We’ve made the difficult decision to drop off our east coast tour with The Queers. We’re committed to putting out a new album this year, and it looks like we just wouldn’t be able to get both things done. The tour would cut into our writing and demo-ing time, likely pushing out the recording date, and at a certain point the album itself would get moved to a 2012 release date. We really want to put out a top notch album in 2011, and the amount of time we’re putting into it is more than we thought it would be when we signed on for this tour a few months ago.

On top of that, the Canadian government still hasn’t given all of us permission to enter the country, so we would not have been able to do Pouzza Fest or any other Canadian dates. This was unexpected, and disappointing. 

Apologies to The Queers, our booking agent, and anyone who bought a ticket to see us. We’ll be back east as soon as we can, and we’ll bring a new record with us. 

-Banner Pilot

As we said a few days ago, what Ben did at SXSW was lame and unjustified. Other bands and people have defended the punch as justified, a view that we consider to be, uh, insane. You don’t punch someone who spits on you, period. But given that by all accounts it was the first time he had punched someone, and he apologized, we felt it made sense to honor the single show we had agreed to months earlier. A lot of other people seem to equate his punch to a guy beating his girlfriend (ala Chris Brown) or something; we viewed it more as a really, really stupid spur of the moment reaction. Dumb, not justified, but not the kind of thing that would make a person have no chance at redemption. So, it was a weird thing to be caught in the middle of, it wasn’t an easy choice, and we understood the other bands who dropped off. We just decided that, based on everything we knew, we’d honor our commitment to play the festival.

Since then, though, the rest of Screeching Weasel has quit, more bands have dropped off, and no one knows if it will even happen. It’s in a weird limbo. If it doesn’t happen, we don’t want to find out so late that it becomes a pain to adjust our tour / travel plans. And if it does happen, it sounds like it will no longer resemble the show we committed to play.

In other words, it’s a pretty weird situation, and we’re going to bow out of it and will look at setting up a different show for Chicago some other time. Apologies to anyone who wanted to see us at the show. We’ll make it up, promise.

-Banner Pilot

Hey all,

We’re back from SXSW – we gained 35 twitter followers during the trip so we’re pretty stoked on that. The buzz is building.

On a serious note, what Ben did at the show was lame and unjustified. Getting spit on and having things thrown at you while on stage is annoying, but responding physically is a completely disproportionate response. I once played a show where I got hit by a firecracker - while I was pretty mad about it, I didn’t up the ante by pulling out a bazooka from behind my amp. In fact, I always leave my bazooka at home to avoid the possibility of that happening.

He should have been the bigger man and just ignore her or have security kick her out, but he didn’t. While his actions are disappointing and were uncalled for, it’s also by all accounts an isolated incident. In his 25 year career there is no history of him hitting or hating women, and he has since issued an apology. It appears to have been a really, really stupid spur of the moment action that he now regrets.

Given all that, I think he deserves a second chance, and I don’t think one isolated incident should define him or his band. If there was any history or pattern of this, we wouldn’t have agreed to play Weasel Fest in the first place.

The show in May is part of a tour we’re on that we’ve committed to. It’s already sold out and presumably people have made travel and hotel plans for it. So, given all of the above, and assuming nothing additional about the incident comes to light, we’ll honor our commitment and play the show. We totally understand the decision of other bands to drop off.

-Nate (and Banner Pilot)

(cross posted at nategangelhoff.com)

Well, it’s some random day of the month, so you know what that means: a Banner Pilot Album Three Songwriting Update! 

Let’s recap. When I posted the last update we had 6 or 7 songs. We’ve scrapped a couple of those since then and added a few more. Most of these new ones have been in the last three weeks; in other words, you could say that we’re on fire. Well, maybe not “fire”. Maybe “a roll”. Or “a tentatively encouraging pace.” Yeah. Kick ass. 

Granted, most of these new ones aren’t sure things, and in some cases we don’t even have vocal melodies sorted out yet. But they *feel* like they have a good chance of working out, unlike the vast majority of Rough Ideas we have, where the feeling is closer to, “Eh, well maybe this might be OK at some point, possibly.” You can just tell sometimes. The sketchy ones are similar to a Bad Job Interview…. halfway into it you have a bad feeling, and while there’s a tiny chance you could turn things around, it’s pretty clear you’re screwed. At a certain point, further investment of time is pointless and it’s better to stand up and say, “You and your battery charger factory can go shove it, mister.” And then you walk up the street and start fresh somewhere else. Like a Jamba Juice.  

That’s what we did recently: abandoned song ideas that were, upon further inspection, probably futile. And there were a LOT of these. I mean, as recently as two weeks ago we had tons and tons of rough ideas and random riffs and stitched together chord progressions, most of which were sad and unfinished and directionless. Looking now in my iTunes folder, I count 203 demo files. Granted, there are duplicates, but still: it’s SEVEN POINT TWO HOURS of mostly crappy demos. Most of them are just rough ideas I came up with in Garage Band, some are recordings of the live band at the practice space, some have vocals, some don’t. Most of it is no good, and again: 203 files, SEVEN HOURS. 

Having this crushing volume of ideas floating around turned out to be counterproductive. “What should I work on? Something in the “LP3 - September Best” folder, or maybe ‘LP3 - Older Crap Heap’? Didn’t ‘Spanish Reds - Alt Vocals Sept 2’ have a cool part? Wait, was ‘Wimpy Riff’ the track I wanted, or was it ‘Chorus Idea - Track 7 (2)”?” 

