in a flash: a musician's diary.

Two Thousand Ten: A Retrospective. Part 6

2011-01-06T02:51:00.008-05:00

This is Part 6 of 9 of my recap of 2010. Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5

I used to hate statistics.

I hated the idea that most everything could be boiled down to a percentage of predictability. It seemed to run directly counter to my faith in self-determination and my allegiance to the underdog. I believe in people, not numbers.

And I do. But as I search for meaning within the seeming absurdity of random, unconnected events, wondering why life unfolds as it does and if we really have any say over our existence, the broadest perspective is the only one I can make any sense of.

Because on a day-to-day, week-to-week, or even month-to-month basis, life isn’t cause and effect, and we don’t have control. We get lucky or we get screwed, sometimes just by chance. Of course we can make daily choices to make our lives better, but that doesn’t keep us immune to the indiscriminate nature of the world.

I can only grasp meaning in the long term. I can’t explain how or why events are connected, but I’ve come to believe in the statistics. I think real success and happiness is a result of applying long-term principles and developing habits over the course of years. We can’t guarantee any specific outcome, but in pursuing a way of life, we can play the odds. And that’s the best we can do.

******************

It was a seasonably hot and humid day in May, nearing that moment in the year where the novelty of summer is just starting to wear off and the thought of a brisk autumn morning doesn’t seem so bad anymore. But inside my new ground level apartment it was cool. Our living room was crowded with drums stacked amongst PA speakers and road cases stenciled with a band’s name that was no longer, an imposing reminder of the transition we were facing.

At this point, I’d only told a few people about Cavashawn’s breakup and we hadn’t made the news public. It was generally my responsibility to post information online, and I just didn’t have it in me to do it. I wasn’t there yet.

I was a mess and I knew it. I felt zealous; each day brought a different flurry of inspiration for a new path, a new direction of which I felt absolutely certain would be the right way. I would move to California and try out for touring gigs, I would go to law school in New York City, I would get a job in Chicago advertising. It would change depending on my mood, but in each moment, I was completely convinced.

I’d poured my heart out during a phone call with my father the day before and we’d come to the conclusion that it was time to move on from this “lifestyle”, not necessarily forever, but as a way to gain some semblance of stability. I hadn’t seen a doctor or dentist for over 3 years and, though I was perfectly healthy, I think they were concerned about my general state. My parents have been immensely supportive throughout this seemingly endless goose chase, but they were telling me what I probably needed to hear.

When my aunt the videographer called from Maryland that afternoon, she brought her less practical perspective. After a year of documenting my life, she was more keenly aware of the sacrifice, more attached to the wildness of the dream, and she urged me to stick with it in one form or another.

I wasn’t so sure as I tried to convince her I needed to get back on my feet and that I was going to give it another round, eventually.

“Fair enough,” she said, “Just don’t give up on your dreams, for God’s sake”.

“I’ll call you back,” I said. “I have another call coming in.”

It was a 615 area code I didn’t recognize.

“Jesse, it’s Eric.” “Eric Brengle.”

I’d heard he joined South Jordan a few months prior, but I wasn’t really sure what he’d been up to. He could difficult guy to get a hold of sometimes and we hadn’t spoken in a while.

“Sorry, I just realized you probably don’t have my new Nashville number.”

He was driving through Pennsylvania. The band had just showcased acoustically for a bunch of record labels in New York City and they were on their way back to Indiana. I started to catch him up on my sorry state of affairs, but he seemed distracted and not very concerned.

“Man, I’m really sorry to hear about that," he said. Listen, our drummer quit the band a few months ago,” he told me. “And we have an offer on the table from Island/Def Jam.”

The band had spent the previous evening at dinner with Anne Zelek, a best friend and Manhattan-ite who I’d introduced Eric to her senior year in high school when I realized they’d be going to the same college. Anne was one of the few friends I’d told about the Cavashawn breakup.

“We want you to join. Here, talk to Bobby.”

Bobby explained to me their situation in a little more detail and asked if I could come to Bloomington for a formal tryout to meet the rest of the guys, etc.

“Uhh…of course. Just tell me when and where….OK well I’ll talk to you soon man….See ya.”

I hung up the phone, brain completely in pieces. This was mind blowing on the greatest scales, the Death Star, nailed one last time by a young Mark Hamill, bursting slow motion into a glorious cosmic supernova. It was way, way too much to process. I sat down.

Holy shit.

Two Thousand Ten: A Retrospective. Part 5

2011-01-05T10:29:00.006-05:00

This is Part 5 of 9 of my recap of 2010. Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

That afternoon drive after brunch to our next show in Cincinnati that night was a turning point, because it was the first time I started seriously thinking about my own path, independent of this band.

It was a difficult notion to process.

I’d conveniently been able to put off considering “the future” for the past years, but I knew I didn’t want to give up on my dreams. Had I failed, I wondered? Was this how I was going to go out, were all of my good music memories and experiences behind me? I shuddered as I imagined myself 10 years out, just another former musician who had a one in a million dream and fell short. I was disgusted as I told myself it was nothing to be ashamed of.

The rest of March was a blur. We went back to Chicago and decided it would be best if we moved out of the apartment. After 5 years, we were thoroughly sick of looking at each other. We ended up making the trip to Austin to play at South by Southwest, mostly just as an excuse to be warm. Feeling the first glimpses of summer on your face a bit earlier in the year under the big Texas sun is hard to dislike, no matter what the circumstances. SXSW was and always will be a blast. Ben and I spent a few days with our friend Todd, an Ohio expatriate who was living in Hollywood working as a recording engineer and songwriter for Sony. He was in the midst of mixing an album with Austin-based producer Dwight Baker, a project that would become Now The Rabbit Has The Gun. Only a few months later, I would be moving Ben across the country to join this band.

****************

In late April we moved out of the apartment at 4719 North Lawndale. I think we all sensed this might not be a temporary solution for the band, and the process was a tense and awkward one.

Ben and I, who were generally on the same page personally throughout most of the breakup, found a place together in Ukrainian Village, an apartment our music lawyer was willing to give us a deal on in exchange for renovation work. Chris moved back to Cincinnati for the summer, exhausted and needing to be with his family and sick mother. Scott moved out on his own in what I can only imagine was somewhat of a relief. I can understand how 4 years of writing music for the band and compromising what he wanted creatively would’ve been frustrating. I know he enjoyed Cavashawn for what it was, but it had worn him down. I’m sure he was as thrilled to get out of the pressure cooker as the rest of us.

The weather was finally improving, and taking a step back for the first time in years was refreshing. Ben and I started renovating the new apartment, and I decided to formalize my digital content management and social media business that had been growing over the past few year. I partnered up with a quirky website designer who quickly became a close, inspiring, friend. I was finally making a little bit of money after a few years of being desperately broke. It felt pretty good.

I was settling in to a new life in Chicago in a neighborhood I loved. For the first time I could easily walk to the grocery store and the coffee shops, bars and restaurants of our bohemian neighborhood. I could see the northern half of the skyline from our apartment, which satisfied an odd personal fixation, the iconic Hancock building towering gloriously over the eastern horizon, a straight shot down Chicago Avenue.

My friends in State and Madison needed a temporary drummer to fill in with them at shows, and I was happy to have the opportunity to hang with the guys and keep my musical chops sharp. They were lighthearted and genuine, and I became close friends with the band during the few months I was playing with them. In May they asked me to accompany them on a trip to Nashville, where they were recording some new songs at Sound Kitchen, an incredible state-of-the-art 7-studio complex just south of the city in Franklin.

State and Madison are some of the scrappiest guys I know, and I say that as a compliment of the highest order. Because of their work schedules, we left Chicago on a Tuesday night at about 10PM, drove overnight, and arrived in Nashville in time for a 7AM breakfast at IHOP, just hours before our day in the studio started at 9. We spent two days recording three songs and I soaked in Nashville, a city in I had spent a few months recording with Marking Twain in late 2006. I liked Nashville, but didn’t love it. I had a weird taste in my mouth from Marking Twain’s experience there, and as I liked to say, it was a place I enjoyed visiting but wouldn’t necessarily want to live.

In the back of my mind, I still thought Cavashawn might have a shot and making it work, but I wasn’t counting on it. We had so much on the line, I reasoned, how could we possibly come this far, almost 10 years in the making, and then just give up?

We had college shows on the books for the fall, and our agent, a confidant whom I continue to consider a close friend, needed to know what we were going to do. It wasn’t the best time to press the issue, but I felt it was a matter of respect to the people working for us to let them know what was going on. The word I got was to cancel the shows. Scott didn’t have any desire to play with Cavashawn anymore, he said. At that point I don’t think anyone else really did either. And that was that.

It was around this time on a warm morning in early June that I moved my drums out of our rehearsal space. Was this it, I wondered? I honestly wasn’t sure if or when I would ever play drums regularly ever again. I wasn’t giving up quite yet, but I’d resigned myself to get a professional-paying job so I could save up money to move to the West Coast and pursue a phase as a drummer for hire. I still desperately craved the experience of playing in the big leagues, and I wasn’t going to give up, even if I had to make some compromises to make it happen. At least that’s what I was telling myself. I was starting to doubt I could really trust my instincts at this point anymore, wondering if my gut was really just leading me towards an unfulfilled, bitter existence. It was a devastating, devastating thought to face.

Alone, I carried each drum, one by one, out the rehearsal space door and down the flight of rusty steps for the last time under the gaze of a dramatic Chicago skyline as the double-decker trains rattled along the Metra tracks just south of Ashland/Grand intersection. It was the end of an era.

Two Thousand Ten: A Retrospective. Part 4

2011-01-04T01:50:00.003-05:00

This is Part 4 of 9 of my recap of 2010. Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

I think what I feared the most was the loss of my identity.

In many ways, Cavashawn and its 10 years of prior configurations had been a secure place for me to define who I was and what I was doing in this world. For the most part, devoting my being to a band was incredibly fulfilling. It was an interdisciplinary way of life, one that demanded both creativity and practicality, and every challenge was a means of self-discovery. It was endlessly stimulating, and the drudge of chasing “the next step” and keeping a nose to the grindstone allowed me to escape addressing some of the big questions.

In retrospect, I’m not sure if I’d ever known true independence. At 24, I still lived with my friends from high school, not unlike those with provincial small-town attitudes I’ve always been trying to escape. It was convenient for me to list the many ways we’d forged our own path and bask in how unique we were, but it was always we. Addressing the I was something I’d never had to do.

Many of my other friends became independent when they started college alone, or graduated and moved themselves across the country to pursue their own careers and ambitions. Despite the many unique experiences I’ve collected over the course of my life, this type of independence wasn’t one of them, and I think maybe facing that was of what I was most afraid.

*******************

Our final tour through our all-too-familiar Midwestern stomping grounds in March was the last straw. The last patches of snow scattered across the highway median grass as we schlepped our way down I-65 in northern Indiana and across Ohio. Tired, hopeless, and burned out, we went through the motions, always enjoying being on stage and playing music, but resigning ourselves to the self-fulfilling belief that it was getting us nowhere. One of the shows I had put together as a part of this tour was in Oxford, OH, home of Miami University and the site of Cavashawn’s origin 6 years earlier.

Stadium Bar and Grill is a sorry excuse for a music venue that perpetually reeks of stale beer and the bleach used to sanitize vomit. I never really liked the place, but it had begrudgingly become a home of sorts in Oxford. It was Green Beer Day, a locally celebrated holiday where Miami students celebrate the end of the quarter by going the bars at 5:30AM and getting piss drunk all day, drinking well, you can probably guess. While many 20-somethings long to re-live their college days, the tangible sense of regression that comes from playing on the same stage four years later with the same broken monitors to (basically) the same (but smaller) crowd of drunken idiots was not so appealing. The money would be worthwhile and we needed to fill the date, but I knew it was going to be rough.

This leg of the “Rad Bromance Tour” included, as did most of the other dates, State and Madison and The Hey Day, but we needed to cover more time at this particular show, so I suggested to the promoter that we add another band to the bill. I knew of a band at Indiana University who I thought would be the perfect fit. I’d never seen them play live, but I had been introduced to their piano player Bobby at IU by our mutual friend Eric Brengle two years prior. I knew Eric in high school in Cincinnati and I’d recorded drums on his solo album. He also produced the Marking Twain record, and we’d always stayed in touch.

When Bobby started a band in 2008, he sent me a MySpace message (back when that was all the rage) and I was pleasantly surprised at how excellent the songs were. It was solid and unabashedly pop, and I liked it. I started e-mailing with him back and forth, genuinely trying to help the band out in anyway I could. I thought South Jordan actually had something special, and I’d even gone as far as to pass their music along to a few managers and Chicago music industry folks with the hopes of somebody picking them up. While nothing came from my e-mails, things had been moving along nicely for South Jordan, and I thought getting put on a Green Beer Day bill might be a cool opportunity to get them into a nearby college town and for us to fill our time slot.

The last thing on my mind as I watched their set was the possibility of being a member of the band, but I was impressed with the show. The band was young and talented and the songwriting and performance was fantastic.

It was at brunch the next morning that Cavashawn unofficially broke up.

My aunt and uncle, network news videographers by profession, had been documenting our lives as a pet project on and off for the past year and they were intimately aware of the band’s internal struggles. As a part of her interview that morning, my aunt asked some of the tough questions we had been ignoring for over a year. Scott was sick of writing pop songs and didn’t like the direction of the band anymore. Chris was burned out, and Ben was well on his way. Maybe it was time to call I quits. I insisted we were fine, and, while admitting we were going through a particularly rough financial and emotional period, pleaded that if we stayed positive, success was just around the corner.

We reached a compromise where we would take the summer off and re-evaluate in the fall. The elephant in the room had been exposed, though, and there was no going back at that point...

...Continue to Part 5

Two Thousand Ten: A Retrospective. Part 3

2011-01-03T02:08:00.015-05:00

This is Part 3 of 9 of my recap of 2010. Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 4

Not surprisingly, the year began amidst an icy, dreary winter in Chicago, and I was frantically searching for ways to get Cavashawn back into higher spirits. The weeks drag on and on that time of year in the Great Lakes region, and this particular January was no exception.

The early months of 2010 were odd in that events unfolded that would’ve been greeted with sky’s-the-limit enthusiasm at any other period in the band’s career. Now they inspired only a careful, jaded skepticism.

And was that so unreasonable? We were in the midst of a gloomy winter and these weren’t exactly booming times for the band, the music industry, or the American economy on the whole. These were not the circumstances to inspire hopefulness, and while I’m not saying things would’ve been much different any other way, it certainly didn’t improve the situation. What was happening was inevitable at that point though. We were growing up, growing apart, and moving on.

*************

The previous November, I had booked a headlining show for late January at the gorgeous, new Lincoln Hall, an instantly classic venue on Lincoln Avenue, directly across from the Biograph Theater where John Dillinger was famously brought to justice 90 years prior. While the show had a respectful attendance, my scheme to convince the venue to let students from the nearby DePaul campus in for free didn’t produce the money we needed to inspire any turnaround.

There was a sense of deadened hope in the frigid dry air as we packed out of the venue that night. We had hit a plateau and weren’t building fans at the rate we had become accustomed to. Our bills were starting to add up, and the band wasn’t making enough money to cover rent anymore. It was around this time that we began devoting more time to side jobs and auxiliary income, which only drained more of the already dwindling energy from within the group

But early 2010 did bring a few glimmers of what I hoped might be optimism. I had contacted WXRT, a staple of Chicago radio and a national gold standard for eclectic, pop music in December to see if they would consider playing our songs. I first became aware of “XRT” my freshmen year in college at Miami of Ohio when I kept seeing their bumper stickers on cars with Illinois tags and didn’t know what it stood for or what the fuss was all about. The station inspires a loyalty not typical of radio in this day and age.

Their local music critic Richard Milne finally got back to me mid-January. His e-mail response was classic.

“Good stuff. Kind of an odd mix of boy band, emo, and Cheap Trick. Works for me. I'll give you a spin this Sunday at 7:30pm.”

So much was said in so few words. I took it as a compliment, which I’m pretty sure it kind of was.

It was also in mid-January when I finally nailed down a time to put together an event with the Chicago Recording Academy’s GRAMMY U Chapter. In early February we spent a day at Flashpoint Academy’s recording school in the heart of the skyscrapers in the Loop working in front of 30 or so GRAMMY U Members to produce a song under the direction of my long-time friend Tom Schleiter. (On a side note, Tom’s band Bad City released their debut album Welcome To The Wasteland with Atlantic Records in August and it’s a bona-fide rock and roll tour de force I highly recommend.) We ended up with a cool demo and got some good press from the event. The Recording Academy presented Cavashawn as one of Chicago’s most up-and-coming and successful local bands, and as much as I wanted to believe it, given our current state of disunion, it just didn’t quite ring as true. But the experience was worthwhile, and Tom proved what needed no proving, which was that he is an excellent musician and producer.

And finally, despite the permeating sense of hopelessness in the Albany Park apartment and our West Loop rehearsal space, in late January we were contacted by an A&R guy at well-known record label who asked for recordings of all of our music. About a week later we caught word that he had managed to work some connections and put us on as the bill of a pretty incredible show, opening for The Academy Is, a celebrated Chicago band who rose to relative national prominence and critical acclaim during the Fall Out Boy era, at their special 5-year anniversary show at Metro.

As an unsigned band, to be put on this show was something of an honor in the Chicago pop/rock scene. Metro is a celebrated, world-famous venue, and a place TAI could have sold out 3 times over. The A&R guy was going to be watching our set. The days were looking brighter. Despite the internal problems, everyone was in pretty high spirits about the show.

It was one last moment of true bliss together. On February 6th, we played our hearts out to a capacity crowd that was spilling out onto Clark Street under the frozen shadow of Wrigley Field. It was truly thrilling. We played tight and furiously, and I thought it was one of Cavashawn’s best shows period. Most importantly, I think we all enjoyed ourselves. I know I did.

The following week our attorney met with the owner of Metro, who was apparently raving over our performance, and our rise to notoriety and work ethic, saying “the band is a priority for us”. I was elated. Things couldn't be so bad, right?

The first two months of 2010 had brought us the support of both of Chicago’s local DJs, the Grammys, Metro, and a scene coronation of sorts. With all of this momentum, I considered pushing ahead a necessity and started working on booking a Spring tour with some friends in the Midwest that would culminate at South by Southwest in Austin, TX.

