Well, our new CD, "The Idiodyssey", is finally released to the tens of adoring fans out there looking for more pirate music in their world. It was the result of a couple of years´ worth of work, struggle, and fun, and we think it´s been well worth it. "How did this album come about", you ask? Well, let´s dive in, shall we?

First off, lemme talk about the quality of the album. I think it´s the best sounding album we´ve created and the one that is the strongest from start to finish in terms of quality of songs. There isn´t a "skip-over" track on this album for me (and believe me, there have been on other albums). In fact, the Bilge Pumps have had a rep for the past several years of being a band that puts on great live shows, but only so-so CD´s. That was partially brought on by the debacle that was our "Broadside Buddies" album. That album had many different factors aligned against it being a solid offering that probably deserve their own blog post one day. Suffice it to say, it wasn´t our best work and there´s a reason it´s out of print after selling out its first run. Then, after a few years of member turnover and general malaise, we finally recorded "A Pirate´s Christmas Wish" in our newly built Sweatbox Studios and put out an album we could be more proud of. It still has a handful of things I would change if I had the chance to go back and do it again, but it was very much a learning album for us.

Now, for "The Idiodyssey", we built upon what we´d learned doing the Christmas album. We had to figure out how to use our new studio the best we could, and made improvements on it, things like permanent A/C and outlets (though John Crow almost blew us up doing that... see pic on the left), better seating, storage, and aesthetics. We also learned about all sorts of things that professional producers already know, things like the best way to use a combination of mics to record acoustic guitar and drums. We also spent more time to record every person´s vocal tracks individually to be able to get a better mix and better editing of the vocal blend. We learned how to use the compressor/limiter built in to our board to get a better incoming signal from vocals and percussion. I have to throw some thanks to Patrick McAlister (aka Squeegy, Sir Not Appearing on this Album) as we plumbed his brain for all its freshly implanted recording knowledge from classes he´d been taking. I also learned a great deal more tricks and techniques for doing the mix down of the song audio track in the software I use. In short, we just got better at recording on our own.

All of this came about because we spent our most precious resource in getting this done... our time. If we had been under a time crunch and trying to get this out as quickly as possible (ex: "We Don´t Know", "Broadside Buddies", and to some extent "A Pirate´s Christmas Wish"), then we wouldn´t have had time to learn the things we needed to learn to make this album as solid as it is. However, because we took long breaks between recording sessions, we got a chance to really rehearse the new songs that appear on the album, and in most cases, we had the opportunity to try them out in front of an audience at various shows throughout the year. That´s always a good thing to do.

My favorite songs on the album are "The Royal Oak", and "The Mermaid", both in how they sound, and in how they take the way we´ve heard these songs for years and kind of flip them on their heads. "The Mermaid" that most of us have ever heard, was always a happy, perky, pub sing song that people had been on us for years to do, but we just flat out refused because we really didn´t like it as we´d been bombarded with it for years. When it came time to select songs to do on this album, we decided to take the song back to its tragic roots, slowed it down, put it in a sad, minor key, and added some solid emotion to the vocals. I´m really proud of the way it turned out and look forward to the day when someone asks us to perform "The Mermaid" at a pub sing and we drop some jaws with our version. "The Royal Oak" is pretty much the opposite, as it takes a previously slow, sad song and gives it a driving rhythm with the faster drums and Sharkbait´s great guitar work. The vocals are just as slow as they normally are on the song, but the music is faster, and more uplifting, as we think it should be for a song about an improbable ship battle in which the teller won. The dichotomy of the slow vocals and faster music is a deviation from most folk music and it adds something to the recording. We even changed one of the verses to be a chorus and added lyrics to each chorus to help tie the song together... like the Dude´s rug.

This album was a chance to bring back songs from our out-of-print albums and keep them alive, including everyone´s fave, "Johnny Jump Up". This is the first version of the song we´ve recorded in the studio that has the energy of a live show. (You´ll just have to imagine us dancing in your stereo) We also made greatly improved versions of "The Ballad of Sam and Marie", "The Pump Shanty", "Pay Me", "The Ballad of Captain Kidd", and others.

We even included some bass for the first time on "Ranzo Ray", and "Bonnie Ship the Diamond (Remix)". The latter song only appears in our Deluxe Edition of the album available only for download on our site. The Deluxe Edition also has a re-do of "Congo River" and, after all these years, "The Queen of All Argyll". Why not include them on the CD? Well... because... that´s why. It´s something new to try out, and if it doesn´t work, we won´t do it again.

