It stopped raining on the Monday after the three date tour leg with Talking To Walls. We called the tour the “Too Many Atts Tour” since TTW is made up of 1 Brian, 1 Nat, and 2 Matts, but we could have called the tour Too Many Rainclouds Pour. The rain started on Friday night, when we met up to play the Vibe Lounge on Long Island, which TTW did acoustic, minus the two Matts. At that show the ratio of Atts to Brians was about even, since Rhythm section of Matts didn’t show, and the sound guy was also named Brian. I kicked off the show with a soundcheck that perhaps foreshadowed the ominous weekend, with the chorus and riff from Perry Mason, stuck in some type of loop. After the soundcheck, I ran through a set full of songs off the new record Bored Games capped off with the first single All The Possibilities. Brian and Nat of TTW followed, playing a strong set highlighted by a new song, Santa Monica, which is off of their latest record, We Were Not So Tall. There was also a great non-sequitor joke by Brian (of TTW, not the sound guy) about having the heads of a Spock and Mr T doll switched and an on point Poison cover of “Every Rose Has It’s Thorn”. Despite the rain, and the additional acts bailing due to unforseen circumstances (perhaps they were feeling under the weather…) we made the best of a dampened night, hightailing it to the diner after the show for an overabundance of Waffle Fries and Comic book conversation.

The next night, I headed from my apartment in Queens to Local 269 in the Lower East Side, but hit into a bit of a snafu. While Friday night was a constant heavy drizzle, Saturday night was full blown monsoon. I thought I was prepared to take my acoustic, merch bag and knapsack of clothes on the train along with my best oversized umbrella. Carrying all of that, I went to transfer to the F train, and stood with Amanda, and hundreds of other passengers on the platform for about a half hour, until we decided that the best (and realistically only plan) was to get back on the same train line that we came from, go downtown, end up by West Houston and then walk crosstown on Houston until we got to Katz’s on Ludlow for our dinner plans, which were originally set for 5:30. The rain flipped the umbrella a number of times, until we needed to give up on it completely. We got there at 6, with our clothes soaking us to the bone, but a few bites of Pastrami got us feeling a bit better. At 6:30 we made our way to Local 269, where TTW and Chris Moschetti arrived. Chris kicked off the night with Nancy Sinatra’s “These Boots Were Made For Walking” and while it made me realize that even though I hadn’t worn rain boots, it was going to be a good night. Chris played a rousing Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues” and a number of crowd pleasing originals, including his “most sarcastic love song,” which he dedicated to me. Talking To Walls were up next, and it was the first time I’d seen them in a full band setting. The rocked Local 269, kicking the energy into high gear. They had a Gun and Roses teaser of Paradise City into their first single off of their new album, “Came To You”. After taking a couple of videos of Talking To Walls performing including “We Were Not So Tall” which was featured in an NBC commercial, I took the stage and played a number of fan favorites for the largest crowd of the tour. After the show was over, I helped pack TTW’s van with all of their gear, and my acoustic. We then headed down to Katz’s for the afterparty. (Katz’s is the deli Where Harry Met Sally, and where Michael Rappaport and Al Roker met the owner.) That’s right, I went to Katz’s twice in one evening! Who’s the lucky dog?

After Katz’s I packed into the backseat with Nat and Matt Nth (TTW bassist) where we promptly got stuck in traffic. We videoblogged, took a trip through Harlem, missed the exit to stay on the Bruckner, had some awesome turns to get back on, and after an hour or two in the pouring rain, ended up at Nat’s house, which was blacked out due to the storm. We then dropped off Matt Nth an hour or two later. Finally at 1:50 at night, we ended up at Brian’s house, where I got the couch. However, it turned out that due to daylight savings time, it was actually 2:50 in the morning. After getting comfy, I passed out for a good nights sleep.

