March StereoGoesStellar Shows!

Hey Gang!

Holy moly, is this week ever busy! Listen to what we’re up to!

Tonight, after a quick band practice we’re headed to Toronto to crash at our good friend Shane, Eric, Kristie and Tara’s house. You might think, “that’s a lot of people in one house for a band to go crash at…”, and you’d be right! Fortunately for us, the residents of what we like to call The ‘Deen are the most kind, generous and hospitable people on earth (as well as unbelievably good looking) and they let us occupy their couches, floors, and dryers. Mick sleeps in the dryer. Like, with it  on and everything. He loves it! It’s great because you know you’re not going to have to fight him for the last couch, but it whomps because he eats socks. I put this in brackets a couple lines up, but it needs to be stated explicitly. Shane, Eric, Kristie and Tara are all unreasonably good looking. Like, you know when you watch TV shows like the Bachelor or the Bachelorette and you think to yourself, “that many good looking people would never all stay in one house together, it’s just so improbable!” Well, guess what… it’s more than probable, it happened. And tonight, we get to go ugly it up by occupying their beautiful home.

Wow, I really got sidetracked up there. Anyways, tomorrow we’re spending the day in Toronto shooting a music video with a delightful young lady named Christina Taco. Christina is also very good looking, but she doesn’t live at The ‘Deen. Having never been a in a music video before, I really don’t know what to expect. And this video is being shot stop-motion as well, so I really have no idea what to expect. A couple years ago though, myself and my friends Mitch, Bogdan and Joey shot a stop-motion film of a Transformers dance party. The music in it was great. It was all old school rap like Run DMC and stuff, and the break dancing was epic, but as I recall the plot was completely nonsensical. I’m pretty sure at one point they were dancing in George Clooney’s house or something.

Interestingly enough, and also completely unrelated to the actual take-home message of this post, our very good looking manager lives very near to The ‘Deen, prompting the question, are all the residents of the neighborhood in which The ‘Deen is located exceptionally good looking? My hypothesis is yes, but I will get back to you on this with empirical results.

Wow, sorry. Sidetracked again. Okay, so Thursday morning, we’re going to get up bright and early for a little more filming I think, but then we have to head home because we’re opening for Lights! Whoop! I can’t wait for this show. There aren’t a lot of tickets left, but let us know if you need some and we’ll make sure you get one somehow. Don’t quote me on this, but I’ve heard rumors that there will not be any tickets at the door for sale. Yikes, right? So if you’re into this show, get hooked up with a ticket ahead of time!

And then Friday morning, it’s time for another quick band practice and then off to St. Catherine’s to rock the L3! This show is going to be insane, but if you’re elsewhere in Ontario and can’t make it to the St. Catherine’s show, peep the shows at the top of the page! We’ve added even more shows for March, so we may be coming to YOUR town!

So that’s this week! What’s next week? I don’t even know!

Oh, but hey! This Sunday, we’re going to be on Cogeco TV and CBC TV in Windsor and London and surrounding areas playing an acoustic version of our song Twenty-Two! Erik was in Korea when we had to film it so we had to make due sans percussion, but I think it went well! I don’t know officially what time it will be at, but it’s during the Easter Seals Telethon this Sunday! Check us out!

Alright, well the entire band is waiting for me to finish this blog so we can hit the road. See you soon!

// JerBear

Yup! We’re opening for LIGHTS! Thursday, March 11th at The Blind Dog in Windsor! Get your tickets at ticketscene.ca, but get them right now because there’s not much left!

Our Dead of Winter Mini-Tour was amazing. Thank you to every single person that hung out with us, bought our record, or even just shot us a dirty look! We really felt  like we connected with every single audience and left every city completely in love with it. The generosity of others never ceases to amaze me either. Shane, Eric, Tara, Kristie, Jayden and Laura, we can’t thank you enough for letting us sleep at your respective and wonderful homes! Not only that, we can’t thank you enough for hanging out with us and making us feel so at home!

