Signing Off
Because we are sending our second petition for Joel's H1-B Visa this week, we will have to take this blog off the catapult site for a while. If you were wondering why we haven't been talking much about the details of Joel's visa or our progress (or lack of it) as a band, it's because we were afraid that the honest confessions of our struggles might hurt our case if someone in INS happened to read it on the internet. But now, reading over the entire blog, we think it might be easier just to remove the whole thing for a while than to change all the references to Joel and our situation.
So, since you might not hear from us for a bit (the petition process could take at least a month) on this blog, we'll now give you a complete update on recent and future occurences:
--Last month, we were surprised to hear that our music is played often on a radio station somewhere in Connecticut. We still haven't found the station, though.
--Also as of last month, OVERHANG now has its own publishing company, "Signpost Publishing", which means we are entitled to some money every time our music is played.
--In June, we hope our publishing rights will be exercised as we release our first single, "Arrived", to several radio and internet stations across the country (so request our single at your local radio stations in mid-June!). Our song will be at the top of the list of tracks on the Damos Agency's promotional cd. The Damos Agency will help promote and track the song's progress for several months. Check out their website. We are glad to be working with fellow Christians who have a similar vision about the future of Christian artistry in the music industry at large.
--The last several weeks, we have been buying equipment for the finishing of our album. The equipment is going to Latvia, where our "reformational Christian" producer, Janis Kalnins will now be able to use his immense engineering talents on the recording of rock'n'roll in his new studio rather than waste his gifts on music and sound for advertisements. The plan is that our money will allow him to get the equipment he needed to start his own studio while enabling us to finish our album rather inexpensively. We will be sending all the tracks from our album to Latvia this week so Janis can begin working on them.
--We do not pretend to know how long it will take to put the final touches on the album. It could take three months. And then it's very possible we'll decide that our own original mixes were better than the ones Janis did. Such is the nature of our work. But you can be sure it will get done and you will be able to purchase it when it does. We are trusting God's timing because we have shown ourselves to be poor judges of timing ourselves (how many times have you heard us say we think the album is done or almost done? and we were flat wrong!)
--In three weeks, the remaining members of OVERHANG will be driving out of the city to a field somewhere in the night to dig holes and take scary pictures for album cover art (proof positive that we expect to finish the album sometime in the near future). We'll be doing this with Matt Dimos, our good friend who helped us with many of the pictures posted on our website.
--We will be launching a new website in early to mid-June that will hopefully reflect the excellence of our musical aesthetic. You will be able to download our music there and we're hoping to include this blog and other interesting phenomena.
--Joel is currently suffering from some tendinitis issues and is taking a break from any and all tasks having to do with his hands. Even though we find ourselves buoyed up by the new music we're making, we're going to let it sit while Joel allows his wrist to heal.
Wow, that's a lot of stuff going on. The Lord has really blessed us despite some very difficult times. If you know anyone who's interested in helping a struggling band through some difficult financial times, let us know. With all the lawyer's fees (WHY DID JOEL HAVE TO BE BORN IN CANADA!? We could be putting the thousands of dollars we're spending on fees to much better use!) and recording equipment costs, we need help just to keep going day by day. I know that, relatively speaking, not very many people read this blog, but I pray fervently every day that God will be glorified through this crazy-ass story of two determined and willfully naive young(ish) men staking themselves and all available resources on the belief that Holy Spirit rock'n'roll can change the world.
Prayer: Lord, establish the work of our hands.