At long last, the Baltimore-based band Lake Trout will release its first official live album. The album includes live versions of songs from previous releases as well as songs that have only been performed live, but never officially recorded. As a gift to their listeners, Lake Trout will be giving away their live album for FREE download via an innovative method of distribution called The Biggest Label Ever.
THE BIGGEST LABEL EVER (dot com) is a record label centered around a website consisting of free music supported by advertising. Lake Trout's live album will be the label's first release and the site will officially launch in 2009. In support of the release, Lake Trout will be playing 2 shows in December:
12/19: Baltimore, MD | Ottobar
12/20: New York, NY | Mercury Lounge
The long-awaited album comes after numerous other projects from its members. Mike, James, and Matt having been playing with the U.K. based Unkle, touring internationally, and playing major festivals since the summer of '07. Unkle's latest record, "End Titles..Stories for film", was co-written by James. In addition, other members have been involved with side projects as well. Lake Trout continues to work on new material, and will release one of these new songs in conjunction with the live album. The song is available for free download at www.laketrout.com/whatyouneed
For more information on Lake Trout as well as their various side projects, please visit www.laketrout.com.
I have been sitting here all day trying to avoid writing this. I have no idea why, I guess I am just rusty.....I keep procrastinating by thinking up little jobs I can do, then rewarding myself with cigarette breaks or constant peeks at CNN to see whats going on with the election, thereby eating up time. For example I will think "hmm, that kitchen counter looks really dirty, i think I better wipe that down....then my eye shifts around our tiny kitchen nook and I see that maybe I can take the garbage out...again...then once I am outside..."Nice job buddy, you just worked really hard, why don't you sit down on the stoop and have a cigarette. Then I come back in and wonder what I can do that will take me outside again so that I can smoke another cigarette. All the while this darn thing isn't getting written. Even now I find myself eyeballing the CNN homepage, staring at polls for the umpteenth time today, knowing that the news probably hasn't changed that drastically in the half an hour it took me to get caught up with this weeks Entourage, but maybe hoping that if I just stare at the screen long enough maybe John McCain and Sarah Palin will just disappear...How cool would that be, I would be known as the guy that just made them disappear thereby saving the world from (at least in my eyes and certainly many others that I know) from certain catastrophe....of course it goes without saying that if I could affect such a change with just my mind I would would probably get drunk with power and take over the world so I would have to remain anonymous. I mean afterall I am not the world domineering type although it would be cool to have a cape and since I would be ruling the world with my mind I could probably pay off all of my wife's student loans and credfit card debt...but i digress........See what I mean about procrastination......Alright so back to the topic at hand. I guess its no secret that Lake Trout has kind of been off of the map for a while.....I can really offer no reason for this except that we wanted to take a break and see what else is going on the world and to just kind of get on with living. There is such a bubble that you exist in while trying to get along in this ridiculous business and after a while you realize, to paraphrase Ferris Bueller (God I hope that doesn't make sound like some out of touch old guy), "Life moves pretty fast and if you don't stop to take a look around once in a while you might miss it"......Well thats what we did.....We all have been very busy however.......Earlier this year Matt and Ed and Myself performed with the Ballet X company in Philadelphia providing music which Matt composed for their Rite to Spring performance.......That was amazing!!! They did use some of the instrumental Lake Trout stuff from yesteryear as well and its amazing watching someone else interpret your music...and interpret the fuck out of it!!! I mean if you had told me ten years ago that while I was sitting on the floor of the studio playing a coffee can with brushes over the song Iris, that later on, a proper ballet compnay would choreograph a whole work around it...I would have peed my pants from laughing so hard...But they did and it was cool......Woody has been building his commercial music empire while working on various side projects with us and some others...... and Matt and Woody have been poring over previously unreleased studio sessions which may result in some future Lake Trout music!....and Matt, James. and myself have been touring with the UK based elctronic act UNKLE for the past 16 or whatever months.....Thats been pretty crazy and that tour (to promote their last release "War Stories") has taken us all over the world in the past year and will finally conclude in a few weeks when we headline the Creamfields festivals in Chile and Argentina........wild......James is actually still in London working on the next UNKLE record and Matt and myself went back over in September to help start writing stuff for it......so thats exciting........I sure miss James though...Baltimore is just a little bit more boring without him, but I will see him soon enough.
ANYWAY.........I keep getting off on these tangents........Lake Trout has decided to dust ourselves off and do some shows around the Christmas holidays!!!!!!Its been along while and we miss playing with each other and just miss playing live so we are doing a show at the Ottobar in Baltimore on the 19th of Dec. and Mercury Lounge in NYC on the 20th of Dec..........We are releasing a live record (for real this time...really...... this is really happening) on a label called "the Biggest Label Ever" and that material comes from stuff that Ed and Woody and our good friend Steve have culled together from past live shows that we recorded and so it should be fun!!!!! We also wanted to say thanks to all of you guys for supporting us over the years. I think to many our hiatus came rather abruptly and we wanted to apologize but we had no more hair left to pull out so we had to take a break and let it grow back...I think we may even have a new song that Woody kind of put together so uh ......hey!.....Also before I go since James will be back from across the pond during that time......Big in Japan is doing a show as well...Dec. 30 th at the 8x10 in baltimore...as always we will be unrehearsed with no songs to speak of and probably more than a little tipsy..so it should be our typical kind of night......Anyway I'm going to go back to my CNN mind control experiments via a bar and a large beer and Hopefully see everyone at these shows..I feel like Ron Howard when the sad day arrived and Arrested Development got cancelled because middle america is full of humorless morons when he said "Please tell everyone you know to watch this show!!!" same goes for all you lot...ok?......bye for now....Mike
