Honeybone Sells Out.

Hi beloved readers

The concept of selling out is quite the tricky one. Does one:

a) Take the money and admit to oneself they were never quite the creative genius their mother told them they were
b) Act horrified someone would even suggest one would defile their 'art' for the sake of something so material as money
c) Give ones 'art' away for free as the ultimate protest against capitalism and the materialistic manner of the western world, and thus move back to ones parent's home because of lack of actual money, becoming what's known as a 'boomerang kid'.

'I'm still allowed out on school nights right?'

Now, I am not sure what I would do, as the concept of 'selling out' has been well documented in the music industry over the past 60 years. When Bob Dylan went electric, many of his fans protested in anger, as it was his  rustic acoustic strummings and mad poetry that defined his folk legend status. A slightly different example of selling out could be that of the case of Metallica vs. Napster, wen drummer Lars Ulrich got his knickers in a twist because he found out millions of people were downloading his beloved music for free. Which I could understand if he weren't a multi-millionaire.

I need a new industrial sized pool cleaner so YOU'RE PAYING

 BUT 'selling out' can also make one rich (which would be nice), and popular across many different groups of people, instead of having one devoted group of fans (or none at all).

Now I bet you're wondering why the title of this blog is 'Honeybone Sells Out'. Well, no we didn't get offered a major label record deal, nor did we sell one of our songs to an advertising company. We're doing the lesser of two evils... learning a bunch of covers. I don't think this is selling out at all, but I know some people who look down on bands who just play covers. As if they aren't as competent musicians because they don't write their own music. Sure, covers bands get paid a lot more than originals bands, maybe thats why all the dedicated originals kids are so judgemental. But to be honest, I would rather listen to a great covers band than a complete shit originals band.

These guys do both

Anyway, Honeybone got asked to play the Brass Monkey motorcycle rally in Oterehua, Central Otago. I was pretty stoked about it, as my Dad and brother are mad about bikes and go every year. We've played covers gigs before, weddings and such, but this is a different kind of gig. This is the type of gig where the audience will be mostly older male bikers, so we probably won't be playing 'Brown Eyed Girl'. We get to pull out the Sabbath and Zeppelin and it's awesome. We started learning the first 20 or so songs on our list last week, and I have to say, it's definitely going to keep our chops up. Some of these songs aren't the easiest to play, and it's great because I've been getting lazy. Also, the gig pays very well. We use covers gigs to pay for our costs such as touring and recording, so no one is personally out of pocket. The money from this gig is probably going towards airfares to the North Island once we get our asses into gear and organise a tour. More on that later.

Also we've got a gig this weekend with the Scurvy Dogs, so come along if you're in town, its at the Crown and features Drew and his orange cast.

Party On.

HoneyBROKENbone

Cheers Nic for the title, if you read this :)

As you can probably tell from the title, Honeybone has had an interesting week (much like every week in the Honeybone Universe). On Wednesday night last week, Drew fractured his fibula.

The fibula is the smaller of the two lower leg bones

He was playing ice-hockey and slammed into the barrier skate first and fractured his fibula and tore the ligament in between the two bones. I was lucky enough to be at the game, but missed the incident as I was down the other end of the rink. I didn't even realise someone was hurt until they slid out a wee chair onto the ice, and because I didn't see Drew skating around I figured it was Drew who had hurt himself. It was.

So after about 4 hours waiting in ED (and a couple of Xrays) we were told Drew had fractured his fibula. Poor guy's been hobbling around on crutches ever since. However he did get a nice orange cast to match his Orange cab and guitar pedals, so it's not all bad.

So where does this leave Honeybone for gigs, you may wonder?

Luckily, Drew can still play guitar (it's pretty much all he does now), so all the gigs we have coming up are still on. Awesome. Drew will still have a heavy plaster on his leg so there won't be any crazy stage antics for him for a while, he'll be sitting in a wee chair like a girly singer/songwriter. That doesn't mean our show won't be shit or anything... hopefully.

Just a short blog for now guys, I'm playing Nurse to the guy in the crutches :)
Ta ta!

PS Here is a picture of the poor wee dear

Note the clashing of orange cast and mustard pants

The Weekend #2

Greetings!
Sorry I went back on my word and promised ya'll another blog last week but time kinda got away from me and, well, I ran out of it. Doncha hate that.

So this is the chronicle of Honeybone's first exploration of the back studios at Albany. We set up all the gear and mics on the Friday Night (1st of April, same night as the Checks gig) and got everything sounding pretty good. We even got a signal from the bass drum mic (very exciting to us novices).

Drew was pretty stoked

So after we got all the gear sorted for Saturday we unplugged everything and locked up the four rooms and headed off to Sammy's for the gig (see the previous post to find out about the gig). Josh didn't come cause he had some hot poker date. Too cool for us plebs.

