It's been a minute...

We know...



We're thinking...

We truely are slackers...

Just last week we did shows at Swing State & at the Racine County Fairgrounds. We spent the night in WI staying up way to late and getting up way too early the next day.

The shows went well and had some positive feedback from the select few that saw us.

Tomorrow, Friday August 28th we'll be playing at Kinetic Playground with a whole bunch of amazing artists! This one you won't want to miss. Sure, lots of bands say that, "you don't want to miss this one," but I don't think we use it too often and when we do, we mean it!

The Infrasonics are headlining the night and DJ crew The FoR. will be keeping the floor moving 'til 4am!

Fabian Guerra & Gary Rogers

With out going in to too much detail. I just wanted to give my thanks and praise to Fabian & Gary. If you haven't heard yet, Chicago lost both of these men this past week, in separate occasions.

When I was in my first band, I was lucky enough to meet both of them. If it weren't for Fabian I would have never gotten my foot in the door at Beat Kitchen or Subterranean.

Gary did sound at many local venues around Chicago. He did sound for us the numerous times we played at Gunther Murphy's.

Both will be missed.

Please have them and their families in your thoughts.

Beat Kitchen

Thank you to everyone who made it out to Beat Kitchen to see us this past Sunday! It was our first time playing the venue and we had a blast! The staff was amazing!

We were lucky enough to play with Loom, from UT, and Exotic Animal Petting Zoo, from the greater Chicago-land area.

Beat Kitchen thought we did a great job and said they would keep us posted on future shows.

We are hoping to go back in to Blam Studios some time in June.

Sightings, the scene, and other randomness...

Yesterday I [Hex], went to Beat Kitchen with Shlee from Chicago Music Project. Our main goal was to check out The Poison Arrows. Shlee had heard about them from a friend and Radio One just had them at Blam! Studios, you can catch their performance this Wednesday at WLUW.

We also ran in to a few of our friends from Enchufate! Sandra and Luis host E>N>E, which we [CANYON] were lucky enough to be a part of. We also ran in to Rebecca from REGO and her friend Wendy. They are always a pleasure to run in to. Rego will be playing at LaSalle Power Co on Thursday night and at Schuba's next week.

Speaking of Beat Kitchen, we will be playing there this Sunday!! May 17th at 8pm, we'll be doing a +17 show with Loom who hails from Salt Lake City, UT. It should be an exciting show!

In Ursula news, she is somewhere in Canada... apparently it's cold there, so she has told us.

Decisions & Dilemmas

We have just found out that we will be playing at Beat Kitchen on May 17th. This doesn't give us much time to promote, but I think we'll be fine. It's our first show that is 17+ so we're excited about that. We go on first so we'll have to see if we can get a crap load of people there to kick it off right.

Last Friday we played at Kinetic Playground with Edith Blade, The Young & Madlys, Kamadevah! & Tiny Speakers. Thank you to everyone who came out to the show! There were a lot of people there that we didn't know, could it start to be the signs of a fan base!? We're keeping our fingers crossed.

A huge topic of discussion has been recording. Before we go back to Blam we would like to finish writing one to two more songs to ensure that the album is just a little bit longer. We are hoping to weave all the songs together as well, so it's one conscious stream. This is where the decision and dilemma comes in. We do have a few songs that we're working on but as of right now we're not sure which to focus on. Also, the last song we wrote was Cold Fusion... how the hell do you top that?! We're not sure... we may have screwed ourselves with that one. Time will tell.

Cold Fusion @ Union Rock Yards

Cold Fusion

This song was originally called Winter Ghost, an ode to Isa. On a very, very cold winter day in December, CANYON was practicing for their show at Elbo Room. After running their set several times, Brandon and Hex decided to work on a riff that Hex had shown Brandon previously. The riff was called "the Wind or Ghost" riff, because Hex said it reminded him of the band Wind or Ghost.

