album Cover No DRM crap - issued under a Creative Commons Music Sharing License (Attribution-NoDerivatives-NonCommercial) Some extra toppings, er...bonus stuff just for being cool

All we ask in return is help us spread the word about Beatnik Turtle, our music, and TheSongOfTheDay.com.

Share the song with your friends, add it to your online players, blog about it or our little band, and help spread the word about Beatnik Turtle, our TheSongOfTheDay.com podcast, and our music.


Hey, enjoy the free pizza!

Sham Rockin' The Radio

That's right! Songs from our album Sham Rock are being played on the radio. WVVS, the station for Valdosta State University in Georgia has added "Beer, Beer, Beer" to its rotation for the next few months. And the Proud To Be Irish show on WVCR based out of New York played "Holy Ground" on a recent episode. Then near the end of October, the Celtic Show on WRFG Radio Free Georgia in Atlanta also played "Holy Ground" on an episode.

Also, the hilarious site HoboTrashcan played "Well Fuck" on their Hobo Radio podcast, episode 152: Where in the world is Lars?. This episode features extensive food discussion (purple potatoes!), reminiscing about first cars, and movie talk. Check out the episode here! Big thanks to Joel for playing us.

As always, you can get your own copy of these songs and support Beatnik Turtle!

Well Fuck (iTunes, Amazon)
Sham Rock album (CDBaby, Amazon)

All of our songs are podsafe, so contact us if you are a podcaster who would like to play any of our music.

What Music Were You Listening To When You Met Your Spouse?

Chip, Beatnik Turtle's trombonist, recently got quoted in the local press here in Chicago. The article was about "what music were you listening to when you met your spouse"?

Chip answered Beatnik Turtle, of course. Check it out here.

Our Junk On The Evil Genius Chronicles!

One of our songs, Drunk Man's Junk, appears on the latest episode of the Evil Genius Chronicles Podcast! This very classy song was co-written by the podcast host Dave Slusher, who is in fact an evil genius. The song is also based on a true story about a kilt-wearing drinker who picked the wrong day to go commando.

This episode also features a song from our friend George Hrab. Check out the podcast episode here.