Real Nights by me and my Pugs (Mayhaw Hoons and Ky Fifer) is now 100% done, and we are working on all the various little release details and artwork and whatnot. I’m hoping to have the online-only release ready in May, with the physical CD release in June or July. Yesss. While all that happens, here is another SNEEK PREEVIEW! This song is called “I Don’t Mind If The Sun Shines.” (click link to dl)

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Recording Real Nights, October 2010.

With the album 99% done at this point, it is time for another SNEEK PREEVIEW of Real Nights featuring my Pugs, Mayhaw Hoons and Ky Fifer. This song features not only Ky’s usual drumming and backing voxing, but also saxing! His horn is all over this track. It’s called “Draw Me Out“:

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The full album will be out in May probably! I can’t wait. Y’all are gonna love it. EAT YOUR HEART OUT, THE BAND TOOL.

It has been said that Twitter is the death of many websites and blogs. I update that thing all the time, but so not this much better-equipped website (yet, do I need a “fail manatee”?). Adding posts longer than 160 characters is hard!

Today, Nick Delffs came over and we recorded the final two overdubs for the next Shaky Hands album (tentatively titled—last I heard anyway—Realms Out Of Reach). It involved vocoder, possibly the last thing anyone would expect to hear in a Shaky Hands song, yet it works perfectly (it IS in the background, not part of some Daft Punkian dance break). And apart from Rafter adding those two overdubs down in San Diego, all the mixing is done too. Now we just gotta release the thing!

I should also mention that I’m going to be playing bass in The Shaky Hands exclusively now that Mayhaw has left. There will be a couple other new people added to the fold as well, but Nick will still be playing drums! That has really worked out well, so there is no reason to change that.

The past month myself, Mayhaw and Ky have been tracking a set of 14 songs for the Alex Arrowsmith & His Pugs album (tentatively titled Real Nights). Like always, I’m engineering/producing/mixing/bluhbluh everything myself but this time with My Pugs in our comfy practice space at Ky’s house in SE Pertland. It is a major departure from all my previous albums, because everything is based around a real band tracking live with no click tracks and no tomfoolery. No ballyhoo. Of course there will be added production, but it all revolves around the basic three-piece takes and it sounds RAD. That should be coming out earlyish 2011. After that, I’ll probably do another Modernity Leave-style album recorded on my four-track. And then another Pugs album. And then the ten-year anniversary reissue of A Bunch Of Songs in November 2012 (with new art by Joe Keatinge!).

We have no Pugs shows coming up at the moment. We wanted to have as few distractions for recording as we could, since we can only get together once or twice a week and if we were playing shows, those would have to be devoted to practicing for a show instead of recording. Also, Mayhaw wants to take a bit of a break from live shows (kind of going back to him leaving the Shakies). But hopefully Ky and I can threaten him inappropriately or something to get him to play some more shows once the album is done.

Also, I play with my friend Nate Birkholz in an on-again-off-again band called Redcoat Turncoat. We recorded an album a year ago (I freaking got to play a real Wurlitzer electric piano) and it just came out last week! We played a release show at Slabtown and it ruled. Lots and lots of funs. Listen and buy!

Hey! I’m in The Shaky Hands now! Jake Morris left their drum throne a couple months ago, so with the lineup in flux anyway, they decided to bring on a jack-of-all-trades of sorts. I’m playing mostly keyboards, but also guitar on some songs. I’ll probably get to rock the floor tom at some point too. Basically, whatever is needed for a given song. The possumbilities are endless.

Here’s the story the Willamette Week music blog posted today about the line-up change with some quotes from my bandmate (three times over!) Mayhaw Hoons.

I’m completely excited. I’ve loved The Shaky Hands ever since Mondo Hollywood first played with them at the Shakies’ second ever show in Jeff’s basement in February 2004. I’ve wanted to be in the band for almost as long. Nick Delffs is the best songwriter in town (at the very least), and I feel superchuffed to be able to contribute to them songs both past and future.

Be sure to catch our shows coming up! We’re playing a house show this Saturday at an undisclosed (but not if you try to find it) location, and then June 12 at the Doug Fir. I’m freaking READY.

