Categories
Features

So Long, Maxwell’s

I’ve been to Maxwell’s in Hoboken so many times over the past few years that I’ve lost count. In fact, I couldn’t even tell you the first show I saw there. I can tell you, though the feeling I felt every time I was inside: comfortable. While waiting in line to see the last show the venue would host Wednesday evening (July 31) before it closed its doors indefinitely, I befriended an older man who lived nearby. Talking about the venue and the shows we’ve seen there over the years, I described Maxwell’s as “homey” and he agreed.

I can’t explain it, but it’s the closest I have gotten to finding my Cheers bar. Over the years I have covered countless shows there and I didn’t even need to have my name added to the guest list. It was one of those places where, yes — everybody knows your name. One of the first shows I saw there was Tyrone Wells and Jason Reeves, both singer-songwriters who I went on to interview after thoroughly enjoying their sets at Maxwell’s. I also interviewed one of my childhood favorites — Kris Roe of The Ataris in the basement of the venue. (Picture below).

interviwingkris

In 2008, I hosted my one-year blog anniversary show. I pitched the show to the booker of Maxwell’s and said my goal was to have 150 people attend. He laughed at the idea because hardly anyone who books their first concert can guarantee that amount will actually show up. But I was set to prove that I could do it. Josh Charles, Joey DeGraw and The Canon Logic, a band I would later come to manage, performed and 152 people attended. Not too shabby for my first concert.

YSIW2

I have reviewed countless indie sets, folk bands and even a few hardcore groups at Maxwell’s and loved every second of it. Covering concerts at Maxwell’s really helped pave the way of my career in music journalism, whether I was writing for my own blog or the Hoboken Patch.

Maxwell’s was hailed by Rolling Stone as one of the best rock clubs in the country and I couldn’t agree more. It has quickly become my favorite concert venue and it’s truly a shame to see it go. Maxwell’s, thanks for the memories.

Categories
Videos

Video of the Day: The Canon Logic’s “Dead Man”

I’ve covered The Canon Logic quite a bit over the past few years. A band I first interviewed for CMJ and then managed, I’m psyched to be attending their rooftop concert tonight in Williamsburg. (I haven’t become a Brooklyn hipster yet…but this may change soon).

Watch their first music video, “Dead Man” below and to read my review of their debut album and download some free tracks here. Expect live tweeting from the show tonight as well. Follow me!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfViDw2b78g?fs=1]

Related Links:
Q&A; with The Canon Logic
Song of the Week: “Delia”
The Canon Logic Video Performance
Canon Logic Lure Fans With Catchy Rock Songs, Sunglasses

Categories
CD Reviews

Album Review: The Canon Logic’s “FM Arcade”

I’ve been to my fair share of shows over the years. Every now and then there’s a band that really sparks your attention. Not just the, “Wow. They were pretty good,” remarks after a concert, but thinking that this band truly has something special. Something different than all those other up-and-coming bands out there. This is exactly how I felt the first time I covered The Canon Logic.

It was October 2008 at Arlene’s Grocery and the first night of the CMJ festival. I had never seen a New York crowd go that crazy. The girls were dancing like maniacs in front of the stage and everyone was wearing Canon Logic sunglasses that the band made specifically for their showcase. Performing at 7pm on a Tuesday night the first day of a festival was definitely not the best time slot, but the band worked it to their advantage.

I interviewed the guys after their set and never imagined I’d wind up working with them as tour manager and publicist for a few months. Funny the way things work out. During my interview, I asked TCL what makes them different from every other band invading NYC during CMJ week. Guitarist Josh Greenfield informed me of their diverse and devote fanbase where everyone from parents to grandparents to even his high school-aged sister enjoy their performances and frequent shows.

“I think we have a wide range of fans. We like to try and bring everybody together. We’re trying to pull from so many different influences. We really like the classic rock stuff and we also like what’s going on now. I think we have a good balance of the two, which allows everyone to really get into the music.”

It’s been a long journey since that October. Many concerts later, The Canon Logic are releasing their debut full length, FM Arcade. The 12-track album is an accurate portrayal of their talent and energetic live show. Think The Killers meet The Beach Boys. Or, as Time Out New York once wrote, “The Canon Logic plays 1960s-style shameless pop fused with latter-day production sensibilities.”

Kicking it off with solid instrumental buildup on first track, “Villain In America” the listener is jolted awake and quickly realizes this isn’t your typical debut. Frontman Tim Kiely’s vocals have an old school vibe that intrigue and are never overpowered by the musical accompaniment.

Second track, “Avenue of Criminals” has always been a concert favorite. Longtime fans will be impressed with the arrangement. Slow piano draws the listener in at first before Kiely enters while guitar and percussion further layer the track. Complete with Beach Boys-esque harmonies, their first single off FM Arcade is bound to stay stuck in your head.