But of course, there were fundamental issues that no temporary state of euphoria or momentum could remedy. We were living in close quarters on the third floor of a sketchy apartment in a sketchy neighborhood, and the banality of being cooped up for yet another winter with the same four guys in a band with mounting collective debt and dwindling creative inspiration was aggravating. February dragged on and “The Rad Bromance Tour”, as it came to be known, didn’t arouse much anticipation amongst the group.

At this point, the novelty of traveling and seeing the country had worn off, and there was the looming sense that we were simply spinning our wheels, re-visiting the same places and wearing out fans by not offering anything new. Independent touring is brutal, and we were probably going to lose money. We knew we were going to be sleeping in our van a lot, which is a soul-crushing way to travel when there’s no end in sight. No one, including myself, was too excited.

But I figured we had to do something. No one was going to swoop down and save us, so I figured we had to make the best of what we had. After all, we’d only made it thus far by making our own breaks. Ironically, what followed was indeed a break, just not the kind I had been hoping for.

...Continue to Part 4

Two Thousand Ten: A Retrospective. Part 2

2011-01-02T01:49:00.008-05:00

This is Part 2 of 9 of my recap of 2010. Click here to read Part 1.

People change. That isn’t breaking news.

It’s a good thing. It’s what keeps life interesting, and it’s inevitable.

But it’s an elusive phenomenon that occurs over time. It's difficult to pinpoint or recognize as it happens. Only in retrospect is it most clear.

This story is about change. It’s about how moving on can be frightening and painful, but ultimately rewarding.

*****************

Cavashawn was the culmination of almost 10 years of music, friendship and, love. To say my time with Chris Hellmann, Ben Kubicki, and Scott Salmon was a definitive life experience would be a gross understatement. Much of what I now know about myself is a direct consequence of knowing them. It was an astonishing ride, full of hilarious and absurd moments, and it ran its course.

While I chalk the experience up as a positive one, the end was difficult, as endings often are.

We lived and worked together for 5 years in what I consider unique circumstances. Friends since high school, we made the leap from our college town to Chicago, a city in which none of us had any roots. We put faith into an ideal we didn’t even really understand. We rented together in a cheap, neighborhood that was completely foreign and, over time, made it our home.

Even though we had somewhat already established a successful regional band in Marking Twain, we started Cavashawn from scratch because we wanted a clean slate to work from in the new metropolis. As a band, we embraced the city to the fullest, and the city eventually embraced us back. For a time, we were able to pay our collective monthly rent with our musical income and we blissfully practiced, recorded, and promoted as a single unit, four young men living together in our best version of a musical utopia.

I naively believed that 100% focus and dedication to the band was our only means to success. Even though the three of them faithfully participated in my vision of an indie band making their own breaks by sheer strategy and work ethic, ultimately this was a philosophy I convinced them of, not a belief they necessarily came to on their own terms.

It certainly worked for a while, especially during the band’s rise to notoriety in the city. I only accepted later that everyone’s priorities are different, and that it is each individual’s right to define success in their own way.

But with the release of the last white EP, Scott felt like he had given it his all as a pop songwriter and, when we weren’t where we’d hoped we'd be, he realized he was sick of participating in the game that is the pop music business. In many ways, I don’t blame him. Cavashawn had become something of a burden to him. Music business types, fans, and even his own band members were expecting him to deliver something he didn’t have in his heart anymore. Chris was beginning to lose steam as well, and understandably so. For almost a decade he had been the doer of thankless, painfully necessary tasks, and the pressure of recording debt, interpersonal tension, and an increasingly hazy future began to take its toll.

I tried to convince myself to stay positive. Because I was so attached to the dream of having a career in music and the band was so deeply ingrained into the DNA of my own self-definition, I was still fully, maybe blindly motivated to push forward.

I felt we were just around the corner from catching “our break” so long as we continued to make progress and come up with more material, and on paper, we certainly were. To much of the outside world, we were still a band on the brink with the full backing of Chicago’s venues, writers, and music scene. On the inside, the negativity within the group was palpable, but I assumed the only way to get out of the funk was to keep pushing. I had come to expect, even demand my own definition of 100% effort from the others because I felt we owed it to each other. I couldn’t hear (or wouldn’t listen to) what they were trying to say, which was, ultimately, that they needed a way out. My refusal to acknowledge this only made the tension thicker.

Without accepting the inevitable finality, I began to recognize my friends giving up on the project we had worked so hard together to build. I started to feel gypped, even resentful. For almost a decade my entire being had been dedicated to something that, I quickly realized, was utterly out of my control and so effortlessly crushed. It was a cruel, but painfully predictable and cliché fate.

*****************

It took every bone in my body to create a facade of civility in the apartment we shared together, and I’m sure it was the same way the others as well. Our living situation, which, for a time was so conducive to teamwork and unity, became just the opposite. The only way to coexist was to ignore the fundamental problems, and necessary confrontations weren’t possible because there was no place to cool off, no space for reflection, no room to settle and recover.

And so we lived in a pressure cooker where the tension was always simmering just below the surface. Understandings of each others' perspectives and worldviews gained through the years of observation and dialogue as close friends became razor sharp weapons for subtle, restrained personal warfare. All it took to inflict pain was a sigh, a glance, or a disguised underhanded comment. Like a game of Jenga we began to dismantle one piece at a time what we had worked so hard to build, waiting for what I can now see with retrospect, was inevitable.

*****************

Those were the circumstances as we began 2010. I wish I would have kept a diary or a blog during that period, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. I was swimming against the current, and it was wearing me down. For 5 more months we continued under these forced circumstances. I continued to book tours, put together promotional strategies, schedule events, and “push forward”. The others half-halfheartedly went along with it, but it was a far cry from the dynamism that had gotten us to where we were. Scott and Chris were slowly checking out, and the atmosphere was taking its toll on Ben as well.

I’m a firm believer that people are far more capable than we give ourselves credit for. Circumstances play a role in building or breaking confidence, though, and we're at our best when our beliefs and talents are supported and affirmed by the people around us. Inspiration rarely comes from within. When the passion in the people around you is gone, however, that too is equally contagious. You need to either rekindle the fire or move on.

2010 was an incredible year, probably the most momentous in my short 25 years on this planet. At this time last year, I knew things were going to be different, but I simply could not have imagined how or why the year would unfold as it did. It was a year of broken dreams, dreams come true, soul-searching, self-realization, wild opportunity, nothing I ever wanted, and everything I ever wanted. For the better, I think 2010 was a period of incredible personal growth. It wasn’t easy, but the experience has left me stronger and happier. All in all, I can’t complain.

...Continue to Part 3.

Two Thousand Ten: A Retrospective. Part 1

2011-01-01T01:47:00.022-05:00

This is Part 1 in a Series of 9.

I glance around the room and I’m surrounded by people who, were it 6 months earlier, I would barely recognize. A lot has changed. These are now my friends, those with whom I now live in a foreign city, and they are the new makeup of my everyday life. I am flanked by dozens of Gold and Platinum records and a stunning view of the heart of Times Square in Midtown Manhattan. We are joined by Grammy-winning songwriters and producers who are credited on a number of the most popular current songs in the world. We are celebrating.

All of this is a somewhat overwhelming. Only a few months prior I was nearing rock bottom, exhausted and devastated, dealing with the crippling breakup of a life that was all I’d ever known. My mind wanders back to this place for a brief moment, a place where my values and conception of self were shaken to their core. Six stories high, I open the window to let in the glorious rush of late night street sounds. I feel the cool September air on my face and I look down. New York City hits my soul.

******************

A year has passed since my last post at the beginning of 2010. For three years I kept this blog meticulously updated, mostly for my own sake, and partially for friends and fans to get a glimpse into what it was like to be a musician following a dream. I tried not to gloss over the rough parts, but I certainly erred on the side of positive. Some things don’t need to be broadcast to the world, and the blogosphere is already crowded with the “woe is me” perspective. There’s nothing that irritates me more than reading someone’s personal pity party about life in an indie band. Pursuing music as a lifestyle is a choice and it’s your own stupid fault you’re not happy.

So when the going got tough, I stopped writing. Not only was I personally in denial about the circumstances, but I’m also of the belief that negativity is contagious. Posting emo blogs was going to do no one any good, and besides, my feelings were too raw and too personal for me to be comfortable sharing. But life has changed for the better. We’re at the beginning of 2011 and I’m at a particularly positive place. Now that a little bit of time has passed and I have some perspective on the matter, I feel like it’s an appropriate time to get this blog rolling again.

To continue my story, though, I need to address, well, what happened. Stay tuned. I'll be posting the rest piece by piece over the next 8 days. This is Two Thousand Ten: A Retrospective.

...Continue to Part 2.

Update

2010-12-10T14:49:00.007-05:00

I've taken a year off from blogging to re-evaluate my life. I am currently re-capping these terrifically tumultuous twelve months in an exclusive all-access megapost that I'm hoping to drop around NYE. In the meantime, I recommend you re-read my Best Moments of The Decade entry from last year if you have any interest in getting caught up.

Also, I'm in the process of assembling the Perfect 90s Pop/Rock MixTape with some very specific parameters. An impassioned, somewhat intelligent discussion on the matter has been taking place on my facebook page. Please join the party if you are so inclined.

july 3rd...

2010-06-27T21:52:00.005-05:00

So I realize I have some serious blogging to do, and all in good time. I'm dedicated to keeping this blog well-documented. But right now things have been an absolute rush and my mind hasn't settled in any way to reflect on anything over the past 6 months.

In the meantime, a few of my awesome friends (and awesome girlfriend) are throwing a dual birthday party for me / bon voyage party for my friend Mike Racanelli, who's moving to LA next week. All 21+ers are welcome... Info is above. Fittingly at Beat Kitchen, as no two men have dedicated more time trying to make that venue money... Great work on the absurd flier, right?

one more ride

2010-06-18T00:16:00.004-05:00

it seems to be, a crazy dream

that's wrapped around your finger

but you just can't remember

how she speaks to me, and tries to be

the one who will surround you, and claim that she has found you, but

rise above, and take me for one more ride

- "one more ride" written by jerry rouse for premium in 2001

life moves on. things happen for a reason. it seems to be a crazy dream, but i'm taking one more ride. ::

http://www.facebook.com/southjordan

greatest response to an e-mail. ever.

2010-01-20T03:39:00.004-05:00

looks like some of our tunage will be heard on WXRT sunday

More Photos From the '00s

2010-01-02T02:59:00.017-05:00

Here are some photos from the past I scoured up while putting together the "Best Moments of the Decade" post. The entire recap is in the blog post below.

Best Moments of the Decade

2009-12-30T13:48:00.066-05:00

“Best of the Decade” lists are hot right now, and man, this was a hell of a decade! The ‘90s were a blur, but the '00s, well, they’ve been one for the ages. I met Chris and Ben in 2000 as freshmen at St. Xavier High School in Cincinnati. Scott (who was a year younger at the same HS) came into the picture in early 2003. The rest is history. Could there be a better way to neatly wrap up a decade of trials and tribulations, self-discovery and self-loathing, failure and success, blood, sweat, tears and triumph than a “Best of the Decade” list?

It was in this decade that we built our lives around our music and each other. We’ve covered a map of the US with tiny dots, playing music in the greatest cities in America, and a lot of “not so great” places as well. We’ve recorded hundreds of songs in a dozen different places and released 4 independent CDs.

Perhaps the beauty of this decade is that it is so certainly our own. For better for worse, we paved the road ourselves (dead ends and all), and maybe the benefit of belonging to the Midwest has been that terrific struggle. But damn, we’ve had some really great times. So without further ado, I give you 10 great moments of the '00s.

1) February 2002, Cincinnati, Ohio - Winning the HS Band Challenge at Bogarts.

Ben, Chris, our friends Jerry and Matt, and myself started Premium, at some point in late 2000. Like many bros, we shared a love for classic rock, Line 6 guitar amps, and the Dave Matthews Band. After exploding onto the scene playing a stunning (and extremely fast) rendition of The Black Crowes' Hard To Handle in early 2001 at a HS talent show, we decided to get "serious" and take it to the next level. In Cincinnati, there was no higher crown of achievement than winning the High School band Challenge at Bogarts, the revered dive of a local rock club. As juniors in late 2001 we hit the big stage for the first time, and four rounds later, we “rocked” a sold out 1600-person capacity club to a thrilling victory as HS band challenge champions. We were featured in the Cincinnati Enquirer the next day, and kept it going, grabbing what we thought were legit slots (although in retrospect they probably fell into the "novelty" category) at local festivals opening for John Mayer, Jason Mraz and even earning a "Cammy" (Cincinnati Music Awards) nomination for “Best Hard Rock Band”, effectively blowing our egos to proportions only capable of being checked by a decade of constant humbling. Stardom was just around the corner, we figured.

The HS Band Challenge was a great moment because it lit a fire. It was the first thrill of playing music on a big stage in front of a sweaty enthusiastic crowd, and it placed the idea somewhere deep in our psyche that we could in fact make a life out of playing music and performing. The rest of the decade would be spent chasing that dream.

2) October 2004, Oxford, OH - Premium's Last Show at Stadium

But as life would have it, stardom was not, in fact, right around the corner. With four of us deciding to go college 50 miles north of Cincinnati at Miami University, we wanted to keep the band together and keep the dream alive. With Benton headed off to school in Colorado, we needed a new bass player. Scott Salmon was a year below us, but we knew he was a talented, spunky musician with serious drive. I pulled him aside in our HS cafeteria right before we graduated in 2003 and asked him if he’d join the band. I figured it was the highest honor anyone could bestow (after all, we were a “huge” deal, at least in my mind), and while he didn’t quite see it that way, he did bite at the chance to get with equally serious musicians and play some real shows. We started playing dive bars across Ohio, sneaking our 17 year old HS bass player in, but it soon became clear that he was becoming much more of a songwriter than a bass player.

We had a lot of friends and a few fans at Miami University, and when Premium began to disband, Scott, Chris, and myself decided we wanted to start something new and keep the music-driven life going, but not before we went out with a bang. On a crisp college-town Halloween weekend, we threw one last bash at the local music joint in Oxford, Stadium Bar & Grill. We packed the place with drunk 19 year olds, rented a stretch limo, dressed up in our best “star” apparel, and even flew Ben in from Colorado to rock out one last time. Friends traveled from all over the Midwest to join us, and we had an absolute blast.

3) January 2006, Chicago, IL - Marking Twain Makes it to the Big City

The night I was making “bass player wanted” fliers for Marking Twain, Ben called to tell me he was moving back, transferring to Miami U from Colorado. The stars were aligning! This band was the start of something new, and I think we all felt like the stakes were much higher. It took us a over a year to get the sound together and recorded, but the songs were better, the band was tighter and more mature, and we were determined to get out there and make it. Blindly harassing every club I could find on the Internet, I managed to book shows traveling a bit more, including ones in Chicago and New York City. I can’t quite describe how I felt the first time we merged from I-90 onto the Dan Ryan Expressway and looked directly north at the epic Chicago skyline, but it was one of the best days of my life. If just for that moment, it was as if all of my dreams were coming true. Our first time to New York City put butterflies in my stomach that summer, but nothing could match the first time we made it to a Chicago as a band. Even though we weren’t playing the greatest club, the innocent thrill of getting to the big city with my friends to play music, something I had fantasized about for years, was beautifully overwhelming. The future was wide open.

4) December 2006, Nashville, TN - Scott Turns 21 on Demumbreum

In the fall of 2006, Marking Twain signed a spec deal with an up-and-coming producer in Tennessee. Even though it ended up being somewhat of a bust (call it creative differences), we rented a place in Nashville for a few months and spent Christmas vacation working on pre-production for a demo and running around the Music City, feeling idealistic and invincible. Scott’s 21st birthday happened to fall while we were there, and we were determined to rage. We found ourselves at Tin Roof, a club on Demubreum Street in a popular bar district just below Music Row. Nashville cover bands put every other city to shame because the musicianship is simply unparalleled, and, unlike my experience of most cover bands, they're actually quite fun to watch. Buzzed and pumped to see top Nashville session players letting loose, we worked our way to the front, hoping to catch a glimpse of the guitar player. Blame it on cultural differences, but unfortunately Henry, the homophobic lead singer of Henry and The SeaHawks, didn’t take too kindly to us being so close ("No dudes in the front row!"). Having a particular distaste for Scott's enthusiasm, he demanded the bouncers “Get this Jim Morrison faggot out of here”. We laughed as we were forcefully ejected out of the bar and onto the street, where we proceeded next door to another cover-band bar at which Scott quickly jumped onstage, took the microphone from the singer, and nailed a passionate rendition of Break On Through. It was a night for the ages.

5) June 2007, Atlanta, GA - Marking Twain Gets a Lesson in Southern Hospitality

In the spirit of running around the country, over the summer of 2007 we managed to connect with a band from Atlanta who invited us open for them at a great music venue, Smith’s Olde Bar. It was a hot summer drive straight south on I-75 to Georgia. It was on this trip I realized, for the first time, that deep south heat is a force to be reckoned with, unlike any other. By that time, we were becoming accustomed to cutting costs by sleeping in the van, which made for a particularly uncomfortable and sweaty night on the way down. The show itself was cool though, and after we played, a frizzy-haired drunk guy with tight jeans and nice boots struck up a conversation with Scott, complimenting us on the show and inquiring generally what we were up to.

When Scott mentioned we were planning on another night in the van, he insisted we stay at his place. Ben thought it was some weird 40-something with bad hair trying to score, but as Scott knew, (because he has a way with these types of things) the guy was Ed Roland, lead singer of the multi-platinum ‘90s rock band Collective Soul, and for some reason he was determined to show us the true meaning of southern hospitality. He put us up in his posh condo, fed us delicious food, and even let us play the piano Elton John had given him. I woke up completely disoriented, sleeping on a couch in Ed's trippy, art-deco themed 3rd floor studio, surrounded by funky lamps, vintage amps, and dozens of guitars each worth much more than our van. Still in a daze later that morning as we were eating breakfast and headed out the door, he asked only one thing from us in return. “Pass it on”, he told us. Ed, we’ve been trying ever since.

