Hey there, this is Mike, just wanted to share my experience filming the music video for Beneath the Tide …



Also known as having lots of fun! (Check out some pics here)

On Saturday 8/21, the band got together for the filming of the Beneath the Tide Music video.  The shooting location was this very serene, peaceful woodsy area in Long Island.  I arrived around 11 after driving down with Barry.  Barry was dressed like a traveling English professor.

Our car ride included the music of Bob Marley, Frank Zappa, Mastodon & the radio amongst other things.  It also had some great discussions on Metallica, the music industry (why it’s in such a bad state) & Frank Zappa (who is just all kinds of cool!).

So, we arrived around 11 and greeted James who had to carry in the harp (that was a surprise!).  James let me borrow the cool medieval shirt I wore for the shoot, because I don’t have any of my own (something I clearly need to fix).  As we’re walking up the path, we see The infamous TD Towers having just finished his shots.  We met the director Nick Fiore and his assistant and got to much on some bagels (always a good way to arrive to something).  From there, with harp in the background, we went straight to filming some Flute/Cello action!  

Apparently we all overlooked that I usually sit down to play, so I played standing up/Apocalyptica style instead.

  That was a lot of fun … it’s been a while since I’ve played standing up!  Anyway, so after take after take of rocking out, I got some time to chill out with the rest of the band while Barry did his individual shots in another section of our “forest”.  Hanging out in the woods, with some of the coolest folks in the world, chatting about music, life, edensong, bobble-heads, etc.  is all kinds of fun.



In the middle of hanging out, Stefan was instructed to run frantically to Barry’s location. 

Not wanting to miss the action, I followed to find everyone lauging & then Barry rocking out to a few more flute solo moments, before dressing in full Sith Regalia (well, really, just a very cool cloak … but it was Sith-y).  A few more shots, and Barry was done.

The camera needed some recharging, so we decided to break for lunch & get some food from a nearby Jewish Deli. We then relocated to our 2nd location (where there was electricity!) where we filmed the cello solo parts, as well as some moments featuring flute, cello & guitar.  I got my turn wearing the cloak and really came out looking like a Sith Lord & then Barry & I were on our way out.



I’ll have to leave the rest of the shoot to someone else …

Hi all. Barry Seroff here, your Edensong flutist. Last night we played our first acoustic set in honor of the opening of Alison Silva’s art exhibition ‘Fantasmagorium’ in Red Bank NJ. If you didn’t know, Alison is also the artist behind the cover art for Edensong’s latest release ‘Echoes of Edensong’ (to be released on August 10th), seen above.  Alison’s work has gained her a large following and much media attention over the past few years and it’s a huge honor for us to have her beautiful work to our album.   The experience of the show was memorable: it was an opportunity to play for a completely different audience with a very different sound. It was also a bit of a revelation to see Alison’s work in person, as it fits so well within the Edensong ethos.  I highly recommend a trip over to her website if you can’t make it to her show in NJ.

Bear with me as I step out of the narrative for a moment. I joined the band long after The Fruit Fallen was released, so as of yet I am basically playing the work of James Schoen (as opposed to being an active composer). So as I wandered the gallery last night, my mind naturally wandered to comparing the music of Mr. Schoen and the art of Ms. Silva. What I found was a deep connection in the fundamental spirit of the works. Both James’ and Alison’s work feature a focus on color and detail; much as one listen to a typical Edensong track will barely scratch the surface of the layers underneath, Alison’s paintings invite exploration.  Just take a look at the cover art above: the details tell a layered story about the images in the forefront. Both deal with fantastical themes; but more than that they are dealt with in new and interesting ways.

Alison’s work invokes fantasy and mystery in a way that manages to be deeply personal, fully in the sky and yet strangely grounded. These observations led me to the realization that there is no better visual representation for Edensong than Alison’s work…

the painting on the cover of Echoes of Edensong fully reflects the music inside. Looking forward to working with her in the future.

Yeah, we played pretty well too, and the acoustic arrangements sound great. We’ll be doing that more often in the future.

Hi there!

So James said you would be hearing from other band members on this blog, and indeed you will.  This is Mike (the new cello player).  We’ve got a lot of very exciting things going on in Edensong these days!
To start with, we’re currently busy rehearsing for the Terra Incognita Festival, which will be held in Quebec City on May 15th.  Please join us if you can.  It’s going to be a very special weekend.  Edensong be playing on Saturday night & sharing the stage with bands such as Discipline, Galahad, Atreal & Claire Vezina.  We are all incredibly excited to be crossing the border & playing music in the beautiful Quebec City.  It’s even more exciting for me personally, because I’ve never been out of country before. For more info, check here: Terra Incognita
In addition to pounding out the old tunes, we’re working on brand new material & coming up with some very exciting stuff.  We’ll be keeping you posted on that as much as we can.

Edensong recently recorded an unreleased song called “Lorelai” for the Haiti Projekt.

For more information, check here: http://www.thehaitiprojekt.com/
Edensong flutist Bary Seroff is premiering a “Quaker Cantata” called Democracy on March 25th at 9:00 at the Issue Project Room in Brooklyn.

A full-length chamber work for soprano and tenor vox, alto and tenor saxophones, electric guitar, electric bass, double bass, drumset and percussion, Democracy features unlikely instrumentation for what the composer refers to as a ‘Quaker Cantata’.

Edensong members Bary Seroff and Stefan Paolini will be involved in the performance.  I’m going to see if I can get one of them to post about it sometime soon.  For more info, check out Barry’s website: Democracy!

Anyway, that’s the news for now!  Stay tuned for some more in the near future.

Musically,
Mike!

