September 2010
1 post
Hindsight
It was 4:47 am on Saturday morning, August the Seventh, the year Two Thousand Ten. I was on 278 East in New York, having just left LaGuardia Airport, dropping off my brother and friends who were about to board a flight to Aruba. It was at this instant I realized that this was the first time in what must have been months that I had a peaceful moment to myself. There would be no talking heads,...
Only in Colorado
After our illustrious show in Iowa it was time to head again to the most beautiful of the United States: Colorado. I fell in love with the Centennial State as soon as I had my first glimpse of the Rocky Mountains as we approached from Interstate 70 in the summer of 2008. The flat horizon turned jagged and menacing in the blink of an eye, and a raw sense of awe and intimidation tumbled through my...
August 2009
2 posts
Exploring Mimal
St. Louis was next. One of our favorite cities from last year’s tour, we were excited to come back. This time would be different, though. Last year we camped at an RV Parque about 15 minutes outside the city, setting our tent up on the gravel spot provided for us, wedged between a highway and train tracks that never ceased to be busy. Our current trip to St. Louis was destined to be more...
It's good to be the king.
Well, despite the severe lack of Internet for the majority of the time, our tour has been going very well so far. After Ohio we hit Chicago. Dave’s brother Scott was in town checking out a possible grad school, planning his trip around our show. Luckily, that meant we had a place to stay (hooray for hotel crashing). Last year we were only in Chicago for a night, and couldn’t find a...
July 2009
3 posts
We're Going Heavy
It started like any other day - waking up on a couch in a rural Ohio basement owned by some kind folks we had met the day before. The hour was early considering how late we were awake the previous night. But we had a decent drive ahead of us. Our next stop was an afternoon gig in Painesville, Ohio (a stone’s throw from Lake Erie), so we could not enjoy the luxury of sleeping in. After...
Mr. Mojo Rising
Tour has started with a bang. A hero’s welcome in Youngstown, Ohio included delicious pork chops. A slight upgrade from the Chex Mix we were feeding on all day in the van. At Mojo’s Pub and Grill last night we were greeted with open arms by all the familiar faces from shows past. By far our best show in Ohio to date, the crowd was plentiful and energetic, dancing along to all the...
Tour Begins at Night
This post was written on Friday July 17 at 12:00 pm
We are driving on Interstate 76, van packed to the brim with everything we need to survive for the next two months. John Fogerty’s twangy guitar and mangy voice struggle to compete with the wind blowing in our faces. The Today Begins at Night National Tour 2009 has officially started. What a ride these past couple weeks have been. ...
June 2009
8 posts
Voting has begun!
Voting has started for WMMR’s Yuengling contest! Click here to view our in-studio performance and then text MMR5 to 83361 to place a vote for our performance! You can see the in-studio performances of the other finalists at the WMMR website. Thanks for all your support!
Apples on the morning show
We’ll be on the WMMR Preston & Steve morning show tomorrow performing our Yuengling contest song live on air at 9 am! Tune in to http://prestonandsteve.libsyn.com/ for the podcast!
We're finalists!
We were notified earlier today that our entry is one of 8 finalists in the WMMR and Yuengling competition! We’ll be going on the radio in a couple weeks to perform our song live! The performance will be videotaped and shown online for people to vote. We’ll let you know as soon as the voting instructions are posted!
WMMR and Yuengling
We recently discovered that Philly rock station 93.3 WMMR was holding a contest for the chance to win a limited edition Martin acoustic guitar signed by Dick Yuengling himself. All you had to do to enter was videotape a performance of a song (could be original or a parody of a song) having to do with WMMR and Yuengling and upload it to YouTube. Since this gave us an actual good excuse to use...
100K
Our van turned 100,000 miles old last night coming home from our show in New Brunswick, New Jersey. I felt honored to have been behind the wheel at the time. What a momentus occassion. We pulled over and lit up cigars in celebration. At 3 in the morning, mind you. May the next 100,000 miles be even more rockin.
Look at how beautiful those zeros are!
Continued from “It is 5 am and you are listening…to Bad Apples.”
When we entered the studio at DB Plus, it was as if we had never left the first time. Though it had been nearly two years since we had been there last, the time in between seemed so inconsequential, it felt like it hadn’t happened. Like the déjà vu of a recurring dream, my consciousness slipped away and I...
“My old man used to say, ‘There’s good in everything you listen to,...”
– Gene Paul, on father Les.
It is 5 am and you are listening...to Bad Apples.
When it comes to getting an album done, the only way to make sure you actually finish it is to set deadlines. Otherwise you can listen and listen and you’ll just find more things to add or change. Can this part use another vocal harmony? Should we bring up the volume of the horns here? You can listen to the same mix for days and days and start hearing things that aren’t there, and...
May 2009
3 posts
Liberty University: limiting freedom of expression →
Can someone say irony?
Chicken and Religion
It’s crunch time now. We finished tracking the new album yesterday. The album now has a title, too - we were getting nervous about this because it was 5 months into recording and two weeks before our duplication deadline and the album was yet untitled. But the end result of the torturous naming process was as perfect as we always imagined it would be. The idea came to me in the shower...
Riding on the Storm
As every musician that has been to New Haven knows, the paramount venue to play (thanks to the Coliseum’s figurative and literal implosions) is Toad’s Place. Located next to the Yale campus in the heart of downtown, Toad’s may be the dingiest night club on the eastern seaboard. The air is musty with the remnants of 35 years worth of cigarette and pot smoke. You can hear the floor struggle to...
April 2009
1 post
Welcome to Bad Apples, Philadelphia!
As many of you know, we have been recently engulfed by our move from our nation’s armpit (New Jersey) to our nation’s Old Spice (Philadelphia). This move, while practical for so many reasons, crept up on us like a cat on his ball of yarn (or aluminum foil, in the case of our beloved Moses). This not being out of the ordinary for most Bad Apples operations, we were not phased in the...
March 2009
3 posts
1 tag
Chuck Norris, where do you get off?
Chuck Norris recently declared, seriously or not, that he would consider running for president of Texas were it to secede from the Union. The level of disturbance this statement causes can only be quantified in the number of double-takes I did after reading it: 3. I guess I had no idea Chuck Norris had a full blown case of the crazies.
Chuck Norris does not read the Constitution. He...
The Charles Mingus Cat Toilet Training Program
Everyone knows Charles Mingus as the legendary jazz bassist and bandleader, but apparently there was much more to this man than meets the ear. I happened to come across this link while on a Wikipedia binge - it seems Mingus himself wrote the article. The strategy makes sense, all it takes is a little patience, and a willing cat. Our little Moses would have none of this toilet training crap,...
February 2009
2 posts
If anyone asks, just tell them the Bad Apples took...
We had a show in Warren, Ohio this past weekend. It was the second time we’ve played in the Buckeye State. The first stop on our summer tour last year was in the seemingly deserted, yet eighth most populated city in Ohio - Youngstown. A city that had flourished during the steel boom, the drive through downtown had made us uneasy for the sole reason that there was no evidence of recent...