Over the weekend I hacked together a podcast feature I want: re-run a podcast from its first episode, with following episodes showing up as “new” on either a weekly or daily schedule.

So you can work your way through all the episodes of a podcast as though they started coming out today, if that makes sense.

(Images: a sort of working web UI and the first episode of Serial showing up as a “new” episode within Pocket Casts)

Just sharing in the hopes someone steals the idea and puts it in a decent podcast app so I can use it!

2023 was pretty full! My first album I Don’t Know What I’m Doing turned twenty years old(!) and we dusted off the full live band for our first shows since 2019. We played an anniversary show and it was a blast to meet a lot of you there, I can’t believe how many people travelled from far away. I don’t really tour so it’s very sweet when you come visit me and it was a pretty special night. For those who didn’t make it, Ben & I did a decent number of live stream shows on YouTube and it was awesome to see you in the chat (next one is January 25th btw).

I kept plugging away at making songs for the Brad Sucks Patreon, which is my favorite thing to be doing these days. Thanks to everyone who supports me there, it means a ton and has really helped keep me moving forward. 

2024 should be similarly busy — one of my songs is apparently going to be in a fancy commercial and I announced the campaign for my Untitled Fifth Album which is just about half-funded. So if that’s successful, finishing the new record should take up most of my time when I’m not writing & recording new songs. Here’s hoping!

Anyway, here’s some of the stuff I made or did this year:

PUBLIC

• SONG: The Comfort Zone (youtube, bandcamp, spotify etc)

• SONG: Lotion (Greenskeepers cover re-record) (youtube, patreon)

• SONG: Cell Phone (youtube, patreon)

• SONG: Tell Me Something I Don’t Know (2003 demo) (youtube, patreon)

• SONGS: I Don’t Know What I’m Doing (instrumentals) (youtube)

• POST: All the Brad Sucks tattoos I’ve been sent (instagram)

• VIDEO: Untitled Fifth Album Demos (youtube)

• VIDEO: AI Grimes singing Making Me Nervous (youtube)

• VIDEO: Bee & PuppyCat Dad Box Birthday Song (youtube)

• CASSETTE: Loss Leader (bandcamp)

• FILM: A Brad Sucks song is in the drag-fu film Enter the Drag Dragon and I went to the premiere (instagram)

PATREON

• SONG: Pink Cloud (patreon)

• SONG: Killed by the Very Best (patreon)

• SONG: In Trouble (Extended) (patreon)

• SONG: Mellow Me Nervous (patreon)

• SONG: Naturally (patreon)

• SONG: Banged Up / Mint Condition (patreon)

• SONG: Banged Up / Mint Condition (acoustic version) (patreon)

• SONG: The Motivation (original 2013 demo) (patreon)

• SONG: Simplifyin (2009 demo) (patreon)

• SONG: Certain Types of People (2008 demo) (patreon)

• REMIX: Virg - Secret (patreon)

LIVE

• IRL: Bad Attraction (Live, August 26th, 2023) (youtube)

• IRL: In Trouble (Live, August 26th, 2023) (youtube)

• Stream Clip: The Comfort Zone (April 27th, 2023) (youtube)

• Stream: December 21st, 2023 (youtube)

• Stream: November 23rd, 2023 (youtube)

• Stream: August 31st, 2023 (youtube)

• Stream: July 27th, 2023 (youtube)

• Stream: May 25th, 2023 (youtube)

• Stream: April 27th, 2023 (youtube)

• Stream: March 23rd, 2023 (youtube)

• Stream: February 16th, 2023 (youtube)

I think that’s it! Thank you! My links: web, patreon, instagram, threads, mastodon, facebook, discord ✌️❤️ — Brad

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

Thanks to everyone who’s contributed to the Untitled Fifth Album campaign! We’re 41% of the way there with 50 days to go!

