Hello Industry is a conscious alternative rock band. Think Queen meets Depeche Mode at a Radiohead concert. It’s highly emotive, high-substance music for people who are sick of mediocrity.
Our church has asked us to fast this month. It can be from food but can be from something other than food like caffeine or tree climbing or rollerblades. Heather and I are fasting from food one day per week and meeting each night to pray about a couple of specific things. But as I thought about the real point of fasting I came to the decision to fast from internet from 5pm-on every night. To some of you this might sound stupid and easy. To others this might sound like suicide. For me, I have a feeling it may be a coming up to breathe for the first time in years.
Do you realize how immersed in information we are? If I’m away from my computer I’m using my iPhone to check twitter or news or I’m checking for updates to my favorite iPhone apps. Or email, IM, txt, voicemail. And if there’s nothing new on any of those fronts I begin to search for something new and I don’t stop until I find it.
Why?
I think I’m an addict. To informational stimulation. To noise. It doesn’t even matter what the information is. I’ve become so accustomed to receiving informational stimulation that when it stops I begin to feel anxiety. Turn on the radio or the TV. Something. I think I’m afraid of silence.
Why?
I think deep down I may be afraid that when all noise stops there really will be silence. No sound of real substance originating from my own heart because I’m immature. No sound of my own creative or unique voice because I’m shallow. No sound of the voice of God because either (a) I don’t really have a connection with Him apart from the noise or (b) He was never there to begin with.
That would kill me.
It’s not worth the risk.
But there’s an easy enough way to avoid it. Turn on the noise. Receive information. Check the latest scores or prices or gossip or news or fashions. Begin another pointless search for the perfect whatever that really won’t matter to me after I get it. It’s not about the acquisition. It’s about the noise that the searching creates.
I’m addicted to noise and I don’t think I’m the only one. But think about what we’re trading. Real fulfillment for pointlessness. Rich living for fake conquest. The truth for tabloids. Sound for noise. And the longer we go like this the shallower we’re becoming.
I think that’s the point of fasting. It’s a cutting off of the noise we make to reveal the sound that was and is and will always be there. The sound that never changes. Or at least the truth about whether it was ever there to begin with.
-np
Happy New Year Everyone. Beth Jacob and I really enjoyed time with family and just time to bum at home over the holidays. Jacob’s Christmas present to his mom was to learn how to say “ma-ma”. He also started walking just before Christmas. I’m looking forward to taking him sledding at some point this winter. I received a couple music related toys for Christmas, so I’ve played with those a little bit and am starting to tweak my guitars for the upcoming HI gigs in Jan-Feb. The most major thing at this point was some filing of the the nut on my yellow Les Paul Special. The low E string was sitting up too high due to my using heavier string gauges on the low strings than typical for electric guitarists, which was throwing the intonation way off. I’m looking forward to no more sharp F’s on the first fret now! Until next time, Brett
Hey Everybody! James here. Back from my winter excursion to St. Francis, MN to see the inlaws. It was a fantastic trip, my wife’s family is awesome and it was really good to get to spend some time with them. Mark, my new father-in-law, gave me a couple of pretty cool albums which you should check out if you haven’t already. One was a soul/electronica band called zero 7.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INn1C6ImJKg
The other CD i got was the new Avett Brothers album “I and Love and You” Check out this song,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jj8HDe5M-Jo
I can’t get enough of this band right now. They have been living in my station wagon cd player for the last couple weeks.
This is going to be an exciting year for Hello Industry! Make sure you’re checking up on our website for upcoming shows and other cool goodies. Happy New Year!!
-james
Hello Industry performs “Unbelievable” at a B&W house show in Peoria, IL. Enjoy.
