Preaching on or around the Golden Shore

At long last we are days away from our first ever West Coast Performance, and we're jazzed to say the least. Since our Tour Manager/Bus Driver/Employer/Photographer/Business Partner/Lindner's Dad/Designated Line Crosser When It Comes To Sick Jokes departed in a MIL Transit School Van packed with all things 28 North last Sunday, we've been without our equipment.
Practice, however, does indeed make perfect so we've improvised by using some of the spare stuff we have in the storage wing of Chateau 28 North. Which has both sucked (solid state amps) and been a pretty good time (Always look for an excuse to bust out the Sitar Pedal). Either way the show must go on and we're fired up and ready to get out there.
The aforementioned show is at the Whiskey A-Go-Go, which is the world famous stomping ground of The Doors and countless others, and maybe someday will be given historic landmark status for its role in our conquest for world domination. We also have a show in Denver on the way home (same thing applies).
So we will go and we will play, and hopefully bring home some bacon, or other pork related metaphorical food item. We're packed with gigs for early 2009, and we've finished tracking on our new album, which we will mix and serve promptly.
Fewer band updates and more random shit to come.
-Alex

NEW 28 North EP

So we've at last begun our next recording project, which as of now is an untitled 5 song EP. We have our first date with sweet lady studio late next week, but right now the buzzword is 'hone'. We've chosen songs based on several things; Songs that have been a big part of our shows since 'Mystery' being the most important (was that a good use of a semi-colon?). We want to really capture the mix of Hard rock, pop, funk, and heart warming americana that is our band, and get a good balance of our different singers, songwriters, and soloists. We feel we've come up with a strong list, which consists of mostly songs written in the last few months or over the summer, and a few even older.

So 'hone' being the buzzword, we are going to spend this week and most of next doing trial recordings, instrumentally, and vocally. The goal is to get the parts down to their essence so that we can record all of us at the same time, as opposed to laying it all down piece by piece with a cacophony of overdubs. We'll experiment with how best to do this so as to sound warm, true, and razor sharp, while keeping some aspect of spontaneity and well... fun. If we can do it without coming out with a basement style record flimsy as un-corrugated cardboard I think we'll have succedeed.

More on the 'honing' later
-alex

Musikal kombat

The first chapter of an absurd weekend for us was a short performance at the Thunderbird Cafe on Butler st in Lawrenceville. It was a taping for Chanel 11's Raw Talent Pittsburgh competition which is a Battle of the Bands. As you may or may not know, we've sworn in the past that we would never again partake in any sort of Battle of the Bands event. I mean how can you decide an epic battle between a biker/metal/hair band that just busted out 'Carry On My Wayward Son' and Joe sad guitar guy, or Norah Jones jr. I mean sure you could say that one band is better at metal than the other is at alt country, but isn't that like saying the the Steelers are better than the Pirates (not that they aren't but the comparison is nontheless unfair and meaningless). We've lost in the finals and been told we needed to do more drugs (believe me we're trying, its on ongoing effort and we just have to keep at it every day). We've lost in the finals to a band who's bass player arranged the gig which was the prize for the competition, if you could call it that. We've also won when we we're good friends with the judge, which I believe to be a legit victory because we rocked pretty freakin hard, but still... There are so many bands out there these days and only so many gigs, pay to play, pre-sale of tickets by musicians, and battle of the bands are all symptoms of the current atmosphere, and they all suck. As lovers of many musical genres we all have to choose whether to spend our seven minute car ride listening to either Tool or Wilco, and surely some of us (not in this band) would sooner severe their ears then sit through the new Metallica, or 'Music Box' by Mariah Carey, but its all just different music, none of it better or worse.
Ideology is great, but not as great as seeing 28 North video aired during a Conan commercial break, so here is a link to our Raw Talent video, Don't forget to vote!

http://www.wpxi.com/rawtalentpittsburgh/index.html

Alex

photobooth

By far the best use we could find for having a computer on our last tour was photo booth. Never has there been a more mindless form of entertainment for four passengers, guitarless and moving 70 miles an hour to pass the time with. It started with classic funny faces and slowly moved in more artistic directions, by the end of the tour we were masters of shadows and light, of immitating aliens with down syndrome that also happened to be Hiroshima victims, and becoming different people with great timing and facial virtuosity. Here are some of the fruits of our labor:

potential album cover?

Ryan Adams should let me stand up

he really should...
I love the guy, but after a beer or two and a little somethin somethin I don't want to sit the whole time at a concert that contains no acoustic guitar. The event I'm referring to was Ryan Adams and the Cardinals at the Palace Theater in Cleveland last week. Me Ty, Lindner, and Tia (Mikes best gal) made the weekday concert run that we do on the regular because god forbid any national acts make Pittsburgh a priority. The curtains came up on an awesome rock show including some space age lighting and a monolithic gong holder, not to mention an unbelievably tight band that cranked out almost 3 hours of music. Nothing about the concert invited sleepiness, in fact many of Radams slower numbers we're performed as juiced up Headbangers and like I said the acoustic so prominent on all his records made no appearance. So what was wrong? SEATS!
this leads me to believe we need to set some rules for 28 North:
1. If you sit, we sit. A sit down audience should not be rocked at, but reflected with
2. If we're all sitting, we'll play acoustic guitar. Acoustic guitar is great and has an especially potent effect when performed in the presence of people whos knees are bent 90 degrees, go figure.
So if we rock out, you rock out, and if we reflect, you do to. Thanks radams
-AS

Zall and Roates

Drive children to school, practice our music songs, and play tonight in the burgh and tomorrow in the Philadelphia. We've been tuning 4 new songs and making them a part of regular performance. They are entitled 'Rainy Day', 'New York', 'I Could', and 'Go Get Her'. Although they may be new material to the universe, 'Rainy Day' and 'I Could' are both songs that Mike wrote over a year ago and demoed in acoustic balladeer fashion, in the strange way things happen they've both become stadium-esque rockers. This tends to happen to material brought to the group, especially when its been aged on the hard disc of the basement recorder like a fine cheese. 'Go Get Her' is the first 28 North song to employ the talk box, and its only describable as the answer to the question what would happen if Hall and Oates and Zapp and Roger met in a darkened ally. Zall and Roates? Happ and Oager?
Peace
AS

the start of something

28 North writes music, drives children to school, and rocks pretty damn hard live. But there's more to it then that and this fall your going to be let in on intricacies and challenges of rocking pretty damn hard, and a bunch of other stupid shit. till then...
-28