Hey folks,

Well we’re glad to see that spring is finally arriving in its own haphazard way in our home state of Pennsylvania… but regardless of the weather, we’ve been making fair-weather plans and working away on rainy-day projects.

Humor us while we talk about ourselves

First, what we’ve been up to: thankfully, we’ve been playing a lot of shows. They’ve all been lots of fun and have been well attended… better than expected in fact. That’s the great thing about being a bunch of pessimists… we’re always pleasantly surprised.

For two of those recent shows, we decided to set up a recording rig and capture them as well as we could so that we’d be able to put out a live disc. We’re thrilled to say that there were eight or ten tunes that came out really well (though there were plenty that didn’t, which is to be expected). So sometime in the next six-ish weeks we’ll release them on disc as well as for download. This is exciting because it’s a more up-to-date production that captures the progress we’ve made in the last year. Look for a mix of new and old favorites on the new disc. We’ve already posted some rough mixes on our Facebook page as a preview.

Probably the most exciting part about the recording, though, is that our buddy Ryan Burns brought a professional camera crew to one of the shows and recorded the whole thing! So that means once we combine the good video with our audio recordings, we’ll finally be putting some better-than-iPhone-quality videos on our YouTube channel. Head over there and subscribe to our channel, and you’ll be the first to see them.

On the side, we’ve also been busy learning how to brew our own beer, and we’ve been building a recording/rehearsal studio for our future productions. I’ll leave the construction details out of this post for brevity’s sake, but for those of you who are interested in studio construction, some details are available over here and here.

Busy days ahead

I’ll wrap up by summarizing the events we’ve got coming up in the next couple months. There’s quite a lot of them already and Bill is still hard at work lining up more. Click the links for more details (address, website, cost, etc).

• Apr 15, 2011 – Pittsburgh, PA @ CONSOL Energy Center
  We’ll be playing outside at the Trib Total Media Gate before the Pens playoff game!
• Apr 29, 2011 – Pittsburgh, PA (US) @ Club Cafe w/ RFH
  Our long-time buddies in RFH have asked us to play at Club Cafe again, which always makes for a great evening…
  We’ll try to play a little… *ahem*… faster this time.
• Apr 30, 2011 – Mercer, PA (US) @ The Sidebar
  This is a cozy tavern in downtown Mercer we like to frequent… the folks there are always receptive.
• May 7, 2011 – Altoona, PA (US) @ Blair County Ballpark – Pints for Pets Brewfest
  One of our most exciting gigs yet, the Pints for Pets Brewfest is one of PA’s largest gatherings of micro-and macro-brewers… Go here for some more info. We’re playing the last slot, at 7:30pm.
• May 15, 2011 – Pittsburgh, PA (US) @ The Pittsburgh Marathon
  We’re sharing a slot with our good friends, Amplifiers. Here’s more info about the marathon.
• May 21, 2011 – Grove City, PA (US) @ Blue Ribbon Tavern – YLS and The Electracons
  Sure to be a fun night! With the help of the mighty Electracons, we’ll be shaking the foundations of downtown Grove City.

There’s a handful of additional shows scheduled and even more in the works, including some sweet-looking festivals and brew fests this summer, but I’ll cut it off there and send out another update when the schedule is more stabilized.

Until next time…

Thanks for listening! Your support means everything to us.
-The Slipper