OVERHANG

One full week gone by: day by day routines, vocal sessions on the same two songs, mix sessions that call all the music into question once again, drummer possibilities and impossibilities, ups and downs, reading rock'n'roll biographies (Johnny Cash, Rolling Stones, David Bowie, George Harrison, Cobain, Radiohead, the rap photographer for the Beasties/Run DMC/Public Enemy etc.), doodling cover art possibilities, day-dreaming about ways to work with Janis in Latvia.

Grant wants so desperately to tell people, when they ask him what he does for a living, that he plays in a rock band. But it just doesn't sound convincing when you don't have a full band and you don't play out and your album is not yet finished and you have no label. Joel wants the album to be finished and won't be happy until it "sounds good". Dan wants to find a drummer so that his bass playing will make sense and he needs to find a job that pays cashmoney.

All good fruit needs time and gentle breezes to grow, flourish and come to full ripeness. But windless days are very uninspiring.

Posted by Grant Elgersma at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In this, the 2nd Century of the reign of The Mass Audience, we, Overhang, understood from the Scriptures, according to the word of the Lord given to Daniel the prophet, that it's ok to do the music industry's business. In fact, we can even help the music industry make money without crumbling beneath the weight of guilty consciences. Thank you, Daniel. We were starting to feel like sell-outs.

But let us give a strong warning to the Industry: Your days of stealing from the poor and keeping the good gifts of the kingdom from your people are numbered. The fire in which you have tossed countless numbers of artists will burn much MUCH hotter for YOU...

Nevertheless, we will serve your interests if you need us and we promise to do our best to prosper you, if you so desire.

Sincerely,

OVERHANG

www.overhangonline.com

Posted by Grant Elgersma at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We're used to disappointments. So we took the newest one in stride. Janis, our Latvian engineering savior has visa problems and couldn't make his flight to the U.S. So now Joel is counting his pennies and we are talking more seriously about the cost of getting our album mixed and engineered properly with a professional. It will most likely take the help of a label and label money to do it right.

But there's a moral and/or ethical dilemma involved in signing our existence away to a major label. Though there are good ones out there, we don't want to support the major label system, which has increasingly shown an animosity toward the audience in recent years. We also tend to believe that we're living in the latter days of the music industry and that label support is on its way out as the only way to pay for the artistic recording process. We would like to be part of a new world, where the relationship between art and money, artist and audience, is saved from the "art as product/music as commodity" model.

But we need the money.

Posted by Grant Elgersma at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)