ソ-ラ-バ-ド-のおん: Solarbird Makes Noises

Up early, waiting for my partner and occasional collaborator Anna as she gets dental surgery done – it’s nothing serious, but does involve anaesthetics which mean Anna requires babysitting. Note: DO allow texting (because hilarious), but do NOT allow root access.

This diurnal thing is for the birds.

We have a winner on the review lottery; thanks to 403 on Dreamwidth for the kind notes about Cracksman Betty, particularly the songs Song for a Blockade Runner and Columbia. Get me your address so I can mail you a signed physical CD! The band address works fine. :D

Leannan Sidhe’s Kickstarter project has hit $2500, or 83.3%; statistically speaking, they’re sure to make it at this point. So go pick a level, ’cause at this point you’re pre-ordering. :D They’ve also announced some stretch goals.

And finally congratulations to friend-of-friends Mira Grant, whose novel Blackout has made the New York Times mass-market paperback best-seller list. I’ve read the first two (Feed and Deadline) and have this concluding novel queued up to read today while babysitting Anna. I’d've read it before, but I didn’t want to lose a day, which is what tends to happen with these things.

Have a good weekend, everybody!

Mirrored from Crime and the Blog of Evil. Come listen to our music!

I’m gonna street-play Folklife this weekend – and attend, too, particularly as weather changes. XD Say hi if you seem me! Also, this is the last weekend for the review raffle, so post a public review of Cracksman Betty and let me know!

Also, I signed up for ReverbNation. Who should I tell it I sound like? I’ve dropped a couple of bands but I need more.

ReverbNation is also making weird things happen where Facebook is telling me people are liking my activity there but not linking me over, but when I go there directly it’s not showing up there. I’ll figure out what that’s supposed to mean when I’m not so busy. If you’re doing stuff, where does it go?

Mirrored from Crime and the Blog of Evil. Come listen to our music!

Cracksman Betty has shown up on iTunes! It costs more there! I don’t know why! But they make those decisions, not me! Clearly they think it’s a real album. :D Yay! It’s not much more, they just set their standard pricing on it. But that’s okay by me. ^_^

If you haven’t given a listen yet, you can hear the whole thing right here, on Bandcamp. No 30-second samples here! They you can buy it on iTunes, or hopefully give it some review love, which it very much needs.

I never did a review raffle beforehand because there wasn’t a beforehand! So I’ll do one now instead: write and post a public review in the next two weeks (plus a little – two weeks plus the weekend) and I’ll email you a special home-burned CD edition of the album. (It’ll be less S-100 Bus which you’ll still have to download on its own because of licensing, but it’s free, so that’s okay.)

This should play the whole album for you:

Post the link to your review here in comments to enter. And have a good weekend!

Mirrored from Crime and the Blog of Evil. Come listen to our music!

Cracksman Betty, alternate history songs of riot and revolution, is live on Bandcamp now. The album of not-entirely-traditional songs we never really intended to make is online, 13 tracks on the web, including “The S-100 Bus” (also available as a free download) as a bonus.

I really said the best of what I think I have to say on Friday. This is CRIME and the Forces of Evil – or various subsets thereof – not taking everything quite so seriously. It’s an alternate history lesson, it’s kicking back in the studio just to have fun, it’s riot girls dyking our way around Vancouver starting fights (not that I’d know anything about that, aheh), it’s cyborgs doing it for the lulz…

…and it’s kicking out some good old alternate-world Cascadian piracy, riot, and revolution folk.

It’s also a good lead-in for the Faerie Blood/Bone Walker soundtrack we’ll hopefully be doing in a couple of months; that’ll be somewhere between this and Dick Tracy Must Die in tone, depending upon where you are in the books. :D

This new album leads off with a brand new track, “Song for a Blockade Runner/High Barbaree,” something you’ve never heard. It’s a new song, with new music, telling a different version of the High Barbaree story, one with enough references to the original to mention it – but it’s from the pirates’ side, and set in the Republic of Cascadia’s 1973-1974 war for independence. Hit PLAY now:

Oh, if you bought the pre-remaster Cracksman Betty for money, at a show or something? Contact me. Send me a photo with your CD. I’ll throw you a download code.

I worry a little about this album, I admit it. We’re mostly about the elfmetal, and the rage. This has elements of that, but it’s a different angle, less complex, and absolutely as sedate as we’ll ever get. I don’t want people to think we’re losing our edge. Din of Thieves will disprove that in 2013, but that’s a year away.

Despite that, as much to my surprise as anybody else’s, I’m convinced of this album. My beta listeners certainly were. If you forgot the reactions I quoted, here they are again:

everything I hear in these tracks is totally Next Level from what came before.

…followed by an assortment of “impressive,” “SO MUCH BETTER” [capslock as per original], “awesome,” and “I love Dalek Boy so much.”