Oh, and our good friend John Diemer came with us the entire tour helping us lug stuff around, set stuff up, fix stuff, sell stuff, and in general just making sure that all conversations never approached any semblance of normality. By the time we got home Sunday, all of our faces hurt from laughing for a week straight, our hands were frozen from Michou sized snowball fights, and our brains were mush from staying up too late and only eating peanut butter sandwiches, but man do we have some stories. So, thanks everyone for hanging out and we absolutely can’t wait to hop back in the van and come back to all of your cities. They were all wonderful!

The best part about coming home though was realizing that we have so much to look forward to! We’re beginning to demo our new material which is of course the first concrete step towards making a new record! In fact, Erik and Keith are driving up to London on Saturday to lay down some tracks with John Diemer at OIART. Next week is of course the LIGHTS show, as well as a show in St. Catherine’s which we’re stoked about, but we’re also hooking up with a very talented young artist in Toronto that is undertaking the arduous process of creating a stop-frame animation music video for us! Her name is Christina Taco and we are pumped to have her on board with the StereoGoesStellar team.

And that’s not even everything that we’re working on! But listen up Windsor, St. Catherine’s, Kitchener, London, and Toronto… we’re comin’ for ya. And we intend to put on some more great shows this month. Peep the dates!

Windsor, Ontario - Thursday, March 11th @ The Blind Dog w/ LIGHTS
St. Catherine’s, Ontario – Friday, March 12th @ L3
London, Ontario - Tuesday, March 16th @ Moon Over Main
Kitchener, Ontario - Wednesday, March 24th @ The Boathouse
Toronto, Ontario - Thursday, March 25th @ Bovine Sex Club

Slightly on the downward side, we do have some bad news to report. Our show that was scheduled for March 10th at the Supermarket in Toronto was cancelled. There was a mixup in the booking, but we were able to add a makeup Toronto date on the 25th of March at the Bovine Sex Club in Toronto, and the booking agent is nothing short of a gentleman and a scholar and has assured us that we will be privileged to take part in another Wednesday night at the Supermarket in the very near future. This is of particular delight because there’s this restaurant in Kensington Market where the Supermarket is that is called the Big Fat Burrito, and I absolutely have to get back there soon. It’s amazing. Sinceriously, the best burrito I’ve ever had. I’d climb a mountain for one. I’d climb two mountains! Whatever it takes!

Please, please, please keep checking back for more shows, videos, and best of all more music soon! Thank you so much for your continued support and have a great week! Hope to see you soon!

Love,

// JerBear

Good people of Earth, we should hang out more.

Things are crazy right now, eh? Everybody is so busy these days all over the place and we barely have a moment to breathe, let alone blog about it! But we miss you all and it’s not fair that we haven’t heard from ya’ll in a while nor that you haven’t heard from us, so let’s fix that up!

First and foremost, happy Valentine’s Day! Yes, I’m a couple days late on that one, but I hope you all enjoyed a pleasant day with your significant other, or significant others depending on what you’re into. And if you’re without a significant other, I hope you spent the day curled up with a nice William Smith movie. I suggest “I, Robot”, but honestly, they’re all good. Also, yesterday was Kevin Couvillon’s birfday, so Happy Birfday Kev!

Now then, let’s get down to the good stuff. Peep this: Dead of Winter Mini-Tour. Oh man, oh man. This is going to kickin’.

Windsor, Ontario – Wednesday, February 23rd @ The Phog Lounge
Toronto, Ontario – Thursday, February 24th @ The Poor Alex Theatre
Ottawa, Ontario – Friday, February 25th @ The Cajun Attic
Montreal, Quebec – Saturday, February 26th @ Bar St. Laurent 2
Waterloo, Ontario – Sunday, February 27th @ Maxwell’s Music House
Join the Dead of Winter Mini-Tour Facebook Event!

And we’re definitely cooking up more dates for March, so if you don’t see your city on that list, hopefully we’ll be coming your way soon!

