Happy Halloween recovery, y’all…
It’s been a crazy few months. I got off the headlining tour and went right into an amazing three week run with my buddy Matt Nathanson back east as well as a five day promo trip to Japan and some time with Deepak Chopra (yes, that Deepak Chopra - random, I know) at his Alliance For a New Humanity benefit and his Sirius radio show.
1 / NATIONAL TOUR WITH BEN LEE - I take off tonight with Ben Lee across the U.S. and Canada. I’ve been a fan of Ben’s music for a long time, and I couldn’t be more excited. You can hear Ben’s music here and he also has a cool free podcast on iTunes. 2 / GREY’S ANATOMY NOV. 15th - Set your Tivos or DVRs (or whatever they call those things) - My song “The Last One” is going to be featured on the big fancy hit ABC show “Grey’s Anatomy” on November 15th. Since it’s an upbeat tune, it’ll be the first time no one on a show is crying while my song is playing, which feels like a big step forward :)
3 / HOTEL CAFE TOUR 2008 - I’ve been getting tons of emails so thought I should say that yes, indeed, there will be more Hotel Cafe touring in 2008. It looks like we will run our crazy music circus across America in March/ April. It will be some combination of the usual suspects and new friends to the Hotel. That’s like my Spring Break, so it can’t come soon enough. For those of you who haven’t seen it before, it’s a night of music like no other. Based on a typical Saturday night at the Hotel Cafe in Los Angeles, the tour is a bunch of great artists playing together and singing together and experimenting in ways that they don’t necessarily get to on their own tours. You come to see a band you love and inevitably walk away a new fan of someone else as well. And it’s…. just… fun :) More info as it comes will be posted here.
4 / THE THOMPSON TWINS - So I did this cover of the great Thompson Twins song “If You Were Here” for the new record, and I just got an email from Alannah Currie from the Twins saying that she dug the tune. If the little 10-year-old Casey Kasem-loving, American Top 40 version of me had heard this, he would have freaked out even more than I did. It’s great, too, because one of my favorite stations, Indie 103.1 in Los Angeles, just added that song to their playlist.
5 / NEED SOME FASHION? - My buddy Jon Marro, who designed some of my shirts and the record cover as well as doing work with Brett Dennen, Matt Nathanson, Jason Mraz, and everyone else with a guitar, has just started a really cool t-shirt company called Blend Apparel I like helping out good people, so stop by his site here is you get a minute.
Thanks for all of the support this year, and I hope to see you out on the road…
Be good,
-CB
p.s. As always, you can get the record…
at iTunes
at my Official Store (with t-shirts and stuff)
at Amazon.com
hey, everybody… so i just wanted to drop a note and let you guys know that we have announced the line-ups and tour dates for the 2008 hotel cafe tour this march/april across north america. i will be joined by ingrid michaelson on the whole tour, and our buddies joshua radin, sara bareilles, eric hutchinson, meiko, jessie baylin, priscilla ahn, kate havenvik, buddy, greg laswell, jim bianco, william fitzsimmons, bob schneider, AM, and many more will be coming along on various stops. go to the website by clicking on the banner below, enter your email, and you can sign up to get access to tickets. some shows have already sold out, so get ‘em while you can. CLICK HERE FOR TICKETS AND INFO this is the third year of the tour, and i think it’ll be the best one yet. see you soon, -CB
marco schafer (of the hotel cafe), laura jansen, me, holly conlan, and buddy at the vail film festival. i drank free whiskey and ate my first truffle. fancy.
i’m reblogging this from a while back, pre-twitter days. this was a message i got from a dude named bryan on a message board from another website that put some of my music up over the christmas holidays:
“Like a lot of people today, I downloaded (illegally) basically all of the music I had. That is, until recently. A couple of things changed all that for me. The first, was seeing you here on Gaia and (almost) on a whim buying your album. (Actually, both. I picked up the live exclusive as well, which is great.) Anyway, this helped me to see the joy in buying and actually owning music again. The second was that my favorite music store in Chicago was forced to close down due to a lack of sales and whatnot.
And so, I deleted all of my illegal music, dug through the basement to find the few CDs I did own, put a LOT of CDs on my Christmas list, and am now the proud owner of nearly 1,000 songs. (Still a fourth of what I had before, but at least now I don’t feel guilty about it.)
