Tag Archives: mountain

Breaking down the songs of Mountain, day five – “Friend of Mine”

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FIVE days now until the release of MOUNTAIN. We have some very cool announcements coming, and more good news. We have surpassed expectations and could not be happier about things happening in the Cold Stares world. So much of our success and these good things are because of YOU, our fans being relentless in spreading the word. Press release on Sleeping With Lions coming shortly today. In the mean time I’ll break down one of our favorites from the album “Friend of Mine”….

This one comes from my love of the poetry of delta blues. Son House, Skip James, story songs about real people. Lots of hidden stuff in this song, but it’s mainly about our character who has seen nothing but bad luck. In the end, he knows things are going to go south and when he stands before God he’s thinking “Hope I’m gonna find you’re a friend of mine”. I always loved the line in the first verse “I ain’t gonna lie I ain’t gonna pay rent”, which I borrowed theme wise from Thorogood’s version of “One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer”, where the landlord says “that don’t confront me, as long as I got my rent by Friday”. Our character is down on his luck and already decided he’s not paying the rent. The following line “Devils in the meadow and the dogs been sent”, means I see the trouble coming, and about all I’m going to do is let the dog out to go handle it.
Verse two things have caught up with the character and the police are at the door. Probably a number of things they could be there for, and perhaps none of them our character has done, but he knows his string of bad luck continues. Doesn’t say how the incident proceeds, but we know that he’s got bullets beside the bed and we find in verse three that he’s now on death row and heading to the gallows.
The line in the chorus “I’ve been standing on the levee since I was 6 years old” is a reference to the Levees we hear about in the delta blues songs. Lower Mississippi was notorious for flooding, and a lot of early delta songwriters referenced the Levee as kind of the last defense against the flood. I always loved Son House’s “Levee Camp Blues”, which also is where our song “John” was inspired from. Anyways, “standing on the levee since I was 6 years old”, simple interprets into- I’ve been waiting around since I was 6 years old for something bad to happen. Fairly hopeless, and maybe that’s the environment that our character grew up in, or around, but he’s felt damned from very early on. This is one of our songs that I would consider “Southern Gothic”. It certainly lends itself to the southern gothic novels, and for characters that I’ve grown up around all my life. Hope you enjoy-

13 blackbirds sitting on a fence
17 dollars that my good girl spent
I ain’t gonna lie, I ain’t gonna pay rent
Devils in the meadow and the dogs been sent

Oh Lord bless my soul
Been standing on the levee since I was 6 years old
Oh Lord when it comes time
Hope I’m gonna find your a friend of mine

16 bullets on the side of the bed
Telephone ringing right beside my head
Knocking on the door it’s the county law
Trying to figure out what I’ve done wrong

Oh Lord bless my soul
Been standing on the levee since I was 6 years old
Oh Lord when it comes time
Hope I’m gonna find your a friend of mine

15 years I’ve been waiting on the line
Preacher said “boy its about that time”
Hangman waiting at the gallows edge
Gonna try to tie a rope up around my neck

Oh Lord bless my soul
Been standing on the levee since I was 6 years old
Oh Lord when it comes time
Hope I’m gonna find your a friend of mine

Breaking down the songs of Mountain, day four – “Gone Not Dead”

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WE HIT 6000! In about a months time we’ve added another 1000 people to the Facebook page. That’s what it’s about and our goal is 10,000 by 2019. Please share the page with your friends if they need some rock and roll and help us get there!
6 Days now until the release of “Mountain”. Got a tracking number yesterday on the vinyls. Shipped out the CD’s yesterday from the Kickstarter, and as soon as the vinyls come in the rest of the orders will be filled ahead of schedule. Excited to see what this record does, and very happy with the choice we made. There’s a press release coming out in the next couple days about our progress/success and some more cool stuff next week. Please stay tuned and thank you for continuing to be here, and for telling other folk to check us out. It’s helping!

Here’s a break down on “Gone (Not Dead)”

I wrote “Gone (Not Dead)” in a time period when I was going back to the roots and listening to some influential albums for me. The Cult “Electric”, AC/DC “Flick of the Switch”, The Four Horsemen. Wanted to do just a straight ahead rocker with a fat riff chorus. I liked having those breaks in the verse to get a line in without the music underneath it, which also works great with us being a two piece band as far as dynamics. Lyrically the song is just about being trapped somewhere that is really heavy on you. A lot of tongue in cheek stuff here, innuendos and references. I’ll run through this one line by line below and give you my thoughts at the time I was writing it. I’m not saying the song is about Evansville, but I think we have had some frustrations that we as a band have always been bigger outside of the place we reside. We were getting played on radio outside of Evansville at the time. Still when we look at our reports and numbers we have always had more fans in listeners in Chicago, Nashville, or Atlanta than Evansville, and I think it’s always frustrated us. That being said, I wrote this song two years ago at a time when we were pretty frustrated with some specific situations. For all the things we would take issue with here, some of our best friends, fans and family also are here. But those of you living here, and reading this, probably have had some similar feelings. We just want to see some positive changes in this place and are trying to create that change. But this song could be about anywhere. I guess. Here we go….

