Backseat Sandbar

You heard it here first!

In a joint effort, Crossroads of America Records and Flannelgraph Records (both from Bloomington) are releasing a series of records on 3″ CDs that will be released monthly (2 releases per month) as a year long subscription service called the Laminar Excursion Monthly.  Sales will open up on Monday, November 2nd and they are EXTREMELY limited to only 100 copies.  Each 3″ CD will be approximately 20 minutes of new, unreleased music from each artist.  Lots of the bands involved frequently play here in Louisville, so it will be a real treat for the first 100 people who decide to purchase it.  Some of the incredible bands involved will be Damien Jurado, Richard Swift, Cotton Jones, Desolation Wilderness, J. Tillman, Saxon Shore, Bexar Bexar, and a host of others that will be announced in the coming days!  With a roster like this and as cheap as it is (only $45!?), I cannot imagine this being around for more than a few hours before it sells out.  Make sure to put this on your calendar and get ready to enjoy one of the coolest things to have come down the pipe in a long time.

With the labels both being in Bloomington, there are a ton of regional bands involved with the subscription service as well such as Everything Now!, husband&wife, Vollmar, Rodeo Ruby Love, Bro. Stephen, Metavari, Osteoferocious, Homecomings, Frank Schweikhardt, Alexander The Great, Chad Serhal, and more!

LEM = Most Perfect Christmas Present Ever.

From the horses mouth:

The intimacy of its sparsity and the intentionality of its medium promise to make this an even more fulfilling investment than a jelly-of-the-month club.

Subscribers will receive two new 3″ cds at the beginning of every month of 2010.  A unique box will be sent with the initial shipment.  Even if the rest of your world falls apart, you can still count on having two new compact discs arriving to your mailbox each month for the entire year.

Laminar Excursion Monthly will be limited to 100 subscribers.

The yearly subscription fee is $45.00 until January 1st.  If any subscriptions are still available at that point, the fee raises to $50.00.

Subscriptions will be available at www.xrarecords.com beginning Monday, November 2nd.

There is a good chance that you have stumbled into a set by The Parade Schedule somewhere around town because frontman Matt Kinder has been setting up shop all over town for the past few years.  Kinder falls under the tutelage of great masters of indie-folk like  Damien Jurado, David Bazan or J. Tillman.  His sepia-folk style sets him apart from a lot of his contemporaries and his songwriting constantly captures loss, love, duty, and honor like few can.  The arrangements are lush and his blue-collar delivery is complemented greatly by the harmonies of Jenn Feikert.  The band is, more or less, completely the product of Matt Kinder, but is rounded out by a slew of talented musicians.  You might even catch the wonderful Brooks Ritter playing guitar and singing with him.  On another night you might just catch Matt singing by himself.  Either way, you’re in luck.  I have been waiting for a proper release of theirs since I first caught a set of Matt’s about 3 years ago at Lisa’s Oak St. Lounge.  Even though they haven’t had a full-length out yet, there are already some classic Parade Schedule songs that I sing constantly.  Songs like “Backyard” and “Dye Your Hair” are songs that I really wish I would have written and others like “The Repentant Backstabber”, “Old”, or “Wolf Skin” are so good I could listen to them all day long and never get sick of them.  The Parade Schedule makes beautiful music that will stick with you like a familiar memory.

Recently, the band was just signed to the incredible record label out of Kansas City entitled The Record Machine.  They have been known for slinging great releases by bands like State Bird and The Winston Jazz Routine and even local instrumental band Interstates.  The Record Machine will be putting out The Parade Schedule debut full-length Seeds To Be Planted, Trees To Be Cut in September.  Any time a local band gets picked up by a label of this caliber, it is a great thing for our music community.  It couldn’t have happened to a nicer group of hard-working folks than The Parade Schedule.  I tracked down The Record Machine’s co-owner and main-dude Nathan Reusch and got him to answer some questions about The Parade Schedule and The Record Machine in case some of you aren’t familiar yet. (Interview and video after the jump.)

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