Today is the day! You can buy tickets below! Funny, all these plans are very new. I didn’t know it was the 20th anniversary until May when people started posted about it. That’s when I thought “I should do a few shows, play the album, we should reissue it on vinyl!” Matador went along with it, so that was cool. Very much in the style of the original project. Winging it.
I got back from the Electric Version tour in the fall of 2003 (the only EV tour, 5 weeks and done) and immediately began work on it. I got a Canadian recording grant for $18000. That helped. Technically a loan, the deal was I’d give them 0.50$ per copy sold. Whatever I didn’t pay back was just written off. No harm, no foul. Imagine how annoyed I was when the record sold a bunch of copies and I had to give it all back. I guess that’s an example of the system working, right? I paid my debt to society.
Was the grant system a big driver in the Canadian indie rock renaissance of the early to mid 2000s? It’s a theory. It helped a lot of us. We stand on guard for thee, Canada. Thanks for that.
I didn’t tell anyone I was making the record, deciding that my self imposed deadline was around Dec. 20th. I wanted to get it to Matador before they left for Xmas break. I didn’t know if they would want to release it. If nothing else, it would be a nice Xmas present. “Did you get Carl’s record? That was nice of him. I didn’t get him anything.”
Good news, they liked it and wanted to put it out. I tried to get the best royalty rate possible by taking the lowest advance. When I hit the ceiling of the royalty rate, that’s when I started asking for money.
It was a strange time, a fun time. Happily perplexed that I was starting to make money from music. Songs from EV were getting licensed, I learned about a thing called ‘mechanical royalties’. That blew my mind. There was money to be made in this business? Wild.
Speaking of money to be made, check out these links to my upcoming shows….
Ticket links
11/20: Boston
City Winery tickets here
11/23: Washington D.C.
Miracle Theater tickets here
11/24: Philadephia
City Winery tickets here
12/6: Brooklyn
Baby’s All Right tickets here
Playing 'Drink To Me Babe Then' In My Living Room (Neon Cloud Mix)!