Stormcellar Band Home Page

Howdy Folks.

Good gig on Saturday night, some excellent moustaches in the audience. OK, one in particular, but there you go.  Now I have moustache envy.

It took a while to get folks dancing but we got there :-)

We're still working the new songs from the album in and it looks like its time to investigate some new technology.

On 'Country radio' and 'South of the Border' I'm singing in a lower range (like in Yamanote line) and the vocals sometimes find it hard to clear the rest of the instrumentation. Pete suggested we look at a vocal compressor to keep the vocal levels up when the lower stuff kicks in.

I started looking into pedals that I can manage from stage and found all sorts of neat things, such as boxes that will boost, add effects, auto harmonise and yes, pitch correct on the fly. That's right, forget all that singing in tune nonsense, you can just gargle your way to awesome vocals using some diodes, a small piece of meteorite, a neodymium insert , some software and a 9 volt battery!

Who needs the lungs of whitney, the range of mariah, the lips of Pavarotti and the schnoz of Durante when you can plug your mike into a box and voila, instant fabulousness.

I have resisted the lure of the Dark Side of the pedal board, I mock guitarists (Ha! I mock you!) for their 55 pedal board setups, I have remained, pure, unsullied....oh....Except for the delay pedal for the harp effects, cos that's really cool and....

NOoo!!! I have succumbed!  Oh well. Once again, my credibility dissolves at the thought of new, shiny, plastic boxes with buttons. BUTTONS!!!

Where was I? oh yeah, we played at the Bald Rock, it was neat. Cheers to Big Daddy and his new flatmate, Shane, Wayne, Jane (I am not making this up) and all the folks that spent the evening with us. 

Now I want to go google vocal effects pedals.... mmm......switches and dials. (EDIT NOTE: Thanks to Rosie for hipping me to spell check fail :-)

Woot - All hail Open Source Software! Our happy little site just had a Mobile template added, so if you're reading this on a Smart phone/iPhone etc, things are going to be easier to see! Go on, whip out your device and try it! Just type our website address in to your in phone browser and marvel at the...err...same list of stuff on the main menu but with less colours (until I get a template package)..

Did I mention it was a free upgrade? 

Heh.

It's not every day you get a moment to witness the birth of a new Musical Genre Name.

I was asking local Radio Doyenne (ooh french sounding) 'Salty Dog' Dennis Trevarthen about the word Ozicana, which he used to describe the musical range of songs he had on a recent show.

Saltys taste runs to the same gamut of musical stuff that we write and play, namely, Blues, Roots, Country and Folk.

On Whiskey Talking we did styles ranging from New Orleans stuff to Shuffles to Bo Diddley beats. We followed that up with Chicago blues (little Walter on our Spacejunk EP), Spaced-out Mali-psychedelic-atmospheric stuff with Sweet Misery and Credence meets Pink Floyd on Swamp Monster. On the next album (Nuevo Retro)  we tried combining Boogie and Zydeco (Can't Tax Love), Johnny Winters Rock Blues (Roscoe's Boogie) and Australiana/Folk/Alternative on our song about Ned Kelly. By Carl's chair (album 4) we'd completely lost the plot and went all Hill Billy and occasionally Country back to Jazz Blues. Don't even ask me whats coming up on the next album...well..if you've been to our gigs(or listened to the making-of-the-album videos here, you know :-)

Yep, SURPRISE! It's more of the same mix of different stuff!

Believe me, it's made writing a band description a (expletive deleted...sorry, I've been applying for festivals and summing us up in 30 words requires some literary dexterity)

Our music has been played on: Blues Stations, Country Stations, Americana Stations, Alternative Country, Rock and yes, gasp, even mainstream stations (whereforart thou, my indy credibility? for shame). So this kind of makes it hard to pigeonhole us.

After 5 albums (well, almost 5) we can play a full set of almost any of the above styles, just by cherry picking from the albums.

Neither fish nor fowl, Arthur or Martha, a band that relies on songs not solo's, what do you do...

