We're done mixing the new record. It's going to be a full-length, 8 songs, our first as a trio. This is the most relaxed I've ever been in the studio, and I think it comes across in the tunes. It'll be released sometime this summer, hopefully in some sort of non-plastic packaging. Songs will be: Monotone, my tribute to Palm Springs, CA; Pigeons, a very old tune comprising what will hopefully be my last take on it's subject matter; Heart of the Ground, a farmworker's tragedy with melodica; Act of God, a bit of pure pop with Atsushi on baritone guitar; Mississippi, another go at a tune from the first duo record about another damn dead popstar; Haiku, a wispy little thing that's possibly my favorite song we've done; Mercury, a tale of an activist gone soft; and Sapphire, which is about, I dunno, the insufficiency of words to describe human suffering, or something along those lines.
El John's been busy touring with Thievery Corporation and Poi Dog Pondering, and Atsushi's been playing a lot of baritone guitar (you'll hear some of this on the new record). I've been putting together an 8-track studio (all analog, natch) and thinking about playing in standard tuning again. For the five years I've been playing exclusively in altered tuning (D-A-D-G-C-F, low to high, for those who care(??)), I've never really learned the guitar half as well as I do in regular tuning. I think it was an advantage at first, to approach writing on the guitar a little blindly. But I think I want to return to more of a feeling of control.
Something to put in your pipe -
http://www.thirdreich.net/Thought_They_Were_Free_nn4.html
December 12, 2002
We've never been a political band per se, though our opinions in person and on this site are readily available and I'm conscious of being an example of my standpoints.
For the band right now, we're ready to record the next full-length and should be starting soon.
For this country, however, my heart is breaking; not at the the thought of what's happening to our legacy as a "free" nation, but for the numbers of people like me who are being misrepresented across the globe as domineering, aggressive, pompous, bloodthirsty savages by the leadership that is in office. I want to leave this country, to escape the daily news that makes me shudder, and I'm making plans to do so at some time in the future, but what of the people who aren't able to? My family, friends, heroes, others? And no matter where I go in the world, will it be even possible to escape the consequences of what's happening right this moment, such as the verbalized threat to use nuclear weapons?
There are plenty of horrifying/comical newsbites available regarding the actions of our leadership. This article in particular made me sit up and, at the very least, post my thoughts on this website.
"What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if he people could understand it, it could not be released because of national security."
http://www.thirdreich.net/Thought_They_Were_Free_nn4.html
August 24, 2002
We're rehearsing a lot and planning our next album, which we'll be recording sometime this fall. This will be our first full-length since the duo record in 1999, and may include a reworking of a really old tune or two as well as 10 or so others. No shows for the moment, we're spending all our time in the practice space and have some traveling to do as well.
May 5
We had a great time on our Southwest tour (check out our tour diary) and are now taking a break from playing live until June or so. We've got a lot of new songs and will probably start recording our next full-length toward the end of the summer.
April 22 (in El Paso, TX)
We've played six dates of the tour and four remain. We've been keeping a tour diary on the road; we'll be bringing it up to date over the next few days.
We'll be playing a homecoming show on Tuesday, April 30 at Bottom of the Hill with Brendan Benson, who's currently touring w/ the White Stripes, and Bunkbed. It's a great lineup and we're really excited to be playing to familiar faces again. We'll be playing some new songs and sharing stories and/or scars from the road. This will also be our last show for a few months, some of us are going on vacations and we're starting to think about recording again.
February 4
We're playing our first headlining show in SF on Sunday, February 17 at the swanky Cafe du Nord. It's a wonderful place with a long San Francisco history and a speakeasy ambience held over from the 30's.
Playing with us are two bands I've been wanting to play with for a long time, Fort Erie and Pinq (not to be confused with Pink). I can't recommend either of them highly enough.
It's an early show on a holiday evening (Monday is President's Day), come at 8:00 p.m. and spend a lovely evening with us.
December 28
EAST BAY RELEASE PARTY
We're having a release party in the East Bay for our new EP on Friday, January 25. It'll be at the great Starry Plough (map) in Berkeley, which has a wonderful brew selection, a comfy neighborhood atmosphere, and that unquenchable Irish spirit. We're excited to be playing with Six Eye Columbia and our pals Staci Twigg.
