It's been few months since we updated our blog which is inexcusable, but also maybe (maybe) understandable when you hear what we've been doing...
For the past 3 months, we have been hard at work in Kyle's ORANGE ROOM studios crafting the best follow-up to this year's self-titled album that we could make. We started with 20 songs, but only 11 made the writing cut to make up what will be the most rocking KK set of songs to date. This past year our debut album has taken us to many places from Calgary to New York, Toronto to Long Beach, and we've had amazing adventures along the way! More amazing that the travels have been meeting all of our fans from literally all over the world who have come up to us to say hi at the cons and concerts, and has been extremely humbling as something we never expected to come from this. Our goal from the start has been to make a band and albums that WE would like to listen to and freak out about, and we're so glad many of you do as well. YOU RULE THE HOUSE!
Though it's been a blast and play time to the extreme, we've had our heads down for months now crafting what we feel will the best follow-up we could make for fans of comics, fans of video games, fans of KK, and for us. Next week we'll be heading into the studio for an intense week and a half recording session filled with big guitars, thundering toms, and melt your face solos...won't you join us? :)
We'll be documenting the whole event via Twitter with videos and pictures all week long and the only place you can see it is by heading to www.twitter.com/kirbykrackle
We're psyched the session dates are finally here, and we hope to pour our love of all things superhuman, cell-shaded, and pixelated into this album to make 2010 even more amazing for us to all rock together with!
Love to all for a Happy New Year and a kick ass 2010,
Jim and Kyle
KK
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Kirby Krackle flew into the Long Beach airport last Friday morning fueled on a mix of cinnamon pretzels, hopes, and dreams. After checking into the hotel (which was surprisingly swanky), we made our way to set up the KK booth for the few hours the show was open that late afternoon. It's always nice catch up with the familiar faces in other artists, writers, and hardcore fan goers we've seen again and again all around North America. It's like a traveling circus where you realize you've seen these people in more cities that you've traveled to with your family or closest friends. Everyone has a mutual respect cause everyone is there for the same thing...they love comics...and selling stuff. Let's be honest here. :)
Late that night, Neslon, Bryce, and Scott (the KK live backing band) flew in and we all caught some food before catching the big day ahead and the concert we were planned to rock that next evening.
We sold albums, shirts, and chatted with awesome fans both new (including Conan O'Brein show regular Pierre Bernard) and old all day. The guys drank beers by the pool, took naps, and relaxed. Is there a problem with this picture? We're glad it was a vacation for them, and think it's safe to say we were all excited to be rocking that night in a foreign city.
The concert was great, we had a lot of fans there who knew the songs inside and out, and even had an opening band that dressed up in full sasquatch regalia. "The Abominable Frontman, "Bass-quatch", and "Sascrotch" were monikers the members went by...Harry never did play solos quite as good.
The vibe on the last day (Sunday) felt like the last day of Senior year...not absent, but knowing the end of an era (touring under the debut album) was here. This disc took us to cities we've never seen, met friends and made lasting relationships that we have taken home with us and with this show being no exception met cool people and had great times. There's something really great that happens when you have a bunch of people come together around positive art, music, and stories.
Kirby Krackle rocked the High Dive in Seattle last night with a full set of nerd rock! We took some videos for you to enjoy, kicking off with our final song of the night, Ring Capacity, featuring our homey Beefy! Enjoy!
Toronto. Home of the Blue Jays, Our Lady Peace (one of my favorite bands), and seemingly hordes of girls that like to dress up in raccoon ears.
We took the KK caravan of tricks to "The Queen City" for 3 days of hustle and our second appearance at a Canadian show. We had our best single selling day ever on Saturday, and ran out of albums on Sunday with 6 hours left in the show. That was a first both cool and annoying, but that way we got to walk around for once and check all the great goods and art. Felt good to get the juices back after a lackluster showing at San Diego and once again saw how Canadians get their "beyond nice" rep. It was great to catch up with the NYC Marvel gang again on Saturday night, see artist friends Laurie B. and Kandrix, plus Jim Zubkavich who went above and beyond in letting us crash at his place, plus we enjoyed some fine local micro-brews. Also, we saw Spock! Looking good Leonard...
