Thank You Deckfight!

Deckfight has put up a review of The Beached Margin/Done Waiting dual EP's! Thanks, folks, for the hard work you do!

A Reason To

While finishing up the debut IWTDI record, John found himself wandering around Warrior Sound, strapped to a guitar. It was at that moment that "A Reason To" was born.

Finishing up the first record wasn't like the end of our more recent recording process. We were writing new songs pretty soon after finishing our self titled debut (We played Get in Line, available here, at our CD release party). Either "A Reason To" wasn't ready, or new songs were coming in so quickly that John worked on the song mostly by himself until much later. We had long since finished recording the first chunk of Horror Vacui when the rest of us got to hear it.

As soon as we started working on it, we knew that it would definitely be included on the record. A more straight up pop song, "A Reason To" features more of John and Rachel's sweet harmonies. The catchy melody and the driving sound of the song has made it a staple in our live performances for the past several months.

Of course *I* like the song, but I am particularly fond of the second half of the second verse and the bridge. And we're ready for the Wilson-Phillips comparisons, assuming I'm not the only one who hears a similarity. As always, we're more than excited to share this song with you in advance of our kicking CD Release Party on October 10. You can listen by going to our player in the right sidebar.

And keep your eyes peeled! Subscribe to the blog or check back frequently. We will be focusing on the great bands we'll be playing with at the CD Release, featuring pictures from our trip to Long Island, catching up with the Sponsored Songs Program, and much more!

Live Action!

I Was Totally Destroying It from Mann's World on Vimeo.

Many thanks to Karen Mann for shooting and posting video of our recent show at the Rollergirls afterparty! Karen has been a fixture of the local music community for years having been in the seminal gal-punk band Chew Toy and writing for the Independent Weekly and now her fantastic blog. Thanks, Karen for kicking all that ass!

The Ocean!

As you know by now, the new IWTDI record is called Horror Vacui. Also known as cenophobia, Horror Vacui is a fear of open spaces. This week's featured song, the album closer, while not the title track per se, might as well be. Perhaps we could call The Ocean the albums descriptive track!

I will probably say that every track we preview is one of my favorite tracks. Duh! That's why we're featuring them! So let me skip that declaration and go right into why I like it. I think the dynamics of this song are more apparent than in many others. I absolutely love the intertwining and overlapping of vocal and instruments. Everything is simple in this song, but it all goes so well together. There's a lot of flow to this song.

My favorite part of the song starts at 2:07. We really tried to create an eerie interlude for this already somewhat eerie song. The band might disagree, but I find the combination of Rachel's piano, the stick-tocks (I made that up!), and the creaking and moaning to be dare I say moving. It was meant to be creepy, maybe even some sort of descent into madness, being trapped in the one situation you find most disconcerting. By the way, those creaks = my fat ass leaning back and forth on my drum stool. Don't tell anyone.

The Ocean is a fitting ending for the album, both sonically and thematically. Just like with the other songs, we loved making it! We hope you enjoy it as well! Click on the player on the right sidebar to play the song! Also, Beneath You All The Way is now available at myspace!

Look Out Brooklyn!

We want to thank everyone who came out to Tir Na Nog last night and helped us celebrate the beautiful brutality America’s rollergirls. All the bands were great, and the folks at Tir Na Nog were generous and accommodating as usual. Good times were had by all!

SO

Even though we’ve been rocking for nearly three years, we have avoided traveling to the northeast. Booking New York, Boston, DC, etc can be really tough, and the tour can be expensive. Tolls, parking, security for your gear and lodging can drive a band crazy. Shows tend to be hit or miss. Crowds can be really ambivalent. One could reasonably argue that there’s no point in playing the big cities of the East at all unless or until there’s a big draw on the bill.

BUT

Here we go! We’ll be playing The Trash Bar in Williamsburg, Brooklyn tonight. Then we’ll be doing a two day stint in Amityville, Long Island. We will be at The Broadway Bar in Amityville Monday and Tuesday nights. These are apparently theme nights. Monday night we’re supposed to wear red, Tuesday is formal night. On one hand, it kinda sucks to have to think about wardrobe when you’re going out of town, but we’re gonna look GOOD!

