I figured I would start updating y’all on our crazy indie rock adventures again.  Lately, more than ever, I’ve felt like I might be the luckiest man on the planet.  I live in the most exciting city in the world.  I get to cram musical instruments into my crappy Oldsmobile (which I saved from death for 1,000 bucks, 3 years ago, and now it’s been all over and over America) and drive my good friends to random places to play the music I wrote.  I get to travel all over the place and meet really sweet, amazing people who tell me really nice things about my music.  Sometimes, the prettiest girls on the planet talk to me.  Usually it’s to ask me for Brett’s number, but still.

Our friend Bobby from Benyaro (NYC) played bass for these shows.  He is the funniest man-human on the planet.

We went to DC and VA Beach last week.  DC was a bit of a drag as the weather was a downpour.  But we still had a handful of superfans, who were amazing, as usual.  Wire, Sugar, Madison.  North, Virginia, Big Girl.  Also, we snuck my underage friend Hanna in (the show was 21+).  I made it my mission to get her in.  These guys are obsessed with checking IDs, too, there should have been Mission Impossible music playing.  I got carded myself like three times.  We pulled off a James Bond plan involving changing jackets, hiding behind drums and in bathrooms.  And it worked.  We got her upstairs.  If the venue reads this and is mad, I’m really sorry and I love you.

Virginia Beach was amazing.  Brett and I drove from Richmond and we took a blond lady named Heather along and she convinced me that my song She-Wolf is actually about Vampires.  Heather sat front seat middle, poised for launch.  Luckily no wrecks.  Brett and I played Bocce Ball on the sunny warm beach with Melissa and Tristan.  The show was our best ever, maybe.  Melissa came onstage to sing Little Bird and Quinn (we had practiced in the car before the show) and presented me with a gift (a fisherman made of shells).  A great turnout with freaking sweet people.  264 was out of commission all night, so instead of waiting in traffic, we got a 6-pack of adult beverages and hung out on the beautiful beach (I didn’t have any adult beverage, as I was driving).  I made Brett and Heather do a little Abercrombie & Fitch photoshoot.  Brett and I left for NYC the next morning.  95 was stopped traffic all the way up, so I said “screw it”.  We got off on a random exit and found our way all the way up to NY on backroads.  It was the most beautiful drive of my life, maybe.  Perfect weather.  Beautiful green grass.  This moment right before Spring explodes, and you know you only have good things to look forward to.

Then back to NYC, which the warmth and sun has totally transformed, and I got a haircut next door at High Profile.

Before:

During:

After:

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Here’s BeauregardB’s excellent entry for the low-budget video contest.  Dude.  This thing is great.  This is just what I had in mind.

Endearing! Entertaining!  Also, the edits to the music are exquisite.

Anyone got more?  All you have to do is download Sugar or Big Girl and make a mash-up video.  I don’t know if that’s the right term, but don’t tell me cause I don’t care.  The Vegas Big Girl vid uses original footage, but you don’t have to put that much effort in.  You can use the hard work/footage of someone else.  Be creative and weird.  The winner gets a lousy hundred bucks!

Thanks for buying the Sugar single, everyone!  We raised ONE MILLION DOLLARS!  Jk but a few hundred anyway.

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Tomorrow – Washington, DC.

Thursday – Virginia Beach, VA

April 15 – New York City

May 15 – New York City

May 29 – Rhode Island???  Yes!!!

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BUY IT NOW!!

Whew.  Jeez.  That took forever.  Sugar might be my favorite song I’ve ever written.  Here’s the single, finally.  This music is turning out to be more than the sum of its parts!!!

OK, so here’s the deal!!!  Buy the single for whatever you can afford.  You can set the price to whatever you want to give.  The minimum is 50 cents as a homage to the rapper 50 Cent.  And also because that’s the amount paypal charges me per item.  But other than that, you can choose to pay whatever you want.  The suggested price is 5 dollars.  But I also suggest 1,000 dollars.

When you buy the Sugar single, you’ll be given a link for download.  I encourage you to email this link to anyone and everyone.  Get this single to everyone you know for free.  But just remember…

We need your help making this next album! If you can spare a few bucks, buying this single will give us more of a boost than you know.  The band and I are just regular guys, except much poorer.  We work our butts off literally 12 hours a day, except we don’t get paid for it, and we spend what we do make on traveling and recording.  We’re eating like college kids, and sometimes, we can’t even afford beer.  We’re working on the best Chris Merritt album ever made, the one that will launch this music all over the globe, but we need your help!  SO BUY IT NOW!!!

The Sugar Single includes:

• Sugar (Single)

1. Sugar (my favorite song ever)
2. Favorite (my favorite song ever)
3. Pep-Pep (also my favorite song ever)
4. Little Bird (super crappy preview version)
5. Secret Track
6. Secret Track

• Cover and artwork
• Every official Tuesday Tape, with cover art
• Extra pictures and video
• If you buy the Big Girl or Sugar single, your name will put in the credits of Virginia Is For Hoverers (Part II)!!

But most importantly

Here she is:

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after work

ha this is getting ridiculous

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hold your horses folks.  this weekend was spent looking for a job because i’m broker than you can even imagine.

I drove to Easton on Friday through the rain like a captain on a storm-thrashed ship.  We had a good show and then I drove back from 3 to 7:30 AM.  Then I slept until work, playing in Manhattan, which I haven’t been paid for in two months.  I’m starting to worry.  Hence the job search.

