Purple Are Forward rocking out in Matt’s previous house at a shutdown house show.

About a month ago, I wrote a blog post announcing the reunion show of Wake the Lion and it’s finally here and happening this Saturday!

We’re very proud to be taking the stage with our good friends in Hawks and Wolves for their E.P. release which is sure to be spectacular.

If you haven’t listened to Wake the Lion before, here’s your chance right now…

I also have a crappy video of us practicing and getting pumped for the show.

Here are the details of the show:

Tickets are $6 advance – $8 at the door

Band Lineup:
Cadence Delicate
Wake The Lion
Squid The Whale
Hawks & Wolves

We play around 8:45 pm!

So, if you’re in the Northeast Ohio area and you’re looking to hear a metal band, (Does not sound like HonestKyle music) come out to the Grog Shop in Cleveland and show your support!

Even if we have or haven’t met, come and say “hi”. It’ll be great to see you.

Just about every band has a Wikipedia page nowadays which is pretty interesting because it can mean a couple things.

1. This band is really famous and anybody who’s just a decent person and a strong fan with some time on their hands is going to write a beneficial biography to help along their success.

2. Someone has been watching this band’s every move in hopes of getting their personal information in order to follow them home and wear their skin around like a suit.

Whatever the reason they’re created, you sure can find some neat facts about each artist, and a couple things were very startling to me.

For instance, I was looking at Taking Back Sunday’s wiki page.

I was such a huge fan of theirs up until they released their third album, Louder Now.

Listening to their first release, Tell All Your Friends, brings back memories of me sitting in the back seat of my sister’s woody van as we pulled out of the high school parking lot after school.

We would be blasting the CD player and telling each other to shut up because the good parts were coming.

Some of the very first songs that I ever learned on the guitar were “Cute With the ‘E’ and “You’re So Last Summer”. I thought I was such a bad-ass, rocking out those four insanely easy chords while jumping around in my bedroom.

This brings me back to my point.

When I looked on their Wikipedia page, I read that that album, Tell All Your Friends,  was released eight years ago. Eight years ago!

Holy crap I’m getting old! And so are some very influential albums of my era!

And for those of you that didn’t really listen to TBS and were more into Brand New, do you know how long ago My Favourite Weapon or Deja Entendu were released?

My Favourite Weapon was nine years ago! Deja Entendu was seven!

While I’m still mentioning some heavy hitters, let’s talk about Blink 182.

My favorite album by them is Take Off Your Pants And Jacket… which was released nine years ago. For others that favored Enema of the State, it’s hard to believe that that powerful album hit the stores about eleven years ago.

You don’t even wanna know how long ago Dude Ranch was released.

What made me think about all this was caused by a conversation I had recently in which I mentioned a popular pop tune that I thought was current at which the respondent mentioned “Oh that. That was like six months ago. That’s old.”

That really put some perspective on things.

This person wasn’t really a music connoisseur or anything, but just your average person that listens to music as it’s presented and in her own mind, six months, for a musician, could mean you’re over.

It causes me to contemplate my chances of “success” in the industry and wonder if I have the right idea of keeping continual contact with my fans and attempting to constantly release new music to let everyone know that I’m still alive.

It also makes me feel badly for new bands and artists that put a lot of work into creating truly artistic compositions, but don’t get the stardom right away because they don’t have a synthesizer-based metal breakdown in the middle anywhere.

However, most of the bands that have taken the time to write very good music without all of the easy flash of other groups have stuck around. This probably applies to groups like Thrice, Radiohead, Rage Against the Machine, Alkaline Trio, Brand New, and Taking Back Sunday.

I don’t know. It’s all very depressing, yet exciting at the same time.

There’s almost no telling what’s going to be the next “big thing” in alternative rock music in the next year, but it makes you wonder what the pieces that cause lasting impressions will become.

What do you think?

Woo hoo!

It’s a piano ballad that’s a little bit different compared to everything you’ve heard thus far, but you should still get a strong “HonestKyle vibe” from it.

However, like I mentioned in the past, I’m only going to have new songs up for streaming  and… they’re for a limited time! (2 weeks from upload time to be exact)

So, if you’re not signed up for my e-mail list, just sign up in the box located underneath the video of me bragging about myself in the sidebar of this site and you can listen to this song AND get tons of free music that you can DOWNLOAD immediately.

And I guess I should address the identity of the secret female vocalist that sang on this song and made it sound so awesome…

It’s my fiancée, Danielle.

