Lots of times we say “east coast tour” and it’s like two shows in New Jersey or Philadelphia and then Ohio and upstate New York or something – but not this time! All the way from Maine down to North Carolina! Wow, that’s really the east coast! Catch The Hat Madder, rocking tunes, slinging vinyl and CDs of Rotting On The Vine, and just being a gosh darn great group of folks. Go on, catch ’em!
6/15 – Lansing, MI @ The Avenue Cafe
6/28 – Youngstown, OH @ Westside Bowl
6/29 – Albany, NY @ Pauly’s Hotel
6/30 – Portland, ME @ SLAB w/ When Particles Collide
7/1 – Belfast, ME @ Three Tides w/ When Particles Collide
7/2 – Trenton, NJ @ Mill Hill Basement w/ Erotic Novels, Wade Wilson, Tim&Dim
7/3 – Baltimore, MD @ Magpie Cage
7/5 – Asheville, NC @ Sly Grog
7/6 – Newport, KY @ Southgate House Revival w/ Mad Anthony
7/7 – Kent, OH @ Stone Tavern
Yes, GTG Fest 2017 saw the release of the fourth album by The Hat Madder. Isaac and company have been toiling over this for a couple years now and the results are well worth it. Intricate production, lush vocal harmonies, off-kilter lyrics, demented pop hooks – it’s all here in another classic from The Hat Madder. Here’s what Wax and Wane Music had to say in an advance review:
“In a day and age of singles, streaming and withering attention spans, Vander Schuur and The Hat Madder have crafted a thoughtful, honest and intricate album that is most impactful when consumed in one full sitting. “R0771N9 ON 7HE V1N3″ stands as a testament to the power of rock music, the catharsis of sound.”
Check it digitally out below. CDs are available now with vinyl and cassette scheduled to coincide with The Hat Madder’s spring tour.
After a year and a half of planning, He Just Wrote Them Like That – A Tribute To George Harrison is now out. It’s available from our bandcamp for a donation-based download, with all proceeds going to benefit Planned Parenthood. We’re honored and humbled to say that the release party we had at The Avenue Cafe on 2/25 (George’s birthday!) was able to raise over $1000 to Planned Parenthood. This is truly a highlight of our work as a label and we can’t thank the attendees and supporters enough. So check out the compilation, featuring brand new recordings of George Harrison songs by Jason Alarm, Carm, The Plurals, Calliope, The Hunky Newcomers, Johnny Unicorn, The Stick Arounds, Drinking Mercury, Scary Women, Mad Moon, Dim, and more! 21 different artists!
Check out the playlist below for some highlights from the release party. Thanks so much to the Avenue Cafe for being such great supporters of GTG Records and all that we do.
First off, check out this new video for “Facebook” by The Plurals! Shot on tour last summer, coming out now in anticipation of a new tour. Also, we discovered when we tried to advertise this video on the, uh, real facebook that you cannot promote non-official products that have the word “Facebook” in them. Well aren’t we just little rebels. But anyway, that’s the video up there. This is a link to it too, because why not?
Anyway, The Plurals are going on tour. Here’s the tour dates!
3/18/16 – Cincinnati, OH @ Northside Yacht Club
3/19/16 – Beckley, WV @ Wild Fire Saloon
3/20/16 – Charleston, SC @ The Tin Roof
3/21/16 – Savannah, GA @ The Wormhole
3/22/16 – St. Petersberg, FL @ Fubar Downtown
3/23/16 – Gainesville, FL @ Hardback Cafe
3/24/16 – Jacksonville, FL @ The Headlamp
3/25/16 – Atlanta, GA @ Cunt Cave
3/26/16 – Murfreesboro, TN @ Mothershack
3/31/16 – Bloomington, IN @ Root Cellar
4/1/16 – Dayton, OH @ Blind Bob’s
4/2/16 – Ft Wayne, IN @ The Brass Rail
4/7/16 – Grand Rapids, MI @ Rocky’s w/ Jeremy Porter & the Tucos, Vibrolas
4/8/16 – Lansing, MI @ The Avenue Cafe w/ Jeremy Porter & the Tucos, Vibrolas
4/9/16 – Detroit, MI @ Northern Lights Lounge w/ Jeremy Porter & the Tucos, Vibrolas
Fun stuff, and during that little gap in Tennessee at the end of March we’ll be in the studio making a new album! Very exciting.
Honah Lee are going on tour too!