Now, some of you might be disappointed that there is no bonus track on this album... the first one of our albums that has no bonus tracks on it. Well, there´s another story there as well, but it´s probably too long to include on this blog. I will say this, though: we recorded one... a really good one that I´d been wanting to record for years... and although it´s not on "The Idiodyssey", you´ll hear it in the future.

Lastly, I have to say something about the fact that we have released three music videos (so far) in support of this album, "Ranzo Ray", "The Mermaid", and "Bonnie Ship the Diamond", and we´re pretty proud of them. They were shot on the Tall Ship Elissa down in Galveston on a hot, hot day in July and also at Stewart Creek Park in The Colony where Pirate Days of Texas used to be held. We ended up shooting all three music videos in about 10 hours´ time combined, so they might not look like MTV videos, but we don´t have their budget, either.

We hope that many, many, many of you get a chance to pick up a copy of the album, either on CD (here) or download (here, iTunes, Amazon,etc.) and feel free to let us know what you think. We are attention whores, after all, or we wouldn´t be dressing up as pirates and making asses of ourselves all the time.

Because it's all for me blog. Me jolly jolly blog.
....Maroon

Working on the newly re-done Past Landings page and seeing some of the gigs therein, got me to thinking about doing another blog of stories from road trips we've taken through the years. This one is all about the weirdness we ran across while performing at the Scarlet's Mid-Winter and Mid-Summer Renaissance Festivals from 2005-2008 in Oklahoma City.

I must start with one of my favorite stories about the festival... on the first year they moved from the State Fairgrounds to the Farmer's Market, we were enjoying a lovely day in the upstairs area we claimed as our own when we saw snow come falling down from the sky. Now, we've done plenty of faires and festivals in the winter, but usually in an area that stays warm enough to not get frozen water falling from the sky, but in this case, we not only got to see the snow falling through the enormous windows that surrounded the upper floor, but we were able to enjoy it while basking under the vents billowing out warm air on our delicate little pirate bodies. Very nice.

Another great story about that festival was in 2005, when we first did the show, we were still breaking in the oh-so-stiff John Crow to the show and he still didn't have an idea of about 1/2 of our songs. It's tough to teach someone 100+ new songs in a handful of rehearsals don't ya know? So, we gave him our official Pirate Bible, the leather-clad tome you'll see us occasionally break out on stage when someone has forgotten (or never learned) the lyrics to a song. In this case, the song was the Queen of All Argyll, and John Crow had no idea what the words were... or apparently any idea of how to spell it, because he spent the majority of the song flipping pages in the book, trying to find the song in it, while moving his jaw randomly in an attempt to sing along. The best part was the fact that he was caught on video doing all this! Check it out here.

Then, to make things even stranger, when we returned to the festival in 2006, the Bilge Pumps got some serious tail! Mer-tail, that is. After all, whenever you had Scarlet the Fox around, you had mermaids nearby and, at the end of one particular festival day, they made the mistake of telling the band that their tails were able to fit almost any size. Next thing you know, almost the entire band was decked out in scaly finery, flipping their fins around, and generally adding to that funky dock smell that wafted over the place as people were trying to exit. Only John Crow and I made it out with our egos intact, but that's mainly because I was busy trying to hunt down our paycheck and Crow had to take the pictures.

Then, during the one year they tried doing a Mid-Summer festival in addition to a Mid-Winter one, they got stuck in a certain building in the fairgrounds with high, arched, wooden beamed ceilings that were very cool to look at, but had zero acoustical value. That was the year, they decided to hire a bagpipe band for the first time, and it didn't matter where we happened to be singing at the time, the bagpipes would just drown us out like Phil doing a cannonball in the deep end. (shudder)

There was also the story of a certain band that shall remain nameless (and should have remained soundless) that managed to get into the Scarlet's show by name-dropping us to Robert (one of the owners) and telling him that we were big supporters of theirs, had shared a stage with them, and just basically showered them with buckets of love meringue. All untrue, unfortunately, but by that point it was too late, because there they were already hired and warbling their best on stage to crowds of solid twos and threes. One time John Crow and Fanny went and sat down at their show because they felt bad that there was no one in their audience. They proceeded to announce their next song was one the Bilge Pumps do, but that they happened to do much better. Then broke into some insane version of "All For Me Grog" that forced Fanny to get up and leave. John Crow stayed and smiled through the whole thing, though. He's that way. He enjoys loving punches to the face and jalapenos in his underwear as well. What can you say? He did join the band after all....

