In lieu of a real blog entry, I’ll just say this:

www.marriedtothesea.com

Seriously, we’re playing at Lenny’s tonight.

 

Mini-tour

The mini-tour last weekend was just about as much fun as we could have, and thanks to those who attended. Of Atlanta, Knoxville and Nashville, who got the best show? Nashville. Sorry, folks. Nashville was the best show we’ve ever done, thanks in no small part to one particular person.

She came up to me before the show and complained that she was there to see a band that was advertised in the paper but didn’t seem to be there. I explained that it was because apparently the band had never confirmed, and I apologized for the error but said “how much did you pay to get in?” “Five dollars.” “I’ll tell you what; if you hang around for a few more minutes, I’ll give you a $25 show – swear to god you won’t want your money back.” “No thanks.”

That pretty much sums up Nashville’s attitude in two words: “no thanks.”

“No, I would not like to try something new and be entertained. I would like more of the same, please. Thanks.” Oh, Nashville. You’re so misguided and backward compared to the other places we play. Those two little words amused me and gave me the extra push I needed. Everybody who hadn’t come to see a band that wasn’t playing crowded around the stage and cheered us on to be the best rock band we could be. It was the best, most fun show of my life by quite a large margin. We’ll be back for more in August.

An extremely informative hat.

 

Harder-hitting, fast-drying

Open up (or, better yet, buy) this month’s Performing Songwriter magazine and you’ll see an article on the state of independent rock and how to find it and you’ll see several bits of an interview with some guy named Adam McIntyre, all thinking he knows something. Read and be amused!

Also, go check our shows page. Chances are that if you live in the Southeast, we’re about to come see you.

 

Relocation is complete

A lot has happened since the last real blog (and there was a lost blog in the pipeline that just squirted out) so without any ado…

We did shaky but fun shows at Vinyl and at the Star Bar in Atlanta that were both well-received, almost surprisingly so. It was great to stand on stage and throw the same “tantrum” (jumping all over the place, screaming and bleeding on the guitar) that I used to throw as a kid, and to get a pat on the back for doing so. People actually like it when I’m wild here so I’m going to keep on doing it. What’s crazy is that Jennifer and Jim are the two wildest personalities and musicians that I’ve had the thrill to play with, and we bonded so much that we’re calling it a band now. Jennifer and I agreed that we’re going to be Adam & The Pinks (to resurrect an old, hardly-used band name from Nashville circa 2004) but Jim isn’t so sure. If you’d like to offer condolences to Jim or to suggest something a little less feminine (I like the “cute” band name to go with the new heavy sound but Jim wants something with more teeth), please drop us a line. We’re thrilled to have found each other though because it just feels right. Lots of bands work hard to fake the chemistry that we’ve stumbled upon!

A third show that happened recently was the Who tribute at The Earl – Jim and I joined forces with two of the Sweetloves to make a one-off band called (for this gig) “The House That Track Built”. We did “The Real Me”, “A Quick One” and “We’re Not Gonna Take It/See Me, Feel Me/Listening To You”. The show was fun, huge and thank goodness our performance was up to par. Hopefully I’ll get a chance to pull out that white boilersuit again one day, but in lieu of that I’m trying to get a youtube or youtube-ready video of the performance. Basically, everything is going really great in Atlanta. I love it here and I feel really encouraged to do my best. Not someone else’s best, but mine. There’s a difference.

We have a LOT of shows coming up. Between the three of us, we’re a booking MACHINE. However, if you live in a town where we’re not playing yet (ie Chattanooga, Montgomery, Auburn, Tuscaloosa, Birmingham, Black Mountain, London, Tokyo) please feel free to get involved. We want to come see you.

