I’ve been playing shows in the northeast Ohio area for the last 9 years and I’ve had a great time doing it. However, other regular bank junkies like myself will agree that it’s far from purely “sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll”. There are songs to write, gear to buy and maintain, merchandise to design and print, and of course… get booked on awesome shows!

Similarly, another prevalent local musician whom I’ve known for probably the last 7 years, Brian Markle, underwent the same struggles with forming bands and hunting for gigs. And while musicians like him and I were constantly at the mercy of the greedy promoters of the area, Brian created his very own production company, BeardCore Productions, and made it his first and only priority to serve the performing musicians. Since his company’s inception, BeardCore has already began ruling the area with average show turnouts in the hundreds even with it’s largest show, BeardStock, still yet to come.

Brian was kind enough to agree to an interview so I thought I would pick his brain on the ins and outs of running a successful production company along with a few great tips on how bands can improve their show experience, catch the eyes of a promoter, and what it takes to sell more tickets. [click to continue...]

There are a lot of really awesome bands out there, however, the reason we know that they’re awesome is because there are so many terrible ones too. Now I’m not going to attest that I’ve never been in a crappy band before because I have. I’ve been in some really lousy groups that would have made you give up listening to music for a couple years. Actually there were points in my life when I did just that to cope. Performing AC/DC covers for months takes a toll on your self-esteem.

But what would the world be like without terrible self-centered bands that think they’re god’s gift to humanity?

Happier? Better turnouts at live shows? A couple thousand less Guitar Center locations? Probably, but until then, you can use this checklist to determine if one of your friend’s bands (or your own band) should do us all a favor and go on a hiatus…indefinitely. [click to continue...]

I woke up that morning thinking to myself, “It’s gonna be cold. I thought it was going to be fun, but it’s going to be cold and dark and miserable.” I sat up in my  bed and just paused there silently. I stared straight ahead at the closed blinds over my single upstairs window and simply began wishing, very hard, that when I opened those blinds to view the outside world that the sun would wash right over me and welcome my sleepy face with a clear sky and smell of impending summer.

Everything Saturday morning I hope for this… unless of course it’s Christmas morning. That’s the only day that it’s allowed to be cold and snow. [click to continue...]

With the first show for HonestKyle 4 months away I finally got my rear in gear and began the hunt for my members. I was really looking for people that I could trust, knew were talented musicians with experience being in a band before, had enough time to take on the job, and were just all around good guys to hang with.

If you’re friends with me on Facebook then you probably saw my statuses asking for musicians send me videos and sound clips of them doing their thing and I watched and listened to them all. Most of them were quite good and it was difficult to narrow down my prospects, but I’ve done it and I want to announce the members here and now.

Lead Vocals – Me… No surprise there. But the only thing that I was considering doing differently was I thought that I might play rhythm guitar in the group. However, I’ve decided to just dedicate my time strictly to vocals only to make sure I deliver a good performance every single time.

Guitar 1/Screams – Matt Westhead. His previous bands include Aldous, Via Transit, Harlequin’s Voice, and Purple Are Forward. He likes to play loud and heavy tunes.

Guitar 2/Back-up Clean Vocals – John Porterfield. He is currently in Arm the Machine and is a great lead guitarist with years of experience under his belt.

Bass – Clayton Jones. This is my cousin and one of the finest bass guitarists I know with a great ability to adapt to all sorts of different genres. He is also in Arm the Machine.

Drums – Seth Basista. Seth was the last piece of the puzzle since it was difficult to find a reliable drummer that I was sure could handle the parts. I had already confirmed someone else, but he informed me that he could no longer take the position. I’m very happy that Seth was able to step in and re-fill the position. His previous bands include Andy Sunglass and Purple Are Forward.

If you’ll notice on the Tour page, I’ve added the Beardstock show with its details so you know exactly what’s going on. I’m super stoked for it!

I’m also in the process of getting some photos and album artwork done for my merch. Here’s a little taste of the photo work being done by Seth (yes the drummer… he’s a very talented guy).

Plus!… I have finally uploaded a couple new fully-mixed and mastered songs for you to enjoy! I’ll actually be giving away 4-5 of them for free very soon, but I would appreciate if you could share this information/music with your friends to at least get them a little interested.

Things are starting to snowball now!