Because it's all for me blog. Me jolly jolly blog.
....Maroon

Technology moves ahead relentlessly, carrying us all forward regardless of personal preferences, desire to change, or basic need. I mean, we may really, really want that new tablet that keeps shining enticingly every time we see it on that store display, but do we need it? Probably not. Doesn´t matter, though, because it´ll soon be replacing your laptop as your primary computing accessory. Don´t own a laptop? Still use an abacus to count your beans? Don´t worry, there´s an abacus app you can download for the tablet that works just as well as the real thing for only $4.99.

The technology progress has dragged the music world kicking and screaming along with it many times during the history of the recording industry. From the resistance to go to the easy portability of the cassette tape from the vinyl LP to the extreme lack of desire to change the industry standard to Sony´s new digital CD format instead of the now easy-to-produce analog tapes, the music business has always been slow to adopt a new standard due to entrenched investment in the technology they´re currently using. They spend years figuring out the ways to squeeze every dollar from the current system and you want them to come along and endorse a brand-new, untested format? No thank you. Well, thanks to the great Napster incident in the 90´s, the recording industry was forced to come to the realization that the world of music was changing with the power of the internet and the mp3 format. Despite the industries insistence at copy-protected digital rights management (DRM) formats inserted into the early licensed digital versions of songs, it didn´t take long until the customer complaints grew to where someone was going to get rid of the copy protection and sell unrestricted music to the masses. Thanks to Amazon, who kick-started the DRM-free movement by offering the license-free mp3 format, and finally Apple who removed the copy protection from their aac format, people could finally put their music on whatever device or computer they wanted, just like they can with a CD, and not have to worry about having an internet connection to check the licensing of each song being played.

Does that mean the CD is a dead animal just waiting to be slaughtered? Well, probably 80% of the music I purchase these days is through an mp3 store like Amazon, either buying individual songs or entire albums. When I buy a CD, it´s often times by a band that just blows me away and I like owning the media to store on my shelf (after ripping the songs down to my hard drive) and sometimes play in the car. Most often, I just listen to a collection of music at random from mp3´s stored on a flash drive or an mp3 player of some kind, but sometimes, I like listening to an album laid out in the way the artist wanted me to hear it, and for that, I´ll listen to the CD. I know I could just listen to the mp3´s in track/album order and get the same thing, but for some reason, it´s not the same thing to me. Now, there are a good many reasons why mp3´s and other digital music formats are superior to CD´s. For instance, portability: You can load a song onto a flash drive to play in your car, onto an mp3 player or iPod to jam out to on the go, onto your computer´s hard drive to listen to at work or home, or even in the cloud to listen to wherever you have a Wi-Fi or a 3G connection. There is also the quality: Back in the days, mp3´s were considered inferior in sound quality to a CD because they were compressed too much. These days though, many of the mp3´s you buy are better than CD quality in the bitrate and can sound sometimes noticeably better than a CD (although they make for pretty huge files that way). The mp3´s we sell of our music on our website are all double CD quality in bit rate and can sound better than their CD counterparts (particularly our newer album songs).

So, why even bother with CD´s at all, if the digital music is that much better? Some of it is compatibility. The vast majority of the people in the country don´t have car stereos with a USB port or an iPod connector on them, so shy of burning a music CD on their computer from songs they purchase online, they listen to the CD´s they buy from the store or borrow from their friends/family and never bring back (like a pirate). Some of it is the nostalgia, too, of people liking the music format they´ve used and loved for years and don´t want to let go of. Kind of like those that refuse to give up their vinyl records or 8-tracks. There´s also the issue of backups. Most people just stash their music on their hard drive after purchasing it and never back it up. If their drive craters on them and they don´t have a backup, that music is lost forever and they´ll have to go back and buy it again from the online music dealer. If you have the CD, though, you can always rip the songs back to your hard drive and enjoy the sounds of your favorite bands again.

Then there´s the primary reason that small independent bands like us still produce our albums on CD´s as well as digitally. We sell the majority of our music at our shows. Oh we´re on Amazon and iTunes and the majority of the digital music slinger sites out there, but far and away most of our sales are at our shows where people see us in action and are inspired to pick up some of the music that made them smile. (It could have also been the incessant peddling of our wares from the stage coupled with the guilt people feel when our sales staff looks at them with puppy dog eyes, but I prefer to think the show inspired the purchase) Most people like to have something to look at before they buy it and our CD´s with the goofy album covers and song titles listed on the back are major points in getting people to talk themselves into a purchase. A full-color CD cover is much nicer to look at than a black USB stick with the album title on it. There´s also the whole instant gratification thing. Even if they have a new car stereo with all the bells and whistles on it, you can bet that stereo still has a CD player in it and they can listen to their new CD all the way home from the show. (Hopefully not having a wreck when they hear any of the bonus tracks). In a small way, the CD is more appealing in that the band can actually sign a CD cover as opposed to putting our initials or something on a flash drive. One other factor is also the cost as CD´s are still much cheaper to produce than flash drives and that still makes them better on the bottom line. Sure, they´re not as cheap as going all digital, but we can´t stand on stage at a show and tell everyone to be sure and download our songs when they get back home. We gotta get that sale right then, when the customer is in the right frame of mind and are thinking about it. Granted, I have seen the occasional person pull out their iPhone and download songs of ours right there at our concert from the iTunes store (talk about instant gratification), but it´s still a small percentage of the world out there that thinks along those lines even if they have the technology and a large enough data plan for their phone.

