The City Veins

Despite some of the recent posts about band discontent/grumbling, things are actually coming together pretty nicely in City Veins land these days. Since Aaron, Adam, and I moved into a house together a few weeks back, we’ve soundproofed the hell out of our basement and have practiced almost daily. As a result, we’ve never sounded tighter as a band than we did at Velvet Lounge on Friday. Part of it might be the fact that we just freakin love the Lounge, the place that gave us our debut show some 3 months ago. But I think the energy and enthusiasm we brought to the songs was because we’ve been having so much fun with this stuff in our basement lately.

But enough happy stuff already; I don’t think anyone’s reading this blog to hear us talk about how happy and awesome we are (though for the most part we are both). I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the last 3 months. Being in a band is a really weird thing to do; as Charles likes to say, no one in their right mind would join a band (which may explain why they’re emotionally volatile rollercoasters to be in). In exchange for thrills such as playing a 20 minute set at 1:20 AM to four people in an empty Baltimore dive bar (which we’ve done), you get to schedule your life around shows/practices/traveling, gain the inability to think about almost anything else on a daily basis, and the ever-fun job of spamming people one at a time on MySpace saying “Hey I saw your profile and I think you’d like my band”and then watching them decline your “add me” invites one at a time (you’re also required to become a slave to that insipidly stupid website and its never-ending string of server crashes, “unknown errors”, and just general user unfriendliness). All this, and we’ve only been doing it for 3 months.

But as Charles says, no one in their right mind joins a band and that includes me, because I’m having the time of my freakin life (no joke) and I wouldn’t trade it in for anything. And for one great hour on stage at a time, it all comes together some times and makes it all more than worth it.

(Side note: In just 3 short months, we’ve played 10 shows in various cities and have gathered a few good war stories along the way. Our friends, Lights Resolve, have been staying with us while on tour for the last few days, and these dudes have been doing this for years; the stories I’ve heard from them in the last few days have been amazing; funny, heart-breaking, insightful, and always fascinating. This is one of the things I really enjoy about being a musician: the camaraderie in suffering you can share with other bands. It’s like being in the military almost; if you’ve ever been in a band, you can relate. But much like my grandfather could never truly tell me what it was like to fight in a war, people who’ve never tried to do this can’t really understand just how different this little music world really is - and I mean that in the least music-snobby way possible).

So wow, I just wrote a lot. Thanks to those still with me. Now, on to the aforementioned TONS O’ FUN:

• We now have our CDs in and YOU CAN GET ONE FOR FREE! Sign up here and we’ll ship it right out to you. You don’t even have to pay postage.
• PLEASE PUT UP OUR BANNER on your MySpace or blog. Here it is: <p><center><a href=”http://www.myspace.com/cityveins”><img src=”http://www.thecityveins.com/art/myspacebannerlarge.jpg” alt=”The City Veins” border=”0″></a></center><br>
• Come see us at TT Reynold’s in Fairfax on THURSDAY, JULY 19th! We’re playing the Locals Only Radio Showcase for our good friends Wes and George from Elysium Productions.
• Go see Lights Resolve at DC9 tonight. These guys are pros (and friends) and they put on a great show.
• More multimedia coming in the next few weeks, including posters, new web banners, and t-shirts.