We have come down to three finalists: The names are Eden’s Favorite Apple, Ken & The Action Figures, and Hey Man Nice Bus.

Eden’s Favorite Apple

To me this name sits in the “this name has deeper meaning” camp, where the name itself can invoke a lot of different imagery.  Earlier when we solicited feedback for this name, one description really drew me: “I would expect a band with this name to push the envelope a bit, to be edgy yet grounded, to have depth.” I feel like that’s what our band is aspiring to be, and that this is a name we could definitely grow into.  While this name definitely conjures up a lot of different imagery, there is definitely a lot of religious connotation with this name, and it could give people the first impression that we are in the Christian music genre, or invoke imagery that people aren’t necessarily comfortable with.  At the same time, the vast array of imagery allows for a lot of great marketing opportunities.

Ken & The Action Figures

Where Eden. lies in the “deeper meaning” camp, this name and Hey Man Nice Bus sit in the opposite side of the spectrum.  This name invokes a much more specific image. This name good pretty favorable feedback amongst our friends, with most of them saying that they found this name intriguing.  The memorable point of feedback we got was “This name implies that if you’re going to check out this band, you’re going to have a good time.”  There is also a vast array of marketing opportunities as well.  The fact that our singer is named Ken gives this added benefit.  A downside to this name is that it doesn’t really offer a deep meaning, and may be a barrier to be taken seriously as a band – after all would you say to your friend, “This song really spoke to me, the one by Ken & The Action Figures”.  Somehow that has a hard time being constructed into a serious sentence.

Hey Man Nice Bus

This name is in the same vein as “Ken & The Action Figures” where the connotation is much less serious.  The feedback we got, while limited (as this name was a late-comer), was also very positive.  This name has a personal tie to our singer Ken, as he owned a VW bus and heard that line for quite a while.  This name could also bring about a fun logo, and some great imager as well. The possible downside is that it could carry a “hippie” stigma – one that may be reserved for more of a “jam band” than we are.

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So those are our three finalists.  I’d really appreciate your thoughts on this.  Which name attracts you the most amongst these three?  Is there anything about any of the names that bothers you?  Is there something else we should consider in naming our band?  If hearing our music would help, give us a listen.  Please feel free to comment below, or contact me on Twitter, Facebook or Gmail.  I’d really appreciate your thoughts, even if you just want to support a specific name.  Thanks again for your feedback!

So to add to my NaBloWriMo failure, I ended up missing yesterday’s post as I spent the evening with my Greenfoot friends, having our last rehearsal.  After we decided last month to put an end to the project, we wanted to gather one last time and do some basic recording and play some of our songs for one last time.  Last night was a lot of fun, and hopefully I’ll be able to share those recordings soon.

I wanted to share some videos that Greenfoot has posted throughout the years, the first being one that we took after about 6 months after I joined the band:

After Julien joined the band, we started playing out again in the spring of 2008, and had the opportunity to have some more video taken at Smokin’ Joe’s in early 2009:

Over the years we played some really interesting places. One that comes to mind is getting up at 4am so that we could play at the Colfax Marathon, right on the street.

Over this summer we got to be the featured band at some farmers markets, which was a pretty fun experience as well:

Looking back, it was a really fun project and I’m really grateful to all of my friends who got our emails, came out to our shows and enjoyed our music! Now with the chapter on Greenfoot closed, I’m excited for what’s to come.

While I could go out and either print out drum tabs or listen to the music or transcribe the songs into sheet music, but that would be a lot of work and could make me reliant on the sheets, especially when I’m playing in a genre that isn’t as accepting of music stands.  Instead, I’ve gone ahead and created a “cliff-notes” version of each song, writing some highlights.

Some things that I start off with some basic: What is the meter? 4/4, 6/8? What’s the tempo (In BPM, or may just a note a general feel)? Do I go with sticks or should I use brushes or the Rutes?

