London Show @ The Bedford, 9.3.10 with Alex Berger & Friends. Pics by David Alexander.

Playing Tonight in London

Hello

Rebels in Flux

Click here for the MPfree.

A couple of weeks ago we played a show at Flux Studios (where we recorded The Matador & The Acrobat) for our friends, Rebel Spirit Music. The aim was to raise money for a very worthy charity Move for ALS, as well as bring together this incredible community of New York musicians & music lovers together. Here's a video of a new song called 'Masquerade', enjoy! (Thanks so much to Flux, Sam, Joy & all the Rebels for donating their time).

Rockwood Music Hall: 5.22.10, 8PM

Last night I met a man who said he hated Brooklyn. I hope I don't have to meet him again.

Lorimer St. Station, (L,G) 6/5/10

Stage 2

Rather exciting. we're playing Rockwood Music Hall's brand new Stage 2 on Friday April 30th @ 8PM. Rumour has it that Greg Holden and Derek James will be in the building.

Snowlady

She started of great. A perfectly happy snowlady.

Then I knocked off her head trying to put on her leaf hat..



She wasn't so happy after that..



..not happy at all.

.

Playing this Friday in New York City..

6:00pm	Chris Yeaton & Hawaiian Slack Key Guitar
7:00pm	Salt & Samovar
8:00pm	Will Knox
9-11pm	James Maddock
11:00pm	Dandelion Wine
12:00am	Dill Dotson and the Chupacabra Kings
1:00am	Haakon's Fault

Haiti Benefit Show in NYC: 1/25/10

Taken from CityWinery.com: A host of special guests from New York's Indie music scene will join forces on Monday night @ 7PM (1/25/10) for the final evening of fundraising.

Amber Rubarth, Ian Axel, Vienna Teng, Wes Hutchinson, Ari Hest, Will Knox, Joey Ryan, Rosi Golan, Nate Campany, Martin Rivas, Dov Rosenblatt, Alex Berger, Greg Holden and the Haiti Benefit House Band – Kevin Rice, Chris Kuffner, Adam Christgau, Tony Maceli, Melissa Tong, Ward Williams, Marika Hughes.

Big Hearted Donor Tickets Here - 100% Donated - 100% Tax Deductible. (includes a bottle of City Winery wine signed by every artist appearing that night.)

100% of funds raised from this benefit will be directed to Doctors Without Borders, Partners in Health and an emergency mobile hospital aid mission organized by the Jewish Renaissance Medical Center. The cost of your ticket is a charitable donation and is tax deductible as allowed by law. We ask that you give any way you can.

•Partners in Health
•Doctors without Borders
•Jewish Renaissance Medical Center

We need your help to raise $100,000 in four nights to help the victims of Haiti’s catastrophic earthquake. No country in the Western Hemisphere has been battered more than Haiti in the last 500 years—the nearly complete annihilation of its native population over two decades, a brutal slave regime, ongoing foreign military interventions over hundreds of years, brutal dictatorships supported by western powers, blockades of aid and more recently, devastating natural disasters from hurricanes to this latest earthquake.

Below are some other important places to donate:
Americares
Partners In Health
Doctors Without Borders
Red Cross

RIP MySpace.

It's been occuring to me that MySpace is dying a slow and painful death. Poor comatozed thing has been on life support for a while, with thousands of musicians' bots* all typing the same message to each other day after day. Is it time to pull the plug Tom?

Don't get me wrong. As far as independent music's growth on the internet, MySpace was the evolutionary equivalent of the opposable thumb. Then the inevitable happened. It was bought by media slut, Rupert Murdoch via Fox. Anyone who has watched Fox News within the last...well, ever....will have noticed its quality control department is hardly at Stradivarius' standards. An invasive onslaught of advertizing, constant spamming and hacking, and horrendous load times started turning MySpace in to the Times Square of the internet - lots of noise, flashy lights and really annoying.

Much like Times Square, we were suddenly surrounded by every rapper, singer-songwriter and hooker looking to make a name for themselves - including myself ;). It became too much, and as a promoter it was too easy to harrass people. *All you needed was some software (called a 'bot') like Spyder, and you could message & friend request up to 300 people a day.. you could even specify what location, age and gender you wanted to target. I know because I did this for months, and I apologize. It turned people off. But by this point it was too late - Facebook had arrived, and was doing MySpace's job so much better. YouTube, eHarmony, Spotify, Pandora & Twitter were rusty nails in the coffin.

With this said, it is still an industry standard for checking out bands because it's simple layout of shows and streaming music is very accesible.. though if I was Mark Zuckerberg I'd be thinking it's all for the taking.