You never know who will be in the booth next to you at these conventions, but we were entertained all weekend by the ladies from UTERUS PARADE. Yes, you read that right. They create cute home crafted mini-comics about their adventures both real and made up, and sew crazy octopus plushy things with evil eyes. Awesome.
We cornered the film crew from CTV; the local news program that was doing a piece on the show and Jim did a great interview that was aired that night. All weekend we had folks come up to us after having seen the spot and it was a lot of fun. You can follow the link below and we are featured at the 16:20 mark.
Only one more convention left of the year and it's gonna go off with a bang! For the weekend of October 3rd-5th the Long Beach Comic Con is flying the full band down for a big rock show benefiting the HERO INITIATIVE, a charity that helps out retired comic creative types needing funds for medical services among other things. It's gonna feel really good to be involved with it and we're really excited for a big rock California adventure.
We're headed into the big studio this weekend after a few weeks of working on the new album. We'll be cutting the brand new track and tweeting from the studio with pix and fun times this Saturday if you'd like to follow the madness! You can find us on twitter at www.twitter.com/kirbykrackle.
Have a great week and after seeing the video below, we hope to harness some of that energy for sure...
Sorry for the late post, post-SDCC has been hectic so here's the breakdown. First, a couple of crazy pictures from the show floor and of our table:
It was 5 days of awesome - selling cd's, interacting with our fans, and meeting tons of new ones who thankfully made the effort to come by and tell us how much they liked the album after buying it online! We saw some con goers turned fans from San Fransisco from February who actually brought us gifts, some folks who have been graciously spreading the word in Canada for the past few months, and even a fan named Mario who came all the way from Mexico City to say hi to one of his favorite bands. WOW. All the fans who came by who enjoy KK and share that enthusiasm with us are so fun and amazing that we try to cherish every moment while we're there. It's a great feeling!
As you know from following us on Twitter (you do follow @kirbykrackle, right?), we love using it. We did some next level stuff and did daily Twitter contests. Each day we would post a first-come first-serve contest on our page when the show floor opened offering the winner their choice of a free shirt or album once the task was completed. One day, it was to sing the Mario Brothers theme song at the top of your lungs, and the other was to sing "Naked Wii" while slow dancing with Jim like in the video below. Katie and her boyfriend Aaron were great to meet and were good sports letting us film it to post online (Part of the deal)! It was so fun, and to the few people who accused us of maliciously abusing our fans via the contest? TOTALLY.
As always, cons have tons of great costumers, here's some of our faves:
Crazy fun, five days of craziness. Thanks to everyone who came out to see us, we had a blast and are already signed up for next year! It's a crazy party, hope you can join us!
Hey Krackleheads, we're packing the bags for this week's trip to San Diego for our Comic Con debut! We're psyched, and especially thankful that we were able to join up on a existing bill on July 25th for a KK Comic Con acoustic set with Kyle. He'll be playing stripped down versions of the songs and telling some fun stories of how they came to be that Saturday night at THE RUBY ROOM in San Diego.
THE RUBY ROOM (21+ kids..., set time around 9:30PM) 1271 University Ave (In Hillcrest) 619.299.7372 $5 Cover
At the convention we'll be at booth #1803 so please come by and hi, talk comics, check out our new T-Shirts ($15), and get non-creepy hugs. Really, not creepy... :)
Enjoy the live video for "Ring Capacity" from last week's big show in Seattle at THE SHOWBOX! We had an absolute blast and were overwhelmed with the amount of Krackleheads who came out and shared our love for comics via song. Thanks for making it a great night everyone, and see you at SDCC!
Last week, the issue of SEATTLE SOUND MAGAZINE featuring a story on "Geek Music" written by Seattle Geekly's own Matt Hammond hit stands. A month ago when we did the photo shoot I said I'd share some pics from the day so here you go!