“It All Went Away…” switches gears from the high intensity of the first few tracks. Just over a minute long, the piano based song showcases the band’s willingness to try something new with a stripped down approach, breaking up the album well. “Nights At Armour Mansion” follows suit and is a darker number with a slow beat at first listen. Midway through, however, an instrumental interlude quickens the pace with fitting percussion before the rest of the band joins in on vocals.

Standout track, “Dead Man” begins with 15 seconds of guitar distortion reminiscent to that of The Kinks. The energy never wavers, and instead continues to electrify throughout the entire track. This is indie rock at its finest. While it’s hard for the rest of the album to follow such intensity, “Dead Man” is one track that is sure to have music critics raving.

Ending with the minute-long “Last Day of Man,” The Canon Logic leave the listener wondering what they can expect next. A solid debut release, FM Arcade, is only a glimpse into what is sure to be a bright future for the Brooklyn-based band.

Gearing up for their debut full length release this coming Tuesday, FM Arcade, will be available on iTunes and Canon Logic’s Web site. If you can’t wait that long, you can download “Nights At Armour Mansion” and “Avenue Criminals” for free here.

The band will be performing at Mercury Lounge tomorrow night celebrating their release. For more information, visit their Web site.

Related Links:
Q&A; with The Canon Logic
Song of the Week: “Delia”
The Canon Logic Video Performance
Canon Logic Lure Fans With Catchy Rock Songs, Sunglasses

Categories
News

Come Out To Bowery Ballroom Tonight!

I have been anxiously awaiting this night for months! My two favorite New York-based bands, The Canon Logic (pictured above) and Lights Resolve will be playing Bowery Ballroom tonight, Thursday, August 13th. I’m sure you’ve read my previous coverage and interviews with both bands, but this is a show not to be missed. Doors open at 6 p.m. and tickets are sure to sell out, so get there early.

Very rarely have I witnessed a show with multiple bands that really resonate with the crowd and Bowery will be the place tonight. Openers include The Rivalry and Jet Lag Gemini.

If my excitement doesn’t entice you enough, check out these live streams from The Canon Logic and some unreleased material by Lights Resolve. And, if you do decide to make it out be sure to leave a note in the comments and we can meet up!

Categories
Song of the Week

Song of the Week: “Delia”

I absolutely love this song by The Canon Logic. I also think this record player is the coolest thing ever. Come on, click the red play button and it plays their song? Pretty clever. If you like what you hear and you’re in the Jersey area come check them out at Maxwell’s in Hoboken tonight as they play with Plushgun and Nightmare of You. If you do make it out, be sure to find me and say hi!

If you like what you just heard, be sure to visit The Canon Logic on MySpace or read my interview with them from CMJ here.

Categories
Interviews

The Canon Logic

With the craziness of CMJ week back in October, I just realized I never posted my full Q&A; with the guys of the Canon Logic. Originally, I intertwined my show review and interview for my CMJ festival write-up, (which you can read here) but thought fans might want to read the interview in its entirety. Be sure to check TCL out on MySpace and if you like what you hear, catch their show this Friday at Southpaw in Brooklyn!

The Canon Logic are:
Mark Alu
Sean Enright
Josh Greenfield
Tim Kiely
Michael Mignano

To hear more about their upcoming album, live show and how they define their music (at one point, jokingly as “a mint-scented breath of fresh air”) read below.

Is this your first time at CMJ?
Tim: It’s our first time playing at CMJ, yeah.

I loved your set, how was it for your first CMJ performance?
Tim: It was unbelievable. The fans were great. We had a blast; we always have a blast onstage. We felt pretty tight.

Josh: I could only really see the first two rows of people. It wasn’t until the very end that I went up front and realized there was a pretty packed house, so that was cool. Our fans are great.

Mike: It’s pretty cool to know that we can get a good group of people out at 7 p.m. on a Tuesday night and they’re acting like its 11 p.m. on a Saturday; dancing, screaming, singing along. So, it was cool, it was a good feeling.

Is this what you expected CMJ to be?
Tim: I think it was everything we expected and more.

Josh: It was really a great show; a lot of people were there. It was really nice to have our fans come out and support us. It felt like an awesome Saturday night show at a bar.

Tim: It’s fun to be a part of the madness, it’s exciting

You just released another EP and you’re working on an album also, right?
Mark: We just released our EP. It’s a collection of unreleased material just to give people a little something until we’re finished.

Josh: It’s sort of showcasing some of our other stuff. We have a live sound going, but we have some other music that we write that probably won’t make the album, but we still want people to hear it.

