Nowhere Band News

This is a handout I whipped up to, um, hand out at tonight’s Derailleur show at the Bedlam Theater (we’re too cheap or too futuristic to make CDs). We go on at 8:30ish, the other bands are reputed to be excellent, and the $10 entry fee goes towards a project involving lockers for the homeless. If you’re in the Twin Cities, you should be there.

So, then, the production update: there’s a good chance Nowhere 44′ll be late, and for a shitty reason: we’ve been undergoing kind of a long-ongoing catastrophe as our cat Ella has gotten steadily sicker. It’s been tough to deal with, and is probably just going to get tougher. So if the comic’s late, that’s why.

I have not ever done this, but god knows there have been lots of times I’ve wanted to.

Also: somehow, I guess this is the 1-year anniversary of Nowhere Band. Huh. It doesn’t seem that long, but that’s pretty cool. Lots of ups, lots of downs (the biggest down being the stretch from about #5 to #10-ish when I was really struggling with a move to a different computer/scanner system). All in all, I guess I’m pretty happy with the way things have moved in the first year, and really it’s probably completely in character that The Awesome Boys have managed not to play a “real” show during that whole time.

Aaaaand speaking of real shows… my band, Derailleur, actually has one! Sept. 12 at the Bedlam Theater in Minneapolis. Details here.

Holy crap, it’s true. The Derailleur Bond EP is done, and available for download over at the Derailleur site. Listen, learn, and love, my friends.

In case you haven’t heard me babble about this before, this EP is our attempt to write theme songs for Bond movies– some are replacements for the original theme (I mean, do you even remember what the official theme to Octopussy was?) and others are themes for Bond movies that haven’t been made, but should.

And if you like this one, there’s more on the way. Our man Jay is hard at work mixing our second full-length album, tentatively called The Dirtiest Dudes in Rock ‘N’ Roll. 

And oh yeah, that comic that gets done around here…. on schedule, and looking good for a posting on Sunday night or Monday morning.

Last night, I took a camera with me to the Derailleur practice/recording session, and took a bunch of pictures. Even in the unlikely event that you’re not a Derailleur fan, it might be worth taking a gander to see a bunch of Nowhere Band source material…

So, I can’t remember what the official theme song was to Octopussy, but I think we can all agree that it didn’t rock hard enough.  If it did, I’d remember it, right? Fortunately, Derailleur’s on the case.  As part of our Bond Themes project, we’ve recorded a new Octopussy theme; a rough mix of it can be heard here.

And, although this is a Derailleur song through and through, this is also more or less what I picture The Awesome Boys as sounding like, except without the backing vocals.

As usual, I’m way better about working on comics offline and thinking, “hey, I should post this to the newsblog” than I am about actually posting things to the newsblog.  Which means that I have a backlog of news, and will be releasing actual comics before too long.

Item!  The McSweeney’s audiobook recording is done, and turned out to be a ton of fun to do.  I felt like a big weirdo, standing on the Washington Avenue Bridge with a recording setup, reading out loud about COBRA.  But hey, you gots to suffer for art.

When the audio download’s ready, I’ll link to it.

Item! Just this morning, I finished inking the guest story I’m doing for Bob Lipski’s Uptown Girl Presents. It’s not a Nowhere strip, but it’s very similar, and the Awesome Boys do make a cameo.  I’ll be traveling for the rest of the week, and finishing the digital part of that comic while I’m on the go (and I’m not sure when the comic would appear here, if ever– certainly not until after Bob’s book has actually been on the stands for a while), and then production will resume on Nowhere.  Strip #20 should be out and about by, say, March 15 (beware!).

Item! I spent a really fun hour and a half yesterday talking to Minnesota Public Radio’s Chris Roberts about Nowhere Band (and, to some extent, Derailleur). It was a cool, cool session, and it sounds like the piece will air on this Friday’s Word of Mouth broadcast (naturally, I’ll be out of town for this).  Should also be available online, eventually, and I will of course post the appropriate links when they’re available.

OK, that’s it.

Here’s a link to an easy way to check out the first-draft mix of Derailleur’s newest song. As I say on the linked page, this is part of our in-production concept EP of theme songs for James Bond movies that haven’t happened yet (or, in a couple of cases, that did happen, but were given the wrong theme songs).

The song fucking rocks the house, and I highly recommend you go check it out.

Also, Nowhere #16 is way ahead of schedule and should be forthcoming within a couple of days.