Next I move onto the structure of the song. What do the drums do during the intro (or is the intro drum-less)? How many repetitions are there in each part of the song? Is there a point where I drop out?  What are the dynamics? Is there anything else special to take note?

The intention is to be able to read through these notes right before I play this song, and in combination with concentration and muscle-memory, be able to work my way through the song.  Obviously with practice I should be able to commit these original and cover songs to memory, but this is a good way to cheat my way through an evening of music.

What other ways do you use to get through songs? For my friends who are not drummers, does a method like this work for you?  Do you have any other tips on how to learn new music in a relatively short period of time?

Ok, so I am technically making a post for Monday, but I am promising better content for Tuesday in the form of two posts. Mondays are hard for me as I follow my day at work with band rehearsal with Ken Stevens. Tonight was actually the first night of practice, and I left with a book full of drumming notes and a sore left wrist – I guess it has been a while since I’ve rehearsed a full evening.  Definitely a good time though. It feels nice to be back in the Saddle.

See you Tuesday!

Ken and I share a lot of the same influences, and I’m really looking forward to the challenge of enhancing his music with my drumming, and putting together something that will be a lot of fun to see and hear.   We’re in the process of working through his acoustic originals, adding some covers and then playing out.

In the meantime, check Ken out on his web site, as well as his Facebook page and MySpace.  This should be exciting! Thank you for your support!

I’ve been sitting on this for about a little over a week, but I am now able to post that as with all good things, Greenfoot has come to an end.  We’ve had a good run, but we’re going to be taking an amicable split.

It’s been a fun four years. Over that time we’ve played over 50 shows, recorded 2 EP’s totaling 8 songs, have written over 20 more songs and played some really fun covers.  Both Jake and Julien – as well as Kevin – have been great band-mates, and I’ve really enjoyed playing with them.  Hopefully our musical paths will cross in the future.

Thanks to all of my friends who came out to support us over the years. We definitely had many fun shows, have played some really interesting places and appreciate all the support that you’ve shown to us – I personally really appreciate it!

Greenfoot wasn’t my first band and most certainly won’t be my last, as I definitely want to get involved in another project.  I’ve detailed some of my drumming influences and aspirations on a drumming page I created. If you or anyone you know is looking for a drummer, check it out and drop me a line!

We’ll actually be broadcasting the sessions live on UStream, so if you’d like to sit in and see us record come check it out!  We’ll kick things off around 11am MDT, but should be going all afternoon.  I’d definitely love for you to stop by and let me know what you think!

I admit they look cool, but then you look at the price tag of $130! Normally a good pair of drum sticks (I typically buy the Vic Firth Buddy Rich Signatures) are $7-8.  You could buy 18 pairs of Buddy for the price of one pair of these Lite Stix.  The funny thing is that the type of drummer that would use these and think they’re cool are the same ones that think it’s cool to break a new pair of sticks every time they play. These should be a lot of fun when they split in half.

Just when you thought you’d seen it all.

Amazon Mp3 is my favorite on-line music store by far, so I’m really stoked to have our music available here!

See Greenfoot on the AmazonMP3 store.

We went through the TuneCore process to get our songs up and running, so Amazon Mp3 is the first of many additions, including iTunes. Watch in the coming weeks!

I cringed when I heard the news, and after playing the set last evening, my dread was justified.

I understand the reasons why venue owners and concert promoters want to use House Drumsets.  When you have multiple bands in one evening, you want to do everything to ensure bands get on and off the stage quickly.  Having a large piece of equipment remain stationary makes sense, especially when the drums have mics attached to them.  However, I can guaranteed that the person who made/promoted that decision is not a drummer.

When I’m asked what it’s like playing on a house drum set, I give the analogy of driving someone else’s car in a race: Yes, you’ll be able to drive the car and you know where the gas, brake & steering wheel are, but you don’t know the intricacies of this car. You don’t know how it accelerates, how it breaks, how it handles around curves.  The same things goes with drum sets.  It bothers me that people wouldn’t fathom telling guitar players to play on someone else’s guitar, yet have no problem telling drummers they have to play a drum set that gets pounded night in & night out.

