“Say It Now” is available online at crocsbattleofthebands.com. You can listen to the song for free as much as you like. All we are asking is that if you listen to the song, you also cast a vote for us. If you listen to the song every day, even better! You can vote for us once a day whether you listen or not. if you think launching the song on this website is just a ploy to get you to go there and vote for us, you are absolutely right.

We were selected by the University of Cincinnati (along with two other area bands) to participate in this online competition. The winning band opens for One Republic and Fabolus at UC on April 26th and gets a mention in SPIN magazine. We could really use an opportunity like this to win over some fresh ears and jump start the new JFK album cycle.

i know from the last few years that when you guys put your mind to online voting, you pretty much kick ass. pretty much kick more ass than any other group of fans (#1 in Q102’s Cincinnati Choice Awards for best singer, a couple #1’s for JFK in the Alternative Addiction charts, etc.) i also know that nobody wants to be voting for stuff all the time and there are a ton of band contests out there. so we’ve gotta choose our battles! and i think we should win this one. what do you think?

A word about say it now–as you will hear it kind of straddles some ground between curvature and jfk. many of the songs on the record are more straightforward nostalgia-esque and many of them sound nothing like either record. this just happens to be one of our favorite songs, and the one that was mixed first. so enjoy, tell your friends, and please vote! thanks so much.

www.julyforkings.net < - new website slowly coming together
www.myspace.com/julyforkings

www.crocsbattleofthebands.com
www.nextstepcampustour.com

i am sick. i had hoped to be recording vocals for the JFK record this week. but since i cannot sing or play very well i have been burning, folding and labeling CD-R’s all day. i think i have a sharpie headache. i have decided to release a selection of my acoustic demos as a limited signed and numbered release called Lexington Demos. it is a collection of 11 songs i recorded in my apartment in 2004 and 2005 around the time i was writing for curvature. these are my favorites that were never recorded properly, and two songs that were re-recorded, Float Away (JFK’s Nostalgia) and Futureflies (Curvature).

talked about the possibility of this with some people on the message boards a while back and it’s just been stirring in my brain until today. i was going to do internet only but a few people said they would really like an actual disc. so… a limited version is a compromise. i think now is a good time to do this, while i still enjoy listening to them and they kind of fit in with the lyrical and melodic aesthetic of curvature, even though they are at the other end of the spectrum sonically–they are very low-fi/indie sounding. it is weird to be releasing this now as i’m in such a different place psychologically and with my writing, but with the amount of solo acoustic shows i’ve been doing, i think releasing some music that’s really intimate like this makes sense. and it is taking us longer than i had anticipated to finish the new july for kings record. if you’re as anxious for its completion as i am, maybe this will help tide you over. consider this the melancholy calm before the coming storm of jfk pop rock.

Joe Hedges
Lexington Demos

1. Africa
2. Float Away
3. Cemetery Sun
4. Crying Tree
5. Messenger
6. Christmas Day
7. Red Ink Letters
8. Sleeping Through
9. Futureflies
10. Wrong Day
11. Walk Carefully

a limited amount of these will be available at CDbaby.com soon, followed by itunes and other digital distributors. when the CD’s are gone they’re gone; at that point it will be an internet only release. i’ll let you know when the page at cdbaby is live!

this was one of the more surreal moments of my life.

my set went pretty well. i played the main stage ballroom. since there were over 100 songwriters participating in the conferences, i felt really good about having a slot on the main stage on saturday night, for the very first cape may conference. immediately after me was my new friend laura warshauer, a young singer/songwriter recently signed to island records, then jeffery gains out of harrisburg pa (perhaps best known for his cover of peter gabriel’s “in your eyes”). i saw laura warshauer at millennium music conference a few months ago in a little room with a terrible pa. but last night was just great, everything about it. and jeffery’s voice sounded incredible too. the whole conference experience was very humbling and inspiring and affirming. i am a songwriter.

congress hall:

the sun finally came out yesterday. in the span of a few minutes, literally a few minutes, the fog lifted and the skies cleared and the sun came out. then this morning was so beautiful i did not want to leave. i took a slight detour up the shore to watch the waves like sheets of diamonds. then through the pinelands and back up to the airport in delaware. a beautiful day for doing 80 in a bright red rental car.

i am sitting in a cocktail lounge at Congress Hall, a historic hotel on the ocean in Cape May, NJ. there is a girl playing piano and singing in english with a spanish accent, almost drowned out by the crowd at the bar. apparently, George Washington stayed here a few times. i am sure the decor in this room has changed a little. the carpet is zebra stripes, palm tree in the corner but the low lighting makes it all work. i’ve just ordered the grilled portobello mushroom lasagna.
[applause]

it has been a long journey getting here yesterday i drove two hours through a blizzard, only to wait all afternoon in the skybus terminal at the columbus airport, looking out at snow coming down quietly on airplanes. they closed the entire airport for a few hours. all the runways were closed. then weirdly, we were instructed to board the plane. i am still not sure how we flew out of that. as we were waiting on the tarmac an army of snow plows came around and circled the runways a few times. they reminded me of synchronized swimmers or a marching band. i spent some time wondering what would be the better analogy if i were to write about it and i couldn’t decide. then, a man in a cherry picker began spraying pink slime all over the plane there were capital letters on the side of the truck DEICING. we must have been one of the first and only planes to fly. during take off i could feel the wheels sliding. fun.

cape may is just as it was described to me–quaint, victorian, nice. but to that you can add rainy and foggy. i went out shooting some pictures today on the beach. it was magnificent. i felt very alone, in a good way.

