R.I.P. Scorpion, Viva la Kittens!

Well much has happened at the time of last writing. Caverns has played rad shows and completed a rad EP we are all psyched about. We will be releasing said ep "Kittens!" on Dec 29th at The 9:30 Club, opening for one of our favorite (and in Ross's case his very favorite) bands of all time Clutch. Russian Circles will also be there melting faces.

The other funny thing that happened a long the way is that the album "Silk Scorpion", which this blog is named after, never actually was made. The reasons for this stems mostly from excellent developments in the world of Caverns which made putting out an EP sooner better than putting out a full length later. The show with Clutch is only the beginning, we have tons of other amazing stuff on the horizon which we hope to announce in the new year. However, this will be the last post for the Silk Scorpion blog which I leave up as an eternal monument to putting the cart before the horse.

Don't be sad though hoss, this doesn't mean that the material we had slated for Silk Scorpion won't be put out in some form, just not under that name and, for some of it, not by the band Caverns.

From now on, check out www.myspace.com/caverns and (toward the end of the year cause the page is getting revamped) farc.net, our record label website!

Thanks for those of you who actually read this thing. We'll still be blogging up a storm over on myspace.

Drums and Guitar are done, SON

Yep, it's official. We have put the drums and guitar in the can for our new e.p. "Kittens!". Let me tell all of you dudes and dudettes in bands who are looking to record in the area: J. Robbins is a genius and you should give him your business (and "the business" if his wife Janet is ok with that). The sounds and tones homeboy got on this record are incredible. Seriously, it is sonically one of the raddest things I have heard. It's called micing technique folks, and J. is the master. Oh and he is pretty much the coolest dude in the world and has tons of rad stories about all the cool shit he did as a member of Government Issue, Jawbox, and Burning Airlines.

We mix in november once and this thing should be in your filthy litte mits by the end of the year.

We love you all.

We record this weekend!

They call it labor day for a reason. This weekend we go back to the magpie cage (which is where J. Robbins concentrates his godliness) to finish drums and guitar tracking for our latest labor of love, our new e.p. "Kittens!". Shortly thereafter Pat will lay down piano (which is usually done at gun point so as to increase the "oh shitness" level of his playing) and we'll add a pinch of additional sounds and electronics. Mix and master hopefully in october/november and get it out to you clowns by Kevin's birthday, which is December 28th. Hopefully more material to come soon.

Anywho, we got a bunch of shows coming up so head over to out myspace page to check out where and when you can catch us next coach.

New Release Announcement!!!

Ok since nothing of substance has been written here for months, I am going to make amends for that by going into great detail about stuff almost no one really cares about!

So, we’ve kept our mouths shut for a while about the state of our first full length Silk Scorpion. Part of the reason for this is that we have that whole inconvenient day job hassle and the other part is cause circumstances have come along that have made us reevaluate our plans.

Let me begin with a little background. We recorded our First e.p. "Sing Along" back in February of ’07. As many of you know, the E.P. contains 5 songs. We chose those 5 since they represented the most cohesive picture of our earliest compositions and were the most “finished” songs at the time. As many (i.e. 3 out of the 4) of you know we’ve been playing "Stop Being Paranoid" and "Spread it Like a Virus" since our very first shows. We had already written many other songs but for one reason or another we decided, even though we felt many of them were stronger than the songs on “Sing Along”, to hold onto them until we went to record our first full length.

A little while ago Kevin wrote a little ditty called Silk Scorpion that we all got really jazzed about. It represented for us a new direction for Caverns. While the song kept our trademark sound of pretty piano coupled with crazy guitar, it was a vast departure from earlier jams like This Are Syntax. We liked the song so much we decided to name our debut LP after it.

At the end of May we went to start recording songs for our debut LP. We got down 6 songs, all of which were conceived before, during or shortly after the “Sing Along” recording and all prior to the writing of Silk Scorpion. Shortly after this recording session the band went on a hiatus to attend to real life shit like our jobs. However, during this time Kevin ended going on a writing frenzy and came up with a bunch of newer material which sonically felt more like the brethren and sisthren (I made that word up) of Silk Scorpion than what we had already laid down. So basically on the one hand we have a bunch of rad shit that sounds more akin to the Sing Along material, though superior, and on the other a bunch of equally rad shit that sounds more like the new direction Silk Scorpion has taken us in.

This has left us with a conundrum: we have a slew of material that we love and desperately want to get out to you guys but is too much to put out on one record, unless we did a Use Your Illusion style deal (but we all know that is followed up by hair plugs, embarrassing sports jersey and booty shorts combinations, and albums that take 2 decades to put out). Plus, if we did that we’d have to wait until like mid ’09 to get you dudes and dudettes anything. Even for a 19 song album that’s way too long, son.

