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News:
1/11
Hey all you winter wonders! Hope
you're staying warm and that you had a splendid holiday. We certainly
did. For those of you who were at Lilly's--and especially those of you
who came from many miles away--thank you so much for making our season
bright and starting our New Year right. We had so much fun.
We have three little (read: big) things to cover this time 'round:
1) NEW VIDEO
2) ALBUM PREVIEW SHOW this Friday
3) LYRICS
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VIDEO SERIES Part 3
In celebration of the new year, here's a song that will be new to a lot
of you, and this is also the first real sneak-peak at the coming album.
Enjoy!
Part 3:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kdPO9gorsM
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ALBUM PREVIEW SHOW w/ Morgan & Mike
That's right. This Friday the vocal half of CS will be at our favorite
intimate venue, Tonic Room, for a raw preview of the upcoming acoustic
album. Most of the songs from the album will be covered, as well as
some good acoustic standby songs of ours. If you've (n)ever seen CS at
an open mic, this is the show for you. (Get it?) :) No but really,
we're quite excited to show you the quieter, more vulnerable side of
our writing that we maybe don't get to do at shows as often. So join
us, and have a drink with us after as we enjoy more music.
Tonic Room
(2447 N Halsted St)
8pm, 21+, $7
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LYRICS
Common Shiner (and a lot of you, we're sure) believe in the importance
of lyrics in the overall craft of the song. So we wanted to mention
that the lyrics to "Faith and I", as well as most of our other songs,
are now available to view and comment on at SongMeanings.com, which in
our opinion is the best lyrics site on the internet. It allows anyone
to post comments and criticisms about lyrics; some people even cite
interviews with the artist about the song. It's just a great site to
talk about what you love (or hate) about a given song and what it means
to you, and sometimes even just to meet other people who like the same
artist. Check it out at:
http://www.songmeanings.net/artist/view/songs/137438991764/
We'll see you Friday at the show, or in two weeks with the next installment in the acoustic video series!
love,
CS
7/8:
Happy Summer Days!
Well we've certainly had an interesting year so far. All you
faithful readers and fans have probably felt like we've been coming and
going quite a bit. First we started off the year with a short
hiatus to jam together a little more and write some new stuff (which we
actually have quite a bit of new stuff that we'll be unveiling for you
soon :)).
Then there was a couple month period where Mike was gone to sing and
dance in the musical A New Brain back in our stomping ground in Grand
Rapids, MI. (for those of you who got a chance to see it, it was quite
wonderful, and we were proud of our little Mikey) The show may
have tried to kill him, but we're pretty sure he's better for the
experience.
And now the latest thing is that we've all taken our turns being sick,
Vijay being the most recent, who may have had swine flu (though he
never officially got tested for it). We could say he had strep,
but it's far more entertaining to say he had swine flu. But don't
worry, he's over it now, so please give him a hug when you see him
(hugs are always free with Common Shiner).
However, in the last month we made our 4th appearance at Elbo Room, and
our 2nd appearance at Beat Kitchen (two of our favorite venues in
Chicago). And next week, we'll be making our 1st appearance at
Double Door, which we are very excited about. So needless to say,
it feels good to be getting back into the groove of things, and we hope
to be seeing all of you far more often (thanks for sticking with us,
given our disjointed-ness).
So come hang out with us next week at Double Door! Not only is it
our first time there, but it's completely FREE! Here's the rest
of the details:
Address: 1572 N Milwaukee Ave, Chicago, Illinois 60622
Date: 7/15
Time: 8:00pm
Cost: FREE (Free Hugs too!)
Part of the Rock 'n' Roll Bailout series
Come hang out with us, as we love you. You may even hear a new song (we've got a bunch brewing)!
We've also got a few out of town gigs coming up for our outside of
Chicago friends too! Take a look at the myspace.com/commonshiner
or commonshiner.com for dates and details.
Common Shiner loves you!
~CS (c/o Morgan)
6/8:
Hey there pretty people,
Well we've missed you all dearly, and since maybe the warm weather is
here to stay in Chicago, we're FINALLY emerging from our recent
hibernation this Saturday at the Elbo Room(6/13). Mikey's back in
town, and we're really looking forward to playing for you all
again. It's been a while, so we wanted to make this show a
special one. Check it:
312unes Presents:
Common Shiner
w/ Eddie Gumucio & The Electrics,
Dan & Leland (from LA), Daysleeper
IPOD GIVEAWAY!!
