BED OF SEEDS – SPRING 2010

This album that started in a cabin became Bed Of Seeds, and it finally came out in the spring of 2010. Normative Records had folded by then, and Friends Records jumped in and put it out.

We did a 60 day tour, half in a van and half in a veggie-oil powered school bus with Nuclear Power Pants. Brendan Richmond, Liz Aeby, Gavin Riley, Emily Slaughter and Rob Dowler jumped in and out as the friends at this point. Rob Dowler played live drums, which was my first real foray into using live instruments onstage.

SHARK TANK – WINTER 2011

Since the winter of 2008, Lord Grunge, Brendan Richmond, Mickey Free and I had been slowly working on a collaborative record. We were split between Baltimore, Pittsburgh and Kingston, Ontario. Getting together wasn’t easy, but we kept at it until we had something tight. We put the album out in the winter of 2011.

This record is special for me in that it’s a posse album with my best friends, and that it’s a return to our roots of rap for the sake of rap. Some of the rhymes and beats had been brewing since the days of Bow and Height or earlier, and some things were made on the spot.

We managed to make a few moves. We played twice in Baltimore, twice in Pittsburgh, and once each in Atlanta, Philadelphia and Providence. People’s support and excitement at some of these shows was unreal. We put something together that people really like, and we laid the groundwork for something we plan on doing for a long time.

Here’s the first Shark Tank video…

MEGA-TOUR – WINTER 2011

That winter, we did our ninth tour that went to the west coast and back, the sixth of which I booked on my own. What made this one notable to me was that I attempted a more ambitious routing. Unlike my usual 30 day coast-to-coast marathons, we were out for 51 days. For a DIY operation, the ratio of shows vs. off days was good. We covered some ground in places we often have to skip, due to time. Flags were planted.

RAP AMBASSADORS TOUR – SPRING 2011

PT Burnem invited me to join him for his second tour of Europe. I’ve dreamed of touring other countries since I started, but I was never able to make it happen. Bringing the whole line-up was out of the question, so Colin volunteered to perform all the duties of every other member of Height With Friends. Our friends Sasha and Xena booked most of the tour and drove us from town to town. We played in Russia, Ukraine, Romania, Hungary, Croatia, Poland and France. Touring the US is like touring Candy Land compared to Eastern Europe, and they sacrificed a lot to make this happen for us. They braved potholes, corrupt cops, troublesome border crossings, parking tickets, twelve hour drives and sleepless nights, all while being pleasant company. I had never seen people go through so much to make a tour a reality.

We got to play for some of the best audiences of our careers, especially in Eastern Europe. Having some level of respect and excitement granted to you before you perform is awesome. People seemed to assume you were going to be good until you proved otherwise, instead of the other way around. I usually left the shows impressed with the work the promoters had done, and with the energy the audience had given to us. They were aware that they were not passively watching youtube on their phones, but seeing human beings give their all right in front of them. The first world could learn a thing or two about how to act from these places.

Here’s a short clip of us playing in Bryansk, Russia…

RAP ROUND ROBIN FIVE – AUGUST 2011

Soon after getting back to the US, we set off the fifth annual rap round robin. Every year the round robin got slightly bigger, and that year we pushed it to the max. Every new group, Mania Music Group, Ooh / Seeweed and Soul Cannon, brought a ton of people out, killed it, and didn’t miss their cues. Every act in the room was in rare form. When it started, I could tell some of the people who had never seen a round robin before were confused. Once things got going, it was a magical night.

MICRO VICTORY – SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2011

We did a US/Canada tour with Jen Rice, Gavin Riley, Jack Topht and Justin Barnes as the band. The tour stands out to me in that I felt like I had turned a corner in my booking and tour-routing skills.

I’ve never enjoyed anything about being my own booking agent. I’m not skilled at it and I’m not a savvy person, but I have endless vigor when it comes to making sure we’re going to have a place to play and a place to sleep. The fact that it took 11 years of booking to get it right made it feel like less than a complete victory. Still, progress is progress.

LIVE BAND BEGINS – NOVEMBER 2011

I had the desire to bring live instruments into our show, but I was always apprehensive about going all the way with it. In years of touring I had seen many lame attempts at live band hip-hop that came out as light, jazzy funk. Also, the second verse of MC Ren’s Kiss My Black Azz had steered me away from live instruments since the 90’s. (“All you need on the stage is meat and bones, save the band shit for Quincy Jones”)

Still, my new guitar-based songs called for it, and I was inspired by seeing it pulled of excellently by Kane Mayfield and Soul Cannon. Jen Rice had done a couple tours as part of Height With Friends as a singer, and she helped me understand how to get it the way I wanted it. It was decided that we should always add to the beats and never subtract.

We found the perfect way to play the songs off Bed Of Seeds and (the forthcoming) Rock and Roll live. At the time, it felt like now that we cooked this up it should stay this way forever. Now, I see that the live show is always going to change as the albums change.

FUN YOUNGS – APRIL 2012

We kept working on more Shark Tank songs. We got together in Pittsburgh in December and January to bang it out. Grunge was about to be evicted, and was living in a three story house with no roommates. He invited us to turn his house into a rap camp. He recorded and mixed everything, and handled the majority of the production as well. You can tell Grunge is at the helm for this one, in a great way. I’m really glad it all came together the way it did.

Mickey Free wasn’t able to commit to the album. He did some beats, but Brendan Richmond, Lord Grunge and I held down the rhymes and the 2012 shows.