If anyone wants to find a physical copy of the issue you an do so in Seattle by heading to your local Easy Street Records or Sonic Boom Records retail spot.
Wow, what a kick ass week! Between dropping our new email list only single, "Ring Capacity" and playing the Fremont ZOMBIE WALK 2009 event we're spent on adrenaline and geekiness through and through! Who are we kidding? We can never get enough, and it sounds like you guys feel the same way about our new song and it's rockin' ode to GREEN LANTERN. The response to "Ring Capacity" exceeded our expectations and we hope you enjoy it as a "thank you" for being great fans and spreading the word about KK. Marking the release, we also were featured on the front page or COMIC BOOK RESOURCES (CBR)...find the article here!
The following below is an excerpt from Kyle's blog and his experience at ZOMBIE WALK 2009. Check it out and wallow in envy if you weren't there...but make sure you wear boots. Wallowing is messy...
"Last week I had mentioned I would be participating in the 2009 ZOMIBIE WALK after Kirby Krackle was invited to play due to the closing song on our debut album entitled, "Zombie Apocalypse"; a social commentary on what it would be like after the undead fallout and delivered via ukulele.
Makes sense right?
With Jim busy with out of town guests, Mandi accompanied me as my infected assistant down to Fremont and for what turned out to be one of the more surreal experiences of my yet to be played out life....
In the weeks prior to the event I was told that the organizers (Fremont Outdoor Cinema) had expected about 2500 for the event and that they were hoping to to break the Guinness record for biggest Zombie Walk, AND largest "Thriller Dance" which came about as a tribute to the now late Michael Jackson. When M and I showed up the line was a couple hundred people long and an hour later after sound check we walked by the line again to see it was now at least over a thousand.
Having some time to kill before we wanted to see the first leg of the walk (about 5 total), we set up at a local outdoor seating restaurant and chuckled at the "Zombie Plate" now listed on the daily menu. It was getting to be obvious everyone was getting in on the fun and a great mood was in the air. As it got closer to walk time (7:30-ish) you could see zombies arriving en masse and seemed to be from all walks of life. There were families of zombies, dwarf zombies (yes that's the PC term so lay off), zombies in wheel chairs, almost nude zombies and the below pictured "Ronald McDonald" zombie. Disturbing and a destroyer of my childhood...thank you, sir.
As with any socially conscious movement, there were the zombie organizers. Standing on raised up tables and preaching to a sea of what was seemingly now thousands of undead infected, the chants of "What do We Want?!" were followed with the perfect rouse of "BRAINS!!!". My favorite chant of the night? The unifying battle cry of, "Zombies Are People Too!"...
Once the 1st leg of the walk started, there is really nothing I can tell you that you can't determined from the video below. I almost wish I didn't know about the walk so I could be one of the hundreds of Fremont citizens that stood wide-eyed with bewildered smiles maybe partially wondering if running would be the better action of choice instead of the omnipresent look of folks taking cell-phone pics. The most priceless thing I saw was hundreds of zombies walking by the "Nectar" club which has a huge iron fence and all lunge towards it with arms sticking through grasping at the patrons inside. From the other perspective it would seem almost too real. So cool!
After the walk the massive horde (reported to be now 4500+) shuffled their way back to HQ to try to break the THRILLER dance record. I'm not sure if it's been reported if they did yet, but I don't know how they couldn't with the sea of inhumanity in the picture below. You be the judge, and I hope it turns out they did.
After doing the dance 3 times (too much) it was my turn to play. I was originally told I had 4 songs to play but as they were way behind schedule I was told the set had been cut back to two. I chose "Naked Wii" and the before mentioned "Zombie Apocalype", which was why we were invited in the first place. I had fun, but barely had a chance to get the crowd primed as I was competing with the massive crowd noise and gathering of folks getting ready to watch SHAUN OF THE DEAD after my performance. I was pretty burnt by that point and didn't stay for the movie, but it was a great time, appreciated the professionalism of the organizers and I think everyone had an awesome night playing rotting make-believe.
