Radio Free Current

Howdy all,

I'm writing to let you all know about Radio Free Current, which is more or less geared as a "takeover" of Minneapolis/St. Paul's 89.3 FM, The Current, by its loyal listeners. You can sign up on The Current's page to request songs, including White Light Riot's own Bitter Beginning, Stars, and Out of Sight from the Dark Is Light Enough EP. A bunch of listeners and bands also created homemade spots for the station which will be played all day. Of course, we made our own as well. We went more for the odd approach, so hopefully you'll enjoy that, especially Dan's best shot at a radio voice. Check it out here. More than anything, by signing up/requesting/listening, you're supporting a great local institution; after all, even if you don't like everything they play, at least The Current gives a lot of indie bands a shot to be heard somewhere other than their hometowns, as well as giving great exposure to local acts. They've been great to us, so we're just asking all of you to help support, too.

In other news, we should have a new video up soon from our show last Tuesday at the Varsity. I saw Nate, our video guy, working on it a bit and it's in the same high-contrast vein as the newest pictures, so it looks pretty awesome. We did a little acoustic set down at the 50 office on Friday as a celebration for all the interns who finished up their internships, and hopefully we'll be able to post a clip of that, too, for something different.

We've been writing like madmen lately and have about 13 new song ideas in various stages of development, so we're already hard at work on the follow-up. I'm pretty excited about a few of them -- exploring new sounds, etc., but that's maybe a bit preemptive, huh? Enjoy May, everyone, and we'll see you around. I'm sure we'll be out on the patio at Brit's or Stella's pretty often, so if you wanna buy us drinks, come on down!

- Joe

And things finally start rolling...

I now realize that the only way this blog is going to be worth a damn is if it is constantly updated, and I will try my best to make sure that one of us at least posts once or twice a week. But, I figured that there's no better way to get back into this than with some good news.

As you may or may not know, we have had a finished record (mixed, mastered, packaged) since the beginning of February and have eagerly been awaiting its release. In the last week, we finally are starting to see some light at the end of that tunnel. Our label is finishing negotiations with a great indie distributor (can't say who yet for legal reasons) and then things are really going to start moving. Once the deal is locked down, we'll cement our release date (which is looking like end of July or early August), and then we'll get our asses on the road. We will of course be launching the tour and the CD in the beautiful town that birthed us at our favorite of local venues, the Varsity. We are going to try and make this a major event, and we are going to have numerous guest musicians joining us fully recreate the new CD, Atomism, from front to back. We'll also have a few surprises to make for a memorable experience.

In the meantime/downtime, we have been writing a bunch of new material to put toward the pool of our next album (I guess it's never too early). But maybe it's too soon to talk about that seeing as no one has even heard our first full length. Either way, we are really excited about what's to come.

So like I said, I am going to try and stay on top of blogging and letting people know what's up in White Light Riot land, and as soon as my blog-impaired self learns more about posting, I'll be adding video clips, pictures, and other pieces of entertaining info. Until then, hope the Spring is treating you well.

Mike