We are excited to announce that we will be performing live from Chicago on Fearless Radio (www.fearlessradio.com) this Monday, April 7th at 5pm CST. We'll be hanging out there for about an hour and will take some of your questions -- and we'd love to hear from ya! The studio line is 312-224-8273 OR you can IM the studio at fearlessradio00 or go to fearlessradio on MSN!
VH1.com just added our video for "Sing Along" to their site! You can check it out here: Our Video on VH1.com Thanks for watching!
We are extremely excited to announce our upcoming album release tour for "Home This Year. We will be going out with an amazing Australian band, The Beautiful Girls...they've got a great Jack Johnson meets Ben Harper vibe and if you haven't heard of them yet you will soon. The tour will be going nationwide to many familiar cities and to some like Seattle, San Francisco and Portland that are about to get their first taste of Virginia Coalition. It all begins on April 8th in Chicago and ends on May 3rd in Tampa, Fl. Check the schedule for dates near you and we'll see you there!!!
Every Tuesday until our release on March 18th we will be posting one new track from our
forthcoming
album and taking down the previous weeks track. "Sing Along" will stay
up there, but each week we will be highlighting one new track!
hello all,
I have to tell you about an amazing experience I had on our last trip out to California. Paul and I arrived a day before we were set to perform with Cary Brothers, at the Sunset Sessions industry showcase in Carlsbad, and for all intents and purposes we were expecting to have a pretty quiet night in preparation for our two shows. Jarrett is a new father so he hopped on an early morning flight the following day to join us. It's a fairly long flight from DC to Los Angeles so we stopped in Manhattan Beach to get some food and made our way to the hotel to crash out. By the way if you've never had the Loco Moco Burger Bowl at Ebizo's Skewer in Manhattan Beach you need to check that out.
That evening we headed to our producer Marshall's studio to say hello and catch up on the new stuff that he was working on. His current project is the new Josh Hoge record and we were excited to meet Josh as we have been playing shows with his brother Will off and on for years. Paul and I showed up that evening around seven or eight pm refreshed from some rest at the hotel and it was hugs and high fives all around as we greeted our old friends. We met Josh who is very friendly and started checking out his new music which is extremely cool and really reminded me of some of the tight r&b Justin Timberlake jams from a few years ago. Josh has an outstanding voice with a falsetto range that made me regret the last cigarette I smoked fifteen years ago.
For those of you who don't know Marshall Altman he is an extremely talented producer, a surprisingly great singer and he is tirelessly energetic in his pursuit of great songs. Above all else he is a genuinely good guy. While we were making our record out west, Jarrett Paul and I developed a real friendship with Marshall and his equally amiable recording partner Eric Robinson. Honestly, the camaraderie we happened upon was so powerful that we were all pretty distraught when we realized we'd actually finished the record.
Now before I mention any more I should probably tell you that more than any of his other qualities Marshall is a consummate master of ceremonies when it comes to his studio and an absolute ringleader when it comes to songwriting. That's not to say the he presides over a circus but simply that he is in a constant unabated state of songwriting collaboration . I don't think that he has ever or will ever meet anyone who he can't write a song with nor would he consider wasting a hang session with musicians on anything other than trying to write a song. Although I didn't know it then Paul and I were going to be writing that night with a very exciting cast of characters.
In his typical understated fashion Marshall mentioned that he was going to invite some people over to kick it and given his circle of friends that usually that means it's going to be good. Paul and I went about ordering VACO's favorite pizza from Dino's, the "Bel Air", and of course some "California salads" with extra sauce which we were turned onto by Marshall and Eric while we were out there working on the record. That particular salad is so damn good that it made it into the lyrics of the song "Home This Year". I don't usually go so far as to actually sing about food on a record but it just seemed right at the time and it's probably a true testament as to how much we were all feeling completely lyrically and musically unconstrained while making our new album.
The food arrived and we had not taken our first bite as none other than Louisiana's own Marc Broussard walked through the door. What a cool surprise! Awesome! I was absolutely thrilled to see his face as we used to do a lot of shows together a few years back and he is definitely among the good hearted people I would count as a friend in the music business. He is channeling soul and funk from somewhere deep in the swamp and if you've never heard his phenomenal singing you probably just need to go ahead and listen and then come back to this "blog" later. Marc is the embodiment of pure Southern flavor in just about everything he does and his Louisiana accent and flair for storytelling make you feel like you're sitting on a back porch in the Bayou while you're with him. You literally feel like you're about to get bit on the neck by a mosquito when he gets rolling. He has a story for every occasion and I was getting lost in one he was telling about an old bluesman hitting him up for money for the dentist when I looked up and was more than a little surprised to see Elliott Yamin. Do you mean the Elliott Yamin from American Idol? That's the one. Now I'm not one to be bowled over national television stars but this was pretty amazing. I'll admit that I watch American Idol these days mainly for the poor bastards who get hilariously eliminated in the first auditions "ala" the bush baby and his friend but in the earlier seasons I was pretty into it. Elliott is an outstanding singer and he's also from Virginia so we all were rooting for him during the show's run. Since then he has gone on to record and sell a ton of albums on his own so when he showed up and had the personality of just a normal friendly dude it was totally disarming. The whole group of us started in on the Bel Air and got to talking about whatever came to mind.
Ok so here is where Marshall's power comes in because I can't say that I really remember how much time had passed or what "discussion" of any songwriting had occurred or if anything resembling a "discussion" of any sort had occurred but I remember suddenly realizing that it was hours later and Paul, me, Marshall, Eric, Marc, Josh and Elliot were writing and recording a song. What? Come again?
Now I have been making music for a while and I've seen a lot of great musicians and I have definitely been numbed a bit to being in the company of talented people but I have to admit that this was a very exciting moment. First I must tell you that there is a part of me that just didn't think it would be possible to write a song together with all of these people. I remember early on kind of cocking my head to one side and closing one eye with the thought that it was just not actually going to happen. The group of us definitely started slowly in terms of polite back and forth discussions about the theme of the song and honestly that is the most difficult and most critical part of any songwriting session. It's never really about the music itself but whether two people or a group of people can be confident enough to express themselves and their creative thoughts without be so confident that they trample on other peoples thoughts and ruin the entire session. In other words you have to know how to get your hands dirty without getting dirt in anyone else's face.
Much to my amazement as time went on we were starting to develop a group dynamic. All of us had unknowingly become invested in the song and had started passionately expressing our ideas for its lyrics, melody and arrangement. It was quite exciting to watch Marc and Elliott and Marshall and all of us vehemently making our cases to the group for what would be the final outcome. It was even more exciting to realize that all of this had happened quite spontaneously and seemingly by accident. By the time we got down to recording the song it was well past 1:30 yet we were all keyed up to go into the booth and sing our parts. The end result was absolute magic as I listened to Marc and Josh and Elliot go off with their amazing voices and perfect a song that had not even existed just a few hours ago.
We didn't end up leaving until it was way too close to 4am, or in other words 7am to us East Coast travelers and needless to say it had not been any bit of the quiet night we'd been expecting. And thank god for that! It was an awesome experience and I'd say that I would love to do it again but it probably could never happen again in quite as perfect a way.