Oh, and in even bigger news than “everything’s going so well and I love my band” and such, you can now hear a little taste of what we’ve been doing in the studio. There’s a new album preview up on myspace. Now that there are leaves on the trees outside, I find myself surprisingly capable of writing lyrics again. It was a hard trek through winter to now but it looks like it’s going to be very easy to finish the record now. Go to our myspace page: http://www.myspace.com/AdamMcIntyre and if “Preview 1″ is still up, give that a listen. It’s a little different from the old stuff and now that we’re going to start doing those new songs at live shows… well, we’re happy. A big burden has been lifted and now there’s only excitement rushing in to take its place.

So in short, new songs, new shows, new band, new town that has welcomed us with open arms. I hope to see you this Summer.

Love to you all,

Adam, Jennifer & Jim

PS – boy and girl “Per Ardua” artwork shirts (courtesy of Ridgely Schantz) at cafepress

 

Ash Wednesday [I should check to make sure that my blogs are going through]

Happy Mardi Gras, people.

I just made a King Cake (no baby, though; Paul is too big now) and threw Mardi Gras beads out the front door in hopes that some barely-legal girls would come take their tops off.

Gentlemen, that has never worked but as with so many things you really have to keep at it to see results. For example, having a drummer. That takes dedication. I’m on my second drummer this week, but do you see me scowling? NO. I am a very upbeat person and besides, Jim came back. Jim? He played on the record a few months ago before he left. But now he’s back. Pretty soon you’ll need notes to keep up with who has been in the band. It will be like the charts for R.Kelly’s videos. Once we start doing shows, I’m sure things will be a lot more steady.

Up next, we have that show on Saturday at Vinyl – $8 for a bunch of music. After that, I have a lot of work to do on the record and a lot of shows to play with the new band. Invite us to do acoustic shows, I dare you.

 

Don’t miss boat.

I’m writing this from Tennessee, where I’m on the road with Les Honky More Tonkies and I wanted to inform you that the part of this webpage that has “shows” actually has content now.
We have two shows:

- February 24th at Vinyl in Atlanta (part of International Pop Overthrow)
- June 1st at 10 High in Atlanta*

We’re working on filling in that space with other gigs. Do you want us to play for your amusement? Is that all we are to you? Good!

* = Jen knows how to talk to booking people. She has clearly read my how-to series. Thanks to Jen for applying this brilliant information to getting us this show and many more to follow.

 

And then the guitar peed on me.

Replacement Guitar

Originally uploaded by adammcintyre.

Atlanta’s music scene is very different from Nashville’s in every imaginable way except that carbon-based life forms make noises that they call “music” in both towns. In Nashville I was never held up by lack of the right musicians to play with. In Atlanta… well, let’s just say that it’s a good thing I play a few instruments and like recording.

I’m very busy with that, as always. I ran out of lyrics at the end of 2006 (after recording three other CDs), which has tripped up progress on the second EP but never fear; the muse has returned after a lot of anxiety and depression was (partially) diagnosed as side-effects of Atrial Fibrillation. My heart problems have only gotten worse over the last ten years but if I stay away from caffeine and chocolate I should live a long and happy life. So I need to work on that will ASAP.

Oh, dark humor!

The lyrics are about halfway finished, and then I’ll start putting vocals down. I’m particularly encouraged by the ease of recording vocals recently (the typical pitch problems have dwindled considerably), for example “Don’t Ruin It For Me” (on myspace) was written and recorded in an afternoon – the vocal is two takes put together. Normally it’s a lot more than two takes. I won’t say how much more. I recorded “Strangers” for a Dave Davies tribute CD about a week ago and the vocal for that was even easier… it might even be one continuous take. Thank goodness for that tonsillectomy – my voice has healed and stabilized and I can move on with my life.

I have a lot of surprises for 2007. I’m going to be very busy – busier still if I can find some people to play shows.

 

Part 2: Booking shows!

I’m just popping in with some helpful information now that the balls are rolling in Atlanta and I can stop holding my breath. First, I’ve discovered that you meet musicians here by meeting musicians. I know it seems obvious, but it took me about five months. Now that you know what a genius I am, I’ll move along to more TIPS FOR MAKIN IT BIG IN NASHVEGAS.