So, after promising to be a frequent blogger, it has taken me, let’s see…8 months to write a followup to my first and only post. The good news is: I can’t really get any worse at keeping in touch. In fact, maybe the whole Edensong crew will start posting here regularly, and you can hear all about our day to day trivialities. Actually, if you really want to be on the cutting edge of Edensong tedium, you can follow us on our brand new *gasp* Twitter page where you can find out fun tidbits like how often we brush our teeth, and probably more likely, how the writing and recording of our new album is coming along…

New album…right…I assure you my silence these past 8 months has not been due to a lack of Edensong developments. We are, in fact, working on some new music at the moment. We’re also working on some old music. We’ve had some great shows. We also have a great show coming up. We even have some new band mates.

Where to begin? Here’s a thrilling play by play narrative…

Well, much of ‘09 has been spent preparing for our festival debut at The Three Rivers Progressive Rock Festival in August (www.3rprogfest.com). After a warm up show on Thursday night (8/6) in New York with Phideaux and 3RDegree we packed up and headed out to Pittsburgh for our Saturday AM slot. Luckily, we got to kick off the festival, and our set seemed to go over nicely. Somebody bootlegged it and put it up on youtube:

You can watch it here in case you were curious. We’ll probably release some professionally recorded audio/video from the show, but there are no immediate plans. This particular track, “Beneath the Tide”, from the 1999 album of the same name, was a good excuse to whip out some old music and play with some old friends. Ben and Tony, band mates of mine from the Echoes of Eden days joined us for a self-indulgent reunion. We had a lot of fun playing this tune, and it always seems like the audience digs this one: a bit more straight ahead and up-tempo than much of our current repertoire. This reunion actually paved the way for some lineup shuffling, as Tony has since joined the band on drums (two drummers/percussionists is pretty badass…and loud!). Along with Tones (recently back from four years in Japan) came the mysterious TD Towers to replace Mike Tee on bass. TD recorded the bass tracks on “The Fruit Fallen,” but then disappeared when we started playing live…you learn quickly not to question TD.

In September, with the new and improved Echoes-of-Edensong lineup, we decided to honor our past and record a better version of “Beneath the Tide” (we were never pleased with the original high school recording). However, before we got a chance to start tracking, we were asked to fill a last minute vacancy at the Progday festival in North Carolina… a fortunate, but nerve-racking opportunity: trial by fire for Tones and TD, who needed to learn/relearn the whole set (plus 2 additional tunes) in less than a week. After some intense rehearsal, an 11 hour drive, and some more rehearsal, the show went over quite well. It was a pretty low-key outdoor festival. If you care to see a clip, someone bootlegged this one too:

…and here is Tones and Barry jamming with the guys from the Japanese band Qui between sets. Given his fluency in Japanese, Tones was fast-friends with these guys and used his time offstage to appear on their podcast.

Again, we’ll release something more legit at some point, but it actually sounds pretty good for a handheld camcorder.

There are some photos from all our recent shows up on our myspace and facebook pages: www.myspace.com/edensong and www.facebook.com/edensongtheband , respectively. We even (finally) posted some images from our March ’09 photo shoot. Of course they’re already outdated as we’ve undergone yet more lineup changes since then.

In the meantime, I’ll leave you all with some more images from the past couple recording/writing sessions (taken with my cell phone). I’m looking forward to sharing some new music (and even some thoughts) with you soon! I hoping this novel-length blog entry begins to make up for my months of silence.

James about to record his guitar parts for “Beneath the Tide”

Tony and his coffee with marshmallows from 7-elevs…fueling some late night songwriting

Kermit-the-frog-legs Stefan gets ready to jam

Love and Music,
James

I had the idea to launch this new section of Edensongtheband.com a few months ago, but things have been rather busy (I guess I shouldn’t be complaining!), so it’s taken a while to get this thing off the ground. It’s been a really exciting time for the band, so I wanted an easily-updateable forum in which to share our progress. I’m a bit ignorant when it comes to matters of web design, so our prior method of news updates proved to be a small pain in the arse for me; as a result, it got updated very infrequently, which is too bad because there tends to be a good amount going on around here at any given time.

With our new blog “Reflection,” we’ll be able to get any Edensong related news out there quickly (certainly before it gets to our old news page).

Aside from the essential updates, you may even get to read our occasional tangential rantings on music and other things pertaining to the life of a New York musician. Best of all, you won’t only hear from me! I’m hoping to get all my Edensong bandmates up on here from time to time. Keep checking back. I bet we’ll post something exciting soon.

So, moving on to keeping you apprised of the recent happenings in the world of Edensong: The new and improved 2009 Edensong lineup has been convening frequently to rehearse material for our live show. While our current goals revolve around an August performance at 3RP in Pittsburgh (visit www.3rprogfest.com for details), I can guarantee that we’ll be hitting the stage well before that in the New York area to play some warm-up shows. We’re looking at early April, most likely. I can honestly say that the music is sounding tighter than ever before, and I can’t wait to try it out on a real live audience.

We’ll try to get out on the road soon after Pittsburgh, so write us a note at info@edensongtheband.com and tell us where you’d like to see us play. We’re preliminarily working on some other big plans as well, though I won’t be able to share until we have the details ironed out.

Because I’m so lax with our myspace updates, let me now announce the lineup. the new Edensong lineup is:

• James Byron Schoen – vocals, guitars
• Stefan Paolini – keys, vocals
• Mike Tee - bass
• Matt Bauer – drums
• Carl Baron – cello
• Barry Seroff – flute

I must say, this is a collection of extraordinarily talented and professional musicians and I feel extremely fortunate to be making music with them.

Talk to you soon,

-James