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FAQs About The Upcoming Astronaut Wife Show.

2009-09-24T15:16:00.011-05:00

Only a couple days until Astronaut Wife reunites for JagerFest at Club Jager, and I am personally psyched. Rob Callahan wrote a great article about it for l'etoile, and its been mentioned in a couple other media outlets too.

There is, however, some confusion about various aspects of this show, and the band in general, so I thought I would clear them up with a quick FAQ...

1. Is Amy Turany playing this show?

No.

This is the most common question. In one sense it's a bit surprising since Amy left the band before we recorded our first album and started playing regular shows. But, the few people who saw AW in its original form remember how cool the 3-part harmonies were and everyone, including me, would love to hear them again.

I think maybe some of the confusion is coming from the old band photos that are being used in a couple of these articles. Whatever the reason, it's not happening.

We did approach her about it, but since she was already out of the band when we wrote most of our songs it seemed like maybe it would be an uphill battle for her.

2. So, what is the lineup?

The version of the band that played most of shows back in the day was me, Angela Orluck, Janey Winterbauer, Tim Ritter and Peter Anderson. We tried to get Peter back for this show, but alas he is out on tour. So for this show we've recruited Matt Franklin, who plays with Tim in Bella Koshka. We've been rehearsing with him and it sounds great, so I am pretty psyched he was able to step in.

3. Is it true that you quit your new band Blue Sky Blackout to revive Astronaut Wife?

OK, I have *no idea* where this came from, but apparently a couple people asked this question to my BSB bandmates. Again, I think it may have been a result of me not mentioning BSB in the l'etoile article, but for the record this is TOTALLY NOT TRUE.

Blue Sky Blackout is also playing at JagerFest that night, and I am looking forward to that show just as much. Well, actually maybe a little more since I get to sing in BSB ;-)

4. What time do you play?

I am pretty sure Blue Sky Blackout is at 8:00, and Astronaut Wife is at 9:00. It's starting to look like it might be a nice day, and show is outside on the lovely patio of Club Jager downtown. I am looking forward to this like crazy. See you there?

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Yeah, It's true. Astronaut Wife is playing a show.

2009-08-31T17:33:00.004-05:00

From the "be careful what you say on Twitter" dept... A couple weeks ago I suggested (only half-jokingly) that we get Astronaut Wife back together. Well now its actually gonna happen – at least for one show.

Tim Ritter, who has played with me in Passage, Astronaut Wife and now Blue Sky Blackout, puts together an annual event at Club Jager called Jagerfest. Tim's wife, the awesome Angela Heitz manages the club which is host to a bunch of great weekly events like TRANSMISSION and JagerCon.

After a few of his first choices weren't available, we got to drunkenly talking about getting Astronaut Wife back together. A week later he had agreement from Janey and Angela, so I guess it's game on.

More info as it develops.

"Long Way Up, Longer Way Down."

2008-12-18T09:12:00.010-06:00

I've been in 3 bands in the last couple decades. The first, Judgement of Paris, was usually considered an "electronic" band even though we used a lot of acoustic/folk instruments like hammered dulcimer. The second was called Passage, a moody acoustic, goth-folk group that again used hammered dulcimer as the lead instrument. Then came Astronaut Wife, an electronic pop "girl group."

I intended for this set of 3 songs to be a kind of stylistic mash-up of all my previous bands. I will leave it to the 10 ten people who have actually heard all my old bands to decide whether I have succeeded.

As with the last one, this one was recorded and mixed on my Mac laptop using ProTools. Some of the elements were created in Reason and Ableton Live. Also Janey sings with me on all 3 tracks. The tracks are:

Song #1 - Away Too Long

For anyone who remembers the Astronaut Wife song "Cape Canaveral" I like to thing of this as a sequel to that song – only told from the male perspective and set 1000 years in the past. Seriously, it makes sense.

Song #2 - The Way You Leave

This one is the least gloomy of the 3. Beyond that, not quite sure how to describe it.

Song #3 - The Long Season

I actually wrote this song a billion years ago. In fact I remember playing a demo of it for some people at Flowers Studio several years ago. But then I put it away and never finished it. It seemed to really fit with some of this other new stuff so I dusted it off and am glad I did.

http://www.3sidedsingles.com

3Sides Up and Running.

2008-11-21T09:39:00.004-06:00

I know I have been ignoring this blog the last few months in favor of my Twitter feed, but I am going to try and get back to it more regularly.

The big news today is that we have finally got the 3Sides project up and running and our first 2 releases up there. The first is just a re-posting of my 3 song thing that helped get this ball rolling, but the second is a set of 3 brand new songs by friends and Susstones labelmates The Mood Swings.

I won't spend too many words describing the idea, its purpose and origins because all of that is on the site. Check it out and leave me a comment with what you think.

http://www.3sidedsingles.com

Josh Nimoy

2008-07-23T13:43:00.003-05:00

Thanks to Facebook I just rediscovered this guy. He does fucking amazing technology-based art and also has done blowaway commercial work with places like Motion Theory, including working on the HP/Pharrel ad.

I have never met him in person, but we first made contact when we was a student, and wanted to do an animated music video for Astronaut Wife as a school project. I obviously said hell yes, and the result is still up on his portfolio site. After you watch, go check out his more recent work, especially in the area of "Robotic Typography". Amazing.