6) August 2007, Oxford, OH - Marking Twain Opens for One Republic

Despite that phenomenal display of generosity, we decided the south was not for us and relocated north later that summer. Only days after moving from Oxford to Chicago, we were back in Ohio, opening for a little known up-and-coming band called One Republic, with whom our friend had been working for through an internship in Los Angeles. It was a warm August night, the kind perfect for an outdoor concert under the big Ohio sky. Because of the nature of the event, every incoming freshman at Miami was required to attend, so the field in front of the stage was packed full of students getting their first taste of college and freedom (and probably for a lot of them, alcohol). Everything was clicking. The mix on stage was superb, the crowd was huge and energetic, and we played flawlessly - maybe our best performance ever. For the first time, we were mobbed by fans asking for pictures and autographs after the show. Afterwords, Ben and I hit the familiar Oxford bars with the LA visitors, and ended back at their hotel (bromance style, nothing more) staying up for a late night conversation with the very intelligent and insightful Ryan Tedder. The One Republic guys couldn’t have been more down-to-earth, and a few short months later, we were elated to watch them become international superstars as their tune Apologize broke radio-play records across the globe.

By that October, our keyboardist Drew would leave the band and Chicago, Marking Twain would be over, and we’d start something new, again. But I look back on that show as one of my fondest MT moments, where, for a fleeting moment, everything was perfect.

marking twain on the cover of the miami student's amusement in 2006

7) August 29th 2008, Chicago, IL - Cavashawn Headlines Metro

<- screen printed posters from the show

After a year in Chicago, where we recorded our first professional EP and acquainted ourselves with the music scene (all while being incredibly broke), we finally caught a break in the summer of 2008. We’d been sucking it up, tackling the daunting task of trying to make a name for ourselves in a city we barely knew. When we caught word that Metro, the venerated institution and holy ground of the Chicago rock scene, was going to ask us to headline one of their famous local music showcases, instantly all of our efforts seemed more than validated. Apparently the four of us put up enough posters to pull the wool over Metro's eyes and lead them to believe we were big enough to headline their venue, but it was self-fulfilling. I guess that's what buzz is all about.

For the first time, it seemed we finally belonged in a city and music scene so overwhelming only a few months prior. The opportunity was a shot of adrenaline, and we spent the entire summer promoting the show and making new Chicago fans. The performance itself was a blur, but I can tell you, it doesn’t get any better than Metro. Looking out from the drum riser on a stage that so many legends consider home, I felt pure, unadulterated pride. We had stuck out some tough times together for a year, and it seemed like we were finally beating the odds.

8) January/February 2009, Santa Monica, CA - California

California holds a special place in every kid's heart who picks up an instrument and dreams of "making it". Of course, Hollywood perpetuates its own myth, but that has never really bothered me. For years we openly fantasized together about going to California, running straight into the Pacific Ocean, and then making the recording of our dreams. In January, we finally got the chance to do both. Jim Wirt, a producer who worked on some of our favorite records, heard our tunes through a mutual friend and invited us to come record with him at his studio in Santa Monica, just blocks from the ocean. So we left the miserable grey icy tundra, hopped on a plane to LAX, and were greeted by sunny blue skies, palm trees, RIAA certified gold records, In & Out Burger, and every other Hollywood cliché our giddy hearts desired. The whole process was surreal; we tracked on Brian Wilson’s console, made great, real recordings with a producer with whom we fell in love, and ended up with a process and product we'll cherish for the rest of our lives.

We ate oversized oranges from Whole Foods and walked to the beach to look north at the Malibu mountains. We soaked in a few weeks than can only adequately be described as a dream come true. It was relaxing and sunny, one of those rare experiences that lived up to and exceeded every single expectation. Years of living together, countless nights crashing on floors, and putting every ounce of energy and soul into a band will take a toll, but getting to California was worth every minute of strife. Now when it gets unbearably cold and my face is red from windburn in Chicago (like it is right now), it makes me think of how sweet that trip really was. I can’t wait to get back.

9) January 16th, 2009, Chicago, IL - Chicagoland, meet Cavashawn

One day last January, in between trips to the West Coast, timing, persistence, and luck intersected on a blustery sub-zero day in Chicago when we made it in the newspaper for the first time, and then the second, and the third. I remember waking up early, bundling up, and heading west down Lawrence Avenue to our neighborhood Starbucks to grab copies of The Chicago Tribune, The Sun-Times, and The Red Eye. I knew Cavashawn stories were supposed to run, but there was only one way to quell that Christmas morning curiosity of what they'd say. I paged through, reading each feature a dozen or so times and even got a little tickled in public. I showed the barista and he he gave me a free cup of congratulatory coffee. With a serious caffeine buzz on my ink-residue covered hands, I braved the elements and ran back to our apartment, completely stoked to show the other guys how great of a morning this was. And it only continued. The show that night at Beat Kitchen was packed with people curious to see what all the buzz was about, only 10 or so short of a sell-out despite the dangerously low temperatures. Validation isn't everything, but it does feel good, and a small dose once and a while keeps the spirit healthy.

10) March 2009, Austin, TX - Our first SXSW

I don’t think I’d be going out too far out on a limb if I said our first trip to the South by Southwest music festival in Austin, TX earlier this year was one of the most fun extended weekends of the decade. It was a long drive, but it was worth every $3 gallon of gas. After playing a show we routed through St. Louis on Wednesday, we left at midnight, Benton and I driving overnight and taking us deep into the heart of America. We switched with Chris and Scott at about 6AM near Tulsa, and I woke up at about 11 somewhere north of Dallas. It was my first time to Texas, and I remember the spacious rolling hills being a fresh visual shift from the usual flat cornfields of the Midwest. We stopped at a Wendy's just south of Dallas on I-35, and after stepping out under the huge bright blue sky into surprisingly warm temperatures, I felt the smallest first inkling of an understanding for Texas, that big bad state that generally seems to annoy the rest of the country. A few hours later, we arrived at the carnival that was Austin. SXSW is the biggest music industry festival, and it's a true freak show, a potent mix of hype, overblown egos, and a lot of free booze.

As we were loading our equipment into the club on 6th Street we were playing, I ran into our friend Auggie from the Chicago band Last Fast Action. My mind was slightly blown as the "small world" feeling sank in, and the tone was set. The rest of the weekend was spent soaking in the warm Texas sun, drinking cheap beer, hanging out with friends, both old and new, and watching great, great music. We discovered that SXSW is a reunion of sorts, a place where many of our friends scattered across the country came together to make music and, more importantly, make merry. We shared a hotel room with our friends State and Madison, but probably didn’t need to, since we didn't get back to our room until after 7AM three nights in a row. In the end, being surrounded by thousands of like-minded people for a weekend of sun, good times, and music was perfect. We had so much fun together that we made a pact to come back every year, no matter where life takes us.

So there you go. 10 great moments of the '00s. Here's to a great decade. It has been more fun than I could have imagined, and I can't even begin to explain how lucky I feel to have had 3 of my best friends right beside me for entire ride. Here's to another 10 years.

cavashawn diary : 12/23/09

2009-12-23T14:43:00.005-05:00

What a week! We're back in Ohio now prepping for the big holiday show tonight at The Southgate House, one of my most favorite venues of all time. The past week saw us performing a 21+ show at Angels and Kings in Chicago, an all-ages show at John Barleycorn's in Schaumburg (suburban Chicago), and taking a quick trip to Saint Louis to play at Cicero's before heading back east to Ohio. Besides running out of gas on I-70 in central Illinois, the week was a success. But that's a different story for a different time. The big news of the week is above. Let's just say we're feeling special.

cavashawn diary : 12.13.09

2009-12-11T12:57:00.010-05:00

SO FAR, December has been better than most. After my last post, we spent the better half of November honing our acoustic set and working out new material, which we're beginning flesh out into demos. Ben got some pretty slick recording gear, and not surprisingly, he's a natural. We can finally record ourselves. In 2009 we've finally broken that barrier again, after a solid 4 year hiatus.

But December got off with a bang at Schubas with our performance as a part of the New York Songwriters Circle Chicago December showcase. NYSC started in, well, New York, and recently branched out to chapters in a few different cities. In typical NY fashion though, they kept New York in the name, even though New York Songwriters Circle Chicago is just downright confusing.

It's simple. Songwriters share songs at an intimate venue. The NYSC Chicago chapter closes all of the shows with an acoustic performance by a full band, which happened to be us this time around. It was a chance to showcase how great of a songwriter Scott actually is. In the end, the songs are all that really matter. As a lover of the art of songwriting, I get a real kick out of being in a band with such an incredible songwriter. I might be his biggest fan.

The show was intimate (quiet even!) and was a cool opportunity to put together new acoustic arrangements of songs we've been playing the same way for a while now. People sat in chairs and listened. It was a far cry from the typical loud and frantic full-band shows we have become accustomed to, but that's precisely what made it interesting and stimulating. Being completely exposed musically was a challenge, but it was raw and thrilling. Putting together a great rock show is more than just playing well; it's about performance, energy, and crowd participation. While how well a group plays musically is, in my opinion, the most important aspect of a rock show, it's still just one part of the equation. The NYSC showcase was about playing music. Raw. And for that, it was a great experience...

And so life continues. Two and a half years in Chicago has humbled us, but we've learned and gained a world of experiences. We make progress every single day. We get better at what we do, and we are slowly inching our way towards where we want to be. Being committed to something this way has been a truly tranformative experience, harder than any of us ever thought, but also more rewarding that we ever expected. It's growing up without giving up, becoming more mature without losing idealism and dreams. It's a strangely beautful life.

cavashawn diary 11/4/09: tales of celebrity in three cities

2009-11-04T00:24:00.011-05:00

If there was a common thread in these past few weeks, it may have been our continued brushes with quasi-celebrity. Now, lets face it, with reality TV being such a phenomenon and the media becoming an all-consuming 24-hour machine constantly making people famous for nothing, celebrity isn't all that uncommon these days. But that doesn't make it any less exciting now, does it?

The Big Man (with a Small Ego) on Campus
If you take I-80 West through Illinois, across the mighty Mississippi River and past the World's Largest Truck Stop, you'll find yourself in Iowa City, home of the University of Iowa. We were there last Saturday for a show supporting Chicago scene vets Lucky Boys Confusion (members of whom are currently in AM (American) Taxi. Iowa is a newer Midwestern state for us, but it's slowly becoming a more familiar dot on the map.

I was vaguely aware the Iowa Hawkeyes were having an excellent football season, but after witnessing a bar full of Hawkeye faithful explode after a dramatic last-second win over Michigan State (to stay undefeated), the point was seared into my mind. The Hawkeyes were heroes in the national spotlight. Students were in a great mood, and the show was a blast. We had fun hanging out with some of the other bands, including Danger Is My Middle Name, and got to spend time with friends. It was a night on the Big-10 college town in all its glory.

<--champions go big. they go for the venti.

We awoke to an absolutely perfect, crisp, fall Sunday morning in Iowa City. With the sky a brilliant blue and and tree-lined streets bursting with yellow, orange, and red, it was almost as if we walked into a U of I brochure, except for maybe the occasional puddle of vomit on the sidewalk. What better way to begin this day than with a cup of coffee from one of the quaint shoppes uptown? Apparently we had the same idea as Kirk Ferrentz, head football coach and the reigning BMOC. The man himself walked right in behind us at Starbucks! He had most likely flown back from Michigan after the game and was starting maybe one of the greatest Sundays of his life with a venti coffee. Scott struck up a conversation and we briefly conversed with the guy. I'm happy to report, that, despite totally being a man at the possible pinnacle of his career, he was a friendly, humble dude. An authentic Big-10 college town moment. Priceless.

A few days later & a few hundred miles south on the Mississippi
If it were 1875 and we were traveling via steamboat, it might have taken us 4 days to get from Iowa to STL. But since we were with van, it back to Chicago before heading southwest again. Yes, it was back to St. Louis for the first time since June. We were headlining a bill with our friends The Hey Day and State & Madison, and there was a good crowd out, especially considering it was Wednesday. We have some incredible fans in St. Louis, and it really is always a pleasure to play there. I have nothing but great memories associated with the city.

If you're wondering if we met Nellie, the answer is no. But if you'll remember correctly, Cicero's is the spot where we first met Todd, singer of John Boys Courage and former(?) host of Cicero's open mic. Well, since we last saw Todd, a lot has changed for him. Puff Daddy transormed Todd's life, and I don't mean in the way that you felt when you first heard "Come With Me" on the Godzilla soundtrack.

<--todd, just as intense in real life as he is on MTV

As we flipped through television channels a few months ago, we came across Starmaker, apparently PDiddy's & MTVs response to American Idol. As we sat on our high horses, bashing every contestent from the safety of couch (us being broke musicians watching Starmaker in our living room mind you), none other than Todd popped onto the screen. The same insanely intense dude we watched host Tuesday night open mic was in the running to be Diddy's next star. 5 weeks later we watched him lose in the finals. Runner-up. We didn't see Todd Wednesday, but we couldn't help but think of him. Maybe only a few people watch MTV these days, but damnit, 4 of us were there on stage.

Hey, Hey Heey...Keep Pushing Guys...
From St. Louis it was I-70 to I-74 to Covington, KY a stones throw across the Ohio River from Cincinnati, just a few miles from where we grew up.

Every year NACA (National Associaton of Campus Activities) holds a regional convention for the Mid-America conference. Colleges from Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, Michigan, PA, Ohio & Kentucky converged in Covington to see and hire on-campus entertainment for the spring. This entails 3 days of showcasing comedians, musicians, a capella cross-dressers, a guy who shows reptiles, pretty much anything college students might find entertaining. We found ourselves working with our NACA agency trying to win votes for on-site showcase. All of the attendees vote in one lucky group (of the 30 or so extra acts who showed up) to showcase on the last day, Saturday.

SO the four of us sat in our Auburn Moon Agency booth and tried to sell every single person who walked by to vote for our band. Luckily these were some of the most open-minded music-loving students in the Midwest, so regardless, it was a great opportunity to meet a lot of new potential fans. But it required constant hustling and persistence. It was tough, and, well, we had to keep pushing. We needed inspiration. We needed an inspirational figure, a leader, to show us the way. But who?

That's Dennis Haskins, but you may know him as Mr. Belding, the principal from Saved By The Bell. Yes, Mr. Belding. A massive, massive figure from our generation's youth. There he was, sharing our booth (also booked by Auburn Moon) giving us words of wisdom. "Keep pushing guys", he kept telling us. And that we did. How could possibly we let Mr. Belding down?

<--he's still kicking. hard. thanks mr. belding, you really know just what to say and when.

So we went on to win the showcase, voted in by students of the heartland. It was amazing. We played Saturday and had a blast hanging out with so many friends (some old, some new) including The Hey Day, Tim Blaine, and We Shot The Moon. We met tons of students and will be playing a hefty amount of on-campus shows this spring.

We're back in Chicago for the next month or so working on a bunch of new songs and improving our acoustic set, which we'll be showing off December 1st at Schubas as a part of the New York Songwriters Circle Chicago Showcase.

cavashawn diary : catching up

2009-10-11T14:04:00.002-05:00

So I realize my last post was in July. It's October. I've had some time off from blogging, but I've been busy doing my best to survive. We've really had our hands full traveling, promoting, and trying to make enough dough to pay our rent. Things are moving along and we continue to make great progress, but reality is, well, reality. Our rent is cheap but we're just not making enough money to get by on the band alone anymore. It's time to dig in and really survive. We still want to travel, expand our fanbase and promote our shows the way we know they need to be promoted. In order to do this, we have to make more money. So we're scraping up odd-ball jobs and doing our best to keep the ship afloat, and the blog took a backseat.

But I really do miss the writing, and I realized I'm doing myself a disservice by not keeping up with what we've been up to. I like looking back at my blog and seeing my thoughts and reflections on events as they happened. It's interesting to compare hindsight with those (almost) real-time thoughts and feelings. My own selfish motives have drawn me back to the blogosphere.

When I originally started "The Cavashawn Diaries", there was no such thing as twitter, and I wanted to keep things updated daily. Twitter has pretty much blown up since then, and we keep the cavashawn twitter page updated all day everyday. If you want to know what's going on in our world, that's a go-to.

So in light of a busy schedule and the ever-changing technological landscape, I'm changing the format of this blog a bit. Think less documentation, more reflection, insight, etc. Every Monday (starting tomorrow) I'm going to post an entry that attempts to wrap up the week. I think this might be more realistic. A weekly blog. We'll see how it goes.

cavashawn diary: THEFT

2009-07-28T00:06:00.007-05:00

<-thanks to sarah daniel for this shot at WPF saturday.

It was bound to happen eventually. I think I knew deep down that it just couldn't last forever. Yes, I always knew someday I'd have to part ways with my Fall '99 LL Bean backback. I just didn't expect it to be this way. But then again you never do.

Yes, someone entered our van and stole our video camera and my backpack, which happened to have my vest, 2 t-shirts, jeans, my wallet, my iPod, and the band's phone. It sucks, but it could've been much worse. How I will replace this stuff, I'm not sure, but my wallet had no money in it (ha!), and I did have my Blackberry and sunglasses on my body. It could have been much, much worse. It's incredible how quickly something like that went down. We were right next to the van loading in and out, at no point more than 40 yards away. Lesson learned.

<- chi street team badass nikki was, um, on fire saturday

But besides that, Wicker Park Fest was a blast. We had some sound issues, but the concert was excellent. There was a great crowd to check us out and street festitivals in the summer are just plain fun. We stuck around to check out the headlining set by our friends Treaty of Paris at 8 on the same stage. It was a jolly summer weekend, the kind that make Chicago winters worth the wait.

cavashawn diary : 7/16/09

2009-07-16T21:16:00.007-05:00

And so we closed a chapter in the Cavashawn story last week. The EP that started in October (and RE-started in January) took us to the West Coast for the first time and solidified our current musical identity is now out for good everywhere. Sure, June 17th was the big day, and with iTunes, etc. a physical release isn't as practically necessary, but we wanted to have CD release shows in our four main cities. There's something both symbolic and meaningful about presenting the fruits of our labor to the people we're proud to have recruited as fans. And It so worked out that Milwaukee was the last of these four cities. Summerfest was just too right of a place to do it.

For us, Summerfest has become a great summer tradition. The festival truly celebrates and supports bands and musicians, particularly ones from the Midwest. The fact that such a well run, well executed festival exists and supports up-coming-artists while still featuring so many hugely world-wide popular acts is downright special.

This year it was bigger, better, more exciting for us - basically it was moving up from the kids table to the adults table at Thanksgiving. The past two years we played a smaller stage, in the afternoon, to a few hundred people. It was still incredible, easily our one of our favorite shows of the summer. Year 3 at Summerfest for us was in front of a large crowd, on the 4th of July, in the evening. It was one of the biggest crowds we've played in front of in a while, and it was, well, everything we could've hoped for.

