alive

Hey folks,

it’s been awhile since we’ve had time to post to the blog.  admittedly, not much has been happening in recent months on our album.  it’s a busy time in our lives but a quiet time in the world of making this album.  just a few notes -

thanks to a couple of supportive folks of the band that i had a chance to meet up with for dinner last week.  hey AC – “first”?

second – got my first ever ipod recently.  sure, i’m behind the times, but i purchased for others before being able to get one myself, which itself was a gift given to me (thanks hottie!).  pretty cool to hear qrstation playing on the ipod.

last – don’t mistake the downtime in the band for a sign that the album will not get completed.  it will, but it just has to marinate for awhile.

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Playlist

Hey there!

It’s been awhile since I’ve been able to write something about our music. We’ve been a bit dormant lately, but I am expecting to be back in the studio this fall. A few things have gotten in the way lately – a day job that has taken a lot of my time, and possibly more importantly a loss of much needed computer equipment for the studio. We do our recording ourselves with low-cost mixers and a standard computer. Our studio needs a computer upgrade to support continued recording and I am expecting to take care of that in September. With that upgrade we’ll be back in the recording flow – which will be very cool because we have lots of ideas. I’m very excited about the next song we’re going to record. It’s inspired by Latin music I’ve heard that was really unique and inspired a particular idea that I wanted to try in a rock song. That’s all I’m going to tell you about it. It’s going to be a real challenge to record this song the way I want to do it. Another challenge is that I badly need some backup singers to pull this song off properly and we don’t really have that right now.

I was reading an article about Bono recently. He made the comment that he thought every musician wanted their music to be heard by a lot of people – that he didn’t buy it when people said that wasn’t important to them. I hadn’t really thought about that before reading that quote, but when I thought about it I had to admit that I really do want a lot of people to listen to our songs. We get a small flow of steady listeners via qrstation.com and reverbnation. What was really cool to see this week was that I was surfing the reverbnation sight and saw that a few people that have accounts on their site had put Q.R. Station songs on their playlists. Users can make a playlist of their favorite songs and it was really great to see that they thought enough of us to add us to their lists. To everyone who has done that -thanks so much. It means a lot to us.

Happy 4th of July and we’ll be in touch.

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Honor, Integrity, Decency, Truth

I don’t get a chance to write in the band blog much these days, as my day job is keeping me very occupied.  The same is true for SwingDoom and J, but the music is still in us.  No worries there.  When other things occupy more of our space than music, it makes it difficult to write blogs on our project.  But today I write not of music, but of life.  I can’t tell you how saddened I am at the passing of Tim Russert, of NBC News and Meet The Press.

I grew up in the Washington DC area and the news was always on in my parents’ house.  So I grew up pretty plugged in to what was happening in the world and that type of thing kind of stuck with me.  I’m the guy watching the cable news shows each night following the minutia of the election season.  Watching and reading so much news over the years has been a great disappointment at times, not so much by what was in the news as by how it was reported.  In the era of constant communications and minute-to-minute news coverage the media has so much time to fill that they often do a poor job of filling it.  They put folks on tv that have no business being there – people that put more effort into looking and sounding important than getting the stories right.  They basically get in the way of the news, to the point where you don’t even want to watch their shows.  One major exception to this was Russert.

I have been watching Meet The Press at every opportunity because it was so good with Tim on it.  He was all about the truth, and he got at the truth in a straightforward way that was focused on the story and not the anchor.  In essence he had the quality that so many people (in the news business and out of it) lack – humility.  As I have watched NBC tributes to Tim over the last day, what strikes me is how people have been putting into words the things that drew me to him so much.  He went about his work with honor and humility.  He did things in a transparent way – he wasn’t trying to fool or trick anybody, just ask the questions that got to the truth (and to keep asking them until he got the truth) – and his transparency spoke to his integrity.  And you could always sense that he was a decent man – he was kind to his guests and showed them a lot of respect.  But the thing that really drew me to Tim’s shows was that he was all about the truth.  For me, truth is everything.  I try to be honest with people and I expect people to be honest with me.  When you are dishonest with me, we’re done.  So to have someone on the tv each week who was all about honesty and truth – believe me I was drawn to it.

I never met Tim, although my brother happened to know him very well.  He was incredibly generous to my brother, and from what I gathered the guy you met off-camera was the same guy you saw on your television.  This was no surprise really – I think that people of substance just stand out and you can see it up close or from a distance.

I guess it’s a little odd to be writing about a news man on a rock and roll blog.  But part of writing this blog is to let anyone who wants to listen understand where the music of Q.R. Station is coming from.  And it comes from those places, people, and experiences that shape each of us in the band.  So for me, it’s people I know and people I have never met but have admired that are pieces of the music that comes out.

