March 2011
3 posts
Queers Tour Announcement
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...
Weasel Fest
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...
Weasel Fest
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...
December 2010
1 post
LP3 Update #3: Trimming the Fat, Increasing the...
(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,...
October 2010
1 post
Read Articles From My Book, For Free
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”...
September 2010
3 posts
LP3 Update #2: Droppin’ Ds
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,...
Resignation Day Remix Out Now!
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!
A Song From the New Resignation Day
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...
August 2010
1 post
LP3 Update #1: It Begins
(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...
April 2010
3 posts
A New Way To Spend Money
Do you often think “Ugh, I have so much money, I don’t know what to do with it!”? Buy some Banner Pilot stuff! We just set up a store here: http://bannerpilot.storenvy.com/
Shirts! Hoodies! Books! CDs! More! Actually, no, that about covers it.
-Nate
February 2010
3 posts
Music From Other Bands!
I’ve gone Bandcamp Crazy and set up pages for a couple other bands. Check ‘em out:
The Gateway District This is another band I’m in. You can pick up our album here, as well as our 7”, which up until now has been fairly limited.
http://thegatewaydistrict.bandcamp.com/
The Pyongyang Metro This is a band I was in from 2006-2007. We released one album and made 100 CDs for...
A New Banner Pilot Page
If anyone cares, I set up a Bandcamp page for Banner Pilot. Despite the very cheezy name, Bandcamp seems quite a bit cooler than shitty ole Myspace. Go check it out:
http://www.bannerpilot.bandcamp.com
There isn’t any “social networking” stuff (so you can’t leave us a flashing comment that says, like, NEW DAUGHTERS OF AUTUMN ALBUM OUT NOW!!!, unfortunately), but if...
A Banner Pilot News Update
Kind of quiet in ye olde Banner Pilot land for the last few months, so I figured an update is in order. Hooray!
Haven’t played a ton of shows lately cuz we’ve been working on new songs. It’s going well, I think. I came up with 15 or 16 rough song ideas (just basic chord progressions and melodies) and now we’re kicking them around with the full band, adding vocal melodies,...
November 2009
9 posts
Transmissions From the Show Me State
Last day of the tour was in St. Louis. A bit of a hike from Dallas, so we left early and tried to keep the stops to a minimum. We finally pulled off in Springfield Missouri for gas and grub, and as we did so the van began making weird noises and chugging along, having difficulty going faster than about 30. It also ceased being able to go in reverse, meaning we had to be verrrry strategic about our...
Texas!
After Prairieville we had three shows in Texas with Dead to Me, all of which were great. Those dudes are all super nice and fun to hang out with, and put on a great show. It was kind of a bummer we only got to play a total of five shows with them.
A brief rundown:
San Antonio: This was the semi-weird one out of the Texas shows. Located in a strip mall, the venue had recently opened and was...
We Sound Kind of Like Nirvana
We had a day off after Fest (extremely smart idea on our part!) which we spent in New Orleans (another smart idea!) After that we met up with Dead to Me in a small town called Prairieville, outside of Baton Rouge.
We arrived early at the bar, the Fat Cat Saloon. The waitress asked what kind of music we played. This task — describing your music to someone who doesn’t listen to punk music...
Fest! Fest! Fest!
Egads, there’s a whole 10 days of tour that I was too lazy to write about while we were on the road. Better do it now before I forget about it. After I catch up, I’ll start using this blog to write about the process of writing songs for the next album. This might prove to be rather inane, but we’ll see!
Anyway: the tour. Last update was about Richmond and their tiny-style bowling alleys. After...
Duckpin Bowling
Fest ended yesterday— a blast as always. Somewhere in Alabama right now; seems like a good time to update the olde tour blog. Or is that ye olde tour blog?
Last Tuesday we played Richmond at a Duckpin Bowling Alley, where all the balls and pins are tiny. The place appeared to have last been updated in the 1950s and had been designed with a vaguely ‘futuristic’ theme in mind....
October 2009
14 posts
“People these days don’t know how to FUCKING dance to punk music!!”
– True punk rocker in Albany, on the sidewalk outside after being kicked out
Boston, not the band. And Albany
When booking this tour I remember thinking that the short drives would be nice. After all, west coast = long drives, east coast = short drives. I mean, that’s a simplification and it depends on the specifics, but generally I’ve thought it to be true.
Not anymore! All the east coast drives took way longer than expected and Philly to Boston was no exception. By the time we got into...
All About the Benjamins
Ok, back to catching up. Where were we? Oh yeah, Philadelphia. Last Saturday. Let’s see….
It was rainy when we rolled into town so we limited the touristy stuff we had planned. Pretty much just saw the Liberty Bell, which I already saw when I was on tour with Rivethead years ago so I’m not sure why I went back. It’s still a bell.
Some fairly interesting history though....
A Cautionary Cheetos Tale
9:55 AM
Nate: You’re eating Jalepeno Cheddar Cheetos for breakfast?
Danny: Yeah. There wasn’t much else in the store
10:22 AM
Danny: It feels like there’s little metal shavings poking my stomach
“It’d be fun, but then I’d have to deal with tomorrow”
– Danny, on drinking whiskey while we’re already drinking beer at a Motel 6 in Albany
Where to Get Pizza in Brooklyn
So in Endicott two different people assured me parking in Manhattan is simple. This turned out to be… Not Even Remotely Accurate. Or NERA. Maybe they were thinking about the Grand Theft Auto version of Manhattan. We gave it a shot but it was ridiculous so the other dudes dropped me off and went to Brooklyn.
I met up with Vanessa, Ray from Teenage Bottlerocket, and Joey Cape to do a radio...
Endicott Times (terrible End Times pun)
As expected, I’ve totally slacked on doing this. Dammit! I’ll do my best to remember what we’ve been up to since Thursday. I’m drinking and selling merch in a loud Albany bar so this will be brief, and possibly vaguely incoherent.
Thursday: With the 18 hour drive from Minneapolis behind us we wheeled into Endicott NY and played the basement of an abandoned used CD store....
Instant Banner Pilot
Drove about 11 hours yesterday and stopped at a Super 8. The lobby was probably the worst smelling room I’ve been inside in at least six years or so. It smelled like used floss mixed with low-grade anti-bug spray. I was reluctant but it was already pretty late. Luckily the actual room smelled ok.
We stayed up and sorted merch. Danny tried to make cheddar cheese ramen using hot water from...
OK!
Ok, I’ve fiddled around with this website for about 45 minutes and was able to update a photo, a video, and a song (see below). Amazing, no? Anyway, this seems easy enough to use; better than the other blog we had. Look for more updates closer to when we head out for tour in a couple weeks!
-Nate
Just doing some more testing of what Tumblr can...
Testing, Testing!
Can’t really tell what exactly this Tumblr thing is all about yet, but I’m giving it a shot. I’d like to have a spot where we can easily leave short updates about band shit, especially while on tour.
So far, we’ve had no luck with this. First, we tried this with a ‘normal’ blog and it was a complete failure. See here:
Banner Pilot: The Blog-Based Version of...