Rob and I listened to 3 pretty darn tootn’ good song writers. Will Sexton, Peter Bradley Adams and Abra Moore were in their element tonight. Abra went on last. I love her use of the effects pedals for her voice as well as for the guitars. She writes beautiful songs and performs them beautifully.
I now own a cd. Ok, so I have to pay Rob back…But, she autographed it and gave it to me. I listened to it on the way home in the car. The music, as expected, was more fleshed out and every bit as good as the live performance. I love live music. It’s always nice when someone’s recording makes you as happy as the live performance….. sigh.
Look up these people Will Sexton, Peter Bradley Adams and Abra Moore and find some good songs.
I probably should not have gone because it meant getting less than 6 hours of sleep, and that’s “dangerous” when one must do 8 hours of mind numbing work the next day. Was hoping to get to sleep before the next day…. (Failed) Falling asleep on the job is bad.
The Mucky Duck usually has some of the very best French fries around. But for some reason that night, though, they were a little off, still good, but not up to the expected standard, ie, not quite as crispy as usual. The service was pleasant and as prompt as possible in a bar—that serves good food!
We haven’t posted any news in a while but that’s because there hasn’t been much to report. Our last gig was at the UU Music Fest and with summer coming up we held off on booking anything else.
So the band is taking a little summertime break as we all head out to the hinterlands to visit family and friends.
John is in Pennsylvania. George is in the D.C. area. Jen is planning a sailing trip for about a week in July and Rob is planning to go to Oklahoma for a week at the end of July.
We do have something booked in August though. We’re going back to the Hops House for the Wednesday night Hard Times Soup Kitchen. More details as they arrive. Hopefully some pics and “what-i-did-on-my-summer-vaction” stories soon to come.
Well this is kinda cool. We’ve got a video that we put together for our song “Crave” and it’s gotten a hundred hits so far.
A friend of mine (this is Rob by the way) challenged me to put one of our songs to an already existing video and I found this snippet from actor//writer director/producer Vinod Pande who released in 2005 a film called “Sins”.
Turns out this clip works pretty damn well with our song.
One of the house photographers and good friend of the Hops House (and friend of Paper Windows) took a few dozen pics of us on stage at the Hops House last week. Here are a few of them.
If you’re in the Houston area and can make it out to The JP Hops House, come on out! We’re the guest troubadours for their weekly Hard Times Soup and Music Kitchen.
Each week Jim and Pam host a guest musician to play with their house band and this week it’s us. They go on at 7:00 and we go on at 8:00. We’ll play for an hour and if there are enough people around we’ll go on again at 10:30 for about half an hour.
Also, a few of the regulars will bring a homemade soup for everyone to test drive.
There will be at least one vegetarian soup and we’re not sure what goes in Corn Chowder but it may be veggie friendly as well.
The biggest reason to come out though… FREE! It’s all FREE! The music, the soup plus you get to hang out with some pretty cool people.
Not to mention that the Hops House is pretty damn cool little joint. Great sound system for the musicians and listeners. Nice atmosphere, about 150 beers to choose from, it’s smoke free, relatively kid friendly (they’ve got a popcorn machine and the best root beer in the city… brewed at the St Arnold’s Brewery right here in Houston) and two of the coolest owners EVER!
Hope to see you there.
John, Jen, George and Rob
Paper Windows
Rob here. I’m really proud of this one. We recorded “crave” last night during rehearsal and it turned pretty damn good if I do say so myself. I wrote this song almost two years ago and the band has been playing it pretty much since we started a year ago. The song has been evolving quite a bit over the past year and it looks like we’ve kinda settled on this version for now.
Mucho big thanks to our friend/sound engineer/booking agent/roadie/biggest fan/and critic (not to mention Jen’s husband) Ron Bosch for tweaking the nobs on the sound board last night to get our levels right.
Anyway, we give you “crave“. Let us know what you think.