Thanks to everyone who voted for us during the set and online, we ended up winning the "Emerging Artist of the Day". Summerfest hooks it up. We won about $600 worth of much needed gear. Cymbals, microphones, headphones - we were thrilled. Summerfest was nothing short of spectacular. We made the drive back to Chicago that night feeling very much alive and very much Midwestern.

Chapter 2: Tales of Other Great Cities of the Midwest, Particularly That One in Indiana

And so with the fresh scent of Milwaukee's Great Lake Coast still lingering in the confines of our big red machine, our next stop was the Indianapolis for an acoustic set at the VIP Lounge of the Verizon Wireless Music Center before the No Doubt/Paramore concert there. Despite a slight panic that set in as we realized we were really, really late, we managed to get set up and going in time for it to all work out. The acoustic set is coming along nicely, and we felt like it went over pretty well. We also got to check out both No Doubt and Paramore. Great concert. No Doubt absolutely brought the place down. We left impressed.

cavashawn diary : 6.28.09

2009-06-28T22:36:00.009-05:00

So last night we were at the Madison Theater in Covington, KY. Covington has all of the benefits of being in greater Cincinnati, just with three times as many drive-thru liquor stores and tobacco outlets.

Despite it being a relatively disorganized pre-show and general confusion abound, I think it was one of our best performances in Cincinnati ever. It was a phenomenal crowd, thanks in part to the fact that we were sharing the bill with Cincinnati vets July For Kings. People knew the words (even to the new songs!) and the energy was intense. Great crowd, great venue, good sound. I can't tell you how many times we haven't had that combo, so it's always refreshing to have things go so smooth. It was smooth despite there being one of those 'worst-case scenario moments' for drummers, and well, it was self-inflicted and my own stupid fault.

I had the terrible misfortune of blowing out a snare drum two songs into the set. I think I stripped a screw that connects the actual snares to the drum as we were setting up before the show. This has only happened to me once, 4 years ago, and it was a pretty big deal. The snare drum crack is the backbeat, literally the sound of rock time. It's the ticking of your watch, the smack that spits 2 & 4 in everyone's face - it's why drunk people dance at concerts. In short, it's the rock drummer's go-to. So you can imagine my horror when the beautiful, crisp punch of my favorite snare became the doughey slop of a non-snared snare drum. It sucks, and it sounds sooo bad.

So during the short section after our 2nd song where Scott was talking, I jumped back to grab my backup snare. We've been lugging around this backup snare to every show since this happened 4 years ago - just as a precaution. I frantically found that the backup snare was not in fact ready to play. Fuck, right? After all those years of lugging it around I don't have it ready to work. I really hate myself in those moments. Really. And so as Scott did his best to talk our way through it, I desperately searched for alternatives backstage. Luckily, Dan, drummer for July For Kings, was willing to let me borrow his snare for the rest of the set. Thank you Dan. The rest of the set was pretty excellent, but I am definitely putting my gear through the grinder this week. I'll be damned if that is ever going to happen again. Back to Chicago Tuesday morrning.

Here's a video (post-snare replacement) of Friendly Fire that Dave Hood shot last night. Thanks Dave!

cavashawn diary : 6.26.09

2009-06-26T20:15:00.007-05:00

SAINT LOUIS

<-you can thank the infamous scott feister for this pic of clifford in tow.

Summer is definitely here, and we are back to the good times of being on the road. Yesterday we made the trip from the shores of Lake Michigan to the banks of the Mississippi, tripping from Chicago to the great state of Missouri. The Midwest is green, corn seems to have been planted, and unfortunately, the Cardinals are atop the NL Central.

The show last night at Cicero's went particularly well. We had a great energetic crowd show up and I thought we played pretty well. Saint Louis is a unique place for us, because we started from scratch. We hardly knew anyone in Missouri when we started, and we haven't caught many breaks (i.e., opening for a larger band, etc.). We've slowly built a great fan-base in this music-loving town, mostly through the Internet. Early on we met some diehard music fans and worked together with them to get the word out about the band. We shipped out flyers and posters, coordinated on Facebook and MySpace, and have inched our way forward. It seems to have been working. People know the words, and the place was pretty full, primarily with our fans. St. Louis makes us believe we can do it. That's why, despite hating the Cardinals (like, really hate) I love the city.

Today was another hot, sunny day as we drove straight west through Illinois, Indiana, and into Ohio. We're in Cincinnati now, prepping for our show tomorrow night at The Madison Theater. It's late June in the Ohio River valley, complete with all the crickets, firecrackers, and humidity you may have come to expect. Summer! It's healthy.

cavashawn diary : 6.24.09

2009-06-25T00:59:00.004-05:00

And the incredible week that started last Wednesday sludges on. The CD was released 7 days ago today, and it has literally been an emotional blur of sweat, stress, and ultimately triumph. We're in the dog days of Summer, and it's unseasonably hot, gross, and muggy. Our bodies move more slowly in this heat, and we sweat sitting around the TV on the sofa, lights low with more noticably warm laptops burning our legs as we try to keep up with the flurry of Internet activity that has been the result of this CD's release. We are stealing feels of AC when we can.

There are about a million and one things going on right now, including the fact that we have an Emmy-winning documentary crew following us around shooting footage for a piece they're working on about entrepreneurship in the music biz. This is clearly awesome, but it also means we have two extra bodies in our already relatively crammed apartment. Life is chaotic right now, but it's amazing. My room is a mess. I need to do laundry in the worst way, but every single day has been jam-packed with one thing after another. Something as time-consuming as laundry simply does not seem to be a priority right now, so I continue to recycle clothes.

After Friday's show at Metro, the rest of the weekend was a bit disjointed, but necessary to re-charge. Chris and I ran around to a lot of the MobFest activities, and got drunk on Saturday night and stayed out late with Dan and Mike from The Fold, watching the sunrise as we finally got back to our apartment. It was awesome. And necessary. The past month has been extremely demanding, and Friday's show was something of a catharsis. It was a lot to grapple with, not so much putting out a CD and playing a show, but feeling the existential weight of knowing that everything, everything - every single day for the past 2 years, the personal struggles, the countless rehearsing, shitty shows, the merciless amount of work that is an endless, enduring reality - was devoted just to getting to where we were Friday night.

And was it a great place to be? Absolutely. There were clear moments that I felt as if I was living in a dream I had when I was 16. But I think what set in Friday for me at least, was the awareness that while I have poured every ounce of my mind, heart, and body for two years straight into this band (and the same is true of the other 3 guys too), we've done this all just to give ourselves a fighting chance. There are no guarantees, no clear light at the end of the tunnel, and no checkpoints to ensure that yes, you're doing the right thing, you're on the right path. All you have is your gut. If this is just the beginning, is it really going to be this hard? That was the question that was sinking in for me Friday. Not that the answer even really matters.

But it's an incredible high to be in the middle of this all. I think I've reached a new level of appreciation for life this week, a feeling of freedom that only comes from unshakeable commitment. And I think this heat is going to my head.

But enough of the heavy stuff. Off to St. Louis tomorrow. More updates via twitter and this blog as the weekend unfolds.

countdown to cavashawn: it's out!

2009-06-17T21:03:00.001-05:00

It's out! It's out! Stream it on MySpace, buy it on iTunes. Busy
day, but it's finally out!

Sent from my iPhone

countdown to cavashawn june 17th: 2 days!

2009-06-15T16:38:00.003-05:00

And we begin a big week. Posters are up, CDs have been shipped to people who pre-ordered, we have new merchandise in, and to be honest, I think we're all a bit whipped. It has been such an intense process - there are seemingly an endless amount of things we could be doing at any moment, but in the end, I guess we've done the best we could to get the word out - now we'll just see how it goes.

Thanks to the help of some incredible people on our street team, we have posters up all across Chicago, St. Louis, and Cincinnati. We sent out over 20,000 flyers to people in the mail with the hopes that they would find their way to some new fans. We've been putting in hours at the rehearsal space, trying to perfect the show, hoping that we'll be able to take these shows by storm.

At this point, it's up to everyone else. If you are reading this, post something on your facebook wall, or send an e-mail to people you know might be interested. This truly is a grassroots effort, and at this point, it's out of our hands. We'll be posting new music to our websites all week, so stay tuned.

countdown to cavashawn june 17th : 7 days

2009-06-10T11:48:00.002-05:00

Wednesday June 10th: 7 days till Cavashawn

1 Week!

A primary order Monday was getting a bunch of stuff shipped, including the CDs to our online store distributor in Florida. Being that the pre-order CDs are set to ship from the distributor Friday, Monday was the day they needed to get out of our apartment. I also went to LaSalle Power Co. downtown Monday night for a happy hour thing. We're in the process of putting together a show there in July, so we were working out some of the details.

And so yesterday was more of the same. Postering, organizing flyers via mail distribution, and then rehearsing. We're building our set for these CD release shows and working through all of the songs, trying to improve sections, and tighten up spots that might need some improvement.

And so today we're going to do some postering before going in to do some more rehearsal. These are not the sexiest days, but we're enjoying it.

countdown to cavashawn june 17th : 13 days

2009-06-05T01:55:00.004-05:00

Thursday June 4th - 13 Days till Cavashawn

I'm not even sure what exactly Ben is doing in this picture, but it's in the "Sierra Mist" green room at Q101. I wonder if Pepsi is pleased. We went down to tape a segment for Local 101, an institution of Chicago local music. The program will air this Sunday, and we'll be premiering Secret Satisfaction, a new song off of the EP.

Interesting experience. Q101 is smack right in the middle of Merchandise Mart, a huge building right across the river from the loop, pretty much in the heart of downtown Chicago. It's fancy and clean, kind of a reminder that, no matter how fucking cool the people who run the local music programs are (and trust me, they're pretty fucking cool) ultimately radio is big business. There is definitely some money changing hands. Whose hands I'm not sure, but I'm guessing it's not the folks who support local bands. Breaking into the system that is radio takes more than throwing up some posters up on a newspaper stand.

countdown to cavashawn june 17th : 14 days

2009-06-04T00:20:00.002-05:00

- The video is officially posted on our website and myspace pages! It's incredible how difficult this was, particularly for the media player on our site.

- Postering is going to happen tomorrow in & around Chicago's northside. We should be good to knock out a few zones with the help of some gracious and incredible volunteers. (Super Ranchers, if we were George W.)

- We also had a spotlight run on MySpace music's page today, which was cool. It's always nice to see when that goes down.

- Posted the Cavashawn Weekly to e-mail and to facebook. A lot of news this week. Not complaining, just sayin.

- Aerosmith rules. Enough said?

countdown to cavashawn june 17 : 15 days

2009-06-03T00:46:00.000-05:00

Tuesday June 2nd - 15 days till Cavashawn

So another weekend has passed. Congrats to both of my brothers, who graduated from HS and college respectively. I spent the weekend in Cincinnati attending the grad party.

But we're back in the swing of things, and hit the ground running today. Much of my today was spent working on converting the video to the various formats we need to post it on various pages. Freeware really can be a pain in the ass. But within the next few days we should have the Keep The Light on video posted on Facebook, YouTube, and a slew of other sites. In case you haven't seen it, here's the video:

Cavashawn - Keep The Light On

Benton is working on a new video blog, this one will shed light into what we've been doing to prep for the CD release shows. I won't give it all away, but it involves racquetball.

We also recently posted Friendly Fire to our facebook page (this was the whole 'announce it on twitter first thing') Friendly Fire is a song that has been around forever, and it has really stood the test of time. We love playing it as much as we did the first time around, and it is cool that we finally have a recorded version of the song that does it justice.

Besides that we are in the process of organizing the troops to put up posters across the city in willing retailers. Saturday was a terrible day for the poster party, and we ended up having to reschedule. So right now we are trying to organize a means to get them all up. If you're on our street team you'll probably be getting an e-mail within the next day or so pleading for help.

Did you see Conan's premier last night? It was great! And he ran across the country to Cheap Trick's 'Surrender'. Awesome.

countdown to cavashawn june 17: 22 days

2009-05-27T23:14:00.004-05:00

countdown to cavashawn june 17: 23 days

2009-05-26T23:42:00.007-05:00

On June 17th we'll be putting out our second EP. We started the process last October and, while there have been a number of bumps, we finally have the CD ready to go. So while we've put in a lot of time thus far, for the next 40 days we'll be kicking it into overdrive. I figured I would start blogging on the process. We're an independent band and that means we have to do 97% of everything related to putting this release out. For the next 40 days, if you're so inclined and want to read this, you'll get some insight into what we're doing to make sure this all goes down.

Tuesday May 27 - 23 Days till Cavashawn

Of all the important things we did last week, nothing trumps our trip to the zoo with the Chicago street team. Little to our knowledge, the Brookfield Zoo is one of the top zoos in the nation, and we were lucky enough to have our friend Stephanie as our host and tour guide. If our band was George W. Bush and street team effort was money, Stephanie would be a Super Ranger.

So we spent Sunday enjoying the Brookfield Zoo with about 10 street teamers. Seriously, it was a lot of fun. Chris got to feed to goats in the children's section. Shit like that makes him happy.

Yesterday was spent scheduling our weeks out through the CD release shows. We officially have a plan, which is good, because while we were functioning and had a general idea of what we were trying to do, etc., now we actually have a schedule and agenda. I put together a color-coded schedule and printed a copy out for everyone so we're all on the same page for timing, etc. We were watching some Green Day documentary and Matt Dirnt was quoted as saying something to the effect that, because Good Riddance was so poppy and the opposite of what punk is, putting it out was actually the most punk thing they could do. Now I'm not so sure if that logic is sound, but I love the song. And if he's right, I'm a fucking rock star.

So we are putting up posters, posters, posters. Scott and I have been literally hitting the streets every day this week, putting up posters across the city. And as we were running out of our first 300 posters today, we just picked up a shipment in of 2000, so we should have our hands full. Man, you really just can't beat the feeling of postering your face everywhere. I think the Captain Morgan's commercial probably sums up the douchey feeling that we have to overcome. Buried. Those thoughts are buried.

We also now have facebook events for all of our CD release shows. So if you haven't confirmed yet for Chicago, St. Louis, Cincinnati, or Milwaukee, now's the perfect opportunity. We also spent last week trying to convince people to vote for us to get on the Summerfest 2009 compilation. Since we were identified as an "Emerging Artist" by the festival, we are thrown in the running to be on the compilation, which gets out to 10,000 music fans. Voting officially ended today, so we'll know how we fared soon, hopefully tomorrow.

So postering and rehearsing. We are working on improving the set and a few tasty new covers we may sprinkle in from time to time. We're rehearsing almost every day, basically so Ben can learn how to play bass.

But man, he can definitely make a mean video blog. Did you see the new one yet?

Speaking of videos, the video for Keep The Light On will premier Friday.

So "the grind" continues.

countdown to cavashawn june 17th : resumes!

2009-05-25T23:30:00.000-05:00

After a week of hectic, hectic awesomeness, I will resume blogging on the countdown tomorrow. We've got a great week in store. A music video? Friday? Yep.

countdown to cavashawn june 17th : 29 days

2009-05-20T01:04:00.003-05:00

i feel like life is a mess if i don't have ideas in illegible scribble on paper larger than 8.5 x 11

So while we have the foundations of what we want to do, the next step for me is to organize them all into something of a calendar/task list. It's a dorky vibe I'm putting out, but I HATE not having a clear plan. So while the others roll their eyes, I think they secretly love it. OK maybe not, but at least we're getting stuff done.

This week has been excellent week for adding to our street team, and we've been trying to keep up with them, sending out new flyers, etc. So while many packages are out, we are sending new ones every day. I've been trying to stay in touch with people who we sent packagaes to via twitter and text, but still haven't heard back from everyone.

Chris and I also finally put in the beginnings of the T-shirt order. Due to popular demand (as voiced right here on this blog!) we are TRYING to get V-necks in some of the new designs, but we still haven't heard a final word on pricing.

I also heard word today from our mastering engineer that the bonus tracks we're giving away to anyone who pre-orders the disk are almost ready. If you pre-ordered, bonus tracks are on the way!

And Chicago folks, just got word that we'll be doing something of a feature on the Local 101 (on Q101) sometime in the near future. Get pumped!

Tomorrow Scott and I begin postering.

countdown to cavashawn june 17th : Day 34

2009-05-14T12:15:00.006-05:00

On June 17th we'll be putting out our second EP. We started the process last October and, while there have been a number of bumps, we finally have the CD ready to go. So while we've put in a lot of time thus far, for the next 40 days we'll be kicking it into overdrive. I figured I would start blogging on the process. We're an independent band and that means we have to do 97% of everything related to putting this release out. For the next 40 days, if you're so inclined and want to read this, you'll get some insight into what we're doing to make sure this all goes down.

Wednesday - 34 Days till Cavashawn

So yesterday was the day of the flyer. We have something around 29,000 flyers in our apartment, and it was time to ship them out to all of our street teamers across the Midwest. At times this street team promotion thing definitely feels like we are biting off more than we can chew, but as long as we're very organized (not something that comes easy to us), I think it is pretty effective.

The pressure with sending out flyers to some 150 people across the country is that if you're going to spend money on shipping and printing, you really REALLY want to make sure people are getting them and passing them out. At some point last year I took on the responsibility of staying in touch with everyone on our street team, and it has turned into quite the full-time circus act. Of course, this is the symptom of the band doing well because it means we've convinced hundreds of people to help us spread the word. I'm not complaining. When we started this thing last year though, we were at around 20. The workload difference is staggering.

We have actual street teams set up in 5 cities - Chicago, Cincinnati, Milwaukee, St. Louis, and Philadlephia. We also have about 30 or so people from across the country who don't live in these cities but have volunteered to help us spread the word anyway. So between facebook, e-mail, and text messages, I do my best to stay in touch with everyone and do everything I can possibly do to help them help us. A few days ago Benton organized a list of every show worth promoting at in May/June in these cities, and we're including some suggestions in the packages. I also send out a message on facebook/email to each of these Caravans every week (well, almost every week) giving them a heads up on when flyers are coming, and suggestions of things they can do that would help the cause. I love doing this, but it has definitley blown up into something bigger than I ever imagined.

But of course, what more could you ask for? If people are going to volunteer to help our band, we're going to make sure they are given every opportunity to make it happen. Why wouldn't you?

Yesterday I also spent time updating our iLike and facebook pages. I'm digging the new layout on the "music" tab. We're trying to get up to 2000 fans on facebook this week. Did you know you can suggest pages to friends? Do us a favor and give it a shot.

