SXSW2008 - Radio Station Radar

I've been feeling jealous reading all this chatter about SXSW and coincidentally I came across this foto of me doing an interview with the radio station Radar from Lisbon, Portugal. I thought it would be cool to post the interview on my site, if only for people to laugh listening to my crazy Portuguese with an American accent, but so far I haven't been able to get any response from the people at Radar.

New ZDF pictures from the last concert

Mustafa sent me a bunch of fotos from the last concert. They are dobré. I'm not sure who took them, but thanks to that European. Check them our here.

Ice-Box Tracking

We finished two days of tracking basics today. Pista and Mustafa were being very brave, trying to bust out their skills in a 3ºC room. I was amazed that they could play since I could hardly type with frozen fingers. We had a small heater and a fireplace, but I didn't want to turn either on, one because of the noise and the other because of all the smoke it made. Amazingly it turned out well and I'll continue recording my stuff next week, if I can get my mac fixed.

The last show at HlavaXXII was great and we got people out in record numbers! It was also really nice to finally have our own sound engineer, Milan Slama. They have a new sound system at Hlava but no one told me that it sound significantly better than the last time, but I assume that it did.

Even with all of these improvements, it still looks like it may be a while until we can perform live like we do in the rehearsal studio. Vocal monitors are just never loud enough. When we practice the play quietly and I can hear my voice really well, but when I'm on the stage sitting next to Mustafa beating the skins my hearing automatically becomes less sensitive the louder he plays so my requests for changes with the monitor are always too late. Sometimes I think that i will never have performance success until I get 10,000 hours of on-stage playing under my belt as Malcolm Gladwell explains. But, I have never tried in ear monitors, so there still might be a solution.

The most funny thing of the entire evening was how popular our last song was. I put it in the setlist cause I thought it would be fun for us, but even with it's sill lyrics, the audience loved it. Milan told me that the audience will always like the songs you don't like. Luckily, the recording turned out well, so I will include that one on the album I hope to release in the next couple of months.

Thanks to everyone that came out. It was a great final show for this chapter of ZDF.

Last ZDF Conert In Slovakia!

Our show on the 17th at Hlava22 will be the last show for Zé Dos Frangos for the near future. In March we will dedicate some time to recording new songs so look forward to a digital EP release in April. Our friend Jakub Gabriel will be opening the set at 20h and then ZDF will start at 20h30.

Last Show In Slovakia!

Our last show in Slovakia will be on February 17 at Hlava22 in Bratisava, opening at 20:00 with Jakub Gabriel. I have decided to move to the US in April and so will have a final show with my great Slovak band and then record the songs we have produced together in March. Come out to the show and look forward to a digital release of new material in April.

Šťastný Nový Rok!

November Show @ HlavaXXII, Bratislava

November's show at HlavaXXII went great. Aside from some technical challenges, the band is getting better and better. Thanks to everyone that came out. Playing in a band is fun, but playing live can be a lot of work. Even if you play the flute, you still have transportation and other worries. Sometimes the whole social event of 'the show' seems to out weigh artistic goals. You may spend more time advertising your show than practicing for it. During this particular show I saw someone singing along with my song "Miss O'Jenny." That was a great "Ah Ha! Art!" moment for me. Thanks.

Grande abraço to Mustafa's friend Michal Jellinek who took some awesome fotos of us. The first thing I thought was, yes, beard is good. The second thing was that I should design a new ZDF website around these fotos. What do you think?
www.zedosfrangos.com

For the first time ever, I posted an entire song from a show to YouTube. It's the Archers Of Loaf cover I do called Web In Front. Thanks to my dad for the tiny organ. I hope some old Archers fans will find this.