So anyway, thank you for your part in this “transformation,” if you will.
and my response:
that’s amazing. well, the fact that even one person was inspired to go to a record store is more than i can ask for. i kind of assume everyone steals the music. though it’s based on pretty simple calculations, i realized that i get many more personal messages (on myspace, from my website, etc.) from people who say they listen to the music than the amount of records i have sold. i don’t mind so much since at least people are listening, but i only hope that people come around and come to the shows or buy t-shirts or anything to keep me afloat because, doing this independently, i don’t have a giant advance check to tide me over forever and pay the bills. from here on out, i only get paid if records sell. things are goin fine now but eventually, in between records, the records don’t sell as much, and that’s when it will hurt.
i grew up hanging out in record stores, sifting through bins of cds, and finding great music from the recommendation of an employee i trusted or sometimes just by the record cover. the record store across the street from my place is closing in a month, and, even though i know i’ve lost money because people have stolen my music online, it’s the first time i feel personally affected by illegal downloading, and it sucks.
even if you do grab a few songs for free, bryan, the fact that you tried to change is pretty rare. most people are too lazy to change for the better. for this, you rule.
what do the rest of you guys think about illegal downloading? do you think about how it affects people? assume the musicians are rich and don’t care? is it so much a part of the way you listen to music that you don’t even think about it? music’s not worth it to you? i’m curious. all i ask is that you keep it honest and on topic. i’ll be the first to say that i’ve stolen music before in the past, so i’m no saint in the discussion. there is no right or wrong, just as long as you state your case.
the floor is yours…
-CB
wong kar-wai’s “chungking express” plus my tune “ride” = best homemade video ever, even if the dude called me “the cary brothers” :)
Cary Brothers
Live at the Crooked Bar 02.21.02
The Drugs Don't Work
hey, thanks to kevin bronson at buzzbands LA for the kind words about my verve “drugs don’t work” cover here.
Tiësto
Kaleidoscope
Here On Earth Featuring Cary Brothers
After we had some fun working on and performing his “Ride” remix last summer, DJ Tiesto asked me to write and sing a song with him for his new record “Kaleidoscope.” It’s called “Here on Earth.” He also asked Jonsi from Sigur Ros, Kele from Bloc Party, Emily from Metric, Tegan & Sara, and many more artists to contribute their voices to the record, and it’s a cool new direction for a guy who is already one of the biggest DJ’s on Earth. You can buy the record/track on iTunes and Amazon and everywhere.
That’s all for today. Much more news coming in the next few weeks and much more music coming in the next few months.
Be good,
-CB
hello, world wide people…
so i’m getting everything together for the new record release on april 6th in the U.S. artwork is all done. sending the single “ghost town” off to radio stations at the end of the month. just got advance copies of the cd yesterday (now it feels real). pretty damn excited for you to hear this record.
i’ll be touring the U.S. this summer, but in the meantime, i’m playing some great shows in holland in late april, opening for the lovely laura jansen who is currently killing it on the charts there with a top ten radio single.
april 18 @ 19:00 - amsterdam / paradiso - tickets/info
april 19 @ 20:30 - groningen / oosterpoort - tickets/info
april 21 @ 19:30 - enschede / atak - tickets/info
april 22 @ 20:30 - arnhem / luxor live - tickets/info
april 23 @ 19:30 - eindhoven / effenaar - tickets/info
april 24 @ 19:00 - rotterdam / watt - tickets/info
april 25 @ 19:30 - utrecht / tivoli - tickets/info
it’ll be great to get back to paradiso and tivoli, and i can’t wait to play all the other rooms for the first time. see you soon, netherlands!
be good,
-CB
Cary Brothers
Under Control
Ghost Town
So this is GHOST TOWN, the first single off of my new record “Under Control.” It’s available March 23rd on iTunes and Amazon mp3, and the album release date is April 6th.
Be good,
-CB
this was the closer at last night’s record release party at the hotel cafe. featuring my buddy matt hales from aqualung on piano. thanks for a great night, everybody…
Pics from the making of the “Ghost Town” video, April 11th and 12th, 2010. Directed by Kyle Eaton.
band got stranded in the states because of the ash cloud. tour rescheduled for late may. now in holland until euro airspace opens. went road-tripping to groningen yesterday. sky looks crazy with the haze of ash.
oh, and on that vail film festival note, someone just sent me this video a few minutes ago of me presenting the “renegade award” to braff. it’s funny how nervous i am about public speaking without a guitar in my hand.
so there’s a guy named rick demint that i’ve bumped into a couple times. he goes around the US to festivals and events and takes polaroids and has the subjects sign them. he calls them portroids. the pic above was taken a couple weeks ago at the vail film festival when i played a show and also presented my buddy zach with an award. check out rick’s website. the pics are pretty interesting, usually catching people off guard. sure, some are pose-y, but most of the shots are relaxed and seem to reveal people more than most photos do. my favorites are the people that have a look that says “who the hell is this guy?” - then he charms them into an autograph. haha. rick has shot EVERYBODY! he even got obama. cool site and good dude. and i love that in a digital age he’s sticking to his ol’ polaroid camera.
“blue eyes” + WALL-E. probably my favorite homemade video anyone has done for one of my songs. really well made.