And so it continues. Benton is working furiously on a new video blog. Scott and Chris have their hands full staying up to date with the 45,000 MySpace fans. Things keep on moving!

countdown to cavashawn june 17th: day 35

2009-05-13T14:52:00.003-05:00

On June 17th we'll be putting out our second EP. We started the process last October and, while there have been a number of bumps, we finally have the CD ready to go. So while we've put in a lot of time thus far, for the next 40 days we'll be kicking it into overdrive. I figured I would start blogging on the process. We're an independent band and that means we have to do 97% of everything related to putting this release out. For the next 40 days, if you're so inclined and want to read this, you'll get some insight into what we're doing to make sure this all goes down.

Tuesday May 13th - 35 days till Cavashawn

Yesterday we were all over the place and a little disjointed, since Scott somehow managed to pull off the most amazing feat of the year, getting tickets to Bruce Springsteen and then managing to win a lottery that put him front row. Yes, I said FRONT. ROW. At the United Center. Front row.

So while he was getting The Boss' crotch in the face all night long, we took some time to start planning out the different features and activities we want to incorporate into the promotion for this EP release. It was a brainstorming session of sorts, and we came up with some interesting stuff, including the typical (video blogs, this blog, twitter updates) but also storytelling video clips (of some of our favorite moments in the past year), and a 4-part history of the band (blog format?) where we'll tell our story (how we met, what we've done, highlights, etc) for new fans who might be interested in catching up. Any other ideas you might be interested in seeing? Let us know.

Ben has been working on compiling a list of all the concerts coming to Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Louis, or Cincinnati that might be worth promoting at. We're in the process of organizing that whole situation so flyers get to people who get to the show and get them in the hands of new music fans. We also started the beginnings of our poster schedule. Putting up the amount of posters that we want to put up is going to take a lot of time, so we have to make sure we schedule the timing out correctly.

So from there the evening consisted of putting together some a news post for the website/myspace and writing the weekly newsletter, which went out last night. If you're not getting that, you can subscribe for it here.

Day 34 continues! Today we are trying to organize the 29,000 flyers we have in our living room. The flyers are out of the boxes. It's quite the sight.

countdown to cavashawn june 17th : day 36

2009-05-12T09:40:00.008-05:00

On June 17th we'll be putting out our second EP. We started the process last October and, while there have been a number of bumps, we finally have the CD ready to go. So while we've put in a lot of time thus far, for the next 40 days we'll be kicking it into overdrive. I figured I would start blogging on the process. We're an independent band and that means we have to do 97% of everything related to putting this release out. For the next 40 days, if you're so inclined and want to read this, you'll get some insight into what we're doing to make sure this all goes down.

Monday - 36 Days till Cavashawn

So Monday it was, and it was off to a bang.

We ended up getting back into town at around 2:30 last night, but we were up by 10:00 this morning prepping for our trip down to the loop to meet with our music attorney. We're in the process of working through some contracts (not recording ones..that would be nice, right?) and planning out what some of our goals for the next few months are.

So after a predictable parking nightmare that ended in us shelling out $20 for a space, we ended up having about a very productive 2 hour meeting, which was followed by us treating ourselves to Asian dumplings at a fast food chain.

It was about then that we got word that A TON of flyers we had ordered were delivered to our publicist's office (our apartment building's mail service is sketchy to say the least) in the near west side area of Wicker Park. We picked those guys up on our way back to the apartment. These are ALL of the flyers for the CD release shows in Chicago, Cincinnati, St. Louis, and Milwaukee, and basic ones that just promote the EP. I believe there are 29,000 flyers in all, which means we are really going to need help getting them all out. But they're cheap, so we figured go big or go home. Between the CDs, the posters, and now all of these flyers, our apartment looks like a warehouse:

So we finally got back at around 4:30 and began respond to a bunch of e-mails and myspace message we'd been letting sit. Benton is working on a new video blog.

OH, and it was also around this time that we CONFIRMED that our Chicago CD Release show will be June 19th at Metro in Chicago. We'll be direct support for American Taxi, our friends who just signed to Virgin Records. This show is going to be excellent. We could not be more stoked.

By 6:30 it was back downtown to LaSalle Power Company to meet with some friends involved with summer music festivals and the like. That place is really growing on me, and cheap drinks don't suck. We were lucky enough to finally a few of the people who are putting together this show at Metro, which will be part of MOBfest. Interesting stuff.

We got back at 9 or so and caught the end of the Blackhawks game, a team which we are slowly warming up to. We grew up with minor league hockey in Cincinnati (IHL anyone?), so we feel we can take allegience to the Blackhawks without feeling like traitors.

From there I spent the rest of the night working on Photoshop stuff for the website and MySpace. We're trying to build this Countdown to Cavashawn thing, but we don't quite have all of the content yet. Here's one of the images I was working on:

We'll probably throw that onto our MySpace page in our little flash news widget. Working on some new updates for the site today...

countdown to cavashawn: days 39. 38, 37

2009-05-10T22:15:00.008-05:00

we probably won't order it in black until winter, but imagine this on a lighter color.

We're all really digging the gypsy one.

We also had a quick rehearsal Friday night, basically just running through the set. Since we had a show Saturday, we wanted to make sure we had transitions and flow down. It is something like a routine maintenance - keeping things tight. We also talked about learning a new cover and threw around some ideas. Lo-Fi '80s tunes (think Spike) seem to be a popular theme these days, but we're also always down to learn a song from what I consider the golden era ('65-'75). We'll see what comes to fruition.

Saturday - 38 Days till Cavashawn
Saturday we nailed down the order for new posters. Posters are a pretty important part of our strategy to wear people down until they check out our band. We made something of a mark last summer putting them up in the places we thought music fans in Chicago might hang out. We were thorough, some would say excessive, but the word spread fast. In June we could barely book a show in the city on a weekend - by the end of August we were asked to headline a Friday at Metro. We think part of that had to do with the fact that people kept seeing our stupid posters.

Since we're turning a new corner, it seemed appropriate to get fresh posters printed and do it up again. This time we're shooting for all 4 of the cities we're playing CD release shows in - Milwaukee, Chicago, Cincinnati, and St. Louis. The major challenge? Deciding how many to get and in which size. While we were toying with the idea of getting 18"x24", they were just way too expensive compared to the 11"x17"s. 11x17s it is. Thrilling, huh? Here's the design we're using - you may have seen it before:

Saturday continued:

After packing up at the rehearsal space and loading up the trailer Saturday afternoon, we left Chicago at around 2:30 and hit I-65 south to Indianapolis. As we would soon discover, though, Greater Indianapolis would probably a be more accurate description. And if you want to get even more specific we're talking suburban strip complete with a drive-thru Starbucks and a Home Depot down the street (which actually came in very handy). This was a show trade with The Holiday, an Indianapolis band, and to be honest, we expected them to draw the crowd, since it was in fact their hometown. We ended bringing about as many people as they did, which pretty much meant the audience was, well, thin. Additionally the venue was in fact a church.

Now, all of this is cool. We're open to anything and have played in much, much less desirable venues. While a church isn't necessarily what we'd consider our musical scene, we're pretty much down for whatever, and we think our music works in just about any situation. We didn't expect the circumstances, but then again, that's how it goes. So we made lemonade out of lemons, bought 40s, drank them in the van in the church parking lot and we made the night work.

In fact we had a good time. We have some amazing, dedicated fans who travelled from all over the place to see the show, most notably a gentleman who flew in from Atlanta JUST TO SEE CAVASHAWN. We are humbled. And really, The Holiday guys are a good band, quality guys, and have a cool sound. They just need to put a little Midwestern elbow grease into promoting their shows harder.

Sunday - 37 Days till Cavashawn
So that was last night. It being Mother's Day and all of our mothers only being about 90 miles from Indianapolis, we decided to spend the day today in Cincinnati. It was good and relaxing, something of a day off. The big news of the day was that we DID get a rough edit of our music video for Keep The Light On, and it is looking fantastic. We are completely thrilled. Drumroll please...ok here are some screen shots from our FIRST EVER music video:

Minds across America are now blown, I'm sure.

So weekend over. Back to Chicago by 2 AM hopefully. I'm feeling a great week coming on.

40 days : cavashawn on june 17

2009-05-08T00:35:00.004-05:00

So here we go. On June 17th we'll be putting out our second EP. We started the process last October and, while there have been a number of bumps, we finally have the CD ready to go. So while we've put in a lot of time thus far, for the next 40 days we'll be kicking it into overdrive. I figured I would start blogging on the process. We're an independent band and that means we have to do 97% of everything related to putting this release out. For the next 40 days, if you're so inclined and want to read this, you'll get some insight into what we're doing to make sure this all goes down.

May 8th, 2009 - 40 days till Cavashawn

Today we finally got new T-shirt designs to choose from. There were 3 of them, and while we love them all we have to decide whether or not we can afford to get 2 of them or just settle for 1. We'll probably end up going with 2 even though it will be twice the cost. We're thinking we can probably make up the money in extra sales to cover the extra design. We're in desperate need of new merchandise, so this will be a nice addition. We're shooting to have them in by June 15th, so this means we'll have to make a decision pretty soon.

I personally also spent time today working on setting up our mobile club through Mozes, an online site that hosts bands and artists' mobile clubs. I'm still trying to figure out the details, but I spoke with a dude at SXSW who worked there and convinced me it was going to do everything we needed.

I also had the nerdy task of trying to figure out how to sync our facebook status (the cavashawn page) to our twitter feeds. Alas, it is more difficult than I ever would've imagined, but I think we figured out something that will work. I guess only time will tell.

We also spent time today making sure promotional efforts were organized related to our relationship with MySpace. We've been lucky enough to be chosen as a band they will help promote independently, but this also means we have to agree on a promotional schedule. As of now, it looks like we'll be able to premier our "Keep the Light on Video" on May 29th. Everything else MySpace related will go down in June.

Time today was also spent rehearsing some new songs and working out harmonies for Thrill. We're really trying to up the harmonies and the overall musicianship for our live show. By breaking down songs we've been able to really improve weak areas. For a while we would just rehearse our set everyday, and while that kept us tight, taking a more critical approach is definitely improving things.

cavashawn diary : 5/5/09

2009-05-04T13:07:00.009-05:00

So it is FINALLY nice here in Chicago. We've waited forever, but the trees are in bloom, it's sunny out, and I finally have an excuse to wear sunglasses. We're remembering why this city is such a great place to live.

This weekend was a great weekend in the world of Cavashawn. It involved two starkly different shows, but both for the best. Friday we played a fraternity party in Terre Haute, IN. Saturday we played a hometown show at Beat Kitchen in Chicago. Different worlds, same sic-nasty grooves for entertainment.

Fraternity parties are fun, but are always a LOT of work because they typically require we bring and run our own sound. This entails lugging twice as much gear as we typically do. We've done our fair share of parties, and while it might seem like a dream come true (party, play music, get paid?) we've actually come to have something more of a neutral attitude.

We had some help running the sound this time, thanks to our long time friend Eric Brengle, but we still had to haul thousands of pounds of equipment down into the "valley" below the house where the party was taking place. And then back up. So as much fun as it was, we were VERY ready to leave at 4 AM after we finally got all of the gear out of the valley/stage, up two wet flights of steps through a beer covered hallway, out the front door and into our trailer.

We were tired, but not too tired to hit up IHOP (my first time!). Basically delirious from heavy lifting and lack of sleep, we all ordered food and couldn't believe old people were up reading the paper.

After a brief 5 hours of sleep, we were up and back on the road at 10 AM the next morning, headed back to Chicago for the big show at Beat Kitchen. Since we were listening to music via computer, I figured I would share our playlist. Hopefully this is visible. Here's what we were listening to:

So we made it back and we were loading into Beat Kitchen by 3PM. By 6PM there was a line halfway down Hoyne St. The place was absolutely packed - only 10 short of a sell out. We are definitely getting there. We were hoping to sell the show out, but all things considered, we were thrilled to have the energetic crowd that we did. It was one of the best shows we've ever played. The crowd was electric and it was, as far as fan participation goes, this show really took things up a notch.

We played with two great Chicago bands, our good friends Coventry and Bright Like Japan, a newer band we quickly hit it off with. I thought it was one of the finer bills we've had.

By 10:30 PM we were packed up and headed downtown to LaSalle Power Company, a new rock venue/bar in the Loop - an area in which we rarely socialize. Despite being out of our "comfort zone" (anywhere north of North Avenue, and Stanleys at Racine & Van Buren) , we decided to give this place a shot. In fact we had a blast hanging out with the dudes in Coventry, the drummer and bassist from Bright Like Japan, and a slew of other friends who decided to come downtown. Good times.

Tomorrow we're staring a new countdown campaign for the EP release. Oh..and..

HUGE CHICAGO CD RELEASE SHOW TBA...stay tuned

Cavashawn on Fearless Radio Today

2009-04-30T09:26:00.004-05:00

Cavashawn will be interviewed live on Fearless Radio today at 5:00 CST. To tune in and listen to the interview, visit the Fearless website.

cavashawn diary: 4/18/09

2009-04-18T14:22:00.003-05:00

So I write this as we're speeding up 1-79 racing to Pittsburgh. See, we left our hotel at 6:45AM this morning in Evansville, IN. That seems pretty early, and yeah, it was. Unfortunately it was about 45 minutes too late and we're now rushing to Pittsburgh.

But anyway, last night was a GREAT time. We opened for Secondhand Serenade, a band we didn't know really what to think of going into the night. They're going great right now, have a single bumping on Top-40 radio, they're all over MTV, FUSE and VH1, and he seems to constantly be on tour. It would seem plausible that so much success could go to one's head, but we saw no evidence of such. The guys in the band were super cool and friendly, and the show went smooth.

The crowd at the University of Evansville was great! We met a ton of new people and played for 600-700 students. It was definitely a blast. Hopefully we can do it again sometime.

But anyway, back to the grind. Updates as we get to Pittsburgh. Are you following us on twitter? Microblogging there all night.

cavashawn diary : 4/4/09

2009-04-04T21:59:00.003-05:00

Cincinnati!

It's been a while since we played the old stomping grounds. It was a few days before Christmas if I'm remembering correctly. It was refreshing in many respects. It really is great to see our fan base growing even though we haven't spent a ton of time there over the past few months. And of course, it's always fun to play for family members and old friends. These are the people who have seen us grow and develop over the course of years. Our friends from Cleveland (Lunavelis) and Indianapolis (The Holiday) shared the bill with us, both doing their own thing and doing it well. We left the show feeling good about our direction in life, which is a decent place to be.

Yesterday also marked the day where I had was forced to throw away a pair of shoes by members of my band. These shoes have been beaten down, had huge gaping holes, and apparently smelled so bad lying underneath the passenger's seat that I was offered an ultimatum: Get rid of them. Being a reasonable man, I followed their wishes. They now hang like beacon of freedom in an unmarked alley in Covington.

We're on the road as I write this driving through Eastern Ohio headed toward Philadelphia. Ohiooooooooooooo. The state that just keeps on going.

cavashawn diary: 3/30/09

2009-03-30T15:09:00.006-05:00

OK,

So tomorrow turned into the next day, etc. Next thing you know it's been a week and I haven't updated anything. I have to play catch up. Soooo here we go.

SXSW RECAP:

Simply put, South by Southwest was the most fun we could have possibly had. After a rainy overnight drive across Missouri, Oklahoma, and a decent chunk of Texas, we arrived in Austin around 6PM or so, in time to check into our hotel room 4 miles north of downtown right off I-35. We were sharing with our Chicago buddies State and Madison, and I expected crazier things to go down in the hotel room, but the thing is, SXSW is not about being in your hotel room. We ended up sleeping in our van both nights because, well, driving wasn't the greatest or most legal idea by the end of the night.

After checking into the hotel and showering, we immediately headed down to the heart of the beast, which is the downtown district that centers around 6th Street at about Brazos. It was immediately clear that this was our kind of festival. Music is overwhelmingly everywhere, long-lost friends who have scattered across the country are plentiful, and the booze is cheap. How can you beat that?

The weather was downright perfect. It was sunny...dare I say warm? The temperature hovered around 80 during the day and probably dropped to around 60 at night. Perfect. People must think we're crazy to live this far north.

About 3 seconds after we hit 6th Street, I ran into Auggie from Last Fast Action. Yes, the Chicago scene was out in full force. We ended up seeing tons of friends who figured enjoying live music in Texas was better than dealing with a Chicago March. We ran over to Paradise to catch the very end of our Pennsylvania friends The Composure's set. We'll be playing with them in 2 weeks in Pittsburgh.

We finally dragged our stuff upstairs to "Nina's Lounge" we were playing at around 9, rushed on stage, played our showcase, and it was over. It all happened so fast, and despite some of the predictable issues (crappy drum hardware, minor sound problems, etc.) the showcase went VERY well. We had the opportunity to play for some people who had been meaning to see us, and we made some good connections. It was a worthwhile trip.

Shortly after packing up, I bought Bill Cox from Danger is My Middle Name a shot for his 21st birthday and then we and hit the streets of Austin with our good friend C. Todd Nielson from Mayday. We go way back with Todd, back to Ohio and more simple times. Todd happened to be in Austin for a few weeks as a part of his move across the country to LA, where his songwriting career is blossoming. We spent a good chunk of the weekend with Todd, which was neat.

As I was saying, we hit the streets, checking out dozens of bands and running into all sorts of people we've come to know over the years. As the night progressed, one thing led to another, and we somehow ended up at a swanky club watching Shwayze's HORRIBLE joke of a performance. Seriously, it was terrible, pretty much an insult to anyone who has ever listened to music. If you were to tell me that I'd drive all the way to Austin and be at SXSW only to see Shwayze, I would have threw up in my mouth. But one must go with the flow.

Before we knew it, the bars closed, and unlike Chicago where you can find bars open till 4 or 5 AM, in Texas it's all over at 2. We crashed in the van on 3rd Street shortly after the bars closed, and after a 7AM drive back to our hotel, we arrived to find that the guys in S&M had kept their word, sleeping on the floor for the first night. God love them. We fell into bed and slept until about 2 or so.

Day 2 (Friday) was no less fun. I ended up at the actual SXSW conference in the afternoon hanging out with Brenden Mulligan at his Artist Data booth. The actual conference was a great opportunity to see what was new in terms of music biz entities, etc. I ended up meeting some people I've talked to on the phone at JakPrints, and left at around 5:45 to meet up with the rest of the guys at The Blind Pig, where the Red Gorilla festival was giving away free food & drink. We soon after met up with our attorney for dinner before hitting the town, again meeting up with our former Ohio cohort and going to check out the Urbanites and some people Todd works with at Sony/ATV Publishing.

