Far Too Gone Music Video!

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

Hey Gang!

There’s a couple things I wanted to bring to everyone’s attention if you have a moment. First of all, Master Tracks aired another new episode last night, which means it’s just a matter of time until our episode airs. I’m stoked! Second, we’re playing with Moneen tomorrow night! We’re out of tickets to sell, but there are still tickets available at the door. This show is going to be so clutch, I can’t even wait. We’re playing pretty early, I think around eight or eight thirty, and we’re going to deliver a great set, I promise you, but Moneen is going to blow the bricks clean off the Chubby Pickle. S’gonna be unreal!

So we have a friend in Australia named Matt who was buying our records off of CDBaby. The deal with CDBaby is that you can buy the physical copy of the record as opposed to the digital download, so it’s great if you want the album artwork. But it ships our record from Canada, so I can’t even fathom what the shipping was to Australia! And Matt bought a whole bunch of copies to give to his friends because he’s the coolest guy in the outback for sure. And of course, if you’re the coolest guy in the outback, then you’re obviously the coolest guy in the world, because just being from Australia makes you cooler than anyone living on any other continent. It’s science. Anyways, to make Matt’s and anyone else living outside of Canada’s life easier, we are now an international artist on iTunes! Pretty cool, hey? I thought so too!

And check this thing out! It’s called Jango, and it’s brilliant. Here’s how it works. You hit up their website and you enter an artist that you like. For example, one of my favorite bands, “Augustana”. So I enter Augustana and it plays a great Augustana track. Then it picks out a song by a band that people that like Augustana may also like. In this case, it played me “Breathe” by Anberlin. Guess what. I LOVE Anberlin! But now here’s where it gets even better. The next song is from a band I’ve never heard of called “Days Away”. And it’s pretty good! So, I’ve just discovered a brand new band! And you can just leave it playing in the background while you’re working, or in my case studying. It’s great!  And we’re now on it, so when people search out artists similar to us, they may end up hearing a track from us and digging our stuff. Or, maybe somebody likes us (unlikely, I know) and they want to discover similar artists to us, so they type in StereoGoesStellar. I just did that to see who’d come up and the list included Saves the Day, Death Cab For Cutie, and Jack’s Mannequin! So, in short, I love Jango! Check it out!

Oh, and finally, I’ve gotten some messages with fans asking for the lyrics to our holiday song, When the Years Collide. So, I posted them on our lyrics page for you guys. Check them out here! Thanks for asking about the lyrics! And thank you everyone for downloading our holiday song and letting it be a part of your holiday season!

Love!

// JerBear

Happy Holidays Indeed!

Well folks, the response to the holiday song has been incredible. I don’t say it enough, but we truly do have the best friends, fans and family on earth and we thank you all so much for taking the time to download our track! We wrote “When the Years Collide” as a means to let all of our friends that have moved away know just how much we miss them, that we hope they’re all doing well wherever they are and whatever they’re doing, and that we can’t wait to see them again. Absence makes the heart grow fonder I’m told, and I have to agree. The best part of the holidays for me is seeing my high school friends again and I straight up can’t wait!

It’s been an insane week though. That’s just how it goes with December I think. Christmas rocks hard, but you have to work hard to get to it. The holiday song itself was kind of a grind at times too. Kevin Couvillon at Blackbox Sound, our best friend, engineer and producer of the track, worked tirelessly to meet our completely unrealistic goal of December first completion. I’m not sure if you’ve watched the video we made or not for the song, but if you check it out you can see Kevin working away. I’m glad he’s in the video lots too because I want to make sure he gets the credit he deserves and hopefully when people are watching it they can get a grasp of just how valuable Kevin Couvillon is to us. Ironically, Kevin stayed up with me all Monday night teaching me how to use Final Cut Pro so that we could make the video in time. And by teaching me, I mean Kevin worked on Final Cut Pro while I watched in amazement. Case in point, Kev rocks hard just like Christmas.

In January we’re playing a show at St. Clair College. I’m pretty stoked about it too, let me tell you! I believe it’s for their “frost” week. See, it’s like “frosh” because it’s at the beginning of the semester, but instead it’s “frost” because it’s cold outside since it’s January. The date of the show is the thirteenth and we’ll be playing in The Hanger. Yesterday, Mick woke me up bright and early to go play a couple of acoustic sets at the college and it was a blast. We met some delightful new people and we got to hang with some great old friends. Then Mick bought a white guitar amp. Pretty edgy! This morning however, the tables turned and it was I that woke Mick up even earlier! If you had your radio dial tuned to CBC Radio One AM 1550, you would have heard Mick and I talking about the holiday track as well as the track itself. It was a great interview and they even gave us our very own CBC coffee mug!

Tonight (Friday), I’ll be playing an acoustic set at a very cool store in Windsor called “Made in Windsor”. The store features products made exclusively in Windsor, Ontario and is now adding a music section where they will be selling our music as well as some other great local bands! You can check me out at 10:40PM, but there are lots of other great artists performing as well.

8:00-8:30 - Pat Robitaille
8:40-9:10 - Mike Hargreaves (Michou)
9:20-9:50 - Adam Fox (Field Assembly)
10:00-10:30 - Stefan Cvetkovic (Efan!)
10:40-11:10 - Jeremy Coulter (StereoGoesStellar)
11:20-11:50 - Adam Rideout-Arkell (Yellow Wood)

Made in Windsor is located on Ottawa Street near Gladstone Avenue. Come check it out!

And finally, MONEEN! This upcoming Wednesday we’re opening for Moneen at the Chubby Pickle. How cool is it that Moneen is coming to Windsor? So cool! There are still tickets available, but not for much longer. Get yours at ticketscene.ca or contact us and we’ll try to hook you up. Do it soon though, because I don’t think they’re going to last much longer.

Oh, oh! And one other final piece of good news, good news! Master Tracks, the television show that we filmed back in August has finally started airing their new season. So, although we have no real way of knowing when our episode is going to air, we do know that it’s going to happen in the relative short term. We’ll keep you posted!

Love, love, LOVE!

// JerBear