On Friday, April 12, my band the Roland High Life is playing in the prestigious Rock & Roll Rumble — and it’d be genuinely awesome if you came out to support us. The Rumble is the longest running Battle-of-the-Bands-type industry showcase in the country, and has helped break bands like Letters to Cleo, Powerman 5000, the Lemonheads, the Dresden Dolls (i knoooow), and many, many more. And while sure, the music industry is in a very different place now than it was back when the event was still sponsored by a major rock radio station — it's still pretty cool! As I told the folks at Cambridge Day:
Me and Jake, our bassist, spent a lot of our formative years going to shows at the Tune Inn in New Haven, where we’d regularly see Rumble bands like Piebald, Lost City Angels, Kings of Nuthin’, Big D, fuckin’ Rocktopus – what a name – and I can’t wait to get in my time machine and tell those high school nerds that they’ll be joining those ranks some day.
The first round of the Rumble takes place at the Middle East Upstairs in Cambridge. We're on at 9pm sharp — a totally reasonable time for a Friday night! — and it would be a tremendous help if you were there acting like you love us. A big, enthusiastic crowd could help us move on to Round Two (which would be even cooler than just getting into the Rumble in the first place).
Even if you can’t make it (like maybe you don’t live in New England), you can still check out our tunes on Bandcamp / Spotify / Apple Music / whatever. We just launched a cool new website, too. Y’all remember websites, right? They were this whole thing, back before social media consumed all our content like a cancer and then charged us for the pleasure.
And in other news: MUSICLAND STORIES is out!
The second season of Musicland Stories, the music-themed fantasy adventure podcast for kids that I’ve been working on, is out now! The Aquatic season was written entirely by me, and features a band of young musicians on a mustard-colored submarine, searching for the song of the legendary Last Leviathan. It’s a lot of fun! The first four episodes are out now, with new ones dropping every Tuesday. You can find it wherever you get your podcasts.
(You don’t necessarily have to listen to Season One first, but I did two episodes there as well, with the rest by my good friend Bob Proehl, so you should listen anyway)
Okay I think that’s all I got for now. Thanks for listening.