Now, we will continue to offer our complete music collection flash drives at shows for those looking for everything we do and have done as it´s a great way to offer our back catalog of music including our out-of-print albums, and we're exploring offering our new album on flash drives as well, but CD´s are still the king for small bands that don´t have the traditional advertising push that record labels use to drive you the digital stores. We have to make the sales at our shows and CD´s are still the favored way to do it. Even though we offer the digital downloads on our Pirate Music Box, CD Baby, iTunes, Amazon and others, they´re more of a convenient nice-to-have to reach people that can´t make it to our appearances. So, the CD may be on a slow downward trend out of our lives, but until we´re all carrying around devices jacked into the cloud and can download whatever we want, when we want, they´re still the best way to sell at a show. Of course, once we reach that point, people won´t even be watching us when they´re at a show; they´ll be watching the live broadcast of our show on the ´net using their virtual reality goggles.

Because it's all for me blog. Me jolly jolly blog.
....Maroon

So, here we are in year three of the Great Recession and despite the Wall Street upticks and general upward trending, the economy still sucks and joblessness is still rampant and people are still scared. What has that meant for the performers and crafters out there in the world of the ren-faires? Well, no one knows for sure since it's not like we all sit around and talk sales statistics with one another (although some of us do), but it's pretty obvious that CD and merchandise sales are down recently compared to previous years. Truthfully, I think it's the same for traditional brick-and-mortar stores and web sites despite the BS sales figures we get fed all the time. There's a reason why Black Friday is such a cutthroat, competitive, freak show these days... businesses are desperate for your money. Sometimes it's just greed (investors have to see sales growth in their stocks regardless of how much money a business is making) and some of it is a reflection of the dire straits of lack of income. Small businesses (and independent musicians) around the world are hurting because people are obsessed with bargains and won't buy anything that's not at a "discount" unless it's a staple product (food, clothing, iPads).

Where does music fall in that list? Pretty low down, I think. I don't know how it's been for the majority of other bands out there on the circuit, but the ones I have spoken to have said their CD sales are down this year compared to last year and even lower down compared to 4 or 5 years ago. I know our sales at our gigs have been down about 30% compared to last year. Granted some of that has to do with the type of shows we've done this year, but it's still a pretty big drop. Even worse are the online sales which are at a 40% drop in sales this year. Now last year, we had a new CD get released so that always adds to an uptick in sales as everyone wants to get the new stuff. In fact, not a show goes that we don't have someone ask us if we have a new album out. Another factor in the declining sales is the decreasing popularity of CD's as well (which will be another blog). Regardless of reasons, it seems that people are less likely to buy music they like from the artist because they don't want to spend the money on it. It doesn't appear that attendance is down at any of the festivals we perform at. In fact, if anything, the patron numbers are either flat or up this year. It's just that people are more likely to spend their money on food and drinks at a festival instead of a hand-carved bowl, a hand-made frame, or music from their local "starving artists".

This might sound all whiny (and in a small way, it is), but it's more along the lines of things that make you go hmmmm. Some performers do well at promoting themselves and getting decent performance fees and tips (Some ren-faire shows are nothing but 30 minute long tip collection events) and they don't care much about merchandise sales, while other performers just try to do the best show they can and hope that people will come along and buy a CD or T-shirt or whatever they are selling. Now, I know that the walking advertisements that are T-shirts are about the last thing some of you want to wear around (ours are here, BTW), but for some acts, like sword-fighting shows, it's all they have to sell. However, if you think you'd like the things you see a performer sell and you're not sure if you'd like to spend the money on it, I encourage you to impulse buy from the little guy and get something unique instead of paying for stuff at your local S-Mart that you don't really care that much about just because they're on sale. Food for thought... and that'll be $9.00 for that turkey leg.

