cavashawn diary : 6.28.09

So last night we were at the Madison Theater in Covington, KY. Covington has all of the benefits of being in greater Cincinnati, just with three times as many drive-thru liquor stores and tobacco outlets.

Despite it being a relatively disorganized pre-show and general confusion abound, I think it was one of our best performances in Cincinnati ever. It was a phenomenal crowd, thanks in part to the fact that we were sharing the bill with Cincinnati vets July For Kings. People knew the words (even to the new songs!) and the energy was intense. Great crowd, great venue, good sound. I can't tell you how many times we haven't had that combo, so it's always refreshing to have things go so smooth. It was smooth despite there being one of those 'worst-case scenario moments' for drummers, and well, it was self-inflicted and my own stupid fault.

I had the terrible misfortune of blowing out a snare drum two songs into the set. I think I stripped a screw that connects the actual snares to the drum as we were setting up before the show. This has only happened to me once, 4 years ago, and it was a pretty big deal. The snare drum crack is the backbeat, literally the sound of rock time. It's the ticking of your watch, the smack that spits 2 & 4 in everyone's face - it's why drunk people dance at concerts. In short, it's the rock drummer's go-to. So you can imagine my horror when the beautiful, crisp punch of my favorite snare became the doughey slop of a non-snared snare drum. It sucks, and it sounds sooo bad.

So during the short section after our 2nd song where Scott was talking, I jumped back to grab my backup snare. We've been lugging around this backup snare to every show since this happened 4 years ago - just as a precaution. I frantically found that the backup snare was not in fact ready to play. Fuck, right? After all those years of lugging it around I don't have it ready to work. I really hate myself in those moments. Really. And so as Scott did his best to talk our way through it, I desperately searched for alternatives backstage. Luckily, Dan, drummer for July For Kings, was willing to let me borrow his snare for the rest of the set. Thank you Dan. The rest of the set was pretty excellent, but I am definitely putting my gear through the grinder this week. I'll be damned if that is ever going to happen again. Back to Chicago Tuesday morrning.

Here's a video (post-snare replacement) of Friendly Fire that Dave Hood shot last night. Thanks Dave!

cavashawn diary : 6.26.09

SAINT LOUIS

<-you can thank the infamous scott feister for this pic of clifford in tow.

Summer is definitely here, and we are back to the good times of being on the road. Yesterday we made the trip from the shores of Lake Michigan to the banks of the Mississippi, tripping from Chicago to the great state of Missouri. The Midwest is green, corn seems to have been planted, and unfortunately, the Cardinals are atop the NL Central.

The show last night at Cicero's went particularly well. We had a great energetic crowd show up and I thought we played pretty well. Saint Louis is a unique place for us, because we started from scratch. We hardly knew anyone in Missouri when we started, and we haven't caught many breaks (i.e., opening for a larger band, etc.). We've slowly built a great fan-base in this music-loving town, mostly through the Internet. Early on we met some diehard music fans and worked together with them to get the word out about the band. We shipped out flyers and posters, coordinated on Facebook and MySpace, and have inched our way forward. It seems to have been working. People know the words, and the place was pretty full, primarily with our fans. St. Louis makes us believe we can do it. That's why, despite hating the Cardinals (like, really hate) I love the city.

Today was another hot, sunny day as we drove straight west through Illinois, Indiana, and into Ohio. We're in Cincinnati now, prepping for our show tomorrow night at The Madison Theater. It's late June in the Ohio River valley, complete with all the crickets, firecrackers, and humidity you may have come to expect. Summer! It's healthy.

cavashawn diary : 6.24.09

And the incredible week that started last Wednesday sludges on. The CD was released 7 days ago today, and it has literally been an emotional blur of sweat, stress, and ultimately triumph. We're in the dog days of Summer, and it's unseasonably hot, gross, and muggy. Our bodies move more slowly in this heat, and we sweat sitting around the TV on the sofa, lights low with more noticably warm laptops burning our legs as we try to keep up with the flurry of Internet activity that has been the result of this CD's release. We are stealing feels of AC when we can.

There are about a million and one things going on right now, including the fact that we have an Emmy-winning documentary crew following us around shooting footage for a piece they're working on about entrepreneurship in the music biz. This is clearly awesome, but it also means we have two extra bodies in our already relatively crammed apartment. Life is chaotic right now, but it's amazing. My room is a mess. I need to do laundry in the worst way, but every single day has been jam-packed with one thing after another. Something as time-consuming as laundry simply does not seem to be a priority right now, so I continue to recycle clothes.

