The first show is kinda semi-private, which is why we qualify the announcement of two gigs.  Coraline is now officially made up of a couple of married couples, and to celebrate Dave & Arwen's joining the ranks of the hitched, they're throwing a big bash on May 25th at Mojito on Grant near Green.  Pretty much all of their various music projects and friends' projects will be performing, so those in attendance will get some Coraline mixed in with their Zeppelin and pretty acoustic music and math-y prog metal and what-not.  It promises to be quite the wang dang doodle.

Then we'll have our first "real" gig since we did City Sessions last autumn, once again in our quieter mostly-acoustic mode (i.e., no drum kit and augmented by all sorts of odd instruments that we don't usually include in our louder gigs).  This one will be at Velo Rouge on Arguello at McAllister, just a block north of the Arguello Gate of Golden Gate Park.  This happenin' hootenanny will be, uh, happening on July 11th, three days before Arwen's birthday, so you've got some extra incentive to come out for this one.  It's a lovely setting, the people and vittles are swell, and we're looking forward to making some noise out in public again.  Come on & check it out!

OK, so the Dune reference is silly, but there's cause for excitement since Coraline will be performing live for the first time in about a half-year.  We've been a bit remiss about promoting this show so far, but we are very happy to be getting back onto the stage after Dave & Arwen's extended summer road trip.

We'll be playing this time as part of the City Sessions series hosted by Club Waziema at 543 Divisadero in San Francisco, across the street from The Independent and about a block south.  Show time is 8:00 sharp, the show is free, and the Ethiopian vittles are tasty, but the area is murderously bad for parking so we're recommending leaving extra time or else taking cab or mass transit.

We'll once again be playing in our quiet/acoustic format--i.e., not much different for Arwen & Deb other than being quieter, but Dave will leave the drums at home and primarily play mandolin and banjo except when he's taking over duties on the acoustic-electric bass so that Michael can fire up the accordion.  Yup, you read that right.  Accordion.  'Nuff said.  See y'all there...

The Magic Theatre — one of San Francisco's premier venues for emerging playwrights and a stage on which Arwen has acted — has started bandJAM, an eclectic music series designed to dovetail with their weekend performances. We're happy to be the second band in this new series.

The music starts at 10pm on Saturday, 3/24 with Arwen and Dave doing a solo/duo acoustic-y type thing and then Coraline will emerge at 10:45pm - right after the last play ends at the Magic Theatre. We believe there is no cover charge but will update this if anything changes.

It's a little out of the way but it should be chill and cozy and it's our percussionist Dave's birthday, so what the hey!

OK, so the promised wealth of new songs has thus far not made its dramatic appearance.  We've been trying to flake the rust off of a bunch of songs we haven't played in a while and also trying to make some decisions about a few of those that are in arrangement limbo.  We also are in between viable recording venues since Dave started moving his gear to a new space that we'd hoped could function as both a rehearsal and recording studio.  Well, that hasn't panned out quite as we'd figured, and in the meantime he's understandably reluctant to move all of that stuff back to the other studio, so no new recordings have been done of late.  We may be able to do some quieter-type things in the new space, and so a recent song called "Safe" may be on the table--more on that as we go...

Just last night we started sifting in earnest through the remaining unmixed songs from our recording session two years ago to see what, if anything, can be salvaged, and since we were pleasantly surprised by some of those recordings, one or two of them may be showing up here once we see about some minor overdubs and mixing. 

In the meantime--to hold over the music-hungry throngs--I've removed the rehearsal recording of "Deep End" (Dave & Arwen were justifiably unhappy with the harmonies on the chorus) and replaced it with a bit of an oddity in our catalog, an even older recording of a song we call "The Rabbit Song," but which I think has a different actual title...check with Arwen on that one. 

Anyway, this was done by an older line-up of the band that I wasn't even in (the humanity!) and in which Dave was playing bass rather than drums.  The drums were played by an old friend of Dave & Arwen's who has since moved away, and the piano was overdubbed (I think) by Dave.  We in the current line-up continued to play this one for a while with Deb on bass and me on drums so that Dave could supply the electric slide guitar, but it, too, has joined the ranks of those "songs in limbo" that I'd mentioned before.  Enjoy this peek at Coralines past...

--Michael

Despite its being a quiet Sunday and a somewhat quiet night at the 'tah, we were graced with some new faces in the crowd. Thanks for coming! Our set list contained a few new songs and we were pretty happy with our performance overall, I think. It was the first time we got to play out in a while, certainly one of the few times Dave's been able to play his drums at full volume.

I dug Nina Violet, who followed us with her thoughtful and interestingly melodic songs with Zach on mandolin and special guest Willy Mason, who played at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival. Thanks to Zach for lending Dave his mandolin!

The Mugs closed out the night with their catchy indie pop - and such nice guys, too!

Check out a short (under 7 minute) montage of our show that night, taken on my new, cute Pure Digital video camera! And that's even *without* using zoom, which I discovered the next day...

Cheers,
Deb

The sleeping band at last awakes and book its first gig in...a long time.  OK, it's been a busy year, but with schedules finally clearing up (somewhat) and at the prodding of various friends and fans, we've gotten around to actively seeking out a show, and at a new venue, no less--SoMa's Hotel Utah Saloon!  We're excited to be getting out of the studio again and to tread the boards of a new stage, which we'll be sharing with Brooklyn's The Mugs!  Check 'em out--they've got a really pretty sound, a gently moody sort of folk-pop thing happening, and we're looking forward to playing with 'em.  Hope to see y'all there...

So--obviously--we've got a couple more songs up now than we did yesterday.  "Cold" is an experiment with recording track-by-track (we've usually recorded live--and then overdubbed as need be--in the past) at a studio Dave has had access to lately...we did that over the last few months and Dave got a final (for now) mix together last night so we thought we'd celebrate by sharing it with y'all. 

Once I got that up I figured we might as well round out the playlist to a full four songs, so I snagged another one from our web site.  This version of "Deep End" is an old rehearsal recording from not long after I first joined the band.  It's undergone some minor tweaks since then and this isn't the most pristine performance, but it's solid enough and gives a fair sense of the song.  Cheers...

Michael

We recorded back in November 200...4?... It was cold in the warehouse/office of Dave's company, where we recorded. I, of course, needing the most separation from other noise sources in the non-sound-insulated place, got to freeze in the coveted wood shop.  My violin was even more out of tune than normal because of that .

It's been over a year since those long, chilly days and we've done quite a bit of post-production, but we only recently finished Johanna (posted on our main profile), and we're thiiiiisss close to finishing Mary, which I really love. Dave and I edited violin tracks and recorded backing vocals last week; we'll finish editing this week and maybe sometime soon he'll be able to eq it and mix it down. We're also going through Glimmer tomorrow so could be a three-song BLOW OUT any day now.

Slow but steady,
Coraline Deb

Here's a montage of our show the other night. We're pleased with it! The crowd was into the music - we love it when they pay attention. :-) Got to play two of our new songs and share the stage with Onya.