Because it's all for me blog. Me jolly jolly blog.
....Maroon

Time for another set of tales from the road. This time, I'm reviewing some of the fortunes and misfortunes from our latest road trip: the 12-hour trek down the US highway system to visit the northern Florida Gulf Coast and Ft. Walton Beach, the stomping grounds of Captain Billy Bowlegs and his 56th visit to the city and his yearly kidnapping of the mayor and tossing of a hold full of beads on the eagerly awaiting (and some unsuspecting) fauna.

The most memorable thing about this trip was the case(s) of the missing keys. It started sometime Friday afternoon at the festival when the sound guy started announcing that they had found a set of missing condo keys. I didn't think much about it since I just knew I had mine safely in my trusty pirate pouch. However, later that day, I finally noticed my copy of the condo key was gone, so I went to see if the found one was mine... it was not. Therefore, we had an entire evening of us trying to go over the places where I might have lost it. Not to mention an entire evening of Sharkbait fretting about someone going into our condo and casually removing all of our stuff and sailing off into the sunset. We had no luck finding the keys anywhere that day or night. Then sometime Saturday afternoon, Fanny found them in the leather box she uses to sell CD's out of. How they got there, no one still has any idea. Oh well, at least they were found... not so for Harvey's rental car keys.

Now, Harvey had his heart in the right place. He and his wife decided to fly in from Dallas to Valparaiso, FL (about 5 miles north of Ft. Walton Beach) whereas the rest of the band drove our vehicles. He decided to opt for a rental car for 3 days instead of calling one of us when he got in to come pick them up. Very sweet of him. Problem was, sometime on Friday, the sound guy started announcing that the keys had been found to a rental car, an Acura. No one thought much about it since their car was a Kia. The announcements went on about the found keys for the next day and a half and none of us thought to go and see about them. On Sunday morning, though, when it's about time for them to go back to the airport, it's discovered the the keys are missing. Sooooo... we call the event organizers to see what happened to the keys. Problem is, no one knows or can find them. A nasty, nasty squall came ripping through the festival on Saturday evening and right before that was the last time anyone saw the keys. They were gone. We looked around the grounds on Sunday and contacted all the people who had touched them at any point, but no go. Harvey ended up having to pay for the car to get towed to Pensacola and pay the exorbitant lost key replacement charge. Not the best way to finish a vacation for them. I guess the lesson is, nice guys finish last... I mean lost.

Speaking of that rain squall, we got a story for that, too. We were all set for a 2 hour set to finish out a day of singing. We had just stepped up and finished sound checks and looked over the audience's left shoulders and saw the gray smudge of a cloud line rolling in. By the time we finished our third song, the wind had risen to the point where the sound guy called it quits on the amplification due to fear of electrocution and/or total destruction. So, being the pirates with the complete lack of self-respect that we are, we rolled out into the audience to sing directly to them. Now, granted, the audience had been reduced to about 10 people by the cold wind and sprinkling rain, but they were the dedicated and possibly inebriated audience, and they needed a show. So, we broke into "March of Cambreadth" and "Congo River". By the time we were finished with that, the rain was hitting us so hard in the face, we couldn't look up at the audience without going blind, so it was definitely time for "Johnny Jump Up". Some tribal dudes came over and helped drum in the rain, and when the song was over, we gave them all a fond farewell and ran to go check on our booth and try to keep it from blowing away in the storm. We've performed in the rain before before, but that show was like stepping into the ocean to sing. Let it be known that this is the first time we've performed "Congo River" after it rained. I'm sure a black hole opened up somewhere because of it. I was stopped later in the evening by two of the people watching that drenching show and they said it was something they'll always remember as they were there specifically to see us after watching us the night before.

One other thing that might only be interesting to me, is that we ended up setting up our booth next to a vendor at the festival who was selling a book that she wrote. Her name is Marti Melville and she was selling a book called Midnight Omen Deja Vu. While talking to her, she kept looking at me askance until she finally told me she had to get a picture with me since I was the spitting image of the dastardly pirate in her book, Captain John Phillips. I thought that was pretty interesting, so I bought the book and had her sign it. Haven't gotten to the part yet where Capt Phillips shows up, but I'll make sure to put the best spin possible on his roguish sensibilities. However, I'd have to mix in a little bit of Sharkbait's grouchiness to the character as well since the author stopped him at Pirate Days of Texas last year and told him that he was what she envisioned her character being. I guess us pirates all look the same when it comes down to it. Except for John Crow, he's in a league all his own.

Because it's all for me blog. Me jolly jolly blog.
....Maroon