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?

You too could be part of the State Shirt CD/t-shirt mailout extravaganza and all-star revue. Clicky click to procure your place in post office history.

The new State Shirt album This is Old is finally released. I hope you like it. It’s available as a CD, MP3 files and FLAC files. And I’d be glad if you shared it with your friends (and enemies). And I’d be just as glad if you purchased a copy. Each CD comes with a neato State Shirt bumper sticker and instant MP3 downloads. Thanks to everyone for their support, I promise the next album won’t take four years.

Buy the CD or MP3s

It’s also available at Amazon, CDBaby, eMusic and will soon be on iTunes. The album is also up at last.fm and it looks like it will be on Jamendo any day now.

Less than a week until This Is Old is released. Pre-order sales of the new album have been great, they’re really piling up. Thanks so much everyone!

• Attention valued listeners: If you ordered a CD, it will be sent out soon, I’m just waiting for the bumper stickers to arrive so I can send those out too! In the meantime, anyone who has pre-ordered the CD can download MP3s of all the songs! Check the email I sent you when you ordered, the download link there is now activated.
• If you haven’t already ordered and you’re not into the whole PayPal thing, on 11.11.08 the album will be available on Amazon and CDBaby. It’s been sent off to iTunes, Napster, Rhapsody and eMusic, and will show up whenever they get around to putting it up. (And, next week I will be offering MP3 and FLAC downloads right here on my site).
• Had some CDs sent out to college radio and press, hope someone likes it enough to play it or write about it. Also sent off CDs to Pandora and Jango, maybe they’ll put this album up there?

Thanks everyone for the support.

The CDs are here, and the stateshirt.com store is up and running! Official release date is November 11, but I’m offering it for pre-ordering early, starting now!

Pay what you like (I’m asking $10). You get a nice CD with 6-panel artwork, and a link to download all of the .MP3s once the album is officially released on November 11. And for a limited time, everyone that pre-orders will also get a nice shiny State Shirt bumper sticker. So that’s it I guess, I hope you like it, and thanks for your support!

Pre-order This is Old now!

Even Edison the dog has his own copy.

The last few months have been crazy. Been working like hell to finish the new album This is Old.

Flew out to Massachusetts and had two friends (Matthew Larsen and Rebekah Dutkiewicz) contribute on a couple tracks. Spent some time shooting photos and working on the CD artwork. Got it mastered last month, and just today the CDs arrived from the manufacturer. We’re really close to the official release on November 11!

Most importantly, pre-ordering will begin this Thursday, October 23. On Thursday, come on down and order your copy (or buy more than one and give to a friend). Help me sell all of them so I can quit my job.

This is Old artwork is at the CD manufacturer, now I’m just waiting for the discs to arrive! I can’t wait to get this out there, it’s been way too long since my last album. Here’s a little preview of the artwork.

So there is a lot going on right now. Final mixes are off to Don C. Tyler for mastering. Looking forward to checking out his handiwork, since he has mastered a few albums that I love (Elliot Smith: XO, Figure 8, Hot Snakes Suicide Invoice). I know mastering is a subtle art, but if he can subtly find a way to make my album as great as those that would be super.

Apart from mastering I’m trying to keep everything else pretty DIY, I just finished designing the artwork for This is Old… I’m excited, it will be a 6-panel digipak, and features a bunch of photos I took on a soggy spring morning on the back roads of western Massachusetts, including one inquisitive cow.

I’m hoping to start online pre-ordering of the album in a few weeks. After I figure out how to make these interwebs work.

So the last few years have not been very kind to me musically. Life has been incredibly droning, wasting away in the San Fernando valley, doing the full time job and feeling fully beaten down. But I have found some precious spare moments to write and record. This Is Old is really about how I’m not going to be able to take life along this path much longer. New song This Is Old available for download now. New album coming 11.11.08. Thanks for listening.

[audio:/thisisold/01 This is Old.mp3]

New State Shirt album will be titled This is Old. Release date will be chosen very soon. Working on obtaining amazing photography for the album artwork. Had a sick fucking dream last night, hoping I can scrounge up enough money to turn it into a music video. More soon.

So this year has started off to a bit of a mess musically. New album is still not quite finished! The guy I was hoping would mix the album needed to back out. And I’ve been trying to work with an indie label over the last couple years and we just never seemed to get anything going. But I really have no one to blame but myself. It’s just taken me forever to finish writing and recording. I should have pushed myself harder to get it finished sooner but it’s a real pain for me to rush anything creative.

So how do I go about getting everything finished up? Take a 3 week road trip! Hmm, ok so maybe not the best way to finish the album, but at least the time away has started to give me a few ideas on how to get it finished up and released by late summer. I’m going to get back into SongFight a bit more and should have a few songs popping up here and there. Also the details are sketchy but there may be a couple remix releases coming out this summer. I’ll keep you posted.

After spending the last two days in Zion National Park and Bryce Canyon National Park, I’m not sure I will want to return to L.A. I think I’m just bring my laptop, a guitar and a microphone and record here.

So I’m ramping up to get my new album finished and out into the world. The thing is I’m not sure exactly how I should do it. I really like the idea of a CD and album artwork and something that you tangible that you can hold onto, and the full-length album experience. Maybe I’m just nostalgic. Ever since the first time I heard OK Computer, I had to listen all the way through. And remembering back to high school driving around in my Ford Econoline listening to Helmet Meantime album on infinite repeat. I love the idea of the album, but I’m not sure anyone else does anymore.

Should I even release a CD at all? Does anyone buy CDs anymore? Or are you happy buying tracks as digital downloads from artist websites, iTunes, eMusic, etc? Should music just be free? Or would you feel bad taking music without paying for it? Should I offer the album on a USB thumb drive? Or put together a book of art, photos and illustration that goes along with the music?

I read a good blog post by Scott Andrew, who had some similar questions last year when he was getting his new album together. It does kinda suck to have so many songs just sitting there, waiting for me to get the whole album done. I could just release them one by one on my site– as I spend random evenings working on new music. So, should I dump the whole album idea? Or really find a new and interesting way to make it work?

Look out for a new State Shirt album coming in early 2008.  I have about 15 tracks in the works, most of which were recorded here in my Los Angeles bedroom studio… although I did do a few overdubs with friends out in Massachusetts. I hope to have a few more guest stars as well, some of them will be announced here. Lastly, if I can make it happen I will have an amazing producer make it all sound shiny. And hopefully if I can get my shit together, there just might be a limited-edition EP coming in late ’07 as well. Stay tuned!