Our friend Rich from high school in Cincinnati, who now lives in Houston, made the drive up to Austin Friday and we finally ended up meeting up with him at about 1AM on 6th Street. Rich had family in town, and we were lucky enough to crash on their place (although Scott apparently preferred sleeping in the van for some reason), but not before some late night Taco Cabana.

We awoke somewhere near the University of Texas Saturday (Day 3) in something of a frenzy because we were late checking out of our hotel room. After speeding back to the hotel, we grabbed our stuff and again met up with Todd one more time for lunch at a Mexican joint a few miles outside of downtown. Overall, I really had too much Mexican food, but I guess that's Texas.

So at around 1 we hit up the Chicago-based Sinister Muse party on 4th Street and watched The Urbanites (again), State & Madison, The Frantic, & The Noise FM. Afterwards we grabbed some coffee, walked around for a bit, and ended up running into Mickey & Gabe from Danger is My Middle Name and some of the dudes in The Hot Melts, who were about to showcase at "The British Music Embassy". Funny accents they had.

So after a bit more aimless wandering, at about 5:30PM or so Saturday we finally hit the road and headed north. And then we drove. And drove. And drove. Waco, Dallas, the Oklahoma border. At about 3AM or so we crashed at a WalMart outside of Tulsa, but by 9AM we were back on the road again straight through the heartland. And drove. Kansas City, Des Moines. Finally we arrived in Ames, IA for a show we picked up while in Austin.

We rolled into town around 5:30 and played at ISU's campus pub to a whopping 4 people, since someone apparently didn't realize Iowa State was on Spring Break. Regardless, we had a good time, were put up in a hotel where we finally showered and slept like tired, tired babies.

Monday morning we got up and made the 6 hour drive back to Chicago. All in all it was an awesome, crazy weekend. I'm finally just now recovering. But trust me, we had fun. It was a LOT of fun. We left Texas thrilled that we made the trip.

the road to austin : 3/22/09

2009-03-23T00:06:00.003-05:00

So after a 15 hour drive from Austin that involved sleeping in the van near Tulsa (almost getting arrested for peeing in a Wal-Mart parking lot where we parked), we rolled in to Ames, IA at around 5:30PM today. We played an on campus event at Iowa State University. We're totally wiped and will be hitting the road back to Chicago tomorrow. We're finally in a hotel, which is nice.

SXSW recap tomrorow!

the road to austin : mobile upload

2009-03-21T13:35:00.000-05:00

state & madison rocking the sinister muse party on 4th street

the road to austin : mobile upload

2009-03-20T13:13:00.000-05:00

austin. is. awesome. above: walking back into our hotel at dawn this
morning.

the road to austin : current location

2009-03-19T15:24:00.000-05:00

the road to austin : mobile upload

2009-03-19T15:12:00.000-05:00

So we have arrived in Northern Texas and are headed east-south (that's
how they say it here!) on I-35 towards Austin. It's hot and there are
amazing big blue skies for as far as I can see. It's everything I
always imagined Texas to be. ETA in Austin: 6:00PM

the road to austin : current location

2009-03-19T06:30:00.001-05:00

the road to austin : mobile upload

2009-03-19T04:34:00.000-05:00

4AM desperation kicks in. energy chews & coffee in joplin, MO

the road to austin : mobile upload

2009-03-18T18:17:00.001-05:00

the road to austin : mobile upload

2009-03-18T13:36:00.000-05:00

and we're off. only an hour and half behind schedule. I-55 south to
STL, here we come.

the road to austin: 3/17/09

2009-03-17T23:39:00.006-05:00

Every March for the past 6 years or so, I've been bombarded with news, images, blogs, and general smugness from individuals much luckier than I. SXSW. Those four stupid letters have haunted me every spring on the cover of A&E magazines, the Internet, cable television, etc. The message was always painfully clear to me: Everyone person remotely connected to the music industry is in Texas, having a blast, without you.

Yes, SXSW. It gets devalued by those in the know, those very people who still seem to willingly go out of their way to end up in Austin that 3rd week of March. It's overrated, worthless, not as good as it used to be, too corporate, and most importantly, a waste of time. If you want to get the "true" SXSW experience, you must first reject it as not being worthwhile before buying your plane ticket. You can only appreciate if you actually don't appreciate. Sure pretty much every band, artist, and music industry figure in America makes an appearance, but that just adds to the lameness, right?

Well, this year we'll finally get our chance to see what all the underwhelming hype is all about. Tomorrow we leave for St. Louis, en route to Austin, Texas. None of us have ever actually been to Austin. Benton is the only one who has even been to Texas. It'll be something new, and I'm going to keep this sucker totally updated. So keep checking regularly for pictures, video, and news from the road. You can also follow us on twitter. We'll be tweeting all weekend. Enjoy!

cavashawn diary: 3/17/09

2009-03-17T22:55:00.000-05:00

Coventry. The other band on the May 2nd bill is Coventry. You know 'em, you love 'em. This is going to be a GREAT show. So excited.

cavashawn diary: 3/12/09

2009-03-13T01:10:00.002-05:00

So a few things of the past few days:

1) The Cincinnati show April 3rd was moved from the 20th Century Theater in Oakley to The Madison Theater in Covington. This is due in part to a miscommunication by the 20th Century. Basically we were misinformed about the overhead of hosting a show there, and when we got the real #s, it just didn't make sense to play there. Even though the Madison Theater is actually a larger venue, it ended up being a more reasonable situation. So there ya go.

2) Beat Kitchen show in Chicago was just announced. That would be May 2nd and we'll be having Bright Like Japan, as well as another TBA Chicago band (you'll know who they are) on the bill. Should be great fun.

3) Looks like we'll be sharing a hotel with State & Madison for a few days down in Texas at SXSW next week. Should make for some interesting moments, no doubt.

4) Benton and I are feverishly working on the LA video. We decided to throw up the footage from us tracking drums & bass for "All The Lonely Girls". You can check that out here.

5) We're headed to Milwaukee tomorrow for a show with our friends Inept. Should be great. We love Milwaukee. Can't wait.

6) Pittsburgh & Oxford (Miami of OH) dates are in the works for late April.

oh, and CD RELEASE JUNE 17th...

cavashawn diary: 3/10/09

2009-03-11T00:42:00.002-05:00

<--that would be bono himself, via chris' phone. and that's outside of metro. fucking bono! ha

cavashawn diary : 3/9/09

2009-03-10T01:22:00.002-05:00

Today was filled with rehearsal space & flyer making.

I also had the joy of teaching a drum lesson today. My student is kicking ass. This makes me extremely proud.

We are SO close to getting a new website and a new myspace layout up. But it's gotta be perfect. Working on it. Working on it.

cavashawn diary: 3/8/09

2009-03-08T15:19:00.006-05:00

<--benton is currently in the process of building his own bass.

SO what has been going on these days in our world? It has come to my attention that I have been "slacking" in the blog department, which I guess is true. I have no excuse, except for maybe the fact that I've been at a loss for "inspiration." I guess you could say I'm lacking quality content.

But we're in a transition period, preparing for the next phase and trying to figure out exactly how we're going to go about making our forthcoming moves. It feels oddly appropriate that the weather is finally starting to improve; temperatures are becoming more bearable and for the first time in months the environment seems to be more on the side of encouragement.

Encouragement. Sometimes you need a little bit of it. We've finished recording and the 5 tracks have been sent to be mastered by a "master" of mastering, Dave Collins. This means we have made final decisions on mixes and are stuck with what we've got, which is pretty good, we think.

Now we wait.

It's not an idle type of waiting, since there is a ton of stuff to plan and execute. It's waiting to be able to do what you LOVE again, though. Right now we are doing a lot of things that we have to do in order to be able to do what we want to do later. It's not bad - we've never been the types to complain about inconvenience (I really don't think we'd still be at it if we didn't have a decent tolerance for the inconvenient). Like most musicians, we want the world to hear our music. Being at least somewhat aware of the challenges we face in reaching that goal, however, we realize that there is a lot of behind-the-scenes work that needs to happen.

It's not the sexiest kind of waiting. We're putting together websites and new MySpace designs, working on publicity, CD duplication and distribution, planning release dates, getting clear copyright agreements in place, hell, Chris is pulling his hair out trying to organize all of our financial transactions over the past year and get our taxes taken care of. All the while we're finding odd jobs here and there to try and make ends meet.

And we wait. And we turn on the TV and see these cheap "industry" artists who have no clue how they got to where they are or why, well, it can be a little bit disheartening at times. We've come to realize that we have absolutely nothing in common with most of the popular artists of today. It would be difficult to find common ground in a conversation with say, Jesse McCartney, or Boys Like Girls, or you fill-in-the-blank. Flip to CNN and Rick Sanchez is tweeting that everyone except him is losing their jobs. Rick, will you please shut the fuck up?

But the waiting is for the best. We have goals in place and we're setting up a foundation so we can hopefully benefit. It's not the flashiest game we're playing right now, but then again, that's not what the Midwest is all about anyway. Recording in LA made us realize that dumb luck and shallow connections can get you a record deal and get your face on television for 15 minutes. But that's not what we would want anyway. If we were going to write our life-story, this is exactly where we'd be. I can wait with that.

cavashawn diary : 2/28/09

2009-02-28T10:17:00.002-05:00

Current Listening: Elvis Costello - My Aim is True

cavashawn mobile diary

2009-02-20T22:01:00.000-05:00

above: chris hangs out backstage before our taping of the steve levy
show.

cavashawn diary: 2/15/09

2009-02-14T02:39:00.003-05:00

This week has really been a blur. It's hard to believe that we have to jump on an airplane tomorrow and head back home, but we did finish what we had hoped to finish. We now have 5 songs recorded to an incredible degree. We are on our way.

We were pretty picky about the recording process, at least to get to this point. We bailed on a project that was 95% complete in December because we didn't believe the recordings captured what we wanted to say. We came out to LA in early January and did 3 songs, got back to Chicago and realized it wasn't enough. The stars aligned and we managed to get back out here and sneak two more songs in. But it was worth it. We finally have music that represents our band.

It's easy to get caught up in the details. Some days things will bring me down or bother me to the point where I can lose track of where we're at. But from time to time I'll have these moments of clarity where I realize that I am in fact living a dream. I think about all of the musicians I know or have known over the course of the past 10 years or so who picked up instruments with this same dream. I think about teachers, people who have inspired, etc. A lot of them never got to where we are today. Even though it really hasn't been the easiest route, I'm glad we've stuck with it.

We're back home now, it's snowing, and we're watching the Big Lebowski. We have a LOT to accomplish over the next few months. Stay tuned.

cavashawn diary: 2/11/09

2009-02-12T02:50:00.004-05:00

AND we continue to PUSH through these 2 songs.

It's been 3 days of serious pushing. Monday and Tuesday were an intense 2 days of tracking, and by last night we were all wiped, but feeling great about the performances we got. Today we left Santa Monica and headed east to Mid City Sound in LA's Koreatown to mix. Again, it was another long, detail oriented day, but we ended up with a GREAT mix of Keep The Light On. The song is sounding pretty incredible and "epic".

Tomorrow we will mix "All The Lonely Girls" and, barring any surprises (you really never know) we will have finished a huge step in this process of getting the new EP out. Very excited.

It's kind of bizare how easy it is to lose track of time and space being here working this way. Between being jetlagged, working 12 hour days, eating irregularly, and the weather, ocean, and palm trees, I really am having a hard time doing anything except focusing on recording and trying to make these songs as amazing as possible. I guess that's the point.

Oh, and don't worry Benton & I are in the process of putting a video together of this whole expedition. Better media is to come. But in the meantime I'm exhausted. Time to crash.

cavashawn diary: 2/9/09

2009-02-10T01:47:00.002-05:00

SANTA MONICA.

We've returned.

Today was exhausting, but we finished pre-production, drums, & bass. Busy day for Ben & myself. Chris is at it now. Better blog tomorrow, but we're rolling.

cavashawn diary: 2/3/09

2009-02-04T01:05:00.002-05:00

i forgot

I forgot how much I love this song. I used to fill in on drums for a guy in Cincinnati who nailed this tune on guitar. Beautiful.

Something about being cold and on tour in the Midwest during this time of year hits home for me. I can only imagine why those 3 wanted to get on a plane instead of driving through the crap weather of Iowa.

cavashawn diary: 1/31/09

2009-01-31T21:38:00.007-05:00

<--lucky boys confusion brought the rock in milwaukee last night. fans knowing every single lyric to every single song is pretty cool to see

As we were driving north on 1-94 yesterday, we had the realization that "heading north to Milwaukee in late January" probably sounds like a terrible idea to a majority of people in our country. "Late January" and "Milwaukee" are two ideas that really shouldn't go together.

Regardless, that is the scenario we found ourselves in yesterday, heading north along Lake Michigan discussing big ideas, like if the Black Crowes deserve the level of success that they've attained, or whether or not Blood Sugar Sex Magik is too long.

It's really not too long of a drive to Milwaukee from Chicago, and the weather wasn't too bad (clear and in the teens). We got the opportunity to open for Lucky Boys Confusion, our friends from Chicago. LBC has something of a cult following from years of sticking it out on the road, and has great loyal fanbase in Milwaukee. It was a great situation for us to play with those guys. They're a great band who are dedicated to helping out up-and-coming groups in the Chicago scene. We definitely had a fantastic time, met a ton of new people, drank free Miller Lite (the perks of being in a city built by, uh, Millers?), and made some new fans in the process.

It was also VERY encouraging to see so many Milwaukee fans out to see us - many who joined our street team when we opened for Northern Room in Milwaukee in December. Milwaukee has been good to us so far... We are looking forward to getting back.

Oh, and we just found out we snagged a showcase at SXSW, a huge music festival in Austin, TX in March. This is a huge opportunity, but we're going to need some help raising money to pay for gas to get down there. At this point, we seriously can't afford to lose money on trips, especially 19 hour ones. SO we're going to be doing some fundraising over the next few months to pay for this trip. If you can or would be willing to help us out, let me know! Playing at SXSW is a great opportunity (and one of my life-long dreams), but as of now we can't afford to drive to Texas!

cavashawn diary: 1/29/09

2009-01-29T02:10:00.003-05:00

so we're headed back to LA to finish the EP next week! more on that to come...

but today we had a photo shoot with Callie Lipkin, the photographer behind the infamous floating/jumping shots we're getting really sick of using for everything. hopefully today's shoot will yield some similar gems. we'll see.

of all the nice cameras in the room today, this photo was taken with a camera phone.

cavashawn diary: 1/26/09

2009-01-27T01:02:00.001-05:00

benton's new look

cavashawn mobile diary

2009-01-24T16:55:00.001-05:00

we are driving back to chicago from saint louis. last night was
incredible! we had a great turnout full of people singing along. it
was serious progress, and exciting to see. we put a lot of time into
saint louis meeting and building a street team, and everyone stepped
up and got the word out for this show. it was great!

our friends nick & tony from state and madison, who were in town early
for their own show tonight came out last night, and benton and I ended
up hanging out with them way late. serious hillarity ensued. love
those guys. I believe there are now seriously damning pictures of
nick floating around on facebook. golden.

Sent from my iPhone

cavashawn diary : 1/19/09

2009-01-20T00:55:00.015-05:00

Chicago is a city steeped in tradition, history, and, shall we say, a more "flexible" notion of democracy. It's a city built upon the complicit understanding what the law "says" isn't always what the law "is." Be it on the books or not, people living here have figured out a way to make things work, even if their methods aren't exactly legal.

This being what it is, we were recently quite brazenly introduced to one of the more peculiar Chicago traditions, one that apparently spans decades despite being, by all technical legal standards, complete and utter bullshit. It manages to combine history, personal hostility related to bad weather, a disregard for what the law actually says, and tackiness. In other words, it's a classic Chicago tradition.

Allow me to introduce you to dibs. Chicago Parking Dibs. You can put a bunch of shitty lawn furniture on the street to save your non-metered public parking spot if it has snowed more than a few inches.

<--"dibs"

Now, you really can't remove the notion of dibs from the absolute misery that is having a car in Chicago in the winter. Parking is a sick and twisted enough game of scarcity during the more temperate months, but come January with snow, slush, sub-zero temperatures (we were at a solid -12 a few days ago), parking is arctic hell. It isn't uncommon to have 2 or 3 feet of snow and ice accumulate every few weeks or so. And as great as the City is at clearing the streets, for those with cars this ends up being a double-edged sword. This public service only works to bury your vehicle under an impenetrable wall of frozen crap/slush.

But life must go on, and people inevitably figure out a way to get their cars out. It might be a real pain, especially when it's fucking freezing and all you have is this stupid plastic shovel that isn't event making a goddamn dent, but people figure out a way to get out.

And therein lies the fundamental justification for dibs. If you go through the suffering of shoveling your car out of a spot, you should get to keep it. You earned it. And what better way to mark your work than putting a bunch of broke lawn furniture in the spot? Sure, the neighborhood might look like Kiefer Sutherland got shitfaced and swerved his way down the street in a pregnant garbage truck, but who the hell cares? Chicago is ugly in January anyway and that spot is fucking yours!

Of course, this is COMPLETELY ILLEGAL. Public parking spots are just that, public. Regardless of whether you had to put up with some strife to move your car, it doesn't give you the right to completely hoard a perfectly good spot to yourself when there are literally thousands of people in the immediate neighborhood who need to park. But I digress.

<--we were arriving back from paradise.

Well we were in a particularly bad mood as we returned from the airport to our neighborhood after a week of sunny, tropical weather in Los Angeles. It was snowing and 14 degrees as we drove down our shit-covered street. We were hazy on the specifics of this whole lawn furniture thing. We kind of figured that dibs was some kind of unspoken rule, maybe it was a tradition brought from Latin America? (No sarcasm - that's what we were thinking - we live in a predominantly Hispanic neighborhood...but in retrospect, snow? the equator?).

Regardless, we were jet-lagged, cold, and sure as hell not about to park in a metered spot (which would require someone to get up at 7:50 the next morning and brave the cold to pay). We ballsily threw a ripped up laundry basket and a chair out of a "dibbed" spot and into the snow next to the sidewalk. We subsequently parked our fat Clifford of a van exactly where we pleased. We laughed as we walked to our nearby apartment. What bullshit of an idea, we thought. Who just thinks they can mark their spot like that? No one, we thought, would mess with Clifford. We were calling bluff on this whole dibs business.