December 5
CD RELEASE PARTY
We'll be celebrating the release of our new EP, "Fall On Your Sword", in San Francisco at Bottom of the Hill on Thursday, December 27 with the rocking Enda and the fabulous Staci Twigg.
There will be giveaways, free stickers, free buttons, fresh chocolate chip cookies (also free) and, yes, more.
It's our first cd since 1999!
November 30
This just in - SF cd release party at Bottom of the Hill on Thursday, December 27 with the fabulous Staci Twigg; Details to follow.
November 27
NEW MUSIC!
The first MP3 from our upcoming EP.
Fall On Your Sword (MP3, 4.3M)
Our new platter is mixed and mastered and artworked and is now baking contentedly somewhere in Canada - we should have them in hand this week. Looks like our release party will be at the wonderful Starry Plough in Berkeley sometime in January.
The press section has been updated.
The East Bay scene is experiencing a bit of a renaissance in venues and, as always, has a lot of damn fine bands. Check out the bEastfest (pig latin for East Bay) this week, it's a yearly festival with ZERO schmoozing/ugly industry types.
Another East Bay prop - Oakland has more artists & performers per capita of any city in the U.S. west of Brooklyn. (courtesy Dani, East Bay booker/promoter/all-around scene supporter.)
October 21
Things have been quiet, other than a fun-filled 12-minute set at the APAture Festival and a lot of listens to the rough mixes from our studio session back in the beginning of September. Next week we go back to mix down the tracks, which will appear on a new EP which should be out by the end of November. We're doing everything we can to make sure that this is the highest fidelity recording we can afford; all analog of course, although the end product will be a cd. This will be our first cd release since 1999.
I'd like to take a moment to thank the people who don't own a turntable but still bought the 7" to support us; this one will be for you.
August 13
We're going into the studio in early September to record a few new songs. We'll be putting these songs together with the ones from the Sun Devil 7" and releasing an cd-only EP in October. We haven't released a compact disc since 1999 - we're long overdue for our turntable-less friends.
We'll be recording at Tiny Telephone in San Francisco, a fantastic analog joint that's only gotten better since we recorded our first cd there. Engineering will be the excellent Alex Newport, a man of many opinions (after visiting his website, I've added a few more things to Analog Life) and many good records.
August 2
There's been a change in the lineup of the August 8 show. Instead of the The Foxymorons, we'll be playing with Kobald, formerly known as Brian_and_Chris. The SF Weekly did an interesting article about them a few months ago. Oughta be good.
Also, we'll be hitting the stage a bit earlier - at 9 p.m. sharp.
July 20
Just announced - we're going to be playing a good show at Bottom of the Hill on Wednesday, August 8th, with The Rum Diary and The Foxymorons. The Rum Diary are a very interesting local band who tend to have a lot of people onstage, a couple of bass guitars and films projected over the musicians. The Foxymorons are a super-sincere pop duo (with additional people on tour) from Texas with two albums out on San Rafael's American Pop Project.
This will be our first show in quite a while and may, in fact, be our last show as a trio. We're hoping to add another guitar player/noisemaker/vocalist to the band in the next month or so. So before we begin our explorations in the time-honored, classic rock and roll quartet format, see us once more in the time-honored, stripped-down lean and mean trio format.
Bay Area people - go see more local music! Seeing eight bands in an hour during this year's Rock Out SF reminded me of the incredible variety of interesting, non-commercial music music that happens in our area. Visit Popular Noise for updates on what's happening with the state of venues, rehearsal spaces, and other legislation that affects local musicians. They also have a really good live music calendar.
June 10
We're going to be recording some new demos soon, and are hard at work writing more new songs.
April 27
The guestbook is back up. Feel free to leave us a message, especially if you're one of those people that keeps downloading our old MP3's even though I took the link off the music page. Our music is getting mysteriously funneled into hard drives all over the world and I don't understand how. Is this that Napster thing my grandkids keep telling me about?