This world lost a good one this week.

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summary of life

Hey Friends,

Sorry the writing has been coming slowly lately. My day job is keeping me pretty occupied, and I can say the same is true for SwingDoom and J. We haven’t been in the studio for a few months now. I think there are a lot of musicians out there who are in the same boat. Music is a labor of love for most, and for many of us it does not offer a true occupation. So we have our day jobs, which if you are lucky, you enjoy. If you are a musician who isn’t so lucky as to enjoy your day job, you probably spend most of your daytime hours dreaming of putting that instrument in your hands. For me, I’ve been lucky. As much as I love our music in the Station, I have the good fortune of liking what I do for a living. That wasn’t true a year ago. A year ago was probably the toughest I have had in a long time in that I started a new job that was a terrible fit. It was during that time that I started to focus a lot of energy on music and recording songs for our album because it was the only thing that gave me pleasure. I think the best thing about that time is that it really helped me to relate to so many people out there that don’t like their jobs – and there are a lot of folks out there that know what I’m talking about. Until that time, I had always loved my work. But then I was pulled into this new organization that didn’t respect me at all. It was a terrible time, and the contrast with this place and where I am now is so amazing. I learned from that experience that the workplace is all about the people. If the people you work with are generous and honest with each other, then the likelihood that the job will be satisfactory is high. If the people are dishonest, disingenuous, and selfish people – well you know what it’s going to be like. A band is the same way. Q.R. Station works because the musicians care about the music and it’s integrity and are not worried about being the center of the music’s attention. There’s nothing worse in music than an out-of-place solo that is there just because a musician needs it to be there. Music has to flow naturally – you can’t force it. So I guess you can say that music models life in that way.

I touched base with a friend recently – telling him how busy I’ve been with work lately. I loved his response – “Are you still playing guitar? I hope you are finding time to work on the album”. I can’t tell you how much I appreciated that. So many friends and fans have been encouraging of our project. The truth is, very few folks are paying attention. To those few that are – I really want to thank you. Some of you have really let me know that it is important to finish this album. It blows me away every time that happens. Thanks for the encouragement, and you can be sure that while it may take awhile, we’re going to complete this album.

Q.R.

1457

The last blog I wrote was kind of tongue in cheek on the whole band rating thing at ReverbNation.  So at that time we were ranked 1393 out of all the rock bands on their site.  I noticed that ranking the last time I checked into what was happening there for Q.R. Station.  Tonight I checked again, and we are now rated 1457.  Yeah, I know, we went down.  Sad news, right?  Well, not really.  Because this time I took a closer look to see how many rock bands are on their site.  Um, that would currently be 22,946.  I don’t want to say anything, but for a band that doesn’t have much time for this stuff given our day jobs and everything, that’s not bad.  As SwingDoom put it the other day, we haven’t even really released a song yet.  I mean, we’ve put up samples, but we really haven’t officially released any songs.

So how does the ranking work?  I haven’t looked in detail, but it’s things like the number of times our songs have been played, the number of visitors to our site on ReverbNation, and the number of people that have registered to be our fan.  So you can help us if you want to by playing our songs occasionally or by registering to be our fan, which you can do either on ReverbNation or at our web site, qrstation.com.  Our site isn’t very pretty, as we haven’t invested much time and effort into it.  One day we’ll get that right.

Anyway, we’re 1457 now, which when you look at the situation isn’t too bad.

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1393

1393. That’s our number, the Q.R. Station number. At least, that’s our number right now. I’m not saying we’re proud of the number, it is what it is. It’s our number right now. I’m not happy about it, I’m not sad about it. It’s just our number.

What is 1393, you ask? That’s Q.R. Station’s ranking among rock bands at ReverbNation. So of all the rock bands registered on their site, we rank 1393 in popularity. ReverbNation is a great site, and they’ve been great for our band. We kind of stumbled upon them, really. We were building the Q.R. Station web site last year when we needed an easy way to stream our audio and when we looked up possible ways on Google we saw a link to their site. They’ve offered way more than just streaming audio. They give us promotional tools, play statistics, a fan base – 21 fans right now. Yeah, that’s right, I said 21. I guess that’s our other number – 21. I guess my preference would be to reverse the meaning of those numbers. Can’t we have 1393 fans and be ranked 21 in rock rather than having 21 fans and being ranked 1393 in rock? I’m going to have to talk to them about that.

Anyway, 1393, that’s our number. We’re not proud of it, we’re not upset with it – it is what it is. It is our number. That is, it’s our number right now.