Tip 1: To book a show, act like a psycho stalker. Remember that time when you were trying to get a date with that one girl who was out of your league and you gave her a mix tape, called her and left messages, sent a tape of 40 songs you’d written about her along with a nice letter about how you can’t live without her, talked to her friends and asked them to put in a good word, sent a safety copy of the mix tape just in case the first one didn’t make it somehow, photoshopped photos of her to include you, secretly killed her dog and made a big show of giving her a new puppy, told her current boyfriend how much she likes anal hard and often, and finally, gave her a mix tape? I mean the one where you included a bunch of songs from “Pet Sounds” because that’s the only way she’d ever really “get” you. You basically need to apply those skills to book a show in Nashville. Get used to the idea of sending multiple packages because the first one will get “lost” (thrown away immediately), calling three times a week (or twice, once you figure out the booking person’s “call hours”) with different character voices from “different people in the organization”, sending emails (not that they check their in-box ever) and also accept that you’re tailing different people. The booking person at The Boro changed four times in five months once, which almost caused me to seriously doubt my sanity. I’d like to think that the frequent booking changes at The Boro had nothing to do with me, but I’ll never know. Finally, don’t be afraid of totally freaking them out by stopping by the venue twice a week around 2pm. Your presence goes a long way toward inspiring what you ultimately need to book your show; fear.

Tip 2: Give yourself 6 months of lead time. The clubs don’t book 6 months in advance; it will take that long to warm them up. Consider it foreplay. If you have an album release show to book, start telling the club you need to book while you are still recording the album. The booking people hate you. It isn’t personal; they hate everybody that isn’t really their friend at this point. They’re tired of the overly-aggressive musicians coming around where they work all the time, and they basically book those people to get them to please stop stalking them. However, they simply ignore the people who don’t do that. I just realized that you could actually pretend to be their friend. That’s another route, but it involves a lot of bribes. Do you have time for that? Probably not. In any case, if you aren’t actually their friend, please remember that you’re dealing with people who hate their job and therefore are gigantic slackers. I guarantee that in their “office” (a closet in the club, or perhaps their bedroom; often they’re the same place) you’ll find an ever-growing pile of CD-sized bubble mailers filled with CDs, glitter and confetti, some of which date back to three Summers ago when they started booking. Keep this in mind while you’re working on staying on the legal side of stalking these people; they hate their jobs, they hate you, they just want you out of their hair. The squeaky wheel gets oiled first. It may take up to six months to get oiled though. Be prepared to re-book your gig several times, and also to have your show moved to a Monday afternoon before the club regularly opens.

Tip 3: Do their job for them. The last thing they want to do is their job, and if you come to them with a package deal (yourself and 1-3 other bands that will offer little variety but hopefully a decent number of warm bodies to buy alcohol), you’ll often get what you want. Since you have this package deal going with yourself and some other bands, why not make it into an event? And while it’s an event, why don’t you promote it as such? The more initiative you show, the more they like you. While you’re at it, offer to help the booking people out by clearing out their pile of unwanted CDs from naive bands who have less initiative than you; open all of the packages and give the CDs to your appreciative and drunk audience members. Does it suck? Who cares! Free CD! Aww, thanks.

Tip 4: Be flexible. These people have important schedules that you have to work around. It’s just how life goes. The more cooperative you are, the more likely it is that you’ll get the gig you want.

Tip 5: Disregard Tip 4; it’s total BS. F*ck these slackers. You’ll get the gig you want, WHEN you want; BE FIRM! Talk to them like you would a child. They need direction and motivation and they clearly weren’t born with either. If they had been, they’d own a club themselves, or better yet, they’d be the manager at a fast-food restaurant. You won’t find the real go-getters booking no-name acts like yourselves into their little crappy clubs, will you? So, again, be firm.

