Clarification and Catch Up

First, Happy Father's Day!

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So, yeah...

It's been forever since I've done this...

Shame on me. I didn't mean to take a 3 month hiatus on the blog posts, but that's what happened.


Since 2010 is half over, I'd like to revisit my goals for this year.

• recording my next album - temporarily on hold


• adding a live drummer to the live set - still looking for a drummer (know anyone?)


• summer regional tour - today is the first day of summer...I have no dates booked


• finalizing the fairy concept album (story and songs) - Oooh! Almost done with this one!

Needless to say, I still have a lot of work cut out for the remainder of the year.

I have been playing a bunch of cool shows in the past few months, that I didn't blog about. I'll do a quick recap in a bit but I do want to clarify something that has been bothering me lately. I've noticed that the press has been dubbing the "One Woman Musical Enigma" as a self proclaimed title, which is not true. Amanda Wells from Landlocked Media called me that a couple years ago and I just decided to run with it. Mostly because it sounds cool and I know damn well I couldn't think of anything on my own.

Why is this bothering me?

I don't know why but I feel like when something that bold is "self proclaimed", it means I'm arrogant as shit. I mean C'mon, my name is Syna So Pro, and I'm constantly having to re-iterate the "So Pro" part means "Solo Project" not "So Professional". So when I ran across my in-studio performance, and a recent album review that has this self proclamation, I feel... ah I don't know...vain... and lame for being that vain. So I guess before this gets too far out of hand, I need to change the artwork to reflect that Amanda Wells stated the quote, not me.

...
I'll probably get to that in about 3 months.

But the last few shows I've played have been very interesting:

June 4th @ Firebird
I pretty much killed it. One of the best shows I've played in a while. Plus had a great time watching The Breaks debut their first show, as well as Russell Bliss perfecting their performance.

June 5th @ RFT Showcase
Yeah...I sang a lot. People really really dug it. But the PA system was not powerful enough to handle my set up. Plus I was having some weird volume issues with the drum machine. I still feel as though I finished strong and I think I blew some minds.

June 9th @ Darkroom (Chicago, IL)
Uhh...I have been trying and trying to block this terrible memory from my skull. I have absolutely no idea what happened. Basically, my rig failed me in a way it has never fail me before rendering me looking utterly confused and desperately trying to figure out the problem, while everyone stares at me in silence. I finally just gave up and did an acapella set to finish off the show, but Good God that was embarrassing!

June 24th @ CAMSTL
I'm hoping the trend of "BEST SHOW EVER" to "WORST SHOW EVER" stops here. I'm playing with 3 really awesome bands and I want to impress all.

Time for the Facebook Event!


Before I go, I'll try to update you fine people a bit more often...
I'd say about twice a month.

...until next time...

~Syrhea

Chicago and le Wood

So, this is way late...

What can I say other than I wanted a little break. I had actually written a 'day by day' run through of our (Dottie plus me) trip to Chicago. I was going to post it...but it was stupidly long, and I didn't want to proof read it or bore you all with my overly detailed dribble. Plus I was being lazy. So I'll tell you how Chicago was in 12 short sentences...

• 1 - Dottie fell 2 hours after arriving resulting in a terribly bruised foot and ankle.


• 2- -We stayed, for 2 of the 3 nights, at Bill Tucker's apartment with another artist Derek (Mallow Hazard)


• 3 - I actually had to go to Guitar Center twice that weekend and knew it was going to be just a douchey (sp?) in Chicago as it is here in StL.


• 4 - Had some vegan pizza and it was delicious


• 5 - Bill, Derek, Dottie and I all played awesome sets the first night at Fill in the Blank Art Gallery


• 6 - a Light Sleeper helped me unload and load the gear Saturday night, since Dottie's foot was non-weight bearing


• 7 - Derek, Dottie, Bill, Kristen, and I stayed up until 3 am talking of old high school stories, Michael, how gay 2012 is going to be, as well as taking pictures of Dottie's foot.


• 8 - Dheeru's apartment has ridiculous amounts of stairs.


• 9 - Honey BBQ was delicious


• 10 - Fellow former shoegazers Matt and Julien came out to Cole's in full support on a Sunday night.