Also, make sure you notice the love from Super-fan Irene. You can't buy that kinda loyalty (I've tried) and she made my night just with that. :)"
All right Krackleheads, we’ve now officially released our FREE summer single: RING CAPACITY! Feedback is already pouring in and people seem to be lovin' our new rockin' tune! If you don't have a copy yet, just head over to the KK website, sign up on the mailing list below and we’ll e-mail the MP3 to you, simple as that!
In other news, Kirby Krackle will be opening for the Vicci Martinez Band on July 17th, 2009 at the Showbox Market in Seattle.
As a special to our fans, through JULY 13TH, you can buy tickets directly from us for only $10 and we'll mail them to you FREE! Just click on the PayPal button below to buy:
Lastly, don't forget to check KK out at the Fremont Outdoor Cinema on July 3rd for RED, WHITE & DEAD, the Zombie event of the season! We'll be opening the festivities with a trio of songs, featuring (not surprisingly), Zombie Apocalypse!
As promised last post, we are officially revealing the name of our summer single today, so here goes: RING CAPACITY.
Additionally, we also promised the full color art would be revealed as well, so being that we're a band of our word, feast your eyes on this super kick-ass piece by multiple Eisner Award nominated artist Nate Powell (Swallow Me Whole):
The single will be released on Tuesday, June 30th and it's COMPLETELY FREE, all you have to do is sign up on our mailing list (you can do just that at the bottom of the front page of the KK website).
We'll be back next Tuesday to talk about the song and more!
As we mentioned in the previous post, we'll be releasing a free summer single for our fans. Coming TUESDAY, JUNE 30TH, a brand new song will be given away for free to all our fans on our mailing list (you can sign up at the bottom of the front page of the KK website)
As a teaser, we thought we'd post this small black & white image from the art that will be attached to the single, it’s by a multiple Eisner Award nominated artist and it’s pretty kick-ass. We’ll reveal the whole image next week in full-color, so check back!
The convention season flew by! We met a lot of amazing fans, did some super fun stuff and got to hang with our favorite creators in the process. Just when we unpacked our bags for more than 2 weeks...we see SAN DIEGO COMIC CON on the horizon less than 2 months away...
Whoo Hoo!
We're cranking up the machine in anticipation of making it our most fun/successful con yet with some really fun stuff in the works that we think you're gonna love. What kinda stuff exactly?
How about a Summer single? :)
Though the album came out just 6 months ago, we've been getting a lot of emails/requests for more music. It feels great to hear that people want more KK, and we've been saying in podcasts and online interviews that the plan is to have a new album out at the beginning of the year and the start of the 2010 convention season. A month ago we were in the studio throwing around new song ideas to see what stuck to the wall (noodles not done yet) and one really rang as something we wanted to put out right away. It couldn't wait till January!
So, we thought it would be really cool as a thank you to the fans (that's KRACKLEHEADS to you) to release a summer single...and give it away for free! The single that's not to be named (yet) drops on TUESDAY, JUNE 30TH and the only way to get it is to sign up on our email list via www.kirbykracklemusic.com!
If you're already on the mailing list, you're good to go and look for it in your inbox that day. If you think you're on the email list and you haven't been getting updates...it must have bounced back. We told you to use your best handwriting! :) What if I follow KK on Twitter/Myspace/Facebook?
Too bad so sad, the only way to get it is to sign up on our email list! Cool? Cool!
We hope the new song proves to be your favorite KK song yet, and we think there's a good chance it will. We'll announce the name and the subject of the song in a few weeks!
In other news, we had a blast at the few Seattle shows we played in Seattle in May and they gave us an opportunity to try to covert non-comic music fans outside of the con circuit to the notion of geek rock. Many people came up to us and said though they didn't know anything about comics/video games...they were down! That was great to experience and leads us to our wanting to do more shows on the road with the following in mind...