After hammering out the riff with Brandon several times, Brandon suggest that Hex use another riff that was in a song that had been long tossed out. The riff which was initially used in a song called "Getting Away With What The Girls Call Murder" was then added to the song. In order to get from one riff to another, Hex through in what he likes to call a "cop out" part. These are bridges that fit the song but are not very technical. In his words, "they get the job done." This part the called the "shoegaze" part.

About a month went by before CANYON was able to work on the song again. After moving to a new practice space in the beginning of '09, they were finally able to start working on new material. Brandon and Hex ran through the three parts they had initially had but weren't really able to come up with anything beyond that.

Another practice came around and Hex found Bailey & Brandon jamming out. Hex came in and started jamming along with them. While jamming Hex came up with a riff that he liked. Although it didn't really fit in to the jam that Brandon & Bailey were working on, he kept it in the back of his head.

Later on Cain showed up to practiced and the four of them continued to work on Cold Fusion. As they were playing the song Hex incorporated the part that he had come up with during the jam with Bailey & Brandon. By the end of practice they finally felt that the song was structured correctly. They ran through the song several times feeling fairly satisfied with the song.

At the next group practice CANYON ran through the songs as Ursula listened in. The song was worked on by all the members for a few practices. As the song finally felt done they stamped the song Winter Ghost, an ode to Isa.

The next practice CANYON decided to play Winter Ghost to get it out of their system. As the song was done everyone felt fairly happy with the song. Suddenly, Hex said, "this song sucks." Everyone was shocked asking why. He said he wasn't sure why. He said, the parts were there and they were all good parts, but that's all they were, a bunch of parts put together.

After dwelling on the song for a while they rearranged the parts in a slightly different pattern. While running through the new structure Cain heard Bailey try to do a 5/4 guitar riff during one of the previous attempts of the song. Cain suggested that Bailey incorporate that back in to the song. CANYON had tried several times to recreate what Bailey attempted in Cold Fusion. After several tries with out any success Hex, slightly frustrated, asked Cain where he came up with the idea. Cain stated that Bailey was able to pull it off. Hex started screaming "cold fusion." Cain said, "what?" Hex said, "they created cold fusion, once... it never happened again." Cain said, "it can be done, I heard it." Hex continued to just say, "cold fusion."

Hex trying to never oppose any one's ideas listened to Cain and CANYON kept hacking away at the new part. Eventually they were able to recreate what Bailey did. With this new addition they were able to add the final touch to the song and the structure was finally done.

Previously, Brandon and Hex had discussion about post-rock bands that would do a lot of "dramatic pauses" in their songs, but that most bands, they felt, never used them correctly. Taking this idea Brandon began to work on the ending of Cold Fusion.

Brandon was so energized by the song that he would come in on days that CANYON wasn't practicing to work on his drum parts. He eventually came up with an ending that he was satisfied with and thought that it would solidify the song, while Bailey and Ursula would come in before practice to eventually solidify their parts.

This is the story of Cold Fusion, the naming and structuring of the song.

No news can be good news.

Right now we're just preparing and promoting for our April 24th show at Kinetic Playground. We plan on giving away tickets, we're just trying to figure out a few ways to do so.

I'm finishing up a comp CD to give to WLUW so they can start promoting the show next week. It should have two songs from each band on there so they can play it during the day.

Here's our promo:

4/24/2009 9:00 PM at The Kinetic Playground
1113 W Lawrence
Chicago, IL 60640
Cost: $5 / 21+

Edith Blade - CANYON - The Young and Madlys - Kamadevah! - Tiny Speakers

Special Guest, DJ Monky

FREE PARKING

Don't forget to follow us on Twitter for ticket give-aways. Also listen all next week to WLUW for tickets.

Enchufate!

Yesterday we played at Cobra Lounge with Subatomico and our good friends Arctic Fox. It was for a new TV program that is being put on by Enchufate! which airs every Wednesday on Channel 25, if you're in Chicago. We'll try our best to get a copy and post it on our You Tube and everywhere else.

We have also just posted our final versions of Good News and Seahorse & The Monkey on our MySpace page.

Loon!

Hex: It sounds like there's a bird in our recordings!?
Bailey: I know. It's awesome!