I hope you do, too. Hit PLAY. Find out. Tell your friends.

Mirrored from Crime and the Blog of Evil. Come listen to our music!

Put simply, this is the album we never meant to make. It was a record-something-every-month project, named for a safecracker (a “Cracksman”) and a blackjack with a woman’s name (a “Betty”), adorned with pirate skull and burglar’s tools, and we finished it up last December… or so we thought.

But the thing is, I went back and gave those recordings another good hard listen, and realised that I’d improved a lot both as a vocalist and an engineer over that year.

So I decided to clean it up, and do some new vocals, and oh, I can totally make Dalek Boy funnier, and Old Black Rum can be a lot more rowdy, and oh, I have this new song (“Song for a Blockade Runner/High Barbaree”) that’ll fit in just great, and…

…somewhere along the way, this became an album. It became a piece, a thing, not just an assemblage. Not a complex a piece as Dick Tracy Must Die or far-reaching as Din of Thieves will be, perhaps, but an entity, a set.

‘Or,’ I asked myself, ‘did it? Really? Am I just making that up? Let’s ask some beta listeners.’

And the first response back was:

everything I hear in these tracks is totally Next Level from what came before.

…followed by an assortment of “impressive,” “SO MUCH BETTER” [capslock in the original], “awesome,” and “I love Dalek Boy so much.”

So I guess I wasn’t making it up!

But what is it? Here’s the track list:

1. Song for a Blockade Runner/High Barbaree
2. Captain Kidd
3. Paddy Murphy (Victory Boulevard Style)
4. I’m a Rover (Live in Juanita Bay)
5. Columbia (Scene from a Revolution)
6. Danny Boy (Instrumental) (Live at El Dorado)
7. Red is the Rose (with Leannan Sidhe)
8. Great Big Sea
9. Old Black Rum (West Coast Style)
10. Dalek Boy (Cyborgs Behaving Badly)
11. Red is the Rose (Live in Studio – bonus track)
12. Dalek Boy (Radio edit – bonus track)
13. The S-100 Bus (Live in studio – web-only bonus track)

I think it’s CRIME and the Forces of Evil – or various subsets thereof – not taking everything quite so seriously. I think it’s an alternate history lesson, and it’s kicking back in the studio just to have fun, and it’s riot girls dyking our way around Vancouver starting fights (also fun), and it’s piracy, and it’s kicking out some Cascadian folk and cyborg lulz.

And it’s dropping on Monday. Of that much, I’m sure. :D

Mirrored from Crime and the Blog of Evil. Come listen to our music!

So many awesome things are going on right now that I have to combine announcements! It’s crazytalk. But before I get to that, even, a quick reminder: I’m guesting tonight on The House of Julie with Julie Cascioppo, 7:30pm, in Seattle, with several other musicians including Roo Forrest, Elaine Bono, Jean Mann, and Bill White. I’m Julie’s first guest of the night; come see the show!

TO THE ANNOUNCEMENTS!

FIRST: The new album – the remixed/remastered/rerecorded Cracksman Betty – will drop Monday, May 7, 2012. It’ll lead off with a completely new track, “Song for a Blockade Runner/High Barbaree,” the pirate’s version of that tale, recast in the fight for Cascadian independence, musically and lyrically original.

My beta listeners have described the album as “impressive,” “SO MUCH BETTER” [than the work prints], “awesome,” and, in one notable case:

everything I hear in these tracks is totally Next Level from what came before.

Caps of Awesome as in the originals. Fuck. Yeah.

This is our long-promised traditional-music album. But of course, we can’t leave it at that; this “traditional” music is re-cast in the Republic of Cascadia, songs of piracy, riot, and revolution, with new interpretation, new history, and far more often than you’d expect on a “traditional” album, new music.

You’ll hear more about that – and some of our guest performers – this week.

SECOND: We’re doing a soundtrack album. For reals, assuming the Kickstarter makes it. It’s a book companion for the novels Faerie Blood and Bone Walker. We’ve already committed Sunnie Larsen (who has played with several bands including Bone Poets Orchestra and Vixy & Tony) and Leannan Sidhe, with whom we’ve worked before. And we’re in talks with more.

Bone Walker will be a mix of readings, original music, and the traditional music referenced in the books. It’ll be something new for all of us, which is always awesome. And again – more announcements will be forthcoming!

FINALLY, talking of Leannan Sidhe, they have their own Kickstarter running for their second studio album, More to Love. I’ve heard some of the material; these are some pretty subversive fairy tales. So of course, we’re onboard – I’ve backed the project personally, with, you know, money. My money. Not even stolen! So you know I mean it.

Currently there’s an extra incentive package: a signed print of a sketch from the album cover artist (Rob Carlos), a print of the aurora photograph that’s going to be used in that album cover, and a handwritten card from the band. That’s all in addition to the regular backer bonuses for whoever gets them to $2000.

