I recently got to borrow an old-school Univox drum machine. It’s strange and unique. Where else can you get volume sliders for Quijada, Guido AND Tambourine. Not only does it have patterns for Mambo, Rumba and Bossanova, but many others including Merinque, Beguine and Habanera. What more could you want?

I felt like making some droning noise so I ran the Univox through my Strymon El Capistan and blueSky reverb pedals. I recently started working with my friends over at Strymon and am really loving what they’ve come up with so far. I’m looking forward to working on some more kick-ass effects with them in the future.

I decided to turn this drum machine effects noise fest into a more involved piece, so I took the original unaltered drum/effects track and added piano, guitar, drums, vocals and some synths. For the video I decided to follow jack conte’s “video song” format, where:
1. What you see is what you hear (no lip-syncing for instruments or voice).
2. If you hear it, at some point you see it (no hidden sounds).

Hope you like it.

When I’m not busy working on music, I occasionally take my Miata out to the racetrack. Here’s some of the laps from my June 2010 race at Buttonwillow Raceway. Out of 17 cars, I started 13th and finished 11th. Not too bad for a terrible race car driver!

More on my illustrious racing career here!

You send me audio. I remix and sing. Together we make an album.

After a little time off I’ve finally been able to spend some time in the studio with all of the amazing samples and audio tracks that everyone has sent to me. Here is a new track for my Creative Commons collaboration album Sounds Like You.

All of the audio (except vocals) has been provided by a group of great musicians and sound creators. I chopped up, remixed, and mangled their samples to create my new track, titled “Teardown”.

Teardown – STEAL

Here’s who you’re hearing along with their original unmodified audio sample(s):

David Patrikios – drums  
Brian Page – drums  
Chris Fudurich – drum loop  
James Santiago – guitar  
Tim Godwin – acoustic guitar  
Eric Pokorny – acoustic guitar  
Dan Friel – noises  
Jon Eric – noises  
Chris T. – bass  

Get more info about the collaboration album and how you can get involved.

Lyrics:

pieces are found, they’ll never go away
i need to know if you are going with him
i’ll take your grief, if you just calm down for a while.
you need to start all over in a small shit town!

we are all afraid of nothing real
it’s just a place for you to feel
all of the people you love go away until it starts again.

i’ll flip the car, the road will be the best part now.
crashing again, this time it’s much too broke to fix
i don’t know where i end and you begin.
you are a wall my soul just can’t get over!

look around, see the faces
keep eyes closed, don’t be erased.
look around, see your face

you can be somebody else. tear down the walls!

We’re walking around, me and the realtor, looking at small yellow houses. I see one to the left that is a stucco California-style house and ask, “oh is that yours?” We then turn around to our right, and we walk up to this house for sale. The realtor grabs the info sheet from the for sale sign and says he can get more info from the seller. I look up and notice that the house consists of just a huge stone concrete grayish yellow staircase in the front, a chimney in the back, and a cement slab foundation, all grayish yellow. I can tell that they’re very old. “Isn’t that a teardown?” I ask the realtor. “That’s not a teardown” he says, “This is a teardown” and points across the street to the right, showing me a nearly identical yard and foundation, but with no staircase and chimney. I realized that a teardown meant not being able to sell as a complete house. He then said, while talking about the house on the right, “You can imagine what this place would look like with a newer staircase, maybe a spiral staircase”. I said “Maybe something like across the street, simple and straight up.” I thought maybe even a ladder attached to the side of the concrete block could work too, but maybe too difficult to carry your groceries home. I then realized that I was in Easthampton. I looked up and noticed that the room was big and had a 1940s feel to it. There were a few people in town wearing 1940s clothes, and there was a shelf with items and a ceiling fan from that area. We walked to the right out of the town common to a dark table with a bunch of coffee mugs on the table, all filled, covered and ready to grab. There is an old woman sitting at the table. The realtor sits down, he’s now a wise old man. The question is asked, by either the old man or woman, “How do you feel about death?” The old man takes a coffee and responds, “Life is like spices, growing sweeter each season.” He then says, “So many things have been so many other things.”

For the remainder of 2010, all profits from the sale of my t-shirts, stickers and CDs will be donated to the National Wildlife Federation and the Nature Conservancy to aid in the gulf region rehabilitation / BP oil spill aftermath. British Petroleum and Halliburton can suck a giant bag of donkey balls.

So why don’t you go ahead and buy a State Shirt cow t-shirt? How about a nice Los Fucking Angeles t-shirt? Or my first album Don’t Die? Or my most recent album This is Old?

july 31, 2001 – march 27, 2010.

dearest Edison, my best friend, my first canine companion, you were one extraordinary dog. you gave us so much happiness, i am honored to have been a part of your life. i know your spirit will watch over us. i can’t wait for the day that we get to meet again. i love you, Edison.

Over the last several months, y’all have created some really amazing remixes of my songs. I just wanted to showcase a few on youtube. I found some cool public domain footage and did a quick mashup. Check it out!

This is Old remix – Sloan
Fell Out of the Sky remix – Chris Fudurich
Computer remix – Diode
Fell Out of the Sky remix – Hans Atom
Up Up Up Up Up remix – Illi
Time to Go remix – Spinmeister
I Hate California remix – Blitch Bango
Chemma Chi remix – DJ Rkod
Conway Station Road remix – The Orchestral Movement of 1932

Download the full versions of the songs on the Remix page!

Just recorded a quick little live looping improvisation in my studio. No instruments, just voice and effects. All recorded live, nothing prerecorded or overdubbed after the fact.