We were wrong.

Poor Clifford suffered a crowbar to the door, a shattered driver's side mirror, and was keyed profusely. In other words, it was Clifford who suffered for our sins. They called our bluff. Someone was pissed. Someone was making sure we learned our lesson. Someone took dibs seriously.

<--ben cutting out a some kind of plastic fake replacement mirror in temperatures below zero.

Apparently, as we soon found through some research, that someone is pretty much half the city of Chicago, including Mayor Daly himself. The realization that we were totally ignorant of a serious tradition, one that traces back to the early days of the automobile in the city sank in pretty quickly. Dibs is legit. Legit whether you like it or not. And by all accounts, a lot of people don't like it, but in the "real" Chicago, dibs is the law of the land.

So as we suffered on Friday in -7 temperatures putting a crappy replacement mirror on our driver's side, we had some time to reflect. Was it bullshit? Yes. Was it fair? No. Did we have fundamental moral and legal differences with the very notion? Pretty much.

So we decided that there really was only one thing we could do to actually remedy this situation. We had to to do what was right and take it in stride. Clifford might be scarred, but don't count us out. Ladies and Gentlemen, please welcome the newest beneficiaries of the dibs system to the neighborhood. If you can't beat em', join 'em!

<-- our shit lies in the middle of the street now. dibs motherfuckers!

cavashawn diary: 1/17/09

2009-01-18T00:02:00.000-05:00

Whew. Yesterday was a HUGE day. The entertainment business is all about having your shit together, and having it together at the right time and the right place. It was one of those times where months (dare i say years?) of work accumulate into one strikingly awesome moment. I LIVE for those moments. I woke up at 7:50 AM and braved -12 degrees to go get the newspapers yesterday.

The Tribune & The Sun-Times both ran features on Cavashawn yesterday. We were also in the RedEye, which is the widely circulated free daily entertainment newsletter - popular reading for those using public transportation. Plastering the city with posters, handing out CDs and fliers at every show possible, being myspace / social networking junkies, and the buzz that we brought back with us from working with Jim Wirt in LA culminated in sweet sweet timing for the Beat Kitchen concert last night.

Depsite the fact that it was a ridiculous 1 degree outside, the show was packed - 95% capacity - a mere 15 people short of a sell out. This is awesome. We could barely get 20 people there in March. We are officially somewhat established in Chicago.

It's pretty affirming to see that kind of coverage in the local newspapers and to see a legitimate national music venue so full of friends and music lovers. It certainly feels great considering how much shit we've been through together for the past year.

cavashawn diary: 1/15/09

2009-01-15T14:45:00.004-05:00

<--not including the windchill. ugh the windchill.

I love the Midwest. It is and always will be home. There's something about growing up in the Midwest that keeps you in check, some kind of deep-seated knowing that you're not the center of world. I love the people here, I love playing in the cities here, and I love the NL Central.

But please, please, someone tell me why we ever left California in January? We were in paradise. We came back to some sick hellish version of the urban arctic. We were living it up recording great songs, walking to get coffee in the morning in a t-shirt, jeans, and sunglasses, and existing in a landscape dominated by the ocean, palm trees, and sunny hills in the distance.

We got back to Chicago yesterday to 2 feet of snow and unspeakably cold temperatures. Waiting for the train this morning, I could not help but have dirty thoughts like "Why the fuck do I live here?" and "I could really see myself moving to LA". Alas, we're not moving anytime soon. But what a terrible time to be traveling across the country.

But overall, we're generally well. We're going to be rehearsing today for the show tomorrow at Beat Kitchen later on today. We are very pumped for the show tomorrow night.

cavashawn mobile diary

2009-01-14T13:38:00.000-05:00

headed back to chi. 75 degrees is LA. A low of -10 tomorrow in
Chicago. Nice.

cavashawn mobile diary

2009-01-13T00:05:00.000-05:00

the strip tonight! we celebrate benton's bday!

cavashawn diary: 1/11/09

2009-01-10T21:47:00.003-05:00

<--4th street recording on, uh, 4th street.

So we've officially finished all of the tracking for this EP. It's a nice feeling to know basically we've done all we can do. Basically we finished up vocals and some final guitar parts today and dumped the whole session from analog tape to digital - we'll be mixing in Pro-Tools. I think tomorrow we'll take the drive from here in Santa Monica to another studio in LA's Koreatown to mix. We'll be mixing the 3 songs we've tracked here as well as 2 other songs we started in Chicago. Should be fantastic.

On a lighter note, Chris and Ben finally showered for the first time since we arrived. While the lounge we're staying in adjacent to the studio is awesome, it does lack bathing facilities. I figured out that the Santa Monica YMCA would host us, so I snuck a shower in yesterday. Scott has yet to. Nice, right?

I am SO relaxed. It really is great to be a drummer in these situations because you finish first and then have the rest of the time to completely chill out. I took a fat nap today, went for a walk on the beach, and generally have been enjoying life.

cavashawn diary: 1/10/09

2009-01-10T03:06:00.006-05:00

<--scott & chris walk down ocean avenue. the weather is pretty peachy.

Wow. Everything is incredible. Everything.

We've been slaving away in the studio for the past three days slamming out all of the basic tracks. Jim Wirt is an incredible producer in that he has been pushing us musically to play parts to our full potential, in other words to play it right. This would seem to be the obvious way to do things, but a lot of times bands and producers take shortcuts because its easier & sometimes quicker to fix it in Pro-Tools. Luckily we all grew up naively believing that becoming proficient at your instrument was the route to success in the music biz, so this current approach works well for us. We're tracking all of the basic tracks on analog tape - no computers involved - which means we are forced to play everything as perfect as possible since it can't be fixed. Crazy, right?

But it really has been an incredible experience thus far. I don't think we've ever been in a better collective mood, and we're living up these incredible temperatures in the high 60s/low 70s.

cavashawn mobile diary

2009-01-09T17:41:00.001-05:00

this is the view from the lounge where we're sleeping

cavashawn mobile diary

2009-01-07T11:34:00.000-05:00

we start tracking today. should be excellent. the studio is great,
relaxing, and feels creative.

cavashawn mobile diary

2009-01-06T20:02:00.001-05:00

fun in the sun on the beach. we're in santa monica. more to come...

cavashawn diary: 1/5/08 continued...

2009-01-05T13:30:00.003-05:00

above: benton braves the 20 degree weather on the steps of our rehearsal space this morning.

we're getting ready to leave chicago tomorrow . today is going to be a busy day of packing and coordinating everything.

i'm trying to pack minimally. t-shirts and jeans are key in my fashion world.

more updates to come...our flight leaves tomorrow at 7:50AM

cavashawn diary: 1/5/08

2009-01-05T02:22:00.002-05:00

FIRST POST OF THE NEW YEAR. already i'm 5 days behind. rough. one of my new years resolutions was to post a blog everyday.

we're headed to california tuesday to finish the EP. exciting stuff. it's cold & gray here in chicago. there could not be a better way to spend the 1st half of january.

cavashawn diary : 12/31/08

2008-12-31T11:58:00.005-05:00

2008 comes to a close! I'm tempted to say something like "Wow, that went fast!" or "Wow, New Years really snuck up on me this year", but after looking at my facebook feed and realizing there are at least 40 other people posting this very same sentiment, I'm resisting.

But seriously, what a year. At this time last year we hadn't even played a show as Cavashawn. One year later the wheels are on the track and we're well on our way. I think we got really "serious" as a band when we were 17 or so, and this is the first year where I can say we've done everything we possibly could've done. We've made more progress in one year than we had in the 5 before. I can look back on this past year and actually feel content, knowing that everything that we wanted to accomplish was pretty much accomplished.

We met thousands of new friends and fans traveling across the country. We put thousands of miles on old Clifford trekking across the Midwest. I saw Minneapolis, Philadelphia, Iowa, St. Louis, The Mississippi River, Connecticut, and Rhode Island for the first time. We went to Manhattan twice to play Arlene's Grocery, the famed Lower East Side rock club. We had 20 people show up at our first Chicago show at Beat Kitchen, 200 in November, and now we're on the brink of selling out the 300 capacity club. We headlined a show at Metro, the great Chicago venue I used to fantasize playing when I was in high school.

Basically I lived a dream this year. It has been nothing short of incredible.

2008 in Pictures
(all from the crappy perspective of an iPhone camera!)

we opened for one republic in cincinnati in april - this is the crowd gathering before the show

we finally tagged all of our cases this spring

we spent a few days in saint louis in early april. we added on an acoustic in-store at vintage vinyl in the delmar loop.

clifford got stuck in the mud at a frat house this spring in terre haute, IN. luckily this heifer of a truck took care of business

after a week and a half on the road, we finally got back to our chicago at the end of april. above: the view from our rehearsal space.

stock st. louis photo. benton is always good to do one of these.

music & coffee : essentials for traveling

in june we headlined a show at the madison theater in cincinnati.

hitting up lake superior in marquette, michigan (upper peninsula!) in june

scott and benton at summerfest in milwaukee in early july

playing for the kiddies at school of rock in mid july

we spent most of august promoting our headlining show at metro. here benton and i were waiting for a train overlooking addison ave and wrigley field while putting up posters across town.

grassroots promotion? it builds character

8.29.08 - we headline metro!!!

chris driving past camden yards in baltimore, early september

chris waiting for the subway in manhattan - september 13th?

driving out of philadelphia at 6AM

performing in pittsburgh in mid-september.

in october we started recording...above: benton hanging out at the studio.

meeting with lawyers in october...nice view!

clifford hangs out in duluth, a town in northern minnesota in (late october)

driving into minneapolis

we came across a wind farm in iowa. we also ran into jason reeves & his band at a hotel in iowa city that night.

walking through providence, RI near brown university in november

by late november the recording process is wearing us down. work on the EP continues.

early december: on the way back from a show in eau claire, WI we struck cheese

opening for lucky boys confusion december 27th at metro in chicago. (LBC soundchecks)

Happy New Year!

cavashawn diary : 12/29/08

2008-12-30T01:03:00.010-05:00

Photo of The Week:
chris hellmann in all of his action shot glory. this is a great argument for making christmas break 3 days instead of a month. thanks to linda, kelly, & lyndsey for this one.

*******************************************

METRO & the great chicago poster party...

<--this is an out of focus picture of lucky boys confusion sound checking at metro saturday.

Our second ever performance at the one and only Metro was nothing short of FANTASTIC! The sound was incredible on stage, we played in front of a great crowd, and we drank free PBR afterwards backstage. Now honestly, what could be better?

We opened for Lucky Boys Confusion as a part of the "Songs From A Scene" show hosted every Christmas by LBC. They are great. Mark Rose (formerly of Spitalfield) and Love Me Electric were great. A huge thanks must go out to Stubhy and LBC for throwing us on their bill. We really enjoyed it.

I would like to commend the staff of Metro for being excellent. We've dealt with some garbage club management in the past few weeks (cough MAD HATTER cough) so it was really great to work with professionals. Good for them for having one of the best reputations in the country. The deserve it. We're waiting on some photos from the show. I will post ASAP.

***********************
<--some might call it "slave labor", but we'd like to think of it as friends helping friends.

Today also marked the first annual Cavashawn Caravan Chicago poster party. About 14 of us covered the North Side with Cavashawn @ Beat Kitchen (the show is January 16th by the way, and you can buy tickets in advance here) posters. THANK YOU to everyone who came and helped out? We are forever indebted to you. It's not slave labor, I swear.

There was also a photo scavenger hunt. Yeah I said it, Photo. Scavenger. Hunt. I'm pretty sure we had a winning team (totals are, of course, still being tallied). I'm also pretty sure some incredibly weird photos will surface soon. Here's what was on the list though:

1. ______ Recreate a scene from a Disney movie.
2. ______ Act out exactly what a street sign says (include the street sign in the picture).
3. ______ Of the group involving the idea of ‘leap-frog'.
4. ______ With an animal.
5. ______ With someone in a CTA uniform.
6. ______ With an individual between the ages of 45-52
7. ______ Mimic a statue (in front of the an actual statue)
8. ______ With a yellow sports utility vehicle.
9. ______ With a Fast Food Worker
10. ______ A member of your group dancing with a stranger.
11. ______ With Tampa Bay Devil Rays official memorabilia.
12. ______ With a license plate of a State that borders the Gulf of Mexico.
13. ______ In front of a Chicago Blackhawks Logo.
14. ______ With a rock musician (members of Cavashawn do not count because who could consider that music?).
15. ______ In front of another poster for a concert taking place north of Irving Park Rd.
16. ______ With the Phil Collins album No Jacket Required in-hand
17. ______ A group member shaking hands with a T-Mobile salesman.
18. ______ An image of Phil Collen (lead guitarist of Def Leppard)
19. ______ Acting out the lyrics to any Cavashawn song.
20. ______ A packet of “Sugar In the Raw”

Did I mention Cavashawn at Beat Kitchen 1/16? We're playing with We The Living & The Urbanites. This is going to be a great show. Get your tickets now:

cavashawn diary : 12/27/08

2008-12-27T11:12:00.004-05:00

I'm not sure when we'll cover this song again, but it was fun. I know 1 of 2 people who took this video, but not sure which one. Thanks regardless.

So we made it back from holiday shows / holiday in Ohio.

We made it back to Chicago last night and were greeted by what must surely have been an extreme change of weather conditions. While it was a very reasonable 40 degrees, it clearly had been one hell of a holiday for this city. As we drove north on the Dan Ryan, what is usually a breathtaking head-on view of the skyline simply ceased to be. A metropolis completely vanished under thick fog. Visibility must've been about 100 feet or so because not once did we even catch a glimpse of anything beyond the freeway. As Benton pointed out, it might as well have been in Hammond, IN. Except for maybe the miserable bumper-to-bumper traffic, one couldn't tell the difference.

We made it back to our fog-laden alley swamped with about a foot-deep muck of dirty melting snow, ice, and slush. Getting the trailer into our garage space was a process, to say the least. Chuck Taylors are not cut out for such conditions.

Regardless, we made it back and we're getting ready for our show at Metro tonight.

The past week has been pretty nuts, and included charlatan club managers screwing us out of money we needed for rent, an overnight corner-t0-corner drive across Ohio, and a thwarted meeting with a multi-platinum producer because of multiple car wrecks. Hope everyone is having a great holiday. See you soon!

cavashawn diary: 12/18/08

2008-12-19T02:17:00.001-05:00

can't. wait. for tomorrow.

the show in cincinnati tomorrow is going to be awesome. can't wait. i'm getting video of the whole shindig

cavashawn mobile diary

2008-12-13T23:12:00.000-05:00

per request via twitter, chris' new haircut in all it's glory

Sent from my iPhone at 10:12 CST

cavashawn diary: 12/09/08

2008-12-10T01:50:00.007-05:00

<--york HS on friday. great turnout!

It has been nothing short of a CRAZY week for us. I've been slacking in the blog department, and I'm going to do better. I swear. here's my recap of the past few days.

friday 12.05
we hit up York Community HS for a Just Because Initiative show (read about it here). it went great, but we had to bring our PA system, which meant loading everything in 5 degree weather and not getting back till 1 AM.

<--more arm signage at york

saturday 12.06 - temperature: 1 degree
wake up at 10 and leave for a show in eau claire, WI. luckily they are paying our expenses, which is nice. we arrive around 5:00 (yeah eau claire is WAY north) , play at around 8, and hang out till around 11 talking to newfound fans. because it's 1 degree, we have to bring all of the drums into the hotel room. not fun. we buy some beer and crash at a relatively comfortable sleep inn.

<--benton enjoys WI cheese. too many stupid caption possibilities here. i resist.

sunday 12.07
wake up at 9 for the continental breakfast. we leave eau claire at 11 and haul ass back to IL, getting to our apartment at 4PM in time to RUN inside, get some clothes, and head southwest to mokena, IL for a show opening for Quitedrive, Rookie of the Year, and The White Tie Affair.

4:46 : we get stuck in GOD-awful traffic on I-94 and are late. this pisses me off.

5:30 - we finally arrive at the club to find out it doesn't fucking matter that we are late. relief.

the show went VERY well. we met a ton of new fans and were pleasantly surprised by Ben & JP from We The Living. VERY good to see those guys.

We leave at around midnight, stop for gas, and end up back to our apartment at around 1:30. We have to haul ALL of the drums and guitars/anything susceptible to the cold up 3 flights of steps to our apartment. Benton and I finally begin to pack for our trip. We get to bed at 3:00AM.

monday 12.08
5:30 AM - benton and i leave the apartment and take the el all the way to midway airport.

10:20 arrive in tulsa, OK. benton and i have been offered a bizzare opportunity to count inventory at a company based in rogers, AR. the money makes this well worth it, but it's kind of random.
<-best pic of OK i got.

1:30 - after 2 hours of driving east through oklahoma, beton and i arrive in rogers, AR.

6:40 - inventory count is complete. success.

8:30 - we have drive back to tulsa, OK

9:00PM - we are exausted and crash HARD. best western tulsa international.

tuesday 12.09
11-1 get breakfast near the university of tulsa
2:20 - leave tulsa
5PM - arrive in chicago

take the train back home. arrive around 7:PM

and here i am. 5 hours of catching up on stuff. i'm hitting it. tomorrow we're at FW Parker HS at 9AM. goodnight.

cavashawn diary: 12/05/08

2008-12-05T14:57:00.002-05:00

above: chris listens to the new speakers he installed in his cab at our rehearsal space. it sounds meaty.

The past few days we've been rehearsing and getting a plan together for the next month or so. we're about to head over to the rehearsal space, pack up, and head on over to York Community HS in Elmhurst for a Just Because Initiative show. Can't wait.

cavashawn diary: 12/03/08

2008-12-03T14:27:00.003-05:00

above: peter terry, who is a GREAT singer but very hard to find on the Internet, played right before us.

The space in Evanston is beautiful. It's a great room for music, and the sound is top-notch. Hell, Mark Tremoniti shot his instructional guitar playing video there. Need I say more??

Last night much more pleasant that we expected. We played an acoustic set, and it felt really, really good. It was so good to get back to playing music together after a short break, especially in an intimate acoustic setting. We could all hear each other and make eye contact. It was really a great experience...a reminder of how much I really do love making music. I think we all need those moments from time to time. Hopefully there will be some YouTube footage up soon.

But I'm out. I'm waiting on the shipments to arrive to the street teams in Philly, Cincy, and Milwaukee. If you got yours, let me know!

cavashawn diary: 11/27/08

2008-11-27T14:44:00.003-05:00

above: (the crew listens as we mix at our producer's north side studio)

happy thanksgiving!