Unfortunately, the first thing I need to announce is I MESSED UP!! I didn’t specify shipping on the “SIGNED Limited Edition Vinyl” perk. I feel awful about it, but if you ordered that one I’ll need to ask you to cancel & request a refund and then re-purchase the same perk (which now includes shipping). I’m very, very sorry for the hassle — don’t hesitate to contact me if you need any help with cancelling your order. 

In other campaign news, I’ve added a “Name in credits + Signed Vinyl” tier by request in case you want both of those things at once. 

Folks who posted custom cover songs: I'll be reaching out to find out what your song selections are soon!

In actual album production developments: we’ve gone ahead and started working on the songs and filming the process, so assuming things go well for the budget, we’re targeting a late February recording date for the drums, tracking the rest shortly after.

I posted a live clip of us playing the unreleased song In Trouble on Youtube if you want to check that out. (A clip of Bad Attraction from my first album is up there as well.)

Anyway other than my dumb shipping mistake, it's been going well so far and I'm optimistic. The support has been really encouraging, thank you so much!

Brad
PS: Ben & I are doing a live stream show on Thursday 8pm EST, come on out to see if I've forgiven myself by then!

Hey everybody! Despite the many indications to the contrary, I believe it’s time to put a new Brad Sucks album together! Which unfortunately means I’m about to awkwardly beg you for support (waits for approving roar of the crowd to die down.)

This time I’m hoping to do things a little differently than my usual DIY af situation — I want to involve my awesome live band in the process. I’ve already got a batch of songs ready to go and if I can raise the funds to pull it off, I think it’ll turn out pretty cool & special. I’ve never done an album like this before and I’d love the chance to.

If you think you might want to get involved, I’ve got a whole Indiegogo over here that you can hop on with more details, rewards you can get and all that. Thanks for checking it out, I really appreciate your support!

Oh, and while I’ve got you here:

Stream Shows!

• Next stream show, December 21st 8pm EST! Save the date!

• Here’s the replay from the November 23rd show, thanks for tuning in, the chat was a blast!

Follow me? Instagram, Threads, Mastodon, Facebook, mostly.

Thank you so much!!

Brad

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

I return this month to report that Starfield is a boring video game and not the mental and emotional space vacation I was hoping for so I’m regretfully back to living in the real world again. So sad.

Spookily though, I re-recorded my cover of Lotion by The Greenskeepers. Check the new version with some creepy animation by my buddy Allen here:

It’s also available for free download on Patreon even if you’re not a patron!

Stream show

Ben & I return from hiatus to stream at you once again on November 23rd, any requests? I request that you hit the “Notify me” bell on the video if you want a reminder when it’s close.

Other stuff

• New Patreon demo: Killed by the Very Best - wrote a rock song, no idea if it’s any good.

• I’ve been working on planning out a new big Brad Sucks project… hope to have news of that to you once my fear of failure is cured completely and forever.

Social media

Seems like it’s getting harder to stay connected online lately which is a drag. For the record, I’m still posting on: Instagram, Threads, Mastodon and Facebook. Anything important gets mentioned on Patreon and the mailing list.  Oh and come hang out in the Brad Sucks Discord, it’s a cool little group there.

Thanks for listening, til next time!

Brad

Oh boy, I’m about to hit this long weekend running. It’s nice weather & Starfield for the foreseeable future for me, thank you very much. But after that? The plan is to return even more powerful.

20 years 🥳

I Don’t Know What I’m Doing turned twenty years old! Crazy. That’s so many years! Thanks for all your kind messages, it means a lot.

The Rainbow

We played a show, it went well! Last Friday was a great time as I mentioned on Instagram:

Wow, what a night that was. So many people came from far away: Hungary, North Carolina, Missouri, New Orleans, Michigan, Texas — incredible, I’m really overwhelmed and touched… thanks to you all. I hope we rocked for you? We played nearly every song we know, for the most part successfully (swipe to the last pic to see when I took full blame for screwing up a song.)

Super fun night! Really enjoyed meeting some of you and hope the show was worth the journey.