• 11 - The Sunday show was surprisingly awesome considering the day of the week, the L running every 15 minutes, and our overall exhaustion from the trip.


• 12 - We fell asleep around 4am on Monday morning resulting in about 3 hours of sleep before we loaded gear and headed back to StL.

In a nutshell, I had loads of fun and I'm confident that Dottie will laugh at the experience in the future... It's not sad, it's awesome!

This past Friday I played the Maplewood Arts Walk at the Turner Center for the Arts on Sutton. Unfortunately I didn't arrive there until, literally, 15 minutes before I was scheduled to play. I had absolutely no time to check out the event and I regret that I had to work that day. The show went ...eh... reasonably well. I didn't practice at all between the shows in Chicago and the Maplewood shows. But I still managed to reach a handful of people there resulting in a success.

I uploaded a song that I performed in Chicago to youtube and facebook today...
check it out...




I'm still struggling with the video camera.

First, at my CD Release show, I set it up, but never hit record.

Then, a month later, I forget the camera entirely.

After that, in Chicago, I repeated to set up the camera but never hit record on the first night. The second night, I set it up, didn't hit record, while on stage, asked one of the audience members to record me, only to have the battery run out after one song.

At the Turner show in Maplewood, I left it in the car.

I don't know why I can't remember to do these basic things...

...oh well.

I also revamped my website (synasoloproject.com) and would kindly appreciate any and all feedback. Just let me know what you like or don't like.

I hope you all have a great Thanksgiving!
I'm planning on eating myself into a coma this year.

...

...

~Syrhea

What's Ahead in My World

Yo Yo Yo!

The show this past Sunday went really well. Half Handed Cloud's new album is definitely worth $10. Well orchestrated, arranged and executed, while each track is no longer than a minute and a half. Yet the album seems so seamless... Pretty effing genius if you ask me. Thanks to Alberto for, once again, asking me to play one of his shows. It was fun as always. My only regret was forgetting to bring my video camera to capture Kevin's awesome studio space. Something I WON'T forget to do in CHICAGO!!!!

That's right peeps...Dottie and I leave in 3 days. And I haven't told her that we're not coming back. She'll find out when she reads this. (To Dottie: We're not going back to St. Louis.|From Syrhea)

I've recently decided that I'm no longer going to solicit for Indie Record labels.

*GASP*

But WHY Syrhea? You're album is the shit!
Ah...you're sweet. It has nothing to do with me not thinking my album is good enough, but everything to do with the fact I'm convinced that I can just as easily start my own label. Of course I'll have a lot of business books to read up on...might as well enroll myself in a few classes. I figure if this endeavor is an epic fail, I can always go back to trying to solicit other Indie Record Labels. We'll see how that goes for now.

I sent a fresh new track to the peeps on my mailing list earlier this week and judging from the feedback I've received, some of them are convinced that I should start my own studio. Or at least stop paying money to use other studios. And I guess this could be feasible but I'm not an engineer and I'd rather have live drums on all of my albums. At the same time if I just save about 2 grand (which is about as much money it'll cost to go to a studio) and buy a G5 with Pro-Tools, I could have a start to my own studio. Baby Steps...baby steps... Maybe one day..

But first, I'm planning on heading back into the studio sometime, before June, of next year. This time the songs that I actually play live will be on the album and I won't feel so guilty during the release show.

I've finished the outline to the "Fairy Album" (scratch title) and I'm currently writing a couple more songs to finish the story out. I'm thinking it'll be pretty cool...

...hopefully...

Playing now is either What's Ahead, (a track you've heard via myspace or the website) or My World, an instrumental I just demoed the other day. There will be vocals on the track, I just didn't feel like recording them at the moment.

Oh and please ignore the crappy guitar solo in the middle...I was just trying to get the arrangement where I wanted to. I'm kinda torn: Should I add violin or not? I hear parts but I'm thinking I have too much already...thoughts?

I'll post more "unfinished" demos here in the future...

I figured this is a Music Blog so I should post some tunes from time to time...

Anyway, I think that's it.

I need to go practice for the Chicago shows this weekend.

Lates!

~Syrhea