The new album, Raw Flowers is here. We've got a semi trailer full of them and we're looking to get rid of a few.

We're asking you to please buy a copy for yourself or a few for your friends. For all of August we're doing a "Buy One, Get Midnight On Pearl Beach free." That's a lot of audio gold for such a small price.

So, go to our website "www.flamesharkmusic.com", use the paypal link located on the home page or store page and make your wildest dreams come true. The album sounds amazing turned up in the car and we promise you'll know all the words by heart after four listens. Dig it.

Love,
~Flame Shark

http://www.flamesharkmusic.com

Alright you hungry coyotes, Raw Flowers has officially been launched into the world. We sent it to press and package in New Jersey of all places yesterday. It should be here by July 21stish so plan on getting your copy with original artwork by our roommate and Rusty's number one girl Erin "Liljeans" Liljegren.

The process has been long, but well worth it. T-minus 10 business days and counting...

PS: We're planning on recording the Raw Flowers follow up, tentatively titled Farm Life on August 22nd at Engine Recording here in Chicago.

Keep your eyes and ears peeled because we are officially addicted to recording and releasing albums. Now, if we could only book that 9 month tour.

Love,
-Justin & Flame Shark

For those of you in the know Raw Flowers is our new album, set to be released upon the world, like a mighty sea gull, on July 4th. While it technically might not be available until after the 4th, I am proud to say the good audio wizards at Piety Street Recording in New Orleans, LA are wrapping up the mastering today.

All the tracks have been laid, the mixing is done and today the mastering will be finished.
Here's the Track Order to Wet Your Beaks:

Raw Flowers

1. "Moving On"
2. "New Year's Day"
3. "Golden Opportunity"
4. "Cathedral Walls"
5. "The Summit Pt. II"
6. "Whipping Boy For All the Lost Souls"
7. "Older Than Gold"
8. "Kill Me With Your Cuica"
9. "City of Boundaries"

After the mastering we'll be packaging them up and getting them ready to take flight. I'm also gonna be writing up some short blogs about my memories from recording and what the songs mean to me and so forth. So, if you'd like to hear what we've been up to since "Midnight On Pearl Beach" back in 2006, it's almost done.

xxoo,
-Justin

"Raw Flowers" is in the final stages of mixing. The fine folks at Piety Street Recording in New Orleans are at the helm of the mixing board. I was down there last week, listening, drinking beer, putting my two cents in the audio pot and everything is starting to sparkle and shine on the album.

Doug Gay, our drummer/percussionist/sonic adviser came down from Baton Rouge and added "MORE CUICA!" If you don't know what a cuica is...it sounds kind of like a honking monkey in the jungle...Doug plays it with his fingers and a wet napkin? Go figure. Anyway, he came down and put some more percussion in the mix. He gets the spirit award for the making of this album for sure.

Piety Street is doing mix number two right now. Funny, we recorded for 20 hours, we've mixed for 26 hours (so far). Lesson we've learned...mixing is important.

We're shooting for a July 4th release date for this juggernaut. We're gonna get a whole pack of those firewords snakes and let them all at once to celebrate. We might even buy Rusty LaRue one of those whistle chasers.

I'm gonna be all up on this myspace page blogging and shit to keep you updated on the status of the new record and what we're up to in general. We're getting back in the deep end of the pool pretty soon and we want to start getting our voices out in the blogosphere more. Keep your peepers peeped.

http://www.flamesharkmusic.com

Word,
-Justin J. of Flame Shark

Holy Shit,
So we drove the big white van down from Chicago to New Orleans this past week. We collected drummer and percussionist Doug Gay in Baton Rouge, LA. Doug is an old friend of mine who played on a recording project way back in the day. We stayed at his house for a weekend, rehearsing, eating, drinking beer and soaking in his hot tub.

From there we went to Piety Street Studio in New Orleans. Two days, 10 hours a day, nine songs, all live. All of our expectations were exceeded. I honestly mean that. The four of us came together, listened to one another and gave it everything we had. The results are beyond what I hoped for. On the second day of recording a St. Patty's Day parade went by the studio. That pretty much summed up the trip. We've still got to add the finishing touches and what not, but we're very excited to get it out there. It's been over three years since we put out a full length album.

