ALBUM RELEASE PARTAY!

Busy times, sorry it's been a while.  We've been out pushing our wares all over town and now we're all enjoying a thanksgiving break.

The week before last we had our album release party. Holy toledo.  What an amazing night.  Not only was it a Tuesday but it was kinda cold and miserable out, and yet tonnes of people came down to Beatbox to celebrate the release of our album Unresolved Heart.



There were 2 other bands playing - the amazing Rowsy Bosch and beautiful Adonisaurus.  We decided that we'd all share responsibilities in terms of manning the ticket booth and merch table, which gave us an excellent opportunity to catch up with people as they came in the door.   One of my favorite moments was standing in the ticket booth with Dr Scott as some of his old friends (whom he hadn't seen in months) arrived.  He was honestly close to tears.  We all know that sometimes you can't be bothered going out and listening to EXTREMELY bass-driven dance music after a long day at work but man, people came, and they came with energy and joy and it was one of the happiest things in my life.



The set went really well, I was totally exhausted by the end but super proud of how we'd pulled it all together. We got to share our first music video with our fans and supporters first and publicly thank Mr Aron Kantor for putting up with us and making us look so damn legit.

In a way, the night was exactly what CD release parties are supposed to be - a chance to revel in all the hard work of making the album before you start drowning in all the hard work of promoting the album!  Which, we are getting on with now.

But for one more moment of reveling...

One of the things I'm consistently blown away by is the amount of help our friends and family are willing to give us.  It's totally amazing.  Totally.  I feel so lucky to have such a supportive and encouraging group of people around us all the time, and it makes me want to work harder just to honor the commitment that they've made in us and our music.  

Thank you all for your support. 

If you'd like to read a review of the gig and see some amazing photos taken by the one and only Brendan McWeeney then click here. 

An ode to Rilke

Whew. It’s done. Unresolved Heart – our debut album – is out and available here.

It’s been such a crazy journey and it’s terribly exciting to finally share it with people!  The album’s name and title track came from a verse by an incredible poet and writer from the 1900’s named Rainer Maria Rilke.  If you’ve never read any of his work, I’d absolutely recommend it, especially if you’re at all interested in love, the artistic process or creativity.

I was given a copy of ‘Letters to a Young Poet’ in my 20’s.  It’s basically a collection of responses that Rilke had sent to a young poet named Mr Kappus who had written Rilke asking for artistic advice and direction.   His advice is beautiful and thought provoking, his concepts of love, the importance of loneliness and solitude are sometimes hard to fathom but I found myself pondering his words a lot during the time we wrote Unresolved Heart. 

If you’ve heard the album you’re possibly wondering how the hell the influence of a 100 year old poet results in songs about one night stands, relationships and getting drunk, but bear with me…

When we were 90% of the way through the album I realized that most of the songs were about that period of time between big, consequential relationships – you know, that time when you vacillate between wanting your old lover back sooooo badly, wanting a quick meaningless shag, swearing you’ll be single forever and wanting to find the ‘true love of your life’. 

For me reflecting on those periods has been incredibly revealing, and kind of fun.  I wasn’t facing any of those experiences directly during the recordings but at different times Ricky and Dr Scott were, so I got to re-imagine some of my own experiences through their situations.  Which brought me back to Rilke. And love, and solitude, and marriage (or lack of it for some of us gay folks here in the USA). Anyway, two things really stuck with me, and have done since in my pursuits, failures and successes in both love and creativity.

‘A good Marriage is one in which each partner appoints the other to be the guardian of his solitude’

‘Be patient towards all that is unresolved in your heart, and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and books that are written in a very foreign tongue’

I hope you enjoy Rilke’s words, and the album as much as we enjoyed making it.

xxJezabel

The First Music Video

Just a few weeks ago we shot the music video for “Straight Girls” – our first single - right here in San Francisco.  Ever since, it’s been a nervous wait to see the final product which will be released in the next couple of months. 

We are so lucky to be working with Aron Kantor, of Dirty Glitter. He is a visual genius with such a contagious and playful energy.  Check out some of his work and you’ll see why were super excited to work with him.

We want to keep the overall look and feel of the video secret until the debut, but I wanted to share some of the highlights for me; number one was the overwhelming support we had from friends and fans. The commitment and enthusiasm from people (who we were depriving of sleep) was humbling and inspiring.

Number Two was watching Aron work, setting up shots and wrangling the three of us into shape.  Even though the shoot meant two very long nights, running into early mornings, Dr. Scott, Jezabel and I were totally happy to be filming. Funnily enough I caught Aron asking all three of us individually to not smile after our first take. I think we were so excited that it was hard not to.

I’m excited to see all that was captured those two nights, even more to see Aron transform the images and music into a blend of Gunsel & Glitter magic. I can’t tell you how nice it is to be lucky enough to have creative people on board that you can put complete trust in, and who inspire you with their dedication. 

I can’t wait to share the final product with you soon.

Until then,

Ricky

All you need is Love...and the rest of those lyrics

We are in the thick of recording our debut album.  It’s exciting and pressured times in the Gunsel House. We’re well over half way there, but we’re still furiously working away on the remaining couple of songs. 

In between writing and rehearsals I try to keep up with the daily news but I find it hard not to let the often desperate state of the world affect our music too much. 

