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