Check these guys out. They do real music from the ground up.

http://www.bigtakeover.com/

They just played Fire In Day's Field.

http://www.woxy.com/

The Beechfields Record Label is pleased to announce the release of Lost and Found and Lost on June 2nd, 2009. 

This highly anticipated third full-length from The Seldon Plan is now available from The Beechfields Record Label.

Lost and Found and Lost is the first Seldon Plan record to feature new guitarist and vocalist Dawn Dineen and new drummer Matthew Leffler Schulman. The record was produced by Matthew Leffler Schulman and Michael Nestor at Baltimore's own Mobtown Studios.

As Michael Nestor (guitars/vocals) stated on the Umbrella Radio Show last week, "This record represents quite a departure musically for us, we wrote most of the record in the studio, and we tackled some underlying political issues surrounding the listlessness most of us feel about the shaky economy. We intended the record to be a throwback to the early 90's mixtapes, but as a modern interpretation-there is a quilt-like aspect to the songwriting that the band really digs."

The Seldon Plan reemerges with whimsy with their highly anticipated album Lost and Found and Lost, a worthy follow-up to their 2007 record The Collective Now. Praised for its “catchy simple melodies awash with lush vocals, hip full guitars, and a hint of Flaming Lips” by artist/composer Mark Degli Antoni (David Byrne/Soul Coughing) and dubbed “smart pop with no wasted space” by record producer Brian McTernan (Senses Fail/Piebald/Thrice), Lost and Found and Lost plays with images of childhood nostalgia to embrace the economic and political pendulum.


About The Beechfields Record Label:

 

Herez all the details:

Date: Saturday, June 27, 2009

Time: 7:00pm - 11:55pm

Location: Metro Gallery

Street: 1700 North Charles Street

City/Town: Baltimore, MD

Email: info[at] theseldonplan.com

More info? Visit: http://themetrogallery.net/

The link is here: http://www.newsday.com/services/newspaper/printedition/bal-al.recession05apr05,0,4023337.story?page=2

The article is below too:

Artists use nation's economic troubles as an outlet for their creativity

By Sam Sessa | April 5, 2009

Web designer Andres Zapata was cleaning out his home office late one January night when inspiration struck.

Zapata came across a zip-lock bag filled with pieces of credit cards he'd chopped up after consolidating his debt last year. Instead of throwing out the clippings, Zapata arranged them in the shape of a spindly hand grasping a credit card and snapped a photo of it. Called Plastic, the villainous-looking piece will be published in a book of recession-themed art later this year.

Plastic "reflects the fake power I was given to purchase things I didn't need and couldn't afford," Zapata said. "It's like facing my own demons."

With Plastic, Zapata joined a growing number of artists and musicians here and abroad who are using the economic meltdown as inspiration. They're creating songs, paintings and photos based on the downturn, and documenting the recession's effect on society.

Nashville-based country music singer John Rich rails against "big shots whining on my evening news" in his heart-wrenching song "Shuttin' Detroit Down." And photos of scathing street art based on bank bailouts and corrupt financier Bernie Madoff appear on the London-based blog Vandalog.

"Sometimes, we're at our best when circumstances are at their worst," said Tom Beck, chief curator at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. "I would say that's true for art as well as every other realm. It seems like when we're most challenged, we rise to that challenge."

Throughout history, artists have used economic and social upheaval as a muse. Like the photos from the government-sponsored Farm Security Administration and Archibald J. Motley Jr.'s Depression-era paintings, some of the most striking art, music and photography came from turbulent times, Beck said.

In January, Zapata began Recession Nation - a book of art and poetry inspired by the crisis. He has since received 30 submissions from artists in Baltimore, New York, Chicago and even Savannah, Ga. He hopes the book will eventually include more than 100 pieces. Proceeds from Recession Nation will be donated to charity, Zapata said, so he can help people affected by the slump.

"In a nutshell, I got tried of hearing people complain about it and not do anything about it," said Zapata, 33, who lives in Charles Village. "I decided to do something about it."

It's important that artists and musicians catalog the fallout in the moment, Zapata said.

"Time changes history," Zapata said. "We will remember things differently. We will talk ourselves out of how bad it really was or how it really impacted us. It's important to document these things now as they're happening so you get closer representation."

That idea is why Baltimore-based photographer Andy Cook set out on a monthlong jaunt around the nation to take portraits of people affected by the recession. This year, Cook, a freelance photographer who lives in Remington, found himself out of work and itching to take a road trip. He began profiling Baltimoreans who had been laid off and wondered what, if anything, they had in common with unemployed people across the country.

In late February, Cook took his 1991 Toyota Camry on a roughly 7,000-mile journey, looking for potential subjects. He drove to Florida, headed west along the Gulf Coast to Austin, Texas, north to Minneapolis and east to New York before returning to Baltimore.

The trip cost Cook about $1,500. He slept at friends' houses whenever possible to cut down on costs. He brought cans of tuna fish and routinely "borrowed" packets of mayonnaise from fast-food restaurants to make tuna salad in his car. Along the way, he found colorful characters who had been affected - for good or ill - by the recession.

In Texas, Cook met Brad Kittel, a 53-year-old who founded a business called Tiny Texas Houses. True to their name, the houses he designs start at 200 square feet and range in price from $30,000 to $60,000.

