THE VELVETEEN BAND regrets to announce that we will unfortunately be unable to perform at STEAMPUNK WORLDS FAIRE, in May of this year.  We were not able to coordinate from afar all the logistics needed to ensure that we could perform the best possible show for ourselves and our fans and friends in New Jersey.

We just want to say that it was truly an honor to be invited.  We hope you all have a great time at the STEAMPUNK WORLDS FAIRE this year, and we wish them the best!

From the beginning of the Velveteen Band, we have sought out other talented musicians and artists to collaborate with. This spirit of collaboration is what has fueled us, and continues to inspire us. To date, this collaboration has been done with one or two artist at a time; our next historic move will enable us to collaborate with thousands:

We’re contributing not just our entire album, but the individual stems (the isolated recordings of each performer), to hitRECord.
You’ll find those contributions here:
http://collaborate.thevelveteenband.com

At this point, you might be asking yourself “what the heck is hitRECord?”

Great Question!

hitRECord is a community of artists in every medium, who have agreed to let each other play with their work in a sort of copyright cease-fire. It’s also a production company, owned by Joseph Gordon-Levitt. We’ll let him explain:

Under Joe’s direction, the community at hitRECord has published books and music to traditional outlets, produced live performances, and is currently completing a 2nd season of “hitRECord on TV” on Pivot.tv

…which you should totally watch. Here’s the first episode from last season:

“So, what does this move mean?“, you ask.

You’re just full of good questions today!

• Members of the hitRECord community will be able to use any part of our songs to score videos.
• They can clear space in our songs to insert themselves into, singing parts or playing instruments.
• They can arrange their own covers or remixes, or use our stems as raw materials to create entirely new works.
• These are a few small examples; the potential uses extend far beyond what we, ourselves, can ever imagine.

All of this is recursive; it iterates forever. The users can transform and improve on each other’s submissions, from any starting point. And those users include us. By posting their works back to the site, these artists can let us be part of continuing those projects in a way that, to our knowledge, no band has ever done before.

We quietly launched with three songs over the weekend. Stems were provided, along with a “video fakebook” to lay out the lyrics and chord progressions (so artists can skip the boring mechanical part of dissecting our work, and jump straight into what they do best).

http://collaborate.thevelveteenband.com will direct you to those records, as well as the release schedule for the rest of our catalog.

If you’d like to be a part of this daring initiative, just sign up at hitRECord.com — this is an ongoing effort, and it’s open to everyone.