Shortwave Dahlia dot org

For those of you lucky enough to be in the area!

Saturday, March 14, 2009
7:00pm - 10:00pm
Memphis Roller Derby at the Mid-South Fairgrounds

Shortwave Dahlia will perform at Halftime!!!

Upcoming gig!

Shortwave Dahlia is back out and performing! New album is imminent!

Here’s the show details–If you’re in the area, make sure to come on down and enjoy an incredible show!

The Full Moon Club
1718 Madison Ave
Memphis, TN
With Clouded Son and Black Max.
Friday, January 9, 2009 at 9:00pm

If you can’t make the gig, check out the merch!
Cat Room Records Merchandise

Now that the album is in it’s final stages, stay tuned for order information, track listings and maybe the occasional taster!

In anticipation of the new Shortwave Dahlia Album coming out, I sent some questions to guitarist/programmer Ethan Grim and he was kind enough to answer them. So here you go, 10 questions with Ethan Grim!
1. When did you first pick up a guitar? I started playing bass at 15. the more I played + wrote songs, I realized how limiting the bass could be for songwriting. Since the guitarists I played with never seemed to play what I heard in my head, I began to teach myself guitar chords to help show them what I wanted. I never performed live on guitar until about 5 years ago when I did so to help out some friends in need. And who were your first influences? as a kid, I liked new wave. but musically, the players I first emulated were predominantly heavy metal. for bass playing, it was all Iron Maiden + Rush songs that I learned to improve myself. on guitar, I have a completely different aesthetic. I really like guitarists who have a certain atmosphere or texture to their sound, like Johnny Marr or Robin Guthrie. for the more straightforward songs, I gravitate more towards guys like Johnny Ramone or William Reid.

2. When it comes time to add your guitar work to a song, do you try to puzzle piece your tracks into what’s already there, or do you try to mold the song to the riff? for the songs already written when I joined, I added on top of what was there, working around the existing song structure. as we collaborate, the song may evolve directly from any idea that’s introduced, including guitar parts or keys or bass or vocals.

3. I can hear the Cure-style influences in your playing, but who would YOU say are the main guitar styles that you enjoy playing? Ringing chorusy stuff? Metallic Shredding?  Buzzy Jesus and Mary Chain riffs? I love them all! to be totally honest, I am limited in my guitar playing. I believe my talents lie more in knowing what sounds best for each song and working around that.

4. What types of effects do you feel work best within the Shortwave Dahlia construct? And which ones would you like to toss into the mix? the guitar effects don’t really stray too far from what’s been done before, but you may notice some of the newer songs have effects tweaked into the programming and even the percussion.

5. What other musical avenues would you like to pursue within the band, apart from guitar and programming? that’s really what I signed on for, and I am perfectly satisfied with the role I play in this band. I do have another project I have started outside of SD where someone else is playing all the guitars and I handle the programming, bass + vocals. more on that as it progresses…

6. You added some programming to the latest tracks. Do you find programming more creatively flexible than guitar, or is it just another instrument to express yourself? there’s definitely more range in programming + sequencing, but at the end of the day, it really is just another instrument.

7. Having been in a a few bands before Shortwave Dahlia, do you find that the friction  within a band makes for better music or worse? it may give some extra fire here + there, but too much tension without a common goal will kill a band. the bands where one half hates the other tend to have a lack of balance in the entire sound.also, who wants to work with people they do not like?

8. What songs from Shortwave Dahlia’s catalog do you like performing live the most? What covers would you like to do live? “Vara” is  one of the few not ’set in stone’ that we actually improvise on live. I programmed a cover version of Charlie the Unicorn’s “Candy Mountain Cave” song and printed the lyrics up for Jack, so maybe we’ll sneak that in  one day… [interviewer’s note–SQUEE!]

9. What would you like to see happen for Shortwave Dahlia with the next album? I’d like to expand our reach, promote ourselves further out. we obviously have the internet to shop ourselves around. maybe if we could arrange more performances in more areas, like at least a weekend trip out of state, all the better as well.

