Word on the street is that the radio tracks we have to send off to Kozy (tour administrator) for the pre-tour promotional CD will be ready by the end of this week. To make a long story short, these tracks are going to be part of a compilation of tunes from every band/artist joining us on this Ontario tour (comprehensive list to come as I find out) in an effort to promote the tour, to get the music out there to draw crowds for the shows we’ll be playing before we actually get there. I’ve heard rumours that there will be radio play and promotion in each of these cities, as well as a promotions team delegated with the task of announcing our imminent invasion by passing around flyers and putting up posters all over the place. I’ve never been too sure about how organized promotion works, or if it even exists, but I could care less; as long as it means getting our name out there, I’d give the green light to putting the SOUL PLANE name and our logo on a line of refurbished dildos.
As far as progress as a band goes, we seem to be making some: the master of the demo is slated to be in our hands by the end of February, and I’ve begun recording the vocals of my own demo as well (the intention of which is really just so that the five-track Soul Plane demo isn’t the only music-related item on sale at our merchandise stand on tour). My solo demo will feature myself, Blythe, and Nickie (former Soul Plane vocal understudy for Blythe), so I’m still very much keeping it within the family, so to speak. Even beat-wise, I’m rapping over beats I made myself, with one exception that was a custom/exclusive Deuce beat. To top it all off, Gideon co-produced one of the beats I am rapping on. But I digress.
Once Soul Plane’s demo is ready, our tracks will go up on the current website, and shortly thereafter the real (non-blogger) website will become accessible as well. Obviously, I’ll be worrying about this after the demo goes from my hands to Conor and anyone else who wants to know if we’re ‘bout it. Once all that is up and running, we will be getting shirts, hats, tuques, badges, and hoodies pressed with the Soul Plane logo on it for merchandise purposes. The band itself is currently working on a 12-13 song repertoire so we don’t bore ourselves to death playing the same old shit over and over again. Despite creativity levels having slowed down a bit due to the shifting of our focus onto prodding Dave to get the demo done, everything we come up with keeps blowing the last thing we came up with clear out of the water. Seriously, though, all this has to (and will) happen before mid-June, which is alarmingly close to the first show date of this tour.
The demo is definitely going to be what gets the ball rolling on our end: in terms of shows, we’ve been stagnant for the last several months as a band because there is simply no way of getting shows using Countdown to Launch, our first demo, as a promo tool – too much has changed: Dan Paiken is no longer with us, so there go the male vocals and lead guitar. Gideon switched from bass guitar to lead, we got a new bassist in Patrick, and Kevin no longer plays keyboard (two of the songs on Countdown to Launch had keyboard in them). Let’s face it; no one is signing us based on a demo that was made just under a year ago with a completely different sound than what we can produce today. You can’t shit on a cupcake, call it icing, and expect people to dig in, right? Now, thanks to our demo, we have an accurate representation of our band and its music. Once we put it in Conor’s hands, as long as we do our part musically and meet the guy halfway, I’m more than positive that he will be able to hook us up with more shows than we can handle, just like he did last summer. And we’ve only stepped our game up since then.
So, all this being said, get the wax out of your ears and the sand out of your vaginas, because once we take off, it’s smooth cruising at 20 000 feet. We may decide to never land.
Hibernation is over. And we’re real hungry.
