Ben & I are back tonight with another stream show at 8pm EST, hope you can tune in! I've started looking forward to these instead of just being nervous, which is a pretty nice development.

One of my resolutions this year has been to be better at regularly posting & promoting on social media, specifically with video content. After each stream show, Ben’s been reviewing the video (I’ve gotten way better but I still really hate watching myself) and giving me a list of "noteworthy" moments. And then I’ve been editing the “highlights” down to 30-60 second reels to promote the next show. Here are a few I’ve made recently if you haven't seen them:

• "Dad Joke"

• "Mentally Ready"

• "Bloopers" 

Oh, and I also made this dumb little one out of Geoff Gibson (@sisc_daily)'s sweet poster art that he sent me that got posted today.

Nothing amazing, but I think I’m improving at making 'em. So far it’s been difficult to get over the feeling I’m annoying everyone on social media with this constant self-promotion, but it feels like a necessary evil if I want to keep doing this stuff blah blah blah blah? Anyway, time to set up my office for streaming... 

Update time! We’ve been working hard on the songs in the cold basement where we rehearse. Big news: we’ve cut some songs. The tracklist is now down to: Wasting My Potential, Pretty Dumb, This Meeting, Simplifyin, Over & Over & Over, Feeling Pretty Good, Certain Types of People, Naturally, In Trouble, The Comfort Zone and Learning to Lie Again. They were the ones everyone was most interested in working on, sorry if your fave got cut. There's still hope it'll get finished one day.

Fundraiser is at 65% with two weeks to go! Thanks to everyone for your support so far. Seems unlikely we’ll make it to 100% so I’m beginning to sweat how I’m gonna pull this project off with whatever budget we end up with, but we’ll see how it goes. The songs are sounding good, our parts are pretty locked. If we can get everything recorded nicely, I think it’ll turn out really well.

While I'm here I might as well mention that Ben & I have a live stream show Thursday night at 8pm on YouTube that you're invited to. 

Some pics from last Friday's chilly rehearsal:

(Photos by Steve Pelehos)

We’re back live this Thursday at 8pm on YouTube!

Just a reminder that Ben and I are back live streaming tonight at 8pm EST! We had no idea it was American Thanksgiving today when we agreed on it, but hopefully some people will still tune in. I'll try not to schedule the next one on a major national holiday (unless it goes really well and then major national holidays only from now on.)

Been feeling a bit guilty towards my $10/month Patrons as I haven’t been digging up any good embarrassment content lately so I decided to throw your names (minus last name for privacy) on the opening and closing stream screens. No shade to the other Patreon tiers, just thought it might be a fun thing to try out as a thank you for that extra support.

Anyway, missed doing this so I’m looking forward to getting back at it, see you in the chat!

Brad

Stream show tomorrow at 8pm EST!

We’re doing a concert on my YouTube channel to celebrate my third album Guess Who’s a Mess turning ten this week. It’s on Thursday November 3rd at 8pm EST, come hang!

The last one was a blast so we’re gonna do it again! Doing another private stream concert, $10, 100 tickets max. December 17th!

The Out of It tenth anniversary vinyl is in the house and they look sweet and also sound sweet. Weird to think I made that record ten years ago. Preorders are 99% shipped so if you order now it’ll be in the mail to you within a week. Grab one in my store or on my Bandcamp page.

Better Than Nothing vinyl is still available as well if you want the entire Brad Sucks vinyl collection while supplies last. Be sure to include a note with your order if you want ‘em signed (by me).

(Photo credit: @thebishopgame)

I've been getting lots of photos and messages telling me people are getting their Better Than Nothing records which makes me super happy, thanks you guys. I keep starting to write something about how humbling and emotional it is to feel so supported after like a decade and a half of making songs, but then I feel dumb and delete it. So, like, thank you? The vinyl release party's November 17th in my hometown of Ottawa. Hope to see you there! Here's the gig poster by Geoff Gibson (@sisc_daily) who also did the awesome Better Than Nothing album artwork.

Oh, so this'll be my first show in Ottawa in a while or two. Gonna be trying out some new stuff, plus old new stuff and then last -- but by no means least -- ...old stuff. Bruce Enloe and the Burning Sensations will be opening. I worked on Bruce's two rad records, Unseasonably Cool and the raw, live-off-the-floor Bonfire. Both worth checking out, Bruce is an excellent songwriter. Geoffrey Gibson made us this beautiful poster:

And here's the Facebook event.

I'm still playing in Toronto on Saturday. I'm pretty sure the album's available everywhere it's supposed to be. iTunes, Amazon, Bandcamp, CD Baby, Spotify, Rdio and now finally Jamendo (thanks to everyone who helped out with that). Oh and I'm slowly getting it on Soundcloud. Also a big thank you to everyone who's been buying it. For a while I wasn't sure if I'd get to still be a musician but it looks like I'm OK for now.