This particular drum set appeared to have a 10″, 13″ & 16″ with Pinstripe heads torque’d pretty high.  What this means is that they were “ping-y” and “ring-”, a stark contrast from my darker ebony heads that produce a warmer tone that works with our music.  In addition, I had to grow used to 3 toms pretty quick, a departure from my 4 toms.  It doesn’t help that I flip the order of my two rack toms – the non-standard configuration probably a bad habit, but it’s what I’ve grown accustomed to.  In my bass drum I have a pillow, which produces a more muffled sound, while allowing a good bounce response.  The House Drumset had no such pillow, and it took an adjustment.

The policy allowed us to bring in our snare drum, pedals & cymbals. At this point, the only thing that was left of the drum set was the bass drum and three toms – which makes me wonder how much time was really saved. 

What owners/promoters don’t understand is that if you give them a staging area to set up their gear off-stage, a good drummer can get their drum on stage and ready to go in roughly the same time it takes a guitar player to set up their amp, pedals, and tune their guitars.

When I was in high school, I played on a foreign drum set each and every day – but school drum sets are different than House Drumsets.  With school drum sets you typically get a period of time to be acclimated to the kit before you play it at anything meaningful.  With the House Kit the sound check is the first chance you get to sit behind the kit.  To borrow a line from A.I., “We’re talking about practice, not the game”.  I’m all about rehearsing on another drum set to help save time – but when you’re essentially putting on an audition it’s pretty lofty to expect drummers to be in their elements in a kit they just started playing.

Like I said, I understand House Drum set may make sense to some, but it doesn’t make sense to drummers.

I’ve been a bit scarce this week because I’ve been drumming pretty much every night.  On Monday night I had rehearsal for an one-time “Barnyard Band”, where we’re doing old-school country songs.  On Tuesday I had Greenfoot practice, as we have our “we’re back” show on Thursday and ended up drumming for almost 4 hours that night.  I came home absolutely exhausted.  I got a bit of a break from drumming on Wednesday, but tonight I’m preparing for a full night of drumming.  First I have the “Barnyard” gig, then I’m off to Denver for the Greenfoot gig  If you happen to be in the Broomfield/Arvada area and would be intersted, we’ll be at the Sweetwater Station around 10pm.

More to come on drumming…

Late Wednesday night I posted the following ad for our Thursday show: Come see great band @ one of Denver’s best live music venues – TONIGHT. On Saturday I got an email from a musician through the ad (didn’t even leave a name), basically chastising us for any reason he could find.  I know that people just have a random ax to grind, and I’m not going to dignify his email with a response – but that doesn’t mean I don’t have any thoughts about it.

First off, I don’t understand why musicians feel the need to make playing music some kind of pissing contest.  In the shows we’ve played around in Denver, we’ve seen some really good bands and we’ve seen some not-so-good bands.  We’re all entitled to our personal opinions, but we keep those within our band – we don’t speak negatively about the band to other musicians, and we surely don’t rip on the bands directly.  We’ve put our music out there and have received some constructive criticism – and welcome that.  I don’t see how someone takes pleasure in ripping on other bands – maybe it makes their ego feel better about their band.  Whatever.

I do want to react to a few things he wrote in his email though:

[The subject was "Govt Mule meets Led Zeppelin????"] seriously??  Do you really think your band compares even one microshed to these two powerhouse legends?   You need some humble pie and an honest assessment of your band from another working local musician.  Good intentions are here – believe me.

If you look in the original ad, I never said that we were the next Led Zeppelin or Gov’t Mule.  I specifically wrote “[our sound] been comparatively described as ‘Gov’t Mule meets Led Zeppelin’.“  This guy is reading into this line a little too much.  This is music marketing 101 (and credited to the Musician’s Cooler podcast): Instead of saying “our band has a very unique sound”, try to think of some of your major influences (specifically ones most people would know) and use those influences as descriptive’s.  That way, when someone reads that and says “I like those two bands, I’ll give it a listen”.  Every musician has influences, it’s not an insult to use those influences when you describe your music.  In the case of this guy, it worked – he just took it the wrong way.