You can also do us a big favor and go to our site on ReverbNation and listen there so we can move up in the rankings. Thanks!
Well, this is a bit of a surprise. Rob here writing this post.I checked out our site on ReverbNation.com and according to stats compiled from yesterday, we’re ranked #485 out of 3,230 bands/artists in the folk genre of that site.
Pretty cool, huh.Help push us up even further by listening to our songs and becoming a fan.
We have a gig tonight playing a private party in the Galleria area and have been rehearsing our little butts off. One reason is because our friend George Cook is helping us out on bass guitar and we’ve been trying to get him to learn as many of the songs as possible. The other reason is… well, because we need to keep our chops up.
George has been pretty amazing. He hasn’t played bass in about 12 or 13 or 15 years…. or somethin like that and he’s been able to pick up on playing and our stuff really quick. He adds a great sounding depth to our songs with his bass.Weird that we’ve been really busy the first couple of months of the new year without even really trying.
We’re looking forward to a little time off… well, at least I am. I’m sure I can speak for John and Jen in saying that. We all three have families and full time jobs so trying to keep up with the band gigs has been a chore.
After a couple of weeks we’ll get back to rehearsing again. The only thing we have lined up (besides our monthly thing we do at our church) is The Houston UU Music Festival. That doesn’t happen for a couple of months so we’ve got a little breathing room till we get ready for that.
We’ll probably hit an open mic or two just to get ourselves ready for that as it gets closer.
Paper Windows rehearsing March 1, 2008 photo by Ron Bosch
Hi all… Rob here.Well, we went out to the Galleria area where we’re playing a private party in a couple of weeks. Pretty cool room we’re playing. Rather small but it’ll be cozy. Luckily our amps don’t “go to eleven.”
So after we all got there, Barbara, the lady who booked us for the gig, started giving us a tour of the entire area the party will encompass. (The room we’re playing is just a part of the party) So she shows us where we can stow our cases and stuff, where the restrooms are, etc and I lean my guitar up against the window. By the way, note… about six inches away from my guitar stand.
When we came back, all of two minutes later my guitar was on the ground, sound board down.
Ugh… i felt sick.
If you get out to a show in the near future and see me constantly check the neck of my guitar… well, you know why now. There’s about an inch long crack near the headstock that was a result of it hitting the deck. The night before I had tightened the tension rod on the neck just a hair as well and I guess it falling down didn’t help.
Yup… we’ve got ourselves a little one year old on our hands. And although we’ve had our moments and it’s been pretty hard, it’s actually been pretty damn fun.
Actually the hardest part has been finding the time to get together to rehearse.
We all have regular full time, grown-up type jobs, kids and families that keep us busy. All in all though… it’s been great fun making music with these two friends of mine.
So here’s how it started. After I initially asked John and Jen via e-mail on Feb 21st they both agreed. And on the 23rd I sent this to them.
> [Original Message]
> From: rob
> To: Jennifer Bosch
> Cc: john hammer
> Date: 2/23/2007 9:44:03 AM
> Subject: so i guess we’re all in
>
> hey check us out…
>
> we’re a band.
> I’m gonna try to record a couple of covers I know in the next week or so
> and I’ll send ‘em via e-mail as mp3s.
> For you Jen, I’ll let you know what chords I’m using and attempt to
> figure out what key it’s in but that may be asking a lot because…
> well, because I don’t know keys.
>
> anyway… cool, huh.
When we formed we were shooting for our first gig to be the Houston UU Music Fest so we tried to meet often and get ready for that. It was AWESOME! We got a choice time-slot and had about 150 to 200 people listening to us.
During the past year we’ve played a few open mics, a few parties for friends, have a standing gig at our church (check us out on a first Sunday if you get a chance) and even opened for Texas Music Award nominee Robert Frith.
We’re looking forward to what the future holds for us and hope to release our first CD by the time December rolls around.
Thanks to our fans the Sills. You support us in amazing ways.
