Live Heathens on Radio Crystal Blue on Sunday
Saturday, August 25, 2007

Friends,

Tune in to our pal Dan Herman's internet radio show Radio Crystal Blue on Sunday at 7 p.m. eastern time. Dan will be spinning a couple of tracks he recorded himself at our July 24 show at New York City's Rodeo Bar.

Listen to us play "For Cryin' Out Loud" here

Nate

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Rock Bottom, PA
Monday, August 20, 2007

"That's Def Leppard talking right there."

It was bound to happen. With my Swiss-cheese brain and hyperactive booking phases there was some club I was bound to not ask these fateful six words: "Do you have a P.A.?"

So it was that we showed up at Pearly Baker's in Easton, PA (hmmm...no PA in PA?) to discover that the club had no sound system. Nor did we. Frantic phone calls to friends in the area revealed that they all had gigs too and didn't have a PA to loan us. I told the band I'd merely shout over the electric instruments, like Little Richard claimed he did back in the day. They told me I was nuts. Eric voted to go home. Domenick too. Dan said, "Can we at least all agree that this is rock bottom for us as a band?"

Fortunately, Eric had a microphone in his drum bag, plus an adapter to plug it into an amp. Butch's amp had two inputs, one for his guitar and one for...a microphone. We jerry-rigged the amp and lo and behold both guitar and vocals had amplification.

We ordered some food and some drinks and we played three sets. The bar was pretty full, some drunks whooped it up, others danced a little bit, all in all it was a pretty standard bar gig. The musical high point came when Domenick, wearing a Def Leppard shirt that he rescued from a bag of old clothes his mom was about to throw away, played a blistering solo during "For Cryin' Out Loud." "That's Def Leppard talking right there," Dan said into my ear.

In a scene similar to the Bob's Country Bunker scene in the Blues Brothers where Bob says to Jake, "That's two hundred dollars, and you boys drank three hundred dollars worth of beer," the bartender handed us $200, and a $100 bar tab. We were drinking $2 pints of local beer all night (could we have really drank 50?). Some of the band were miffed that the club coudn't give us a few bucks off the local lager, or let us drink free all night (like band-friendly clubs do). A vote was taken not to play there again. Words were exchanged. Tempers flared.

We're taking a month off.

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By With A Little Help From...
Saturday, August 18, 2007

5:21 a.m. and just walked in my apartment door after playing four sets and driving a combined eight hours to and from Delhi, NY. We played the Sol Bar, a great little spot owned by our pal Jonah. The only problem is Delhi, NY, nestled in the Catskill Mountains, can be a little tricky to find. Then there's the fact that the road to Delhi from Roscoe, NY (a.k.a. "Trout City U.S.A.") was washed out in a flash flood a few months ago. Even though I worked on the story about that fatal flood, I didn't think to warn Dan the Bass Man about the ruined road. He got stuck in detour hell and we had to go bassless on our first set a-la the White Stripes (without, as Eric pointed out, a babe at the drumset).

Fortunately our buddies in Future Farmers of America were in the crowd and they ran down the road to get their instruments to sit in with us. The FFA/Heathens mix-up sounded awesome (particularly on "Dead Flowers" when we got Chico belting the background vox into the microphone). The house, packed with a class of 1987 reunion, seemed to dig it. After the show a woman told me I have "good thrust."

We'll be back in Delhi on Sept. 21 and then in neighboring Bovina on Sept. 22 for Livestock, the brain child of Mr. Chico Finn and easily the best roots rock festival probably in the nation.

And we'll be in Easton, PA in fifteen hours...

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What I Did On My Summer Vacation...
Friday, August 17, 2007

Just got back to NYC after spending 10 days fishing and visiting family in Montana. Went camping in Yellowstone Park, where I worked in 1997, for five days and saw two adult grizzly bears and two cubs, seven wolves, three black bears, hundreds of bison, dozens of elk, golden eagles, bald eagles, osprey, mule deer, coyotes, pronghorn and a big bull moose. Plus I caught dozens of fat native Yellowstone Cutthroat Trout (see picture above).

After visitng friends in Missoula over the weekend I went with my stepdad, sister and brother up to Glacier National Park for a couple more days of camping and cutthroat trout catching (they have the speckled Westslope Cutthroat Trout up in Glacier). Ate and drank at the Northern Lights Saloon in Polebridge, MT, my favorite dot on the map. There a buffalo enchalada and four beers costs less than a twenty, and the cooks strum tunes by the Bottle Rockets outside as the moon goes up. Heaven can't be much different.

I'm excited to jump back in the saddle with the New Heathens and make some rock n' roll. Tomorrow we play a favorite bar of ours, the Sol Bar in Delhi, NY (one week ago today I stood in Yellowstone's Lamar Valley watching a grizzly bear gnaw on a freshly killed buffalo and I started chatting with the dude next to me who just happened to live in Delhi). On Saturday we play a place we've never played, Pearly Baker's Ale House in Easton, PA. We've got some great friends in Easton, so it should be a great weekend.

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Thursday, August 9, 2007

New Heathens Go Back Into The Studio To Record Next Album
The New Heathens recently recorded 6 new tracks with Eric Roscoe Ambel at Cowboy Technical Services in Brooklyn. For the last year, the band has been constantly touring and saving every penny in order to bring uber producer Roscoe on board for the second album. Roscoe is a member of The Yayhoos, former Steve Earle guitarist, original member of Joan Jett & the Blackheart and has written songs with Warren Zevon, Ryan Adams and Dan Baird to name a few. Now, he's taking on the New Heathens' next effort. Look for the new album in Winter 08.