As a side note, we also stopped in McComb, Mississippi on the way back. We ate at the famed Dinner Bell Restaurant. Four giant tables, 17 strangers to a table, lazy Susans and the best Southern cooking you could ever imagine. It was as if we were living in a dream world for a week.

Cheers,
Flame Shark

We can all breath a collective sigh of relief...our new website at flamesharkmusic.com is up and running. Now we can start putting this porno site business behind us. Read the previous blog if you don't know what I'm talking about. Anyway, it's nice to have a proper internet home again. I'll be updating it all regular like so keep your peepers on it. Thanks! Check it why don't ya and let us know us what you think. -Justin PS: DO NOT EVER GO TO flameshark.com...that IS NOT US ANYMORE!! We are flamesharkmusic.com

Ohhhh I'm mad! Mad is not the word. I'm disappointed, I'm frustrated, I'm exhausted, I'm confused. If you've visited flameshark.com lately you might've gotten a horrible shock. What use to be our proud home, the official internet home of Flame Shark is now a "rape porn" website based out of Russia. Our website was highjacked, held for ransom, we were extorted, forced to pay and the story goes on. We did this because we wanted to keep flameshark.com Now I realized that site has been "sold" to some sick piece of shit using it for this heinous porno site. I'm sick of this because it is wrong and unjust on so many levels. PLEASE DO NOT VISIT OUR OLD SITE. WE ARE WORKING ON A NEW ONE, WE HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH INTERNET PORN!! IF YOU KNOW OUR OLD SITE YOU KNOW HOW MUCH WE CARED ABOUT IT. WE HAVE VERY LIMITED RESOURCES FOR THESE THINGS AND WE ARE SADDENED THAT OUR SITE HAS COME TO THIS. THANKS FOR UNDERSTANDING. -Justin J.

I'm telling ya, it's like the Christmas elves live down in New Orleans or something. Every few months, out of the blue, Christmas or not, we get a new video in the mailbox from Scrub Brush Productions based out of New Orleans.

Scrub Brush Productions is a video/media production company owned and run by my brother Jonathan Jahnke and John Richey, both of New Orleans, LA. If you've seen any of our videos, you've seen Scrub Brush's handiwork. John appears in several of the videos, most memorably as the trucker/snow beast in the Captain video. The budget for these videos is always zero and they usually appear without notice, magically produced and sent our way.

This time the new video is for "Dead Deer" from our 2006 album Midnight On Pearl Beach. The video is put together using old 8mm footage from the Jahnke relatives archives. My aunt and uncle both appear in the video. I think my granddad, who was a photographer, shot a lot of the footage with the help of my uncle. I've found the more I watch the video, the more of a narrative it becomes. I hope you enjoy it. I feel like it really compliments the song and the song's message.

The song was written after I moved to Wisconsin from Baton Rouge, LA and I noticed how many dead deer littered the interstate as I drove from Madison to Milwaukee to make the Pearl Beach album. I felt sorry for them, but I later learned how dangerous a deer crossing the road can be. Go figure. Deer vs. Car and sometimes deer wins.

So we've gotten some emails and phone calls and carrier pigeon messages lately asking us what's up? Where have we been? What are we doing? That sort of jazz. Our website is gone in case you've checked it and our email is out of commission. Don't get your panties in a wad. We're still around. In fact, we're more around than we ever have been, we just don't have a working website or email address right now.

We're poor okay. We couldn't pay the bills for it so rather than file Chapter 11 we shuttered our doors. But there is light at the end of this tunnel. We're working on getting a new site up and running and a new email address.

We're also working hard here in Chicago putting together a new album. The new songs sound nothing like the old and the general feel is kind of like a bramblewood orchestra if that gives you any idea. We'll be returning back to my beloved Louisiana to record it, mostly likely in New Orleans. We're tracking it live with my old friend and drummer extraordinaire Doug Gay of Baton Rouge. He'll be managing the skins for us on the record. Expect percussion, horns, pedal steel guitars, harmonies, hand claps, lots of piano a la Rusty LaRue. Hear for yourself in a few months. It's been a long time coming. Until then, we'll keep the fires stoked and re-emerge when the time is right. XXOO-Flame Shark