(First of all, don’t forget, show in NYC at Sullivan Hall at 8:30 pm TOMORRA)

I’m at Disneyland Hotel right now!  I don’t have a room, but I’m on the internet in the lobby! Leaving for NY at 4 in the morn.

The title and first two sentences of this post were designed to evoke childlike excitement and happiness!  Now, I hit you with really really bad news!!  Ready?!! Great!!!  The next Chris Merritt album isn’t going to be even close to done on May 1st!  Oh boy!!  We currently lack the resources to create the most amazing album ever made!!!  HoorayyyY!!!

Don’t worry.  We’re working on this thing, and it sounds 100 times better than any other musical album ever made by a man or woman human.  I don’t want to cut any corners at all, and so we’re really not settling for less.  I felt like VA Hoverers Pt. 1 and Demos Of Nod and even Pixie And The Bear were all compromised by severe budget and time constraints.  I also want real distribution and marketing on this release, which could be within our grasp.  I guess I could make another album full of my best-written songs, hastily and half-assedly produced, but…..I’m ready for something better.  Even the two singles, Big Girl and Sugar have gained new parts, and lyrics, mixing, etc, and become more ultimate since their release.  Favorite and Wire have come into their own, too, with newer versions.  On top of that, there are 10 more songs that haven’t even been tracked.  Over 20 in all.  We love them all.  Only ten will make the final cut.

I don’t have a release date.  I’ll just say…..soon.  As in, months away.  This summer probably.

If anyone is actually saddened by this news, if anyone out there cares, I say to you, thank you for your support and love.  I’ll be updating the Tuesday Tapes with new songs every week and bringing you updates as we hammer details out.  We’ve managed to round up some funding, and we might even have real distribution and marketing with this thing.

If you’re still sad, here’s the worst picture of me ever taken:

Chris Merritt, Orange County, CA, 2010.  Photo by Wes Nease.

UPDATE:  Don’t forget to come out to the show in NYC Thursday.  Sullivan Hall, show starts at 8:30 PM.  Also playing: Shannon Corey and Tim Be Told.

I’ve been writing, but traveling and too busy to tape ‘em. Here’s a b-side from the Sugar single (I particularly like this song):

Falling asleep on the plane to California while istening to Richard Dawkins read his book The Ancestor’s Tale.

I was on the chapter dealing with our 195 millionth grandparent, the mudskipper. A fish that had the tenacity and sport to venture onto land, evolving into an air-breathing walker.

Dawkins says,

“I like the idea that we are descended from some creature which, even if it was different from a modern mudskipper in many other respects, was as adventurous and enterprising as a little dog: the nearest thing, perhaps, to a dog that the Devonian had to offer? A girlfriend of mine from long ago explained why she loved dogs: ‘Dogs are such good sports.’ I think the first fish to venture out onto the land must have been an archetypal good sport, whom it would be a pleasure to call ancestor.”

The vast valley of time that seperates us from this common ancestor is almost impossible to really grasp. Millions of years. A hundred years, a thousand, ten, a hundred thousand, a million, hundreds of millions. But it all happened and the process was never shut down fully, and millions and millions of little creatures survived and reproduced and died, and now we sit here, the product of the best survivors, the .000001% who made it, and found mates, and made babies.

So, I was listening to Dawkins talk about these ancient creatures, more ancient than we are equipped to grasp (we never evolved the capacity to grok such huge amounts of time, and never wanted to, until recently), and I was falling asleep, in that dream-hallucinating state between wake and sleep (the same state Carl Sagan shows is responsible for most “alien abductions” and demon-haunted madness), and I truly grokked, for a second, this vast amount of time. How truly amazing it is that such a creature existed, so very long ago, and gave rise to our lives. I was there on that shore, for a couple seconds, watching this creature struggle against all odds, and I really saw him, and grokked him. He was really there. He was struggling but happy to struggle and happy to be alive. He is my relative, and I still carry much of his genetic code.

Bizarre. It’s so cool to be alive sometimes.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

I did nothing at all today, except around 4:30 I put on pants.

Also I watched videos online all day.  Funny/bizarre, adorable/funny, amazing, what’s the deal here, does anyone know about the arrested development movie?, funny faces.

If you like wasting time watching stupid videos follow me out on twitter.  I link to them all the time.  Also sometimes I talk about science, music, and video gamz.

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:

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.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Tomorrow – Washington, DC.

Thursday – Virginia Beach, VA

April 15 – New York City

May 15 – New York City

May 29 – Rhode Island???  Yes!!!

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

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.