We wanna give a shout out to our old friend Paul Cadena and his band The Sleeping for hooking us up with these Long Island shows. You may remember Paul from IWTDI predecessor En Garde. He’s an absolute sweetheart who went back home to Long Island a few years ago and took his rock skills to a whole new level. We’re looking forward to seeing him.

I will say this, for what it’s worth. I love Brooklyn. I’m not always very comfortable there, as apparently smiling at strangers is out of fashion, but there’s a great feel in Brooklyn, and I’m looking forward to hanging out there. But I’m MOST excited about Strong Island. I’ve never visited but I’ve come to have certain, shall we say expectations about the cultural offerings of this fine place. Don’t let us down, Amityville! The band is armed with cameras. We will report back!

Carolina Rollergirls!

Come out to Tir Na Nog tonight! There will be four bands rocking for you at The Carolina Rollergirls' Wicked Wheels of the East Tournament! Spend your afternoon and early evening watch one of the most exciting sports known to man. Then shower up and come on out to 218 S. Blount St. in Raleigh for some sweaty-ass rock and roll!

From the facebook event page:

Pink Flag will kick it off with their all-woman Punk-pop fun. West Virginia's The Demon Beat are next with Indie/bluesy Punk that wowed people back in July. I Was Totally Destroying It are in the hammock slot with their duel vocals and guitar Inidie-pop. Closing out the night is our road-tested heroes Red Collar with their passionate Blue-collar ethics backed by sweat drenched leave it on the floor indie/punk/rock. This night will rock your face off!

Five bucks gets you more rock than you could ever hope for, plus a special cocktail called "The Rolling Red Flag of The Demon Destroyer", designed by Nobel Prize winning mixologist Chris Tamplin. You WILL have fun or the rollergirls will hurt you. And not the way John Cougar Mellencamp likes it.

Beneath You All The Way!

Horror Vacui was done, finished, in the can, ready to go! We had twelve songs. We were pretty happy with everything having done quite a bit of tweaking. We had spent months working on this record, trying to figure out which songs should go where, which songs should go on the vinyl. But it was done! I had four or five CDR's ready to send out to people for consideration, for advice, etc.

And then stupid Curtis wrote some lick, some part, and next thing I know, I come to practice and we have a new song! Normally a new song is great, but in this case we were just coming out of a songwriting phase that led to a couple dozen new tracks. We were trying to sort of move into a phase where we would focus on performing and promoting the new stuff, so the timing for a catchy new song was kinda bad. Instead of keeping the new song on the back burner until we record again, we decided to take a few days and hammer it out in the studio and see where things go.

Enter Beneath You All the Way. Obviously we liked the song and the recording enough to put it on the record. Not only that, but we liked it so much we decided to open the whole album with it! A pretty straightforward track, we had a lot of fun toying with it to see what we could do to make it stand out as a song that sets the tone for the album. I'm particularly fond of how Rachel sounds when it gets real quiet towards the end. Mitch and Al at Warrior Sound did a terrific job squeezing us in and making this song happen. We're really excited about sharing it with you, and we hope you enjoy Beneath You All the Way!

As usual, click the player on the right sidebar to play the track. Also, Come Out Come Out has been posted to myspace, so feel free to listen again here or cruise on over to myspace!

Windows Media Guide!

There has been no shortage of talk surrounding the Sponsored Songs Program, an experiment brought to you by Reverbnation, Microsoft Windows, and 1001 bands, known and unknown, local and not local. The program is in it's final few weeks, and from our end, we can honestly say that the vast majority of people who downloaded our song have been people that we have sent to the download site. This means we asked friends to help us out and they did (thank you friends!). It also means that there weren't very many people who happened upon our music and downloaded it.

Such is the nature of experiments. The downside is that a lot of the time you don't get the outcomes you hope for. The upside is that you learn as much if not more from the let downs than you do from the successes. This is how we got post-it notes and teflon. So while any bump we saw with RN from the program was short lived and somewhat artificial, it opened the door for new ideas.

