Last Saturday, March 21st, we trotted out a whole new set list out in Carol Stream, IL. Overall, I was very pleased with the way the set played. Most of the songs were getting their first play in front of an audience. I can always tell if our song choices are hitting the mark when one or two audience members turn to each other and nod as if saying, “I remember that one”. A few people even began to sing along. A good omen! As in any debut performance, we discovered our blemishes and now know where tweaking and added rehearsal is required. However, I am very excited and inspired with where we are headed.

Remember, Kenny Rogers and the First Edition”? I am currently working on “I Just Dropped In”. Very 60’s and kind of tongue and cheek lyrics in today’s world. Look for it soon. We are gearing up for the summertime festivals so keep an eye on the gig posting to see if we are appearing near you.        Peace

I told you to keep checking here…And now it’s paying off. This Saturday the 21st we’re going to do our new set at Playoffs in Carol Stream. All the details can be found on the gigs calendar page, so I won’t bore you with the details here. So come see us live, take a picture, say hi. It’s going to be a lot of fun.

Mark it on your calendar. Yes, now, before  you forget. See you then.

Well, we’re going to jump in with both feet. At our rehearsal on Wednesday we felt really good about the set and so we decided it’s time for a time honored tradition of finding a spot to try it out and see how it plays in front of a live audience. Not a full gig…But run the set as a whole. And do it as soon as possible.

That does a couple of things for us. It gives us extra motivation to work out all the tweaks we need to make now and it gives us the chance to get comfortable with the set. You know, kick the tires and see how it rides. So you might want to keep looking for us while we’re looking for the place we’ll play because it might happen pretty quickly. We’ll give you as much notice as we can, of course, but it’s likely to happen with a short turnaround time.

While you can look for us here (lets not be too obvious, Jim), you can also find us and become a fan of our Facebook page at http://band.to/4-am/ and become a fan while you’re at it. Oh and don’t forget to come up and say after any gig you attend. We’re nice…And silly…And well, I could go on for awhile, but not now.

We’ve been working up a lot of new arrangements lately and we’re really happy with what’s happening with them. So we decided to take the next step and put together a set that includes a lot of these new arrangements. It’s a set of 13 songs and out of the 13, 9 of them are brand new arrangements we’ve done. So we’re getting this set together and we’re going to rehearse it and try it out in the near future live.  So here it is:

 
We’re excited about the set, what do you think?

I can’t believe it’s the middle of February already.  It was a busy holiday season for us and one of the things that was out of the ordinary for us was the work we did on the short film Bound with Love. This was one of a series of films based on the works of Mike Royko, a Chicago Columnist. You can find out more about the series of films at Royko.tv.

On December 5th, we went into a recording studio and recorded O Tannenbaum in about as many different ways as you could imagine, Fast, slow, in German, in English, only on Oooo, on Oooo switching to Ah and… well, you get the idea. It was a great time and we enjoyed every minute of the time we spent recording, even when we left the warmth of the recording studio to go out in the back lot to record the ambiance of singing outdoors and believe it was very cold that night, but it was a great experience, all the way around and that was only the beginning.

We did our part of the filming on December 13th. There had been a major part of the shoot the night before as well and true to Chicago, the weather was very different between the two. The night before was cold with wind chill dropping to somewhere near -20 degrees Fahrenheit, but the night we filmed, it was near 40 degrees above zero and the snow was melting with standing water all around, amazing (you can see production stills from the shoot on our Sights & Sounds page). Once again, despite the weird weather, everything went pretty well, we actually lip synched to a small alarm clock/cd player for the shoot as well as did some live takes, that was interesting. Everyone was great to work with and a lot of that had to do with the person who was the driving force behind the project, Norman Skul. One of the nicest people you’d ever want to meet and one of those guys that you hope you’re going to get the opportunity to work for and with again. He made everything flow really smoothly and there was just a great attitude throughout the entire experience.

Sadly, we learned that Norman passed away suddenly and unexpectedly after the first of the year. I didn’t get to know him very well in that short time, but based on what I saw when I did get to work with him, everyone who knew him, loved him and he will be missed. Fortunately, we’ve been told that production is going to continue not just on Bound with Love, but on the whole series and Norman’s vision will continue. Maybe that’s the best tribute of all.