Sometime around 20 years ago, Michael (Mike) and Anthony (Tony) started a garage band. Since then, nearly every single Monday evening, we gather with friends on the top of Bradford Mountain in Dry Creek Valley to eat, drink, be merry and lay down all original tunes in a variety of musical styles, from rock to jazz to country. And every Tuesday morning, Mike & Tony show up to work with the same sleepy smile and the same question -- "Songo?" That's Brunstone code for "What was the most memorable song of the night?" At long last we have decided to share (inflict?) our SONGOs with the rest of the outside world. We're not pros and the recordings aren't perfect but we hope you can share in the spirit! And when you leave the studio please EXIT THROUGH THE GIFTSHOP and buy some wine. You'll really be helping out the little guys in this crazy business.
GOLD RUSH (Monday Feb 24, 2020)
Niners got whooped. Cold, hard fact. I suppose we should all just be really glad they even got there. Yeah, whatever... But one glorious victory to come out of that mess was a song we wrote as a tribute to our team, the San Francisco 49ers. The week before the big game we actually sent a copy of this tune to the 9ers cheerleaders, The Gold Rush Girls, hoping they might do a between-quarter dance to it. I don't think they did. Anyway, it's a song we mostly made up on the spot, recording and mixing individual tracks which we rarely do. Seems like we cranked it out in less than 2 hours. But the groove is timeless...
Niners got whooped. Cold, hard fact. I suppose we should all just be really glad they even got there. Yeah, whatever... But one glorious victory to come out of that mess was a song we wrote as a tribute to our team, the San Francisco 49ers. The week before the big game we actually sent a copy of this tune to the 9ers cheerleaders, The Gold Rush Girls, hoping they might do a between-quarter dance to it. I don't think they did. Anyway, it's a song we mostly made up on the spot, recording and mixing individual tracks which we rarely do. Seems like we cranked it out in less than 2 hours. But the groove is timeless...
FEEDBACK. We love it.
DO IT AGAIN TONIGHT (Monday Sep 23, 2019)
We realized very early on (over 20 years ago) that the scene on Monday nights at Hanta Virus Studios was way too cool to be kept our little secret. Word leaked out, locals started whispering, and some nights the breeze would carry faint whiffs of our sublime creations to the ears of fortunate folks on the valley floor below. It started innocent enough. One of us would bring a friend up. Next time that friend might bring another friend or two. They say you can’t have too many friends but, really, the socializing got a bit out of hand. Our creative time was shrinking and the music was suffering. We had to lay down the law. Now, we really only have one rule at Hanta – nobody comes up unless invited. It was the only way to preserve the vibe and keep the all original tunes flowing. That said, we do have a select group of bros who are still always welcome. And a very few of the select are talented musicians who we invite to jam with us on certain nights. This particular Monday up came Mark and Chris (a.k.a, “the Blues Brothers”). Didn’t hurt at all that they brought ribs and fresh caught salmon as an offering.
We realized very early on (over 20 years ago) that the scene on Monday nights at Hanta Virus Studios was way too cool to be kept our little secret. Word leaked out, locals started whispering, and some nights the breeze would carry faint whiffs of our sublime creations to the ears of fortunate folks on the valley floor below. It started innocent enough. One of us would bring a friend up. Next time that friend might bring another friend or two. They say you can’t have too many friends but, really, the socializing got a bit out of hand. Our creative time was shrinking and the music was suffering. We had to lay down the law. Now, we really only have one rule at Hanta – nobody comes up unless invited. It was the only way to preserve the vibe and keep the all original tunes flowing. That said, we do have a select group of bros who are still always welcome. And a very few of the select are talented musicians who we invite to jam with us on certain nights. This particular Monday up came Mark and Chris (a.k.a, “the Blues Brothers”). Didn’t hurt at all that they brought ribs and fresh caught salmon as an offering.
FEAR & HATE (Monday Sep 16, 2019)
So we got this new keyboard, a pretty nice one. And we're having such a blast jamming with it that most of our recent recordings end up being 20+ minute spontaneous 'explorations', shall we say. Pretty much all of it is brilliant and beautiful, but not ready for prime time. Perhaps a bit less beautiful is this gem from the vault circa who knows how many years ago. In the early days, especially, we played a lot of fast, loud punky stuff. I think maybe our smoke machine may have been working back then. Anyway, the sentiment of this song has not changed one bit.