The next morning I awoke, and played the do not disturb game, where I waited for everyone else to wake up. Once we all woke up, we popped on the TV and caught a little bit of Spaceballs before going out for some breakfast. When we got back, it was finishing up, and we then caught an A Team Marathon on the channel Centric. They had a number of outrageous commercials for Colon Blow, and something called the Brazilian Secret. It made me jones to play Infomercial Blues that night. After the rest of TTW assembled at Brian’s house, we packed into the van and headed to Boston. On the way up we played various Bored Games like Classic Rock Ice Cream Flavors (Randy Rocky Rhoads…) Lord of the Rings Diner Food (The Oneion Ring…) and other similar timewasters. Still the weather was raining steadily, which added to our time. We got to Boston with about an hour to spare, and set up at Hennessy’s Hooley House in Boston proper. On the way up, I convinced Krupa (TTW’s drummer) to play for my set. He spent the first 30 minutes at the venue (after unloading the van) listening to the album for the first time. Then, we took some time to hear the first act of the night. They played jammy covers of Sublime and Hendrix worked in with their own originals. Then it was Talking To Walls’ turn to rock. I worked the room with their mailing list and merch table, and they had a surprise for the audience as well. For their final song of the night, they invited me up on stage to sing along to their “Song For Megan”, an Irish punk song. What better venue for singing an Irish punk song, than a Boston pub the weekend before St. Paddy’s day? Members of the crowd broke out into a spontaneous jig, while I sang along and air guitared.

Right after that, it was my turn on stage. Krupa stayed on, and we went into Someone, which sounded pretty solid for the first time playing together. While there was a few missteps, we had a lot of fun, and played a rousing version of Patient Waltz before closing out the set with Brian and Nat coming on stage to harmonize to All The Possibilities. After that, we packed the van, after watching a tractor trailer block the road for about a half hour before the double parked police car helped escort him off of the side street the truck was on. Then we booked it out of Boston, only to find that every road the GPS wanted us to take had roadblocks due to flooding. While we considered slamming through the barriers A Team style, we decided to consult the map hidden below the passenger seat, and went the best way we could to get outta Boston. This involved going South, and then North, and then West, to go back down South again, instead of just going West and then South. We made a pit stop at around midnight at a strange rest stop, where the only thing open was a McDonalds that served only Chicken Nuggets, Angus burgers, or Double Cheeseburgers. The whole way home, we played 6 degrees of band separation (for example, get to Jack White to Jack Black). That culminated in us getting from William Shatner to Leonard Nimoy using music instead of Star Trek. Finally at around 3:30 in the morning, we arrived at Brian’s house, after dropping Krupa off, and Nat and Matt Nth split for their respective homes. Brian and I got files ready for exchanging, as we had recorded the sets on video, pictures and mp3s, and then went to bed.

The next morning Brian woke me with a knock on the door. I quickly got ready to go, and ate some Rice Krispies, while we found out that overnight, Brian’s fishtank had leaked. This was after many of our fans couldn’t make it to some of the shows due to the storm, flooding in their homes, flooding in mass transit (in Boston and NYC) and other rain related reasons. Brian’s house didn’t have any problems from the storm, but apparently his fish tank did. We left and Brian dropped me off at the train, right as the train pulled away from the station. After a 20 minute wait in the rain, I caught the next train out, transferred in Grand Central, and made my way home, where I was effectively exhausted for the next half day.

So that’s the story of the tour. What do you think? Can you figure out how too get from Leonard Nimoy to William Shatner through music?

A lot is going on, as it’s T-Minus 4 days until 3/2/10, when Bored Games will be released. I’ll be playing a house party in an undisclosed location in the West Village, while webstreaming it online here at 8PM. Then soon after it’s on to the tour, which you’ll read about below.

Bored Games is already starting to have a couple of landing pages prior to the release on sites such as Last.fm, and will be available on sites such as iTunes, Amazon, and CD Baby, to name a few. The first single, All The Possibilities, is available for streaming currently on Myspace and Facebook, and available as a free download for special fans like yourself here. Feel free to spread the word about both the new album and the free downloads/streams of All The Possibilities.

This past Sunday I was featured in Newsday, which you can find on Newsday site here (if you currently have a Newsday subscription or are a part of Optonline). If you’re not a Newsday subscriber, you can find the content of the article here. The article was also picked up by some other news outlets, including Fuse.tv, which you can find here. If you are a paper or a blog looking to cover the album, definitely get in touch!