Kittel "was envisioning his business as trying to fight against he American mentality of excess and consumption," Cook said. "He had a lot to say and was a classic Texan entrepreneur, all swagger and cowboy hat."

In each city Cook visited, he posted ads about his project on the classified advertising Web site Craigslist and set up shop in a coffeehouse with a wireless Internet connection.

"I figured coffee shops in the middle of the day were good places to find people who weren't working," he said.

All in all, Cook accumulated about 30 portraits with accompanying interviews. He dubbed the project Faces of the Recession and published it on a blog of the same name.

Cook said most of his subjects were hopeful that the economy would turn around in the near future, and that Americans would emerge from the recession with a healthy skepticism of corporate culture and material excess.

"There was a lot of gallows humor," Cook said. "An overall mood was one of uncertainty, obviously, with their own financial situations, but a generally positive feeling. It's causing people to reconsider their basic needs and maybe get back to simpler ideas they'd left behind."

Eventually, Cook hopes to get Faces of the Recession published in print. But he says he's not finished with the project yet.

"What I've got is a really good start," he said. "I want to continue to build it, continue to make it more focused."

Michael Nestor, singer/guitarist for the Baltimore-based indie rock group The Seldon Plan, has a recession story of his own. His wife, Kristin, is a senior associate at Merrill Lynch and he is a post-doctoral fellow at the National Institutes of Health. His wife almost lost her job in the crash, and Nestor saw his grant money dry up. In the past, Nestor was wary of putting social and political commentary into his music. But because the downturn struck so close to home, he broke with tradition.

"It's been a rough six months," said Nestor, who recently bought a house in Catonsville. "Themes of losing so much stuff and trying to find meaning in life through physical and material things started creeping into all these songs."

As a result, The Seldon Plan's third record, Lost and Found and Lost, features songs based on the economy and President Barack Obama. The album's title is a reference to the ups and downs of the stock market, Nestor said. It's slated for release in late May or early June.

Nestor started writing Lost and Found and Lost as the stock market plummeted, Obama won office and the auto industry begged for bailout money. As a songwriter, he said he couldn't help but be influenced by the economic woes.

"Now you hear people talking about things like getting back to basics," Nestor said. "All these things were never gone. People just forgot about them for a while."

In Lost and Found and Lost'stitle track, Nestor looks at how the crumbling economy stunned the public: "We are lost at sea / With no sense of what went wrong." On the song "Lonely Bridgewater," he offers a mixed assessment of the near future: "We're the hopeful ones who want the springtime back / But the ground beneath our feet is falling fast / And the stars we reach for are out of grasp."

"These were the hardest lyrics I've ever had to write - ever," he said. "It took me a while to get them out, but now that they're out, I feel completely liberated, creatively. I feel really energized."

Rebecca Hoffberger, founder and director of the American Visionary Art Museum, sees the economic upheaval as an opportunity for artists and musicians to make lasting impressions in pop culture.

"In the long run, despite the hardships, this is a good thing for society - not a sad thing," Hoffberger wrote in an e-mail. "And the artists among us will most certainly be lighting the way with their gifts."

"Lost and Found and Lost": To hear a track from The Seldon Plan, go to baltimoresun.com/arts. The band is at theseldonplan.com.

“Lost and Found and Lost” is the first single from the upcoming record due out May 26th! Please enjoy this free download and share with all your friends. You can also stream it below.

Download MP3 (256 kbps)

Download AAC (256 kbps)

We all want to thank Sam Sessa for such a great article, it was really interesting to see how different artists are reacting to the new economic circumstances we are all in.

As a thank you to you, and in light of the economic times, if you join us at our Facebook, Myspace, or Twitter accounts (or all three) and then message us with your mailing address, we will send you our CD for 5 dollars (and that includes shipping)!

If you email us at info [at] theseldonplan.com, we will also send the CD for 5 dollars. And don’t worry, we are regular working folks like you and hate when we get spam-we won’t do that! We just want to get the CD out there. This offer will expire, so go ahead send away.

The CD will be mailed to you in advance of the May 26 release date.

Mike | Mat | Dawn | Dave

Hey guys, we don't want to clutter our myspace page up too much, so we have a pretty active blog over on our webpage, www.theseldonplan.com. Come join in, and you can also tweet at us over on Twitter at: www.twitter.com/seldonplan.

It is all good fun, check it out-we promise we won't fill your inbox with bothersome junk!

TSP

We are working on a new record, we hope you like it-it will be pretty different...expect it in 2009.

We are in the process of retooling the ship. Just wanted to let you know that we are still around, and The Collective Now made a number fo "Top of 2007" lists.
 
The Baltimore Sun names our record one of the top 5 locals of 2007: http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/midnight_sun/blog/2007/12/fab_five_friday_16.html
Amie St. names our record one of the top 50 of 2007: http://amiestreet.com/blog/post/2007s-best-albums
And they write a great article about it: http://amiestreet.com/blog/post/why-indie-pop-was-fun-in-the-first-place
 
And Redefine Magazine kind of got the idea behind the new record: http://www.redefinemag.com/music/reviews_cover_2.php?artist=The-Seldon-Plan&id=35