What should fans expect from your full-length album out in 2009?
Tim: We’ve dwindled the list from a couple hundred songs down to hopefully 10 to 12 songs.

Mark: It’s the best of the best that we’ve got.

Josh: We’ve finished instrumentals on four tracks and the production is ridiculous.

Tim: It’s the best sound we’ve had.

Mike: Expect a refreshing kick in the face.

How do you feel you stand out at CMJ vs. all the other bands around?
Tim: I think something that we do, which is the toughest aspect of our music, is having five people singing while also being able to handle the rock attitude. I don’t see many bands do it. I don’t know if I’ve seen a band do it and pull it off well. We’re really confident in what we’ve got going and I think that’s what separates us. And we’ve got great songs.

Josh: You can also expect a little bit of everything; some dancing, some singing along. We have a lot of songs that our fans come to shows to see and they’ve been learning the lyrics; they’re really easy to sing along to so they really enjoy getting into the songs and dancing and also head banging and rocking out too.

How would you describe your music to someone who has never heard it before?
Mike: Our corny catch phrase is a mint-scented breath of fresh air. Realistically, I’d say it’s a gritty blend of harmony driven pop.

Josh: I think that it hits on anyone from your grandparents to your parents, to my sister who’s in high school, she really likes it. I think we have a wide range of fans. We like to try and bring everybody together. We’re trying to pull from so many different influences. We really like the classic rock stuff and we also like what’s going on now. I think we have a good balance of the two, which allows everyone to really get into the music. We enjoy that aspect of it.

What else do you want fans to know about you?
Tim: Our blog, thecanonlogic.com. If you want to be up-to-date about what’s going on with the album. We post pretty much everyday. We’re writing songs every day. There is so much music to show people, we want them to hear it. That’s why we released this EP.

Mike: Can we tell a funny story? We definitely want everyone to visit our blog, we post very regularly to our blog multiple times a day. A quick funny story about that blog is, this morning I was picking up my badge for CMJ. I took a picture of the CMJ thing and I immediately uploaded it to our blog and I titled the post, “CMJ Badge Pick-up.” Well, somehow throughout the day anybody that ended up Googling CMJ Badge Pick-up was directed immediately to our site over CMJ.com. So, our site trumped theirs.

How did you pick your set-list?
Tim: We wanted to start off quick and really give everybody a kick to the face while also trying to show our versatility. But really, we were just trying to rock people out for 45 minutes to an hour. We like everyone dancing.

Mike: We like to keep people moving.

How do you react on nights when the crowd isn’t moving or interested in your performance?
Tim: We’ve been together long enough where there’s no one standing there. We try not to let whatever the audience is doing affect us. We’re always trying to be the best we can be. The audience definitely motivates us, but if they’re not kicking it, we still will.

Mike: The bottom line is, whether or not there is one person in the room or 100, we’re still going to give everybody that came the best performance we can give. We don??
?t get bummed b
y low numbers if we ever have them. We just rock out.

Did you prepare for your CMJ showcase differently than other shows?
Tim:
Not too much differently than our normal shows, other than the fact that we’re giving out a lot of free stuff. We’re giving out our EP and hopefully you’ll see people around Manhattan wearing The Canon Logic sunglasses. Otherwise, no. Same kind of thing, coming out and playing our best.

Josh: We have enough loyal fans that every show, even though not everyone can make it to every show, the amount of people we’re pulling from ends up giving us a pretty packed house. A lot of our shows are similar in the sense that people are there, really getting into the music and enjoying themselves. We try not to change it too much.

What is the writing process like between all of you?
Josh: We all like to write. Generally Tim will bring a song in or someone will bring a piece to him and we’ll just throw out ideas. It’s rare that we ever have a finished song that one person brings and does. Maybe we’ll have a bridge and a chorus or a verse and a bridge and then we’ll expand and we’ll try different things. Our songs are rarely ever complete. We’ve been playing this one song, “The Run” for three or four years. It’s probably one of our first songs and we’re still changing it and trying to make it better. Nothing is ever really finished. We’re always trying to change and stay ahead of the curve and keep things fresh.

You were on Warped Tour and MTV2 recently. So your music is definitely getting out there.
Sean:
Both of those were great because we rarely get to touch upon the teenage demographic. Usually we’re playing at bars so we’re lucky if we can sneak some 18+ in on a good night. That’s a huge crowd playing 13 through 18. We really take advantage of those; we either have give-a-ways or practice extra hard. I think the MTV2 thing was the perfect example. We made a point to be on point and grab as many fans as we could when we had a chance because those opportunities are, at the current time, few and far between.

