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The Good Listeners"Don't Quit Your Daydream" Movie
To be a good story teller, performer, songwriter, you have to be a good listener. To take on that claim as a band name, you have to be really committed to the task. The Good Listeners take on the role and raise the bar. Mostly their own bar. On past album efforts the Los Angeles by way of Portland Oregon duo have created and recorded songs in one day. That model helps to keep things fresh and to not have the process clogged with over-thinking. On the latest release, ‘Don’t Quit Your Daydream’, the band take their self-imposed methods and take things on the road. The Good Listeners took a day to record and a day to travel for each of their songs, logging twenty four days and coming home with twelve songs as souvenirs of the trip.
Not to say the process was easy.
The Alternate Root (TAR): What prompted this undertaking?
Clark Stiles (CS): We needed to make our next record. For our past two albums, we have enjoyed the methodology of doing ten songs in ten days. We wanted to share the process with other people and break up monotony of sitting in a room.
Nathan Kyber (NK): We didn’t want to get things too polished.
The duo test drove the process in Los Angeles before venturing too far from home. They realized that traveling, setting up, writing and recording was probably too much to take on. Once they knew how much difficulty the making of the album would be, they packed up the gear and headed on the road. Pictures make a vacation, right? The Good Listeners brought along a camera crew to chronicle their trek and musical creation.
CS: We wanted to capture the journey and get it down on film.
TAR: Did everyone work well together?
NK: We knew one or two of the crew members before the trip. Others we hired before we went.
CS: The crew was not happy half way through. A big divide happened. It was kind of like the cafeteria scene in Alien or Mutiny on the Bounty.
The album, ‘Don’t Quit Your Daydream’, and the documentary give the impression that the process was smooth. The Good Listeners have created a solid album, mixing acoustics and studio techniques for a folk leaning sound that nods to the past styles of the singer/songwriter and expands on the potential of the genre.
NK: We are very happy with the album results. We are happy that anything got recorded. It was a grueling process and we are pleased with the marathon effort.
Look for a full feature on The Good Listeners in the upcoming January issue of The Alternate Root Magazine.
DOWNLOAD Zip file full CD
Going For Adds Jan 25th CMJ, AAA, FMQB
iTunes Names The Good Listeners Hit Song, Eighty Steps Away, Discovery Download of the Week
From January 19 - 25, 2010 music lovers can download Eighty Steps Away free of charge on iTunes, giving the band exposure on both the main and genre pages.
Los Angeles, CA (January 19, 2010) - The Good Listeners are debuting their new album this week, Don't Quit Your Daydream, in an exclusive iTunes digital-only release by Three Fingers Records that is already attracting rave reviews from listeners and music industry insiders. In conjunction with the album's release, the band's musical documentary (or we can call it a rock-u-mentary) will also be available to iTunes users on January 19, 2010.
"The Good Listeners are quite possibly the single greatest musical duo that you've never heard - yet, " says David Wild, contributing editor for Rolling Stone.
The Good Listeners, named for the band's ability to listen to music and hear all of its unique hidden and subtle sounds, recorded and filmed both the album and documentary Don't Quit Your Daydream while taking a 31-day cross-country road trip in an RV. Not wanting to give up the dream of being rock stars, the 40-year-old friends pack up their lives, leave their day jobs behind, and risk it all to make the album of their dreams come to life. The group stops in eight different locations and collaborates with small town musicians who like band members, Clark Stiles and Nathan Khyber, love creating music.
"We call our style cinematic pop," says Clark Stiles, who together with Nathan Khyber are The Good Listeners. "Each song on this album had a different collaborator with a different musical background. Don't Quit Your Daydream is the result of a great road trip and an amazing musical adventure."
Stiles and Khyber got their start in rock-and-roll back in the 90's when they were a part of the up and coming musical sensation, Absinthe. The duo are no strangers to unusual ways of working and remote recording locations, having completed their 2005 debut album, Ojai, after recording an impressive 10 songs in 10 days in a makeshift home recording studio. And in a setting reminiscent of the movie, "The Shining, " their 2007 album, Crane Point Lodge, was recorded in a 14-room country lodge nestled deep in New York State's Adirondack Mountains.
For more information and touring information about The Good Listeners, please visit www.thegoodlisteners.com. Download your copy of the album and documentary Don't Quit Your Daydream at www.itunes.com.
About Three Fingers Records
Three Fingers Records is an independent digital music, film and gaming label, whose award-winning titles are distributed exclusively through iTunes in the US and across the globe. Three Fingers Records is based in West Hollywood with satellite offices in San Francisco and Nashville. Three Fingers is a division of Red Bird Entertainment, which houses Sawmill Records distributed through Welk Music Group/EMI worldwide and Red Bird Cinema, a film production company. Three Fingers Records, Need address, phone, fax, website, and email contact info.
Check out their new movie!
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