Nathan Wade Music

Just a little reminder of our CD release party this Friday night (morbid poster courtesy of Brian Alter). And be sure to check out Kevin Cole and KEXP’s ‘Music That Matters’ podcast (v.216), which features “Lake of Fire” off of our album The Gospel Of Rust; you can download all of their podcasts for free, via iTunes.  Thank you, Kevin & KEXP!

I’d like to heartily thank Seattle’s best radio station (IMHO) KEXP for their support over the years, and they’ve been especially good to us with our latest release. Aside from spinning album tracks daily and recommending our Sept. 10th CD release party, music director Don Yates wrote a fantastic review of the album as well. Hot damn!

Since KEXP is streaming live on the internet, it has developed a worldwide following. Coincidentally, a quick and easy way to help spread the news about The Gospel Of Rust is to request our music; it’s as easy as sending an email to dj@kexp.org or by filling out the online request form here. “Lake of Fire” and “This World (Already Over)” have been getting a lot of love lately, so those are two likely suggestions.

Thank you all for your help, and thank you, KEXP, for being an independent oasis in the Clear Channel wasteland that is modern radio.

It’s been a long, rocky road to presenting The Gospel of Rust on CD, but we finally have a local release party to seal the deal–and at Seattle’s Hard Rock Cafe, no less!

FRI, Sept. 10th @ 9:00pm
Hard Rock Cafe (21+)
116 Pike Street, Seattle, WA
$8 advance/$12 at the door
Purchase tix via TicketWeb.com

We’ll share the night with our close buds in both Red Jacket Mine and Lost Dogma and our set will be populated with special guests.

(BTW: the $8 “advance tickets” are actually $11 after the inclusion of a $3 service fee. You save a whole dollar by purchasing in advance…I know, I know.)

Besides celebrating our album’s release, Red Jacket Mine will introduce their new bassist, Matthew Cunningham,  and Toby of Lost Dogma celebrates his birthday. If you’re in the city, we hope you can join us for this celebratory triple header.

As an addendum to last week’s post, The Gospel of Rust is now available digitally on a few very prominent sites:

eMusic

iTunes

Amazon MP3

If you’re still creeped out by a world sliding ever closer towards the inevitable future of streaming music from the clouds, you can still own a physical copy of the CD through CD Baby–it’s autographed and everything.

…And FRI, September 10th: CD release party at Hard Rock Cafe - Seattle!

Man, do we have updates–unfortunately, they’ve had to wait while I was busy gallivantin’ around the Midwest. In no short order, let’s talk about August shows:

WED, August 4th @ 9pm
Highway 99 Blues Club (21+/$5)
1414 Alaskan Way, Seattle, WA
[Nathan solo] w/Sam Marshal Trio

FRI, August 13th @ 9pm
Everybody’s Brewing (21+/Free)
151 W. Jewett Boulevard, White Salmon, WA
All Dark Pioneers, all night long!

I’ll open for my long-time road buddy Sam Marshall and his Trio on August 4th; I haven’t played a solo show in ages, and it’s been just as long since I’ve played at Seattle’s hidden treasure, Highway 99.

Next we travel south to play in White Salmon, WA for the first time. The Dark Pioneers and I will play a couple of sets at Everybody’s Brewing–and this is about as close as we’ll get to Portland for the Summer after a bad streak of booking luck.

Now let’s talk about a technical snafu at CD Baby that has prevented our new album from going digital across the internet–ahem: except for Bandcamp.com. I’m hopeful that The Gospel Of Rust will be available at iTunes, Amazon.com MP3, eMusic, Rhapsody, etc. very soon.

Oh yeah: our CD release party in Seattle will be held at The Hard Rock Cafe in Seattle! We’ll be playing with Lost Dogma, Red Jacket Mine (who will surely sit in with us) and any special guests we can rope in with the allure of free booze and appetizers. More info on that one in future posts, ‘cuz this is already long enough.

