Don't Worry, We're Still Alive!
February 25th, 2010|11:51am.

Hey guys!  So I feel like we've been kind of quiet lately.  This is because we're in the process of reworking things, but we don't want anybody to think that we've gone away.  Quite the opposite in fact!

After (amiably) parting ways with Dane, we were left searching for a new drummer.  The search ended with not one, but TWO new members of the band!  Both Brain and James, formally of ...The Nominees Are, have joined us on drums and guitar/vocals respectively.  Now I know what you're saying, "Dave, don't you have several people playing guitar and singing already?"  Well, the answer is "Yes! We do! And we still will.  Only now we'll have more!"  Adding James to the line up will give me a chance to expand my instrumentation, so I will certainly still be playing guitar, but I will also be doing some keyboard work as well (think Teppei from Thrice).

We're all really excited about where things are going with this new line up.  We've got some work to do, but I think this will be a very cool step forward in our sound.

Also, don't forget to download Pass It On and pick up Do You Like Me? Yes/No/Maybe if you haven't already!

Dave
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Pass It On!
February 5th, 2010|12:41am.

So we just finished our latest recording project... a cover of Vanessa Carlton's "A Thousand Miles" (some of you who have seen us live recently may have heard it).  It turned out amazing.  Justin over at Waysound, did a great job (as usual).

We wanted to use this song as part of a promotional tool for Do You Like Me? Yes/No/Maybe so we're putting it on a sort of 3 song sampler promo called Pass It On.  We won't be getting any formal copies of it pressed, we just want to distribute it freely.  This means burning CDs and handing them out, making it free to download, putting it up on Bit torrent , last.fm, and basically encouraging people to STEAL THIS RECORD (and pass it on to other people).

Dane did some artwork for for this record back when we were first talking about it.  It's really simple, but I think it works perfectly for what we're doing with this.



So now go download this record here! Seriously, its OK!  Just take it!

Burn copies to disks and give them to people.  Give the files to your friends.

For those of you who like stealing your music through Bit torrent... here's the torrent! (or pick it up from btjunkie) Steal away! And seed it for others!

The whole point of this is to get people to hear our new stuff, and maybe if you like it enough, pick up Do You Like Me? Yes/No/Maybe

Dave
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So Long...
January 18th, 2010|10:34am.

It's with a heavy heart that I announce that I will no longer be playing drums with the American Autumn. The reason why seems simple to me, but could get a little complicated. I'll give it a shot anyways.

We started the band with a pretty basic philosophy: to play simpler punk-rock, something that could be fun to play instead of difficult or complicated, something that people could clap their hands to. Even though we all had different ideas for where the band should go musically, we agreed on one thing: let's have fun and work the band around the lives we already have.

Over the past two years, we've done that to the extent that it's possible. Recently, though, we've outgrown that philosophy. The American Autumn is ready to play shows on Thursday nights at the Subterranean (instead of being limited to weekends), to headline a show at 11:30 at night, to go on a tour across the country--all things that interfere with the life I already have outside the band.

As my mind has it, I'm leaving so that the band can reach its full potential. It wasn't an easy decision to make, since my hands and heart were so invested in the entity that is the American Autumn. But if I didn't think that it would somehow be better for the band, I don't think I would have reached this decision.

I do want to thank Chris and Josh, who have become best friends of mine in the past two years. Chris has become a person I can talk to about things that I can't talk to most people about, plus he's one of the few people whose musical opinions I trust. Josh's optimism and positivity has been inspiring to me; I consider myself a bit of a cynic and "realist", but Josh helped me lighten up a bit over the past few years.

Dave and I have been friends for a while, but the band has helped bolster that friendship. Dave is a super-smart and talented person whose progress as a musician has left me startled. I want to thank him for his support and for being a great friend.

Of course, there's other people who need to be thanked, like my parents, whose basement has been a practice space since band's beginning. I also want to thank Emily, my wife, who has supported the band, who inspires me to play music, and who has been one of the band's biggest advocates.

I'm glad that the band made the decision to move on and I know that the American Autumn is a band with potential to do some really amazing things. If you're a fan of this band, stay tuned, since there will be some pretty awesome things in store for the American Autumn in the next year and beyond.

And thanks, guys.

Dane
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Do You Like Me? Yes/No/Maybe On CD Baby
January 17th, 2010|7:44pm.

We have yet another outlet for you to purchase our new(ish) record now!  We just got word that you can get our music through CD Baby now.  Just head to http://cdbaby.com/cd/AmericanAutumn and it's all yours!  Enjoy!

Dave
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2010: The Year of The American Autumn
January 4th, 2010|2:11pm.

Hey guys! Happy New Year.  I hope 2009 was as great for you as it was for us.  I did a post like this last year around this time and thought it was a lot of fun, so once again I'd like to look back at the last year and a look forward at what 2010 might hold for us.

2009

We played a lot of great shows and made a lot of new friends last year, which is really what this is all about.  It's so much fun to hang out with awesome fans and bands at shows.  Over the summer we were able to get back in to the studio and finish up recording our new record.  After lots of delays and format changes we finally released our EP; Do You Like Me? Yes/No/Maybe.  This was a great accomplishment for us and it just felt so good to finally hold the finished product in our hands.  As of December we have been selling this record on iTunes, which is another cool milestone for us.

2010

So what will we be doing in 2010?  Right now we're still focusing on promoting the new record as much as we can.  We'd like to get some more press going about it and obviously play a lot more shows to support it.  We're currently working on a cool little project to promote DYLM? Y/N/M right now, that I think you'll all enjoy.  We'll tell you more about it as it unfolds.  We're hoping that we can break into some bigger venues this year and maybe give touring another shot (it just didn't happen last year).   I think we're getting better and better at this every year and I'm really looking forward to what we'll be able to do in 2010!

