Archive for April, 2010

The record is officially released!! You can now order it physically online here, which I will mail out with a signed poster and sticker, or you can download it digitally from the download page!! I am so excited for you all to hear it. Please feel free to give us some feedback on what you think about the new songs and the re-vamped sound. We worked very hard. Its already reviewed you can read the review here.

And tonight we get to celebrate the release at New World Brewery! CD release show starts at 9pm, its $8 ( $2 a band, what a deal!) and it is 21+. On the bill we have the absolutely extraordinary Marksmen (Matt Segallos who is the frontman of the Marksmen, sang on “You’re Half Mine”, so if you’ve been wondering who’s angelic voice is on that song, its Matt’s.), Josh Roberts and the Hinges, and The Still Voice. All in all an amazing lineup.

On a not so sunny note, our tour van is completely caput. The International Bus Group (the place we bought it from) destroyed our van. We paid $1000 for them to service it and they neglected to fix absolutely everything and due to that, now the van is undrivable and sitting in a Ford Dealership in St Petersburg FL, and they are telling us that it will cost $4,300 to repair. We are completely out of money because we gave the bus company all the money we had, so we are hoping that they will be decent people and will cover the repairs seeing as though it is completely 100% their fault the van is undrivable.

We have in turn had to cancel a few of our tour dates. I will post cancellations tomorrow and we do apologize to you (our fans) and to the venue owners and promoters-this one is completely out of our hands. Unless we win the lottery and get $4,300 by monday, there is nothing we can do to get out there. I will keep you guys posted.

If you care to help us with this costly venture, all donations are greatly appreciated!

As always, love you all and thank you all for the undying support and belief in what myself and my boys are doing and creating. We do it for you.

Keep your fingers crossed and keep us in your thoughts- we hope to be out there on the road on wednesday if all goes well.Until then, check out the record, its up for sale now in our store tab!!

Geri X

Here’s the live TV show!!

In the course of very few days ,very many things have happened. I apologize for being away and not keeping you guys in the loop but it has been certified crazy for a while. 
Got the van, got the dropcards (they look AWESOME), got the stickers and got the posters. Then van started making strange noises and we scheduled an appointment for Monday to fix the noises. Waited for CDs and tshirts to come Saturday but no luck. Played Inman park festival Sunday and it was a blast! Said goodbye to everyone and drove by myself with the pups to FL. Got home, had veggie burgers with the fam and when to bed. Woke up and things started going south. 
Greg took the van to get fixed. We were told it would take a couple hours till they could get him in and that the repair itself would take two hours and would be in the $250 range. Instead, Greg got there at 8:45am and waited till 5pm for them to get the van in. In the meantime had to walk two miles to get something to eat and was freezing. Such horse***t!!!
 I picked up Steve from the airport in Tampa  and went directly to practice. Practiced till 9:30 came back to moms and got a call from Greg. They “did” fix it but he got home to pack and after tuning off the van it won’t start again. Started was aparently shot. Called AAA to come and tow him out of the back alley because he was blocking a parkinglot exit but the towtruck couldn’t tow him with the equipment he had. Called another towtruck and around 12:30am he tried to tow him but couldn’t. Towtruck driver called dispatch to get a tow dally to help, dispatch informed him that “we don’t do shuttle buses”. That’s horse***t #2. 
At 1:30 am Greg calls, exhausted and fed up. and ends up sleeping in the van. 
This morning I woke up at 7:45 got coffee, got ready for tv. Had to go on acoustic because Greg was stranded in Atlanta due to the van not being usable. Went live on tv to promote for the record- always a fun time at channel 10, such awesome nice people. Messed up some chords and words but eh, you know… It was waaaaay early
Called Greg after we got out of the tv station, he talked to the service department manager and the sales lady who said they were beside themselves,couldn’t believe that the mechanic didn’t fix anything, said they were going to send a tow truck and fix it for us today. Took the van in while Greg cleaned the apartment and went to the studio. We both agreed that due to the fact that before buying it we gave them an entire day to do a thorough inspection to make sure everything is ok and we were assured 100% that there was nothing wrong with the thing, they should fix it at no cost to us seeing as though they completely inconvinienced us, and greg wasn’t able to make shows and dealines because of their mistakes and had we known there was something wrong with it we would NOT have bought it. Regardless, they made us pay them $900.00 . Horse***t!
  Steve and I had acoustic practice, I started getting sleepy and loosing my mind a litle bit so we took a break. Then went to full band practice at 7pm and got out at 9pm. The practice space owner creeped me out a bit but what are you gonna do. Called Greg to see if he left…
He made it about 50 miles out of Atlanta and all the noises that they had “fixed” came back. The van wouldn’t accelerate past 60mph and the headlights were flickering on and off as he was driving. Oh, and did I mention that 3 times they said the van had gotten an oil change ? I think not! Greg had to stop and by quarts of oil because the level was below the red line. It’s pretty crappy. I don’t think it’s morally right. 
All horse***t aside, we got the CDs and although I haven’t seen them yet cause Greg has them, he said they are BEAUTIFUL. I can’t wait to open the first one and smell it! I am so pround of this record. Also got the tshirts and they look fantastic. So… Yeah. Packing like a maniac and dealing with all of these little disasters has been very disorianting. I’m hoping it’s a way to get all the bad stuff out of the way before we go on tour. 
We are oficially going to make a van fund to help pay back the $10,000.00 that we sunk into this piece of junk. Donations at shows will be greatly appriciated and needed. 
Cd release show Friday can’t come soon enough!

