THE COLD STARES

Cancelling the National Underground Nashville Residency

2011-10-24T08:09:00.000-07:00

Wanted to update everyone on our Saturday night residency at National Underground Nashville. At this point we are pulling the plug on the weekly shows. Nothing but great things to say about the venue, the staff and all involved. It's simply too tough for us to pass up other Nashville venues shows, our friends venues and keep our old contacts happy with dates.

Our sound Engineer has opened a really cool new venue in Evansville Indiana (Mojo's) and we are looking forward to some dates there. In addition, you'll find us in the upcoming months at our other Nashville venues including 3rd and Lindsley, the Hard Rock, The Basement and 12th and Porter.
We wanted to give the shows a chance, and I feel like we've done that. In the end, we really want to make sure that every show is the absolute best show that we can give our fans every time we go on the stage- and for that reason we believe it's wise to not continue the every Saturday at NUN.

Much thanks to everyone involved, and wish nothing but success for the venue as well.

News October 2011

2011-10-20T14:17:00.000-07:00

It's late October and I thought I should update everyone on where we are on a couple of things. A couple months ago we had some things on the table we were looking at in consideration of where this band is going. A lot of the things are dependent on "thing A" being finished so that "thing B" could be done by.....etc. There are two things you can do in this situation, you can say- it will never happen and go with another plan, or you can book it- and just do your best at knocking one thing out at a time. So I'm happy to say that we are in the process of working our new website for a early 2012 launch (hopefully Jan 1st.). I'm not going into detail too much at this point about the site- but I will say that I think it will put us in a position we need to be.

To my knowledge it will be like nothing out there, and it will definitely give our fans a ton of content that they've never heard/seen. I can also tell you that we have one EP completed in the can, and will be available at website launch. In addition we also have studio time booked in November at House of David in Nashville with our engineer Chris Grainger to finish a full length record that will have an addition 10-15 songs on it. So at website launch we are hopeful that there will be a series of 3 new Cold Stares albums- 1 Electric EP, 1 Acoustic EP, and one full length album. A lot of work, planning and luck has gone into it all- and I'm confident we are following the right path. Appreciate all the support and excitement that it's generating- and wanted to thank you guys.

We are currently doing a string of Saturday nights at the National Underground Nashville- on Broadway across from the Hard Rock Cafe. You can catch us there every Saturday for a while 9pm-11pm. You can also see our additional Nashville dates and out of state dates at http://www.reverbnation.com/thecoldstares

Lots of work going on behind the scenes, and hopefully a lot more to share soon.
Much love ya'll-

THE COLD STARES

The Cold Stares "A 3 Year Condensed History"

2011-08-16T14:16:00.000-07:00

I started this blog a couple of years ago, and really had great intentions on updating it weekly. The issue is that when you are working on the other 30 things you have to do to make a band successful, the blog unfortunately is at the bottom of the list.

Everything we have done to this point, we've done ourselves with help from God and of course a few friends.

So, let me sum it up for you in it's most simplest complicated form. Obviously there are some great stories in between the lines, and I don't mean to omit anyone, we'll save the rest for the book someday.

Chris Tapp and Brian Mullins were in a band called Shelby.
We showcased for some record labels, won some stuff, no magic happened and we retired.

A few weeks later we decided to jam. We had no intentions on doing anything with it.

Minus a bass player, I began to experiment with playing the bass via the guitar and constructed a monstrosity of a rig that sounded like 3 people. It was too huge sounding not to at least play out once. So we played the Duck Inn-Evansville IN.
First gig got a better reaction than anything either of us had done before.

More gigs came.x100
More fans came.x200
More money came.x2

Recorded an EP in Ohio, sold a bunch.

We played a gig at 3rd and Lindsley, and owner Ron Brice was the first Nashvillian to get on board. He would be instrumental in building our confidence and providing motion forward.

In 2010 We entered this Hard Rock Cafe "Ambassadors of Rock" contest in Nashville.
Hmmm. Won the contest beating out all other rock bands from Nashville. In my opinion these bands were the best in the country. And we came in 2nd Internationally.

Did TV appearances on Fox morning show Nashville, Fox, CBS, NBC, Evansville IN.

Did tons of press interviews answering the same questions over and over.

Write ups and offers from industry folks like Gibson, Peavey, Campbell, DeLisle.

We were promised a spot on Nashville's "Live on the Green" concert series after the Hard Rock win. Never happened.....

Played some dates with Rocco Deluca, Bob Schneider, Roman Candle, The Verve Pipe, to name a few.

Better gigs came.

We went to Indy and recorded another EP "Hot Like Waco" with the Johnsons/Pop Machine over a weekend.
Sold a lot of CD's.

Played more gigs, playing sometimes 4 times a month in the same markets and still gaining crowd numbers each gig.

Entered lightning100's "Music City Mayhem" contest in Nashville. We won 4 weeks in a row, and made it to the final 4 concert at The Exit In. Came in 2nd place. (the winners were a Vandy band...cut us some slack).

More gigs, more cities. More write ups, more press.

Started selling out shows, and getting more frequent encores.

Fans started telling folks about our band, that told folks that knew folks.

Ray Kennedy showed up at our Hard Rock show in Nashville.
Ray offered to help. Ray got on board.

We played the WC Handy Blues Festival in Henderson KY for the first time.
Dorin Luck helped. Dorin got on board.

We went back in the studio with Producer/Engineer Chris Grainger and Tres Sasser.
Recorded 5 new songs for an EP.

Director Ryan Smith called after hearing it at Chris Graingers place. Very excited.
Ryan Smith got on board.

We shot pictures with Ryan for the EP we did with Chris Grainger.

We had more management and label interest and requests that we sit on the EP for the time being until we sort it out.

Which brings us to now.

We've built this up with hard work and relentless touring for almost 3 years.

We've had a lot of things happen, and we've had a few things fall through that would have been life changing. Everytime I've felt like throwing in the towel, someone at a show says something amazing afterwards and we push on.

I could name drop- or quote some music critic person who said this or that about us, or is interested or....whatever. But I won't. ----

Because we are a working mans band. We are a middle class band. We play rock and roll. We are not in the hipster scene. We are not a passing fad. Your favorite band does not want to follow us on stage.

The greatest compliment we've had in 3 years came one night at 12th and Porter. The bartender came over after our set and said he had worked there for 10 years and that was the best set he'd ever seen.

That's better than any article by some critic who's never seen us, or by some label A&R guy with a funny last name.

That's in the trench rock and roll honesty, and that's what we are about.