OVERHANG

Figuring out what a drummer is like through email and phone conversations is like looking through a glass darkly. Our potential drummer lives too far away and his musical style is a bit lighter than ours. We have been getting some good technical drummers, but none of them have the deep, dark something that is also necessary. But there isn't a whole lot of that kind of music in rock'n'roll right now, so it makes sense that not too many people are influenced by it.

Joel and Grant are going to play an original song at Pullman Church this weekend. That's two mini-gigs in as many weeks. Joel will play guitar despite the fact that his fingers get all tingly and numb afterward and it will probably take him a year to recover from the damage that has been done. We really miss the band when we do live stuff like this. It's kind of sad, actually, but what can you do? Take any drummer that comes along? That doesn't seem like a great option, not at the moment anyway. We already found our ideal musicians. And they left the band.

We are starting to realize that if building another band is not panning out, we should continue to pursue the "Christian" studio route, so we are now looking into the possibility of getting Janis (a repeated figure in this blog's cast of characters) a religious visa. Pullman Church is looking for someone to help with the music and sound, which may be one of the requirements for the visa. Janis has helped build some of the best studios in Latvia, so that would be a real plus for Pullman. As always, we'll keep you abreasted (how I wish this was a word).

Posted by Grant Elgersma at 4:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Joel and Grant are getting ready for a little gig at the Festival of the Americas this weekend. It's our lawyer's thing she does for her church. We did it last year with the whole band, a kind of funny experience--we were playing our own stuff at 1/10th the volume we normally play, and it was still too loud and people were eating burritos and just staring at us like "What are they doing here?" Then we played a couple praise and worship songs by special request and melted their hearts. It was actually one of Grant's favorite live performance experiences. It probably also helped boost our status for the H1-B Visa, since it made us look better than the average garage band. By the way, it was a minor miracle we got this visa, I don't know if I communicated that clearly enough. I think OVERHANG Productions LLC's case might have set immigration law precedent, no joke.

Anyways, as this little gig is coming up, we get this email from yet another guy who is interested in drumming for OVERHANG, but this guy is uncanny. Grant seriously thought it might be a hoax or prank from someone who has been reading these blogs and thought it would be funny to write us an email spitting back exactly what we want to hear. By the way he talks about music and his influences, he sounds like almost a mirror image of us. And he lives in Chicago. We are still keeping expectations under control, but we can at least be encouraged that "that special someone" is out there somewhere.

Posted by Grant Elgersma at 8:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Picture this scene: the original members of Overhang, all together in one place again, eating Chipotles on a warm sunny day in the park across the street from the skyscraper where Matt now works. It only lasted as long as Matt's lunchbreak--one hour--but for that short time it felt really good to be together again. Nothing but warm feelings. What a blessing! Joel and Grant feel fortunate to have shared a year-and-a-half with those guys. I think it was good for all of us.

Joel and Grant are also encouraged by a meeting they had with a drummer possibility. His name is Euwen (pronounced "Owen"). He's from Ireland and has an H1-B Visa in common with Joel. His musical style is different from Grant and Joel's habitual way of doing things, but he's an excellent songwriter in his own right and appears very rhythmically sound. We have not played live with him yet, but are hoping to do so tomorrow. Joel, of course, will have to watch, because he needs to rest his arms.

The one year anniversary of Overhang's decision to split up has proven to be a true celebration.

Posted by Grant Elgersma at 5:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Joel and Grant are looking forward to meeting up with Matt and Dan in a week or so to hang out. Dan is coming in from Philly and Matt is still around town, so we'll get together and talk about old times and what's been going on in the meantime. It's hard to believe it's been a year already!

In Joel and Grant's meantime, we've been consistently weeding through drummer and bassist possibilities--one or two a week. We are encouraged by positive feedback we've received from people who would like to promote our music on the radio. I think I mentioned that John from the Damos Agency had a heart attack several weeks ago during the time we released our single "Arrived" to Underground and Christian radio stations. We were wondering why we weren't hearing back from him about our single and then we get this email saying he had a heart attack. But, thank God, he survived.

