dear friends -

this is dan harding, and i handle booking management for good night, states. lots of shows that we’ve played in the past have been because of recommendations of friends and fans.

so, if you have any recommendations for…
- cities gn,s should play in
- venues that gn,s should play at
- bands gn,s should play with
- online radio/radio stations (especially college radio) that gn,s should be played on
- blogs/sites gn,s should be featured on
- festivals gn,s should play at
- all around cool things that gn,s should look into or that you could connect to gn,s

…i would appreciate it!

contact me by replying to this post.

like most bands say, we can’t do this without you, and we wouldn’t be here without your support, and like most bands, we mean this.

thanks,
dan

imagine me holding up my fingers to make those quotation marks.

dear reader, i certainly use the above term for lack of a better one, but i’m not sure i really believe it.

some of you know i’ve been working a bit to prepare for Real Mixing of The Album, and that’s been an interesting use of time lately. first off, i need great big blocks of time to allow for the nearly two-hour round trip to and from the studio and still have enough when i’m there to get something done; the actual work is a bit of a challenge itself, since i’m prepping each song’s file for best and most convenient use by another human being (always something of a crap shoot) and i admittedly hate pro tools; last is the fact that i’m spending hours (HOURS) making changes that the average human is unable to detect through normal listening.
of course, these are all morning hours, since i’m in the busiest fall ever of my day job, and my day job is actually an afternoon and evening job. this all adds up to pretty long days with lots of time in the car to think about what i’ve done.

incidentally, pre-mixing is what i was going to be doing this morning, but it didn’t work out. so you’re all going to suffer from the affliction of this post. i haven’t even gotten to the real subject yet.

and the real subject (the astute postmodern reader ought not to take offense at my careless words) regards some soundtrack work that i, like a crazy person, have of late agreed to do for a friend’s film. the bulk of it needs to be done, of course, in the same short present timeframe as everything else.
what is a beleaguered artist to do in these trying times but go home, sit down at his or her organ, and plug his or her radio and monosynth into a ring modulator; out of the sums and differences a beauty is sure to arise. i did this for some time yesterday, and i’ll admit, it did help. i was able to picture the footage and hear something sweet, albeit on the far-off edges of my imagination.
i don’t as yet have any actual songs, though, and i wonder if this sense of working out something internally is real. am i progressing–”proceeding”–through a series of steps that, though unobservable, will cause in me a song to be written? (this might be one for the origins debate; emergence of life in microcosm, anyone?) is the low-volume electronic mayhem i claim as a “process” really the primordial ooze of an intentionally structured 4 minutes of music?
the rational observer, whom i am not but i play one on tv, answers no. nein. i have no process. i write entire songs while driving and without picking up an instrument. in the eccles days, i wrote exclusively on a typewriter. now, i stare at formulas for gain of an op-amp and frequency cut-off of a filter (in terms of capacitor and resistor values) until i am inspired to write a song about the parity of populism and elitism. follow me? i hope not. i make no sense.

and i’d be willing to bet i’m not the only one who tells this story. the truth is that i have a sleepless creative nature, and i hang around with it until it gives me a song, or part of a song that i clumsily complete in time. all i can really say with certainty is that this happens often enough for me to be in a band.

hopefully, it’s also often enough to complete a soundtrack in three weeks. while i mix.

(thanks for reading.)

A few weeks ago, I decided that it was finally time to open up a Good Night, States business checking account. Opening business accounts is something that I have some experience with, so I thought it would be a piece of cake.

I stroll into my local National City branch in the late morning (to avoid the lines) and end up waiting for probably 10-15 minutes for the next available customer service representative. Then, I get my shot.

The customer service rep takes me back to her small office with no windows and offers me a seat. I sit down and explain that I need to open a small business checking account. “Simple,” I think. She had a little more trouble than I thought a customer service rep should have, but no big deal, I’m a pretty patient person when it comes to this kind of stuff.

Then she asks me, “What is your business name?” I reply, “Good Night comma States.” She proceeds to type into the computer: “Goodnight, States”. Then I tell her, “No, it’s three words: Good. Night. States.” She writes it out on a bit of paper on her desk a few times, just to make sure she has it correct. “Great,” I think, “this was a bit painful, but it’s worth having things right the first time.”

She then proceeds to shuffle papers around, prints some things off, gets a cell phone call from her son, and has me sign a bunch of forms to finalize the account creation. She then jots another note on a small piece of paper and says that she’s going to have one of the tellers order me checks, free of charge! (This must be to make people feel really important. I mean, FREE CHECKS! How much better can life get?!?)

I leave the branch humming happily to myself because of my free checks and head back to work (a little later than I had hoped).

The end of the next week came and so did my lovely box of FREE checks! I threw them on the table with a pile of other stuff to take upstairs; I had decided to unwrap the goodness later when I got around to doing the band finances. The next day, I get another envelope from my bank. I opened it up and saw that my bank was sweetening the deal; they’d sent me a business credit card with a limit high enough to finish off the rest of my school loans (or purchase another vintage synthesizer)! I drooled over the credit line and took a second look at the card. “Wait a second, the business name says GOOD NIGHT ESTATES!” I looked at the box of checks still on the kitchen table, “The checks say GOOD NIGHT ESTATES, too!”

So, somewhere along the line “Good Night, States” got translated into, “Good Night Estates.” I can understand the mix-up, but I also feel like I am stuck in the middle of a large game of “telephone.”

I finally got around to going back to the bank and asking them to correct their mistake. They had no problem fixing things, though the service associate that helped me with the change scoffed at how this mistake could even happen in the first place.

All in all, I think Good Night Estates would be a great business name for a nice bed and breakfast that is set on and old family estate somewhere in the mid-Atlantic region. Maybe in a few years, I can settle down and start that business!

i’m writing this, my first post, not to contribute anything novel or edifying to the conversation that is already well underway, but rather in the hope that it will be a catalyst for more and better submissions from the rest of the band. i’m also writing this to share with you, my loyal fans (or our loyal fans…whatever) the deepest, most profound, most personal components of my being. my deep, cavernous being.

it’s a little bit embarrassing for me to share this with you, but i think it’s important that our relationship be founded on the solid rock of honesty. preferably a truth-bearing slab of limestone (for any potential patron[esse]s out there granite or marble would be really nice, it’s just not in the budget right now). in fact, i’m going to edit the tour rider to call for a truth-bearing slab of marble on every stage we play henceforth.

last weekend, in the midst of a 12 hour rehearsal (no, we did not break for meals, and yes, i was wearing a catheter) i did something i’ve never done before an audience. right there in trevor and megan’s living room, in front of god, the band, and the elderly neighbors on the east side of bruce street, i busted my nut.

of course, this made quite a scene. at the time i was tweaking the nord lead 2 (for our regular readers, i’m also playing the synth label game) and i stumbled across a particularly stimulating bass tone that sent my guitar from its precariously pro junior-supported upright position into the opposing wall. and though i thought nothing of it at the time, when i next picked up the guitar to play it, i found that my nut was indeed busted.

i’ll have you know that superglue is a legitimately utilized substance in the repair of many guitar parts, nuts included. steve was good enough to find the disembodied nut piece, megan was good enough to find some superglue and a bamboo twig to apply it, and i was good enough to flawlessly return the formerly disembodied nut piece to its rightful place on the neck of my guitar.

see, this story had a happy ending after all.

as a final word, i’d like to bring to everyone’s attention the blatant war-on-joe’s-integrity that trevor has imprudently waged via this blog. every good deed deserves another. just wait…

Here’s some footage that was taken at the show on 8/30/2007. This song is featured on our forthcoming album. Enjoy!