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.

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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.

Over the last year or so i’ve given my fair share of free promotion to thesixtyone.com. a site that used to be one of my favorite music websites. that is until they broke it.

well they did more than just break it. they also managed to alienate their most fervent supporters.

t61 was (note past tense) an excellent place to discover new music. and as a musician it was a great place to be able to interact with and talk to people who like my music.

but t61 pretty much killed all of that when they launched their radically changed site last week. they removed just about everything that made it a unique place for listeners and artists to converge. all of the community features, posting comments, the great way you could discover new music. everything gone. in favor of a new design with big pretty pictures. i figured, hey, they’ll probably add some of this stuff back once the work out the kinks. but instead, they’ve taken on this ridiculously arrogant attitude, blocked all communication and ignored thousands of facebook and twitter complaints and suggestions. and pissed off their most passionate users, listeners and artists alike.

sure, you can do whatever you want with your website, even if that includes pissing off every one of your users. but i wouldn’t expect to be around long. it’s a bummer since all of my friends and fans there have left the site. And it makes me look like a schmuck for all of those times I’ve recommended their site.

The day it all went down I wrote and recorded a little protest song called “61 Ways”. I know it sounds ridiculous to write a protest song about a website. But I just couldn’t believe how egotistical and oblivious they were being. It’s sort of like a break up song. And a song about not having to put up with anyone’s arrogance. Fuck that shit.

61 Ways – DOWNLOAD – Lyrics

Are you a company that wants to alienate all of your customers? Read on:
- movement sixtyone
- I used to like thesixtyone
- dear thesixtyone
- an open letter to thesixtyone
- thesixtyone: life and death
- the redesign of T61 and listening to your users

And if you’re looking for a new site to discover music, try out Uvumi.

So what do you make of all this?

this week i’ve fulfilled my video-a-week requirement with a dumb song about my beard. the stop motion took a few hours to do but it was nice to finally get a haircut and shave this terrible beard.

Welcome to Week #3 in the 2010 State Shirt song-a-week video-a-week extravaganza and all-star revue. I wrote this one for SongFight. You should definitely head on over there and listen to all the songs in the fight.

Keep All Your Promises – DOWNLOAD – Lyrics

No lip-syncing, no instrument-syncing. What you see is what you hear. Hope you like it!

Don’t forget to subscribe

Please subscribe to my YouTube channel, where all of this video-a-week stuff will be posted. They’ll also be on my FaceBook page. Come on and join me there too!

Let me know if you have any suggestions for this project. Video ideas, cover song suggestions, questions about my gear, or anything else. I’d love to hear from you. Please comment below!

So I took a look back at the last 10 years and realized that I’ve only released maybe 30 songs. On one hand I’m happy that I’ve had the opportunity to create this music, collaborate with others and even just have some gear in this small bedroom studio. On the other hand, 30 songs in 10 years is only 3 songs a year. That’s pretty pathetic. Not that it’s necessary to be prolific. But it’s apparent that I’ve only spent a small part of my life working on music in the last 10 years. Or at least finishing it. I have gigabytes of unfinished songs sleeping in the corners of my studio.

I’ve been following a couple artists that have really inspired me over the last few weeks (namely Amanda Palmer and Jack Conte). I’m inspired by the fact that they are creative at every turn and make a career for themselves by being an artist every day. I’m done being an artist every 2 to 3 weeks. I’m sick of this being a hobby. So what do I do? Put music first and stop fucking around.

A song a week. AND a video a week.

Ok I know the song-a-week is not an new idea (Jonathan Coulton did it 5 years ago). But the idea is simple. Create something every day, and get some new music out there every week. The videos may range from simple acoustic performances to gear demos to full-blown music videos, depending on how much sleep I can go without.

At the end of the year I’ll compile them into albums and move the rejects to the dumpster.

Subscribe to my Youtube channel

So with that, here’s an invitation to subscribe to my YouTube channel, where all of these videos will be posted. They’ll also be on my FaceBook page. Come on and join me there as well!

Let me know if you have any suggestions for this project. Video ideas, cover song suggestions, questions about my gear, or anything else. I’d love to hear from you. Please comment below!

Here are the first couple videos from the project: “Crush” and “Frostbite”. Hope you like ‘em.

Last week I recorded the new song “Crush”. Hope you like it.

Crush – DOWNLOAD – Lyrics

This week I gave myself the challenge of creating a music video in 7 days.

Budget was $0. The shopping cart was left on my street and the paper was from old fashion and art magazines. Ok I guess there was a little expense because I bought Dragon stop motion animation software (which is awesome by the way). This is my first foray into stop motion animation but I’m sure I’ll do more… it’s incredibly time consuming but supah fun.

Thanks to Angela Heine for shooting the shopping cart footage and for pushing me around for an hour!

Now I must sleep…