Do you have a concentration of KRACKLEHEADS in your area? Are you into the idea of helping set up a show at your local comic shop? Let us know! We want to come and play where the fans are so please, if you want a KK show in your area (no matter where) cluing us in to the location of the geek-tribes would rule...thanks!
Until then, please enjoy the videos from our show in Seattle last month! Our new keyboardist Bryce Francis and drummer Nelson Estes who flesh out the live band are KILLING IT and make us want to write better songs!
If you want find out what we're up do in-between blog entries you can follow us on Twitter at www.twitter.com/kirbykrackle where we're pretty active in sharing what we think will be fun to hear about and general internet nonsense. Nonsense we say!
Some great articles/podcast are in the works, and last night we did an podcast interview with Chuck and Eric from COMIC RELATED which will be posted soon! Until that's posted, check out our talk with writer Liam Bradley here.
Tonight, we have a photo shoot on a downtown roof for a magazine article where we were requested to "wear capes"...
It's a good time to be alive! :)
We hope you've had a great past 6 months following KK, and here's to another 6 ahead! PEACE. LOVE. COMICS.
We're feeling good today...so good! Why? Because this week week get to spread the message of madness and playing video games naked across the Seattle landscape with not one...but two shows! Everyone at ECCC wanted to know when we're gonna play "out of convention shows" so here's your chance to see us in a place where people aren't wearing capes! Well, it is "The Ave" so who knows...
Here's the info to know!
SUNDAY, MAY 17TH University Street Fair on the UW Daily Mainstage on 43rd 10:30-11:30 AM All-Ages! Outside! Free!
TUESDAY, MAY 19 ToST in Fremont 10:00 PM 21+ $5.00 Cover
Hit us up if you have any questions and lets hope for good weather on Sunday!
Wow, a lot of time has passed since we updated the blog before we went to NYC. Hmmmm...let's see. We went back to New York to play a few shows and to meet with some Marvel folks about some cool stuff coming down the pipe in KK land and can't wait till we can share what we're talking about! Kyle came down with Strep Throat and a 103 degree temp 4 days before the trip. We almost scrapped the whole thing but ended up braving it and went anyways. Kyle sang the first show at Jim Hanley's Comic Universe and the next morning after singing on already strained and destroyed swollen vox cords due to the Strep had to lip sync the next night...cause he could barely talk. That was a first, and hopefully last time for that but the folks at COMIC BOOK JONES made us feel like conquering heroes with a fully catered night and great energy that makes us spread the word about the store anytime we talk with folks in the comic world.
After the NYC trip weekend, we had a couple of days off to rest and get Kyle's voice back before heading off to the CALGARY EXPO for a few days with our neighbors to the north and an excellent convention weekend. After the expo we headed up on a bus to Banff for a few days with fellow artists that included Ron Marz, Mark Brooks and Mike Choi (X-Men) and Gears of War 2 writer Josh Ortega. We had a blast and now we're home resting after our crazy month of conventions and trips!
Next up is a few shows in the Seattle area after many requests at the Emerald City Comic Con for some local shows ASAP! We'll be playing both shows full-band with the first being at the University Street Fair in Seattle on Sunday May 17th for an outdoor slot at 10:30am. There's no ticket fee, so come one come all and let's show them how geeks rock out! A few nights later we'll be at TOST in Seattle's Fremont area on the 19th for a 10:00pm show that marks the first club gig for KK.
The shows are gonna be a total blast and we hope to see you all there!
For more detailed accounts of the trips, check Kyle's blog at www.kylestevensmusic.blogspot.com, or by clicking the links below to get to the exact postings of KK action...
KIRBY KRACKLE is a nerd rock band from Seattle, WA. Their self-titled debut album (named one of the Best Albums of 2009 by Tuscon Weekly) has been featured on television, radio, magazines and on dozens of websites. Their sophomore album is titled E FOR EVERYONE.
