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News:
12/8:
So if you were one of the beautiful people at
Cubby Bear Friday night, you already know this and are telling friends.
Thanks so much for coming out--it was a fantastic show (well, until
they started kicking people out so fast we couldn't say goodbyes). We
can't tell you how much it meant to have you there, nor how much our
hearts swell when we get on stage and see the faces of many dear
friends. You keep us going. And we have to say, it was yet another show
that state lines were crossed to see. We feel unbelievably blessed.
But in case you couldn't be there Friday night, we wanted to pass this
on to you tonight so *you* can have the EP and be passing the website
on. We intentionally made it pretty easy to remember. HERE IT IS!
www.saynotobadpop.com
("say no to bad pop dot com")
You just go there and enter your name and email and start the free
download! It's a zip file that contains all four songs, and even some
album artwork, lyrics, and a Common Shiner desktop wallpaper for fun.
And just so you know, we *are* still doing this all indepently, and
still need financial help whenever we can get it. So after you download
the album, there is a button to "donate" that will take you to a Paypal
site where you can contribute whatever you can. And by the way, sorry
the donate button is so big--we're not trying to push, Paypal seriously
wouldn't let us make it any smaller. :)
WE LOVE YOU ALL SO MUCH! It's bittersweet to be going into this
figurative cave for a couple months, but we hope to emerge better
artists, with new music and new thoughts. Assuming you're not one of
the few people we'll see up at the Turtle Creek Casino shows in two
weeks, we'll see you in February.
All love, and Happy Holidays,
CS
9/1:
Hey all you wonderful people,
Well we've been keeping busy with all kinds of stuff. Not
just
gigs, but we also spent a couple days in the studio laying down some of
our newer stuff that you may have heard at shows already.
We've
also taken some new pictures of our sometimes pretty faces that you'll
be able to see soon too (you could maybe even see one right now on our
myspace :-)).
STORYTIME
====================================
So we mentioned before we had a couple great stories, so we figured
we'd share them with you.
First Story: Rainy Day Occurrence
-------------------------------------------------
We played about a month ago at Subterranean, and for those of you in
Chicago, you'll remember that as the night a virtual hurricane blew
through in the form of two gigantic thunderstorms. Well as we
were packing up, our very own Vijay (the Professor) discovered that his
passenger side car window was shattered, and everything he had inside
was gone. He was also planning on driving out of town immediately after
our show, so he had all of his clothing packed for the night,
directions to where he was going, all kinds of extra stuff, and all of
it was gone.
Needless to say, we were all a little distraught and just generally
disappointed with humanity. So we cleaned most of the glass
out
of the car, and Vijay pulled it up to load in his stuff. He popped open
the trunk, and there may as well have been a heavenly chorus of Ah's,
as we noticed that all of his stuff was in the trunk.
Everything. Even his google directions.
So putting aside the possibilities that Vijay was on a drunken binge
that none of us were aware of (also, that he could manipulate time and
space), or that the storm itself had perfectly transferred all of his
stuff whilst keeping it dry, we surmised that what must have happened
was that something in the storm, or maybe someone on accident broke his
passenger side window, then some sort of street angel noticed this,
thought either "someone's going to steal his stuff" or "all of his
stuff is going to get wet" and moved all of his stuff to the trunk
(with the trunk lever now being accessible, thanks to the broken window.
Faith in humanity restored.
P.S. If whoever did that is reading this - Thank you!
-------------------------------------------------
Second Story: Using up All Our Luck
-------------------------------------------------
You may know that we recently played up at Little River
Casino.
Overall, we had a wonderful time, and while we were there, we decided
we'd try a little gambling (responsible gambling, of course, if that's
such a thing). Morgan left the blackjack tables $20
up.
Jake dabbled with the slots and the blackjack tables and left $5
up. Vijay lost every hand he attempted in Blackjack, and left
down $40.
Then we move to Mike, who about $2 into trying out the slots, won
$1,250. We're not making this up. He had to fill
out tax
information, then received $1,250 in cash. So dinner was on
him,
to say the least.
And hopefully he has not used up all our luck. :-)
-------------------------------------------------
That's all for now, but more to come soon, such as details of our
upcoming tour!
CS is growing quite fond of you.
7/24:
And finally, to conclude our Getting to Know
the Band series, we've got one last guy to tell you about.