If you’re looking for something to remix, feel free to grab the audio from this track (and other tracks of mine): http://stateshirt.com/remix

Hey. I just finished recording a cover of “Souvenir” by OMD (Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark). I’d consider this mix a “beta” mix, but it’s pretty close. Listen below:

Souvenir – DOWNLOAD

I haven’t created a music video for my cover version yet, but for the time being check out the original OMD video below. I’d like to do a similar video, except I’ll be driving my racecar wearing my full race gear and helmet. And instead of driving off into the distance at the end, I’ll do a bunch of donuts and smokey burnouts.

I started this song last week with hopes it would be the next SongFight winner! But I just can’t find the right way to finish this tune. I like that it’s mellow and relatively catchy but I just wasn’t really inspired to complete it.

Maybe there’s something about it that you like?

If so, please go ahead and grab the source files and finish it any way you’d like. Cut it up, mash it up, sing over it, rap over it, turn it into a funky house / disco trance medley.

Send me your track when you’re done and I’ll post it up here (and on my facebook and twitter pages).

Here’s my unfinished track:

Double Take (unfinished) – DOWNLOAD

And here are the raw source files (all of the individual tracks used in the song). They’re also up on ccMixter. Have at it!

SOURCE FILES: MP3 source (50MB) – WAV source (235MB)

All samples licensed as Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial.

…..:::…..:::….:::…….:::….::…..:::…:::……

UPDATE! – March 2: Glenn Case has warped the space time continuum and added his lyrics and vocals in record time. Check out his track:

Double Take (State Shirt and Glenn Case) – DOWNLOAD

I knew writing a song and creating a video every week in 2010 would be tough. The idea behind this was to get me back into writing and creating again. Which it has! Definitely! I haven’t slept much in the last two months. So after 8 songs and 8 videos, I’ve finally hit a wall where I’ve created a song that I’m not really that into. So it’s left me in a bit of a predicament. Do I go ahead and post my mediocre song just to say that I didn’t miss a week in my 2010 challenge? Or stab the song to death and never let it see the light of day?

Well this week I’m going with song death.

It’s not that the song is that terrible, I worked on it for the last 3 days, but it just didn’t seem to go anywhere. And I just kept adding more and more guitar parts to try to cover up the fact that it’s just not a very good song. Or at least I couldn’t figure out how to make it good.

So, while I’d really like to keep up with my song a week/video a week thing, I just can’t post a song that I’m not that into.

I’ll try not to miss many more weeks but I will miss this one. I’ll try again next week.

Time for another beer.

Just put together a music video for my new song “Please Stop”. Everything was shot in los angeles.

Please Stop – DOWNLOAD

lyrics

please stop believing
that nature will care for you
crawl up the river
and embrace your solitude.

heartbeat slows, your wounds won’t close?

please stop believing
that your friends can keep you safe
squeeze your little hands
they tingle, but you can still feel

don’t come around here anymore
it’s the only thing i ask of you

please stop your talking
who is that in my head?
please stop, i don’t want to go
i know you barely had a chance to know
please let me go quickly
will it hurt? i could be wrong.

Ok. So this week got a little bit busy and I wasn’t able to complete a new song for my song-a-week challenge.

But I’ll make up for it by posting TWO (count ‘em, two) songs from the archives that haven’t ever really been officially “released”. Both of these are collaborations that I did with other artists. hope you like ‘em.

First up is Hostess Mostess’ “Ease Up on the Drugs”. Last year, Brent Stansfield (Hostess Mostess) sent me guitar and vocal parts of his unfinished track for use on my Collaboration Album. But when I listened to what he sent, I realized his song elements had too much potential on their own, so I decided hey I’ll just pick up where he left off. So I wrote some parts around what he’d already finished, added drums, bass and some more guitars. So here’s Hostess Mostess featuring State Shirt:

Hostess Mostess & State Shirt – Ease Up on the Drugs – DOWNLOAD

Next is Ethrikios’ “Framed”. This was a SongFight entry that my friend Dave Patrikios and I put together last year. He did most everything, I just wrote a couple of the parts, played some guitar and did the backup vox on the chorus. Everything else is DJ Davey P. check it out.

Ethrikios – Framed – DOWNLOAD

Song-a-week / video-a-week #5. “Let’s Get Bloody”. Recorded for the upcoming SongFight. This was recorded live, nothing prerecorded, nothing overdubbed after the fact… all live looping.

Let’s Get Bloody – DOWNLOAD

This was recorded live using two Gibson Echoplex Digital Pro’s, a Casio SK-8, Yamaha DX21, Line 6 DL4 and my voice. If you have any questions or comments about the setup, gear or the song in general, please comment below.

So today I was both excited to learn that Glenn Case had done a cover of my song “Highway”. I was so flattered that I figured I’d return the favor and cover one of his songs. Glenn is likely the most prolific songwriter that I’m aware of. He has well over 400 songs for download on his site, and this one, “Pencil Me In” is one of my favorites. You can find the original here and plenty of other goodies at glenncase.com.

Below is his cover of “Highway” and my cover of “Pencil Me In“.

Song-a-week #4. Just finished a new song, “The Road to Hana”.

The Road to Hana – DOWNLOAD

you mustn’t be afraid of what’s to come
the road is dark and there’s no turning back
the whales will only guide you so far.
but then you’re on your own, you must swim all the way.

are we there yet?

it will feel like there’s no destination
it will feel like you’re all alone.
but we will be there right by your side!
but we will be there guiding you back home.

are we there yet?
are we here?

you can join us, on hana lane.