Freakwitch.net

The RPM Challenge people are putting together compilation CDs from the tracks submitted to this year’s RPM Challenge. I’m happy to say that “My Own Way” by Freakwitch has been nominated for the Rock disc (Disc #7).

If you want to help us out, please go to the voting page and enter some votes for Freakwitch, My Own Way. It’s a forum, so you’ll have to register for the forum.

Please and Thank You.

With Interconnected out (thanks to all for listening), we are now gearing up for our summer gigs. We have several lined up so far. I’ll list them all here for a preliminary reference, and as we get closer to them we’ll post more individual detail about each one.

Fri June 20
5:15 - 6:15
Maine Vocals Freedom Fest
Starks, ME (exact location to be determined)

Sat Aug 2
afternoon - evening
Lammas Bash
Hollis, ME (our private bash, contact us if you want to come)

Thurs Aug 14
5:15 - 6:15
Fri Aug 15
11am - noon
Maine Vocals Hempstock
Starks, ME (exact location to be determined)

Sat Aug 16
1 pm - 2 pm
Maine Pagan Pride Day
Portland, ME

Fri Sept 5
evening
Awen Camp
Harrison, ME

Solar Sun Festival
(time and location to be determined)

Sat Sept 20
Lizzyoos Bog Bash
Belgrade, ME (another private party, contact us if interested)

Thurs Oct 2
5:30 - 6:30
Sat Oct 4
noon - 1 pm
Maine Vocals Harvest Fest
Starks, ME (exact location to be determined)

Our new album, Interconnected, is now available. You can download it directly from us, but please save bandwidth and listen/download from our myspace page or our RPM challenge page instead if you can (they will be posted there shortly as I write this).

We are not charging to download it, but please support us if you like it either by buying some merchandise, buying a copy of the CD (they will be available soon), or just simply donating to our cause.

Lyrics are posted below for your perusal. Thanks to everyone for contributing to this album and for putting up with us while we made it.

Everything is interconnected, I’m just not sure why

Well, we finished in time. Barely.

We’ll get mp3s up here soon, but first we want to finish artwork etc for the album.

It’s called Interconnected, by the way….

Still recording like crazy. Spent the weekend up the coast getting Guitar tracks from Todd and Bass tracks from Yo. Recording went well, and is (just about) done. I’ll probably add a few of my own guitar tracks here and there this week, but the bulk of the remaining work is in editing and mixing. We have 8 songs for the album, 2 of which are pretty much done. I am going to try to finish up one additional song each night before Friday, when we’ll get together and put this baby to bed.

Watch this space. Looks like we’ll (finally!) have some new music up here this time next week!

We’re giving the RPM challenge a serious go. We have about 40min worth of songs in various stages of production, and we have less than two weeks left. Some of the songs are coming out quite nicely, I’m particularly excited about The Rain Song. This week/weekend we’ll get the last of the tracking done, and next week I will be madly mixing and editing to finish by the 29th.

Not much else of an update, we aren’t gigging right now, but as you know we have a few lined up. We also are on board for this year’s Maine Pagan Pride Day, which is always fun. Last year there were dancers, and I believe that will be the case this year again as well.

Well, we’re signed on for the RPM Challenge:

This is the challenge: record an album in 29 days, just because you can.
That’s 10 songs or 35 minutes of original material recorded during the month of February. Go ahead… put it to tape.

It’s a little like National Novel Writing Month, (NaNoWriMo.org) where writers challenge each other to write 1,700 words a day for 30 days, or the great folks over at February Album Writing Month (fawm.org), who encourage artists to write 14 new songs in February. Maybe they don’t have “Grapes of Wrath” or “Abbey Road” at the end of the month, or maybe they do—but that’s not the point. The point is they get busy and stop waiting around for the muse to appear. Get the gears moving. Do something.

We’re going to give this a go. You can visit our user page to get more info or follow up on our progress.

It’s a slow time for Freakwitch by all outward appearances. We do have some gigs scheduled for later in the year, we will be playing several shows for Maine Vocals in 2008:

• Freedom Fest June 20-22
• Hempstock August 14-17
• Harvest Fest October 3-5

The fests are undergoing some changes, apparently they will no longer be held at Harry Brown’s farm in Starks. They are working on the locations, but we’ll let you know more as things clarify.