God damn can you believe all this? And we have more things cooking I’m not even talking about here. More than can fit into this post. But one more super-sneak preview, a whisper, a ghost, a rumour of rage, an echo of elfmetal, a part two of a bigger story, a title:

Din of Thieves.

Muah ha ha ha ha ha!

Mirrored from Crime and the Blog of Evil. Come listen to our music!

Oh guys seriously I did not think Cracksman Betty could sound this good. Not what’s online now; the re-engineered/re-mastered version that’s in progress. It’s always going to be a bit of a jumble as an album, having been originally just a place to put all my trad-o’-the-week/fortnight/month songs, but it’s so much better a jumble than I ever thought it would or even could be.

And I don’t mean just individually as songs, I mean as an album. It’s actually starting to hang together as a work. I don’t know what to call it – Alternate History Folk, maybe? But that’s awfully long. Regardless, it has a form now. It is shadowy and rough, but it is a beast, of genus undetermined.

I’m even thinking of asking Kickstarter if it wants to pay for mastering. No lie.

Did I mention there’s a new track? I don’t think I mentioned there’s a new track. There is! “Song for a Blockade Runner/High Barbaree.” I’m really excited about it.

Of all the reset-in-Cascadia traditional folk, this is the most changed from its original; it makes “Columbia” sound unedited. “High Barbaree” is about taking down pirates; “Song for a Blockade Runner” is the other side of that story, in 1973, during the Cascadian War for Independence, a goddamn hardscrabble pirate and smuggler anthem. It’s new music, too – not so much a traditional-song rendition as a long-lost fraternal twin, come in from the cold Salish sea.

12 tracks on the CD, if I print one. 13 tracks online, with “S-100 Bus,” which has to be online only for licensing reasons. Eleven songs, plus two “radio edit” versions as bonus tracks.

None of this is going live quite yet – I’m still twiddling bits and I want to redub another line of vocals. But – it’s coming. Soon. :D

PS: Anna’s fantasy novel Kickstarter just hit 45% and she’s dropped an excerpt from “Blood of the Land,” another Warder universe story, as a teaser. She’s really hoping to hit 50% this weekend. Check it out!

Mirrored from Crime and the Blog of Evil. Come listen to our music!

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2012, CASCADIA, AND ALL SHORES BEYOND!

With the close of 2011, we come to the end of the Cracksman Betty project. But not before we add a 12th track, a gift for your New Year 2012.

Some of the songs on Cracksman Betty are centuries old. This final addition – one I’ve been promising quietly for two months – isn’t traditional. It’s a cover, of sorts. The music and arrangement are my own, but the lyrics are by a musician named Frank Hayes. Frank wrote these lyrics in 1982, a mere 30 years ago, not centuries. But in computer terms, that’s at least as many generations in the past.

So come back with me, to days of old, when computers weren’t bought – they were built! By hand! Come back with me – to the days of The S-100 Bus.

Mirrored from Crime and the Blog of Evil. Come listen to our music!

If you’re reading this on Friday, listen up: I’m playing tonight, providing some instrumental backup for Leannan Sidhe, at a house concert at 13309 23rd Ave. NE in Seattle. RSVP info here.

It’s mostly their show, of course, but Leannan Sidhe’s lead singer has also asked me to perform one of mine: My Boyfriend, which is my political Sailor Moon song about writing out queer characters in US translation. (If you don’t know the story, listen to it before the song.) This is pretty much the opposite of her and her music – so really, I’m there to throw her into sharp relief. XD

But the request got me thinking, “Y’know, this song is missing something, live.” Of course, what it’s missing is a drum kit. But aside from that, I realised that I think it’s also missing a really terrible costume change mid-show.

I have taken possibly disturbing steps to rectify this situation.

Then tomorrow, all the way down in the wilds north of Olympia, in the South Sound, I have Spooky Action at a Distance, where I’m contributing a set and Juli will be doing a short reading and hopefully some glasswork and maybe some other things! All of which I hope happen. It’s been a while since I’ve done anything Seriously Arty. One way or another, THERE WILL BE ART!

Oh, the latest Trad o’ th’ Month, Red is the Rose (with Leannan Sidhe) is, like the rest of the Cracksman Betty project, a free/pay-what-you-want download.

I’ve had a couple of people say they feel bad about downloading without hitting the tip jar, so don’t download free things. Really, if I minded, I’d put a price on it. This is what Cracksman Betty is for, along with experimentation and learning. Put another way: I need ears more than I need a dollar. NOT THAT BOTH WOULDN’T BE GOOD. But if I want your money that much? Don’t worry. I’ll steal it from you. XD

Mirrored from Crime and the Blog of Evil. Come listen to our music!