Dave
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Do You Like Me? Yes/No/Maybe Now Available On iTunes!
December 15th, 2009|12:58am.

Good news everybody!  After all sorts of complicated, high powered music businessy type of work our new record is now available through iTunes!  This means you can now pick up our lovable jams from the same convenient place you pick up all of your other new music (except for The Beatles, of course).   Just follow this link to open up your iTunes and pick up Do You Like Me? Yes/No/Maybe!  If for some reason that doesn't work for you, try this web link.

Seriously, this feels like a great milestone for us.  We're really excited to be able to get our music out to people around the world, so head over to iTunes and pick up the record today, in these turbulent financial times, rock and roll is never a poor investment!

Dave
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Video Blog? Whoa.
December 3rd, 2009|9:36pm.

Josh and Chris were nice enough to record a quick video blog promoting tomorrow's show.  Check it out (and get a glimpse at what Josh's room looks like!)



The show is at the Cosmos (details here ), 2135 N Milwaukee in Chicago.  Show starts at 6:00.  See you there!

Dave
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Behind The Music: Sunrise Through Tattered Blinds (Part 2)
November 19th, 2009|5:59pm.

So I can't really say much more beyond what Dave has about how the song came together. I can reiterate that we all really liked the idea of the song standing out on it's own. We're not an acoustic band but it just had this feeling of being a particular event that was captured for the album. Think of sitting around a party with your friends singing  that one song from a band you all like. That was the idea. I think it came across.

But about the actual song...

I started dating this amazing girl in January of 2009 (see Aly Hunter in cd thanks) This song is about starting that relationship and getting to know her. Then realizing that since we have this life together, when we are apart, something always seems off.  Think of it like cutting your right arm and left leg off and coming to he realization that "hey.. I can't walk correctly or perform simple things anymore"

Beyond that, the song title references the nights we've spent talking and confessing personal things to each other until the sun came up. In her bedroom the sun would always come through her blinds In a way that made us all of a sudden aware that we'd missed a night of sleep. Being tired the next day is a reminder of the good night we had before.

Yes it is a cheezy love song about a girl. But who doesn't love that honestly? I don't think it was over the top "baby baby baby" and that's what I love about it. It was subtle enough to contain inside jokes while broad enough that people who fall in love can definitely relate to it. I think in all we have very few songs that are actually about girls. A point of pride for us as band in a genre full of them. But we still enjoy a good love song as much as the next pop punk kid.

To all the gentlemen out there.. When you meet that special girl, try telling her how you feel. If she doesn't get it, do something creative. In this case it was a love song that made my special girl cry. That was a win for me.

Josh
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Behind The Music: Sunrise Through Tattered Blinds
November 12th, 2009|9:13pm.

So, this is sort of an interesting "Behind The Music" for me to do, as I didn't really write this song, Josh did.  When I first heard the song it had a chord progression and lyrics, so he'd be much better at telling you what the song is really about.  What I want to talk about is more of the high level idea behind the song and my part in it.

When we were talking about making a new record the idea of recording an acoustic track came up.  At first I was really against it.  I don't really think of us as much of an acoustic band (though some of our songs to translate well).  We didn't have any songs written that would be good to turn into an acoustic song and I was wary about just throwing something together and recording it somewhere cheap, shooting for "low fi" and ending up with just "crappy".  Also, I'm not much of an acoustic guitar player.  I own one and it certainly has a time and place, but if given the choice I will usually opt for my electric guitar.

As we kept talking about the song I had the idea of writing a piano part for whatever we had rather than 2nd acoustic part, letting Josh and Chris handle the guitar duties.  I really don't get a chance to play much piano any more and the fact that we were planning to write a song that we would just record, but not try to translate into our live show allowed it to be a legitimate option for this track.

We ended up getting together at my parents house (because that was the only place with a piano) and I wrote my part at that practice.  It was a really fun new challenge and I think it turned out pretty cool.  There wasn't originally a piano "solo" in it but I was just messing around with some really high, thin notes and it sounded cool so we worked it into the bridge.  I'm really not as skilled of a piano player as I'd like to be, but I ended up writing something that was right for this song and that's what is really important.

Apart from just being an awesome song, I think using piano gives it a little something to separate it from being just another romantic acoustic song.  Switching instruments really made the song a lot of fun for me, musically.

When it came time to record it we wanted to do something different as this song was so obviously different from the rest of our stuff so we decided to record it live with an audience.  We really wanted to create the experience of a bunch of people just hanging out listening to music, so we got a bunch of friends together at our buddy's studio and played the song live with people hanging out and helping sing the last verse.  It just made the song so real and that recording session so much fun.

What makes Sunrise Through Tatted Blinds so cool to me is that it REALLY is just the song that was recorded that night.  It doesn't have to exist in any other capacity besides that performance and it can really stand on its own as a musical entity.  It went from an idea that I really wasn't excited about at first to a track that I really enjoy for so many reasons.

I recently made this song available for free download on Last.fm so feel free to pick it up here!

Dave
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Listen To The New Record For Free!
October 28th, 2009|11:07pm.

Hey! Everybody head over to the Last.fm page for Do You Like Me? Yes/No/Maybe!  You can stream the whole record for now.  Also, feel free to download North and Damen (also totally free) while you're there.

Last.fm is a really cool music site, if you're not familiar with it, I strongly recommend checking it out.  You'll probably need to be logged in in order to listen to tracks for free.

What are you waiting for?! Free music!  New record!  Here!

Dave
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