Consider this the Sea of Trees house warming party. We moved in a long time ago, but we’re just getting around to inviting all of our friends over for a party. Hope to see you there!
Here's some songs to get you in the mood.
Hello everyone! Hope your holidays went well and that you had a good new years eve and a decent morning after. We over at the Sea of Trees camp have been busy the last few weeks.
- We have some new pictures up on the Myspace (and further down in this post) taken during the recent snowstorm. Somewhere out there is a video of Mitch and Ian doing some amazing ice-sliding ninja moves. If I find it I will let everyone know ASAP.
- We are gearing up for the release our first full-length album, Animal Sounds. We spent the majority of 2008 writing, recording, and mixing this album, and it is finally complete. There will be a digital release of the album very soon available at all major online retailers, with a CD release later this year. We are very excited to share this album with you and want you to be able to have it in your ears as soon as possible! We will let you know as soon as the album is available online.
- We will also be updating the songs on our Myspace to coincide with the digital release of the album.
- We are in the process of setting up some shows for early this year, and are working with some awesome Albany bands, so get ready to see Sea of Trees out performing again soon!
- Albany favorite Matthew Loiacono gave Sea of Trees a shout-out in a recent crumbs.net podcast. Matthew Loiacono is not only a great musical presence in the capital region but also a right-on guy. Listen to the podcast here.
- We are also looking for publications, 'zines, music blogs, and other journalistic entities to review Animal Sounds. If you or someone you know is interested, send us a message through myspace or contact us at seaoftrees@live.com
Thanks for reading through this lengthy update. We're really hitting 2009 running, and there will be much more Sea of Trees coming your way.
Pictures:
For those of you who have had the pleasure of coming into contact with either of the Martinez children, you will know that we keep it really, really, real. My brother brought this revolutionary idea into the family when he decided to stop showering daily in the 10th grade. Since then it has evolved into a mantra and occasional excuse. Trust me, this is going somewhere.
Last week we played our first outside-Albany show at Trash Bar in Brooklyn - particularly Williamsburg which, according to Wikipedia is a hub for indie music and a hipster haven. Who knew.
You can hear the tight-jean chafing all the way up here.
In the interest of keeping it real and full blog disclosure, let me say that I'm not a very hip person. In my hometown Michigan suburb, we didn't really use the term "hipster," we used the term "scene-kid." And I was neither. I had a livejournal (and now I have this blog. It seems things never really change). I listened to east-coast emo-rock and unashamedly loved The O.C. So, needless to say that even though I was wearing flats, I was not prepared for the 6-block radius around bedford and metropolitan.
I think Mitch put it best when he told Ian, "just remember, every person here is better than you." And I think I put it second best when I said "I've never seen so many walking, breathing stereotypes in my life." I think I also put it third best when I said "I'm having a hard time not laughing in people's faces." We took the scenic route while getting some pre-show pizza (which was much better than the post-show Thruway Roy Rogers) and I do mean scenic route in every punny connotation.
That's not to say that people weren't cool. The show went really well, and everyone who came out was awesome. We have another show in that area July 17 at Zebulon that I'm really looking forward to.
I promised that this was leading somewhere, and it is. So far I've been talking about Brooklyn and keeping it real. Well, to combine those two topics, I would like to say that at our show we met The Realest People in Brooklyn, aka, The Nuck Fuggets. They're an electro-comedy-esque duo that put on a show with so much energy even though everyone was sitting down (but laughing, to be fair.) Mitch and I decided to tell them that we had designated them with this title, and I hope that they received it sincerely.
so I realize that this is the first post back in a while, and while it was a little lackluster and didn't have all the biting wit that my posts usually have, I hope it was at least partially satisfactory.
p.s. Keeping it real only works if your reality doesn't completely suck.
Friday night was a night of many firsts. The first time I paid $5 for a drink the size of those cups you use to give children cough medicine. The first time I participated in (and lost) a 40 oz Colt 45 chugging contest with a grown man. And (for something non-alcohol related) The first time I heard myself on the radio.
Remember that scene in the awesome movie That Thing You Do where they run around the appliance store turning on every radio, dancing with cardboard cutouts, and jumping up and down ecstatic? Well, this wasn't quite like that, but it was still, to put it in the classiest of terms, pretty fucking sweet.
We knew that we had been on some (meaning two) radio stations in the Albany area. We premiered on the EQX-Posure show on WEQX 102.7 two weeks ago, but nobody in the band had the chance to actually hear it. They played the song Raccoon (With a Sword-Paw) and will play it for two more weeks (including this one) before moving it into regular EQX-Posure rotation.
The other radio station we have been played on is a new public radio station, owned by the WMHT television station. 97.7 WEXT is a listener-supported station, and after a friend of Justin's heard us on May 12th, Dylan started banging on the window of Mitch's car as we were pulling away from Franklin's Tower to head to Savannah's Friday night. Mitch put his index finger to the test hitting that little radio button to get us to 97.7, and we were on the radio (static and pop-station interference and all).
While WEQX opted for Raccoon, WEXT have been playing Nunatek. Our total number of plays is only 2 (4 overall if you include WEQX), but it's still a unique experience to hear us coming through the speakers of Mitch's awesome car stereo system. I realize I'm probably supposed to play it cool, acting like it was no big deal, but my skills in 'playing-it-cool' never developed while i was in the womb, so I can't help but dork out over everything (I also saved the issue of Metroland that had our first show listed under the Valentine's ad).