I checked out your YouTube videos.   Gov’t Mule meets Led Zeppelin?  Hardly.   More like “High School Garage Band Rehearsal” meets “Really Bad Jam Session.”

Good intentions are here – believe me.

As a fellow local  musician, I REALLY recommend some more woodshedding before you put your name out there on YouTube, Craigslist, etc.   First impression is a lasting one.. I for one will never come see your band because of the first impression I had after seeing your YouTube videos.

This makes absolutely no sense to me.  YouTube and Craigslist are great publicity tools, but we’re not talking about sending a CD to Rolling Stone or a video to MTV.  I’m not supposed to use these web sites to promote our band’s music, but somehow we’re supposed to expect people to magically come to our shows without any promotion.

Secondly, first impressions are important, and I’m proud of the work that we’ve put our on our web site and on our videos.  Does it have room to grow?  Of course, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t use it as a promotional tool.  In the case of the YouTube video: it was put out by the venue we played at, we can either pretend it doesn’t exist or embrace it.  It’s a great performance so we were happy to put it out on our web site.  As we grow as a band we’ll make better recordings and better videos.  That said, we don’t expect everyone to like our music.  Everyone has different tastes and that’s fine.  Frankly, if this guy treats fellow musicians this way, then we don’t want him at our shows.

Do NOT EVER compare yourself to bands like LZ and Mule unless you can back it up.   It really leaves a disappointment when I read that part of your ad, hit your site, and find the very elementary and mediocre work you guys are doing. Booking managers will feel the same as me TRUST ME.

Ok, calm down.  We used some comparative descriptions, we didn’t shoot your dog.  I’m not going to re-hash my argument from above, but just that this guy shouldn’t take this so personally.  We put ads on Craigslist for people to come check out our site and hear our music.  We hope people will like it, but if you don’t then that’s fine.  I’m sorry this guy felt like we wasted his time, but apparently his time isn’t so valuable that he can’t compose a diatribe about how he hates our band.

And booking managers will feel the same?  Some may and that’s fine, but we’ve had a steady schedule and played at a lot of great places this summer and met most of our goals.  We’ve worked hard and it’s paid off, but I guess booking managers feel the same as this guy.

I do between 60 to 80 gigs a year with my bands and I book 95% of our gigs.  You really need to think of a different way to market yourself besides the LZep/Mule thing.   What a disappointment.

Ok, so this guy can pee further than we can.  I’m glad his head grew as he wrote that sentence.  This guy is comparing apples to oranges.  When you want to make it big in music then it’s probably your full-time job and probably do need to play 80+ gigs per year.  That not our band’s goal.  We’ve all got our own careers, families and other priorities.  The music is simply a release for us, we’re happy with playing 3-4 shows per month.  We work hard and welcome any success, but our livelihood isn’t dependant on playing 80 shows per year.

And with his 95% of 60-80 gigs booking experience, the best advice he can offer us is “don’t say Led Zep and you guys suck”.  Thanks for the substantive advice!  I really appreciate all this guy is doing to support his fellow musicians, nothing like tearing other people down to help think better about yourself. But good intentions are here – believe me.

Check out this story in the Florida Today

I came across this story and it just reminds me how infuriating this royalties issue is to me.  It’s great to see that an organization set up to protect the songwriters is really screwing up other song-writers and artists.  This goes back to what I blogged about last month, and how important covers are to establishing bands.  Greenfoot is lucky that we have enough original music to be able to keep us afloat, but I know there are going to be times where we’re going to be burned by not being able to play covers.

This article does a really good job highlighting the issues with trying to keep in compliance with these policies, and how companies like ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC seem to go out of their way to make it difficult for smaller venues looking to support live music.  They don’t really make any apologies about it either.

