We're all set to release our next song and it's a cover song.  When we first got together it was for the purpose of creating our own music and it never even crossed our minds to do any covers but when we recorded this song we decided that we liked it so much we just had to release it. And hey, we're joining the ranks of Elvis, The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Prince, and AC/DC, all of whom have released covers. If it's good enough for them who are we to argue?

The song is the classic Cars song "Drive". We recorded it for a publishing company who was looking to pitch the tune to an ad campaign for Uber (or Lyft, I forget which) and when we were finished I said "man, this is such a great song. What do you think about releasing it as a SM single?" Phil said "Let's do it. Your vocals are unbelievable on it". Well, that last part isn't completely true (recording the vocals actually made me want to quit singing.. haha) but Phil did agree that it would make a great SM song so we acquired the necessary rights and it's now set for a Friday the 13th release on December 13th. The song stays pretty true to the original but we definitely put our SM stamp on it.

If you've already pre-saved it on Spotify THANK YOU!! It really does help. (If not, please consider doing so HERE. (You don't have to have a paid account to do so.) 

However you listen to music please give us a spin on the 13th.  

see you soon, 

carl
 

We're excited to announce that we've got another tune for you all to hear. This Friday, July 26th, our latest single "Time's Up" drops on all the major music outlets. If you're a Spotify subscriber you can (and should) pre-save it HERE! (you'll also be entered for a chance to win a free t-shirt).

"Time's Up" is the very first song that Phil and I wrote together. It came about when Phil reached out to me to see if i'd be interested in doing some co-writing. We didn't really know each other at the time but had mutual friends in the business (one of whom is Rex Owen, who plays drums on this track) and so he sent me the original demo version of his idea for this tune. I liked the strange chord progression and had some melody ideas that I brought to that first writing session. We chopped up the song a little and i suggested dropping a beat here and there to fit what i had in my head and the time signature subsequently got a little screwy but hey, that's what we do when we make art. 
Rex came in and played drums on the tune and we conned our buddy Todd O'Meara into "visiting" the studio and twisted his arm until he agreed to lay down some backing vocals. (While there he asked what the lyric "clamorizing" meant and after a few seconds of thinking he was nuts we realized he had misunderstood "clamor rising" and we got a good laugh out of it. So if you see us use the hashtag "clamorizing" you will be one of the few who understands.) We also got some additional backing vocals from a young prodigy named LeAndre Melton who is a phenomenal singer out of Houston, Texas. 

This tune sounds quite a bit different than any of the other songs we've written together. It's still on the rock side of musical genres but it has some progressive elements and some of our favorite ingredients of seventies music made it in there as well. 
Check it out and let us know what you think. 

As always, thank you so much for your continued support. You don't know how much we appreciate it.

 It's been over a year since Phil first sent me the riff that would be the basis for our forthcoming release Diverging. I immediately loved it and got back to him with some ideas of my own. After getting together and hammering out a rough outline of a music bed I set about coming up with a melody and some lyrics that would complement it. Phil had the idea to call it "Divergent" because he thought that was a good word to describe the kind of music we make. I came up with a melody line that almost seemed to write itself and that, coupled with a slight tweak to Phil's idea for a title, dictated the direction that the lyric would take. It made me think about how hard it sometimes is to make the right decision when facing a difficult fork in the road and how even when you fail to do so and figuratively "fall down", as long as you "still go on" you will continue to make forward progress. As someone (probably not Confucius) once said "Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising every time we fall."

When i got back to the studio I hoped Phil would like where his idea had taken me. I was relieved that he did and after we worked out some additional parts I went into the vocal booth and recorded a scratch melody line for the chorus. When I said "Let me do a few more. i've got sort of a 'rounds' type vocal idea; like a heavy 'row row row your boat'" I think he probably thought i had finally gone off the deep end but he indulged me and I was stoked that he liked what i was going for. After fleshing out the rest of the tune together and adding a bridge with some weird backward guitar things and a piano part, we called in our buddy Greg Unthank (Bleu Phonque) to lay down a drum track and we had the beginnings of a tune. After finishing out the recording and doing several different mixes we're finally able to say it's ready and we're super excited to get to share it at last. It's something that we're really proud of!

One of the things I love about the stuff that we create together is that it's hard to pigeonhole into any specific genre. It's not really like the hard rock that we grew up listening to, it's not like the modern screamo stuff that's so ubiquitous in the metal genre these days, and it's not like the retro style rock that bands like greta van fleet have popularized. It's its own unique thing. Even the bloggers that we've spoken to don't know how to categorize it. Born Music Online told us "it's too heavy for our indie-based site" while All That Shreds Magazine said "This sounds more like country music than any rock I know". (While we appreciate ATSM's opinion we wonder if they've ever heard country music before 'cause this definitely ain't it.)

Please consider pre-saving it here if you're a spotify user. If not, please give it a listen on your platform of choice when it's released on May 17th. Lots of love and work went into making it and If you like listening to it half as much as we've enjoyed creating it then I'll consider it a huge success. Let us know what you think.

Thanks as always for your support,

carl

here are a couple more quotes i came across that sum up what i tried to say in this tune. Courtesy of BrainyQuote.com

"Failures, repeated failures, are finger posts on the road to achievement. One fails forward toward success." C. S. Lewis 

"Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure... than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat." Theodore Roosevelt 

"It's fine to celebrate success but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure." Bill Gates