We just finished recording at Blam Studios tonight. We did a lot of layering on the tracks and with the help of Sean we produced something that we're all very proud of. We beefed up the songs and made them as epic as we thought we could while still keeping the idea of each of the two songs.

Sean is working on the mixes this week and we should have the two tracks by the end of the week.

On Good News we did a lot of cool stuff with the cello and even have some acoustic guitar in it as well. We also did some additional instrumentation that gives it a little more of an eerie feel.

Ronny's

Last night was an amazing night for music! I couldn't believe we were put on the bill with such talented bands!

Just before the show we took Cadejo Negro to visit Union Rock Yards. They'll be playing their in April on the 25th with Mayor For Life.

Today Cain and Brandon will record Good News and Seahorse at Blam Studios with Sean. I'm going to try get in the studio to record my parts as well. Kevin will be coming in tomorrow to lay down his tracks. We're trying to get them finished by April for a soundtrack.

Tonight

Tonight we'll be at Ronny's with:

Nanogon
Cadejo Negro
German Beef Initiative

Blam

Yesterday I was at blam tracking scratch tracks for Good News & Seahorse. It went pretty well, I think. I had to do everything to a click track so it took me a moment to get it down, but not as long as I thought it would.

Tonight Ursula goes in to record her parts.

Recording

Well, it's that time again. We're going to bum rush Blam Studios this week to try to get a couple of songs recorded for a soundtrack. We were asked to record Seahorse and The Monkey and the first three minutes and thirty seconds of Good News.

Unfortunately do to everyone's schedule we're going to have to do our recording in a slightly different manor than we're use to. I'm going to go in and lay down some scratch tracks for the songs to a click track. Ursula is going to come in on either Wednesday or Thursday to lay down her parts then on Saturday we're all going to come in and track the drums, guitars and bass.

I pray that this works.

Redemption

Yesterday we took part of the Feedback Magazine's P.U.S.H. Showcase. We got there just before 3pm and loaded in. We hung around and set up a table with some of our CDs and our mailing list. Most of the time if you don't mention it, people don't sign up for your mailing list or even take all the free junk you lay out.

Most of the bands, although good at what they did, sounded very similar. It's interesting to see a band and just know who their influences are. I do have to mention that we did see one band that really did amaze us more than any other group/performance. I don't remember their name right now but as soon as I remember it I'll post it.

Each band was given 15 minutes to play. Unfortunately most bands didn't listen to that rule. I started getting fairly upset when a band would bust in to song number four.

We did make a few new friends at P.U.S.H. and we're really excited to know all these new bands and people.

Just as we were about to leave Evie from Feedback told us to stick around because they were going to be giving away the prizes. As tired as we were, we're very glad we stayed. We were asked to do a radio interview with JStreet Radio 98.3 as soon as possible.

We won:
a video taping of a live show, and a taping of an interview
a video for one of our songs
graphic design work
We also were given the opportunity to play a festival at the Racine County Fairgrounds on August 21st.

That was the best 15 minutes for CANYON to date.

Feedback Magazine

Today is our showcase with Feedback Magazine. I've been spending the whole morning burning comp CDs of the songs we have recorded to pass out at the showcase. We'll still have to stuff them in to sleeves and label them.

We're all meeting at the space at 12 then we're off to Antioch, IL. It's going to be a long day!

March 27th

Ronny's
2101 N California Ave
Chicago, Illinois 60647

NONAGON (ex mbr of the Blue Meanies) is a 3-piece, punk rock concern that formed in 2003 and practices in the Logan Square neighborhood of Chicago. They are the proud purveyors of a loud set of short songs that have unconventional hooks and changes but still (in the one-time-cool vernacular) “rock”. The band consists of drummer Tony Aimone (who used to play in The Blue Meanies, J. Davis Trio, and Taylor), bass player Robert Gomez (formerly of der lugomen and one oneth of Martian Law), and guitar player John Hastie (who was once in Jumpknuckle). They hope to soon create a lasting audio documentation of their existence, and they like to play shows but have no idea how to dress for them.