By the way, the source/stems for the album are here. Send me anything you make with my stuff, I'll be featuring some things in the next while.

I've been neglecting this blog in favor of Facebook and Twitter. I have some confusion about where to channel my Internet energies these days.

It's -28C outside right now. That's cold.

The new album will be out November 2nd. There'll be a release party:

Here's the info on Facebook.

Hey everybody. I accidentally did a show a couple of weeks ago. It was pretty informal. A nice person came all the way from Hungary to see it which was a little nerve-wracking. It went fine though, thank you for coming (if you did). I've been just plain working on my album. Growing a beard. Trying to drink sensibly. Also:  playing some video games here and there. Arkham City comes out next week. I might be too busy to play it, how sad is that. Seriously how sad for me are you right now tell me.

I keep thinking of writing about recording the album because they say you should keep your 'online presence' going but that's so fucking boring. Does anyone really want to read that? "I've been re-recording all the basslines." Oh kick ass, Brad. "I'm enjoying playing bass more." Awesome, awesome! I'd rather talk about my awesome dog Rufus:

Just look at that fuckin' guy. What a dude.

But I'm getting restless, which I think is a nice sign. I really want the album to be done so I can move on. I have all these fantasies about how creative I'm going to be when this is over and I'm not working on the same batch of songs anymore. How I shouldn't wait so long between albums anymore. That all my fussing is really only mildly improving the songs. I should be more spontaneous! I should be more like Prince!

But I also want to obsess over every part of it forever until the end of time. I know that my restlessness will overcome my perfectionism soon though and that, my friends, is how babies are born.

[My new nephew Crue (as in Motley).]

You don't get asked to be made an uncle, someone just makes you one.

Yeah, so, there was a wiener theme to the show tonight. First time ever. I tried to communicate it from the stage but I'm not sure how clear I was. Here's the two point recap: 1. Next to the venue was an abandoned KFC with this sign:

rlggsx

2. Inside, on the bar, next to jars of pickled eggs and cheese was a jar of pickled wieners. I did some of my Seinfeld-esque observational humor from the stage re: this crazy coincidence and this wound up happening:

weiner

For those of you who are not musicians, that is a pickled wiener that has been tossed onto the stage, specifically onto the set list of your guitarist.

Good times.

I think I might be finished with nearly anything that happens in convention centers. I'm not sure I've ever had a good time in one. Do they happen? They're so sterile they creep me out and make me want to run far away (to my sterile hotel room). My panel was OK, though the discussion was just getting going when we ran out of time. I also felt it was a bit too focused on far-off scenarios rather than practical stuff that might help musicians. I have a hard time caring about anything I have to imagine 5-10 years into the future to get. Probably my issue, but there it is.

Once again Boston tried to hang onto me by laying down a giant storm on my way out. Last time it was snow that cancelled every flight but mine. This time it was wind that cancelled every flight but mine. It's never cool when you see this much red on a departures screen when you walk up to your gate:

I got to fly in a 9-seat Cessna propeller airplane (the ninth seat is actually the co-pilot seat). I thought it would be scary especially with all the turbulence but I found it easy to accept the idea of dying after spending so many hours in an airport. Also it felt like being in a van in the sky. And whenever I was nervous the pilot was like three feet away from me so I could study his body language. "He's not sweating and trying to secretly phone his kids, so I think this is just normal turbulence."

I took this video of the landing:

Pretty sweet landing there. The other three I experienced weren't quite as slick.

Scott's rolling to a stop on his solo live playing. I think that's cool, I started to weigh in with a comment on my own struggle with playing live but it got too huge so here it is:

A couple of years ago I was fed up with playing live. Some people love to perform and I'm just not that guy. I wouldn't say I'm shy but I wouldn't deny that I'm an introvert. Then I had a pretty bad string of rough, demoralizing gigs and it was messing with me. I'd travel home afterwards all bummed out and thinking my time would have been much better spent recording or writing or doing stuff on the internet. Plus it's easier and more fun to me.

I got fed up, took a break and decided to play less shows but to make them more meaningful. Promote them better, book them better, work harder at them. In 2010 that approach was pretty successful so I'm planning to play some more in 2011.

A lesson I learned, and this may only apply to me and my city, is that there's very little point to playing thankless gigs. Maybe you're getting some practice in. Maybe you enjoy it. But you're not building a fan base. You're not generating buzz. If you have a small draw, which most bands do, you're spreading it too thin over many sad shows rather than saving it up for a few good ones.

Now that I'm taking this new approach I'm enjoying the shows way more. I'm still not much of a performer, but I've been enjoying the crowd interaction. I like getting yelled at. I enjoy feeling like my being there and doing my thang is facilitating a good time for others.