The weekend after the album is release, I’ll be going out on the road with the band Talking To Walls. Here’s the dates that are solidified, as well as the dates that are still tentative:

March 2nd – House Party and Webstream – New York, NY

March 7th – Hennessy’s Hooley House – Boston, MA

March 12th – Vibe Lounge – Rockville Centre, NY

March 13th – Local 269 – New York, NY

March 19th – Venue TBA – New Jersey

March 20th – Venue TBA – Baltimore, MD

March 21st – Venue TBA – Philadelphia, PA

March 25th – Venue TBA – New Paltz, NY

March 26th – Venue TBA – Albany, NY

March 27th – Venue TBA – Binghamton, NY

April 1st – Acoustic Cafe – Bridgeport, CT

That’s all for now, I’ll see you all via webstream on Tuesday!

-Matt

Tomorrow is the big day, sort of. If everything goes right, I should have the albums in my hands, depending on how long it takes to get mailed from New Jersey to New York. Then I can begin the promotional campaign, by sending out the copies of the recording to the various radio stations, blogs, podcasts, press, and other important people that help make the music industry run so semi-smoothly. I really hope I can handle putting together booking a month long tour and doing a lot of the leg work for a mass mailing campaign this month on my own, which is why I can use all the help I can get.

Do you know of a cool blog that reviews music like mine? Do you know a newspaperman or newspaperwoman who reports on pop-rock singer-songwriter music? Do you know someone who knows someone who works at a radio station? If so, let me know! Shoot me an email or leave a comment so we can work on this together.

Do you know nobody? Would you still want to help? Are you in the NYC area and have some free time on your hands, on weekday nights or on weekends? Do you want to know how to do a DIY marketing campaign? Shoot me an email or comment!

Do you want to help book a show for the tour and know of the perfect venue in your town? Let me know!

Thus concludes the infomercial portion of this blog post. Still, as one of the tracks is called Infomercial Blues, I might as well get into the spirit of the album, as should you!

So I have been spending this beautiful snowy Sunday morning in New York City in my pajamas going through a list of music blogs to submit my album to and it can be a little overwhelming. From one little blog roll I’ve found a whole lot of music blogs, and putting them all together in a workable database is challenging and fun. It’s not hard work, but it does take up a lot of time. It makers me a little sad that I haven’t been using this space for talking about music as much as I’d like to. Still there are only so many hours in a day, and you have to choose your battles wisely.

Speaking of album preparation, right now I’m in the limbo stage where my album is at the duplicator waiting to be pressed. First there was minor artwork issues (the blues and yellows bled to make green, who knew?) and then there was master recording issues (who knew the burnt CD with some schmootz on the bottom was going to be corrupted?) but now all that has been (hopefully) straightened out.

So I’m hoping to have the albums in hand by the new year, and ready to send them out to local radio, press, podcasts and blogs. If you are a radio station, newspaper or zine, podcast or blog, or write/play music for one, definitely let me know if you’d want to get a review copy. What this means for you the general public/fans is that the countdown for the album release has started. As of now, we’re shooting for a 3/2/10 release date. Thus, the countdown has begun!

As part of the upcoming release for Bored Games, I’ve decided to play some Bored Games with you, the fans. Each person can submit ten words that they want to become a song, and I’ll work it in to put together a rough demo this weekend of yours and someone else’s list.

For example, I received “blue, snow, flipper, aorta, cinderella, earlobe, run, jump, hide, thrive” from Emily S. and “feather, skipper, marzipan, couch, shimmer, brush, lament, assumption, bristle, aligned” from Michael R. From that I wrote this song:

Blue skies give way to the clouds of snow
There’s flake drifting down past her earlobe
Cinderella’s late, so she starts to run
Her aorta starts to ache, the ball has just begun

Out of the carraige, up the steps
Cannot hide form the consequence

Flipper waitsto swim in another pool
The skipper wants him to jump through another hoop
While you sit on your couch, their instincts are aligned
As the dolphin makes his jump, the heroes thrive

Out the water, into the air
Flippers turn to feathers while you stand there

Late at night you lament the past
You made a wrong assumption, you know it won’t last
Picking up a brush, you comb your hair
The bristles make it shimmer and you stop to care