Yea! I’m marrying that girl! (Hopefully… since the whole “exploiting her talents for my own personal gain” thing hasn’t really come up yet)

I’ve always known that she had a completely awesome voice and I had to plead with her for literally months to get her to agree to do this.

We’ll see what other things I can coerce her to sing on.

But I’m incredibly proud of how this tune turned out thanks to Danielle and welcome any feedback that you might have.

Want to know a secret?

I actually had all of the piano tracks recorded before from a previous musical project. Yea, I recycled, reduced, and reused that shit.

The music project that that piece was intended for, I simply went by my full name of Kyle Hoffman and you can check out songs under that project by clicking here.

If you haven’t gathered by now, I probably have way too many projects and bands.

I’m already on the verge of a 2nd reunion show in the last three months with a different band!

When it rains it pours I guess.

Here’s a little fan appreciation that I wanted to mention.

Just a few days ago, I received a very nice message on my ReverbNation page from a girl that mentioned how since she’s come across my music, she’s taken the initiative to spread my music to her friends all across her Facebook account.

And furthermore, her boyfriend gave a listen, it appealed to him as well, and he gave me some nice promotion on Facebook too!

Because of their solid initiative at promoting my music, I’ve given them my two most recent (non-downloadable) tracks as a thanks for them being so awesome!

So special thanks to Jessica and her boyfriend for helping me out! (Sorry I don’t know her boyfriend’s first name :/)

Fan appreciation for me is one of my top priorities and if YOU would like some similar recognition, take some time out of your day to give me some extra promotion and let me know what you did! Better yet, show me via pictures or e-mail!

Good deeds shouldn’t go unnoticed
HonestKyle

Every time that I get something new, the first thing that comes to my head is this viral video that was passed around years ago called “My New Haircut”. I think it was the first video that I watched that was related to the very popular site, CollegeHumor.com.

I think I’ll add that at the end of this post. And the Asian parody as well. For good measure.

But anyway…

I got a bass guitar! I needed one for the band that I recently joined called Purple Are Forward which I mentioned in my previous post:

Things Are Getting A Little… Purple?

Now, the subject of me purchasing a new bass guitar might raise a question like “Wait, there’s bass guitar in your HonestKyle songs. You didn’t record those yourself?! I knew you were a lying sack of crap! …plays all the instruments my ass.”

Whoa! Whoa! Don’t get hostile now. I actually kind of have a bass guitar, but it’s not mine.

You see, my dad is a huge music nut, just like me, even more so. And he purchased a cheap violin bass so he could be Paul McCartney in a Beatles tribute band. True story.

Yeah he has the wig and everything. Very cute.

So, when I needed a bass track for HonestKyle, I would head down to the basement, haul that snazzy Rogue bass up to my studio space and let ‘er rip.

Now, that thing has pretty terrible playing action. You’re gonna buzz on almost every fret.

Plus, the strings are around ten years old. I don’t think that’s the norm.

So I think that I should be getting some credit for making that thing sound somewhat decent on my tracks. (folds arms in a pouting motion)

But I’m incredibly psyched about the bass that I just purchased. It’s a Squier by Fender Classic Vibe Jazz Bass ‘60s model.

Now, I’ve played a few different kinds of basses, Rogues, Fender P-basses, Jazz Basses, Warwicks, Spectors, Ernie Ball, and in my personal opinion, there isn’t that much of a difference.

The only things I care about are whether the strings are twanging around when I’m strumming, and if the frets are easy to press down.
Hell, some of you can say I’m naive and don’t know a damn thing about bass.

Well, I’ve been in nine different bands over a period of eight years, been to more shows than I can count, and don’t hardly notice a thing that’s different from the bass tone.

Usually, a bad bass tone is due to an inexperienced player that has no idea had to turn their knobs.

But I digress…

The main reason I chose this bass is because if you go to Musician’s Friend, this bass has 35 perfect five star reviews. Yeah, I thought I read it wrong at first too.

But I got me a bass, hoping to pick up an amp later when Purple Are Forward gets closer to a show date, and I’ll be set.

By the way, PAF is doing great. We’ve had two practices and know three songs already.

Boggles the mind!

It should really be a very diverse and intense show for those that decide to see us live because I’m so extremely confident with all of the members of this group

A couple of them could bathe more however.

Maybe I’ll post some short videos that I shoot with my HTC Hero just so peeps can pick up the vibe of what’s going on.

If you have a comment about my new bass or about what YOU think the real differences are with bass sounds and playing, leave one below.

Have a good one

HonestKyle