So when people come out now, tell me they like my stuff, tell me they're looking forward to new music, it's pretty great. It's very easy on the Internet to group fans into one single entity. But when I meet people face to face who seem to genuinely connect with what I've done or what I'm doing, well that's encouraging and awesome and nice.

Last night's show was fun, thanks to everyone for coming out. These three shows I've done with the new band have been pretty encouraging. I'm not someone who actually really enjoys performing or being on a stage, but I do get a huge kick out of an energetic, happy crowd and instigating a good time.  So I'm gonna let that motivate me into more show bookings and hope it's enough.

Hey, we'll be playing in Kingston at The Mansion on January 7th:

Facebook events here and here.

Getting the laptop into the live show has been a long dumb technical process. It's been working solid now for a long time so the last step was to get it all into a nice portable form factor that was quick and easy to set up and tear down.  I think I'm just about there:

I bought this Gator Studio-2-Go case - which is a 2U rack case (front and back) as well as a laptop compartment on top (and most importantly a hole between the rack and laptop compartments for cable runs). Getting it was a stupid ordeal. I actually couldn't find it anywhere in Canada (everyone said it was discontinued) so I had to order it from Sweetwater, get it delivered in the US and drive across the border to get it.  Sine then it's been a gradual process figuring out everything I need in it.

In the front (sorry for the crappy photos) I've got a Furman M-8X (rack-mounted power strip), a MOTU Ultralite mk3 (sound card) and a Shure PSM200 wireless transmitter (for feeding the click to the drummer). The power strip means I only have one power cord for the whole box, which is great.

In the back:

The sound card's outputs go into a Behringer ULTRA-DI PRO DI800, giving the sound dude three channels of DI'd output.  I had to learn how to build some short angle patch cables since non-angled ones wouldn't fit with the back cover on.

Remaining issues:

• I need an 8-channel XLR s-s-snake for the DI outputs (this has been ordered.)
• The power supply for the PSM200 is one of those dudes with the AC adapter block separated from the plug. Meaning the block is floating around in the case, threatening to knock all my other connections out. I'm not sure how to secure it down or if I should try and replace it with a different adapter.
• The Firewire adapter in the laptop sticks out of the side of the laptop a great deal and makes the side-foam the case comes with not fit properly. I guess I'll cut a hole in it.
• I wish it was easier to get the DI in and out in case I need to adjust something.  Right now I can squeeze my arms in but I'm only getting fatter so that's not a permanent option. I don't know much about racks - is there a. thing for that? A rack drawer maybe?

So instead of bringing in a pile of devices and having to set up all my cables each time, I'm down to one AC adapter and a handful of XLR outs and I don't need any DIs from the house.

That was a lot of work.

I own several books by Bobby Owsinski and since I've been putting a live show back together I bought his new book and DVD: How To Make Your Band Sound Great.

I wasn't sure what to expect. The new live show's sounding pretty good I think and I've got a fair amount of experience on stage now but figured it'd be worth checking out.

Good Stuff

The most useful sections in the book for me were his technical descriptions of dynamics and playing "in the pocket". Bobby talks a lot about playing "bigger" rather than louder or faster which has been an issue I've struggled with. For instance I liked this observation about why a lot of musicians feel like the life's been sucked out of their performance if they aren't playing really loud:

The internal dynamics of each individual usually go out the window. Instead of playing crisp yet quiet, with the same attacks and releases the band had at the higher volume level, the attacks and releases get relaxed so the playing becomes less precise. The real trick is learning to actually play with the same intensity at lower levels.

Makes a lot of sense. He suggests plotting out song (and set) dynamics on a 1-10 scale and to make sure the band members agree on what the levels on the scale sound like.

Bad Stuff

But besides a handful of useful tips, the book is geared towards the beginner. Repeated admonitions to tune your instrument, turn off your cell phone, take vocal lessons and be a professional might be useful to some readers but they seemed obvious to me.

The included 60-minute DVD of Bobby coaching a band rehearsing a song is interesting, but could easily have been edited down to around 15 minutes, which would have made it more effective and reduced my exposure to ska considerably. Cuts back and forth between the earlier and later (improved) performances of the song would have been a helpful demonstration.

Conclusion

It's not a bad book, I'd recommend it for a complete beginner. But it made me more aware of questions I had going in that it didn't answer. I'd love to see another book that dealt with situations that are more geared towards laptoppy Internet recording artists who are branching out into live performance like:

• How to deal with a laptop on stage - my first few times out I had issues with only having unbalanced outputs.
• Backing tracks. How many outputs to give the house, how to treat them, how much backing stuff to include.
• How to simulate band dynamics with drum backing tracks or a drum machine.
• Vocal treatment & effects. Especially in small venues I've found running my vocals through a compressor/limiter helps my vocals sound more like the records.
• How to handle crappy sound guys. (Constructing an alibi, body disposal, etc.)

I'm sure it would be a huge, huge money-making hit.