On May 29th, we're going to be playing the Paradise Lounge as part of a show set up by our good friends Staci Twigg. Also playing are The Velvet Teen and KoolieCat. I love Staci Twigg, and all four of our bands have a musical connection and friendship, so come out and support our growing little community. If you haven't been to the Paradise, it has a great setup where the action shifts continuously between two stages, so you don't need to endure that protracted lull while the next band sets up their gear. KoolieCat starts on the main stage at 8:45, then Velvet Teen plays a short set on the back stage, followed by Staci Twigg on the main stage, then after another Velvet Teen set, we'll go on the main stage promptly at 11. I'm really looking forward to it. We'll be debuting several more new songs this evening, and there may be chocolate chip cookies to artificially enhance your Mhorse enjoyment. (Never said we weren't above a little cheap bribery.)
And if you need more reasons to come, consider this incredible coincidence. If you add the numbers of the date (5/29), plus the millenia (2), you get the number 36 - and this will be our 36th show as Maxwell Horse. How could this not be a magical night?
April 4
The last few shows have included lots of new songs, and we're working hard on more. We're going in the studio in a month or two, and it looks like we'll emerge with a full-length record. I believe it'll be on Dimed Records again, and definitely will come out on vinyl and cd both. The songs that will be on the record are the first that were written specifically for the trio, both songs on the "Sun Devil" single were written when we were still a duo, and were then heavily adapted when El John and Atsushi joined. I think it's going to be a complex record soundwise, while it's going to be built around the basic trio sound, I have a lot of sonic ideas that I want to explore. I'm not planning to use the delay effects that I've started using in the live show; I like to use them to simulate layers, but when I have the ability to actually overdub different parts, I'd rather use more organic textures like slide or a miked unplugged electric (used on the Sun Devil b-side "Passover") or a toy amp. If we use delay at all, it's going to be tape delay - I don't want there to be a single digital sound source on the record. Obsessive? Sure. But the great thing about studios is the chance to indulge one's obsessions.
March 17
The record release was wonderful. Thanks to everyone for coming out.
This week we get over to the East Bay for the first time in over a year, and our first time at the Starry Plough, a homey Irish place with excellent beer on tap. We're playing with two excellent bands, Meriwether (who was also with us at the release party) and 20 Minute Loop.
February 16
Record release party! At long last! This will be in celebration of our first single, "Sun Devil", which is on gold vinyl in a limited edition of 500 copies. It was recorded, mixed and mastered 100% analog just the way we like it. You can get a little digital taste here, or come out to the show and pick one up cheap!
Tuesday, February 20
Bottom of the Hill
1233 17th Street (17th @ Missouri)
San Francisco
Info line: 415-621-4455
10 p.m.
$5 Preceded by Meriwether, one of my favorite SF bands, at 9. Followed closely by Amory, a band from L.A. that has some excellent songs on their website.
Please come! This is one of those shows that, uh, Matters.
February 7
The tour has been postponed 'til early Summer. Until then we'll be doing a bunch of local shows, and gearing up to record a full-length in a few months. We did our first show in 6 months a week ago, check the live page for a quick take on how it went and our upcoming dates.
January 11
Got our first vinyl in my hands, a great feeling. We'll be having the release party at Bottom of the Hill on February 20. We're having a warm-up show before that at Hotel Utah, and some other shows on the horizon. We haven't played a show since last July - yikes! We have a lot of new songs that don't sound anything like what we were doing last year. I can't wait to play.
We'll be doing a tour of the Southwest in March - probably down to San Diego, then across Arizona and New Mexico to Texas. Watch here for the details.
November 13
The "Sun Devil/Passover" single is now mastered and is waiting to be pressed. One of the more thrilling things I've seen was seeing a needle etch a groove into shiny black vinyl - and that groove was a song of ours. Damn! Mastering a record is such an amazing process. They actually look at the grooves with a microscope to be sure they're being cut right. And you know those few seconds of silence after you drop the needle down, until the song starts? That's the time between the engineer dropping the needle into the wax and then hitting "play" on the tape machine. Amazing. Hopefully we'll have the records in hand by the end of November. This will be a limited-edition press of 500, on gold vinyl.
