LAST UPDATED: 2023.10.12
------------
BELL MINE - ethereal doomwave
spent a week in march 2023 recording an LP with a friend in NM, then booked studio time in august to fix some things and do some more overdubs. no ETA on album release yet but it's gonna be fuckin fantastic; i'm not exaggerating when i say i can already tell it's gonna be the best thing i ever did
personnel:
becky - vox, flute, synth, electronic drum programming, field recordings of rabbits munching on greens
ya boi - drums, percussion, electric bass, gtr, hella wind chimes
madeline aka midwife - perc, gtr, engineering
someone i only met for 30 seconds - electric cello
some folks i never even met - strings
nick from black cohosh - upright bass
there's a strict embargo on sharing demos but in the meantime you can find becky's self-produced debut EP here:
self-titled
oct 2023 update: album progress still creeping along. all the synth strings have been replaced by real strings, all my electric bass and drums are done. becky is doing comp work to figure out which of the dozens of vocal takes to use, while i still have some gtr parts to add (and maybe some vibraphone? tbd). recording is over 95% done but then we have to dump all 50gb+ of tracks into someone's lap for mixing/mastering lol. optimistic release date is probably Q1 2024, followed in Q2 by a two-week tour with midwife. i know some of y'all aren't too far away so i'll try to remember to share tour dates. we did play live together for the first time on 10/8 and leah can confirm it slapped
------------
DAZZLE SHIPS - damaged funk
founded as Life Is Cool back in 2012, renamed Dazzle Ships in 2018ish despite my objections. though the band is all but defunct, we have a huge pile of cash in a savings acct as we saved every penny we ever earned. earlier in 2023 i rebooted discussions with the other two long-term members about cobbling together a studio album; outlook on that is a little bleak as one dude is a weirdo space case (not in a cool way like me) and the other dude is such a relentless perfectionist that nothing is ever worth trying but i'm still gonna do my best wrangling these goons lol
here is a live performance from 2017, part of a showcase where local bands played covers of other local bands. our version is first (dig that fuckin sax beast), then i'll add the original so you can hear the difference:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7FAgW9y1ko
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P84rcpKycEQ
you can totally hear the Bogusman dudes hooting and hollering from the back of the room during the first video, it's my favorite part
finally there was only ever one track we actually did in a studio, it was our "payment" for playing the studio's grand opening party:
https://soundcloud.com/lifeiscool/mo-and-gloves
------------
ALL YOUNG GIRLS ARE MACHINE GUNS - throwback soul/doowop
several of my other bands had played shows with this omaha band over the many years, but back in 2016 they booked themselves a little four-day mini-tour to colorado and suddenly their drummer had to back out due to landing a big gig playing in a musical. rather than cancel the mini-tour, they put out a call to see if anyone they knew would like a free all-expenses-paid trip to fort collins + denver to play some shows - and i was like uhh fuck yeah i'll fuckin do that! so i learned their songs and went on a tour, it was a blast.
the shows in fort collins and denver had a folk singer whose stage name is Danielle Ate the Sandwich headlining, and we stayed at her place in FC. during the day while she was at work we learned one of her songs in case she wanted us to play it live with her, and she flipped out and demanded we make a video of it. so first i'll post that video (which is super cute) and then i'll post a link to a recording of a followup show we played with her again in des moines that fall.
DATSxAYGAMG video for "long haul":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3eDtOuDSViw
AYGAMG live in des moines:
https://www.periscope.tv/PikopK_/1eaJbXYjrpkKX
jason the original drummer had another show conflict in november 2021 so they pulled me off the bench - and then he told them he was quitting and that was going to be his last show anyway, so they offered me full membership. at the time i was sorta avoiding doing music stuff because pandemic but also because sad, so i told them no but that i'd play shows with them for the time being. then at some point in late 2022 i came back around again and accepted the offer, so yay!
it's not really the kind of music i'm super into but it's a lot of fun to do something different once in a while, plus they're all really nice people.
new album finally dropped a couple months ago, it's p good even though i'm not on it:
don't let the music fool you
and here's our spotify page
tragically we had our last public show on 10/7; the founder/leader was suffering pretty bad from burnout and decided to pull the plug. the silver lining is we got our pal ian to do a high quality live recording to be released around xmastime as a live album. sucks that it's over but at least i finally got to be on an album!
------------
SUN DAY - chamber prog
sun day has been officially defunct since dustin moved to the PNW in 2019 but we put out a cassette tape back in like 2015 i think:
self-titled
dustin's voice is an acquired taste but the overall quality of songwriting and musicianship on this album is still to this day pretty amazing to me. i run into some of the other folks from time to time and we always say "hey we should do some new music" but it keeps not happening lol
------------
WHISKEY DRINKERS UNION - roots rock
this band has been around in one form or another for almost 20 years, usually just me and patrick (vox/gtr) until a while ago we recruited dave (patrick's brother-in-law and my third cousin) to do a doors-style keys-with-the-right-hand-bass-with-the-left kind of thing. full-length release:
self-titled
i actually played most of the bass on the record except for one tune which was done remotely from ireland by one of our old friends from back in the day. works out pretty well because when he comes back to visit friends/family we try to get a show scheduled he can be a part of. at any rate it's cool af to actually be on vinyl
------------
MALEVOLENT SCUM - hardcore
speaking of playing bass, i did a couple of bass tracks for a friend's hardcore EP, and provided drums for the last track (someone else had to do the first four since i can't do blast beats for shit)
plague
this was just a one-time thing since andrew moved to seattle in 2015 ;\
------------
BLACK COHOSH - death western
this band formed in 2011 and aside from a one-off reunion show a few years back has been defunct since 2013.
bandcamp page
the performance that became the live album ended with this epic medley:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-q6cwag3x8
------------
as always idgaf if you like any of this or not but all this stuff has been a pretty big chunk of my life for the last like 30 yrs so sometimes i really wanna share it hehe
EDIT: youtube embed is busted