After Friday's show at Metro, the rest of the weekend was a bit disjointed, but necessary to re-charge. Chris and I ran around to a lot of the MobFest activities, and got drunk on Saturday night and stayed out late with Dan and Mike from The Fold, watching the sunrise as we finally got back to our apartment. It was awesome. And necessary. The past month has been extremely demanding, and Friday's show was something of a catharsis. It was a lot to grapple with, not so much putting out a CD and playing a show, but feeling the existential weight of knowing that everything, everything - every single day for the past 2 years, the personal struggles, the countless rehearsing, shitty shows, the merciless amount of work that is an endless, enduring reality - was devoted just to getting to where we were Friday night.

And was it a great place to be? Absolutely. There were clear moments that I felt as if I was living in a dream I had when I was 16. But I think what set in Friday for me at least, was the awareness that while I have poured every ounce of my mind, heart, and body for two years straight into this band (and the same is true of the other 3 guys too), we've done this all just to give ourselves a fighting chance. There are no guarantees, no clear light at the end of the tunnel, and no checkpoints to ensure that yes, you're doing the right thing, you're on the right path. All you have is your gut. If this is just the beginning, is it really going to be this hard? That was the question that was sinking in for me Friday. Not that the answer even really matters.

But it's an incredible high to be in the middle of this all. I think I've reached a new level of appreciation for life this week, a feeling of freedom that only comes from unshakeable commitment. And I think this heat is going to my head.

But enough of the heavy stuff. Off to St. Louis tomorrow. More updates via twitter and this blog as the weekend unfolds.

countdown to cavashawn: it's out!

It's out! It's out! Stream it on MySpace, buy it on iTunes. Busy
day, but it's finally out!

Sent from my iPhone

countdown to cavashawn june 17th: 2 days!

And we begin a big week. Posters are up, CDs have been shipped to people who pre-ordered, we have new merchandise in, and to be honest, I think we're all a bit whipped. It has been such an intense process - there are seemingly an endless amount of things we could be doing at any moment, but in the end, I guess we've done the best we could to get the word out - now we'll just see how it goes.

Thanks to the help of some incredible people on our street team, we have posters up all across Chicago, St. Louis, and Cincinnati. We sent out over 20,000 flyers to people in the mail with the hopes that they would find their way to some new fans. We've been putting in hours at the rehearsal space, trying to perfect the show, hoping that we'll be able to take these shows by storm.

At this point, it's up to everyone else. If you are reading this, post something on your facebook wall, or send an e-mail to people you know might be interested. This truly is a grassroots effort, and at this point, it's out of our hands. We'll be posting new music to our websites all week, so stay tuned.

countdown to cavashawn june 17th : 7 days

Wednesday June 10th: 7 days till Cavashawn

1 Week!

A primary order Monday was getting a bunch of stuff shipped, including the CDs to our online store distributor in Florida. Being that the pre-order CDs are set to ship from the distributor Friday, Monday was the day they needed to get out of our apartment. I also went to LaSalle Power Co. downtown Monday night for a happy hour thing. We're in the process of putting together a show there in July, so we were working out some of the details.

And so yesterday was more of the same. Postering, organizing flyers via mail distribution, and then rehearsing. We're building our set for these CD release shows and working through all of the songs, trying to improve sections, and tighten up spots that might need some improvement.

And so today we're going to do some postering before going in to do some more rehearsal. These are not the sexiest days, but we're enjoying it.

countdown to cavashawn june 17th : 13 days

Thursday June 4th - 13 Days till Cavashawn

I'm not even sure what exactly Ben is doing in this picture, but it's in the "Sierra Mist" green room at Q101. I wonder if Pepsi is pleased. We went down to tape a segment for Local 101, an institution of Chicago local music. The program will air this Sunday, and we'll be premiering Secret Satisfaction, a new song off of the EP.

Interesting experience. Q101 is smack right in the middle of Merchandise Mart, a huge building right across the river from the loop, pretty much in the heart of downtown Chicago. It's fancy and clean, kind of a reminder that, no matter how fucking cool the people who run the local music programs are (and trust me, they're pretty fucking cool) ultimately radio is big business. There is definitely some money changing hands. Whose hands I'm not sure, but I'm guessing it's not the folks who support local bands. Breaking into the system that is radio takes more than throwing up some posters up on a newspaper stand.