Blessed be the Salty Dog, for he hath given us a name, that we may put in the little 'Genre' box for submission forms, that we can include in Gracenote databases, that will one day be argued about by purists debating whether this particular song or that particular band fits that particular box.

Spake the Salty:

OZICANA - Australian blues/roots/americana/colonial/urban folk - got it!

ust tell em that mixed up kid Salty coined it'

Amen. I will now pass the communion waffles. (This church has Waffles? All right!)

Howdy Folks.

As you may have gathered from my sudden interest in finishing a camera mounting, it's Video Clip Time Again! Yeehaa!

When working on a Zero Budget (or close to it) clip, we rely on Random Stuff To Magically Come Together ( I do believe, I do believe I can fly-eee....thud).

We also believe in unicorns.

If you want to see the kind of stuff we make, look to the left (or click here), yep, all those little boxes with pictures are clips we've made, or stuff we've shot.

Ahem.

So, we're throwing open the doors and using mixed metaphors to our dear readers and other Random People to get involved in our clips.

I am going to start by listing the clips we have ideas for and what we need. 

Stuff You Might Want To Know

We''ve got lots of ideas for the different songs, some from the coming album, some from other ones we have always wanted to do

We do them when we get enough random stuff together to implement an idea

If we try and things fall over, we don't complain, we just move on and do the one's we can make happen.

We'll shoot weekdays, nights or weekends, completely depending on when all random factors are in alignment

Some stuff we already have, here are a list of the things we ain't got:

Stormcellar Song Videoclip Ideas and What We Need to Make'em

Clip Idea 1. Running Jody

Synopsis: The internal dialogue of a soldier dealing with being home.

Cast:

MALE - 25-40, fit looking, must be able to jog

FEMALE - 25-40 - Playing the wife of the Male character

Clip Idea 2. Hollow Tree

Synopsis: Romeo and Juliet meets To Kill A Mockingbird

 Location

An old dilapidated farm house

A Big, Gnarly Tree in a park or forest

Cast:

3 YOUNG GIRLS: playing jump rope (skipping)

YOUNG FEMALE: Youngish 16-25, has to look young and innocent

YOUNG MAN: Her secret boyfriend

OLD MAN: Mean old cuss, get off my lawn, don't date my daughter

Clip Idea 3 - Suit Yourself

Synopsis: Bi Polar? Bi-WINNING!

Location:

Empty Theatre with stage

Empty LARGE auditorium

Stage

Cast:

HIPSTERS & SYCOPHANTS - Various Hip Looking Peeps

PAPPARAZZI - Come on, work it like a Tiger

MALE - 20-40 - it's mental crisis time!

Clip Idea 4 - Country Radio

Synopsis: Trucker on a lost highway singing along with random people who have gone into a radio station. What does it all mean? who knows!

Location:

Semi Trailer Truck Cabin

Semi Trailer stopping by the side of a road

 Radio Studio

Cast:

JUG BAND - Several dudes dressed a-la O Brother Where Art Thou.

PUNK GRRL BAND: Gothabilly look?

COUNTRY GIRL SINGER: Traditional Country Singer look

TRUCKER: Whatever a trucker looks like

Clip Idea 5 - Light In The Distance

Synopsis: Someone on a train looking out into the dark, see someone on a track

Location:

RAILWAY TRACK: Abandoned station? unused section? Any ideas? I'll be calling State Rail and asking anyway.

MODERN TRAIN CARRIAGE: Any ideas? 

Cast

MAN: 20-50

Clip Idea 6 - Southern Belles

Synopsis: Working guy goes out on a Friday night bender

Location:

WORKSITE - Guys doing roadworks./building work

PUB: Where the action takes place

Cast:

MAN: 20-30 Your Average Aussie Bloke

OTHER: Random stuff we haven't worked out yet

And that's not all the clips we have ideas for, just the ones that we're ready to go with. If you have any suggestions on locations or want to volunteer to be in the clip, message me here

We'll add some more clip ideas soon! Stay tuned! Internet Fame & Glory Await!