10. Just for the gear-heads like me– What guitar would you kill to have, if money was no option? I like the ‘fishbone’ guitar Andy Summers had in the Synchronicity II video…

Thanks again to Ethan Grim for talking to me.

Directly from the proverbial horse’s mouth, and by horse I mean JACK!

“Okay, so here’s how this is going to work.

The Wilderness is expected to be rolling out in August or September.  A pre-order price of $10.00 gets you:

1. A compact disc of the album (remember those things?  shiny platters of digitally coded music?)
2. A selection in the weeks before the album’s release of downloadable practice sessions, in which we roll through the new tunes as well as some old favorites.
3. Inclusion on a special e-mail list with which we give you news on the album’s development.
4. Last but not least, your very own shortwavedahlia.org e-mail address!  Now your spam has somewhere new to go!

PayPal your money over to shortwavedahlia@yahoo.com OR to send it by snail mail, contact Jack at jack@shortwavedahlia.org for the mailing address.
So what do you say?  Ready for the next phase of Shortwave Dahlia?”

From the mouth of Jack….

Shortwave Dahlia has another gig coming up!
Saturday, July 5th
The P&H Cafe
1532 Madison Ave
Memphis, TN 38104

Shortwave Dahlia
with our friends
J.D. Reager & the Cold-Blooded Three (http://www.myspace.com/jdreager)
~and~
The Original Cyndi (http://www.myspace.com/theoriginalcyndi)
$5 and shit goes down at 10:00 PM.

Per Jack!

http://popsballot.memphisflyer.com/

Please do a write-in vote for “Shortwave Dahlia”. It would blow my mind to see us actually get written up as an honorable mention.

So get over there and do the Shorty D write-in!

I had a chance to toss some questions to the band, about the new album and their newest member, and here are their replies!

1: Now that you’re heading into your second full album, has your sound changed or evolved since the last album, Illuminated?

Jack: It’s evolved a lot! The process is much different to the point that it’s almost impossible for me to equate the two. Illuminated was an educational experience for me as much as it was an artistic endeavor. I was learning how to utilize the studio, but I wasn’t really trying to stretch myself as a songwriter so I hear it now and think about things I could have done better. In this process, I can actually say “Why don’t we do this instead?” It’s nice to have people to bounce ideas off of.

Mark: Because everyone in the group has the chance to contribute to the songwriting process, the sound cannot help but have changed as we have added more people. I think that the great thing about this particular group of people is that we all liked the sound of Shortwave Dahlia before we joined. No one is trying to strike off on a tangent, instead it is more a matter of developing what we had as a starting point.

2: You’ve added a fourth person to your band, Dana Liebchen. How has her addition modified the Shortwave Dahlia sound?

Jack: It’s allowed us to do more of the instrumentation live, which has improved things. Also, with Dana on board it’s nice to be able to focus on an instrument at times, personally. I’m no Freddie Mercury.

Ethan: There is definitely a new dynamic working with Dana. We are all impressed by her abilities and proud to include her as one of her own. So far, her influence has been subtle, as I believe she is still trying not to change things too much. But, I also believe that her role will grow the more comfortable she gets working together with us. “Paramour” is so far the most obvious Dana-influenced song, as her voice carries it to a level we could not have without her.

Read the rest of this entry »

DJ John Bowles over at One Kind Radio Webradio has “Loose Arrow” on his playlist for this month’s edition of his alternative/Indie radio show.

Click over and take a listen!

He also included a link back to this webpage so “Hello!” to anyone swinging by for a visit! Take a look around to learn more about Shortwave Dahlia and scan back through the blog here to see what the band’s been up to!

Your favorite electronic shoegazing pop quartet from Memphis now has a Facebook page:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Shortwave-Dahlia/9450546977

Be sure and become a fan! The more the merrier…

Love and gourami,
J