Where guitar playing has led me in the past 2 monthes...

-playing guitar in a non heated room without a door in 18 degrees in Brooklyn
-playing in a lasertag place called "The Laserdome" in Lancaster, PA and getting paid in money, pizza, free lasertag and a dixie cup filed with tokens for games
-going to see the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia, PA
-finding a random shop in Asbury Park, NJ that sold vinyl, used/vintage clothes and old music gear (i bought a tremolo pedal for $50)
-meeting and playing with bands i really like and finding out some of them are really nice... and some are jerk faces.
-hanging out at the metropolitan museum of art
-meeting up with friends i haven't seen in a long while... and sleeping on their floors!
-playing one of the most fun college shows ever for crazy kids


so listen up kids... learn to play guitar and you could do weird things like this too. Just like me!

A month to prepare

I dream of someday writing a book. I think this would be a great accomplishment for irony. Since i rarely read. I'm not sure why that is either. Maybe i have an undiagnosed minor case of ADD and can't focus on it, or maybe i just never found the right book. Although a week ago i bought a Get In The Van by Henry Rollins, and I haven't put it down. I'm about 75% through the book right now and its very inspiring and at the same time, I feel like I've accomplished so little in my time in a band. Mostly I feel that i have a bunch of stories that I've gathered and want to document them. maybe I'll start updating this more with those stories from the past few years and the current stuff. Would anybody read that if I posted it?? Maybe that dream book will consist of thing and a the compiled ramblings of my notebooks filled with booking info, and to do lists. It will be a combo of Get In The Van and Kurt Cobain's Journals only way less successful.

I've wanted to tour since shortly after I picked up a guitar and realized how it makes noise. Most kids outgrow that phase but i can't seem to kick it. We had talks of doing something in the spring for like a week or so, but Peterson can't get the time off of work, so we're limited to weekends. Also as you all know we live in the northeast, and with our luck being that of a one eyed three legged cat who's been struck by lightening twice, I'm trying to be as careful as possible as to where we go. I do have 2 weekend tours in the works with bands that i am a huge fan of and friends with. January 29-31th we will be traveling across PA and NJ with the one man dance machine Team Goldie. I've unofficially dubbed it the "Dancing, Drinking, Fucking, Sleeping Tour" since I'm pretty sure I'll take part in none of these activities. Lets hope it catches on. And in February we will be traveling again across the great New York State tundra with Patrons of Sweet from Buffalo. More info on that as is develops.

In other news we're finishing recording our new disc "Flame On" and there is literally 3 more lines of singing that need to be recorded and then its done. What will happen with it in regards of pressing and releasing is anybodies guess right now. Hope for the best, plan for the worst. So my days of non-guitar selling are currently spent practicing the new tunes with The Andrea Doria gents, writing some new stuff, and booking these upcoming weekends. I've been filling my show playing addiction with my other band Stonelord. The new disc is being released this weekend. "new" being a relative term... we recorded it in June. Ahh reminds me of T.A.D.'s "Champagne Dreams on a Beer Budget" which i believed was recorded in September of '08 and released in July of '09. we're all pros.

Well, tomorrow's agenda will consist of making some phone calls for the Dancing, Drinking, Fucking, Sleeping tour... see its catching on already. doing some things for the day job, and doing merch inventory to see what new shirts and such we need to order. Days off are never days off but learning to play guitar morphed into playing guitar in bands and that mutated into pushing this dream as far as it can go.

I think these are the hapy times an older Mark will look back on fondly

Today was rockstar day. The Andrea Doria cats were in the Hollow recording a new record. And after one day i can say that this studio is the best kept secret in Syracuse. Totally a great place to record highly recomended. So we went in with plans of knocking out some to most of the drums, and ended up finishing all the drums and bass tracks. Tomorrow we all go back to that whole day job thing, and then Tuesday Steve and myself are going in to do guitars and vocals.

