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Saturday, November 28, 2009

Happy Black Friday!

Hello everyone,

I hope you all had a Happy Thanksgiving! Did anyone manage to grab any good deals today? My hat's off to those of you who joined the crowds of holiday shoppers this morning. You were in my thoughts as I made myself a cup of hot chocolate, stretched out, and finished reading another Grisham novel. No lines for me!

What are your holiday plans? I'm looking forward to starting to put the finishing touches on some of the material for a'tris' next record. If you are in or around the DC area I hope to see you tomorrow! I'll be performing a couple of the new songs at Urban Outfitters and I can't wait to share them with you! I also have a limited number of "Of The Commons" CDs to give away at the end of the show! I don't think you could find a better stocking stuffer. But I may be biased.

If you'd like to introduce your friends to our music and are not in the DC area, iTunes allows you to easily gift albums, and we've made it even easier for you to buy ours. All you have to do is click here and then choose gift this artist. I'm sure many of you are aware of this, but I only discovered it last week so - if you're like me - here's a helpful screencast:

Last year, on Thanksgiving day, I blogged about many of the things I was thankful for. This year, quite honestly, I was too busy eating But I still wanted to take a moment today to share with you two recent placements we’re really proud about:

1. Thanks to The Modern Vocalist for recently featuring us! It was seriously cool to be recognized by them. TMV is made up of extraordinarily talented vocalists and vocal coaches so that really meant a lot to me personally.

2. Thanks to Leah DeVon from Indie Style TV, Rob Saunders from Deuce Management and Promotions, and the folks at Comcast! In Leah's latest episode, she had a great chat with Rob about the music biz and shared our music video from "Automatic Doors". If you're a subscirber and would like to catch our video on the big box be sure to check your local listings! I've included a clip of the show below for you if you'd like to watch it on your computer.

Hope this finds you all feeling healthy!

-Mason

1:19 AM

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Monday, November 23, 2009

Why We'd Like You to Introduce Yourself

Thanks to everybody who commented on my last blog post! I really appreciate you sharing your playlists with everyone and introducing us to some great new music!

As I was responding to your comments, something hit me. You guys have shown us an incredible ammount of support over the last few years. You've called your local DJs to request our music. You've come to our shows and purchased our CDs. And your votes have caused us to win more contests and get onto more playlists than I could count. Each of you has helped make what we do possible.

Last week was really cool because we had twenty people contribute to our post! But, our anlaytics show that hundreds of people read it. Why is that? I'm not sure. But I feel that it is - at least in some part - due to the fact that so often the creation and delivery of art is a one way street. I want to change that; so I'd like to invite you to take a moment to do three things:

Visit atris.wordpress.com (This will be more fun if everyone goes to the same page.)
Scroll down to the comment box and introduce yourself. Write a few words about anything you'd like. How did you first hear our music? What city are you from? What are your favorite movies? Pretend we just met at a coffee shop. If you'd like share your blog address, Twitter ID or someplace where we and other people can learn more about you that would be great too!
Check the box that says Notify me of follow-up comments via email.

Please don't do this for us, do this for yourself and for everyone. It takes a certain amount of bravery to put yourself out there; but it's worth it. We love to get to know people with similar interests, ideas, and opinions. And it's really cool when group discussions are started. If you have something in common with someone who posts, let him or her know! It makes me feel great to see people responding to my comments, and I love to chime back in to share my thoughts.

Looking forward to meeting you!

-Mason

7:49 PM

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Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Shuffle!

....
Hey everyone,

What bands are you listening to? I thought it would be fun for us to get to know each other's musical tastes. If you have a moment and an MP3 player, follow these three steps and drop me a comment with what you get!

1. Turn on your MP3 Player.
2. Navigate to SHUFFLE songs mode.
3. Write down the artist and song title of the 1st 10 songs that come up.

Here's what I got. If you'd like to listen to/purchase any of these tunes just click their title to be directed to the iTunes music store.