Then trains were all messed up so I got home Saturday at like 3 am, soaked to the bone and sick of the torrents of drizzly cold rain.  Then I slept till noon and finally finished the vocals for Favorite, but by then Bobby was over for rehearsal for tonight’s show.  We sound great right now.  (Come out to see us tonight at 8 or 9 at the Trash Bar in Brooklyn, by the way.  Check it out)

Today was spent mastering Pep-Pep and Favorite.  I still need to package everything together.  SORRY GUYS!!!  I’m working on it.  Now we rehearsed again and we’re leaving soon for the show.

I won’t put another misjudged date on this thing, but if I had to bet, I would bet on tomorrow morning.  I’ll try to finish before I go to the temp agency.

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You may have noticed that yesterday was the release date for the second single.  Or, apparently not.  You can see that we run a pretty tight ship here at Chris Merritt Industries!  Apparently my self-imposed deadlines are more like guidelines.  But then again, the Sugar single release has turned out to be much bigger and better than we even imagined.  Along with starving and working and gigging and traveling, the trio has been working its collective butt off to finish this thing.  The new release date is……..drumroll……..Monday!

First of all, there’s the new single, Sugar.  Somehow, a crappy demo of this song leaked on to the internet a couple years ago, and it’s since been my #1 most requested song ever at shows.  It hasn’t even properly been on a record, until Demos Of Nod, but even then it was that same little keyboard demo with me doing my best impression of David Bazan.  Anyway, we’ve finally done it up proper; it really turned out to be more than the sum of it’s parts.  Brett put awesome percussion on this thing.  There’s lots of rad background vocals and Jacob put sweet melodic weird synth lines over his bass parts.  The energy is just huge.  In the years 1950-1999, Sugar would have been a huge radio hit.  As it stands, it will tear up those internet radio charts OH BOY!

Then comes Favorite.  Dustin and Al and me recorded this out in Salt Lake a few weeks back.  This song fills my heart with hapiness.  The Utah Trio was at it’s tightest when we recorded this, and we did 11 takes, which I’ve been painstakingly editing together for days now.  This song and the performance is so strong that I think this might end up on the final record, but in a Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, screwed-up kind of way.  Maybe Jacob will mix it to that next level of weird greatness, and Brett might add some bells and whistles.  But for now, it’s a straight-up rock and roll track and I can’t stop listening to it.

There’s also a song called Pep-Pep.  It’s this bizarre, chromaticy guitar song that I’ve been playing every night in bed as I go to sleep.  I’m strangely addicted to it.

So along with Sugar and the two b-sides, Favorite and Pep-Pep, the new single release will also contain two rough-mixes of potential album tracks, Little Bird and Drug.  Also included with the new single release will be every Tuesday Tape ever recorded!!!  There will also be some of my crappy drawings as usual!!!!  You’ll also get a video thank-you message and maybe a couple of other goodies.  For a mere 5 dollars American, all of this is yours!  Alternately, you can get your friend to email you the tracks which is free.

I figure there is only one real reason people pay for music these days;  to support the artist.  I think it’s beautiful and natural that people can get music and media for free now.  I think that when people can afford it, they would usually rather support the artist, but it’s great that po’ folk can still feed their brains with succulent information.

And speaking of po’ folk, Brett and Jacob and I could really use some of that support I was talking about – we need every penny we can get to finish Virginia Is For Hoverers (Part II).  It truly is turning out to be more than the sum of its parts.  It’s a huge undertaking, though – we’re recording 20 songs and whittling them down to 10.  It’s a group effort and we’re all working for hours a day on this thing and spending all our own cash on it.  And that’s tricky to do because we don’t have any at all.  Anyway, I say all that to say this:  get your hands on this single on Monday.  Download it from a friend.  Start seeding a torrent file.  And by all means, once you get your hands on it, email it to everyone you know.  But if you have a regular job, and you can sacrifice eating your donut and coffee six instead of seven days next week, consider helping us finish this record.  Buy the single, b-sides, and load of goodies for only a fiver.

I’m sure my landlord would appreciate it.

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Shows:  Easton, MD - this coming Friday!  8 PM, Night Cat.  March 12. w/Ian Axel and Greg Holden.

Brooklyn, New York – Monday, March 15 – at The Trash Bar with Fictionist!

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I started this song today.

It’s a strange song to write during the winter in Brooklyn NY.  PS right click to download.  That goes for the video contest too! (see below)

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Hey guys!!!  I’m backlogged. I’ve been having crazy indie-rock man-adventures all over the place.  I’ll have to tell you about them.

BUT FIRST

I propose a Chris Merritt low-budget music video contest! To promote Virginia Is For Hoverers (Part II), out May 1st, 2010, choose either Big Girl or Sugar (the upcoming single, to be released March 11) and put together a music video mash-up – you can use old movies, rare animation, funny out-of-context tv shows – whatever you want! Choose something that looks great when in the context of the new songs. I figured this would be a fun way to get these new singles on YouTube, where strangely, most people go to listen to music on the internet.

Also, if you want, you can create your own footage, of course. But the idea is to keep it simple and get ‘er done. You can also use another Chris Merritt song if you really really really want to. But I encourage the singles – Big Girl or Sugar (the album version of Sugar so far, by the way, kicks five thousand asses).

The winners will be chosen by Machine Piano aka Wes.

First Prize:

• 100 bucks!
• Signed Chris Merritt stuff
• Virginia Is For Hoverers (Part II) (special edition)

Runners Up:

• 3 Bucks!
• Signed Chris Merritt stuff
• Virginia Is For Hoverers (Part II) (special edition)

All entries will recieve a promo code to download Virginia Is For Hoverers (Part II) free on it’s release May 1st, 2010! All entries are due by April 20th! Here are some good examples: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIkWJZf33UY here’s another: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYGvqr49SVU&NR=1&feature=fvwp here’s another: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlp6haHfg1Q&feature=channel

And for inspiration here is the best animated music video I’ve ever seen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvTzT-mjZgA

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