then i came back to congress hall to do some mentoring. this is the first time i have participated in any kind of mentoring thing at one of these conferences. it was great! basically i sat at a table and young (or old) aspiring (or working) songwriters would come up and ask me questions, play me their cd’s, show me their press kits. it was really fun meeting people and feeling like i had something to offer.

i cannot seem to finish a journal so i’m just gonna put this up. more later.

do you like samba? i do. i am listening to samba and studying american history.

my sister amy and i went to Millenium Music Conference in Harrisburg, PA over the weekend. it was nice. we spent friday night and some of saturday wandering around amish country with my ex drummer sam and his girlfriend Rachel, who grew up in miflintown, pa. it’s a ways off the highway and life moves a little more slowly. or a lot more slowly, if you are driving behind a horse and buggy in your car. some photos from the pennsylvania hills:

stuffed

then we drove to harrisburg for the conference. before the show we ate at a mexican restaurant downtown

hotel hallway

harrisburg was surprisingly cool. my friend thom guessed that being the capitol city, it must attract some young people who make it maybe a little hipper than your average PA town. i don’t know. we don’t really know anything about it i’m just running my mouth. but we did get a good vibe just driving around and randomly selecting a restaurant.

unfortunately amy did not get to perform with me as she was getting over a terrible sickness. she was still nice enough to travel with me.

the stage and the room were small. i played mostly stuff off curvature, until people started falling asleep then i threw in some JFK. somehow, i was on a bill with all female singer/songwriters, most of them jazz. as much as i like being sandwiched between females, performing after jazz musicians can be intimidating. i opted not to play the piano and just did an all guitar set. i performed newer songs “say it now” and “sam” for the first time. following my set was the always lovely darcie miner. she writes with honesty and directness that i really appreciate and can sing her ass off. plus, she’s twangy.

at the raddison inn, all the rooms had sleep number beds. sleep number beds run on ancient magic and emit vacuum cleaner sounds when they inflate–er when they magically get harder. they go all the way up to 100. i found that it is best to start at 100 and go down. like any kind of scale, it’s best to start toward the end that is bad and work your way to the good. if you start good, you’re never going to know how much bad you can tolerate. my sleep number is 25. amy’s was 20. 20 is five sleep numbers too low for me.

there is a lunar eclipse tonight. i hope you can catch it!

well we are finishing the drums now. he is leaving in a couple hours. today we have cut “tarantula”, “100 pianos” and we’re about to do “blue”. this is ballad day or something. i am finished with nearly all my guitars. i may have to re-cut some acoustics for blue (they’re hissy) and i need to re-cut a few parts for six hour drive. so drums and my guitars are about wrapped up. but there is still a whole lot left to do. this record is taking forever. maybe, i am turning into a perfectionist. so far i have completely re-cut three songs from the ground up because i changed my mind about the tempos. maybe it is just that self-producing, i keep doing things wrong and then it takes me longer to realize what kind of mistakes i am making. that’s some of it. then there’s the idea that if i think something is wrong and i’m working by myself, i can just re-cut it. i don’t have to feel like i am annoying somebody with a million requests or being overly meticulous.

working with frank has been great. he’s really done a fantastic job getting tones and making suggestions. it is a nice relief from me sitting down here alone so much. he and dan have really gotten along well and the three of us have had a lot of fun. even if we may be a little crazy with our attention to detail, this is the most laid back album i’ve ever done in terms of vibe around the studio. there are no contracts, no money exchanging hands, no deadlines, nothing hanging overhead. we’re just having fun and i think it’s going to sound like it.

also it will be our most musical album yet. dan’s parts range from thrash metal to bossa nova. it has really been cool to have him experiment with so many different feels and sounds. we were talking yesterday–he has always had the ability to play all sorts of things really well, we’ve just never done an album that really allows him to stretch out in this way.

we have fifteen tracks recorded. we’re either going to release all fifteen, cut some, or keep going and make a double-album. that’s just sort of a joke but who knows. we have enough songs for it…

tonight i’ve gotta finish a painting.

is here at my house for a week to record dan mcquinn playing drums in my basement.

a short history of Frank: i first met Frank when he was in the seventh grade at a Latin convention in Massachusetts. i think i had just graduated high school. TJ Miller and i were writing and performing songs together and coffee houses and talent shows; Frank was learning to play the guitar and developing an interest in recording. we had stars in our eyes.

Frank became good friends with my sister Amy, and we kind of kept in touch through her. a couple years later Ken Lewis, our first producer, recruited Frank to assist engineer on our SWIM album for MCA Records. he spent a lot of time helping out and hanging out at the band house and some time up in the Massachusettes studio Longview Farms. a trip back in time: (wavy wavy wavines, chime sounds)

this was back in the old days when you needed to go to a studio to record music.

as frank recalled i did not have enough feet to switch all the pedals for different sections of the song we were tracking.

frank says “ken had to reassure my mom that i wouldn’t drink beer.” look mom no beer!

he has since graduated from Berkley School of music and currently lives in L.A. making a living doing “anything anybody will pay me for” [laughs]
“mainly I am a producer and sound-alike session singer.” he will be singing a few tracks for the next guitar hero game. he is a lot like me–he has his hands in all sorts of other creative projects from photography to video editing etc.

it is very fitting that the kind and talented Frank Charlton is here doing some recording for this July For Kings record. i am grateful. we have a lot of history.

cut to the present.

dan is playing a cheap Yamaha keyboard waiting for Frank to figure out some computer things. we have all the drums mic’ed, cables strewn everywhere, a rack of hardware, a space heater on. we’re getting ready to track Roses.
we just figured out the theme to “Rugrats”

more soon.