What were the results of the release of our single? Well, about what we expected. Here are some of the stations it was played on: KSRQ, KWOF, KZZQ, WBNY, WCUW, HDRC, KADI, KCBU, KCSU, KDCR, KJTY, KSPC, WBGL, WBYO, WCUW, WDCX, WGCA, WFSE, WIOJ, WITR, WMSJ, IGGY ROCKS, STILL SMALL VOICE, TETELESTARI RADIO, UNDERGROUND RADIO, INDIE GOSPEL RADIO, YOUTH RADIO, SPIRIT RADIO, CROSSROADS, TIGER RADIO, KCFS, WITR, LIGHTFORCE, INDIE ROCK SHOW, KNGM, WDMl, BCC. We got our last tracking report and some stations were giving it medium air play.

In other news, Joel is undergoing acupuncture for carpeltunnel in both his wrists. 12 hours a day of guitar playing and computer work is hard on the body, apparently. He is frustrated by it, but buoyed up by the fact that we're still able to work on new music , hands or no hands. In fact, lately it's been no hands. Joel devised a contraption by which he can cut, paste and mix with his feet. It looks very funny. We ought to take a picture. The owner of a secondhand store thought it was quite funny that Joel wanted to buy a pink little wheely dinosaur toy so he could cut off the top and strap it to his foot so he could use the mouse with his toes.

Joel and Grant are getting ready to play at their lawyer's church function in a few weeks. Joel will probably have to play drums and Grant will sing and play guitar. Grant has been doing a bit more singing at Pullman Church, taking old gospel songs and giving them a new rock'n'roll feel. That's kind of the direction the new album is going too.

What? New album? The first one isn't even finished yet! Oh yeah, we're going to try to release two at once. The new material has more potential for radio play and since we don't have the band we want yet, that's our best bet. Besides, we've learned how to make live-sounding rock music with hip hop beat sounds and that seems promising. The new album might have at least 4 or 5 possible singles on it while "Another Hole for You to Crawl Into" has maybe two at the most. And those would be a hard sell without hearing the band live. And if you never heard Overhang live, that's too bad. It was really something to see Matt playing the work of 15 or 20 drummers on one trap set. Hopefully you will get a chance to see something like that again sometime. The new music is coming 10X faster than on "Another Hole...", like some divine music-maker is presenting us with a gift and asking us to just take down what's coming day by day. And it's coming fast, just like we hope Janis will come from Latvia on a visitor's visa to help us finish both albums at once. He can struggle with us on the first one, and then cruise on the new stuff, like we've been doing. I'll post some of the new material here or on our website soon. Oh yeah, our website should be up in the next several weeks. We'll let you know.

Thanks for reading! Rock rock rock and roll.

Posted by Grant Elgersma at 4:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Ray Johnson, message in a bottle

Inspiration without notation

Here in the duldrums again

no wind and no answer my friend:

Joel with carp l. tunnel and hit in the ribs by moving car while riding his bike, John with heart attack while promoting our single "until it's arrived" on the radio. Courtney Taylor vs. The Brian Jonestown Massacre. Dig! An old story? No, things have already changed since then, and Anton had nothing to do with it. The music industry wakes up as a cockroach, and there's nothing they can do about it--internet will not stop! Stop on a dime.

Will we ever really be artists? Christians are unwilling to be prophets--too scary, too Protestant, too much getting shit on the hands and then burning it to make too much of a point that the stupid people won't get anyway. Not even after you're dead, maybe. Human feces, Lord? How about cow dung instead. Then, maybe, I'll follow your will. How to be an artist: we've got the living-off-limited-resources part down, but I'm not sure I'm willing to go THAT far. I like being understood too much! How to draw a successful rock band? Burn it and then dump it in the river in the middle of January for someone to make sense of later. I don't like that idea, but that's the idea, right?

Posted by Grant Elgersma at 9:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)