Tip 6: Apologize for your previous behavior often. Tips 1-5 don’t work all that well, to be perfectly honest. Booking a show in Nashville requires as much VooDoo as it does experience. If they don’t respond to your apology in a way that makes you feel any better, kick them really hard in the shin and run away quickly. This will earn their respect and you’ll gain a reputation for being “enigmatic” or perhaps “difficult”. Nothing says “talent” and “big draw” like being a tempermental brat. It works for tons of acts. See your entire record collection for proof.

Tip 7: I don’t know, man. Just call them and leave incoherent, tearful messages and tell them you don’t know what you’re going to do. If this doesn’t work, move to Atlanta.

Special extra tip: If they call you for a gig, it’s probably just a dive bar over by Centennial Park. This is a trap. Hang up immediately.

I hope that this has been as helpful and informative for you as it has been for me! Take care of yourselves and remember; you can’t have too much Cilantro in your Saag Paneer, but you can have too much sag in your in-ear monitors.

This is continued from Part One of the “Nashville” series. Click here to go straight to that nonsense.

Adam McIntyre defected from Nashville in May of 2006 after a ten-year stay. He currently cowers in his studio, recording music that people generally don’t want to listen to.

 

Me musician. Me hit drum.

[Nashville Rage music listings] JOSH BENNETT. Astounding Nashville rock singer-songwriter Bennett reemerges after a yearlong artistic hibernation, and we’re eager to see what he’s been up to lately. The last we saw him, his superb major-label debut had been unceremoniously shelved and was left in limbo. Still no word on whether it will ever be available publicly, which is all the more reason to see him live. 8:30pm, The Family Wash, free.

I know, right? I didn’t realize the writers at The Rage were in the habit of taking X and smearing themselves with vaseline before writing artist blurbs but apparently they are! Josh knew that I knew his songs better than almost anybody else in town and picked me to play drums and his neighbor Paul Slivka to play bass. I still don’t really have much experience playing drums live – usually I play drums in my studio and have a few chances to get it right. Inexperienced drummers like me rely on click tracks to keep them steady – performing live without a click feels like walking the highwire without a net. Oh… and people are going to be watching me!!!

Rehearsals started out shaky but quickly improved, and I ran through the set a few times a day on my own to make sure I wouldn’t be a liability on stage. After one final rehearsal, we ran over to the Wash and set up – nobody was there! Oh yes, Cinco de Mayo. Not even the guy who wrote that blurb came to the show. But ya know what? The show was really good.

Josh started out doing two solo acoustic songs (one of which was new) and we eased into the proper set with a “band” version of Baby Doll, with Paul playing sparsely and me on brushes. Then it was straight on into If You Have To Go. End of the World went quite well, as I started to play “out” a little bit while still trying to watch my tempo. The whole set was fairly solid, but my favorite (and everybody else’s) was Candy Store, which ended the show. There’s a jam at the end and I decided to kick it up a notch by raving it into doubletime with lots of crazy drum fills. It felt great! One of the employees had sworn that they were going to heckle us if we sucked, and after that song everybody hollered and she said “that ROCKED!” Heh heh. I love playing drums. Next time Josh plays, ya gotta come see. I just wish there was some way you could hear some of the songs from the unreleased album. If only there was a way!

It looks like MY album release show will be June 6th (the day before it comes out) at The Basement here in Nashville. I love seeing shows at The Basement so it will be great to finally play there. No word yet on who I’ll be opening for. Of course, we’ll be selling CDs that night and they’ll be available the next day at Grimey’s (upstairs from The Basement).

 

I hate my son’s baby stroller.

