I’m in a strange, never-experienced-before predicament. I’ve spent some time promoting an upcoming show with some friends here in town, KNAPSACKHEROES! (Yeah, you’re supposed to type it with all Caps and an exclamation point at the end, but I’ll refrain from here on out.) They are a mix of new wave pop with rock and hip-hop. When I moved to Nashville, I first heard about them at a house party I went to. I met a couple of guys, one from this band, and the other from this other band. And they said that I would probably really be into Knapsackheroes because I like hip-hop and I like electronic music.

Well I never got to see them until about a year later. I was doing synth and samples for a band; we ended up opening for them. Immediately, I noticed that they had a really energetic live show. The girl I was dating at the time said that the drummer scared her by how he was playing. Well, that’s a good sign. Knapsackheroes was dangerous.

We did a couple of shows together over the years. I’ve gotten to know them a little bit and they’re a great group of guys. They are actually deep students of pop culture as a whole; and between the 5 of them, they have a wide variety of musical taste. Well, we like a lot of the same bands. So I’ve been excited to get to do another show with them on March 17th at Mercy Lounge along with Details Details (a Postal Service meets Owl City electro-pop artist) and Eyes Around (rock band from Alabama).

On Monday, Vinyl Jones, the rapper in Knapsackheroes, had a stroke. He’s been in the hospital for the past couple of days. I don’t know all the specifics. I’m getting updated with the rest of the world on the Knapsackheroes facebook page. I don’t know if he’ll be okay for the upcoming show. I don’t care about a show. I just hope he’ll be alright and can recover. He’s got a loving family (complete with 8 kids) so I know he has some support. But please pray for him. Pray for his family. Pray for his band.

EDIT: He’s home from the hospital; doing physical therapy and the show will go on! Keep praying. But wow!

And check out the Knapsackheroes! EP

I finally got to do a show at The Rutledge! It was a lot of fun. Robert, Frank, & Andy were very nice to me and all of my friends who came out. Thanks to them; and thanks to Tyrone Carreker, Rebecca Moreland, and Xilehom for allowing me to be on the show with them. Great people.

Click the picture above to get more pics from that night; courtesy of raywen.org

This was a cool show since I finally had J. Prodigal there. It was the first time in a while I’ve gotten to perform the tracks with J. Prodigal since Machismo starting playing on Pandora. So far, it seems like only Wildfire, I Am…, and Machismo from the Machismo EP have been getting Pandora plays. So that was cool to have him there along with James Fate.

If you haven’t heard those tracks from the Machismo EP, you can download it for free.

I had a pretty good show last week at the Mercy Lounge. It was the first show I’d done in a while in Nashville where I had also booked the other acts. Thanks to Billy Gemmill of Naked Without Us for giving me that opportunity; and thanks to Mercy Lounge for having us.

The pic you see at the top is from raywen.org, run by Ray & Wendy. I mention them here because they have been faithfully coming to QE shows for over a year. Furthermore, they’ve been taking pics for several bands and have done a lot to enhance and document the music scene, especially the hip-hop scene and the goth scene. I have a LOT of pics from shows thanks to them. Of course, they have a plethora of pics from that night.

This night was Get Got’s last show for a while until they get their album done. Right now all they have out is their demo. If you haven’t gotten to hear it, Check it out: Get Got Demo by origthedj

Also, were the Billy Goats, I’ve mentioned them here before. I perhaps will mention them again. I might get to do a remix of theirs. If I do; it probably will be to this song:

The big deal of the night was Spice J; I had never seen him DJ before. I mainly booked him because he’s a friendly guy and I’m a friendly guy. but it was my favorite part of the night.  He did kind of a dubstep set. If you don’t know about Dubstep, click. But anyway, I was highly impressed. He says he’ll have a mixtape coming soon. He does play in another band, the Protomen. Probably the best live show in Nashville. My opinion.

Anyway, this past show was one of my favorite shows; mainly because I got a chance to talk to a lot of new people and just had fun overall. I have another Nashville show coming up soon (January 26 @ The Rutledge) so I hope it’s just as much fun.

Keep in touch.

-QE