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QR Station endorses …

It’s election time and perhaps it’s time to make an endorsement. But I don’t want to endorse a candidate. I want to endorse a rock star. So Q.R. Station endorses Lenny Kravitz as the coolest dude in the universe. I had the pleasure of checking out Lenny at the Orpheum in Boston last night. Lenny just is the essence of cool. The man is his music and he enjoys playing his stuff.

I’ve seen Lenny before at the Orpheum. The last time we saw him there he had a visitor, Steven Tyler of Aerosmith. It was interesting to see that not long after that Lenny joined Aerosmith on tour. For me, Lenny is the ultimate rock star. Rock and roll is not dead when it’s in the hands of Lenny.

But let’s get back to cool. Lenny doesn’t just play his music, the man grooves to his music and draws everyone in with him. At the Orpheum last night, everyone was standing from the moment he walked onto the stage until he walked off of it. Both times we’ve seen Lenny at the Orpheum he has left the stage and walked through the crowd. Man, the crowd loves him. Lenny was sending a message last night, and he sent it with Let Love Rule. Lenny grooved that song with the audience for at least a half hour.

If you ever get the chance to hang with Lenny, I suggest you do it.

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Finally, a new song

Okay, so it’s not actually completed. we still have to record the drum tracks on Better Than This, but it was time to let it be heard. If you go to qrstation.com you can hear it. We uploaded it tonight.

This song was among the first I ever wrote. I played it at an open mike not long after it was written with just an acoustic guitar and a microphone. In that context, in front of that crowd, it really sounded like a folk song. But more recently, in the summer of 2007, I started hearing that song a different way. I needed some guitar effects pedals to get the sound I was hearing. So I experimented with a bunch of them and then went to work. It took a lot of time to record the song since there are a number of elements involved. I think if you listen to it carefully you will hear them all. The cool thing is that it really came out like I was hoping it would. To be honest, my timing is always a little imprecise. That makes SwingDoom’s and J’s jobs difficult on the drums and bass. But they get it done and make it work.

We would really like to hear what you think of this cut of the song. It will likely evolve and hopefully Swing will get some time in the studio soon. But let us know what you think. You can make comments on this blog, or you can send us an email at qrstation@gmail.com. Whatever you want to do.

I may have blogged about this song last summer when we were in the studio. I can’t remember what I said. But if you show some interest and send comments, I’ll tell you more about how it came about.

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new mix

Happy holidays.  We’ve been pretty busy with life and haven’t had much time to develop the album.  But we are going to put a new mix on the web site very soon.  It’s a song we recorded this summer and it isn’t complete, but it’s timely so we want to get it out there for folks to listen to.

more soon …

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Hola, Gringo

I’m in Puerto Rico this week, and I can tell from the reaction I am getting from the locals that they aren’t aware that a celebrity is in their midst.  Don’t get me wrong, everybody has been friendly and helpful.  It’s just that, you know, sometimes it’s nice when you get, ummm, recognized.

One thing that has been a bit disturbing is how everyone around here just presumes I’m a gringo.  Hey, I could be Puerto Rican, Latin American, Caribbean, or some other “ethnic” being.  Why you gotta take one look and make me out to be a gringo?  One joint was particularly guilty of this.  I walk into a restaurant with my girl and they seat us, handing us these menus in English.  Now you know damn well that they have Spanish menus there.  They didn’t even ask, man, they just gave us the gringo menus.  Problem is, we know all the local foods by their Spanish names so we’re looking at this menu and trying to figure out the English translation for Mofongo, or for Bistek.  Can’t find it – so when a waiter passes by I ask him “menu en espanol, por favor?”.  Yo – the dude says “oh for her?”  What the **** is up with that?  Why can’t the Spanish menu be for me?  Why does it have to be for my lady and not for me?  Why do you have to assume I’m the gringo?  But it gets worse.  He brings the Spanish menu (one menu, mind you, because he figures there’s no way I’m going to be needing one) and everything starts to make sense to us.  We can see all the dishes we are used to and that we came there for.  So then our waiter comes.  Now keep in mind that on both the English and Spanish menus, each item has a number next to the name and description.  Using the “Spanish menu” I figure out what I want, so I tell the waiter “vaca frita, por favor”.  The dude says “you want number 39?”.  No you *******, I want vaca frita!  What, the gringo can’t speak Spanish? 

Here’s the deal – this was some serious comedy, man.  What I am telling you is all true.  And I was a bit taken aback by the whole thing, but I love me some Puerto Rican people and we got a real good laugh about all of this.  The food was awesome and the people, despite making all these assumptions about me, were cool.  People are funny, man, you just gotta love it.

 

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