CADEJO NEGRO - Will Walker and Jason Whitus cut the cord of the traditional Rock and Roll format and come to the world as a thunderous Drum and Bass 2 piece. Former members of Mezzanine C14 stripe down the layers of calculating complex time signatures to bring strong rythums, back beats, and thundering bass while adding the art of noise as an instrument.

German Beef Initiative
The zombie walkers and vacuum assholes abounding, the German Beef Initiative stuck to their cause even while the New England occupation of Texas seemed complete with fascist commandant marching down Congress Street, vibrator lodged in ass screaming, "Limits to freedom!

It's a few of our friends' birthdays around that time. Donna, Dave and Ronnie, Ursula's room mate. We get to set the pace by going on first that evening! I'm really excited to be playing the show!

March 14th

March is finally uppon us. This month we have two shows going on. One will be at Tower Room in Antioch, IL for the Feedback P.U.S.H. (promote until something happens) Show Case. We'll be there passing out some CDs, probably bowling...

Here are some pictures of a photo shoot Ursula did for Feedback Magazine.

Milwaukee

Tomorrow we are off to Milwaukee for our first out of state show! Everyone is really excited. I think all the bands that we're playing with are amazing too! Hopefully we'll have a decent crowd going at BBC.

At 4:30 we'll be on the radio doing a stripped down set with WMSE. After we'll be heading over to BBC to drop off our equipment and then visit Milwaukee. Hopefully we'll get to take lots of pictures of us running around town. We all have friends in Milwaukee also that we hope to catch up with as well. I think we'll have enough time to do everything we'd like. We're also going to spend the night there. We'll see if we really use those hotel rooms that we got. I have a feeling we'll be up all night.

We'll be sharing the stage with Leah Jee & The Boys, This Specific Dream & Kamadevah!

It's true...

It has been a while since we've posted anything on here. I'm sorry we've been neglecting our site a little.

We had an amazing show at Kinetic Playground this past Friday. It was our "Be My Bloody Valentine, Anti-Valentine's Day Extravaganza." Here are some pictures in case you missed it.



All the bands were phenomenal!!! DJ Monky was the glue to the whole night. We want to thank him and everyone else we played with.

The Final Countdown...

So here it is, Monday morning. We're just a few days away from our show at Kinetic Playground. I have a feeling I'm not going to be able to sleep this whole week.

This past Saturday we did an interview with Deysi Cuevas on her show Solo Local which is on Radio Arte 90.5

We're currently trying to finish our latest song called Cold Fusion (Winter Ghost, an ode to Isa). It's a little bit of math rock, time changes, key changes, but still pretty driving, good parts. Finally a song you can bob your head to also. Those are always my favorite guitar riffs. Ones where I feel you can throw a rap over it. Maybe Bailey and I can lay it down for someone to rhyme over.

Post no bills

Last night Cain, Dave and I went around putting up posters and passing out fliers around Chicago. We hit parts of Wicker Park, Uptown and Ukraine Village. I still have to hit up Kinetic Playground and Loyola. I'm hoping to do that on Friday.

Tonight is practice, we're all very excited about it. We have a new song in the works called Winter Ghost, an ode to Isa. Hopefully we can try to revisit Iron Hear of The Republic as well.

Seahorse and The Monkey is now posted!!! Last night I went over to Jeremy's to check out the mixes that he did on the tracks. As for now we grabbed three of the songs we recorded.

Unfortunately we were a little rushed in the studio and we thought we could pull it off. As demos they work fine so I think with the three that we picked people will be able to hear what we sound like.

Tonight we're going to go around Chicago to put up posters for our show at Kinetic Playground. I've asked Dave to help us also. Hopefully we can get a lot done in a short time.

Keeping up with CANYON

Well, it's been forever since we've updated anything on here. I'm sorry for that.

We moved in to a temporary home until February, then we'll be moving to our permanent space. We've had a couple of practices since the move and things are going well.