Crazed,frazzed,disorianted,deranged
Geri X.

oh, and here is a sneak peek at the cover of the record. shhh

Ha. So here it is. We are calling her Ole Bessie.

As fas as we know (keeping our fingas crossed) all is well. She just needs a new U joint, or whatever that thing is called and we are all set.

Greg’s out in the driveway right now building bunks and lofts and such. She drives smooth and strong.

Thats it!

So of course 3 days before tour things must fall apart. Turns out the space shuttle is a total lemon. Piece of advice, don’t go to Midas- they don’t know shit! 

After an alarming phone call from the bus company this morning, Greg and I spent the day trying to find another van. It a pain in the ass. We haven’t (obviously) started doing any preparation to any vehicle and we leave Sunday. Bring on the stress. But we did test drive something we liked and if all goes well we’ll be buying it tomorrow. 

So…I’ll have some good news for you guys by tomorrow night?We’ll be doing this tour even if we have to travel in my jeep,I promise!

Restlessly frazzled
Geri X.

Sorry again its been a while since I’ve written.

What an eventful weekend!

Again, officially, Greg and I no longer have day jobs-yay! We got the bus, which is why I’ve been so busy. Sunday Greg and I did some heavy duty work trying to get all the seats out of it. I don’t know how they installed them in the first place, but it took us a while. I was in the van and Greg was under the van and we both had to loosen the bolts at the same time to get them off. What a pain! And those shuttle riders were messy people too! Found a barrage of candy wrappers, plane tickets, news papers dated from 1999 and clothes hangers (!?!) under the seats. Then we snuck behind our building and dumped all of them by the trash ( sorry to our neighbors and the sanitation department people, but we had no other choice!). Soon after we went to Home Depot and bought paint. The inside of it is now a cool shade of sunflower yellow/peach on the sides, and a nice olive/moss on the back. It looks super cool and I think that those walls are gonna keep us sane 6 months from now. Gray is way too depressing. I also spray painted our windows black from the inside so no one can peek in. Its pretty sweet. You also may call it dope,rad,pimpin,kick ass, all of the above. Im hoping that once our bass player Steve gets into town him and I can draw murals on the inside of the bus when were bored. (Steven Bossler Art )

The downside is the air conditioning which worked when we test drove it works no more. Now its at the National Bus Company so they can figure out whats wrong with it. Keep your fingers crossed that its nothing serious because it sucks going on the road broke. To top it all off, my jeep has been overheating the past 2 days…car problems come in pairs. Oh well.

We just came back from an early morning excursion. One of our pups Sam is getting spayed today. I feel bad for her, but we can’t be coming back from tour to take care of a litter of puppies. Sorry Sam. After we dropped her off and I stepped in dog poo, we went and rented a storage unit. We have bins upon bins of vinyl records, tons of them really, which of course would not be practical to take on the road. So we got a storage unit to store some extra musical things. Now we are at the studio and combining our efforts on numerous computers to make cds. All in all, I think we have plenty of time to get ready for the road. Haven’t really started packing yet, but we sold all of our stuff when we moved from FL so there really isn’t much. I am however, getting rid of alot of my clothes. So if any of you ladies out there want some free shwag, please let me know. Otherwise, its going to GoodWill.

We got a chance to see our good friend Kim Manning last night. She is a P-Funk Allstar. She’s been in George Clinton’s band for 10 years or so and they were in town last night playing at the Masquerade. All I can say is I admire her tolerance and he ability to remain calm and normal around all the crazyness that surrounds that band. Their fans are fun-addicts. Seriously. But it was good to sit and chat with her and see their tour bus. One day, we’ll have one of those :] I swear.

Off to doing more work for the tour now. Posters should be here today and stickers too. Cd’s I think get here tomorrow. Shirts are en-route.Can’t believe it-5 days!

love you guys, see you soon I hope!

Crazy,

Geri

Im sitting here in the studio by myself, its 8:36 am, I am wide awake. Our new record is playing in the background and its strange to me to listen to what I’ve made and not cringe and turn it off right away. At this point I understand what it means to be satisfied. Its not about anybody else liking your record, its about you liking your record. As long as you’re happy with it, and it turned out to be exactly what you wanted it to be, then it doesn’t matter if anyone else likes it, because there is nothing like having to defend a piece of your work you hate. I’ve had to do that for 7 albums, and now that this one is done I can’t wait to share it and can’t believe it took this long. Anyway, its early and Im a bit philosophical.

I’ve been driving Greg to work at 5 am for the past 5 days and it feels a bit like I have insomnia, Atlanta traffic is horrid, and he works 45 minutes away without traffic, hense why I am up so early.

I came home about half hour ago from driving him, and our dogs had gotten into the trashcan,ate everything that was edible and left little presents for me to clean up.

So recap: woke up at 4:30am, drove Greg to work, sat in traffic, got home, trash everywhere, cleaned the apartment, got dressed for work, came to the studio, and now making cds. phew.

We finally get the van today, it needed to have the roaders changed and its taking Midas 3 days, but its alright. Im looking forward to being able to stand in the van while moving. Its way more luxurious than anything I thought we would buy. Its still gonna be DIY inside, with wooden lofts, Im painting the walls and drawing on them, but its nice to have space when you’ll be on the road for at least the next 7 months.

Lastly, and very importantly, I want to thank Jeff Carano from Babicz guitars. I received the guitar yesterday after missing the FedEx guy the day before, and my baby came back sparkling clean, with brand new strings on, polished and sounding like heaven. Also in the box, Jeff stuffed a good number of tank tops, t-shirts and sweaters ( which I am SO excited about) and I am wearing one of their tanks right now.Thank you Jeff, you have, no joke, secured my future on the road for the next 7 months.

www.babiczguitars.com

I am going to back to working now, thank you all for reading and feel free to comment, I love reading feedback.

Cheers

Geri

The latest Press Release has been posted in News!

Thats all. Go check out the tour schedule on here, or on our myspace, http://myspace.com/gerix

also new songs on our myspace!

go go go!

we are going to pick up the new tour bus now, keep them fingers crossed peeps!

Lil G