Pressing Matters

I've blogged on here somewhere about how we've been banking all along on a particular pressing deal. It would have gotten us 200 pressed CD's in DigiPaks for a great price. We set the release date and declared that the May 22nd show would be our record release, thinking that we could have it all in time. We were a little later than we'd liked getting the masters, and I uploaded them to all the online stores as soon as I got them. I also e-mailed the company and asked about the special price.

Then I waited.

And waited. Three days later, they e-mail me to tell me they had forwarded my request to their pressing department. The next day, the pressing department said they aren't taking new orders as they are closing down and to use someone else. I found a company with a comparable deal and hastily paid to get it done.

Then I read the fine print.

The 15-20 day turn around starts after you send them the discs and artwork and after they approve it and after you approve the artwork.

We need the CD's by Saturday, May 22nd. That's 21 business days from today. If everything gets there on time and they approve it as fast as they say it will (two big if's), the 15-20 day pressing period will begin. That will be 18 business days before the show if all goes according to plan. That will be a close shave to get the record for the release show. Can we do it?

This begs the question of whether we should pay more to get it pressed faster. How much is it worth to us to get the record that fast? That's where they stick us on the price. I guess we'll have to wait until everything is approved before we look at the shipping date.

In the meantime, we have kicked the practice into high gear for the release show. We're working up the three songs from the record that have never been played live. The rest are getting infused with new energy now that the record is completely behind us. We've sped them up, tightened them up, and really learned how to PLAY them, and it's so much more fun this way.

After the release show, we booked the closest thing we can do to a tour with our work schedules, booking four shows in three weeks for the mid summer. Hopefully we can generate some sales. We are most excited about finally playing Maryville, the hometown for Daniel and Josh and me. That's going to be a very wild night.

Activity

It has been a while since I have made a post. So here we go!

The past few months have been one interesting rollercoaster ride. The early response to our new album has been quite nice and we can see the results to the hard work we have put into this project.

When we decided that we going to do this, I think I knew how the end result of the album would turn out, but also didn't know that I knew. Normally I keep all my notebooks and random note, but this past weekend I decided to scale some of them down and throw out alot of pieces of paper that had random stuff written on it. I came across several pages with reminders and time notations for cassettes I was using for the home demos I was doing. I made a note on a certain riff and also noted "slow song for album/possible female back-up." That riff eventually became Dear Abby. That note was made in Feb 2009. Kinda weird? Not to mention all the other random notes I wrote myself, but never remembered. Some of those ideas were made by other members of the band. Also kinda weird.

The track listing was rough because in the end, there were 8 really good possibilities. They all sounded good. I don't think last January were ever expected Election: 1800 to be the first song or turn out the way it did. I remember all of us thinking it was a good song but tried very hard to not discard it. Election:1800 is a good example of why having producers is good and creatively stimulating. They had us do stuff we never would have thought about. Sometimes, real simple stuff.

The artwork kicks ass. Nuff said.

We've been playing shows here and there for the last few months. We played at the Basement, and hopefully will get another show there this summer. We did a birthday party for Aaron Sefton, and we also managed to play at the YEAH! center. All these little performances have been getting us ready for the biggest show of the bands career, our record release show!

Daniel Rice got down and dirty with all the mixes and even the mastering. He was a bit hesitant to accept the role of mastering after having spent the most time with all the tracks, but we managed to talk him into doing it. There were only a few hang ups with his final tracks and those ere easily solved by the adjustment of a knob or the push of a button. I think we listened to the tracks 3 times a day. I know I did.

Another bit of news that is not related to the album is that I managed to get the band featured in an upcoming horror film called Girls Night Out. This is a DIY project done by several friends of mine. I asked to write the theme song and they said yes. I spent a few weeks recording the tune at home on my computer and recently presented the final mix to the director. The song will be available through our site soon.

After all the recordings, rehearsing, overdubs, mixing, and mix approvals, we will finally be able to present the world with our history album on May 11th.