Sorta final live stream

Ben and I did our last scheduled live stream last night, ending a multi-month campaign of scheduled stream-rocking. Thanks for hanging out with us if you popped by, it’s been really fun to play and read the comments. Haven’t decided what to do next… I’d love to experiment a bit more maybe? Let me know if you have any thoughts or requests or ideas.

Other stuff I posted

• The I Don’t Know What I’m Doing Instrumentals are on YouTube now

• I posted all the Brad Sucks tattoos I’ve been sent

• Patreon: In Trouble (Extended) - working on this one for the next single(?)

Social media

When not in the sunshine or playing Starfield I’ll be on social media:  Instagram, Threads, Mastodon, X and Facebook. Anything important gets mentioned on Patreon and the mailing list.

Thanks for listening, til next time!

Brad

Hey all! Hope the summer’s treating you well. Huge news here: I took a pickleball beginner’s class and my body hurts. Also one of my guitars broke and I’m waiting for its replacement to arrive. (These events were unrelated.)

In I guess professional news, I put a song called Cell Phone on YouTube., but mostly I’d like to remind you that the full band and I are doing an I Don’t Know What I’m Doing 20th anniversary show on Friday, August 25th in Ottawa, Ontario (Canada):

We plan to live stream it on my YouTube channel but that’s no excuse not to attend! Plus the live streaming might not even work, who knows? Take the safe route and travel alllll the way to Canada to see a small indie rock band: tickets available here.

Ben and I did a live stream show last week, here’s the replay if you’re interested, which I am not. Still hate watching myself! I wonder if that’ll ever get any better? And I put all the I Don’t Know What I’m Doing instrumentals online because some people told me they wanted that for some reason 🤷🏻‍♂️.

Okay, gotta run — looking forward to a full band rehearsal tonight preparing for the 25th. It’s been a real joy to get back to playing. After the long break I wasn’t sure it would ever happen again so I’m feeling extra grateful when it happens these days.

Thanks for listening, commenting, subscribing, patreoning, reading, I appreciate it all. I’m a bit behind in email right now but I swear I’m gonna catch up… very soon. See ya,

Brad

PS: Social media’s a mess — I don’t know where exactly to put my posting efforts these days but I’m trying to post on: Instagram, Threads, Mastodon, Bluesky, sometimes  Twitter and Facebook, until I can allow myself to stop. All real news goes to the mailing list , website and of course the Patreon.

Some folks have asked me for these to be on YouTube, so here are the instrumentals for I Don’t Know What I’m Doing. Sounds better without my voice in it.

This album’s gonna be 20 years old next month! We’re doing a show in my hometown of Ottawa on August 25th that you should come to. I think we’re gonna try and live stream as well. Also I’m doing a stream show on July 27th with Ben, so come hang for that. All dates: https://www.bradsucks.net/shows/

Way to June, everybody. Hope you Juned it so hard. Mine was good, stressful, ups and downs, but overall solid. Here’s what I got up to Brad Sucks-wise:

• The full Brad Sucks band played our first live show since 2019, warming up for the August 25th I Don’t Know What I’m Doing 20th anniversary show. We completed every single song and nobody was injured, a complete success.

• I finished a new song demo tentatively called Cell Phone and put it on the Brad Sucks Patreon. There are like 25+ unreleased songs over there — really gotta finish and release some, just having a tough time committing to final versions as usual.

• BTW some of those Patreon demos are on a limited release called Loss Leader which I just added to Bandcamp — you can also get it on cassettes I had made up for the A New Low in Hi-Fi crowdfunder until I run out.

Coming up, I’ve got a live stream on YouTube on July 27th, the 20th anniversary show on August 25th in Ottawa (which will also be live-streamed, I think?) Working on: new demos, new singles, new BS album, rarities release, live album, weird side project, videos.

I’m still posting on Instagram ,  Twitter ,  Facebook ,  Mastodon and Bluesky until I can allow myself to stop.