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New Heathens Start Blogging

Get the inside scoop on the New Heathens. Nate recently blogged about their second day in the studio with Eric 'Roscoe' Ambel. Nate writes,'we are all psyched and surprised at how good the tracks are sounding. They are darker, richer, more muscley, and sleeker than our first record'. Read More.

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Callicoon, NY with Spanking Charlene
Sunday, August 5, 2007

Had a real, real fun gig in Callicoon, NY (about two hours north of the city) with our rockin' pals in Spanking Charlene. We played a club called Sidetracks. The inside looked like a rec room and a grip of dudes played beer pong on a table right in front of the bands. Ping pong balls bounced around our feet and the dudes bumbled over and pick 'em up around our sound pedals. Charlene, displaying characteristic moxie, snatched one of the balls and the dude who came to retrieve it started grind dancing with her, then got down on his knees and threatened to stick his noggin up underneath her short skirt. Charlene gave him the ball back and bellowed, "Thank you!"

We saw our friend Michelle and some of her crew. Also met a very cool journalist/DJ who gave us a nice write-up in the local paper and a second cool DJ who dug it when Charlene and I sang a few Gram Parsons songs together.

Butch sounded badass all night long.

Dan and Eric played with Charlene and they both sounded killer. Spanking Charlene played an incindiary set and Butch and I were way impressed with how Dan Ambrico nailed theri basslines on his first gig with them.

Hopefully we can play some more upstate gigs with Spanking Charlene. That was great fun!

The New Heathens have a pretty light August and first part of September. I'm off to Montana to catch fish and visit my family (in that order). Domenick is likewise headed to his home turf to do some fishing. Eric is bound for destinations unknown. I can't speak for Dan but Butch has something really, really cool coming up.

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Cowboy Technical Studios Day #3
Friday, August 3, 2007

Monday, July 30, 2007: Last day at the studio went by pretty quick. I tried doing some vocal overdubs, notably on “Only Gets Better,” but Roscoe was quick to notice (and I was equally quick to admit) that my voice was cashed from singing for almost three days straight. I think some of the vocal takes I laid down while we were recording the songs, on tunes like “Crybaby” and “Feelin’ Lucky” were good enough to take. Domenick laid down a wonderful vocal on “27 Years,” as did Butch on “Pig Pen.”

Roscoe played some cool sounding 12-string acoustic guitar on "Don't Think I Can't Stop" and a slick Nashville tuned acoustic on "Only Gets Better." Made both of 'em sound real nice.

We’ve still got tweaks and overdubs to do, but we’ve got the bones of six solid tracks done. Can’t wait to get back in the studio and finish these up, and record some more, hopefully for a sophomore effort.

As a final funny aside, we paid for the sessions with money we’d saved from playing gigs and selling merch. Domenick, the treasurer, kept the money in thick paper envelopes that were as dense as bricks when he brought them to the studio. We paid poor Roscoe with enough one-dollar bills to keep busy at the strip club of his choice for months.

Exhausted.

Labels: Day 3 Studio

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Studio Day #2

Sunday, July 29, 2007: Finished day two at the studio and we laid down the basic tracks for three more songs. Butch’s “Pig Pen,” as well as “Only Gets Better” and “Crybaby.”

Our friend Charlene McPherson, from the band Spanking Charlene, stopped by and kept us entertained with wild tales from a recent fetish party she ended up at.

I was a little surprised with the last two songs Roscoe picked to record (from a dozen or so acoustic demos we gave him). “Only Gets Better,” which is a slow song that we often don’t play in the raucous bars, sounded great in the studio. Crybaby was slowed down from the wanna-be-Ramones sounding thing we had been playing into a badass rocker.

I think we’re all psyched and surprised at how good the tracks are sounding. They’re darker, richer, more muscley, and sleeker than our first record. I dig where we’re going as a band.

Going back in about half an hour to do overdubs.

Labels: Day 2 Studio

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Cowboy Technical Studios Day #1

Saturday, July 28, 2007, Just finished our first day in the studio for what we hope turns into our second album. We recorded at Cowboy Technical Studios in Williamsburg, Brooklyn and the studio’s owner, Eric “Roscoe” Ambel, is producing us.

I’ve been a longtime fan of Roscoe’s work, most notably his work producing one of my favorite bands the Bottle Rockets, as well as his guitar playing with the Yayhoos and Steve Earle. It’s really cool to have him working with the Heathens.

We cut “Feelin’ Lucky Again,” which is a sleek, powerful, cruising song. We also cut “Don’t Think I Can’t Stop (Just Because I Don’t),” kind of a folk rock number on which Domenick played electric 12-string. We also cut a song that Domenick wrote called “27 Years,” kind of a Crazy Horse type of song that featured a badass outro solo from Butch Phelps.

Eric Seftel’s drumming never sounded bigger or better, and Dan Ambrico was the ambassador of the subterrain. He worked hard locking in with Eric, at Roscoe’s suggestion.

Tim Hatfield was the engineer, and he was very cool (plus his name is there on the credits on Keith Richards' second solo record "Main Offender," one of my all-time favorites!). We made our first record at Cowboy Technical Studios, so it felt great to be back in there to take another crack at things (especially with the new air conditioner in the place, which was noticeably lacking in July 2005). When we made Heathens Like Me, we had played three shows. Now we’ve played more than 100.

We go back tomorrow at noon. I can’t wait.

Labels: Day 1 Studio

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Sorry the blog's been down a few days...

...the responsible people at Blogger.com shut us down for a couple days so they could verify that we're a real blog, with real typing monkeys, and not a "spam blog."

Thanks for your patience.

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