We haven't played a show since August, and I'm just dying to get onstage again. We're writing new songs like mad, and jettisoning old ones too. I want to play an almost totally new set when we get out there again. A lot of the the old songs just don't seem to matter much to me anymore; when a tune gets a few years on it, it's relevance seems gone and it seems pointless to play, although I don't mind hearing the old recordings and think they're great as a picture of the time.
We're starting to book a Southern tour for February. Probably 7 or 8 dates. Then in Spring we'll record our next full-length, and then a really big tour in summer. My hands are really full with stuff to do and things to mail right now, and it feels great.
September 29
New recordings! We've posted MP3's here - once again, we do not condone the use of digital technology for music recording or reproduction, but it does make it handy to get music over the 'Net. We can't be absolutist all of the time. We hope to get it on 7" vinyl by the end of the year with nice artwork and analog mastering and everything.
Old fans will note that we rerecorded "MHEL" (I can't deal with the words "my" and "love" to appear together in a song title, sorry). Atsushi and El John wrote such nice new parts that we had to get it on tape.
What next? Lots of new songs. And lots of shows to play them at. I'm just getting started on booking now, keep an eye on the shows page.
September 21
We're lucky enough to still have a rehearsal space, but a whole lot of other bands aren't so fortunate. This Saturday at 1 p.m. there's going to be a whole lot of live music in the city to support the cause for local music. (El John's out of town so we won't be participating, but I may do a solo set somewhere). Get out, walk around, and find out more about what's been going on.
WEAR EARPLUGS. BUY LOCAL. VOTE NADER.
September 15
Tomorrow we go back in the studio to do vocals and overdubs, and maybe mix too. It's so great to hear the songs on tape; we keep hearing things that we never heard before. As soon as we finish this sucker, I'm going to send it to every club I've even talked to. I'm dying to play out again, and I've been waiting til now to have something that actually represents us. I've already got a lot of ideas for the next full album...hopefully next spring. I've written an opening riff and a closing riff to the record - now I just need words and a few hundred more riffs to fill it in.
Saw Mike Watt last week. He's so inspiring, always; even just seeing him hang out afterwards, selling his own t-shirts, moving his own amp, shaking everybody's hand and talking, not just taking people's money. I want to be doing that when I'm forty-plus.
I'm heartened by the fact that there's a new venue, over in Oakland, and I've heard good things about the happenings there. Check it out.
August 26
THIS SHIT IS RIDICULOUS
For anyone who thought defunct/lame/hard up underground bands selling their songs to Volkswagen was the last word in commercializing a once-great idea or individual, I invite you to check out:
Bob Marley Footwear
Speaking of capitalism, we now take credit cards on our site. You can order our cd outright, or drop us an email and we'll mail you a cd FREE to check out. If you like it, hang onto it, put it on credit and collect interest on your 8 bucks for another month. (If you don't like it, just send it back to us, no problem. honest.)
August 25
My apologies to anyone who tried to come see us at the San Francisco Tenants Union benefit the other night. We showed up on time, only to be told to go on a full hour before we were scheduled. THEN, we only got to play five songs...it's frustrating to donate your time and effort to a good cause, and then be limited in doing your contribution.
I wish we were on tour again. I read other band's tour diaries a lot, especially well-written ones like the Poster Children's or Mike Watt's. There's a huge difference between these diaries (flat tires, lack of $, sleeping on floors, digging the Americana) and those of, say, the Lilith Fair (the poor backstage buffet, who rode on whose bus today, the singalong in the dressing room). My experiences have shown me how great it is to simply travel, with your music as the cause. There's no glamour, at this level anyway, other than that feeling of being in a rock band and actually living like one for a little while, where the band is your life for as long as your trip lasts.
I can't schedule any more travels until we have our new recordings, though, hopefully in a month. We're such a different band now, and I've been reluctant to send our old demo out. It's kind of funny realizing that we started recording that cd a year ago, it feels like much longer. I still love it, but my perspective has really changed. In some ways it sounds like chamber music to me, a pretty introverted little group of songs, with the focus being more on the interaction of the musicians than on the listener. Now my concern is the effect I have on people, it feels pointless to sit in a room and play - no more jazz ambitions for me. That's why touring is so attractive, it's literally taking the songs to people (even if they didn't know they wanted them, or I suppose even if they STILL don't want them. What are you gonna do?)
Say hi.