Updating Patreon & mailing list with any real Brad Sucks news if I ever do anything again, which unfortunately seems likely.

Thanks for listening, may your July be merciful,

Brad

Hey hey, how’s it going? I’m avoiding packing all my gear up for band practice tonight, it’s grown into a lot of stuff which is unfortunate because I’m very, very lazy. Anyway, here’s all the news from me:

• Tickets are available for my first full band shows since 2019!

• As the 20th anniversary of I Don’t Know What I’m Doing is coming up, I asked people (on Instagram and on Facebook) to share where they found out about the album and I was blown away by the replies. It’s often a bit tough to think anything I’ve made is worthwhile at all but that gave me a much-needed boost, so thank you all for that.

• We did a live stream on May 25th which was also very encouraging, everyone was so nice. Also last stream I was recovering from Covid and basically braindead so this was a nice redemption.

• I made an AI voice replacement of Grimes singing Making Me Nervous. The future is freaky. On the one hand I don’t want my career to be ruined by machines, but on the other hand creatively it’s pretty irresistible getting to play with other people’s voices. I’m still thinking the human element will be tough to simulate but I’m also an idiot human so what do I know.

• Even though machines can do it better than my stupid brain and hands, I’ve been trying to improve my piano playing. While thinking about some ideas for Brad Sucks video games on the Brad Sucks Discord, I made a moody piano cover of Making Me Nervous for the Patreon.

• I’m working on another single release (finishing up the In Trouble demo from the Patreon). I’ve had people ask if I’m doing another album but I think I’m just gonna do singles for a while and see how that goes.

Okay, uh now I’ve run out of news and have to start packing my stuff up, wish me luck. Hope you’re all well, love y’all.

I’ve got some full-band IRL Brad Sucks shows coming up in the Ottawa area, it’ll be the first time we’ve played since 2019 which doesn’t fill me with terrible anxiety at all. Here are the dates:

Friday, June 16th: Hyde Smokehouse & Bar - formerly The Branch, we used to play this small place in my hometown yearly and thought this’d be a good warm-up gig. It’s out in the middle of nowhere and there are only about fifty seats so YMMV. (Tickets: $15 CAD, call to reserve)

Friday, August 25th: The Rainbow - This show’ll be to celebrate I Don’t Know What I’m Doing’s 20th anniversary. It’s located in the big city of Ottawa so if you’re making a journey from elsewhere, this’d be the most convenient one for you. (Tickets $17.50 CAD)

Hope to see you there! Also: Ben and I still have three scheduled stream shows remaining:

Thursday, May 25th 8pm EST
Thursday, July 27th 8pm EST
Thursday, August 31st 8pm EST

Subscribe to my YouTube channel and turn on notifications and it’ll remind you. I should hopefully be less sick and out of my mind for the stream next week, fingers crossed.

Hey all! My new song The Comfort Zone is streaming today (and it’s also on Bandcamp). If you could give it a glance, a listen, a like, a share, a playlist add, I’d appreciate it. Here’s the lyric video (premiering 11am EST):

Get all the links here: https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/bradsucks/the-comfort-zone

I wrote and recorded the original demo and posted it on my Patreon in January 2021 which feels like a lifetime ago now. But that’s a relatively quick turnaround for me. I revisited the track a couple of months ago, re-recording a lot of it and making some tweaks. Ben Mullin added some guitars and Rob Cosh mixed it, making it sound much better than I could on my own.

This song may sound sad but I like to think of it as withdrawing in order to come back stronger. I hope you like the song, thanks for listening ❤️

Brad

New Brad Sucks Newsletter just dropped where I self-promote and stuff

My new single The Comfort Zone streams on all platforms 4/14/23, please pay attention to it 😵‍💫

Links will all be here

Previously posted on the Patreon, I uploaded an old unreleased demo from 2003 called Tell Me Something I Don’t Know. This was supposed to go on my first album I Don’t Know What I’m Doing but I cut it for whatever reasons and then thought about finishing it up for oh, twenty years. I definitely re-recorded the guitars and vocals a couple of times and then abandoned and lost those as well so it probably wasn’t meant to be.