A few weeks ago we got an email from Jed Carlson at Revebnation. They asked us if we'd like to submit our sponsored song to Windows for inclusion at the Windows Media Guide website. The terms wouldn't change from the sponsored songs thingy. No new money, but potential exposure. We submitted our song thinking that we could see how it would affect the numbers we (I) had been watching for a few months.

I don't know how many bands submitted, but we were chosen, and Microsoft has been featuring us at their media guide for just about the past week. We mentioned the inclusion on facebook and twitter but we didn't push it nearly as hard as we had the original sponsored song since all of our friends had already downloaded it, and we really wanted to see what kind of attention it would bring from the outside.

Feel free to take a look at the site. Hit up the media guide, mouse over "music" and select "free downloads". Or just click here. It's an old song, nothing you haven't heard before if you've been listening to us for the past few years. But it's an interesting idea. We will report back when it's all done and let you know how well it worked.

Requests for a free copy of Windows 7 as compensation have gone unreplied.

Come Out, Come Out!

It's time! We're very pleased to share the lead single from our new album, Horror Vacui! We had a lot of fun recording this song. To listen, simply click play on the player located on the right sidebar

Most of the time in the studio we have a good idea of how the song goes, what we want to do with it, what it should sound like in the end. With Come Out, Come Out, we took a different direction. John and Hep each recorded two tracks using makeshift drum combinations. There were lots of group vocals, a lot of fun.

There were countless directions we could take with the song, and we decided to enlist the skills of the Hercules Europe Brass, who you might know from seeing The Wusses or D-Town Brass play around town over the years. Also, Justin Pierre from Motion City Soundtrack loved the roughs we sent him and contributed the lyrics and melody that we used in the bridge. Perhaps one of the most collaborative songs of the new album, Come Out, Come Out is catchy and upbeat.

We hope you like it! Leave a comment and tell us what you think! And don't forget, you can get a free copy of Horror Vacui at our CD Release party October 10th!

CD Release Party Is GO!!!!!

On October 10th, we will be rocking the Cat's Cradle in Carrboro with four great bands, and one outstanding magician! For a paltry sum of ten dollars, you will get into the show, you will get a copy of Horror Vacui, and more! That's cheaper than you can actually buy a CD at a store!

The show will feature the mind-boggling illusions of Magician Michael Casey, on stage and working the crowd; the Eno meets The Church pop awesomeness of Lake Inferior; the spectacular, spleen-splitting rock riffage of Rat Jackson; the adjective defying Des Ark (really, there aren't words in the English language to adequately express my love for Des Ark); Lonnie Walker's melange of "equal parts sweetness and brutality, equal parts country charm and rock swagger" (Ear Farm really hit the nail on the head with this, I can not improve upon it); and of course IWTDI, whom are we. We're so excited about this event that we will be throwing out little features of each band as we approach the show date.

Doors open at 8:00 pm, the show starts at 8:30. The cover is $7 in advance and $10 at the door. The show is ALL AGES, and everyone who comes gets a free copy of the new CD. Tell your friends! The more people that come out, the more fun everyone will have! Woo Hoo!

Fall Tour, Coming Along!

Chris Williams makes some of the best screen printed posters we've ever seen! He did the posters for our vinyl release in August, and his Cy Rawls Benefit poster for Colossus, Grappling Hook, and Tooth is the centerpiece of my rock art collection. Thanks, Chris for your incredible work!

Our Fall '09 Tour is coming along nicely! We'll be headed out with The Story Changes to the midwest and back, rocking kids in Minneapolis, Omaha, Kansas City, and all sorts of points in between. Check out our dates on the right sidebar, and if you live in one of those towns, hit us up and we'll send you free stuff in exchange for helping us get people out to the shows. You can email us right here.

Meanwhile, keep your eyes peeled for the first of six song previews from Horror Vacui, our next record. Come Out, Come Out will be posted first, one of my personal favorite tracks, in part because it features The Hercules Europe Brass, courtesy of Wuss-Tone records. You can read all about them at The Wusses' website. You will be able to listen simply by using the player on the right sidebar of this blog.