HK

The first HonestKyle show is finally set and I’m super excited (and nervous) for the big day. However, this show is not until July of 2012. (So don’t start bugging me for tickets right now)

Now, from the beginning of this music’s conception, I imagined putting on my very own massive album release show to kick off the band and establish myself as a major contender in the area, but late at night this past week, while browsing Facebook, I saw an opportunity that I decided I couldn’t turn away.

A good musical friend of mine named Brian has made it his goal to continually raise the bar as far as the representation and performances of the northeast Ohio local music scene and he does a hell of a job. He’s a cofounder of an independent music production company called Beardcore Productions that hosts a number of high-production shows in my area.

When you attend one of his shows, you can expect at least a dozen bands, possibly on multiple stages, and a turnout of at least a couple hundred people. These shows are pretty great to say the least.

But late one night last week, I was browsing Facebook and noticed that Brian had decided to put on a massive show planned for July spanning 3 days with multiple stages, featured touring acts, and a bill containing almost every reputable band in the northeast Ohio area. And all this is happening right in my hometown of Newton Falls, OH.

Now, my first response was to simply view the event, give my continued support, and then go to bed… but… when I laid in bed, my mind was racing at a hundred miles an hour. The next day at work I was practically a zombie with how much sleep I had lost the night before.

And I began to weigh my very own plans for HonestKyle’s debut.

Would I be able to put on a show with the same turnout? Would I be able replicate a similar intesified atmosphere for my very own album release?

I finally realized that even though I do have great confidence in my own skills to put on a show with a large turnout, I knew that this event being hosted by Brian is just too much to pass up.

So I threw my hat into the ring and I’m super excited! I’m planning to go all out for this show to provide a performance that people will be talking about for a long time.

To prepare, I’ve been working even harder to finish my album in the next couple months so that I can focus primarily on my backing band. So keep an eye out for more music updates to appear!

 

 

The end is near! Repent! Repent!

A joke, yes. I’m drawing ever closer to finishing this debut album and things are started to really heat up. Down below, you’ll notice that I have a teaser clip of my most recent composition. I believe that I have a title for this creation as well… “Walking Blind Through A Blizzard”.

So I guess this big question is “Is this the final song on the album? Are you starting to wrap things up?”

Well… almost. The very last bit of tracking that I’m doing is for a very short melody track that I believe will start off the album. It’s catchy, simple, and shouldn’t take very long to get done. Plus, I think it’ll sound awesome done live.

Recently, I’ve had a few friends asking “When will this get done?” I’ve thrown out answers like “in a month? a couple months?”

Honestly, I’m not sure. It’ll get done when it gets done. I’m just not ready to toss out something to the public that I’m not happy with.

And when it comes time to start putting a band together to perform these things, I hope that I find some good vocalists to help me out on stage.

To those that are patiently waiting, my advice is to sit tight. Everything will be done in due time.

Thank you all for caring

The band that I’ve been a part of for close to a year, Purple Are Forward, had possibly its last show this past Thursday at Cedar’s Lounge in Youngstown, OH. It sure was a fun ride with these guys and I’m positive that we’ll still be seeing a lot of each other still.

It may not have been the best show to end on seeing as how all of us were dead tired after working/going to school all day only to come out and be as rockin’ as we possibly could, taking the stage at 11:00 pm. Even with the odds against us, we brought it. Oh did we bring it.

The crowd wasn’t massive, but it was still great to see all our regulars bobbin’ their heads and enjoying the show. Even if it’s only a handful of people we know, we always expect to have a good time.

The video below was taken again by our friend Nick Serra. Be sure to give him some good comments on YouTube where these videos are posted please. I’m sure he would appreciate it.

You’ll also notice that I have a few pictures of me and my fiancee Zombified! We attended the yearly Youngstown, OH Zombie Crawl. We’re first-timers so we had to have our friends Matt and Angi help us with our makeup. Did they do a good job or what?!

Danielle all ghouled up

Danielle And I

Mind you the picture of me standing in the dark with my hood up is after only getting 4 hours of sleep from playing the PAF show the night before.

So what’s happening with HonestKyle…

Well, I’ll tell you what I worked on this past weekend and it wasn’t music. It wasn’t even fun.