And anyway, local public radio is the shit. I stopped listening to the radio almost entirely about 4 years ago, because in my hometown of Saginaw, Michigan there were no college stations and the public stations were all talk radio. Seeing as how I would rather punch myself in the face than listen to commercial radio, the second I got an iPod for my 17th birthday (and a car tape deck adapter) I left radio behind.
WEQX was the first interaction I had with independent radio that didn't use the phrases "lords work" or "liberal conspiracy". I had started to tire of the music I had been listening to on repeat for two years and wanted to find more than just what my friends were sending me and what I found by accident on the internet. Summer after my freshman year (back when I still had a car) I would listen to WEQX all the time (I even won a CD once).
WEXT looks like a really promising station. I'm listening to the mp3 stream right now, and have looked up the playlists (while searching for Sea of Trees, of course). Death Cab for Cutie, MGMT, Cake, Rilo Kiley, Cat Power, Otis Redding, Wilco, Rufus Wainwright, Jackson Browne (!), Ryan Adams, Josh Ritter (!!), Dashboard Confessional (lolz), Augustana, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, The Shins, Rogue Wave, and Jason Mraz were all played on the same day we were. They also play a lot of local music (they pledge to play at least one local musician every hour every day) and older, classic songs as well (like Ray Charles - You Don't Know Me). Some good (and hilarious) company.
EQX-Posure
Sunday nights, 7 - 8 PM
102.7 FM
EXIT 97.7 (WEXT)
Request songs, listen online, support the station, etc.
Part II of 5 Local Bands I am Super Pscyhed/Would Love to Share a Bill With is coming soon
Part 1: Two Local Bands I Am Super Psyched to Share a Bill With
Ashley Pond
www.myspace.com/ashleypond
Ashley Pond is one of the immediately-intimidating Saint Rose music industry-bred musicians I came into contact with my freshman year of college. I first saw Ashley perform in a pre-Starbucks Commuter Lounge on the Saint Rose campus. The female songwriter population in my hometown was severely limited, with most of them just awkwardly strumming G,C, and A minor chords coupled with rhyming lyrics. (Myself included. There are some pretty embarrassing recordings tucked away in a folder on my computer.). I don't know if it just never occurred to me, but for the first time there was a ridiculously talented musician just hanging out, like any other college student. I battled between jealousy and admiration, but quickly settled on the latter.
Almost 3 years later, she's still as impressive as ever. Her first full-length album, the ten-track Dala, was released in September of 2007. I got my copy earlier this year at a show at Valentine's - the first time I had seen Ashley perform live in well over a year. A tiny person with a big guitar and an even bigger voice, I was more impressed than ever (and maybe still a little jealous).
Catch her and us:
May 31st, 2008
Valentines (downstairs) in Albany, NY
8:30 PM, $5
along with Elias Orling
Saint Ukraine
www.myspace.com/saintukraine
As a band, we must have some pretty boring day jobs, because the members of Sea of Trees spend a lot of time e-mailing. It started out with booking info or recording ideas, and has gradually progressed to inside jokes (justin spice), shit-talking, and general useless conversation. There was a short time period where Dylan kept e-mail fowarding us various YouTube videos, but luckily he grew out of that phase. One time Mitch and I even talked on Gmail messenger, and much hilarity (and OMG LOL-ing) ensued.
I found out about Saint Ukraine from one of these e-mails. Ian introduced us to the band, suggesting we check them out to see if we wanted to book them for the Muddy Cup show. I did just that. Sirens and Packages was the first song I heard and I was instantly hooked. Great melodies, achingly subtle lyrics, simple structure with some cool instrumentation to keep it interesting.
I've always been a sucker for music you can listen to by lamplight, smoking a cigarette and just absorbing the songs. For me, along with acts like Sparklehorse, Elliot Smith, and Josh Ritter, Saint Ukraine is a band like that. They're #2 on my Last.fm Top Artists this week, right behind Death Cab for Cutie (who had a new album come out recently, mind you.) The best part is, all their songs are downloadable from their myspace.
P.S. I got to meet Matt and Joe last night at our Savannah's show, and I totally fangirled to Matt. Hopefully he isn't creeped out to play with us in June.
Catch them and us:
June 13th, 2008
The Muddy Cup in Albany, NY
8:00 PM, Free
along with Greg Pier
Listen:
Saint Ukraine - Sirens and Packages
and of course get the rest at the myspace.
Check back for Part II of this series: Three Local Bands I Would Love to Share a Bill With
The second show of Sea of Trees is now upon us, this Friday, at Savannah's on Pearl Street in Albany. We're playing with two very awesome acts: Palatypus, who have had some serious rotation in my iTunes playlist recently (seriously, just check my last.fm) and Jared Funari who I've heard does some sweet things with a loop.
I'm personally excited because May 16th is also the birthday of not one, not two, but THREE of my good friends. Justin, our guitarist, will be celebrating his Friday night, as well as Lacy (our official first fan) and my friend Chrissy, who was my very first roommate when I moved to Albany and is still managing to put up with me 3 years later. So, long story short, I will be buying lots of shots this weekend, so if you come out, chances are I'll buy you one by accident. Sounds like a good deal to me.
For those of you who went to our first show at Valentine's, we'll be mixing it up this show with a new set list that includes our newest and recently-named song, Horseshoes and Hand Grenades. I'm really excited for this song, I think it's one of our best yet, and Ian is doing some sweet drum stuff that I wouldn't really even begin to know how to explain.
We'll be playing last, but make sure you get there early (is 9 PM considered early? am I just getting old?) to check out Palatypus and Jared Funari, and of course, to have a few birthday shots.
