Bring on the Recording!

Just a quick one to say that we will start recording our next album at Fantasy Studios in the first week of March: http://www.fantasystudios.com/studio-d.html

I am so impatient about this stuff, so when when things finally start rolling, it's a giant relief. We just have to practice like maniacs for the big day.

We'll start with our new songs "The Legion" and "Time Bending," and hopefully make our way to "Kindling For Fire" if there's time.

We are super-excited to work again with the Rondo Brothers, the guys who produced our last album, Secrets of the Sea. It's good to work with cool guys who challenge us to go after the unexpected.

Speaking of new songs, if you're in the Bay Area and have tickets to our Noise Pop show at Bottom of the Hill, we'll be playing a few songs from our upcoming album. If you don't have tickets, unfortunately, the show is sold out. However, there will be 50 tickets held at the door for Noise Pop badge holders and early bird walk-ups. Doors open at 8.

Stay tuned for blogs with video and photos from our recording sessions. Can't wait for the fun to begin!

xoxo, Loquat

Time For Some Show and Tell

It really means the world to us when people out in the world respond to our music by making more art. That's one of the main reasons we started this blog, so we could share the other music and art that people have given to us over the years. 

Here, we'll start with one brand-new thing and one from a few years back. A while back, I met a rapper named Musik G (www.myspace.com/theuga). I've been a hip-hop fan for a long time, but to my surprise, he really liked our song "Swingset Chain" and told me he wanted to add a third verse to the song. He really nailed it in my opinion, and it brings my original feelings from when I wrote the song back to the surface. 

My best friend Kari lives in Minnesota. We grew up together in MN, three doors down from each other. When I moved to California, it broke both of our hearts a little. Then she moved to Chicago for college. We spent eight years only seeing each other maybe once or twice a year. And then, to my delight, she moved to San Francisco and lived right down the street from me again. But it was not to last. The pull was too great for her to go back to Minneapolis, and that's when I wrote this song, with a broken heart. 

Finally, we're sharing it. I really can't believe it took this long (well, I did lose it in a drawer for a a couple years): http://www.loquatmusic.com/flash/music/ssc_rap.mp3

And below is a cool piece of art our cool Facebook fan Knisterpapier made for us. (And yes, that is a rooster in the photo with me.)

If you have anything you want to share with us, we'd love to see it. Please send it our way: loquatmusic@yahoo.com.

xoxo, Loquat

Yes, Loquat is a band (and a fruit)

Everyone has a blog. My grandmother probably has one. For some unknown reason, Loquat never had an official blog. Maybe it's time, considering I (Kylee) am a writer by day and band nerd by night.

I say "band nerd" because that's what we called ourselves in high school. Loquat has a history of having members who were once band nerds: We were in marching band, concert band, jazz band, etc., in high school. (I will not share photos, at least not of me.) Interestingly, our lead guitar players—former guitarist, Earl Otsuka, and current guitarist, Chip Cosby—scoffed at the idea of having to wear a ridiculously hot wool tuxedo, silver overlay with a giant "O" on it, and a plastic hat with a feather plume, marching around a football field in August with a saxophone playing Twisted Sister's "We're Not Gonna Take It."

Anthony and Christopher were in the drum line together, so they were a little bit cooler than me. Coop played clarinet, so we were about the same level of nerd. Maybe one day Coop and I will do a clarinet/saxophone duet. Heh.

At any rate, Loquat has been around for a while now. We're not planning on packing it in anytime soon, so we might as well finally get to know each other, right? There many stories we haven't told. Feel free to share your embarrassing high school stories (past or present) with us, so we can commiserate. We're here for you.

And we'd like to be meet more of you, too. We are dying to get back on the road. Come hell or high water (in which case we'll have to fly), we will. But first, there is the business of recording a new album. We're writing songs, liking some and getting frustrated with others, writing more, working them out in the rehearsal space, writing more, angrily kicking some to the curb and stomping on them, writing more, swearing at my computer, writing more (pretty pissed off now), and writing yet more. And it's still not enough. Making music is both thrilling and insanely aggravating. Sometimes you're inspired; sometimes you think you're a hack, and you think you're going to get found out.

The good news is that we're meeting with our producers the Rondo Brothers—who worked on our last album, Secrets of the Sea—this week to show them what we've been working on. It's good to have some outside perspective to keep us on course. We'll also be doing a tour of a studio in the Bay Area. It's time to make a plan. Otherwise, we'd just keep writing songs forever. We really want to git 'er done. In the meantime, we do have a show coming up for the Noise Pop festival, Saturday, Feb. 27 at Bottom of the Hill in San Francisco. There won't be tickets available for long, but for now, you can get them here: http://www.stubmatic.com/bottomofthehill/event/2754

And if you want to know anything about Loquat, please leave us comments and questions. We don't want to be working on an album in a dark cave by ourselves, so some human contact would be nice.

Love, Loquat