Since I’m a big boy now with a big boy job, sometimes you have to meet deadlines with your projects and get those TPS reports out before someone comes and bothers you and this was one of those times. I’m a software developer and I had to have a new feature in the company’s test system by the end of the day Monday and it wasn’t ready so I actually had to put in a 6 hour work day on Saturday and another 8 hours on Sunday. I at least got to work from my laptop at home, but it was still disheartening knowing my guitar was so close by and that I couldn’t touch it!

I’m happy to say that I got the project in on time. And hopefully, I don’t have anything that urgent to do for awhile so I can buckle down and feed you guys some more sneaky peaks of what’s happening in the HK music world as I get more time to crank out this final tune for the album.

I have another 20 second teaser track for you to listen to from my most recently finished song simply called Song 8 for the time being. Now, the song isn’t completely finished as I didn’t do any mixing for this tune, but I figure that I’ll probably go back and do all sorts of mixing for each song once the entire album’s tracking is over.

That leaves only one more tune… Song 9. Dun dun dun.

One thing that I wanted to accomplish with this album is to give every single song its own identity. I want you to be able to identify each tune on the album as having its own personality as it were.

Have you ever listened to an album where every tune, one after the other, started to blend together and it wasn’t until a couple listens that you finally began hearing the colorful differences between each track? That really bothers me.

I picked up an album like that recently. It’s a metal band that kind of switches back and forth from prerecorded beat tracks and metal riffs. You know the type. Well, I’ve eventually come to really like this album, but it wasn’t until listening to it maybe 3-4 times that this happened. Yikes.

Here’s a question that I’d like to ask you…

Do you feel like in the late 90s and early 2000s that music was simpler? I’m talking about in the early days of Blink 182, Sum 41, Something Corporate, and Story of the Year.

I’ve been so hooked on Does This Look Infected because of the intoxicating singing melodies and the simplicity of composition. I’ll always be amazed at how powerful a few simple well-placed 4-chord guitar riffs can create a tune that you’re not likely to forget.

This sets the mood for Song 9. Powerful, simple, and hopefully unforgettable.

 

First, make sure you listen to this clip while you can because I plan on removing it in a weeks time! FYI!

Since I’ve been in such an ambitious mood for the last few weeks since finishing song 7 of  9 (Watch Me Go) for my full-length album, I cranked out the music to song 8 in almost no time.

What I love about this song is that I tried a bunch of new ideas and attemped to incorporate a multitude of styles. There were times I would listen to my riffs and think, geez, I really wished that this sounded more like so-and-so instead of what it really is.

However, I’ve come to be proud of some of the subtle tweaks that I put to the typical post-hardcore/rock/metal/punk/whatever-the-hell-you-want-to-stick-in-there genre because that’s what it’s all about right? Make something appealing that traditional listeners of the genre can identify with, but twist it into your own personal creation.

This sound clip that I have for you to listen to isn’t anything stupendous, but I at least wanted to give you a little taste of my next tune without handing over the whole pie. The section I have for you is the third verse and most of the bridge.

I’ve written out all the lyrics to this piece as well and I’ve decided that the topic is sort of “Life Commiseration“. Heck, that sounds like a pretty sweet song title too.

But the message of the song is this:

Everybody struggles with major problems and simple day-to-day obstacles, but there should be comfort in knowing that this applies to everyone. And if one person can survive, then we all can.

Now, if whether or not I can actually convey that message in this song successfully… well that’s another story.

Go ahead and leave a comment to tell me what you think of either my song concept or music clip. And keep checking back because I hope to continue providing more consistent updates and sneak peeks at my music as things unfold.

Here are just a few video’s of last week’s show at The Lemon Grove in Youngstown, OH if you couldn’t make it. We had a great time and we’re just happy that we actually got to play this time! lol

If you didn’t know, the last time we had a performance at The Lemon Grove, the headlining band just stepped in and stole our spot because the show was going too late. Some really nice guys I know. But this time, we got in, did our thing, and had a pretty good time.

What’s interesting about this show (and you may not have known this) is that we hadn’t had the chance to practice for over a month! Yea, we were going in to this one cold.

You might spot a couple flubs, but I think that we did alright considering the circumstances. Thanks to Nick Serra for taking some great high definition video. Enjoy!

[Seth and Matt carrying out Seth's cabinet while Chris and I look pretty.
This video was taken with my phone]