SUNSET

Giving it All Away, til I Think Better of it

Fri, 02 Dec 2011 11:56:00 -0500

I have been living under various rocks for most of my life but recently emerged from my latest rock to see the weird harsh light of our new digital world. I guess it first happened when my hard drive crashed and I lost all my information, including old demos, new things, and music for listening pleasure. My turntable is broken and getting it fixed is annoying, so, for the first time, I gave illegal downloading a go.

Seems crazy and hypocritical, right? Especially when I ask people to buy my music? Yeah maybe. But all this illegal downloading has exposed me to such great music, from unreleased Can to Les Paul and Mary Ford to Kraftwerk bootlegs to Gene Clark.

It’s a weird time in music. If you just enter an album title and “rar” into google, you can download an album and be listening to it in 30 seconds.

In this digital age, it is just insanely easy to steal things, and I myself have recently seen the benefit of it.

So I am putting all my old music up as “pay what you want” on bandcamp.

It’s kind of funny/bizarre. Some of the old releases I did not have anymore so I had to google them and ‘illegally’ download them from filesharing sites.

I am still charging money for special objects… any item I produce that you can hold in your hands will be a special and unique object. But, as far as I can tell, there is no enforceable way to make listeners pay for mp3s.

You can download most of my back catalog here:

http://blankfritz.bandcamp.com

Blank Fritz is the name of my new band, whenever it comes together. For the time being, I am playing alone. Perhaps a bit premature, or perhaps a bit optimistically, I named the site Blank Fritz. Now it is just a name sitting there, a reminder that I am playing solo and have not gotten another band together.

Sunset was always an evolving concept but it went too far in one direction and when that group of people fell apart, I needed a break from the name, even though on many of the recordings I had played everything. It had morphed into another entity. And when that entity died (or, rather, continued on with Sleep Good, gawd bless em) I decided to take a deep long breath.

Ahhhhhhhhhh.

We still have several records we recorded that have not been released. Perhaps after a short break, we will reconvene, either under the Sunset banner or something else, and release all this new material.

Removed drums and some keyboards to focus on the...

Wed, 20 Oct 2010 14:33:00 -0400

Removed drums and some keyboards to focus on the singing.

download the track here:

http://www.sunsetswebsite.com/dustydiamondsnaked.mp3

From the “gold dissolves to gray” album. I did a...

Thu, 07 Oct 2010 13:26:00 -0400

From the “gold dissolves to gray” album. I did a remix of just piano, banjo, guitar, and organ. And the end chants. It sounds more old-timey this way, kind of more like it was originally written.

download the track here:

http://www.sunsetswebsite.com/hillcountrysmog2.mp3

Video

Tue, 03 Aug 2010 22:03:41 -0400

Video

Tue, 03 Aug 2010 21:48:00 -0400

Video

Wed, 21 Jul 2010 08:22:32 -0400

We crafted this ambitious masterwork to reflect thoughtfully on...

Fri, 16 Jul 2010 12:36:24 -0400

We crafted this ambitious masterwork to reflect thoughtfully on the nature of our predicament.

Video

Fri, 16 Jul 2010 12:35:13 -0400

Video

Tue, 13 Jul 2010 09:22:26 -0400

White Whale sprung a leak

Tue, 13 Jul 2010 09:15:00 -0400

The van broke down yesterday about halfway through Connecticut. Promptly got towed by AAA. Our driver had been working 10 straight days of 24-hour shifts. He chain smoked and I imagine did some crystal meth somewhere in there too. He called our van a “piece of shit.” I could not really disagree.

Now at the mercy of AAMCO. What will become of us?? Stay tuned.

Video

Sat, 10 Jul 2010 12:19:22 -0400

Video

Wed, 07 Jul 2010 19:44:28 -0400

Video

Mon, 05 Jul 2010 19:22:10 -0400

tour video #2

Sat, 03 Jul 2010 22:44:00 -0400

tour video #2

Hot Pink Haze #2

Sat, 03 Jul 2010 21:33:01 -0400

Did not sleep the night before tour. Up all night prepping merch and mine own brain for a 6-week departure.

Getting through Houston and out of TX came as a sloppy slog. Heavy rain, crowded freeways, a leaking van, endless delays. Pulled into H-town and played a show to the club’s brick walls and vacant plush furniture. Club called the Mink, another in a series of seemingly endless Houston haunts. Slept at Paul’s and left town in a hurry, only to be jammed up at Houston’s eastern border. Hours and hours later, pulled out of town and on the road.

New Orleans presented some beautiful imagery. Walking down Frenchman’s Street, saw a woman brushing her teeth while drinking a beer in an alleyway, an old man with a “Bong Hits For Jesus” tee shirt, a large brass band playing and dancing in the street, lots of passed out people in doorways. Beautiful decay.

Played at Dragon’s Den to a partially enthused crowd. John lent his drums to another drummer who had apparently been on a 48-hour coke and whiskey binge. He somehow seemed to be tweaking while simultaneously passing out. Kept screaming about the Dwight Twilley Band. Saw him light a cigarette backwards.