I simply cannot wait to hit the road again! And neither can Talladega (our van). I’m wondering if our drummer Erik can’t wait though. He’s in Korea right now, and we’re pretty much just taking him off a plane and putting him in the van to hit the road. I’ve never experienced jet lag, but I think Erik may have no choice but to endure it. Or maybe this is best case scenario for him, because he can just sleep in the van whenever he wants! Opt for optimism, that’s what I never say but am going to say that I always say!

Alright, well that’s it for now! Windsor, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, and Waterloo, put on your dancin’ pants because we’re coming for ya!

Love,

// JerBear

Hey Folks!

I hope your weekend is going swimmingly. I’ve got exciting news for you though! I’ll be playing a solo show at one of my favourite downtown restaurants in Windsor this upcoming Monday, January 18th! Check out these details!

Black Kettle Bistro is excited to announce its participation in Winter Bites. We are taking the culinary festival one step further and incorporating some of Windsor’s finest artistic talents to create not only a great culinary experience but a great taste of the Windsor arts & music scene. Each night we will be hosting a special guest artist or musician. It will be a special small and intimate atmosphere. You may not get a chance to see these artists is such a setting anywhere else. We will be offering a new and unique menu for the event. When you purchase the $25 menu $5 will automatically go to the artist and if you choose the $35 menu then $15 will go to the artist and you will receive a signed copy of their CD or a special limited addition print signed by the artist. Below is a list of the participating artists and musicians as well as the special menu being offered.

Pretty cool, right? For more information or for reservations call Black Kettle Bistro at 519.252.4333 or eMail them from their website at blackkettlebistro.com. And check out the other great events their holding over the course of the entire Winter Bites festival!

Sunday January 17 – Cooking Class: Soups & Stews
Details: http://bkbrino.wordpress.com/

Monday January 18 – Jeremy Coulter (Stereo Goes Stellar)
Link: http://www.stereogoesstellar.com/

Tuesday January 19 – Owen Wolters Photo Exhibit Show Closing
Link: http://www.windsorvisuals.com/

Wednesday January 20 – Adam Rideout-Arkel (Yellow Wood)
Link: http://yellowwoodmusic.com/

Thursday January 21 – Mike Hargreaves (Michou & Solo Artist)
Link: http://mikehargreaves.bandcamp.com

Friday January 22 – Stefan Cvetkovic (Efan)
Link: http://efan.bandcamp.com/

Saturday January 23 – Cristina Naccarato Photo Exhibit Opening
Link: http://crustina.blogspot.com/

Outstanding! If you haven’t been before, the dining at Black Kettle Bistro is clutch. Absolutely delicious! And if that’s not reason enough to stop by, the above artists and musicians certainly are. Can’t wait to see ya’ll out!

// JerBear

Things got a little out of hand at our first annual Ugly Holiday Sweater Party this year.

Well folks, I hope that your holidays were as good as mine! I definitely got everything I asked for this year: just a whole lot of hanging out with family I don’t see enough and friends that live too far away. What more could a guy want? And there is already lots of exciting stuff going on this year for StereoGoesStellar! You can expect more songs, more videos, and more shows! And hopefully, if we play our cards right, we can expect to meet more cool people, have more fun, and experience more success in what we’re doing.

So, I know I keep bringing it up, but one of these days, and it’ll probably be a Tuesday, Aux TV is going to air our episode of Master Tracks which means you’ll be able to download our song “Twenty Two” and watch us hack our way through recording a song in a professional studio. The show airs every Monday night, but they can’t tell us exactly what night it will air. It’s top secret I guess! But I will let you know, promise! And you may have noticed that there’s a naming pattern in our songs. We always name our songs around something that has a recurring digit. For example, first there was “Eighty Eight Keys”, soon you can download “Twenty Two”, and we’re currently working on a cover of “I’ve Got Ninety Nine Problems But A Bitch Ain’t One”. I will neither confirm nor deny the truth of that.