Following this turn of events, Rockstar Day concluded with us listening to our song Planet Problems being played on K-Rock. As cool and apathetic and anti-radio as i want to sound, hearing our song on the radio is pretty cool. You know that scene in That Thing You Do where they hear their song and run around to the store and turn on all the radios and dance around and such? well it wasn't like that. It was more like me, Nick and Matt sitting around their apartment, not being able to fins 100.9 on their clock radios and running to the van and finding what was being played and then going back inside and finding that song so we knew we had the right station. When it came on we had a moment of "wow".... then we just kind of looked at each other like, "....cool... i'm going home see you in the studio Tuesday."

Also next Sunday, go to this:
we're going to be incredibly out of place, but its going to be fun and the cash money is going to a good cause.

Chalk up another ridiculous experience of me hearing my own guitar playing and Steve Peterson's voice on the radio to me being able to play guitar.

The Syracuse SingAlong 2009

The Stockholm: Dead. The Lifeboat: For Sale Enter: The Great White Hope

Hey both my readers, I hope all has been well. There haven't been many posts, becasue things have been relatively normal here. Keep in mind "Normal" is a sliding scale that encompasses siphoning veggie oil from restaurants, and playing for a classroom of mentally challenged 4th graders. Seriously.... ask me about those sometime. The big new news is we have a new van our beautiful... reliable.... and sexy Ford E250 extended cab. In attempts to thwart the universe and change our luck around it will hence forth be known as The Great White Hope.

Tonight we took the beast on its maiden voyage to my old school where i met the majority of my readers, SUNY Binghamton. Big room.... few people.... terrible sound system.... the return of chocolate milk....nick and i destroying some public property with matt's bass cab, and some old friends showed up. Fun times. Ok this post was basically for me to remember this night. I just drove home through some fog... bed time

i've fallen behind

Hello internet friends....ok so here's the story with what's been going on. Since we last left our heroes The Andrea Doria... they have been continuing to push this square peg uphill into the round hole. Last Saturday, we met up after work and rounded up the garbage (musical gear) and rented a trailer and shuffled off to Buffalo. This show was different because our friend Josh from the band Seen It All (www.myspace.com/seenitalldotnet) asked us to come out. apparently heard our Shark Week disc and liked us enough to have us come out and play...weird... So we went out and played, and the show was... not as good as it should have been. maybe next time we will use less "talent juice" in the recipe. so around 1am we left the show and went to our merch guy Toby's appartment in Rochester. Slept for 4 hours and drove back to syracuse to go back to work at 11 on sunday.

so that show kind of left a bad taste in our mouthes. and this week there was a miscommunication and we had to cancel practice so tonight's show with team goldie (www.myspace.com/teamgoldie) could have gone either way. Luckily it went way better than could have been expected. So we played our standards and threw in a new fun cover. So i think spirits are high, and i need to go to bed to wake up early for work tomorrow and then Saturday holds a work day and a long 4 hour car ride to Manhattanville College.

more stories as the adventure into frowns-ville, which is just south of debt-town, continues

They've played Eurpoe, Hong Kong, and now my garage

So there i was looking busy at work but thinking about things like who was the first person to see a cows udder and think i'm gonna drink what comes our of that... anyways these guys come in and are talking in Scottish accents and are asking to play guitars and are blown away when i say they can play anything. after chit chatting (because like most girls am intrigued by accents) they say that they're a band called Vinyl and are on tour in Syracuse for the Music and Arts Festival (editors note: that should be read as and will from here on in be reffered to as Failure Fest 09'). they're show last night raked in 3 paying attendees, and they had tonight off. I told them that i could get them on a show tonight which may not have a good turnout, or pay, but it will be fun. The venue.... my garage. So with an hours notice, i called and text'd and sex'd everyone in my phone in the Syracuse area to say that i was throwing together a literal last minute show. Some people were there, and we shared gear and had a really fun time. That band is great, and i advise both of my readers.... well the literate one to check them out. http://www.myspace.com/vinylglasgow The one who comes here just for the pictures can look at this: