Greetings, all!

As September drifts to its breeze-laden conclusion, Grimfeather has armed its wings with guitar picks once again and crafted a brand new song for your shrunken bellies. We know your mouths are dry, your stomachs empty and aching for our musical syrup…and why? Because we have neglected you since June. It’s true, we are sometimes forgetful, but perhaps this will help make amends for our absence. To listen, please force your mice to dance upon the play button below. We promise, your mechanical rodents will thank you.

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“Invisible Posture” by Grimfeather.

So here it is at long last! The first of the recordings from the new Grimfeather album, Remodeling Our Modest Portions. This song was first performed live in summer of 2006 while on tour with The Books. Since then it’s seen a lot of alterations – The addition of drums, violin, and some vocal switching. Hope you enjoy it!

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“Newer Vogue” by Grimfeather.

As summer comes to an end, I’ve been looking back on the massive amount of work that’s been accomplished. This summer has certainly been a musical workfest for me, and I’m very excited about finishing the mixing up on the three projects I’ve been working on. First of all, in June Erik and Rob Ogden went into the recording studio to record about 50 minutes of music for the first full-length Grimfeather album. There’s still a lot to do on that project – recording my bass and keyboard parts, and recording Erik’s vocals – but to have that step forward was nice. Next, Rob and I composed 40 minutes worth of orchestral music for a new project called Make-Believe Machines. We’ve got ten minutes left to create before the album’s complete. We hope to share some of that material with you soon! Then, last week, Rob and I went back into the studio and he recorded drums for about 30 minutes worth of An Umbrella material – totally re-recorded versions of “Vegas Anesthetic Peddler,” “Three-Pronged Fork”, and “Glacier Park”. On top of that, a great artist named Mary Rose completed the first phase of her work on a new piece of interactive artwork for the An Umbrella Web site. In other summer news, I also did a lot of writing and animation work for the first six episodes of a new online comedy series. Yes, we’ve been busy, but our hope that we’ll be able to share this stuff with you all during the latter part of this year. Until then, have a wonderful fall season! I suspect you’ll be hearing from us again shortly!

The familiar image of Joe Richards’ headphone mixer.

Wes just had a review of the new Blood Brothers album published over at Music Angle. If you want to read an entertainingly in-depth review of the album’s content head over to the Young Machetes page and take a look. In other news, Erik has re-commenced recording vocals for the 50-odd-minutes of Grimfeather material this evening, after a bout with illness. More news on the latest musical and animated projects is likely to come soon!

Cover art from the Blood Brothers’ Young Machetes album.

The last ten days have been spent painstakingly practicing and recording about 50 minutes worth of Grimfeather material for an album to be hopefully released later this year. The fellow who recorded the majority of the Cardboard Canary material, along with Elmo’s “Proletariat”, Joe Richards, tracked former Cardcan drummer Rob Ogden’s consistently wonderful playing alongside Erik’s guitar for six songs. Four of those we played on tour last year with The Books, and the other two are new. Roughly half of the work is done now, and we’ve since commenced recording vocals. We’re pretty excited about the material so far, and we hope to have an album available to share with you all soon!

Potential art for the upcoming Grimfeather album.

Wow, it’s been awhile since I’ve posted anything! I just returned from a trip to Las Vegas, where I recorded demo versions of the final two songs for the full-length, 50-minute Grimfeather debut album we’re hoping to record later this year. The new songs are called “Invisible Posture” and “Conversations and Opinions”, which fall into similar categories as “Newer Vogue” and “Mood of Solitude” respectively, which we played on tour with The Books last year. The complication with getting the album recorded now mostly has to do with getting Erik and Robby Ogden into the studio in Iowa at the same time. This proves a bit difficult seeing as though Robby lives in Michigan and Erik is preparing to get married in California. However, we’re pressing on with writing in the meantime, and looking forward to getting this stuff all nicely recorded for you!

Erik Brown plays with Grimfeather in Denver, CO. Photo by Jeanne Jebbia.

This weekend, I finished work on the Web site for Embassy Glass, and am looking ahead to the new projects I mentioned in my last entry. One that I hadn’t mentioned, however, was the recording of two new Grimfeather songs that we performed on tour – “Newer Vogue” and “A Mood of Solitude”. Although I’d made broad mention of recording them once the tour was over, it looks as though the recording process will begin in August. Erik has also passed on a demo of his latest song to the rest of the group, so a new song is also in the works. 

A crippled bird I found while touring with Grimfeather in Texas.

I forgot to mention that I updated the Grimfeather Web site when I got back from Iowa and you can now hear a clip of Josh Schryver ranting about his experience on tour with The Books. To listen, just click the blue lettering on the Grimfeather news page.

Ahhh…we’ve arrived back in Iowa after our brief tour and it was pretty marvelous. The Books were wonderful to travel with and the crowds seemed quite receptive. We also got to see some neat places, and explore some cities that we hadn’t formerly. Thanks to everyone who came out and listened! It was a blast! So, now to record the album… Erik, Savanna and I will probably be heading back out to Nevada / California soon to work some more on that, including a couple of new songs that some of you may have heard live – “Newer Vogue” and “A Mood of Solitude.”

Grimfeather playing live in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Hello again! The tour is about to begin, and I just wanted to let you all know a last-minute detail: We plan to sell 3-song demo CDs for $1 each at our shows, while they last. They will include “Prometaphor,” “A Chasing After the Wind,” and “Candlesmoke” and feature photographs taken by my brother, Wesley Norman. Also, Kirk Brown will not be coming along, as mentioned before, but vocalist/glockenspielist Savanna Blazina will be!MONDAY April 3, 2006: Des Moines, IA – Vaudeville Mews w/ Halfway House, The Reputation and ZPSTHURSDAY April 6, 2006: Austin, TX – The Parish w/ The BooksFRIDAY April 7, 2006: Denton, TX – Hailey’s w/ The BooksMONDAY April 10, 2006: Denver, CO – Larimer Lounge w/ The BooksWEDNESDAY April 12, 2006: Salt Lake City, UT – In The Venue w/ The Books

One of the photos used for the Grimfeather CD artwork, taken by Wesley Norman.