orlando

last night we played at a bar/club downtlown called 'the liquid cellar'. it was fun. beau couldnt make it, so we had a fill-in bassist for the night, justin. he rocked! we had a show in nashville the night before, so we drove straight from the show, 14 hours through the night, so it felt great to sleep in today. no show tonight, but we play at 'the social;, here in orlando tomorrow night. i also did a little radio interview for a local indierock station. that was fun. it was with neil and kate from dirt poor robins too.
-pete

carey ott

our last three shows have been opening for an amazing singer-songwriter carey ott and his fantastic band. he's got a song on the teeveee show 'grey's anatomy' so maybe you've already heard him. but if you haven't check out his album 'lucid dream'.

the shows have been cool. playing in and around nashville, which is great cause most of the band is from nashville. we had a little plastic football which we would would toss around in parking lots after sound checks. buuuut... josh, with his bionic arm, threw the ball on top of the venue. sooo no more football for us.

in related news, its freaking cold in nashville. i can almost hear los angeles laughing at me.

-pete

mixin

almost done with mixdown here in oklahoma. neil and i drove here from kentucky, and its been almost two weeks of staight mixing. ug!

but everything is sounding great. what a difference a proper mix makes. the songs have a lot more presence and punch now. i'll throw some of the new mixes up on myspace as soon as i can.

-pete

la, orlando, nyc

just got back yesteray from a whirlwind trip to l.a., orlando, and nyc. i had a blast! i got to meet the new band astonish signed, 'aranda'. man those guys rock! and they're super nice people too! we hung out until 3am each night singing every song off the 'white album'.

l.a. --> we had some meetings with video people about videos for 'sweep the leg', and other stuff.

orlando --> did a greenscreen video shoot for the astonish website. each band did a performance of one song, as well as some quick messages for the site.

nyc --> met with an image consultant and a publicist. saw 'spamalot', the monty python broadway musical. got up way too early for my flight.

so all in all, the trip was a lot of fun. and very encouraging.

and now its back to recording lead vocals!

-pete

lead vocals

started recording lead vocals today. we started with 'sweep the leg'. it was a little weird because we just changed the melody for the chorus, and also we tried to find a little tag to sing at the end of the chorus.. so those things were new, which made it hard to get them to sound natural. but i think we got a pretty good sound, all in all.

-pete

production

so we're nearing the completion of recording the instrumentation for the album. then its onto vocals. i'm really psyched with the way everything is turning out. neil is the man! he's maintaining great energy in each of the songs. simple but effective arrangements. funky when it needs to be.

we're off to l.a. in a few weeks for a meeting about a video, and then on to florida for a greenscreen video shoot for the astonish website. then new york for a meeting with some management and public relations people.

exciting funtimes coming up. word.

-pete

vocals

well, its crunch time for getting the vocal demos done. which means, i gotta have all my lyrics finished. in my usual way, i had a bunch of half finished songs, and very few actually finished ones. but over the past few days i'm starting to wrap em up. now i've got only four songs left that need final lyrics. oddly, three of them are old 'no more kings' songs that we are reworking. 'god breathed', 'umbrella' and 'being green', (the hulk song).

i think we're gonna end up with six of our old songs on this album, with eight new songs.

-pete

pre-production

well, we're about a month into pre-production of the album. we've got about 13 songs in various stages of completion. today we ran out and did a quick photo shoot for astonish's website. probably we'll use the photos for our myspace page too. two birds, one little stone.

one of the problems we're running into, is trying to revamp some of our older songs. in almost all cases, its the lyrics that need overhauling. but a few of the songs needed a bit of an update musically. we're really trying to push the songs in a more funk-groove direction. i'm excited about them. i'm getting anxious to record vocals.

-pete