We haven’t yet announced an official CD release party, but we do have a few shows coming up in the month of July, including a last-minute duo gig at The Green Room (part of Showbox at the Market):

WED, July 7th @ 9:00pm
The Green Room (21+/$6)
1426 1st Ave, Seattle, WA
w/Starving Art Family and Koko & The Sweetmeats

FRI, July 16th @ 9:00pm
The Skylark (21+/FREE)
3803 Delridge Way SW, W. Seattle, WA
w/Strange Jerome and The Riffbrokers

SAT, July 17th @ 9:00pm
Main Street Saloon (21+/$5)
221 Main St, Renton, WA
w/Jodie Watts and Grunion

I’ve also compiled all of the “Track by Track” posts into a single digest. It’s over on my blog, which I’ve neglected for months.  Happy 4th to those in the U.S.–go grill yerself something.  Many things will be going “boom” over the weekend, but please: don’t blow your nuts or digits off.

I have some good news and ONLY good news: The Gospel Of Rust is finally available on CD Baby.com! And, for a limited time, your order will net you a signed copy of the CD, autographed by the band. Check it:

I’ve had to drag myself back into the world of press releases and promotion. Elbow deep in hyperbole and sales-speak is not my favorite way to spend untold hours, but the hope is to push this one farther along than The Chroma Session EP. It’s been a long journey to get our debut album out as a CD (one full year after we finished it, fer’ cripe’s sake), especially to release music that I’m  proud of at a time when it’s hard to tell if anybody’s listening at all. Throughout the process, I’ve learned a lot, taken a few mental punches, and battled career fatigue just to get the album to this point, and we have NO INTENTION of taking this long with the next release (though I can’t see recording another full-length album anytime soon). As always, your help and support over the years is deeply appreciated. Thank you kindly!

I’ve always loved the “earthy blues in the heavenly ether” production on Chris Whitley’s Living With The Law album. Weeds Grow Around was our attempt at a song that was equal parts Wrecking Ball (Emmy Lou Harris) and Living With The Law–with a dash of Radiohead.

Aside from Lincoln’s spacey guitar and Sam’s dream-time Wurlizer piano, this song has a lot to do with percussion. Besides the percussive qualities of acoustic bass and resonator slide guitar, Brad draped a Weezer t-shirt over Brian’s snare drum to achieve that tight, muffled slap effect. There’s also the sound of six different shakers, shaking live in the Two Sticks drum room–a Shaker Choir, maybe?

Sam created a great string arrangement for the end of the song and after the intense ride ride that proceeded Weeds Grow Around, the strings were a way to ease you out of the 12 Songs Of The Apocalypse. (The swoop up at the finale is either a cruel twist or a question mark after THE END.)

And speaking of…that brings us to the end. Thank you for reading and listening.

12 Weeds Grow Around by nathanwademusic

I wrote I Am The Rust  before I met Brian & Sam but I can’t imagine how this song could ever work without them. It’s become a staple of our live shows and it never stops being fun to play. If you have seen us live, though, you’ll notice we left off the “Rock Concert Ending” (cue the flashpots!); in the context of the album, it didn’t make any sense.

During the recording process, we had been listening to David Lee Roth’s awesome/hilarious isolated vocal track from “Runnin’ With The Devil”; I tried to conjure up a touch o’ Dave for my vocals. A couple of wild obscenities and hollers were cut in the final mix (even though Brad tried to convince me otherwise); in our age of the technology, I’m sure this mix will surface as all things do.

10 I Am The Rust by nathanwademusic

 

“I Am The Rust” and “Weeds Grow Around” were at odds when played back-to-back, so a breath was needed in between. That’s how Lost Transmissions came to be.

Sam played a reprise of his Mellotron line from “I Am The Rust” followed by the outro of “Weeds Grow Around” played on a Melodica. The two themes segue like time has elapsed. Additionally, Brad took an unused portion of Lincoln’s guitar feedback on “Weeds” and reversed it, placing it under the Melodica until it builds to a crescendo.

11 Lost Transmissions by nathanwademusic

Okay, so nobody’s perfect. It seems I was inaccurate in my post last week about how Sam Collins managed that freaky bass sound on “Golgotha Drone.” This was in my inbox over the weekend:

Dear Sir,
In your recently published “Track by Track” post for Golgotha Drone, you referred to the process used by the bass player to produce high harmonics. You incorrectly (and innocently, I’m sure) identified the source of the sound as “moving [one’s] fingers up and down the string.” The correct source of the sound was bowing close to the bridge on an open D-string. The Double Bass is a strange and profound instrument, capable of producing myriad sounds through a variety of methods, so it is difficult to correctly identify playing methods simply by listening.

Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,
H. Phatherbatham, E.S.D., PhD

This man is a PhD for cryin’ out loud; clearly he knows what he’s talking about.