Just this past Saturday Ursula tracked a bunch of cello on Sentence Fragment & Evil Shenanigans demos. We're waiting for the mix downs so we can get them mastered.

Move'n on up....

Today we moved to our new practice space. It's a space I've know about for a fairly long time. There are a few bands that I know in the building and a few that are no longer there.

We are in a temporary room right now and in February we will be moving to a slightly larger room.

We had a rather quiet practice today. For some reason our Vox amp didn't work so Bailey and Cain had to keep taking turns playing through an amp. In a lot of ways this worked out because we were able to hammer out parts a lot better. We just chopped everything up and worked on the songs bit by bit. We're definately on the road to being a lot tighter that we have been in the past.

It's really bitter sweet how busy we are. In a lot of ways it's great that we have a lot of shows and interviews coming up but it's not allowing us time to write and tighten up on the songs we currently have. I'm sure that we'll make good use of the new practice space and hammer everything out in enough time for our shows in February.

Sponsored!

Today we found out that WMSE will be sponsoring our show Feb 21st in Milwaukee at BBC Upper Level. We're really excited to have their support and backing. They're going to give all the bands an interview and push the show for two weeks!!

We're still not 100% of the order of the show, but the line up is:

Leah Jee & The Boys
This Specific Dream
Kamadevah!

It looks like a great line up and I think everyone's sounds will flow really well throughout the night.

Shattered....

I kept having a recurring dream last night. I had three dreams, from what I remember. In each dream I found my guitar shattered. Each time I had the dream it was more shattered than the previous dream.

Anyway, we're currently planning our Kinetic Playground and BBC shows. We're working on getting sponsors and fliers made for each of the shows.

Here's the poster that was made by Phil of Wonderful Flying Machines. I think it turned out great!

Practice makes a good time!

Last night we had a nice little practice session. It was just Ursula, Brandon and myself. It went well and we went over some of the set we'll be playing tomorrow night at Union Rock Yards.

We were actually able to take little breaks and have a little bit of conversation between the three of us.

All and all the practice was good and we got a little bit of structuring and writing in with the cello.

Editing, take one.

Last night I went over to Jeremy's to start working on the editing and mixing of our songs. Unfortunately while we were recording one of the mics we used had some sort of short so every once in a while there would be a frequency spike. Jeremy was going in and editing them out. Surprisingly, it didn't effect the songs.

We're going to try to get two or three songs done before we do some of the radio shows. Hopefully we'll have them in time.

We're also working on some buttons to give away at our shows.

Holy God, it's the hipsters!

On Saturday night I went to check out In Case of Capture at Reggie's. Minus their techincal difficulties they put on a good show. Unfortunately Cory kept pulling his cord out of his pedals and it kept cutting his signal to his amp.

They played really well and per usual, I went deaf after watching them play.

While at the Reggie's show I received a text message from our old guitarist asking us to play a house party on Saturday. We already have a show at Union Rock Yards but we decided to do the house party also. As soon as we're done at the Union Rock Yards we'll be packing up and heading over to the house party.

After Reggie's I met up with Brandon at Double Door to see Doctor, this virus is silence who was playing with Camera that night. Both bands were really good and we got a chance to talk to them after their sets.

Once we were done at Double Door we headed over to Danny's to meet up with Eric from Tiny Speakers/Penthouse Sweets/Arctic Fox. After a few more drinks we were off to Pasedita for tacos.

Practice

Today we regrouped after our recording session last week. Everyone was on par with their parts and the songs are coming together really well. We ran through all of our songs a few times to make sure everyone was where they needed to be musically. From what it seems we're all happy with our parts and we're ready for our next show.

We will have one more practice before our show at Union Rock Yards this coming Saturday just to make sure we're as tight as we think we are.

New Year, same goals

It's day one of 2009. It's taken just over 3 years to get this band off the ground but it looks like it's well on its way now.

We have a lot of great shows booked around Chicago and we're going to be venturing to Milwaukee as well in February. I'm pretty excited for the new year. The band has a lot of amazing musicians and a ton of great potential musically.

It will be great to see what happens in '09.