Well it’s been two months since my last update! Oops! It’s not because there hasn’t been any action, either. I’ve just been forgetting to update. So yeah, I’ve been recording (mostly a new new new song called “A Different Story” and more “Bad Vibrations”) and I played three shows in December, including one last night at the Banana Stand. The Banana Stand show will be mixed by myself soon enough. Tiger House is recording right now so I’ll have to split my recording resources with that project for the next month or so. Mayhaw Hoons and I have been hatching a plan to record a CD of four track recorded songs along with Jeff Lehman’s William Oaktree project. It would be a split CD or something. All new stuff. It’s not set in stone or anything, but I’ve been wanting to do a four track EP anyway so there’ll be something along those lines happening soon regardless.

I suppose that’s it for now. Public Domain Rainbow is coming along and I still have no idea when it will come out. Do you have an idea? If so, tell me about it!

Rarely,
Alex

Peoples! Lovers! Dudes! Fiends! I just made a video for a new song called “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.” Actually, it’s an old song; it was co-written with Mayhaw Hoons from The Shaky Hands back in 1999, who also put in some singing and clapping duties on this recording of it. After years lost in the wilderness, it finally finds a home on my forthcoming album Public Domain Rainbow, which is being released someday by somebody.

Hopefully more videos of new songs will be coming soon!

Download an mp3 of “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” here, or listen here:

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Best buds,
Alex

New Project: THE SONG. Time to get out the sand box, because I’m going to spend the next while working on only one song. But it’s going to be the best song of…well, 2008 hopefully, but I’ll accept 2002 or even 1997. I’m thinking “Good Vibrations” meets “Happiness Is A Warm Gun” for dinner where “Jesus Of Suburbia” is the sommelier and “Sowing the Seeds of Love” is the overly-jolly restaurant owner. If you can make any sense out of that, you’re probably thinking, “Oh it’s going to be one of THOSE songs.” But no, it’s not going to be “epic,” prog or pretentious at all. It probably won’t even be any longer than 5 minutes tops. The project is more of a method thing than anything, but it should have a cut-up kind of sound like the aforementioned “Good Vibrations” and “Happiness Is A Warm Gun.” I kind of already did that with “McCain Campaign,” but this time it’ll be more developed, as well as being an ACTUAL SONG. I just thought it would be interesting to see what happens when I make one song in the amount of time I’d normally spend writing and recording an album. The end result will be on Public Domain Rainbow, which is otherwise finished now. I started writing THE SONG on August 8 and I’ve come up with a handful of killer melodies so far, so get ready and fearful for THE SONG.

Last Thursday Mayhaw Hoons and I went to the KINK studio and recorded two songs for broadcast at a later date (Sept. 2 and 3 I believe). It’s to promote their new Plug In Portland sampler that I’m on. We recorded “Coldplay Got Eaten By Piranhas” and “Not Salman Rushdie.” Mayhaw’s bassing was exquisite. We were in and out of there so fast that it makes My Aim Is True look like Chinese Democracy. It was a total musical invasion of South Ossetia.

Prolongedly,
Alex

Next Wednesday July 30, I’m going to play on the KPSU program “That Sound.” It’s on @ 9 pm and you can stream it for free from kpsu.org. Host Dave Cusick also releases his shows in podcast form every week, which you can get from thatsoundradio.com. Mayhaw Hoons will also be in tow, providing the necessary “second instrument” in whatever form it might take from song to song. See also: “second vocal cord.”

I haven’t mentioned anything about my new album for a while have I? Well it seems like a while anyway. I’m done recording it, and mostly done mixing it, too. So basically, it’s just about finished. But finishing an album is kind of like that math/physics anomaly where you can never actually touch anything, you can only just get infinitely closer and closer. It seems like every time I’m done, some other thing pops up that needs to be fixed, or remixed, or whatever. I’ll consider it done when I can listen to it and not need to fix anything. Seems like a no-brainer, but it’s harder than it sounds. Even when it’s done, it’ll still probably lay around for a while before I have the money to get it mastered and pressed/printed. Unless you know — or are — a wealthy label that wants to spend YOUR money on such a thing.

*crickets*

Defreshingly,
Alex