Hodge Podge

Hello All

Hope you are not totally covered in snow right now or having to dig out of it. It has been a cold snowy winter for all of us this year. Thankfully Spring is on its way!

I thought I would continue in my series of posts about bands we have been listening to while making the new record. I thought today I would introduce you to several up and coming bands that you may or may not have heard of that we really like and have influenced us. All of these bands are from the UK, except one, which is from our own Nashville, Tennessee.

These bands all share a common theme to me. They are rock, punk, and dance rock all fused together, but each in their own unique way.The one thing I loved about all of these bands was the amount of energy you can feel while listening to them. Yeah some of them have a very raw feel, while others don't, but the energy they put off is intoxicating.

So let me introduce you to this hodge podge of bands in no particular order.

Here they are:

The View, Twisted Wheel, Those Darlins, Pigeon Detectives, The Answering Machine and Blood Red Shoes.

I owe a lot to a little tv show that once aired called bintune tv to introducing me to several of these bands. I may have to blog at some point about this show & why it was so good.

Listening to these bands is liking listening to many different styles and genres of music. Those Darlins are straight up old school country music from the 50's and 60's. The Answering Machine sounds like a rocked up version of Franz Ferdinand. The Blood Red Shoes are electronic pop with elements of well everything.

I really like the fact that they are all differnet from one another and much different from mainstream music we hear here in the States. Honestly I don't think you could get a radio station in the States to play any of these bands unless it was an underground or college station. Even then I doubt they have heard of them.

You never know where the next big thing in music is going to come from. I think all of these bands have something special about them. Could one of these bands be the next big thing, maybe given the chance. They do challenge you to think about popular music.

I'm proud to say I own all of their records

The Second Music Review: Kasabian

Hope everyone enjoyed my first post on bands we have been listening to while making the new record. I thought I would talk about another band that we have been listening to a good deal and that is Kasabian.

I had heard of Kasabian before but I was only familiar with one of their songs called 'Shoot the Runner'. I had caught them by accident on an episode of Abbey Road Live on the sundance channel performing the song.

I really owe listening to Kasabian to my friend Mike who has been a fan of theirs for awhile now. Although Jimi had a couple of there albums himself, he never really talked about them very much as an influnence. Anyway I got their newest release 'West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum'. Let me just say I am gald I did too!

First off I want to say I chose this as my album of the year for 2009. No other record I heard in 2009 came close in my opinion to this record. Top to bottom it is just brilliant.

Imagine if you will that the Beatles had kept making music all of these years. I really believe they would have made an album that sounded like this. Pop melodies and structures over simple beats & riffs.

As a huge fan of the Beatles their influence on Kasabian is hard not to notice, but I think its the way they go about that is so unique.

Most electronic and looped based music lacks those types of melodies and harmonies. The music is more about the beat then anything else. Kasabian to me was able to take the melodic structure of the song and put the beats underneath it in a way I have never heard before.

It really inspired me to start thinking in that same way. How can we put these differents beats and sounds in our music but keep all of the pop structure.

This has lead to lots of experimenting and craziness in the studio! haha It has been a lot of fun to play with this idea of electronic music without it being electronic music. Confused yet, yeah me too, but it has inspired us to look past the ways we have made music in the past.

For that I am thankful.

Across the USA!

Just wanted to take a moment and let all of you know that on Monday our song 'Be Mine' went out to radio statios across the USA! We are very excited as you might guess. We want to thank everyone who helped make this possible. We want to thank all of YOU! Our fans and friends who continue to support us. So many of you have requested that your local station play our songs and many of them have because of you.

So now we are on the radio here in the USA & in France. Let's see if we can keep this going and get on the radio all around the World!

We Love You!
TGH