But, check this out before you go on with your day! We finished off last year at number five on the CJAM 91.5 Earshot Chart, which is pretty cool! But then we started this year off right by being among the top five highest Pop Scores on Jango! If you’re not familiar with Jango, it’s an internet radio website where you can hear new artists that are similar to artists that you already like. It’s a great way to discover new music! And the Pop Score is calculated user ratings and compared to other pop genre artists on the website! It’s pretty outstanding! Check out this little blog about it!

Oh yeah, and one other exciting thing! Eddie Schwartz, the fine upstanding Canadian citizen that wrote the smash hit “Hit Me With Your Best Shot” which we borrowed from him (and he was totally cool about it), mentioned us in the most recent issue of Words + Music magazine! The article was an interview about the famous track, and when asked “What is your favourite cover of the song?”, Eddie responded “There’s a new band from Windsor, Ontario called StereoGoesStellar with a brilliant singer and their version sounds very original.” So, thanks be to Eddie for the accolades!

Anyways, that’s it for today. I just wanted to share those exciting pieces of information with you all, but more importantly I wanted to wish everyone a Happy New Year!

Love,

// JerBear

Hey! Happy Sunday!

Sundays are great. Probably the best day of the week. No, definitely. Definitely the best day of the week. If you’ve got work that you couldn’t get to during the week, there’s always Sunday. If you worked too hard all week and you just need to sleep in, there’s always Sunday! If your brain is fried from a frustrating week and you just need to do absolutely nothing but watch the Lions lose (which they are currently down seventeen to three to Baltimore in the second quarter), there’s Sunday! Sunday is just there for you! Maybe that’s why I was so revolted when I had to write an exam this morning at eight thirty! Eight thirty on a Sunday! I remember last year as being even worse though. Our professors had gone on strike for a couple weeks so they compressed the exam schedule and added extra time slots which resulted in one of my math exams being held at seven in the morning on a Sunday. Not clutch University of Windsor, not clutch.

But do you know what is clutch? Our good chum Cristina Naccarato! You know how you have those people on Twitter that tweet constantly and its never interesting? Well, that’s exactly who Cristina ISN’T. It seems like she just always has something awesome going on! For example, earlier this semester she and her colleagues at Broken City Lab projected messages on the high-rise buildings downtown so that our American friends across the river could know that we wanted to say hey! But Cristina’s main squeeze is taking photographs. The vast majority of the photographs on our website are stolen from Cristina’s Flickr page because they’re just too good not to steal! So this year, Cristina vowed to take a photo a day for 365 days and she did! And she’s having a photography show at the Phog Lounge in Windsor where she will be COVERING the walls with her work. It’s called Drink Coffee and Destroy! The show will take place from December 15th until January 1st. I think it’s going to be great, and I will definitely check it out. Probably on a Sunday.

Actually, definitely on a Sunday! Sunday, December 20th to be precise. Yellow Wood, The Bulletproof Tiger, and Kid Brother are all playing at Phog that night and it’s a must see. I’ve actually never made it out to see The Bulletproof Tiger or Kid Brother, which in turn makes me the least scene person ever. Or maybe the least ’seen’ since I’ve never been ’seen’ at one of their shows. Either way, I’m a loser.

Oh yeah, and check out this sweet picture that Cristina took for us! Yeah, the one that’s at the top of this blog! We thought since we made a holiday song, we should have a holiday picture or two! And thus behold, another Cristina Naccarato masterpiece. Cameron Elsdon, whose family has more Christmas lights than Clark Griswold as it turns out, hooked us up with more than enough Christmas lights to make Tally look roughly equivalent to that Christmas tree in front of the Rockafeller Center. She was glorious!

Anyways folks, enjoy the rest of your Sunday! I know I will. And enjoy your week as well. To all my fellow post secondary education sufferers who must weather the remainder of the final exam storm, be strong!

Love!

// JerBear