Total confusion. So we went through basically every file we had a couple weeks ago and ruthlessly discarded 99% of them. Now it’s way easier to tell where we’re at, and to focus on the songs that actually have a chance of seeing the light of day. Before it was “7 pretty good songs and 40+ ideas that have cool parts here and there that maybe we can combine stuff from and blah blah”; now it’s “these 10 songs have the best chance of working out, and these other 4 have some cool parts. The end.” WAY easier. The end result will be an album that’s much better than if we were just like, “Screw it, the 12 songs that are closest to being done, boom, there’s our album.” 

So there you go. There’s the update. Next time: a discussion on song tempos! Whoo hoo!

-Nate

Hey-

I put up some free sample articles from my book ‘You Idiot’— you can check ‘em out below. And if you feel so inclined, you can buy the whole book here: http://www.amazon.com/You-Idiot-Nate-Gangelhoff/dp/0981681301/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1287372771&sr=8-1

Cool!

-Nate

http://www.scribd.com/doc/39548014/Hulk-Raps
“If You Want To Be Real, Real Cool Don’t Be Stupid And Play the Fool”
This is an in-depth review of Hulk Hogan’s legendary rap album.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/39567266/Reviews-of-Books-I-Sort-Of-Skimmed-Through
“Reviews of Books I Sort of Skimmed Through”
This article reviews books that look interesting, but too inane or insane to actually wade through. With that in mind, a simple skim is given to “The Truth About Power Rangers”, “Do Cats Have ESP?”, “Baby Drama Mama: I Can’t Believe My Wife Left My Son and Me For Another”, and more.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/39567158/Magically-Lose-Weight-With-Magic
“Magically Lose Weight With Magic”
This article looks at some of the more absurd diet programs offered on the internet and elsewhere. Magic couches, fat-reducing rings, shady pills… it’s all here.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/39567017/Omnipotence-Through-Pseudoscience
“Omnipotence Through Pseudoscience”
This article examines bizarre “secret to success” books from decades ago that promise you’ll be become wealthy by chanting gibberish, or that you’ll be able to create a car out of bubbles by harnessing an ancient power, and so on.

What do you folks think about Drop D? It’s a phrase that causes me to cringe, or at least gulp, at first but then with further reflection my hesitation eases a little. See, first impression I think of something in the Korn / Limp Bizkit vein, a vein that is no good. But there’s also a few good indie and punk songs that pull it off. (‘Chinatown’ by Jets to Brazil comes to mind. Also… Ok, I’m drawing a blank, but other examples do exist!)

I guess I should explain: Drop D means you drop the tuning of the lowest string on the guitar. Usually E, it goes down – or drops, get it? – to D. What happens after that depends on what you do with it. It makes power chords easier to play, and you can do a lot of goofy sounding stuff on the lower frets (this is what falls under the Korn camp).

But there are also a few neat tricks you can do, things that don’t make it sound like you have dreadlocks and are about to yell, “Step the fuck back!” or “Ruahkakaka!” or something. For one, you can play octaves on the A string but also hit the open dropped D, which makes a nice Jawbreaker-y effect on the right frets. And just playing a ‘normal’ punk progression suddenly has a cool, darker sound to it.

I’ve written two song ideas in Drop D for the new album. Obviously, they are not in the Korn camp. Dummy titles are “Blinders” and “Lightsleep”. The initial demos were a little shaky, but we’ve done some cool stuff to them as a full band and i’m now pretty confident both songs will end up on the final album. TWO drop d songs— who would have guessed?

The other weird/different thing I wanted to try on this record was a song in 6/8. But what I came up with sucked. So, fuck that 6/8 shit! Drop D is where it’s at.

In fact, do you think “Stop, Drop D, and Roll” would be a good album title? Like, all of us adjusting our tunings in the middle of a fire….. could be awesome.

-Nate

Yep! High quality digital available here:

http://bannerpilot.bandcamp.com/album/resignation-day

You can also stream the whole thing there.

CD/vinyl in stores, or at Fatwreck.com!

As mentioned earlier, we’ve remixed and remastered our first album Resignation Day and it’ll be released on Fat Wreck Chords next Tuesday. We’re stoked! And now you can go check out a song from it on our Bandcamp page:

http://bannerpilot.bandcamp.com/album/resignation-day

Let us know what you think! Remember, it’s a stream, so it’ll sound even better on CD/vinyl/etc. The preorder is still available, too! - Nate

(Look for a few dozen of these in the months to come. They will probably be boring and inane one-by-one, but could be cool as a whole months from now when the record is almost done. Maybe? Maybe!)

Starting to make decent progress on things. Right now, here is where we are at: I have about 40 song ideas on my computer. The vast majority of these are garbage; stitched together chord progressions and random guitar noodling that tries, unsuccessfully, to hit on a good vocal melody idea. But! About 8 or 9 of them seem potentially good enough to end up as keeper songs. Of these, we’ve tackled 4 or 5 as a full band, recording demo versions at the practice space.

Just in the last week, we’ve recorded two of them. ‘Spanish Reds’ and ‘Sleep it Off’. As with all of these, they’re just dummy song titles I make up on the spot when forced to name the drum-machine file. Sometimes, they stick (“Drains to the Mississippi”, “Skeleton Key”, etc), but usually not. (“Spit Out” was originally called “TV Ears Saved Our Marriage”, because that was the text of a magazine ad that happened to be opened up on the table when I named the file).

I think these two tunes will both end up on the album. Sometimes you can tell. On the last album, there were songs that immediately felt like keepers, and others (like a song we named “Blue Ribbon” because… well, take a guess at what might have been in the room when we wrote the song) are more like “I think this might be OK? I mean, maybe?”, which is a sign they’ll get scrapped later. These two, though, seem to fall in the former camp. Good sign!

Danny said the prechorus to Spanish Reds reminds him of an Andrew WK part. That seems good to me. - Nate

Left my bass strap in the states. In Northern France I had to make the following choice. I have no regrets. -Nate