So Saturday morning arrived we got up bright and earlyish (10.30am) to begin recording. We had to make a few changes to the set up, as Drew wanted to record straight to his hard drive and we needed headphones for Peter and I so we could hear stuff as we were in separate rooms from the gat boys (they stood in the hallway with their amps in another room). We plugged everything in and did a wee check of the sound, and found a mysterious clicking noise on the bottom snare mic.

We couldn't figure out where it was coming from, as the mic, lead and input were all fine. Then the clicking changed to another track, this time Josh's guitar track. We couldn't figure out how to get rid of it, so we just left it there, as we couldn't waste too much time because we only the studios booked for Saturday. Plus they're only demos, when it comes to recording the actual album I'm sure we'll be more professional...

So we got all the instrument tracks done that we wanted to, and Drew got three vocal tracks done. We wanted to get all the recording done in one day, but Drew 's voice got a little bashed throughout the day as he was singing a scratch track for each song so we all knew where we were.

So instead of giving you a verbal run down of recording each song, I'm going to post some pictures instead. They're worth like, 1000 words apparantly.

Desk

View of Bass room from Drum room (Note: the ambient light)

Drews Gat Amp

Recording Vocals

Peter and his Basses

Joshy needs his lunchy

Overheads

Couchtastic

Protools

Guitar hallway

Drums!

Bass Amp

The amp Josh used

Thanks for reading, Ya'll come back now!

The Weekend #1

Hi there!
We had a pretty eventful weekend, you could say. This is why I named the blog 'The Weekend' (the pronounced 'thee', thats how good this weekend was).

NB: There are two parts to this blog, the second installment will be up in a few days

Anyway...

On Friday night (April 1st) Drew, Peter and I went to see An Emerald City, The Checks and Alizarin Lizard play at Sammys (an awesome venue which ya'll should check out). We went primarily for The Checks, as they are one of our fav bands and one of HBs influences. I was rather excited because I hadn't seen The Checks play in a while, and rumour had it they were going to play some new songs (they didn't, they were just really old songs I hadn't heard before so new to me). I was also pumped to see An Emerald City, because they are unbelievably EPIC. They opened for the Datsuns when they played Sammys in '09, and blew my mind with their distorted violin and electric percussion fused with psychedelic gats and bass. The gig was awesome.

But one thing constantly bothers me whenever I go to a Checks gig.

Why are so many of their fans tall, jocky, speights drinking male idiots? I just don't understand it. The Checks are truly a crossover band, with enough indie cred to keep those hipsters happy, enough heaviness to keep us HB kids happy, and enough pop cred (radio play to you) to keep the first year girls happy. That I can understand.

But guys like this?

Sorry if you know this guy...

Now, I'm not usually a hatin' type of girl. Well... sometimes I am. But not usually one to discriminate against people at gigs. We're all there for the same reason right? The Music?

Now I'm inclined to think perhaps not.

So it's after Alizarin Lizard and Drew and I were keen on getting up the front. So we joined the throng at the front of the stage and quietly slipped into position, with me sitting on a wee jutting out bit right in front of the middle of the stage (effectively where the singer would stand eg. prime real estate). We had a bunch of extremely drunk and raucous young'uns to our left (although they were all about a foot taller than either of us), and some even larger guys to our right. Then one of the large guys on our right sat right next to me and began shuffling against me, effectively pushing me right off my perch. I was all 'bro, wtf' and he was all 'wtf' back. I said 'Can't you see me sitting here' and he just looked at me like I was mad (I was getting a bit mad at this point) and then just continued to shimmy his behind against mine until I was 'half-on' the seat (if you get my drift).

Somehow the cast of Friends never had this problem

So, admitting defeat, we went back to the back of the ever-growing throng (with the drunk young'uns at the front continously trying and failing to start a 'We Want The Checks' chant), and just chilled out. The Checks came on (to the delight of many), and launched into 'Take Me There', their most well-known and radio-friendly hit. All the large, drunk, rugby type guys around me went nuts, singing along and jumping up and down like tweens watching Bieber. But then as the set went on, and The Checks progressed into material from their new album, and old songs hardly anyone knew, the crowd began to thin. By the end of their last encore, we were standing about 3 or 4 rows from the front, without any pushing or jabbing of elbows at all. Hardly a large man in a rugby shirt and smurf beanie to be seen. I had a wee 'lol' to myself, as I thought of the guy who had usurped my position at the front was probably back at his flat on Castle Street, raving about how awesome The Checks were, even though he only stayed for the first two songs.

'Owwaooaaahhh Taeke Me Therrrre! I LOVE that song!!!'

I am honestly at a loss as to why so many idiotic large male students like The Checks so much but hey. It's just one of those funny wee things in life we must all accept. Like Richard Simmons.

That's all for now, but I'll be back with 'The Weekend #2' later in the week.