More Stuff on Rifflet.

2008-07-20T14:06:00.003-05:00

Just posted some more unfinished clips on Rifflet, including some bits that were supposed to become Astronaut Wife songs at some point.

Rifflet

2008-07-13T12:48:00.004-05:00

Some folks over at trend powerhouse PSFK turned me on to Rifflet this week. The concept is that its a dumping/sharing ground for "unfinished songs". In terms of how it works, its very similar to CCMixter, but the concept and origins of the site are actually a little different.

I plan on continuing to participate in both, but I see different kinds of stuff going to each site. I'll use CCMixter for stand-alone beats and loops, and use Rifflet to upload stuff that is a little more thought out...things that I could imagine being a song, but never quite figured out.

My page on Rifflet will show anything I have contributed, but I also plan on using my Twitter feed to announce whenever I put up a snippet. I have quite a backlog of stuff that I liked that never got finished so hopefully I will use this a lot.

The Apple / AT&T Partnership is kinda like a Coltrane/Kenny G duet.

2008-07-11T09:04:00.004-05:00

You can probably imagine which one is which. We made the best attempt in the world to get everyone at Zeus Jones iPhones this morning, only to be told that we couldn't activate our corporate accounts at the Apple Store, only at AT&T. The AT&T store of course got only a fraction of the number of phones to sell, so we knew we were screwed on that front.

The Apple Store guys at Southdale were super cool though and did their best to help - even got AT&T on the phone and tried to work out a back-door method for making it happen. Turns out AT&T is just as stupid and rude to store employees as they are to customers.

So we've all come back empty-handed. More on this as it develops.

UPDATE: Adrian has his more detailed version of the story up on the Zeus Jones blog.

Zeus Jones Mid-Year Review

2008-07-10T20:45:00.004-05:00

One of the nice things about still being a small company is you can do stuff like decide to upgrade everyone to the new iPhone - which Zeus Jones is doing tomorrow when it's released. But of course we weren't gonna just come right out and say it. Instead we made all the employees sit through a terrifying presentation Adrian, Eric and I had put together about how we needed to become more corporate and process-oriented. Then we told them they all had to show up at an 8AM offsite tomorrow before revealing that really we were just giving everyone iPhones.

The part about going there at the crack of dawn was, of course, true though.

Adrian posted the deck on the Zeus Jones Blog.

Drum Loops

2008-07-06T20:36:00.003-05:00

When my cohorts and I launched our company Zeus Jones a little over a year ago, we promoted ourselves by creating content all over the web. One of the things I did was to upload some loops to CCMixter, the Creative Commons music sharing site. These loops are released under a CC Atrribution 3.0 license, which means anyone can use them for any purpose or manipulate them in any way (even commercial purposes) as long as Zeus Jones gets credit.

Check them out and if you use them, post a comment here with a link to what you did. I would love to hear it.

"Advance Promotional Cassette" release notes

2008-07-01T16:16:00.005-05:00

I've been thinking about doing a "solo project" for about 20 years. And since we can't seem to really get Astronaut Wife together to do anything these days (mostly because we all keep having more kids) now seemed like a good time. I've put up an ill-conceived solo song here and there, but now I really, really want to do it for real.

It doesn't make much sense to release stuff on physical media when you are a complete unknown like me, so I did this one (and probably future ones) as a download-only thing. Also, I was never super-focused making money from music – which is a great coincidence because its pretty much impossible – so I am giving everything away under a CC license.

And this is the first one.

Song #1: A Little Sun

Wrote this a long time ago and never recorded it. Jon Hunt help me arrange the chorus on this way back when. Most of it was recorded and mixed by me on my laptop at home, but the awesome drum track was played by Peter Anderson and engineered and edited by Ed Ackerson. Janey sings on it of course.

Song #2: Paper Airplane

Another one I've been meaning to record forever. Again, a home recording for the most part, except Janey's vocals which Ed recorded and edited at Flowers when we had planned on her singing it.

Song #3: Stitching Time

This is a cover of a song by The Legendary Pink Dots – one of my all time favorite bands. I banged this out in a couple hours one afternoon. I really, really dig this song, hopefully it shows on the track.

More stuff to come I hope.

Hi there.

2008-06-29T18:43:00.008-05:00

Sometimes it takes me a while to get to stuff. Like, decades, I mean. Such is the case with me launching a personal blog. I remember Phil Torrone telling me I needed to have one way back in the Fallon days and since then almost everyone in the universe but me seems to have one.

Mostly what held me back is that I'm not really the pontificating type, and I like keeping a low – borderline anonymous – profile. But I guess I realized I am doing some interesting stuff, and have done some interesting stuff in the past so why not have a venue for archiving it all. Even if no one ever reads it, its a good place to just write stuff down.

At one point or another this blog may cover:

1. Any of the bands I've been in – Judgement of Paris, Passage, Astronaut Wife – or any music I've done solo.
2. Any of the places I've worked or currently work including Fallon and Zeus Jones.
3. The Susstones record label – which I am a partner in – and any of its artists.
4. My adorable little kids and whatever they are up to.
5. Links to any and all projects I am working on or have done in the past.
6. Whatever the heck I feel like documenting.

So in other words, pretty typical stuff. I'm guessing no one will really ever read this.