David Bowie - Thursday's Child

Bill Evans - Peri's Scope

Tegan and Sara - Hop a Plane

Jimmy Eat World - Your House

Sufjan Stevens - Let's Hear That String Part Again, Beacause I don't Think They Heard It All the Way Out In Bushnell

Coldplay - Amsterdam

Emily Haines & The Soft Skeleton - Reading In Bed

Belle & Sebastian - Get Me Away From Here, I'm Dying

Keane - Atlantic

Michael Stipe - In the Sun

Thanks to Pat Donahue, from 107.7 WACC's Notes from the Underground for this idea!

7:28 PM

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Saturday, November 07, 2009

We Love Pixies

Hey everyone,

I just saw this post on Pitchfork and couldn't resist passing it along. Our fellow Boston rockers, Pixies, know how to put on an incredible live show. Don't believe me? Ryan Dombal has the scoop on how to download four live recordings for free so you can hear for yourself :)

Pixies are really doing everything they can to remind people (and satiate long time fans) of their 1989 album Doolittle. Along with their ongoing Doolittle tour, there are instantaneous live CDs and USB drives being made. They'll play "Here Comes Your Man" on "The Tonight Show", um, tonight, and "I Bleed" with "Weird Al" at a benefit in December.

Now the band is giving away four songs recorded at their recent gig in Paris on October 16. (Via TwentyFourBit via Slicing Up Eyeballs.)

All you have to do is click the widget after the jump and you're on your way:

Doolittle 20th Anniversary Live Sampler:

01 Dancing the Manta Ray
02 Monkey Gone to Heaven
03 Crackity Jones
04 Gouge Away

via Pitchfork: Latest News

If you'd like to download the above songs, just click here to find the widget Ryan mentioned. I hope you'll enjoy them as much as I did. "Monkey Gone to Heaven" is ridiculously awesome.

-Mason

5:14 PM

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Friday, November 06, 2009

We Have a Fansite and it's Awesome!

Hey everyone,

After spending a day or two recovering from my vacation, I hit the ground running yesterday and began the arduous task of notating the melody line of one of our new songs. It would be easier if I hadn't made this particular melody so damn syncopated. Fire the writer! Why am I doing this? Well, there are many reasons. One of which is that it's nice to look at things. The guys and I are ridiculously perfectionistic and each part must be meticulously crafted to work with the surrounding instrumentation and to satisfy our compulsions :) You should see some of the stuff my principle co-writer, Mike Kreher, submits. It's pretty nuts. But it's also helpful to be able to see how the music looks. We're audio guys, there's no denying that, but there's something about being able to visualize how the pieces fit together that's extremely helpful. In the past we would trade files back and forth or print scores and mark them up in rehearsals. But Mike, being the awesome guy that he is, introduced us to a new way of collaborating.

Noteflight provides an online suite of tools that artists can use to collaborate on musical scores. Think Google docs, but cooler (I know, we're biased). Check out this glimpse of the new song. I wrote it on the internet. How cool is that?

Speaking of coolness, our friend Angie made us a fansite! If you click here you'll be directed to a'tris Nation where you'll find some of the many awesome banners and glitter graphics she's created for us over the years. If you like them, she's made it easy for you to embed them on your site to share them with your friends. Thanks Angie!

Here's on of my favorites. I have a tie just like this one :)

Please let Angie know how awesome she is in the below comment box!

-Mason

4:34 PM

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Monday, November 02, 2009

Beach Vacation

Hey everyone,

I just got back from a week-long vacation in the Outer Banks of North Carolina and boy did I have a blast. For those of you tweeps who've already seen this on Twitter, I really don't mean to boast but I can't get over the place where I stayed. Check out this view from the back porch:

It really doesn't get any better than that! I can't tell you how many hours I sat there and soaked in the hot tub. But I can say that, in that time, I was able to catch up on my reading. I've been on a legal kick lately so I turned to John Grisham and read both The Brethren and The Broker. I have no idea why these both sit at 3/5 ☆s on Amazon's reviews. Grisham's books, in my opinion, are not crafted to be works of art; they are designed to provide escapist entertainment. And, in that respect, they worked for me. When not reading or playing a round of Wii golf (I'm far better in the virtual world) I had the great fortune of having a wonderful experience fishing with some friends of mine. I say that it was a wonderful experience because I actually caught something (a rarity for me) and I have photographic evidence to prove it:

Yeah, this little guy is nothing to boast about but I'm the frontman of a rock band. What do you expect? I was just proud that I caught him within 30 seconds (no joke!) of casting. Regrettably, I did not continue to have that kind of luck. But I was able to brag that I had the first bite :)

This was a day-long trip and, as you can see, it got a little colder outside. With the drop in temperature though came a spike of luck. It's a little difficult to make out in this picture, but I'm actually holding a small shark! Trust me, reeling him in was a lot more difficult than you might think. This was, by far, my coolest catch!

I hope you won't mind me reliving a bit of my trip here. I had planned on sharing some news with you about some cool things concerning a'tris I found in my inbox and on my answering machine upon my return; but, as I sat to write this, I found my mind wandering and thought I might as well trace its movement in this post.

Do you have any vacations planned of your own? What did you do for Halloween while I was away? Drop me a line in the comment section and let me know what you're up to!

Hope this finds you feeling healthy!
-Mason

8:45 PM

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Saturday, October 24, 2009

Congratulations

Wow. Whole lot of news this week: First of all congratulations to you! Because of your votes a'tris won the first round of the Indie Show Contest! I've seriously lost count of how many of these we've won thanks to you. This win will allow us to advance to The Indie Show's finals round, so as soon as we have more information about that I'll post it here. Thanks again!

Tomorrow's going to be pretty crazy for me. Our friends at Urban Outfitters have invited me to play a solo show at their Baltimore location and we're talking about putting some more dates together at other Urban Outfitters stores. I'm pretty stoked about having the opportunity to share some of the piano arrangements I've created for some of my favorite songs so, if you're in the Baltimore area, I hope you'll stop by! After the show I'm going to be dropping by Cyclops to share some more tunes and hopefully to get to know you! If you'd like to buy me a caffeinated beverage I will not turn you down because I'm getting up at 5AM. Why? You might ask... I'll let this thread from Twitter do the talking:

Yeah... I think I need to have this looked at. It's a four hour drive to the show tomorrow too so, if I'm to fit this into my schedule (and I believe that would probably fall into the good idea category) I have some work to do! Hopefully I'll be able to update this post with a before and after. For the moment here's the before:

Warning: the following photographs are graphic and may offend some viewers - who are musicians - who play keyboards.

-Mason

2:38 AM

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Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Our First 123 Tweeps

Nambu, my favorite Twitter client, has now reached V1.9.2.1. It's still in Beta but it's stable and Growl notifications are now active. This makes me very happy because I'm now able to see what the people whom we're following are tweeting about in real time while I'm working on my computer. Some of you might think that this would be a little distracting but I love it. It's pretty cool to see what people are talking about and to chime in whenever I can. Yesterday @macgasm did a piece on an app I recommended and today @thewildthings RTd a review I shared of Spike Jonze's upcoming film, Where the Wild Things Are. How cool is that? Thanks again guys!

Speaking of sharing, short of posting many of the tweets I've enjoyed over the last few weeks with you, I though it would be fun to introduce you to the first 117 tweeps we're following, interacting with and learning from. Below you'll find a Twitter Mosaic courtesy of the folks at Sxoop Technologies. Clicking each person's face will take you to his or her profile. From there you can choose to follow her and introduce yourself by mentioning us, @atris, or you can lurk. It's up to you; but I hope you'll choose to follow.

Hope this finds you feeling healthy!

-Mason

10:35 PM

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Tuesday, October 06, 2009

Can you help us?

Would you like for Reza's music video for "Dark Lotus" to be on TV? If so, will you do two things for us?

First, will you watch the video at theindieshow.com?

Second, will you take a moment to register and vote for us by following the directions in the below clip?

If you could spare a couple of minutes to do this we'd really appreciate it. Voting is open through 5 April 2010 so you can vote for our music and videos as frequently and as often as you'd like :)

Hope this finds you feeling healthy,

-Mason

P.S. I just saw that we're in the Top 10 Alternative Rock artists on Ourstage again this month. Thanks guys!

10:31 PM

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