Gone (Not Dead)
Dirty water on the holy ground (things are not right here…)
And the preacher done left town (not much chance of getting better, feels like hope has left town)
Spider with 7 legs (again, things not adding up and not seeming normal)
Never trust what your momma says (whoever is telling you that things are cool, and normal, nah, don’t trust them)

Nickel slots on a river boat (a big fancy smoke filled casino with a cheap game. At the time I was getting over cancer the city was letting people smoke in the casino for purely financial reasons, knowing it was killing our citizens.)
Rolls Royce on a dirt road (you can have the nicest things but if you treat them poorly you will destroy them)
Never know where I wanna go, oh no (anywhere but here at the moment?…)

Just wanna be gone from here, and not dead (Wanting to get out of here, before the place literally or mentally kills me)
Just wanna be gone from here, and not dead

Gravedigger with a broken back (Can’t seem to get things done)
Got a train, ain’t got a track (Can’t seem to get things rolling)
5th son of a 7th son (Not much luck at the moment)
Guess I could never really get it done (guess I’m stuck here)

Nickel slots on a river boat
Rolls Royce on a dirt road
Never know where I wanna go, oh no

Just wanna be gone from here, and not dead
Just wanna be gone from here, and not dead

Congratulations to our man Axell Hodges for winning gold!

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Congratulations to our man Axell Hodges for winning the gold on this fall’s X-Games on ESPN!

The video segment was shot to The Cold Stares new single “Sleeping With Lions” and we are very proud to be part of the winning team. The video from ESPN has seen over a million views online and will be shown throughout 2019. Thank you to Monster Energy, Axell and Ash Hodges, ESPN and X-Games for choosing “Sleeping With Lions”.

Hear “Sleeping With Lions” on Spotify now!

Tracks off for mastering!

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Tracks sent off for final mastering touch up for vinyl this morning. Here’s the song listing for-

MOUNTAIN

1-The Great Unknown
2-Stickemup
3-Under His Command
4-Friend of Mine
5-Gone (Not Dead)
6-Wade in the Darkness
7-Child of God
8-Sleeping With Lions
9-The River
10-Cold Black Water
11-The Plan
12-If Your Way Gets Dark
13-Two Keys and a Good Book
14-Killing Machine
15-Mountain

TCS - Mountain

Kickstarter for album “Mountain” to help self fund “Ways”

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Please check out our Kickstarter for “Mountain”, share and tag your friends. And thank you very much for playing a role in Cold Stares history- TCS

A tale of two records, publishing rights, and the struggles of a roots rock band in 2018.

As we began to discuss our next record which would have been titled “Ways” we decided together to pass on the record label offers we had and try to self fund the album in an attempt keep our music publishing this time. For those of you that don’t know when you see our music on a Monster Energy commercial, ESPN or a show on TNT, the money made from those performances actually go back to the record company instead of the artist.

Every record deal offer out there for us at the moment had the record label holding our publishing. Our last record deal the record label held our publishing. At this point in our career we were no longer willing to give that up, and artists shouldn’t have to. It’s hard enough to be a rock band out there right now, and for us to sustain our career we have to hold our licensing. So we decided to try to fund our record with our fans.

Here’s the dilemma. To properly record, produce, and promote “WAYS” we needed to raise around 20k. We have been really struggling on asking our fans to contribute that kind of money. We are a working class band, and we know a lot of our fans are blue collar working folks and to be honest it just felt a bit heavy to us. We built a kickstarter and then mulled for weeks over a discussion on what to do. We lost a lot of sleep, but through a lot of prayer and meditation we came to an answer.

What we decided. We decided we wanted to try to pay for the “WAYS” album ourselves. But how could we do that? Release “MOUNTAIN”.

Backstory- In the beginning of 2016 I was a bit over 2 years out cancer free. At that point I wasn’t for sure what life held ahead, but I knew my goal was to just live and make it to the goal we set with my doctors, five years. I also knew a lot of my friends that had gone through treatment with me had lost their battles. Not knowing exactly what we might have to deal with in the near future, we wanted to write and record everything I could so that if something happened to me I would leave a musical legacy behind for The Cold Stares. So we went in the studio with Greg Pearce and recorded “Dark Dark Blue”, and then “The Southern”. Both of these EP’s were released in 2016 with ZERO PR budget, zero buzz behind them. We also released some singles “Stickemup”, “Sleeping with Lions” and our version of the Allman’s classic “Whipping Post”. What we thought at the time, was that later when we got more well known our new fans would find these older EP’s. What we didn’t understand and what we have learned over the years is that without some PR budget behind ANY release- no one will hear or find it. No one is exactly pushing rock music onto the front page of Spotify or iTunes these days to be seen if you haven’t noticed. Those EP’s were very difficult to find online and most of these songs have never been heard outside of our close immediate fan base. So what we decided to do was take that group of songs, along with a few others our fans had never heard, remix and master them together and release as one album “Mountain”.

This group of 15 songs, all written around the same time, share a common theme and feel and we have always felt that they are just too important not to be presented correctly. Releasing “Mountain” will do a couple things, it will give these songs an opportunity to be heard, give our old fans a few new songs and remasters, and it will also give us an avenue to raise money for our February release “Ways”. We felt much better about raising the money with our fans in this fashion and we think it’s the proper way to move forward.

With your help we can meet or exceed our goal of 5k that will allow us to release “Mountain” and have a reasonable PR budget to get “Mountain” heard. Sales from “Mountain” and any additional money that might be possibly raised from this campaign will go to the funding of “Ways”. Any money we might be short of for “Ways” we will be funding ourselves. We honestly feel that “Mountain” will be our best album release to date, and when we look at the song listing I can’t say any other release comes close to summing up who we are musically. “Mountain” symbolically means so many different things to us, but more than anything what we’ve overcome, on our terms to be here with you. Thank you for your support in getting us here, and beyond. God Bless-

THE COLD STARES