First of several stream shows last night, here’s the replay if you’re interested. Thanks to all who attended and especially those who chipped in some cash. I think it went all right and I’m looking forward to doing more.

I don’t know if anyone wants any technical details but here are some changes I made from the last show stream:

• Bought a new $40 dollar light which seemed to improve the lighting situation a bit

• New backgrounds! I paid like $80 for a month of Storyblocks so I have 29 more days to download all the footage I possibly can before I cancel. I think they turned out pretty fun.

• New keyboard! Retired the Yamaha Reface CP (which only does electric piano sounds) and replaced it with the Mininova I’ve had for ages. I’ve always hated the sounds on it but I bought a preset pack and now it sounds pretty dope and Ben’s having a good time with it. Looking forward to selling the Reface and looking forward to putting new sounds into the set

• Redid my guitar patches on the Line 6 Stomp XL. I think they sound better

• Cueing songs from my keyboard instead of the computer keyboard

• Finally solved a random USB dropout issue that’s been haunting me for like a decade

For next time:

• Add more songs to the repertoire

• I’d like to add a looper type thing so we can easily jam or try stuff out

• Automating the background changes would take a load off my mind

• Might run a long cable from my studio through the living room to the router instead of relying on wi-fi.

• Maybe figure out how to stream to other platforms at the same time

• Add a limiter? Not totally pleased with the audio on the streams but I don’t know if I’ll ever be content there

• Remember all my lyrics and forget none of them

Also for bonus points I’m starting to rehearse with a drummer and bass player again as we’ve got some full band IRL shows booked, so I’ve gotta figure out how to get integrate them with the duo show I’ve built up the past couple of years.

Next show is March 23rd!

Stream show tomorrow at 8pm EST!

I just sent my mailing list out and I feel I should repost it here:

Hey hey, how’s it going? Quick question for you: If I did an I Don’t Know What I’m Doing 20th anniversary concert on the August 25th weekend (either the Friday or Saturday) in Ottawa, Ontario (Canada), do you think you’d be attending? If so, please throw a “yes” down in this poll so I can get an idea of what size of venue to book. No pressure or commitment, just haven’t played a real show since 2019 and I have no idea what to expect. Thank you!

Stream Shows

Stream show dates! These’ll be live on my YouTube channel. Songs will be played, mistakes will be made. First one is next week!

Thursday, February 16th, 2023, 8pm EST
Thursday, March 23rd, 2023, 8pm EST
Thursday, April 20th, 2023, 8pm EST
Thursday, May 25th, 2023, 8pm EST
Thursday, July 27th, 2023, 8pm EST
Thursday, August 31st, 2023, 8pm EST

Drop on by!

A Song in the Film Enter the Drag Dragon

I went to the premiere of Enter the Drag Dragon which was a hilarious campy good time. My song Dropping out of School was in a fun scene, here’s a clip I secretly took in the theatre. Keep an eye out for it at film festivals!

“Brad, What’s New on the Patreon?”

Boy am I glad you asked:

• The Comfort Zone (Revised 2023) - - People seemed to like this demo so I’m gonna release it on streaming services. I fixed it up a bit and it’s getting mixed right now. Release date probably in March?

• Tell Me Something I Don’t Know (demo) - An unreleased/abandoned song that was cut from I Don’t Know What I’m Doing back in 2003. Been meaning to finish this one for twenty years but I suspect it might not happen. Thinking I’ll probably throw this up on YouTube soon.

Btw feel free to stop by the Brad Sucks Discord chat, you don’t have to be a member of the Patreon to hang out.

Out and About

That’s it for now, join me on the social media: Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, oh I’m on Mastodon also because I’m a huge nerd.

Brad