For the love of music!

Yay for music blogging! I love the coming together of musicians from all around the world and the exchanges of creative and diverse music achieved through blogging.

Annnnd…

I am super excited to share that the UK based-music blog ‘The Sound of Confusion’ has included The Rungs on their ‘Daughters of Ether – The Heroines of Modern Dream-pop’ playlist! There are lots of great female musicians on here and I’m so happy to be included.

http://thesoundofconfusionblog.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/daughters-of-ether-heroines-of-modern.html

Enjoy that playlist and all of the great music out there!

close but no cigar

‘Front Desk Runaway’ is one of those songs that Diwas and I have been omitting from our set list. For some reason, something about it just didn’t sit well but we couldn’t pin point exactly what was wrong. So, we decided to avoid this song at our live shows, at least until we would have time to plop ourselves down and give it a good working out. As many of you songwriters know, some songs just don’t quite make the cut. We thought Front Desk Runaway would be one of our ‘close but no cigar’ songs.

Anyway, I’m not sure why we added it to our set last month at the Elephants for Autism Festival. We hadn’t changed anything since I first wrote it back in February, but I guess we both just missed it!

Turns out, we had a lot of fun playing it! So much fun that the song even creeped onto another set list, last Sunday’s show. Not to duplicate content, (I already posted the Front Desk Runaway from Elephants for Autism Festival), but here is a live video of the same song from our Chapter House show last Sunday. This neglected song just needs a little TLC!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dznKb82GTRE

Any other musicians out there with their own ‘close but no cigar’ songs??? Lets work on these babies!

A couple of firsts

Well, the show Sunday was definitely a success. After playing gigs in a few other places these past few weeks, I was surprised to feel cozy and comfy in a room I was familiar with.  It’s the first time I’ve had that feeling playing a live show. It felt good! I think our songs are getting more consistent too, now that we’ve been playing them out a lot. Where I used to think, ‘okay here comes the next part of the song, don’t mess up!’ (and then of course I immediately, loudly and confidently would strike a sour note that instantly resulted in some funny facial expressions, ‘what was that?!’), I am now feeling an ease for the first time, almost like some of the songs are becoming automatic. I can just sink into them and rock out. It’s a great feeling!

rungs chappySome other firsts of the night include:

Inviting one of my good girlfriends up to play drums and sing some of her own original songs.

Having another friend play drums on a few covers, (Blur and Nirvana).

Playing with our openers, Erika and Doug, whose music was just enchanting. I am definitely booking another show with them soon!

So, I’m loving these new first time experiences, all thanks to music! The last first would be getting this funny picture, compliments of my dad 🙂

Sunday Funday

It’s so much fun performing music, I just want all of my friends to get to do it too! We have another Sunday show coming up on June 2nd, and this time, I’ve invited some friends to come and play with us. I’m really looking forward to sharing the stage!

Meanwhile, my Photoshop skills are still in their toddler phase, but with each poster I make,  I will hopefully slowly improve….

Here is the poster for Sunday 🙂 

 rungs poster dad prop yell

..its a dual purpose poster with a little inside joke as I found someone’s old prom picture. hehehehehe 🙂 boy were they psyched to see this up around town!

Boogie Shakedown!

What a fun Memorial Day Weekend! Thanks to some very nice friends, we were able to play at a local outdoor party, an annual Boogie Shakedown. The air was a little chilly for late May, but clear skies let the heat of the sun keep us warm. Our set was a rough one, but a few musical kinks can’t stop us from having a blast while playing live 🙂  It’s just encouragement to keep practicing! Plus, we’re our own worst critics right?

rungs at boogie shakedown

There’s no place better than a sunny outdoor party with friends, food, and fuzzy beverages to enter new musical territory..

 

Front Desk Runaway

Luckily there was some video caught of our Elephants for Autism Music Festival set at the Boneyard in Atlantic City! This is currently our roughest song, but we decided to give it a go. Not too bad, but definitely time to vamp up the vocal practices!! Check it out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Ymi4MsgXbQ

Note the cool sparkly lights in the background. We need to get some cool sparkly lights!

 

My first sick show!

Okay, not sick like ‘rad!’ or ‘awesome!’ .. more like under-the-weather-sick. It was pretty rough, but I couldn’t let a stupid cold keep me from playing music!  We played in a local art gallery, with beautiful artwork hanging on all four walls, completely covering them from the floor to the ceiling. The room wouldn’t have been the same without the art. We stood surrounded by intricate colors and designs and it felt wonderful to play music amidst such creativity!  I swear there were charges of energy bouncing off the walls, giving off a buzz. Here is a video of our last song of the set, and guess what, its ‘Trees!’

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74LW_RDtXQ8&feature=youtu.be

My first sick show = 100% worth it 🙂

 

Milking – Deerhoof cover from our LOT 10 show!

Before watching this video, I must first tell you the story of the drums. It goes all the way back to when I was a confused little highschooler.   My parents temporarily decided to reward my sisters and I for getting good grades and a drum kit arrived after    my one-year-younger-than-me sister got honor roll. Now none of us really knew how to play music, so setting up a drum kit in my sister’s room was a horrible recipe for loud aimless noise.  As some of you might know, drums have this way of hooking you into a trance. Once you sit there and start playing, its like a black hole of time! (Is this just me?)

The drums survived our beatings through high school, and when my sister moved up to live with me, you bet she brought them! With aged hardware and parts missing, they were first used in the attempted formation of my girl band. I met a girl, she wanted to start a band. Then we met another girl, she wanted to play drums. I happened to a have the drum kit, and we took it from there! We didn’t know a thing about setting up or tuning drums, and we shamelessly used random kitchen supplies to make up for missing parts, like the high hat that we concocted from small grilling sheets. Yes this really happened.

The drums now live in my apartment. New and improved with replaced parts, the drums on the premises come in super handy when friends stop by to jam. They’ve also allowed my husband and me to practice at the same skill level. I am a beginner at guitar, and he is a beginner at drums. Our excitement about this resulted in a recent crazy idea, ‘Lets bring them to our show!’

The best part about our band is that anything goes, so bring the drums we did! It was a blast 🙂

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0AsSWnGG70

 

 

 

Lets play more shows please!

The best part about loading out after last Sunday’s show was knowing that we have another show just around the corner!  This time it is with a fellow local Ithaca band, Powder the Moon, featuring music by our good friend, Gabe Tavares. For anyone interested, you can listen to his music here: https://www.facebook.com/GabeTavares/app_2405167945

Having a show to look forward to on the calendar makes my days leading up to it feel so sweet 🙂

At our last show, my camera died while were playing, so hopefully I will get some good video from this one to share!

the rungs @ lot ten