A regular Sunday outing to have some Indian food and browse some sales at the mall turned deadly- er, somewhat fateful when I got a bit cavalier about unfolding Paul’s stroller. Two pieces of the stroller finally came unstuck from the folded position and locked themselves back together in the “stroller” position – on the ringfinger of my left hand. Five seconds of silent screaming later, I was able to unlock the stroller again and free my finger which was sending white-hot-and-cold streaks of pain up my entire arm. We kept it in a pack of ice for about half an hour but that didn’t really help – the parts had closed on the last digit of my finger where the nail is and had bruised it badly. That was two weeks ago and while the feeling has come back in that finger, it still hurts to play guitar. In the meantime I’ve been practicing drums a lot and working on “other things”. But more about that in a minute…

Despite the smashed finger, I did do a show the other night at the Family Wash in “East Nashville”. For those of you not from this area, East Nashville is not to be confused with Nashville – only the trendiest of the trendiest hipsters live in East Nashville. Against my better judgment, I like that area. I mean, if you can ignore the projects right next door to cute, fixed-up houses right next to crackhouses which are right next to the country club, yeah it’s great. I did a gig there with Gerlinda from WeakLazyLiar. It was Paul’s first time at one of my shows, and he was apparently quite amused at seeing his daddy singing to everybody. I’m looking forward to going back there in a couple weeks playing drums for our bassist, Josh Bennett. Gerlinda and I had spent the afternoon before the set playing songs to each other on my back porch. That memory will probably be with me until I’m an old, old man. It will be the day I realized that my journey as a songwriter is only beginning.

Before I smashed my finger, I celebrated my 27th birthday at ye olde Windows On The Cumberland with a quite good set of electric rock and roll. It was a good show – I can’t complain. The venue itself is worth plugging in at all and the bands we did the show with were two of the most gracious bands I’ve ever been on a bill with. We didn’t use any of our own amps or drums thanks to them. The whole deal was quite pleasant but unfortunately I had to leave (to relieve the babysitter) while the second band was playing The Meters’ “Cissy Strut” – one of the first pieces of music that Drivin South ever put down on tape.

But enough about things that are less me, let’s talk about things that are a bit MORE me. Dismal tone of this blog aside, when people read something I’ve written, they often ask me “Adam, you should write!” I remind them bluntly that they have not asked a question at all but merely ended a declarative statement with an unnecessary exclamation point. They then pull a brick out of their handbag and reduce me to pudding for my insolence. But seriously, why don’t I write? First, I have no education on the matter of writing. If you could see the high school I went to, you’d be impressed that I can eat grown-up food. College only confused me when they introduced me to words like “comma splice”, “topic sentence” and “the”. However, I’ve been told that I couldn’t do things before. Remember that crabby old bastard at Highland Music in Birmingham? He told me I should just give up playing guitar because he didn’t hear any talent. Obviously I didn’t buy an amp from him that day. I used my irritation to write Drivin South’s first song and the rest is forgotten history. Yeah, maybe I will work on the writing thing. I decided to write a series of short stories based on the songs from “Nothing Means Anything” and seventeen days later, I’m finished. Well, except for editing. It needs work but some of the stories turned out quite well. If you want a copy, let me know – I’ll email it to you. The main thing I learned during this process is that while I do have a certain amount of writing talent, I have a long way to go and I need to work on it like crazy to get there.

Speaking of other avenues, a friend called me recently wanting me to do the “film score” for her short film. It’s going to be a very funny film and I’m enjoying working on the soundtrack. I did take a couple years of film scoring classes at Belmont with the intention of eventually getting into it but doing film scores is kind of like getting any kind of job; no one will hire you without experience. I guess the goal is to eventually do Wes Anderson-y movies but I think Mark Mothersbaugh has that job locked down pretty tight. And he can keep it; God forbid anything bad happen to Markie. Check out “The Life Aquatic”’s intimidating score for examples of his work in Wes’s films. Yes, it’s the guy from Devo. And yes, I did just record a rough cover of Devo’s “Girl U Want”. A somewhat more polished version will probably go on an EP to be released this fall.

Did I just mention an upcoming release? Because I should mention that the new album, Nothing Means Anything, is being manufactured in a Portland factory at this very moment. Promo copies will go out in a mere two weeks and the full-on real deal will be in boxes at Headphone Treats in Atlanta well before the release date on June 7th. Watch out for its adverts in your favorite music mags around that time.

Time to go get Indian food and hopefully not to smash my finger again.

Over and out,
Adam