Bring two or more friends, tell the door guy you're there for Common
Shiner, and put your name in at our merch table to be entered to win a
BRAND NEW IPOD with the entire Common Shiner catalogue on it--including
unreleased live tracks!
Also, 312unes is sponsoring, so if you find the 312unes rep in the crowd, you can get free beer and Goose Island swag!!
Openers start at 8:30pm, CS is HEADLINING. And you may hear a new song or two!
We'd like to make it a great night, especially for friends Dan and Leland who will be here all the way from California!
Also, check out our calendar on commonshiner.com, myspace, and
facebook, as we've got all kinds of shows coming up both in and out of
town (and plenty more to come), so come hang out with us, and tell your
friends.
We can't wait to see you all again. You complete us. You had us at hello. etc.
Nothing but love!
~CS
4/12:
Hey all you lovely lovely people,
Well Spring
refuses to come to Chicago, and we keep making promises we don't
keep. :( That promise is that we haven't sent you a "real"
newsletter in a while.
Well the reason we
haven't had a chance to this time is because our very own Michael James
Brooks has been cast as the leading role in Actors' Theatre's
Production of "A New Brain" up in Grand Rapids, MI. The rest of
us in the band are very proud of Mike and excited for his new
endeavor. You can check out more info on the show here:
http://actorstheatregrandrapids.com/
So we're taking
the next month and a half or so to book our summer and work on some
other things. And you who are anywhere near the Grand Rapids area
should all go out and see Mike singing and dancing his heart out.
However, we do
have one show coming up very soon that we're very excited about.
We're playing as part of the International Pop Overthrow Festival this
coming Thursday at the Abbey Pub in Chicago
(http://www.internationalpopoverthrow.com/schedule-Chicago-2009.htm).
Here's the details:
Date: 4/16
Time: 8pm
Place: Abbey Pub (3420 W Grace St, Chicago, IL)
Cover: $8
We're very excited
to make our first appearance as part of the IPO (and since you can
still download our latest ep at http://www.saynotobadpop.com/, the IPO
is something we're definitely on the same page with :)).
Come on out and
hang out with us! We would absolutely love to see all of
you! (and you can celebrate the Hawks winning game 1 of their
playoff series, for those of you that care about hockey)
There are plenty of other irons in the fire, so you're bound to hear more from us soon.
We love you dearly!
~CS
3/18:
Greetings Lovelies!
So we
strive to have interesting and entertaining newsletters, and as of
late, we have been failing on that promise. Not to worry, we
promise we'll have a normal (or at least our definition of normal)
newsletter soon. So stay tuned!
In the meantime,
we wanted to let you know that we'll be back out in Wrigleyville this
Friday (3/20), celebrating (almost) the start of spring and therefore
baseball season, bike riding, park attending, and all the other
wonderful things that come with spring. Here's all the details:
Underground Lounge
Address: 952 W Newport Ave, Chicago, Illinois 60657
Date: 5/20
Time: 8pm doors
Cover: $5
Details: Band Called Catch Jen Hall, Big Livy, and The Blamers
We hope to see you
soon! We've got some fun other announcements coming up soon, but
we'll keep this email brief. If you can't make it, at least let
us know how you're doing or something. :)
Common Shiner loves you.
~CS
3/4:
Hey everyone, hope you all had a happy Ash
Thursday! (If you don't own our album So Long..., you will not
get that joke) And if you're following the Lenten tradition and
denying yourself things right now, we wish you strength! Morgan
gave up coffee, Mike and Vijay gave up whiskey (harder than you may
imagine), and we may have talked Jake into giving up peanut butter
(possibly his only true vice).
Well first off, a huge thank you to all of our friends who came and
hung out with us at Billy's Lounge up in Grand Rapids (special thanks
to those who drove from far distances too! You know who you
are). We had such a great time, and felt very loved. It was
also a lot of fun to share a bill with our good friends Bless You
Boys. I hope we can play shows together until the day we die.
So big semi-last minute news here, but we're going to be making our
Beat Kitchen debut in two days! We're excited to finally play at
one of our favorite venues in Chicago, and we hope we caught a lot of
you with free Thursday nights so you can come hang out with us.
And good news for those of you who have to work the next day, this is a
slightly earlier show than most of our Thursday shows have been.
Here's all the details:
Beat Kitchen
Cost: $8 (21+)
Time: Doors 8:30pm, show at 9:00pm (we are on first!)