3/16 – Morgantown WV @ Atomic Cafe
3/17 – Dayton OH @ Blind Bob’s
3/18 – Lansing, MI @ The Avenue Cafe
3/19 – Indianapolis IN @ Melody Inn
3/20 – Cincinnati OH @ Northside Yacht Club
3/22 – Lexington KY @ Al’s Bar
3/24 – Greensboro NC @ Tuba House
3/25 – Washington, DC @ Dougout
3/26 – Trenton, NJ @ Mill Hill Basement
Just in time for this tour our friends at Durry Dog Tapes released a limited edition cassette version of Honah Lee’s 2015 LP 33 On 45, so that baby’s now available on vinyl, CD, DVD, and cassette (at Honah Lee’s shows only!). And digital, of course. Insane! Honah Lee are up to a bunch of cool things currently, including collaborating with a member of Kool & the Gang on the theme song for a documentary about Ghostbusters. True story!
The Hat Madder are, of course, finishing their tour now. Here’s the last couple dates!
GTG Sessions returns with a four song burner from The Hat Madder. Check out this fantastic mini-set in the video and then look below for their tour dates!
In case you’re just blacking in, six days ago we began a 366 day (for real) cycle that shall be labelled as “2016.” In addition to celebrating the birth of Leap Day William, this year also promises plenty of exciting releases from GTG Records. Red Teeth will be making their label debut with theLight Bender 7-inch, which is at the pressing plant with an early spring release targeted. The Narc Out the Reds 10″ is mastered, the next Hat Madder record is approaching the mixing stage (and the band will be touring the east coast and midwest with When Particles Collide in March), the new Sleeping Timmy-fronted project Carm’s debut is in the tracking stage, and the Plurals just booked studio time (and a tour of the southeast) in late March for a fourth album. Honah Lee will also be hitting the studio in the spring, but first they’ll be doing some midwest tour dates. Plenty to look forward to! We also have some really cool split releases to announce and a few more things in the works so get those turntables warming up! Is that a thing? You probably don’t want to burn out the belts on those things now that I think about it. Clean your ears… yeah, that’ll do.
But before we get too future-fixated, let’s take a look back on the previous year. We released three albums in 2015:
Honah Lee – 33 On 45 – 12″ LP of 10 catchy as hell punky rock and roll anthems. Reviews earned them comparisons to Superchunk, Lemonheads, Weezer, and more and they put in some serious road time on the east coast and in the midwest, including festival appearances at Death to False Hope Fest and GTG Fest. The LP gained enough traction that Creep Records in Philadelphia took on pressing up a CD version as well.
The Plurals – An Onion Tied To My Belt – 12″ LP and CD of 12 Plurals-like Plurals songs that we had the pleasure to co-release with Florida’s Infintesmal Records and Arizona’s Diet Pop Records. Tommy Plural is the one writing this update and clearly I’m too close to this record to objectively judge it but we did some coast-to-coast touring with it and people at keyboards (not to assume too much of anyone else’s process) compared it to the Replacements, Husker Du, early 90s DC noise, late 80s SST, and more. And to me it’s a (non) reflection of the style of the time.
Dreadpool Parker – self titled – CD featuring 11 tracks from New Jersey rap crew consisting of MCs Wade Wilson and Raymond Strife with Dready Mercury making the beats. We go way back with Ray (Nich Plural has potentially the best “first impression” story every involving him, and I basically quit drinking to excess after a blacked-out night with him a few years ago) so when he told us that his new group was doing some touring and putting out an album this year we had to get behind it (and book them for GTG Fest). As it stands it’s not only the first rap release on our label but also just a blast of catchy, witty, and fun music that stands tall among our catalog. Can’t wait for them to tour again!
In addition to these full-length releases we also issued an archival live recording of the Hat Madder from a 2008 tour date in France, a free label sampler (and more) nonsensically called Time to Val Kilmer, a compilation of acoustic artists and recordings, and, as always, capped off the year with the strangely-becoming-a-legacy holiday compilationBermuda Snohawk. And in addition to these additions we also, additionally, released 10 live music video recordings in the GTG Sessions seriesthat featured, alongside plenty of GTG usual suspects, performances by Nato Coles & the Blue Diamond Band, The Devils Cut, Logan & Lucille, and Croatone. What a year, and more to come.
I thought about making it a goal to have every band I’m in put out a physical release in 2016, but this is easier said than done as I don’t think a single band I’ve ever been in has actually “broken up” but… I’m hoping for Drinking Mercury, Calliope, and Frank and Earnest to all put out some solid product this year too. Calling it!
This week! Four (damn) days of music and shenanigans in Lansing, Michigan, featuring a lot of Michigan talent alongside cool touring bands. Let’s take a look at what’s happening!
THURSDAY 10/08 @ GTG HOUSE, LANSING MI
DOORS AT 8 PM / SHOW AT 9 PM / $5 SUGGESTED DONATION
In the third installment of GTG Sessions, Isaac Richmond Vander Schuur from the Hat Madder serenades the world (and an intimate studio audience) with four songs from across the Hat Madder discography. The Hat Madder will be issuing an archival live performance later this spring so enjoy this little taste of the Hat Madder live experience, a la carte.
GTG RECORDS 