--------------------------------------
Getting to Know the Band - Vol. 4: Daddy Long Legs
The last but certainly important part to Common Shiner is our skinny
wonderful electric guitarist Andrew. GR friends will know him
well, but Chicago friends may not have had the chance to meet him just
yet. That's because he still lives in Michigan, working on
his
Masters (and PhD, possibly) in engineering at Michigan State
University, no less. He's a pretty smart guy, and if you ever
have a hankering for a conversation about cars or baseball, he's your
man.
He also likes Pearl Jam a lot, and if you've had the privilege of
seeing us cover Alive, we hope your face has unmelted.
Andrew has also been in the band virtually since it's inception,
joining Morgan very shortly after the formation of the band.
So
he has been through it all, and has certainly played a key role in what
Common Shiner has become.
He's hilarious and strange, so he fits in with the rest of us
well. We'll let him take it from here.......
(Morgan: want to write a bio?)
Andrew: Bio? I took bio sophomore year of high
school. It was the class that broke my 4.0, because I knew
genotypes and phenotypes so well that my mathematical logic gave me
intuition to know that if you had 2 traits, one dominant over the
other, you would have an 8x8 square making 64 possibilities, and 1/4 of
those would have the non dominant trait, so the answer to the question
on the exam was 16, and i got it right. . . except I got 1 out of 10
points on it because i didn't show my work, and it gave me an A- for
the class. Frickin' Mr. Mulford. That was when I decided no
more
bio science for me, I'm going to physics and chemistry instead, and
then I got to have Mr. Omar Bjarki for those classes the next two
years, and those helped inspire me to pursue engineering, which is the
root cause of me being the lost member of common shiner.
However,
I should really thank Mr. Mulford for grading so dumb, because that A-
along with one in my bonehead art class kept me from having to give a
speech at graduation--we had two valedictorians with 4.0s, and the
salutatorian had 1 A-, and then there was me right behind, sitting nice
near the top of the list, but not having to bore everyone with a
pathetic speech given by an awkward skinny kid with a zitty face.
----------------------------------------------
And by the way, this probably isn't the greatest thing to announce, but
we're excited about it and we're nerds. But we have Common Shiner
stickers now! They're totally free, so when you come see us,
grab
a sticker.
And remember, Common Shiner L_ _ _
_ Y _ _. Would you like to solve the puzzle?
~CS
6/19:
How's our favorite people doing?
We're doing pretty well. Mike and Morgan have discovered
busking
in the subways recently, and that's been a blast. So if
you're
ever taking the Red Line at the Lake stop, you may very well see us
there.
Also, we're very very excited about this coming Sunday night when we're
making our second appearance at the Elbo Room, and this time we're
joined by our old amazingly talented friend Rachel Zylstra
(www.rachelzylstra.com). Rachel will be going on at 8pm, and
we'll probably go on at 10:30pm. It's only $7 and it's sure
to be
a great time. So come hang out with us!
Also, if you're one of the lucky people near South Haven, MI this
coming Saturday, you can catch a very rare solo performance by Morgan,
where he'll also be sharing the stage with his dad! If you
haven't met his dad yet, he's pretty much the coolest old man on the
planet. We love him dearly. So if you're around
South
Haven, MI, head down to Foundry Hall for only $5!
-------------------------
Getting to Know the Band - Vol 4:
Jake "Clever Nickname" Chandler
Jake is the newest Shiner, so new that we STILL haven't come up with a
nickname for him (reply to this email with ideas!). We
actually
just celebrated his one year anniversary of having joined the band the
other day, reminiscing about his first gig with us, which was opening
for the Dave Matthews Tribute band Crash at The Intersection in Grand
Rapids.
What to say about Jake. Not only is he a fantastic bass
player,
but he's the only one of us who officially went to school for
it.
We'll leave it up to him whether or not he wants to mention his
California adventures.
If you hang out with us much, you may know that Jake tends to be the
butt of a lot of our jokes, but make no mistake about it, we love him
to death, and we especially love his unique outlook on life, such as:
- not realizing that he would need to use a bag of screws when
installing a chin up bar in his doorway
- driving a car for an entire Chicago winter with no heat
- and our personal favorite, being mistaken for a homeless person while
standing at a bus stop
But we often talk for him, so we should let him talk for himself now.
Well hello everyone, I hope my story warrants your interest.
It
all starts in West Philadelphia, I was born and raised, on the
playground is where I spent most of my days, chillin', maxin', relaxin'
all cool shootin' some b-ball outside the school.....just kidding.
I grew up in Aurora, IL, with Vijay actually, and a few other awesome
friends I still have to this day. After graduating high
school I
went to Musicians Institute in California(I recommend that school for
any aspiring musician) for about 2 years where I spent most of my
nights sleeping on the floor and most of my days sitting in
traffic. And yes, I have stories aplenty, if you'd like to
hear
some just ask me in person cause they're usually too long to type
here(and possibly inappropriate).
