black lab : : the official band website : : 2010

Kristin Kelly of Cake or Death (!!!)

admin — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 22:52:47 +0000

hey, sure to check out See Red, the debut solo album by Kristin Kelly — listen & buy right here. she and Deej (stray palace!) did an amazing job putting this together and everyone I know who has it is listening to a disturbingly obsessive degree.

also, new free mp3 up now: our demo of “walk slow,” recorded & produced by Matt Wallace (Faith No More, Maroon 5) before YOur Body Above Me was made. this comes from the same sessions that produced the mp3 of the month club demo of “can’t keep the rain,” and feels more raw and vital than the album cut (from YBAM the director’s cut). check the metal at the top!

meanwhile, the album is coming along. worked 35 hours straight last week writing a song I thnk I’m gonna love and am just now feeling like myself again.

rage!

swimming through fog

admin — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 19:05:46 +0000

It’s amazing to me that, after all these years, it’s still the hardest thing in the world for me to sit down, clear away the distractions and write a goddamn song. I think that everyone has difficulty with the challenge of doing what they love. so here I am, doing what I love — for a living. the funny thing is that it’s STILL hard. I keep getting distracted with business ideas, side opportunities, spiritual aspirations, software, marketing ideas, etc. all these things are important, as are family and friends, but in the end they ALL have to get swept aside if any writing is going to get done. there is always another cool trip to go on, a party someone is calling me about, a day on skis with my kid, a biz deal I can’t turn down, a new idea me or one of my friends has that needs looking into, a novel I can’t put down, a retreat I should do. sometimes I wish I had some boring job that I hated so that all day I could just be burning to get home and write – that I would arrive at my desk as like a hot stone from a slingshot. but this is a fantasy, too, I know.

whether you have a job you hate or are doing what you love for a living, you still have to face the blank page, the bridge that needs writing, the crappy idea that has some potential there buried under twenty hours of re-writing. as Henry Miller said, if you’re waiting for the perfect circumstances to create, then you’re not an artist. some days, I’m just not an artist. but after a while, the old fire gets stirred up and starts to burn again, and then I don’t eat or sleep until there’s something good finally down on the page or coming out of the monitors. it tears me up every time, sends me to bed for a day, makes me a little afraid of the next bout. but I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

‘pictures of people’ video feat. YOUR picture

admin — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 17:50:41 +0000

hey everyone, in case you haven’t heard, we’re making a video for ‘pictures of people’ that’s gonna feature photos of all of you mixed in with shots of us. it’s going to be fantastic — we’ve already received hundreds of shots and they’re great.

so please keep them coming to contact @ blacklabworld.com and be sure to make them as high resolution as possible. (we’ll assume that, in emailing us your pic, we have your permission to use it in the vid).

thanks!

writing ’say goodbye’

admin — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 23:09:31 +0000

a little webcam footage from the black lab: me slogging away at a new track which (I think…) will definitely be on the new album, called “say goodbye.” thanks to Evan Hinthorne for cutting this together.

good times

admin — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 18:44:01 +0000

wow, we’re on a roll. Andy is cranking out new tracks, I’m writing new songs, walking around all day in a daze trying to find a better rhyme, trying to say something not in the usual way I would say it. I try to draw from my life but my life is kinda boring. fortunately my boring life produces an enormous amount of extremely intense emotion. so I try to draw from that, let it slosh around inside my memory until it carves out some kind of fiction that can contain it. ironically (or not), that fiction often ends up sounding a lot like my life. (and that, my friends, is not an easy thing to explain to the people around me). oh well. let the good times roll!

meanwhile, I’m going to Europe, seeing some friends and doing a little business in France & Germany. won’t be there long, just long enough to get completely addicted to the 8-espresso-shot/day lifestyle. can’t wait. I’ll try to tweet but am uncertain about access.

happy new year everyone!