Address: 2100 W Belmont, Chicago, Illinois 60618
Additional Info: We'll be followed by two great bands, Doe &
Stag and Animal City. So if you can manage it, you'll want to
stay out to hear those guys too.
Since this is our first show at Beat Kitchen, we'd love to have you all there with us! Hope to see you soon!
We love you immensely.
~CS
12/8:
So if you were one of the beautiful people at
Cubby Bear Friday night, you already know this and are telling friends.
Thanks so much for coming out--it was a fantastic show (well, until
they started kicking people out so fast we couldn't say goodbyes). We
can't tell you how much it meant to have you there, nor how much our
hearts swell when we get on stage and see the faces of many dear
friends. You keep us going. And we have to say, it was yet another show
that state lines were crossed to see. We feel unbelievably blessed.
But in case you couldn't be there Friday night, we wanted to pass this
on to you tonight so *you* can have the EP and be passing the website
on. We intentionally made it pretty easy to remember. HERE IT IS!
www.saynotobadpop.com
("say no to bad pop dot com")
You just go there and enter your name and email and start the free
download! It's a zip file that contains all four songs, and even some
album artwork, lyrics, and a Common Shiner desktop wallpaper for fun.
And just so you know, we *are* still doing this all indepently, and
still need financial help whenever we can get it. So after you download
the album, there is a button to "donate" that will take you to a Paypal
site where you can contribute whatever you can. And by the way, sorry
the donate button is so big--we're not trying to push, Paypal seriously
wouldn't let us make it any smaller. :)
WE LOVE YOU ALL SO MUCH! It's bittersweet to be going into this
figurative cave for a couple months, but we hope to emerge better
artists, with new music and new thoughts. Assuming you're not one of
the few people we'll see up at the Turtle Creek Casino shows in two
weeks, we'll see you in February.
All love, and Happy Holidays,
CS
9/1:
Hey all you wonderful people,
Well we've been keeping busy with all kinds of stuff. Not
just
gigs, but we also spent a couple days in the studio laying down some of
our newer stuff that you may have heard at shows already.
We've
also taken some new pictures of our sometimes pretty faces that you'll
be able to see soon too (you could maybe even see one right now on our
myspace :-)).
STORYTIME
====================================
So we mentioned before we had a couple great stories, so we figured
we'd share them with you.
First Story: Rainy Day Occurrence
-------------------------------------------------
We played about a month ago at Subterranean, and for those of you in
Chicago, you'll remember that as the night a virtual hurricane blew
through in the form of two gigantic thunderstorms. Well as we
were packing up, our very own Vijay (the Professor) discovered that his
passenger side car window was shattered, and everything he had inside
was gone. He was also planning on driving out of town immediately after
our show, so he had all of his clothing packed for the night,
directions to where he was going, all kinds of extra stuff, and all of
it was gone.
Needless to say, we were all a little distraught and just generally
disappointed with humanity. So we cleaned most of the glass
out
of the car, and Vijay pulled it up to load in his stuff. He popped open
the trunk, and there may as well have been a heavenly chorus of Ah's,
as we noticed that all of his stuff was in the trunk.
Everything. Even his google directions.
So putting aside the possibilities that Vijay was on a drunken binge
that none of us were aware of (also, that he could manipulate time and
space), or that the storm itself had perfectly transferred all of his
stuff whilst keeping it dry, we surmised that what must have happened
was that something in the storm, or maybe someone on accident broke his
passenger side window, then some sort of street angel noticed this,
thought either "someone's going to steal his stuff" or "all of his
stuff is going to get wet" and moved all of his stuff to the trunk
(with the trunk lever now being accessible, thanks to the broken window.
Faith in humanity restored.
P.S. If whoever did that is reading this - Thank you!
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Second Story: Using up All Our Luck
-------------------------------------------------
You may know that we recently played up at Little River
Casino.
Overall, we had a wonderful time, and while we were there, we decided
we'd try a little gambling (responsible gambling, of course, if that's
such a thing). Morgan left the blackjack tables $20
up.
Jake dabbled with the slots and the blackjack tables and left $5
up. Vijay lost every hand he attempted in Blackjack, and left
down $40.
Then we move to Mike, who about $2 into trying out the slots, won
$1,250. We're not making this up. He had to fill
out tax
information, then received $1,250 in cash. So dinner was on
him,
to say the least.
And hopefully he has not used up all our luck. :-)
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That's all for now, but more to come soon, such as details of our
upcoming tour!
CS is growing quite fond of you.
Check us out on iRadio LA
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