After returning to Aurora from Cali., my friend Elliot and I tried to
start a band(as we did in California, with no success) but things
didn't really work out. And one year later I received a call
from
Vijay asking if I wanted to fill in at a couple shows for Common
Shiner, and things just clicked and I've been with the band ever since.
For my personal interests, ummm.....I'll just make some very short
lists for you. Music: Project 86, Forever the Sickest Kids,
Underoath, Hush Sound, Paper Route, Ingrid Michaelson......Movies:
Superbad, Batman(the new ones), High Fidelity, The Rocketeer, 28 Days
Later, Elf, Bad Boys 2......T.V.: Heroes, The O.C.(RIP), Boy Meets
World(RIP), It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia.......Comedians: Mitch
Hedberg(RIP), Daniel Tosh, Russell Peters, Maria Bamford........
And there are many other things that make up the mysterious Jake
Chandler(yes I am referring to myself in 3rd person), and if you would
like to know anything else feel free to just ask. Or we could
go
out for dinner and a movie*****. Thank you and goodnight my
friends.
Jake Chandler
*****dinner and movie applies to females only. no purchase
necessary.
copyright
Jake Chandler
6/4:
Hello all!
Well we've had a great albeit exhausting couple weekends going back and
forth between Chicago and Grand Rapids. Thank you so much to
our
Grand Rapids friends who came out. It was so good to see you
all! We miss you a ton.
Also, it was a blast to play with Bless You Boys two weekends in a
row. If you all don't know about them yet, keep your eye
out. If you're anything like us, then after seeing them
you'll
wish they had a couple songs on Guitar Hero. Bless You Boys,
we
love you guys.
We've got a couple cool gigs coming up to tell you about, but first.....
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Getting to Know the Band - Vol 3: The Professor
For the third installment of the Getting to Know the Band series, we
move to that guy who's always in the back bobbing his head along to the
very beats he's laying down, Vijay Bangalore, AKA the
Professor.
Vijay met Morgan through a church praise team, and we believe the
question posed to him was "so, you wanna be in a band?" to which he
responded in very Vijay fashion "no worries" following that up with his
other favorite phrase that sums up his attitude on life: "Good times."
However, some things you may not know about him. He's half
Indian
and half Irish, meaning he sells liquor to himself; he's known to do
ridiculous things when up too late, or just whenever really; and he was
a huge fan of Carmen (for those of you not in the early 90s Christian
rock movement, be glad you don't get this reference). But
we'll
let him do something he never gets to do at shows..... speak for
himself.
Word. I actually tried guitar first, when I was about
7.
But I kept laying the thing down so I could see my fingers on the
fret-board. Then I started learning drums when I was
10. I
got a lot of experience by playing in churches. Something I
would
recommend to anyone (because most churches will let anyone
play).
I was also in one of those loud, heavy, and perhaps even obnoxious
garage-bands in high school with Jake (our bassist) and a couple other
guys. Then I went off to college and the rest is history
(although I guess the stuff before that was history as well).
I
would probably say my main influences would be Carter Beauford (of DMB)
and Terry Bozzio (Frank Zappa's drummer).
Aside from music I really love economics. It's what I studied
in
college. I particularly dig institutionalism, game theory and
research in general. I'm reading "Gang Leader For a Day" and
it's
pretty good (although more sociology than
economics). I
have a cat named Mia and she's great. I LOVE John Cusack
movies. And maybe Morgan sometimes hassles me for my affinity
for
romantic--comedies. . .maybe. . .
I canvass for Save the Children to pay the bills. I'm the guy
standing on the sidewalk in the loop yelling, "Hi, you have a minute
for Save the Children," and then goes on to try to get you to sponsor a
child at $28 a month (come on, that really isn't too much to ask for,
is it?) It's a pretty good job, although that rough days
really
do suck. And you can only take so many guys in big sunglasses
tell you that they eat babies and then laugh with their trophy
girlfriend as they walk away. Good times indeed.
But I do
work with really great people, and they keep me coming back for more :)
Aside from this stuff. . . I am the kind of person that would have no
qualms about going into personal stuff like family, relationships,
etc. But I honestly have no idea who subscribes to this thing
and
I wouldn't want to be uncouth. Feel free to give me a ring if
you
want to learn more about me or have a good heart to heart.
Check us out on iRadio LA
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