SoundRabbit

Spent the last three nights hanging out with The Infamous Stringdusters at their shows at the Ogden here in Denver. Such talented and nice guys, I love seeing the success they’re having. The Ogden is a 1,600 capacity room, and they were there for three nights. A big jump from when I saw them at the 500 capacity Fox Theater in Boulder just a couple of years ago.

Most of you know that they had us out to play their Festy fall festival in Virginia last October, which was a blast. The last three nights (Thurs, Fri, Sat), I cruised to the shows and then headed backstage to relax after the sets, and eventually out to the tour bus for the late night/early morning hang. Fun to see that side of things and to chill with them. On Friday night, I was sitting in the green room backstage for the aftershow party, and a guy sat down next to me. We got to talking, and after 40 minutes or so, he had to split. During the conversation, we covered a dozen topics, including that I was a musician, but we didn’t get into it any deeper than that, and I hadn’t mentioned the band name. As he got up to leave, he said, “hey, what’s the name of your band, so I can check it out?” I said, “SoundRabbit”… he stopped and had a funny look on his face. He said, “SoundRabbit? Did you guys play at St. Lawrence University with Keller Williams?!” Caught me by surprise, to say the least. I said, “yep!” and he called his fiancee over to meet me, both of them saying that they were at that show and that they dug the set, etc. That show was 5 years ago, almost to the day. What a small world… love it. Funny to think that we’re planting these seeds over the years, with tours, etc… people out there who may have seen us once, years ago… and still remember it. We’re a tiny little group, so it’s fun to hear things like that.

Last night I left the bus at 2am just as the boys were pulling off to drive to Salt Lake City… we’re having a bunch of snow today and they hit it in Wyoming today, where the interstate was closed. The adventures of life on the road. Definitely try and catch them if you see them coming to your town… phenomenal show.

Awesome to see these guys killing it. Well deserved, 12 years in the making…

Happy New Year, all. Wow… 2014… 7 years since we hosted our first concert as a quartet at the old Trilogy Wine Bar & Lounge in downtown Boulder. Lots of experiences, trips, people met, songs written, progeny arrivals, and so on. We’re really lucky to have lives full of love and music, and we hope the same for all of you this year.

We’re very (very) close to launching our newest endeavor. We’ve been testing it for the last couple of months, trying to get everything sounding just right, working out the kinks, etc. We hope you’ll dig it. As you may have seen on Facebook late last year, we were trying to think of a way to “pipe” you all in to our little RabbitDen studio, and I think we’ve figured it out. There will be more news on that soon – an invitation to join us for a weekly series, etc. Can’t wait to be able to hang with y’all on a regular basis. You’ll have the opportunity to invite your friends into the space as well, which in our minds is a way to invite them into the SR family.

As we all start the year and perhaps reevaluate what we’re spending much of our limited time on this planet doing, I thought this video was pretty awesome. Talk about a unique interest and “job”…

Catch you all soon…

Hey there… 3:45am and I’m about to crawl into bed, but wanted to put up a quick post here, as it’s been a week or more since the last one. Just got home from night #1 of The Infamous Stringdusters’ 2-night stand at the Boulder Theater. Fantastic show, the guys are really sounding incredibly tight, including some nice new 5-part harmonies I hadn’t heard before and some new tunes off of their upcoming record. Cruised backstage after the show to hang out and then checked out their tour bus. Really nice digs… and it’s really fun to see what that level of music career looks like (at the least the post-show backstage/bus part). They’ve cultivated a fantastic scene of super nice, down to earth people… their crew, the band, friends and family, all in all a comfortable and welcoming bunch. Neat to see and to dream about having one day… they set a great example. Hope you’re all doing well and staying warm tonight – Old Man Winter is definitely making his presence known here this week. I’ll be back at the Boulder Theater tomorrow (Sun) night for the second show, can’t wait.

And now, a talking boat.

Hi, All – writing you from a flight from Denver to Phoenix. Going to catch some warmer temps for a couple of days. I land at 11:40pm Arizona time, should take about 45 minutes to get my rental car and then drive to my hotel, which has a nice outdoor pool that I’m hoping to take a dip in tonight if it’s still open. Spending most of this flight thinking about you guys and all the plans we (the band) have for the next year. We’ve hung a video camera from the ceiling in the corner of our music studio space, we’ve run lines for each instrument and vocal to a recording rig… and we did a test run last night of tracking the whole thing, which went really well. At minimum, we’ll be giving y’all a glimpse into the studio each week, by releasing video and audio to you here on the Backstage site. Ideally, though, we’re trying to figure out the best way to ‘pipe’ you into the room to be with us live during the writing and jamming sessions. We got a TV screen set up last night on a shelf by the door… going to try and find the best web camera for the purpose, and we’ll see if we’ll all have a weekly date together to hang out and make some music. Hope some of you would be into the idea – it’s probably yet another ‘first’… I know bands do live show streams, but I don’t know how many share the rehearsal access with their communities. Can’t wait to figure it out. Hope y’all are doing well wherever you are down there. I always get a window seat on these flights, to look down at the little specks of city lights and interstates and gain some perspective. We’re 15 minutes from landing… catch up with you fine people later.

Mario, Anton, and I were at the studio space the other morning… I decided to make a quick little tour for y’all to check out while they worked on a new tune. Nightlite Jesus, Einstein, and a bunny dollar bill…

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve listened to this song in the last 15 years. Counts in the hundreds for sure. One of the most perfectly-nailed emotional vocal performances ever captured. The build near the end is incredible. I don’t know how his mom could ever listen to this without falling to pieces, given what happened to him.