Hi Everybody, I always take for granted how much I like not having to shovel, sweep, and scrape my car off every morning before work until Peoria weather such as we’re having now kicks in. Someday maybe I’ll have a two car garage and I’ll scoot off to work in ease; but until then I’ll try to enjoy the extra bit of morning exercise. We’re getting into the holiday spirit at home. The Christmas tree is up and Jacob is having fun pulling it back down. It was fun to watch him look out the window and notice all that white stuff on the ground for the first time. I think 14 months is a ripe old age to start sledding; looking forward to it. HI will be gearing up starting just after the holidays for a marathon of traveling gigs in the Jan-Feb timeframe. We do have one final Peoria show this weekend though. So we hope to see you Saturday (12) at the next Black and White show (see website for details), the last show of 2009. Until next time, enjoy shoveling/sweeping/and scraping. Brett
Hey friends! I visited Tricia Rosborough this morning to check out the venue for this Saturday’s shwanky affair. It’s going to be very nice. They have a lovely home, perfect for hosting Hello Industry B&W events, furnished with a beautiful black medium-grand Mason and Hamlin piano. Sounds great - I tested it out to check the feel and tone. Freshly tuned by our friend Roman just last week. ;) It has a great response, nice action, warm mids and bright highs. Perfect for the Chopin Fantaisie-Impromptu.
While we were there, Tricia’s 9-foot Christmas tree was being delivered, the end sawed off, and deposited in a large tree-stand, smack in the center of a gorgeous 2-story picture window looking out on their backyard. It’s going to look beautiful!
The Rosboroughs are so hospitable. They’ve offered to serve drinks and cookies to top off your fancy evening. Thanks, Dave and Tricia!
James has tweaked a few of his arrangements for the second installment of the B&W set-list. We hope you enjoy the upgrades.
Oh, I have had a few people ask: we will be wearing formal attire, so feel free to join us, but you don’t have to! We love you just the way you are. ;)
We have already sold quite a few tickets to the show, and the limit is 30… So be sure to purchase them while there are still some seats left. We certainly won’t turn you away at the door, but the door charge is $15, so get your tickets online today! Can’t wait to see you guys there. We’re practicing!!
Happy Holidays!
Well folks, I’m remembering now why I decided never to mix another one of our own albums.
A few years ago when we recorded our first album, Fooled, I mixed it. It was a lot of work. I remember the final “day” of mixing. We were scheduled to do mastering in Chicago the next day so it had to be done. I spent about 26 hours straight mixing and bouncing out +1 -1 vocal +1 -1 bass tracks. I finished at about 6am, took a shower, went and played at my church, and then drove to Chicago for mastering. It turned out really good, but I probably lost a couple years off the end of my life making it happen.
Two years ago we recorded MaryAnn. I mixed it as well. Sent it to Nashville to be mastered and when I got it back I had this nagging feeling like it could have been better. Like all of the time and skill that went into writing and performing was being bottlenecked by my mix engineering limitations. We made a decision to scrap my weeks of mixing work and send it to our friend Neeraj (engineer on the last couple of Killers albums). Neeraj mixed it and sent it back within 2 weeks. We compared it to my mixes and immediately knew we made the right decision. That was when we vowed never to mix our own stuff.
Mixing your own music isn’t a bad idea just because you might lack some engineering skills that some other guy has. My engineering skills are up there, actually. But when mixing your own music you lack something that every other engineer on the planet has - objectivity. You’re in love with the way you used 20 mics to capture that guitar sound. Or the 40 tracks of vocals. Or you’re embarrassed about some vocal intonation so you bury the vocal a bit more than you should in the mix. Objectivity lets an engineer say “eh, throw this out. throw that out. boost this. cut that.” Because they’re working on the art, not on someone’s ego.
I think this can carry over to other parts of art. There’s value in working with a team of people on a project. Different people bring different things to the table in the creative process - the most priceless of things being objectivity.
That being said, I now find myself mixing our Hymns album. This is more of a side project of mine and James’, so the budget for a mixing engineer wasn’t there. I’m definitely paying for it - very stressed and fairly frustrated a lot of the time. But I’m actually very optimistic. I’ve got some good guys checking the mixes for me and am exercising my objectivity muscle a lot. I think it’s going to be a #1 smash hit.
Our promise: You will love this album when it’s complete. We’re still hoping to have it available for you by Christmas!!
Ok, thanks for listening. Back to the mixing cave. To keep up with the finer details of the Hymns mixing process, watch our twitter feed…
-np
I would like to take this moment to describe how bizarre it is being married to Nathan. I knew he was different, the amount of time he takes to research things and shop around before making a purchase or decision. But this week it went to a whole new level.