We're all with our families in ohio enjoying the break. Cavashawn is *this* close to finishing up the EP...more updates soon, of course. And don't worry, we are making progress getting our money back in Lake Geneva.

cavashawn diary: 11/22/08

2008-11-22T15:29:00.013-05:00

<--it might seem cool, but really it's a place full of crooks. they should add "water" to their sign.

So we're on I-55 headed southwest towards St. Louis. This part of Illinois, like many parts of the Midwest at this time of year, is pretty gloomy and gray. We tend to see a lot of wide open fields, checkered with rows where corn used to be, stretching out for miles. The occasional patch of bare-branch trees scattered across the distance only adds to the "you could film a horror film about some teenagers getting chopped alive in a shed" vibe that we're getting here.

But on to a more serious matters. Extortion. God damned extortion.

We played in Lake Geneva, WI last night, a town near the IL/WI border home to many a Chicagoan's summer home. It's a quaint town, and we enjoyed our show at the Geneva Theater, which is an absolutely gorgeous recently renovated 1920s theater. During the summer the population swells to 50,000, but these days it sits between 5-8K. Think Blues Brothers hitting up all those towns when promoting their show at the Palace Ballroom. It's that kind of place.

We were extorted. Damnit.

We were lucky enough to have a few fans make the drive from Milwaukee to check out our show. This is excellent. The fact that folks were willing to make a 45 minute drive to the middle of nowhere to see us makes us pretty happy. After the set we decided to grab a milkshake/bite to eat with a few of these new friends of ours (most of whom we met at the Milwaukee show 2 weeks ago). There was a late-night diner place opened across the street called the Olympic Diner. The place seemed kind of cool in a Risky Business-era type of way, so we checked it out. Business was pretty slow, and as we were still packing out a few of the Milwaukee folks grabbed a table for 11. The waitress, as is customary at ALL diners, brought them out some tap water.

We finally arrived around 11PM (they'd been waiting for about 1/2 hour) and sat down to order. Not everyone ordered, but the majority of us did. We didn't get huge meals, because, honestly, we weren't that hungry. I got a milkshake, a few of us got appetizers, all in all we probably ordered $30 worth of food.

Now granted, this probably irritated the waitress. Seeing such a big group, she probably had hopes of a large order and the possibility of a significant tip. But like I said, we weren't that hungry, and the place was relatively empty. There were probably a dozen open tables. No one was waiting in line. So no big deal, right? In Lake Geneva, the answer to that question is a resounding wrong.

After serving us our meals, the waitress, who was obviously in a bad mood, announced she was charging us $2 each for our tap waters. This was tap water served in a red plastic (note...NOT glass) cup - think Fisher Price style - not bottled water, not filtered water, straight up Lake fucking Geneva tap water.

The bill for our water: $18. $18 for 9 tap waters. And she was generous enough to include a 20% gratuity to our bill as a tip, just in case we didn't feel like tipping since we being extorted. This brought the total for this water to a little over $21. Am I taking crazy pills? No, $21 for tap water, which apparently she wasn't charging anyone else in the restaurant for. I guess she was pissed because we didn't want to order the fatass special.

<--could i make this shit up if i tried?? notice the "9 H2O" charge at the bottom.

Needless to say, we were shocked, and vocally questioned the charge. We made it clear we weren't going to pay for tap water, especially when charged ex post-facto.

So they called the cops. They called the fucking cops. Let me make this clear: We were not making a scene, we were not being unruly, we were simply refusing to pay $21 for tap water. Almost immediately, two cops, serving and protecting the shit out of Lake Geneva, showed up a bit baffled, but forced us to pay anyway, because, as they put it "we can't tell someone how to run their business". What a sweet job they have. Honest to God.

They ended up not charging those of us who had purchased food for their tap water, instead generously only charging $12 for 6 waters. But if you include the forced gratuity, we're still looking at around $15 for TAP WATER. What could we do?? The cops were there forcing us to pay. WE WERE EXTORTED.

<--the most expensive fisher price cups full of water I've ever seen.

But we're not going down without a fight. I called the restaurant manager this morning (who was conveniently NOT there...apparently no one was in charge of the place at that hour...to make it that much better the waitresses refused to give their names). I politely told her on the phone that we were putting a stop on the Visa payment, and if she doesn't give us our money back we are going to be reporting her to the Better Business Bureau, calling the Lake Geneva Chamber of Commerce, and contacting all of the Lake Geneva media outlets about this ludicrous $15 tap water sucker punch. She said she was going to call me back tomorrow. We are ready to go to "war" with the Olympic Family Restaurant. They are going to feel the wrath (by the strongest legal means) of Cavashawn.

If you were with us last night, well, you witnessed absurdity. I hope you enjoyed it as much as we did.

cavashawn diary: 11/19/08

2008-11-20T03:00:00.004-05:00

Yesterday we put the finishing touches on our new EP(!) with an engineer at what I believe was Rainwalker Studios near Sheridan and Irving Park Rd. A final mix session is next week...

cavashawn diary : 11/16/08

2008-11-16T02:25:00.008-05:00

<--i'm really resisting the urge to make a sappy analogy about walking together on a journey. that would be pretty cheesy, right? resisting...we walk to the van at brown university in providence this morning.

Exhausting. Maybe that's the best word to describe the past week. We're back on the road heading to Chicago for an overnight trip after a week of shows on the East Coast. In the words of an English dude with bad teeth and horrible taste in child names, "Nobody said it was easy".

If we weren't a band of (generally) optimists, we might be leaving the East Coast feeling dejected. If you could, imagine Chris Farley delivering this next line: None of the shows this week were exactly what you would call "great."

We're building slowly from the ground up. It's tough. It takes resolve and it takes time. Luckily we have both.

Don't get me wrong, there were definitely some promising developments on the "Eastern Front" this week. In Syracuse, we made enough $ to pay for gas for most of the trip, and we played to a VERY receptive audience. We met 2 awesome fans who drove 1/2 hour to see us and are now going to start street teaming in Upstate New York for us. In NYC we had some industry folks come check out the band, which is always nice. In Philly we had a small crowd (but larger than last time!) and we're on the brink of launching a full blown Cavashawn Caravan there this week. In Providence, RI we played at Brown University with Chris Berman's son's band (...why would I make that up?) and met some new friends who might help us spin something in the Boston area. And even at tonight's show in Danbury, CT, which was pretty fucking pathetic, we still met some interesting bands.

But we're tired. We're absolutely broke. As Scott pointed out last night, none of us have bought new clothes in a year (except for our $2 white v necks...) Chris has been sick. He's had a stomach virus and has struggled to make it through the past few shows. We're lucky enough to know people who let us crash on their floors, but we've still slept on floors the past few nights. I don't mind the floor, but it's not exactly the best sleep. You have to switch between sleeping on your back and sleeping on your side all night in order to keep your body from aching. None of us are really eating that well, although we've had some INCREDIBLE fans who have been shipping or dropping off food and fruit at shows (You know who you are!). This kind of stuff is making a huge difference. We are literally staying alive and healthy because of the support of our fans. That's something special the Jonas Brothers will never know.

There have certainly been some dejecting moments this week, but like I said, we have resolve. There have been enough positive developments to make this trip a success in our eyes. We leave the East Coast knowing we have our work cut out for us, but also knowing things are moving slowly but surely. We're lucky to be making and meeting more and more people who are willing to help us spread the word and spread the music. And so even if we're exhausted for now, we're still having a blast. This is fun...remember?

cavashawn mobile diary

2008-11-13T16:56:00.000-05:00

above: the view from the van on race & 15th street in philadelphia.

we've arrived in philadelphia. I haven't had time to upload or write
about last night's escapade in NYC yet. soon...

Sent from my iPhone at 4:56 EST

cavashawn mobile diary: 11/12/08

2008-11-12T16:16:00.003-05:00

We're on our way into Manhattan, working our way through this mis-mash of highways that is the NYC Metro area. What can I say? It's always amazing to play in New York. When I was 12 our family drove to Boston for a summer vacation. On the way back to Ohio from Massachusetts, I realized we were only about 80 miles outside of New York City. I beggggged my parents to drive through NYC, even it just meant we could see the skyline from the car. No dice. I had to settle for seeing the reflection of the city lighting up the sky on the horizon. I guess I've been trying to get to NYC ever since.

cavashawn mobile diary: 11/10/08

2008-11-11T15:09:00.002-05:00

<--benton driving through snowy western PA

We are currently on the road heading to Syracuse for a show at the SUNY Upstate Medical School. This should be an interesting acoustic show, and they are taking good care of us. It's worth the trip. It being a 13 hour trip, we thought it might be best to split it up into 2 chunks. Last night we drove about halfway and ended up in Cleveland, home of crappy weather and, even worse, The Browns. I guess you could say it has been an uneventful past day, although I'm sure things will get much more spicy as the week progresses. We just found out we're playing a club called Billy Baloney's in Danbury, CT on Saturday. BILLY BALONEY's ha! Apparently it's a pretty good place, but damn, what a name! If that's not justification for a career in music, I don't know what is.

Looking out to the left of I-90, we can see Lake Erie. Being on the east side of a lake now (as opposed to Chicago, which is west of Lake Michigan), the ground is covered with snow and the sky is stuck in a perpetually dark shade of gray. Lake-effect snow. It could get depressing. Apparently there are more suicides in Buffalo, NY than any other place in the U.S. I guess that's the perky fact of the day. Still, as Benton pointed out, this is kind of a pleasant drive. It's early enough in the winter for snow to still be quaint, and we're jamming Ben Folds, so morale is relatively high. Vineyards and endless Wendy's are at every exit -- how could we possibly off ourselves in such paradise?

The past few months we've really been nailing the Great Lakes, which I kind of like. One of the stories my dad used to read my brothers and I over and over when we were young was called "Paddle To The Sea". The story is basically about a Native American kid who carves a toy canoe and pushes it out to sea. As the boy grows up and the world changes around him the toy canoe makes a journey through all of the Great Lakes. The boy grows up and finds his toy at the opposite end of the Great Lakes region. It's a nice story, and we've been spending time around a number of the Lakes, which really are a definitive geographical force in the region we've been covering. I didn't grow up around the Lakes, but it was part of my family's history. It feels right to be here.

That's all I've got. Upstate NY, here we come.

cavashawn diary: 11/10/08

2008-11-10T17:09:00.002-05:00

WHEW,

Iowa City & Milwaukee! Friday we were in Iowa City for our first time at a venue called The Picador. Fun. Saturday we were in Milwaukee playing with a show with Northern Room at the Turner Hall Ballroom. WOW. Two great shows. One was pretty sparse, the other was about 700 people deep. Northern Room brought a crowd, and we met a TON of awesome music lovers in Milwaukee.

THIS is rushed but we're about to head out the door and leave for Syracuse, NY. We have a show there tomorrow evening and then a string of dates along the East Coast. BUSY !!!

cavashawn diary: 11/7/08

2008-11-07T18:34:00.007-05:00

<--the crack in our windshield is getting out of control. it's slowly inching it's way to the east coast. more updates on that as we get 'em.

AND so it was. This is a historic week, and I'm talking for real this time. Chicago was nothing short of insane the past 6 days or so. On Tuesday we put Barack Obama into office as the first president of "our" generation. I can personally say I'm thrilled. The Senator from Chicago has inspired millions across the U.S. for a variety of reasons, and I'm no exception. What I have been particularly fascinated about with Barack is his ability to organize people using all of this new technology we've been bombarded with over the past few years. I love that he was able to bridge the digital and the physical world to achieve greatness. I think that's the key to success for people trying to impact our society these days, and we're taking notes. I hope I can read this blog in 40 years and remember how exciting this week has been for the young people of our country.

I FORGOT to write a post about our *amazing* show at Beat Kitchen in Chicago last Saturday. We were so busy making sure everything went down smoothly that I didn't get any pictures. I can say that we've come a LONG way. The show was soooo close to selling out. In March we couldn't get 20 people to that place. Now we have 200+. That, my friends, is incredible. We have great fans and friends who are helping us spread the word. It is everything I could hope for.

But on to less historic matters, namely the fact that we are now back on the road again and played in Madison last night. We've been to Madison a few times for shows, always opening for our friends We The Living. Last night we were on our own playing a concert held by Kappa Alpha Theta, a University of Wisconsin sorority. We played with some crazy, fun guys in the band Lights Off Dancing from Minneapolis. Theta had rented out a venue called "Madison Avenue" which most recently has been a dance club of sorts. As we found out from the guy running sound though, Madison Avenue has a rich musical history - some GREAT bands have graced the stage, most notably Metallica and Nirvana. It's always cool to walk where greatness has been.

Twas an enjoyable evening, although there isn't a ton to write home about. We've officially hit the crap weather of November. Awesome.

We're now back on the road now, headed towards Iowa City for a recently booked show at The Picador, a venue we're excited to check out. Yesterday we found out that a friend/fan of ours ended up writing up a great feature on us in The Daily Iowan. Check it out here. Thanks Linda!

But anyway more updates as they come. I'm going to try to throw together a little video blog at some point.

cavashawn mobile diary

2008-11-03T18:48:00.000-05:00

I'm sitting in Clifford downtown outside of House of Blues listening
to Boston on the radio. Chris and Benton are passing out flyers and
talking to people in line waiting to see Hanson. I love Hanson fans.
They are incredible. Even if you don't love Hanson, you have to give
it to them for fostering such a great, long-lasting relationship with
their fans.

Sent from my iPhone at 5:48 PM

cavashawn picture diary: iowa

2008-10-30T12:18:00.005-05:00

pictures from des moines & our trip from minnestoa into iowa.

4th street, des moines

yeah, they have these in iowa.

a magnificent windfarm on I-35S near the iowa/mn border . t boone must be hard at work

coffee shop side of the 4th street theater.

cavashawn diary: 10/25/08

2008-10-25T18:12:00.011-05:00

It being a historic weekend and all, we finally made it to Minneapolis, another first. Minneapolis is an intriguing city, perhaps the last frontier of the northwest until...Seattle? Really, there aren't any major cities between Minneapolis and Seattle. So I guess Minneapolis is somewhat of a refuge for certain type of people in the surrounding states. If you lived in, say, North Dakota, and you were looking for a large urban environment, you might pick Minneapolis because of its proximity. I've heard people in New York complain that Williamsburg, Brooklyn is full of disgruntled Midwesterners who move there to find like-minded folks. That might be a shitty analogy for Minneapolis. But where the hell am I going with this? I digress.

Minneapolis is unlike any city I've ever been in. Squeaky clean. Not just the city itself but also the majority of the people we ran into. In our short evening in the city, I was somewhat overwhelmed by the fact that everyone seemed, well, clean. Maybe (and it's very likely) that it's because we barely scratched the surface of the city, but to me, everyone looked so sharp and with it. I was impressed, and a little taken aback. I guess I'm accustomed to seeing more grittiness and dysfunctionality. This is definitely a good looking city. Everywhere I looked there were men with impeccable scruff and girls with great scarves. Hot.

We got into town at around 5 and met up with some folks, including the only person we actually knew in Minneapolis, our friend Addy. Addy was kind enough to bake delicious white chocolate brownies for Chris' birthday (which is Monday, hint hint).

<--apparently bob dylan lived in an apartment above this drugstore for his 1 year at the university of minneapolis.

Coffee. I happen to love coffee. It's worse than love, I suppose - let's get real - I'm a goddamn addict. I almost wrecked Clifford yesterday morning by leaving him in Drive as I was trying to go inside a gas station to get coffee at 1:30PM (which is WAY late for me). Take a second and imagine me walking away from the van and then running back to it, jumping in as it's moving towards a pole, and hitting the breaks to the absolute disgust of the rest of my band. That's how much I love (and need) coffee. Scott even went as far as to say that he was going to stop making fun of me for drinking coffee so much because "You really are a fucking retard without it. Your brain doesn't work".

<--the beat in all its glory

I guess this leads me to The Beat, the coffeeshop/music venue that we played in Minneapolis last night. The Beat makes fantastic coffee exclusively through the french press method. That was nice. But more importantly, they host bands for live concerts. Our concert last night was fantastic considering it was our first time playing in the city. We made a lot of new friends, including the Zach Ojeda from the Zmo Trio. Zach was kind enough to let us crash at his place. Thanks Zach.

<--some of the other delicious looking pizza options at mesa in dinkytown.

Post-show we headed over to Dinkytown (ha!) near the University of Minnesota for Macaroni & Cheese Pizza at Mesa, which was delicious. All in all, Minneapolis was a blast. We'll be back soon I would hope.

cavashawn diary: 10/24/08

2008-10-24T17:16:00.005-05:00

<--clifford braces the crap weather this morning in Duluth.

DULUTH. It's the farthest point north any of us have ever been. I've been to Toronto, which, despite being in Canada, is still latitude (ily?) speaking south of Duluth. Duluth also marked another milestone for the band: our first time stepping foot in Minnesota. So with those two things in mind I guess you could say that this was somewhat of a historic visit.

First of all, I have to say that Minnesota is absolutely gorgeous, pretty much everything I could have hoped for. Duluth is the furthest west fresh water port in North America, and like other bay cities on Lake Superior the land has a beautiful lay - tree lined valleys and hills dominate the landscape.

<--scott soundchecks at "the venue"

The trip to Duluth was pretty last-second to begin with. Basically we were looking for spots near Minneapolis, since we were going to be in the area anyway. Our manager hooked this show up last week, and it happened to be an Obama/Biden rally for the local AFL-CIO. I can honestly say that we've never played a union rally before. That's a fact. But we were happy to have the opportunity to play, and we met some interesting and impressive people. It wasn't wild or anything, but we enjoyed checking it out. And yes, it was COLD, but not as cold as I was bracing for. I broke out the winter coat just in case, but luckily there was no need.

clifford enjoys the wonderful $2.49/gallon gas of minnesota. clifford likey.

We were lucky enough to crash with Martin, the owner of "The Venue". This made the entire trip a joy, since we were able to sleep warmly and take showers. Thanks much to Martin.

So we're now in Minneapolis at The Beat getting ready to load in. More details soon.

cavashawn mobile diary: 10/23/08

2008-10-23T12:32:00.000-05:00

fresh milk straight from america's dairy farm

we're heading north in rural wisconsin listening to tom petty and the
beach boys. scott is manning the wheel. good times.

Sent from my iPhone at 12:29 CST