June 2008

We had two fun shows this week here in Colorado – one up in the mountains on Thursday night, and one on Saturday night in downtown Boulder. We were fortunate enough to make some new fans and friends at one, who then came down and joined us for the other… it’s always nice when it works out that way. The show up in the mountains was in Dillon, at a small bar/restaurant with a lot of locals sharing the evening with us. It was our first time playing in the town, but we’ll be sure to go back this winter when the ski season is in full swing. On Saturday night, we played at the b.side in Boulder, formerly known as Trilogy. We really enjoyed ourselves, and shared the stage with our friends in Boulder Acoustic Society. It was a weird night in downtown Boulder, as if the plague had chased everyone out of town. We had about 60 people in the room total for the night (circulating in and out), and the staff told us that we were “by far” the biggest draw in town. Other bars were literally closing their doors at 10pm for lack of business – on a Saturday night. Really strange. Anywho, we did our best to entertain those who made it out, and we had Kailin Yong, BAS’ violinist, join us on Don, View, Eoghan, and Egg. We taped the entire show, though I’ve yet to listen to it to see how the recording turned out. We don’t have the best luck in the world with recording live shows… lightning seems to strike almost every time, whether it’s the ProTools freezing up midway through the set, or the computer being accidentally shut down before saving, or microphones crapping out or weird noises (air conditioners, loud bartenders) interrupting the music, or whatever… so here’s hoping that Saturday’s show is audible. Here’s the setlist from Saturday (the Thursday show was a setlist on-the-fly, so I’ll have to consult with the guys to piece it together from memory):

Park
Heat
Story Of…
List
Marula Binge
Sketch30 (aka “Sunny Clouds” as named by a new fan/friend)
Don*
View From Way Up Here*
Nightlite
ZED
Hazel
IIOKYN
Obey –>
Life During Wartime
Eoghan, Late Saturday*
Turn My Egg*

* with Kailin Yong

The next live show is July 11th in Denver, and in the interim we’re going to be working on a lot of writing and web work. The former will result in some new sketches (MP3s) here for y’all to check out, and the latter will result in all kinds of locations for you to hear and share our music with as many friends, neighbors, pets, and neighbors’ pets as you can. We’re also booking our midwest and northeast shows for October, as well as a Pacific Northwest tour in November. If you have suggestions for venues or towns we should visit, drop us an email!

First off, I hope you all had a nice weekend. Secondly, this will be short, as I have to get up in 4 hours to head to the airport. My cousin was in town visiting from Spain, and he heads out first thing this morning. He’s a fantastic pianist and musician, so it was a nice couple of days discussing/playing/idea-izing with him.

On Friday night we played a great night of music at Owsley’s in Denver. It was one of those moments that just came together really well for us, without us really ‘forcing’ anything to happen. We were booked on the outdoor (small) stage, while Ryan Montbleau Band from Boston was booked on the indoor (larger) stage. Montbleau had an opening act from Salt Lake City – Good Morning Maxfield – and they were awesome. Great music and great guys. As it turns out, though, we got the best deal of the night. When we showed up to load in, we heard that Montlbleau’s band had intended to play outside, but that with the weather forecasters calling for a 40% chance of rain, they opted to set up on the indoor stage. We set up outside and ended up with absolutely gorgeous “summer night” weather all night. We played our first set at 8:30pm, then Good Morning Maxfield played on the indoor stage at 9:30pm (so we stopped). They finished at 10:10pm or so, at which point we played again on the outdoor stage… then Montbleau started his set at about 10:30pm indoors, stopping for a set break at about 11:45pm… at which point we played again outside. The weather was so nice that the majority of the people came out for our sets and/or stayed outside even during the indoor bands’ sets. We had many, many people come up to us after our 2nd set, saying “umm… we were here for Montbleau tonight, but you guys are unbelievable,” etc. We were SO happy to have so many people come up and talk to us between the multiple sets, about how they can’t believe that we’re not “already huge around here” and “holy crap, I’ll be able to go see you guys at Red Rocks and say that I saw you at Owsleys back in the day,” etc. Again, we lucked out by chance on the location, and we made a point of really playing tight, short sets that left the audience wanting more. Here’s how the three setlists turned out:

Set I
Park
List
Don
ZED
New Song (“Sketch 30″/”Years Ago”)
Hazel
Heat
New Song (“Sketch 32” – instrumental)
Nightlite Jesus