So here’s the plan: We will be releasing a 7 song e.p. entitled “Kittens!” (yep!) this fall/early winter ‘08 containing new stuff that will not only expand our sonic palette but absolutely smokes everything on Sing Along (by the way I’m not shitting on Sing Along, I am just really super stoked about this new stuff). Then, sometime in mid ’09 we will unleash the album Silk Scorpion on you clowns. Just to whet your appetites for destruction here are some song –

Kittens! track list.
1) Spread it Like a Virus
2) Brodown: High Noon
3) How to Seduce an Android
4) Stop Being Paranoid
5) Dance you Son of a Bitch
6) Arctic Phantoms
7) Resmasculator

Big show Tomorrow at The Black Cat

First thing is first: I'm sure in every decade since the late seventies DC musicians have yearned for "the good old days" when DC was known as a city where musicians took chances and made fresh, compelling music. However, I doubt that desire has ever been so deep as it has been lately. With the recent amount of punk pop/new wave/dance punk garabage that has been shat out of this city for the last oh say 3 or 4 years it has been easy to forget this town was once a bastion of originality and experimentalism. I think many of those who remember the first time they heard Frodus, Fugazi, Nation of Ulysses and so many other legendary dc bands are awaiting a new DC musical renaissance where the dance/new wave dragon which flew in here from New York or LA or London or some other industry town prizing fashion over music is finally slain and DC takes back its mantle (lost in large part to Baltimore where most midatlantic radness is occuring these days) as the town where the best underground music is made. That day is coming soon my brothers and sisters...but until then you might as well kill sometime and come see us play our brand of new wave dance punk with Imperial China and True Womanhood!!!!!!

Show starts at 9
We go on at 10:15
The Black Cat
1811 14th Street, NW
Washington DC 20009

Cal Robbins Benefit at the Black Cat Friday!

If you're reading this then you probably already know about this mandatory event. However, we want to stress that this show will be both rad and for a great cause, so unless you are like making love to Kate Beckinsdale for a charity for people with brain tumors this friday, you pretty much will be BLOWING IT by not showing up. By tickets NOW! Buy them here:

http://www.ticketmaster.com/event/15004089E5AC790C?artistid=1144255&majorcatid=10001&minorcatid=60

For more info on Cal Robbins: http://callumrobbins.blogspot.com

Show starts at 9 pm
The Black Cat
1811 14th Street NW
Washington DC 20009
Use the U Street Station on the Green Line

3 weeks/ Track List/Big show

First thing is first: We are playing a benefit for Cal Robbins w/ The Bakerton Group on June 13th at the Black Cat go here to score those tickets NOW so you don't get left out of what will be one of the best shows of the summer. Also, it is for a great cause - to help a young little boy live a happy and healthy life!

So I stand by my promise that more rad content will be put up on here SOON on our home away from nerdspace. Sometime this week Pat and I will be putting the finishing touches on some of the genius level programming Ross did on a few of our new songs. Homeboy is to Reason what Rain Man is to Black Jack (and yes Ross isn't afraid to fart when you're inside a phone booth with him). I also did some more modest programming, which Pat, being our resident Pro-Tools wiz, will hone into something sleek and sexy for J. Robbins to use as the king sees fit.

In T-Minus 3 weeks we will be in the studio with J. Robbins tracking drums and guitar for 6 songs!!!

So, not that this will mean much to anyone since you don't know what most of these songs sound like, but here is the track listing for Silk Scorpion, in no particular order (all of these titles are subject to change):

_ Years, _ Months, _ Days
Silk Scorpion
Brodown: High Noon
Arctic Phantoms
Spread It Like A Virus
Dance You Son of a Bitch
How to Seduce an Android
Test Drive the Jackal
Stop Being Paranoid
Kittens!
Remasculator
Pillow Talk

That's all for now, but check back soon for videos and maybe even some brief clips of new jams!

Set it off

Welcome to Caverns highly self indulgent blog, which will serve as the one stop place on the internerd for all things related to the making of our first full length album, "Silk Scorpion". Though it will be sometime before this jammy will be out for public consumption (we're shooting for 1/09), we are almost finished with the writing portion. With around 7 songs completely finished and 5 more over the 50% mark, we are excited to say we've booked recording time with J. Robbins at the end of may to record the first chunk of the record. In the near future we will post webisodes from our rehearsal space, from the studio, from live performance of new songs and from the set of that show "Cavemen" which this album is a tribute to. Yeah the mars volta isn't the only band who's got concepts coach.

Actually not really. We're an instrumental band, so if we said one of our records was a concept record we'd probably also be too busy smelling our own farts to be writing this blog. Despite this, Silk Scorpion is a cohesive statement, with each track exploring avenues of musical expression that we as a band find exciting. We're dabbling in a bunch of shit: dancy techno influenced music, no wave/noise rock, guitar-pop, extreme metal, post punk, space rock and the doses of jazz, classical and hardcore you've come to sort of know and kind of like from us. Is that nerdy enough to take us seriously?

So stay tuned in the weeks and months to come for updates and content on this blog you won't get anywhere else, you dig?