In the meantime, recording continues. I have been continually upgrading the recording setup, and indeed I’ve started Crafted Recordings as a commercial recording/consulting business. Plus I’ve taken a job in the acoustics industry. So there are a lot of changes happening around Freakwitch that can distract us a bit, but in the end these changes will support what Freakwitch is doing.

We are also thinking about taking the RPM Challenge and record an entire album, start-to-finish, in February. The idea was inspired by the National Novel Writing Month, in that it imposes a completely arbitrary deadline as a way to spur creative production. It’d be a good exercise for us if nothing else. We’ll make the decision one way or the other on this and keep you posted. Watch this space.

We’re in recording mode. We’re writing some new songs, and recording them immediately as we write them. This is sort of a new mode of operation for us.

No gigs are currently scheduled; we may decide to gig some over the winter but we’re having fun with the writing and recording.

Not much else to update at the moment, we will probably have some new songs up for your listening pleasure before too long.

We’re gearing up to play a couple of sets at HarvestFest in Starks this weekend.

These things are often in flux — bottom line, there will be great music happening all weekend — but at the moment we are scheduled to play on Thursday afternoon from 12:00 noon to 1:45, and again on Saturday morning from 10:30am-11:30am.

See you there!

We’re gearing up to play the Bog Bash in Mercer this Saturday. For those who don’t know, this is a private-but-welcoming party hosted by the fabulous lizzyoos.

We’ve been informed that we are welcome to bring as many as we like, so if you aren’t doing anything Saturday night, and want to head up near Norridgewock to meet some cool people and hear some good music (Smoked Salmon is also playing, probably others as well), then contact us for directions.

See you there!

We’ll be at the last Maine Vocals event of the year, the Maine HarvestFest. We will be the house band, which at this point means we get 2 slots (Thursday, Oct 4 from 12 noon -1:30pm and Sat, Oct 6 from 10:00am - 10:45am), and if there are any last-minute cancellations we will fill in.

Should be a wild weekend with camping and all kinds of amazing music, including DOORBELL, DIFFERENT NATURE, SOAK, THE NEARLY NORMAL, BLUE SKY MISSION CLUB, ROOST, SIMPLE, STRATOSPHEERIUS, THE RHYTHM SHIP, JIM WEIDER’S ProJECT PERCoLAToR, GREEN LEMON, and many others.

Come on out for an amazing weekend.

We will be playing the 5th Annual Bog Bash in Mercer, ME on Sat, Sept 22.  Rumor has it that we go on @ 7pm. We’ve never played there before, but it is hosted by the wondrous Lizzyoos who we met at Maine Garden Fest. If you’re up that way (Skowhegan, Waterville, etc) come check it out. Contact us for details on this good bash with good people.

We’re playing at Maine Pagan Pride Day, Saturday afternoon, August 18th. According to the schedule, we’ll play from 1pm-2:30pm, with a break in between for a performance by Aepril Schaile in between.

If you are reading this, then consider yourself hereby summoned. Come have a good time, for a great cause.

Everyone give a big Freakwitchy welcome to our new drummer, Jim Davis.

He’s excited to be playing the next few gigs with us, hopefully he’ll have been having fun and decide to hang out for a while. Jim gives us an entirely new rhythmic vocabulary. We’ve been having fun playing with him. Come to the gigs if you can….

We have 2 gigs coming up that are private parties, one in Greene, ME and one in Hollis, ME. If you are reading this, and you don’t know about the parties and perhaps want to come, then contact us. We can probably get you invited. ;-)

Our next public gig is Maine Pagan Pride Day in Portland on Saturday, August 18th at the Allen Ave Unitarian Universalist Church in Portland.

Hope to see you there, come support the Freaky, Witchy pagans of Maine….

We’re playing Geno’s this Wed, June 27 with The Chickadees, Julz A and Andrew Scandal (NY). We’ll play at around 9 or 9:30 for 45 minutes or so. This will be Brent’s last show with Freakwitch, so come out and give him a joyful sendoff. :-)