We’ve been married for 8 years. I’ve gotten used to Nathan’s habit of researching GEAR… mics, amps, guitars, recording plug-ins, rack-mountable things, DIs, computers, flight cases, trailers, sound boards, programmable lights, etc., but it doesn’t stop there. Granted, it is the reason I play the Nord, the all-time best keyboard ever in the whole world. So thank you, Nathan, for your thorough (read obsessive) nature. I just have to tell the world how funny it is. He doesn’t think it’s weird at all, just logical.
I knew I was getting in over my head when we registered for gifts for our wedding and stood in front of the garlic presses for over ten minutes. Ironically, he still has never used a garlic press, but did insist then on registering for a specific model. Oddly, I now own 2, maybe 3. You really only need 1.
Another illustration: Last winter, a friend of ours, Brian Kurland, turned 40. His wife Angela threw a surprise bash for him. Another good friend of mine, Monica Lin, offered to make (by hand, from scratch) 4 cheesecakes for the party. She spent 3 days making them, and her husband, Dave, informed me later the family ate nothing but PB&J for those 3 days. Awesome. But you should have seen those cheesecakes. I think I have a picture I can post from Nathan’s phone. 
UNBELIEVABLE. They were displayed beautifully. When it was time to partake, Nathan approached Monica and proceeded to pepper her with questions about the ingredients of each one, the baking method, and the consistency. He wanted to insure his choice would be the BEST choice. He then settled on Key Lime and walked away to enjoy his selection. Monica, of course, found Nathan’s behavior absurd.
GET THIS. 5 minutes later, Brett, our electric guitarist, who was also attending the party, approached Monica (completely separate and unaware of Nathan’s exchange with her) and began a very methodical interview with her about each of the cheesecakes, identical to Nathan’s process. WHAT?!? These guys need to know when to turn it off. Or stop spending so much time around each other. It just feeds the sickness.
To their credit (or Monica’s) they were both, however, completely satisfied with their choices. ;)
But friends, our date on Wednesday really bumped it up a notch. Being Foodies (foodies: snooty people who pride themselves on being selective and having a refined palette, but are really just snobby and like to critique everything), we usually go to Sushigawa, but I wanted to do something different. We agreed to park and walk down Prospect in Peoria Heights, and decide on one of the restaurants there. Jim’s Bistro, Basta Mangiare, Seven, French Toast, or maybe Paparazzi, if we could find it. We walked down the street. I was thinking we’d just pick one. Nathan wanted to pop his head inside each one, take a look at the ambiance, maybe the menu, and then make an informed decision.
After visiting the 3 on the one side of the street, we decided on Jim’s Bistro. It was crowded and we’d never been there, and looked nice. To make a long story short, after about 20 minutes (after being seated, visited by a waitress, and looking at the menu), Nathan decided we had to leave. He looked around, suddenly noticing everyone was old and had mashed potatoes on their plates, and decided it wasn’t for us. I would have stayed. But I was mostly glad he was not going to settle because it would have been a real let-down. We walked down the block again, then circled back through the alley looking for Paparazzi. Woops, that light was coming from a barber shop. We were back in front of Jim’s. We crossed the street so as not to be seen, and were about to settle on Seven, but just weren’t satisfied with our choice.
We finally decided to try June, a new restaurant that uses only organic and fresh ingredients, where they make everything from scratch. Every dish has a special presentation. This is art. We ended up having one of the most superb dining experiences ever (it was also our entertainment for the evening). Five stars. The head chef’s (Josh Adams) recipes, preparation, and presentation were brilliant. The cooks were bending down to the table, getting each dish at eye-level, and using tweezers to adjust the micro-herbs on our plates. That’s the passion for excellence that inspires me, that inspires Nathan. I felt a very strong urge to stand up and clap after our appetizer. Nathan said that would be weird.
For all Nathan’s idio-syncracies, I would never ever ever want anything else! I could not settle for someone who was happy with mediocrity. Nathan is a perfectionist, a passionate visionary who is inspired by others’ passion for excellence. This manifests itself in different ways, but in every area of his life. He is consistently driven, obsessively absurd, and already I think he will make a fantastically quirky old geezer.
I love you, hub!
Hi plays “Easy” in Peoria, IL…
You may remember our friend Julius Adams - we invited him to play the B-SIDES show with us back in September. Julius has returned the favor and we’ll be playing a few songs at a show of his this coming Friday (Nov 20th) at 7pm. More info is here. It’s a free show. We’d love to see you there.