I agree with one of the bar owners when he says, “It’s extortion, it’s intimidating. It’s such a scam.”

The Greenfoot booking machine is running on all cylinders right now, and part of that is because we’re trying a lot of new things.  In mid-July we’re scheduled to play at Pizza Hut of all places.  I realize that “Pizza Hut” isn’t synonymous with live music, but it’s a great concept that we’re really excited about.  As a local musician, I appreciate any way a business tries to outreach to the local music community, and as a band we’re excited to appeal to a different demographic of fans.

Tonight I got an email from the gal that is coordinating the shows, stating that ASCAP (the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers) have made their presence known, threatening to take action if any of the band makes unlawful usage of someone else’s music - in the form of cover songs.  They’ve made the Pizza Hut manager aware that they will be on-hand to monitor the shows and make sure no one violates the rules.

I read this and was floored.  I’ve heard bands do cover songs all the time it was under the impression that as long as a band didn’t record or sell a recording of the song – they were fine.  I got on and did some research and found out just how wrong I’ve been.  (Note – I’m not a lawyer and my research consisted of about 30 minutes on Google, so I still have a lot to learn).

First off, a royalty fee needs to be played for every cover song that you do.  Here is where things get crazy – it’s not on the band to pay the fee, but actually on the club owner or promoter to pay the BMI, ASAP, SESAC (this is what I got from MusicBizAdvice.com).  The logic here is that the club owner has the most to gain from you playing that song, which is why they should pay the fee.

I was little surprised to go to the DrummerWorld discussion forum and find that most musicians had little sympathy for the bar owners.   On one hand, I can see how this can make sense, and I can also understand that this is common knowledge and not a big deal to the bar owner that has live bands playing every night.   Where I take issue is that ASCAP is harassing a smaller place (and yes I know I’m talking about Pizza Hut) that is trying to do what it can to support local music, and has this “take no prisoners” approach.  I read a story about how a bar in Oregon was going to have to close down because a band played a cover song at their bar.  In the end they’re hurting musicians in the name of helping musicians.

I realize Pizza Hut (under Pepsi Co.) is a huge corporation with deep pockets, but this idea to bring in live music isn’t coming from a board room – it’s a locally grown idea started by the team that works at that location, in an attempt to partner with and support the local music scene.  These intimidation tactics are only going to result in businesses being discouraged to venture into efforts like these, and abandon it all together.  I hope that the bands scheduled with PIzza Hut draw a good crowd this year, because I wouldn’t blame the owner/managers deciding that ASCAP breathing down their necks is more trouble than it’s worth for next summer.

As band that plays original music – that hurts us.  There aren’t an abundance of venues for original-music bands, and the last thing we need is for places to get shut down in the name of protecting musicians.

This also hurts us on a musical level as well.  Although Greenfoot is original-music, we’re starting to look to playing some cover songs to help us fill out needed time slots, as well as find ways to appeal to new fans.  How many times do you sit in a live-music bar and hear a familiar song that you like, which encourages you to listen and opens your ears for the band’s original material.  The last thing I want to do is watch song-writers get robbed – and if a band is an exclusive cover band making money off other people’s music then they probably should pay – but what ASCAP is doing in cases like ours is simply robbing Peter to pay Paul.

What’s worse, this introduces an entire gray area for our band.  We’ve been asked to play at some company picnics this summer. Naturally this is great exposure for our original music, but the picnickers want to hear songs they also know.  If we play covers, who pays ASCAP?  The company sponsoring the picnic?  The musicians being hired to play?  My girlfriend’s was going to encourage her company to have us play at their grand opening, but with this fee confusion they may just be persuaded to go with a cover band that has a blanket fee established – thanks ASCAP for screwing original-music artists.

This is just another demonstration for the need of copyright reform, and companies employing their archaic business models to cannibalize their own industry.  Do you remember how in the movies when people in a bar randomly break out in song?  I hope if that ever happens to me in real life, no one from ASCAP is sitting at the table next to me (especially if I own that bar).