For obvious reasons the ‘equality’ and ‘gay marriage’ debates are quite tender issues for Darling Gunsel, and it’s been hard not to become saddened by the immensity of mud slinging that is smothering the Internet, the papers and the white house. 

Quite simply it makes me sad.  And consequently, my song writing of late has been a rollercoaster ride from angry to sad to depressed and back.  Now of course these emotions are all fine and dandy, but I realized that my anger isn’t helping much (and it certainly isn’t creating music that’s very fun to dance to).

I talked a little to Gunsel, who posed an interesting question to me.  He suggested that instead of trying to change the minds of others, (who believe in their views as resolutely as I believe in mine), it might be better to focus on the similarities we all have as human beings.  He said “through specificity comes great universality”.  Which to me is a good reminder that although two people may disagree on the issue of same-sex marriage, at a fundamental level both people long for the same things: joy, security, liberty and love.

I know, I know, it’s not going to change the world, but it’s helping me finish this album with a happier heart!  And, it reminded me of the beautiful simplicity of one of my all time favorite songs:

“All you need is Love!  All you need is Love!  All you need is love, love.  Love is all you need”.

Anyway, back to the song-smithing.  I can’t wait to share the tracks with you all soon.

Hope you’re all loved and loving.

Jezabel  

Trip to New York

New York! I've been here for a few weeks meeting with industry connections, checking out some live shows and generally getting inspired by some amazing people. I hung out with a friend of mine, DJ Seymour Butts from Stereogamous and saw some great shows. We went to see the Scissor Sisters, TRST and Light Asylum. I love going to see electronic bands and how they perform. They were all so inspiring to me. It makes the inspiration so much more real when you get to chat with the bands afterwards and realize that they are all great people too!

I also spent some time in upstate New York at a friend's farm. Nothing like nature, a comfortable home and good people to inspire music. Randomly our videographer, Aron Kantor from Dirty Glitter joined us on the farm as well. We were able to chat about the upcoming music video for Analog Digital. He's such a creative and positive man!

Heading back to San Francisco tomorrow. It will be nice to reconnect with the band, finally finish out our album, play some live shows and make our premiere music video. I haven't been excited about a project like this in a very long time.

Inspiration is all around, sometimes it takes looking at something familiar from a unique perspective to make it shine.

Dr Scott

Countdown

As the countdown moves closer to our first performance and release of the first single, our three member little gang has somehow already created quite the buzz.

Sure we each told "a few friends" about the band and a few others have heard some of what is to come just by being at the right place at the right time.  It’s kind of amazing how quickly everyone is coming on board. Some joining us on facebook have only heard the name ‘Darling Gunsel’. Wow, now that's cool! :)

At the same time I have been dealing with some technological terrors on the side.

For the last month I've been trying to keep alive a PC that, like a spider who refuses to not get stuck in the bathtub, truly wants to die.

At times I think it's personal. This machine doesn't want to cooperate. Other times I almost think someone or something is playing with me.

Who is it? Who keeps showing up in our studio at night after Jezabel, Dr. Scott and I leave?

This force is like a wicked fairy, always moving and tinkering with our musical instruments and electronics.

Gunsel loves to challenge you, whether you like it or not and maybe the forces of good and evil are around to assist his every wish.

Raving Lyrical

37 days until our preview performance!  I’m equal parts excited and terrified.

This week I’ve been trying to put the finishing touches on some of the lyrics for the new tracks.  One of which is called Lady.  It started out as a bit of a sultry jazz number all about those incredibly amazing women who are classic, timeless, pillars of strength.  You know, the kind that don’t need to flaunt how fabulous they are by wearing thousand dollar shoes because wit and style just exude from their very pores. 

So, I thought I’d share three amazing women with you on this blog, by way of aspiring to their greatness and appreciating their finesse.  In no particular order:

 Katharine Hepburn – Amazing.  Have you seen her in The Philadelphia Story? It’s one of my favorites.  She always seems to be cast as the strong, wealthy woman who has these grand moments of realization that there’s more to life than money and power (a mighty important lesson if I do say so myself).

        Princess Diana – a woman who did have it all (by most measures) but who still chose to pursue true love and happiness rather than suffering in an unhappy situation.  What’s more, she was friends with Elton John long before being a fag-hag was hip.  I love how she looks equally comfortable in haute couture as she does in workout pants.  Awesome.

            Gilda Radner – holy hell!  If you haven’t seen her tribute to the Punk Rock types on SNL then you need to do it now!  I didn’t realize how troubled Radner was until I started doing research on her for my lyrics.  Despite her inner pain, Radner was one of the funniest women on television, and in my opinion one of the smartest.  I love how she didn’t mind making a bit of a dork out of herself, and was willing to push herself to the extreme to make a point. 

Sometimes I like to imagine how amazing it would be to have these three women over for dinner – it would be dynamite!   Right now though, I’ve got to go have dinner with the men in my life.  With just over a month to go, things are pretty busy in the House of Gunsel. Ricky Terry just got a sexy new drum module which we’re working into our performance and Dr Scott is busy transforming the end of Ladies into this crazy dub-step breakout with a major build and all sorts of surprises. 

I cannot wait to share Darling Gunsel with you all.    It can't get here soon enough. 

Much love, 
Jezabel