Set II
Story Of
View From Way Up Here
Obey ->
Life During Wartime

Set III
Marula Binge
Turn My Egg

We visited with some of the Montbleau guys and talked about their touring plans, etc. If you’re not familiar with them, they basically play 200 shows a year, touring around in a diesel van, from coast to coast. They’re definitely feeling the pain of gas prices (check out the CNN article just added to the Backstage homepage on this topic). Conversations like that really make us feel better and better about our strategy of limited & targeted touring, slow growth, community building, etc… and we all feel really good about how the live show has improved and grown over the last 18 months. It was exactly 18 months ago that we played our first show as a four-piece with Anton, and at that point he wasn’t even an “official member” – he was sitting in as a friend/guest. For 18 months in existence, we’re all really excited about how much we have in place and how much we’ve learned and pushed eachother to hone our skills live and in the writing sessions. And on that topic, we debuted two new songs on Friday night – one we did instrumentally, because it’s super groovy and I (Russ) haven’t had time to really sit down and work on lyrics for it yet. The other one we did with vocals as a full song, though it, too, is lacking the actual lyrics that will actually be found on any album/permanent version of it. The reaction from the crowd was great on both. We really want to start “road testing” new material on a regular basis… writing in the studio, then taking it out quickly to the live setting to let that pressure and atmosphere have its effect on what we do with the song. Sometimes you can “catch lightning in a bottle,” as the saying goes.

Alrighty… I’m off to bed to let thoughts of SoundRabbit and music and live shows and touring and websites and music and lyrics and shows and music and … on and on… swirl around in my head until my eyelids give up the fight. More later… thanks as always for reading, and for your support, and for the emails we get from you.

Note to self: catch a CU football game or two from the Stadium Club this fall. Wow, what a room with a view. The event we played tonight was a bit odd… it was some sort of festival with a Pink Floyd theme, but the organization of it left a bit to be desired. We showed up at Folsom Field and loaded in on the 5th floor, where the Stadium Club is located. It’s a huge space (probably holds close to 1,000), with all glass windows running the length of it on both sides, so you’re surrounded by views of the Rockies and football stadium on one side, and the city of Boulder on the other. It happened to be a gorgeous day, too, so we all enjoyed staring out there while we were playing. Here’s the setlist:

Story Of…
View From Way Up Here
Turn My Egg
Nightlite Jesus
Hazel
Heat
Don
Obey –>
Life During Wartime

The Colorado Daily (CU newspaper) was there covering the show, and we invited them to come out to the June 28th show with Boulder Acoustic Society, so hopefully we’ll have some coverage there as well.

It’s a funny thing, this music thing… there are no guarantees and really no roadmap. One of the other bands on the lineup tonight (young, new band) was asking us how we manage to book so many solid shows, how we made our  album, how we came up with the Backstage idea, etc… thinking us to be quite established. Of course, we’re not, and who knows what “established” means these days anyway. There are 1,000 bands that have done completely different things to create success – some with zero radio play (Dispatch), some with 250+ shows per year (Phish, DMB, Grateful Dead), some with gimmicks (GWAR), some with a combo of clever ideas and luck (see “Ok Go’s” treadmill video – 35 million views so far on YouTube), some with moderate radio play (Guster), some with tons of radio play (Maroon 5). We’ll just keep doing what we’re doing, and try and write better and better songs, and get the live show tighter and tighter, and get in front of as many ears and eyes as we can through the rest of this year. We had two separate groups of people at Avogadro’s the other night told us that we have the “x factor”… the “intangible, ‘it’ thing”… that they were seeing a band that would be “huge” some day. That they’ll be telling people in a few years, “I saw them on a patio at a bar”… etc., etc. We’ve heard that from a lot of people, pretty much since we first started playing together 18 months ago. It definitely makes it easier to keep pushing ahead with those bits of encouragement, especially when we’re all wondering how long it will be before we’re paying the mortgage with this thing.

We’re playing with Ryan Montbleau Band this coming Friday (June 20) in Denver. Should be a great opportunity to get some new ears on our stuff, as Ryan’s music is very compatible with ours, though very different. Overall it should be a great night of music, as we’ll be trading sets with them from 8pm to 2am. If you’re in Denver, we’d encourage you to come out and enjoy a full night of tunes. Tickets are $10 at the door… and our show at the b.side (formerly Trilogy) in Boulder on June 28th is also $10 at the door. The Backstage “VIP guest list” benefit is becoming more valuable by the month.   🙂

If you’d like to be on the guest list for either or both of these shows, please send us an email at soundrabbit@soundrabbit.com and we’ll add you (space on the guest list will be limited at both of these shows, so let us know early!).

More on Friday late night after the show…

Good morning. Guten morgen. Ohio (phonetically-spelled Japanese version).

Last night we played up in Fort Collins, Colorado at Avogadro’s. They’ve got a sick outdoor patio (probably holds around 200+) with a substantial stage and good sound, and, last night, plenty of people ready to hear some SoundRabbit. There happened to be a wedding party from Georgia out there, to whom we distributed copies of TRBAC as wedding gifts after the set. They were recommending us places to play in Georgia and the Carolinas and were overall very happy that we happened to be playing on the night of their shindig. We booked another show there for October 3rd. Here’s how the setlist panned out:

Park
Story Of
Don
Heat
ZED
IIOKYN
List
Around The Bend
Turn My Egg
View From Way Up Here
Nightlite Jesus
Hazel
Eoghan, Late Saturday
Marula Binge
Obey –>
Life During Wartime

Tonight we play up at Folsom Field, which is the football stadium at the University of Colorado here in Boulder. More from there later…