Do you feel like a band can survive being independent or are you looking for that record deal?
Sean: We don’t feel any immediate pressure for our careers to get a record deal. We know plenty of bands who have gotten low-level indie with major distribution who have just gotten screwed over and they’re on the shelf for three years. We know better than to make a stupid move, but we can sustain ourselves if we put out a really good CD just on MySpace and grassroots. We’re smart guys; we have plans all the time, different marketing schemes.

Josh: The Internet has really been a great tool. We all work and during the day, probably about a few hundred emails in a given day might go back and forth so we’re always in contact. Sure, we have our jobs, but this is what we want to do. We try to do as much as we can on the Internet. I think we’ve gotten a lot of younger fans from the Internet because they’re the ones that go on the Web sites, comment and check things out. That’s why we like to try and get a few all-age shows, 18+. Sullivan Hall is a great venue because it’s 18+, so a lot of the kids from NYU come, a lot of college kids. In the end, that’s the loyal, dedicated people that come out. Once you’re out of college it definitely gets harder to come to shows. The Internet’s been wonderful to us.

Be sure to give the Canon Logic’s MySpace a listen and check out their Web site as well. Watch a live performance of fan favorite, “Avenue of Criminals” from their performance during MTV2’s “Battle of the Bands” below.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAlz30OGPc0]

Categories
Concert Reviews Festivals

CMJ Review: Canon Logic Lure Fans With Catchy Rock Songs, Sunglasses

Playing a 7 p.m. set on a Tuesday night may not be a band’s dream gig, but the Canon Logic worked it to their advantage. With sunglasses give-a-ways creatively imprinted with the band’s name on each pair and free downloads of their latest EP, the Canon Logic played to a packed crowd at Arlene’s Grocery that only seemed to get louder as their set progressed.

While their music has been compared to that of the Beach Boys and even the Beatles, the band brought their A-game to their CMJ Showcase and didn’t disappoint, as they had many in attendance dancing along and singing the words to each song. Drummer Mike Mignano likes to describe their music as “a mint-scented breath of fresh air.” While he admits it’s a corny catch phrase, realistically he says “it’s a gritty blend of harmony-driven pop,” which I couldn’t agree more.

Playing a 35-minute set, the Canon Logic’s performance featured a solid mix of songs from their last EP, “The White Balloon,” as well as songs that can be heard on their full-length album due out early next year. Their first CMJ performance, frontman Tim Kiely feels the set was unbelievable. “The fans were great. We had a blast; we always have a blast onstage. We felt pretty tight.” Guitarist Josh Greenfield agrees. “I could only see the first two rows of people. It wasn’t until the very end that I went up front and realized there was a pretty packed house, so that was cool.”

The five-piece band’s energy was apparent onstage as the three guitarists and bass player jumped around the stage throughout their performance, enticing and encouraging the crowd to do the same. Their set included fan favorite “Avenue of Criminals” as well as “I’ve Been Sleeping With Your Best Friend,” a song off their latest EP, the concept clearly chronicled within the title. “Delia” is one song where their ’60s pop flavor is showcased. With strong guitar, keyboard and drum accompaniment the band seemingly takes the audience back in time.

A diverse and devote fanbase, anyone from parents to grandparents to even Greenfield’s high school-aged sister enjoy their performances and frequent shows. “I think we have a wide range of fans. We like to try and bring everybody together,” Greenfield says. “We’re trying to pull from so many different influences. We really like the classic rock stuff and we also like what’s going on now. I think we have a good balance of the two, which allows everyone to really get into the music.”

Surpassing the band’s CMJ expectations, the early Tuesday set time didn’t seem to deter concertgoers. “It’s pretty cool to know that we can get a good group of people out at 7 p.m. on a Tuesday night and they’re acting like its 11 p.m. on a Saturday; dancing, screaming, singing along. It was a good feeling,” says Mignano.

With hundreds of bands performing throughout the week, the Canon Logic continues to set themselves apart. “I think something that we do, which is the toughest aspect of our music, is having five people singing while also being able to handle the rock attitude,” Kiely says. “I don’t see many bands do it. I don’t know if I’ve seen a band do it and pull it off well. We’re really confident in what we’ve got going and I think that’s what separates us. And we’ve got great songs.”

If one thing is certain, a Canon Logic show won’t leave you bored. “You can expect a little bit of everything; some dancing, some singing along. We have a lot of songs that our fans come to shows to see and they’ve been learning the lyrics; they’re really easy to sing along to so they really enjoy getting into the songs and dancing and also head banging and rocking out,” Greenfield says.

Be sure to check out the Canon Logic’s MySpace and Blog for more info about their next record and catch their next show Nov. 8 at Maxwell’s in Hoboken! Check back in few days for more of my interview with the guys of the Canon Logic.

To read this live review, originally posted on the UWire click here.