The big album release party is this Saturday, at Discovery Ventura! The Jelly is playing! Barrelhouse Wailers is also playing! Lee’s Menagerie will have a new selection of magical creatures for you to adopt! And we’ll be performing the new album, from start to finish.
We’re so excited for you to finally hear the new album.
Lilly’s heard it. Find out what she thinks!
If you follow us on Facebook, you might have seen the live unboxing video when the CDs arrived. And then when that failed, you might have seen our second try at it.
We’ve signed a bunch of ’em for the Kickstarter backers who wanted that.
And, special acknowledgment: Our good friend Jessica Potts-Mee has done a ton of work getting reward packages prepped to go out. We’d be dead in the water without her. Thanks again, Red!
Will those arrive before the 30th? Probably not. But we will get the digital downloads out to our backers before then, to make sure they get a chance to hear the album before anyone else.
(Someone recently asked how we plan all our videos. This should make it pretty obvious: we do nothing of the sort!)
So, timely announcement: We’ve all but finished the new album!
You read that correctly. Mixing, mastering, artwork… we’re double checking some last details before we send the files off, but things are very much on schedule!
Here’s a taste of what the final mixes sound like, and the kind of crazy variety you can expect between songs:
I should probably have warned you, Foe put that medley together.
Pretty sure he was aiming for maximum torture; sorry about that. Fortunately, adding pictures and text seemed to help soften the blow.
Still, his “I’m Not Broken” cut was way too short, so… surprise! Here’s the full thing:
Of course, his cut of “Crocodile Man” wasn’t much longer. And that’s just unfair; no one’s even heard that song! So, just for you, until someone notices and asks me to take this down, here’s a super secret “extended version”.
(I should probably have warned you, this was also Foe’s idea)
But, hey! Let’s talk about “I’m Not Broken”, shall we?
A while back, one of our friends (Hi, Nate!) went through a traumatic break-up. He told us what he was going through, and we tried to assure him that we had each survived and eventually healed from similar experiences, so he would get through this as well. He wasn’t ready to internalize that, insisting again and again that he was broken. It hit us pretty hard.
The next morning, Dan wrote a song. The lyrics were whimsical, more in line with what we usually do. They expressed that no matter how bad things get, there’s a character in Lord of the Rings who has it worse. And so, “You’re not Gollum” was born.
Dan sent me a demo and asked if I felt as helpless as he did.
I had been, up until that moment, but the song got me thinking. I started to reply with something like “Forget Gollum. You’re not BROKEN.”
I was halfway joking, but it struck me that whatever we wrote, our friend would eventually sing along to. So, why not use that?
In the next few hours, I ended up rewriting all of the lyrics, from the emotionally raw perspective of someone very much like our friend, with one key difference: this character was ready to start climbing out of the hole.
I was a little worried that twisting their words to convey the opposite meaning might be somehow disrespectful or insensitive, but the first time we performed the song, our friend ended up interrupting the show to jump up on stage and give everybody bear hugs.
And then the next morning, he showed us his brand new tattoo:
So, yeah. This song means a lot to us, and we’re thrilled to finally have it out in the world.
Particularly now, with all the ugliness going on out there. It’s important to remember, none of us are alone, and despite everything, we’re not broken either!
(Keep making! Keep creating! And do it with love and a song in your heart!)
What else can we talk about?
Well, I suppose there’s this. Check out the new album cover!!!
Art by Claire Michelle Flores
The back’s even better! But you can’t see that yet, because we’re still teasing you.
(Sorry. Foe’s influence is all over this post. We should probably stop asking that guy for marketing advice. I don’t know what we were thinking…)
To promote this whole Kickstarter thing, and to celebrate hitting the 50% mark in just over one day, we’ve decided to pull back the curtain a little and answer a few questions. Do you have any?
This is going to be really awkward if nobody ask anything.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
The Velveteen Band will be launching a Kickstarter on Monday, July 24th, to raise funds for printing their upcoming new album, “What’s on the Other Side”.
The Kickstarter is basically a pre-order for the upcoming album, but will also feature signed albums, special merchandise, and other leveled incentives. The band hopes to raise $1500 to cover the cost of printing, and digital distribution.
On Monday, the band will launch the campaign with a special promotional pitch video, produced by Aaron Levitz, which links directly to the Kickstarter. The pitch video features some never before seen behind-the-scenes and live footage from the past 3 years.
The new album, “What’s on the Other Side”, has already been recorded, and is currently being mixed and mastered by Chris Coyle. It will feature 10 songs, and artwork by Claire Flores. It is set to be released on September 30th worldwide, with an album release party at the Discovery, in Ventura, CA.
