It’s been a busy summer for me. A good busy! TiRES have been playing a lot of shows and ended a three day trek in the middle of the summer with a Daytrotter session which was posted about a week ago!  We later came back to Davenport and played the Daytrotter venue during the Alternating Currents Fest. Paste Magazine streamed a live video of the performance and you can watch the whole thing here! We’ve also been recording some new material that we’re excited about. Our next show is the evening of October 6th at the Sculpture Park.

Just recently The Wheelers have been making noise again, and not only at practice. As of yesterday we decided to release a digital version of an EP titled Vacation we had put together a couple of years ago, so it’s super exciting to have that out in the world!  We hadn’t really played much or at all in the last year, but we have had the tradition of closing down Maximum Ames Music Festival every year at Deano’s with our pals Mumford’s, so practices started up and we even got to writing and performing a new full song at our set last night. It was fun to thrash on drums on again. The evening was full of fun, familiar faces from my times in Ames, new friends in new bands, and the memories and music of my friend Charlie Vestal, whose artistic and unique life was being celebrated and remembered throughout the festival last week.  As beautiful as the tributes have been there was also the undeniable feeling of mourning in that process as well, at least for myself.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I have been recording a lot at at my home studio I like to call the Birdroom, and while I have been working on and recording new solo material, some of it has turned into new Electronidoll music! It’s been really exciting using new tools, equipment and experimenting with a lot of fun ideas and songs. We had a session on Saturday and I hope to have an EP out in some form by the end of the year. My plan is to also release an instrumental version of most of the songs as well.  Fun stuff!

Lastly, I have been doing a few solo shows around Iowa. This Saturday I’ll be heading up to Mason City to play at Fat Hill Brewery for the first time and I’ll be playing the Chapman House for the first time for a cool Nova Labs show later in October! I’m sure I’ll have more to share soon. Check out the TiRES Daytrotter session HERE and the new Wheelers EP!