Out of the dream, into real life
Out of movie marzipan, into human strife

Then I received these words from Sara N.: “octopus, purr, salt, velvet, thwart, violet, scissors, chihuahua, gargoyle, lily” and these from Kim S.: “love, lace, heart, dolphin, snuggle, bunny, turkey, merry, jolly, happy”

From those words came the second song about a dolphin of the day:

I’ve never heard of a love quite like this
Between Merry the Dolphin and Lily the Octopus
Lily’s skin was violet, Merry’s heart was a size three
Together they found love in the salt water sea

Oh the secret lives of beasts
When humans are out of reach

I’ve haven’t found a rivalry so funny
Between a stone cold gargoyle and a snuggle bunny
The bunny’s velvet skin was twarted once again
And the gargoyle was smirking at him sitting by the fountain

Oh the secret lives of beasts
While humans are out of reach

You should have seen this chihuahua’s face
When a turkey cut him a heart of lace
Strapping scissors to it’s feet
To make the dog purr so jolly

Oh the secret lives of beasts
When humans are out of reach

*This idea comes from this blog by Carrie Brownstein (of NPR and Sleater-Kinney fame), modified for this weekend.

As you all may know by now, Bored Games is the latest album set to be released in early 2010. However, you may not have known that as of now, you can be a part of the Game. See below, or check out http://www.thepoint.com/campaigns/win-matt-jaspers-bored-games for more information

As of the beginning of the month, I’ve completed the album, speeding through a month and a week of recording of 13 songs, 11 or 12 of which we’ll use. Right now, we’re working on the artwork, and it’s turning out pretty kick ass. Then we press the copies, and pick a publicist, perhaps an A&R company to shop it around, maybe get a few placements, maybe a record deal, and go for broke on the tour. It’s exciting to think that the album will be on it’s way in a few short months, and I’ll be back in the saddle so to speak.

But I’m getting ahead of myself here. This morning is my birthday, and I can’t think of a better way to spend it than going to work, having a surprise party thrown sometime in the day, then going out for a night on the town. After that, I heard a rumor that there’s ice cream cake waiting in the fridge. Feel free to wish me the best on my birthday!

I should be in the studio at this very moment, beginning to lay down some bass parts to go with the very excellent drums that were played last week by Eric Lense. However, we had a minor setback, which is technically a positive thing. We had inadvertently been recording the drums in the dreaded high resolution format (96 kHz, 24 bit), which is pretty awesome sounding, but takes up the most amount of space on a hard drive, since it essentially captures every little nuance of the recording. The thing about 96kHz, is that while some programs are totally cool with it, other programs or computers totally can’t handle the process. Today, I was going to go to Jake’s apartment to get some bass and hopefully some guitars done, but last night Jake realized that since the tracks were saved in the high format, his computer couldn’t handle the high quality awesomeness that the drum tracks were. So, instead of recording my album, I’m sitting at home, figuring out what to do with the afternoon.

Never fear, dear follower of my recording process! I have studio time this upcoming Tuesday and Wednesday, where the bass and guitars will be recorded.

This past Wednesday and Thursday I started recording my next album, along with Eric Lense, the drummer for the album, and Jake Skolnick, the producer. It went really well. We started out by tracking the drums along with a scratch rhythm guitar. We had a lot to get accomplished in a short amount of time, since we had about three hours on Wednesday and up to five hours on Thursday for drums, before Eric would be booked for a longer amount of time (he’s currently in three different projects, is about to record a full length with his main project, The Instant Classic, and is also planning a tour for them). Still, we had 13 songs on the roster, and three of them would be percussion only. The other ten we needed to get good drums on, and quick. The only problem was that Eric hadn’t heard and of the songs until two nights before, when I sent him 4 songs. The majority of the tracks he hadn’t heard at all before stepping foot into the studio. Still wee performed admirable and got the ten drum songs completed in seven hours over two days. Plus they sound really kickass. So even though I had July 4th long weekend in between then and now, I’m still feeling the after effects of a couple of great studio sessions. The next session is either this Tuesday or Saturday, and I can’t wait to get back to lay down some drums and guitars.