After a busy couple of weeks of shows and practices here and there, this just feels good. Lets get the gear!
Tag: the rungs
The LOT 10 show went magnificently well! The guys from the touring act, Sool, had some old friends in the Ithaca area, so there was a nice little vibe of reunion in the air. I also learned a surprising lesson in flexibility. These guys are of a slightly older generation, and it seemed to be a later than usual night for some of their friends. Although they were scheduled to play last, they asked us to switch with them so that they could play earlier and relieve their friends of staying up super late. Diwas and I didn’t really think much of it. Here it was their show, they were only in town for one weekend, and they hadn’t seen some of these friend in many years, so of course we were like, ‘hey guys, its your show, whatever you want!’ From their response, it was evident that they were not used to playing with bands that were so flexible. Man, imagine how awkward and rigid the night would have been if we were like, ‘No guys, sorry, the line up has already been discussed, we can’t change it.’ Ha! That would have taken the fun right out of it! So anyway, the lesson learned is that when it comes to gigging with other bands, the key to having fun and ensuring a smooth event is flexibility. Things are constantly changing and you’ve just gotta roll with it. That night, with such good attitudes all around, the music was that much better. Both The Fly Rods and Sool rocked it! And here is a little home video from the first song of our set, BFF.
Well, after all of our groovy Sunday sets since the birth of the Rungs, (we’re just over a year old now!), its about time for a Friday night gig! We will be hitting the stage at Lot 10 in Ithaca tonight with our local friends, The Fly Rods, and touring rockers, Sool. We have some friends in town who have been super supportive of our music and through them we were connected to Sool, who contacted us to open for them when they came through Ithaca on a summer mini tour. I feel so lucky to have such supportive friends! (I think it helps that they like our music too 🙂 ) And after the shaky performance last weekend, I’m hoping for an awesome night tonight. It’ll make for a perfect end to the week! Plus with this line-up, Fly Rods, Rungs, Sool, its just gonna be rockin with high-energy-dance-to-the-grooves-feel-good-vibes.
Sool: http://www.soolmusic.com/
The Fly Rods: https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Fly-Rods
Well it was another exciting weekend for us, and of course, it was filled with music! 
We made it down to Atlantic City for the 4th annual Elephant Talk Indie Music Festival. Elephant Talk Indie Music Magazine’s Jerry Ryan organizes the festival each year and brings indie bands together from NJ and surrounding areas to make some noise in two neighboring music venues, The Boneyard and Le Grand Fromage, just a block away from the shore. The thing I love about Elephant Talk Indie events is how supportive the bands are of each other. It was great to see so many musicians come together and connect!
Now we didn’t play our best set ever, in fact it was our worst yet. Just prior, Diwas had been out of town recording music for one of his other projects and I had been working over-time a bit. By the time we set up at the festival, we hadn’t even rehearsed a Rungs song for two weeks (pretty much since g-roots)! To add to that, our electronics didn’t make the sound system very happy. But regardless, all shows must go on right!? And on it did. We had fun, and the folks in the audience were just radiating with positive vibrations that sent our tiredness and frustrations far out into the Atlantic Ocean somewhere. It’s so great to be surrounded by people who are in it for the music 🙂 plus we got to sign the Elephant Talk Indie guitar!
Thank you Jerry Ryan and Elephant Talk Indie Music!
Grassroots Festival recap continues… (oh yes, there is more!)
Soooo as if playing late night Saturday night with the Sutras wasn’t enough, (see my last post if you missed this!) I played again on Sunday with ‘Diwas Gurung’! Diwas, (who is the other 50% of The Rungs) also plays in other projects, including his own solo Nepalese venture, titled, ‘Diwas Gurung’. You can listen to it at his bandcamp if you are curious 🙂 http://diwas.bandcamp.com/album/adhunique
Anywhooo, his Sunday set included a mix of Nepalese folk songs, originals, and we even threw in a Rungs song, Missed Connections! The band included members of a previous band he was in, his current bandmate in his other indie-electro-pop duo ‘Photoreal’ annnnnnd me! It was quite the musical reunion. I played a mix of synth parts, electronic drum hits, guitar, and vocals. Many thanks to those guys for letting me join them!
Most importantly, check out my loud pants, compliments of Diwas 🙂 videos on the way!
Well, June began with a bang, (literally a ‘bang’ – flat tire on the way to Shindig in Brooklyn!) and closed with a mellow Sunday night set at Felicia’s in Ithaca. I’m so happy our friends, The Sunday Vipers, asked us to open for them. I mean, its an honor when anyone asks us to play with them. My reaction is always, ‘Really?! You want us to open for you??!! Yes!’ And then I am secretly flattered forever that they liked our music enough to share a bill together 🙂
This night was particularly special because I’m a huge fan of Sunday Vipers, AND the venue is practically my neighbor. Diwas and I just hop on out the door, guitars and amps in hand, and take about 20 steps to load in. The awesomeness of the night can further be summed up by fun music, delicious cocktails, good friends, a great audience and one new Rungs Facebook fan! (Yes, one. I will take what I can get!)
Here is a live song from the set! This is a new one. It’s called Indecisive. You’ll get what I mean 🙂
Thank you readers, thank you June (month of the supermoon!), and thank you Sunday Vipers for an awesome night!
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!
I must provide a recap on our recent weekend adventure.
It started over a month ago, when a good friend asked Diwas to host one of the weekly open mic nights she organizes in a newly established Brooklyn music venue called Shindig. We love getting out of town and visiting our friends, so of course he agreed, and we put it on our calendar, ‘a weekend in Brooklyn in June’. It was May at the time, so adding something to the next month’s agenda felt like such a ways off. But boy does time fly! The weekend was here before we knew it and ended it up being the perfect time to get out of town.
We hit the road early Saturday morning only to get an unexpected surprise on the way….
Our first band flat! I had never gotten a flat before, so I kind of thought it was exciting. The next surprise was that Diwas, a guy who I’ve never seen do much car work, got in there and successfully put on the spare like a pro. Definite road trip buddy! We were back on the road in no time 🙂
We drove for about two hours with the little donut spare, and despite feeling extra nervous in the nyc tunnels, the ride was pretty smooth all the way to Shindig! Our luck returned when we got to the venue in time, found a parking spot right outside, and enjoyed a night of entertaining and diverse open mic performances. Here is some of the crew:
‘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!
Any other musicians out there with their own ‘close but no cigar’ songs??? Lets work on these babies!
Gotta love playing those covers of our favorite bands! About a Girl by Nirvana is a fun one, and at our last show at the Chapter House we had a special guest join us on drums!
therungsband.com 