writing ’say goodbye’

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

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!

interview with alternative addiction

here’s a recent interview with alternative addiction. check it!

welcome to the new site

I never thought I’d be this psyched about a website before, but check it out!!  it’s state of the art, turbo-charged and ready to roll!  I’ve been wanting a central nervous system for the band for awhile, since the web has gotten so fractured into different social media sites, youtube, websites, blogs, etc etc. the old front page was more a welcoming mat, like “hey, we’re back!” kinda outdated.

so now we have it: http://blacklabworld.com. yes, we’re back! and this the new new machine. this front page will have the latest and greatest. I’ll be blogging here weekly and tweeting daily. all that will get fed into the various other sites so you won’t miss a beat, but there will be lots ‘o special blacklabworld-only stuff. while you’re here, be sure to check out the wicked new army page! we’re finally gonna get our street-team thing on, so please be sure to sign up there as well as above (if you’re not already on our email list. of course, your email is always super-safe with us and I won’t overload you with messages) and check out the call to action section.

what else? oh yeah, changes to the store: I’ve discounted all t-shirts as they are on the way out. maybe I’ll make more someday if I can find some designs I’m psyched about, but for now this is your last chance to get your hands on these (it’s Christmas, hint hint). also, if you ever wanted to subscribe to the mp3 of the month club back volumes, now is the time to do it since I’ll soon stop offering them on CD. all the regular album downloads are now CD quality .wav files, so when you buy a download you get album artwork, lyrics & liner notes, promo tracks from other albums, as well as the all the tracks from the albums in the same 16bit/44.1k quality you would get from a CD, ready for burning and compressing however you like. speaking of CD-quality, we’ve got the stray palace stuff available there now finally.  if you prefer mp3’s or aac’s, feel free to hit the links to the iTunes or AmazonMP3 stores (we make almost the same money there as we do here and they do all the work).

between here and Christmas we’ll be shipping all physical products within 48 hours (I lowered shipping charges as well) so you’ll get them in plenty of time to put under the tree for the black lab fans or fans-to-be among your beloved (or, you know, yourself).

we’re excited to turn blacklabworld.com into a living breathing organism, and hope you’ll join us here to listen, watch & comment. there’s goodies strewn all over the place (go nuts with that tunecore widget on the army page!) and many more to follow as we scan the archives and post them here. so thanks again and we’ll see you soon.

free mp3 of the month

Andy and I are working hard on the new black lab album and we’re going to be giving you a taste! instead of charging a subscription to the mp3 of the month club, we’ve decided to open it up to everyone — and start offering a free mp3 of the month. to say thanks for all your support over the years, each month we’ll be offering a free mp3 for quick & easy download (get yours right now above!). some months it will be new demos from the album as we soldier on towards the finish line. other months it will be alternate mixes of older tracks, live improvs, crusty demos of tracks that have never seen the light of day, etc. etc. etc.

I’ll open up a thread on the forum, or you can comment right here on the blog. we’ll be reading and responding as always. you guys are a lot of help when it comes to figuring out what sucks and what doesn’t, so don’t be shy.