CD, Baby!

Big day in the CST administrative compound today. Matt and I played a "CD release show" at the Mill, which was interesting (as shows at the Mill generally are) and a lot of fun. It was our first chance to play a couple of the new tunes on the CD for our Iowa City fans and the band after us (if I may borrow a Barney-ism) suited up. Fun night.

Also, today we got notice from CD Baby that What I Know Now's online store is up and running. To wit:

CD release show this Friday!

Come on down to the Mill in Iowa City this Friday evening (April 13th) to catch some of the tunes off our new CD. Enjoy some music, good food and beverages, and help us celebrate the release of What I Know Now. Cover is $6, and CST hits the stage at 9:00 p.m. Following our set will be a performance by Patrick Bloom and the Ghosts of Radio, another of Iowa City's fine local acts.

And then there were five

It's not the Storyhill discography yet by any means, but on the other hand we're still at a point where we can expand our catalog by 25% in a single morning. There is much rejoicing around the CST complex this morning.

EDIT - click here for the first review of the new disc.

And here it is:

The CD is in production. Oh, excitement is mounting! Keep checking back for exciting news about CD release shows and other fun stuff.

WHAT I KNOW NOW

Here is what I know now:

• Central Standard Time's third full-length, all-original CD is finished and set for production to begin.
• The new CD should be (cross your fingers, knock on wood, etc.) in our hands in time for our March 29th show at Luther College.
• The new CD has been a long time coming. We've been working on it in one way or another for about... four years (?). I think that's right.
• The title of the CD is What I Know Now.

Whew... more to come soon!

Slow and steady wins the race.

Well, Charlie already provided the update below on our progress on the new CD. And no, we didn’t get it done by Christmas (though that was a conscious decision on our part). Progress continues, albeit slow. We are gradually chipping away at and refining each song, deciding what little things to add or not to add to each one.

The process of creating this new CD has been much more a labor of love than our past CDs. When we recorded Second Whisper and Folksinging, we did so in a very limited amount of time. With Charlie’s nice home studio, we’ve had the luxury of taking our time and carefully considering exactly what to do with each song on the disc.

I think it will be worth the wait. I’ve enjoyed listening to the rough tracks Charlie mentioned below. The songs in their state on the CD Charlie burned all have at least a little tweaking to be done, but even if we left them as they are, I think all of them would hold up against our past work. Pillar to post, I think this will be our best release yet, and I’m excited that we’re getting so darn close to finishing it!

Check back often for updates and an announcement of the *official* release date!

Forward progress

I just finished burning two rough mix CDs. They're hardly a finished product, but they represent most of the songs for the new disc being at a "put 'em on a CD so we can listen over and over and decide whether more needs to be done" stage. Which is pretty exciting, really.

There's certainly more work to be done - two songs aren't on these rough mix discs at all (that's still 83% present and accounted for, though) - but it's nice to have the songs on CD finally. I apologize to anyone who rides in my car during the next month or so for the fact that you'll probably be subjected to some CST.

Matt thinks we can have the new disc out for Christmas. As long as a year isn't specified, I totally agree.

Soon and very soon

So we've been saying for a good, long while now that CST's new CD will be released soon. "Soon," it turns out, hasn't meant exactly what one might normally expect it to mean. I think we first said, "The new CD will be released soon" probably three years ago. Maybe longer. Since then we've maintained that it will be "soon."

Well, over the past... so many months, we've actually made some significant progress on the new CD. We spent some time in the studio laying down tracks, and ended up with some good takes on at least a handful of our "new" tunes. I think that once Charlie is back from camp, we might actually get some more work done, and who knows... "Soon" might be sooner than later!

The problem (or rather, a problem), you see, is that with our first recordings, we had stockpiles of songs ready to go, and we didn't have that luxury this time around. Back in 1995, not terribly long after Charlie loaned me a guitar, we both had written a number of songs we felt merited recording, and we were super excited to record them! So we found some available time in a tiny studio on our college campus, went in with almost no knowledge of the recording process, and came out with a real CD! Granted, it was a pretty bad CD, and might have actually harmed your speakers when you played it, but a CD nonetheless.

As time went on, we realized that the recording quality on that CD was somewhat less than good. Heck, it was less than bad. So we decided that we were going to re-record that disc and do it right. Fortunately, a mysterious, wealthy financier came forth to pay for the studio time, so we went to This Here Studio in Milford, Iowa, and re-recorded most of the tracks off that first CD, along with a few other songs we'd written in the meantime. The results were astoundingly better than our previous effort.

A couple years later, and after we'd both continued to write songs at least somewhat frequently, we decided it was time to record again. Our mysterious financier had vanished before we could repay him, leaving us with enough cash for another trip to This Here Studio, by then more conveniently located in Strawberry Point, Iowa. We spent two full days (versus just one for the previous CD) in the studio, and again, were quite pleased with the result.

So just like that--boom! boom!--two (or three (boom!), depending on how you look at it) full-length CDs within about two years' time. Second Whisper came out in 1997 and Folksinging in 1999. Now it's 2006, nearing seven years since we release our last CD. Why the long delay for this one?

Well, life has kept us both from writing as many songs as we used to write. We just haven't had as much time. Both Charlie and I are good at starting songs, or at least at coming up with ideas for new songs. I think we both have a bunch of songs with just one verse or just a chorus, that we never got around to finishing. So it's taken us longer to build up to the number of songs we felt we needed for another CD.

I think we may finally be there, though. We both have written (or finished writing) songs within the past few months, so I think we're at the point now where we can record enough songs to finish and release the new CD.

So when will the new CD be released? Well... soon! We'll let you know when we know.

In the meantime, check our schedule (or just continue to read) for some upcoming shows. A couple are yet to be confirmed, but I think we're playing a Mud River Festival benefit show on August 24 at the Mill in Iowa City. I think we'll also play at the EWALU Alumni Weekend, probably at 7:00 or 8:00 on September 2. We're playing the Mud River Festival on September 9, probably at about 6:00, and we're playing at the Coralville Farmers' Market at 5:00 on September 25.

Stay cool and enjoy the rest of your summer.