Danced at Mimi’s Bar until 4am. Woke the next morning and the whole band signed up for Chevron credit cards using names like Milton Johnson, Wilbo Patton, and Roger Bam. We each received $5 Chevron gift cards. The cards still need to be processed. If there is a Johann Crock living on Dognob Street in Paris, TX, he will soon be receiving a Chevron credit card.

Now…. Tallahassee and surfing some gulf coast oil spillage.

Running like a madman. Head spinning. Pianos burning....

Thu, 01 Jul 2010 11:45:00 -0400

Running like a madman. Head spinning. Pianos burning. Swimming in all these tasks I will never finish. Riding the wave.

I feel like rolling down a long grassy hill into a pool of beer and taking a nice long cold swim. For this tour, I bought a pretty cool, very small digital video camera from Japan. I will be doing some video updates and such.

The first! Short document of screen printing and block printing our merch.

the "hot pink haze" tour

Wed, 23 Jun 2010 14:17:42 -0400

Been working a while on a tour that will span 6 weeks. Thanks to my friends Paul and Tommy and Latane for bringing “the heat” in making this happen.

I called this tour the “Hot Pink Haze tour,” in honor of Himi Jendrix. That’s Jimi’s half -brother who played keyboards with Boz Scaggs and released a solo album called “Hot Pink Haze.” That album can be found in thrift store record bins.

A few words about the groups touring:
Sunset has just finished a new album and will be playing songs from that, as well as a few old favorites. We will be selling a “greatest hits” c.d., more like an intro to the band spanning our many releases in our 2 years of existence. A few rare cuts on there. There will also be an accompanying DVD of a live performance by us at Baby Blue, shot on Pixelvision and super8 film. This is a tour-only item at this point, and should be very special. It will cost only $5 ! We will also have t-shirts I screen-printed and some new pamphlets of my fiction and non-fiction writing.

Sleep Good just released an album, “Skyclimber” and they will be touring with us for the East Coast portion to support the album. If you haven’t heard their music yet, check it out now:http://sleepgood.autobusrecs.com/

It’s really good dream pop with heavy rhythm section. Sleep Good will also have tshirts and other assorted ephemera. A great live band, not to be missed!

For the west coast portion, Sunset will be doing some dates with Jesse Woods. I played with him at this year’s ACL fest and it was surreal and fun. His songs are in the modern folk vein, which means somewhere between old folk and new weird. We (Sunset) will be backing him on some songs, so it should get interesting.
http://www.jessewoods.net/

Here are the dates (with some additions and corrections to come as we approach departure):
East Coast (all dates with Sleep Good except 7/8)
July 1 - Houston, TX - The Mink
July 2 - New Orleans - Dragon’s Den - w/ The White Bitch, Bipoloroid
July 3 - Tallahassee, FL - Engine Room w/ Jane Jane Pollock, Port City
July 4 - Atlanta - house party @ 4four collective
July 5 - House Party - Chapel Hill w/ Curtains
July 6 - Baltimore - Metro Gallery
July 7 - Washington, DC - DC9 - w/ Matthew Hemerlein, True Womanhood
July 8 - Brooklyn, NY — Rooftop Film Series at BROOKLYN TECH, Roof of Brooklyn Technical High School
July 9 - Philly, PA - Philebrity show on a YACHT - details on philebrity.com
July 11 - NYC - Cake Shop - w/ Inoculist, The Due Diligence
July 12 - Boston - Butcher Shop w/ Four Eyes, Spring Totem
July 14 - Easthampton, MA - The Flywheel - w/ Matt Krefting Band, Bourgeois Heroes

Midwest:
7/15 - 7/20 - eating lots of cheese curds and trying not to get caught speeding and watching the rivers catch on fire

West Coast (all dates with Jesse Woods except Seattle):
July 21 - Los Angeles - Spaceland - w/ Superhumanoids
July 23 - Venice, CA - AC Lounge
July 25 - Big Sur, CA - Alanna’s Unicorn Palace !
July 27 - Monterey, CA - East Village Coffee House
July 28 - Santa Cruz, CA - Crepe Place
Aug 1 (day show)- San Francisco, CA - Milk Bar - w/ Mark David Ashworth
Aug 1 - Hemlock Tavern
Aug 3 - Portland, Or - Rotture w/ Tango Alpha Tango
Aug 4 - Seattle, WA - High Dive - w/ Pill Wonder
Aug 7 - Boise, ID - Neurolux
Aug 9 - Missoula, MT - The Badlander
Aug 10 - Salt Lake City, UT — Urban Lounge
Aug 11 - Denver, CO - Hi Dive - w/ Gauntlet Hair

Hope to see you for one or all of the shows! If you live somewhere along the way and can put us up or want to hang or let us play on your radio show, etc, please be in touch! We love house parties and small events and even people hopping in the van with us for a day or two.

We will not be playing in Austin again until our album is released in the fall. Which means it will have been like a 7-month break. More, maybe. But it will be worth the wait. It will be a very special event… more details to come.

Yrs,
Bill Baird

out with the mold

Wed, 23 Jun 2010 13:39:00 -0400

Ditched blogger.com because got tired of the interface and the spam. G-bye. I will leave it up for those who want to read old postings:

sunsetsblogtime.blogspot.com