having fun

~ Adam Johnston ~ Leave a comment

Since getting ready for the big public show at the Station and then getting our stuff recorded and out as demos, we’ve been looking forward to getting into a rehearsal that didn’t have any expectations, where we could just kick back and have fun. When you have a catalog of material that’s well rehearsed, it feels good to just enjoy it. This is the difference between “playing” and “practicing,” I suppose.

And yet, this morning when we got together for three hours we worked on all completely new stuff that we’d never played before.

This qualifies as real work. We picked through a few standards, some classic soul and blues tunes, a couple of obscure covers, and one that just came up in conversation and suddenly became part of an upcoming set list. One, a Bob Dylan cover, evolved through versions ranging from a straight torch song (too boring) to an uptempo bossa nova (fun to play, off-putting to listen to) to a twangy country romp (hilarious, but we respect our audience too much) to a smooth swing that Tony Bennett could sing in front of a big band–or, if you’re lucky, Caryn in front of our ensemble.

At my last count, I think we have nine new songs–pretty good for a Saturday morning. So much for taking it easy, but like everything else we’ve been doing lately, it turned out to be a lot of fun.

we made a thing

~ Adam Johnston ~ 2 Comments

It’s not as though this has been a secret, but we’ve been keeping it to ourselves until everything was ready.

And now, it’s ready.

We spent an afternoon in the studio and recorded stuff worthy of your favorite speakers or headphones. Either way, turn it up to 11 and listen.

You can go to the dedicated samples page (substandards.band/samples) where there’s a description of each track (plus one bonus demo track!), or push the play button on the player in the side bar (often pushed to the bottom if you’re reading this on a smaller device), or let us know if you’d like these in another format and we’ll be delighted to share them with you.

While you’re listening, here’s a few snapshots from The Proper Way studios on a Saturday afternoon. When we look back on this, we were clearly having a good time playing through the live takes to get each track just like we wanted it. It was also intimidating and stressful. But you’d never know now. We’re proud of these, and grateful that we got to do this. We hope you enjoy it, too.

For gigs, Caryn’s usually in heels. This should be our album cover.
Ian with 4 microphones and a room all to himself
Tim and his fretless bass.
Tim and Caryn getting situated.
Adam warms up and figures out headphones.
Caryn listening to one of our takes.
Hanging up the headphones and listening to tracks in the studio.
Caryn, Caryn’s microphone, and Caryn’s headset all getting a break.
Caryn with Scott Rogers, our recording guru who puts all the sounds through the cables and into the boxes.

get ready

~ Adam Johnston ~ 1 Comment

Remember that time we got to play Jazz at the Station? We’re still tickled about that. Being up on a stage in that giant hall where the sound hangs in space, all in front of old friends and new friends — this all makes for a really fun gig.

People Get Ready
We’re using the train station theme. Listen to the end when Caryn gets the audience on board.

Since then, we’ve been keeping to ourselves but busy working. In the next couple of days we should have something new to share!

Edit: A few days later in the studio, we’d record a demo of the same song while we were checking microphones. It’s fun to play with the variation the song affords.

People Get Ready demo

mixtapes at the Station

~ Adam Johnston ~ 1 Comment

We’re really, really excited to get to play Jazz at the Station next week. This venue is made legitimate by a long list of accomplished and talented musicians engaged there each month. You should go even when we’re not playing, second Wednesday of each month. The music is good, it’s free (thanks to support of Weber County RAMP funding and the hard work of Caril Jennings and Benjamin Jennings), and it’s in a grand hall of an old train station. This makes it a great place to spend an hour, even if there weren’t music playing.

On Wednesday, there will be music playing and it will be ours. We hope to see you there:

Jazz at the Station
Ogden’s Union Station, Grand Lobby
Wednesday, January 9th, 2019
7-8pm

Besides rehearsing, we’re tasked with figuring out what to play. We’ve reached the point where we have material to choose from (in addition to new things we’d love to try out soon), and to squeeze it all coherently into an hour is a challenge. We’ve flashed back to making mixtapes for loved ones, an extinct hobby but one that is responsible for the existence of many of our students. How else would your parents have fallen in love with one another if it weren’t for the artful sequence from Peter Gabriel to Abba to Fleetwood Mac? Um … hypothetically speaking, of course.

Our setlist has some of the same considerations. How do you open enthusiastically but not too over-the-top? How do you sequence from one piece to the next, from fast to slow or from a standard to a re-invention? How do we make sure that Caryn has a chance to breathe in between songs? Where can we work in a subtle reference to trains? And, maybe most important, how do we build up and close the set? You’ll find out on Wednesday with an hour of music that spans most of the last century, but with our own recent spin and whimsy.

It’s us!!

professional courtesy

~ Adam Johnston ~ 1 Comment

We enjoy taking other artists’ music and crafting it according to our own style and musings. On some level, this is just for our own entertainment and enjoyment. But I also think it’s a professional courtesy. We take music that’s pretty good and then see what we can do to make it better. Take, for example, the Grammy nominated The Middle. Sure, it’s already a fine song, but we thought it might be improved if we traded in its dance floor and synth for our blues scales and fretless bass. We think it works quite well. 

Caryn, Tim, Ian, and Adam at Cuppa, 14 Dec 2018.

Zedd & company have literally a million times as many plays on YouTube as we do. But we’ve got a better following at the vegan coffee shops.