11/29/07
6 years ago today
well, i hope no one minds if i take the first part of today's post to inform those of you who don't already know that today marks the sixth anniversary of george harrison's death. i know everyone always thinks of him as "the quiet beatle" or the lead guitar player, or that guy who wrote "here comes the sun", but i think it's a good idea to take today to remember that he was a father and a husband and a friend, and that regardless of his immense contribution to the music society, they all still miss him very much.we love you george
well, as crass as it seems, i'm going to go ahead with an actual news update now.
mostly just wanted to remind everyone about the show this saturday night at frog and peach pub on the back patio from nine to ten thirty! 21 and over, no cover charge. should be a lot of fun :) december is my busiest month for shows yet, and all the info on the other five shows can be found in the shows section!
also on sunday the second of december i'm gonna be entering the westcoast songwriter's competition for the third time. last month i won best performance, this month i'm hoping for best song.
thanks a lot everyone, i hope you're still enjoying the music and i hope to see you at one of the many upcoming shows!
-loren
11/20/07
i guess you're just what i needed
hey everyone, i hope you don't mind me getting just a little self indulgent with this post.you see, tonight i played my first ever featured set with the westcoast songwriter's association showcase (wow, say that three times fast...) which means that while i shared the bill with several other performers, this time i was give a forty five minute set rather than only fifteen, plus i'm the headlining act and i'm allowed to receive tips. mostly it's just the longer set that was both cool/exciting and making me nervous.
i tend to take forever to communicate, so this time i'm gonna try and keep it short. ha.
so, short version then... i didn't feel like i did that well tonight, but the audience was just amazing, attentive and responsive and they really seemed to enjoy it, and so many people came up to encourage me and give me positive feedback after the show, it was really a great night, i think it was just what i needed.
so, thanks to everybody i know who came out to see me, and thanks to all the strangers who stuck around to hear me even though you didn't have to, i appreciate it so much.
thanks everybody, for making it a great night for me and the other songwriters,
-loren
11/15/07
oh! the humanity!
so it's been a whole two weeks since the last post, and i know you've all been feverishly clicking your refresh buttons every few seconds hoping for a new news post, right? right? what, you haven't even been checking the site because i took so long to type a new update? oh....shoot. sorry, my bad.
well, there is some news. for starters, i'm having some trouble with the mailing list, so that's one reason there haven't been any updates recently. sorry about that.
secondly, the band was played on the radio for the second time on monday night, in minnesota. it's far away, but it's still a radio station and we still got real honest to goodness airtime. i think it's really exciting. we managed to record his intros to one of our songs and maybe we'll put it up for ya'll to hear at some point. there's one more show coming on november 22nd (thanksgiving, i know). if you just so happen to be free from 5 to 8 pacific time, or you're just looking for some mellow holiday background music, head over to www.wtip.org and click the moose on the left for their live internet stream of the radio show. it's like the radio, but on the internet!
next up, i've got a show at the clubhouse next tuesday, the 20th, two days before thanksgiving. this show is going to be a songwriter's showcase, so i'll be joining several other artists, but this will be the first time i'm the featured act. this means that i get a forty five minute set while the other performers are allowed three songs each. it's always a really talented group and it'd be great to see y'all there. show starts at 6:30, my set is gonna be around 7:00. check the shows section for details on the time and place!
lastly, i wanted to inform everyone that i entered the songwriter's competition last month for the second time, and just like last time i was a few points shy of winning the "best song" award. however, unlike last time, i did manage to walk away with the "best performance" award. it's really sort of a consolation prize, second place kinda thing, but it's still really cool to be given an award for my music. i'm entering again next month (december 2nd at linnaea's cafe from 7 to 9) and i'm still really hoping to land "best song" one of these times. anyway, i guess that means that technically i'm now an award winning musician, haha, which sounds much cooler than it really is. oh, my last show at the clubhouse was also my first paid show, which means that i'm now also a professional musician, which is also cool.
anyway, that's what's going on, sorry there's been less activity in recent weeks, there's been a lot of life and work stuff getting in the way of the music stuff. thanks to everyone keeping in touch and commenting and just staying interested. hope to see you all at shows sometime soon, thanks!
-loren
11/02/07
halloween show, radio show
So last night I had my first show in kind of a while at the Clubhouse @ This Old House.
I played for three hours without a break, it was pretty grueling. I had a lot of fun though, especially after about an hour in when a lot of people I knew started to show up. It was a very different experience since it's much more of a restaurant type venue rather than a bar or coffee shop where people are actually paying attention to you.
It was hard for me to keep the energy up for the first half hour or so when I felt like nobody was paying attention, but I got over that and I'm glad I did, because people who I thought weren't paying attention commented on how much they liked the music and even bought cd's! Also I think it was a really good experience to have a room with a majority of people I've never met before and who aren't exclusively paying attention to me. Now that I've had that experience and learned how to interact with a different sort of crowd I think it'll be beneficial when these sorts of shows come up again in the future.
All in all I'm really glad with how the show went. I was feeling incredibly underprepared and worried, so I was really glad that I made it the whole three hours without a break and only having to loop a handful of songs. I'm definitely looking forward to playing there again. I want to say one more time a special thank you to everyone who came, Courtney, Katie, Mike, Sadie, Henry, Lisa, Dad, Mom, Matt, Katherine, Toby, Marcus, it was really great to see you and to have your support, thanks!
Also of interest, we were featured on a radio station in Minnesota yesterday on a show that aired from 5 to 8 pm (Pacific Time). The station is www.wtip.org if you're interested in checking it out, they stream the show live on the internet, and we're going to be featured again on November 12th and 22nd, so stay tuned! It was a really cool thing to 1) hear our band on the internet streaming and 2) to know that there's two cities in minnesota where anyone tuned to 90.7 or 91.7 heard us on their radios! It was a really cool feeling and I really enjoyed the show apart from our music as well, it's a great mix of popular and indie artists with styles that I really like. I'd recommend it even if we weren't gonna be on it again :) A Huge Thank You! to Tim Young for finding us on youtube and deciding to put us on your radio show!
Also, we've recently added a lot of new people to this mailing list, which means this may be the first message a lot of you are receiving. If that's the case, either Matt, Dan, or myself thought that you would be interested in being kept up to date on band news, so we added you from our personal address books. If you'd rather not keep getting these messages, you can unsubscribe, or just mark our messages as spam and I promise we won't be offended :)
Lastly, there are updated versions of several songs online, such as Butterflies, Homesick, and Sleep, while I also have a demo of a new cover up, The Beatles song, Because (also available in A Capella).
I hope you enjoy those new songs, and that of course means we're that many steps closer to our final album release (hooray!).
Thanks for reading,
-loren