So we got this new keyboard, a pretty nice one. And we're having such a blast jamming with it that most of our recent recordings end up being 20+ minute spontaneous 'explorations', shall we say. Pretty much all of it is brilliant and beautiful, but not ready for prime time. Perhaps a bit less beautiful is this gem from the vault circa who knows how many years ago. In the early days, especially, we played a lot of fast, loud punky stuff. I think maybe our smoke machine may have been working back then. Anyway, the sentiment of this song has not changed one bit.
SOW YOUR OATS (Monday Apr 29, 2019)
Great to be back on the air! Sorry to deprive you of your weekly taste of musical genius lately but Amsterdam and Bruges were just stunning, thanks for asking. I saw a poster in Antwerp announcing a Neil Young show in July. How insane is that?!? You just can't take the rock out of some old men. This song is not rock and nothing like Neil Young.
Great to be back on the air! Sorry to deprive you of your weekly taste of musical genius lately but Amsterdam and Bruges were just stunning, thanks for asking. I saw a poster in Antwerp announcing a Neil Young show in July. How insane is that?!? You just can't take the rock out of some old men. This song is not rock and nothing like Neil Young.
BLACK BLOOD (Monday Apr 22, 2019)
Here's an incredible fact about the band that, oddly, probably rarely occurs to any of us -- we always get along, all of the time. We never have serious arguments, we don't have hidden conflicts, we never criticize someone's effort (well, o.k., maybe during horseshoes). We're good friends. That's what made it easy when Joe came up one fine Monday a few years back and pretty much insisted that he was in our band. I seem to recall a lot of earnest points being made as he pitched it to us but I don't think it really mattered. We all knew Joe and we knew that he was one of us. And it didn't hurt that he was the drummer and singer in a band in the Healdsburg scene that we loved, Mark Twine. That band had broken up recently and Joe was ready to put down the dough and get back to the show (see related story on Monday Feb 11). And the rest is the best to come.
Here's an incredible fact about the band that, oddly, probably rarely occurs to any of us -- we always get along, all of the time. We never have serious arguments, we don't have hidden conflicts, we never criticize someone's effort (well, o.k., maybe during horseshoes). We're good friends. That's what made it easy when Joe came up one fine Monday a few years back and pretty much insisted that he was in our band. I seem to recall a lot of earnest points being made as he pitched it to us but I don't think it really mattered. We all knew Joe and we knew that he was one of us. And it didn't hurt that he was the drummer and singer in a band in the Healdsburg scene that we loved, Mark Twine. That band had broken up recently and Joe was ready to put down the dough and get back to the show (see related story on Monday Feb 11). And the rest is the best to come.
Yep, been a week or two. It happens. But here's a little teaser about a giant moth ( I came across it the other day and it made me laugh). This song was written about 23 years ago and this jam is from our early (loud) days, maybe 10ish years ago. And I'm very proud and excited to introduce the very first BRUNSTONE PRODUCTIONS multi-media production -- Wow! Here's what you do -- simply crank up the volume on your speakers, click on the PLAY button above, then immediately click on the link below and hit the MUTE on the YOU TUBE video. Heh.
MOTHRA!
MOTHRA!
MORE WAR (Monday Mar 18, 2019)
Yeah, I get it. It's pretty simple, I guess. Humans have been killing each other since we became human. And plenty of other species kill their own, sometimes for no apparent reason. And with time we propagate and our numbers swell and then the resources it takes to support our population become more scarce and the competition for each resource gets more intense. Toss in religious extremists, uber-wealthy power freaks and unstable world leaders and, yeah, things are gonna get disturbing. But all that knowledge doesn't help when you see what's going on out there, day after day, year after year. Sometimes it makes me want to scream.
Yeah, I get it. It's pretty simple, I guess. Humans have been killing each other since we became human. And plenty of other species kill their own, sometimes for no apparent reason. And with time we propagate and our numbers swell and then the resources it takes to support our population become more scarce and the competition for each resource gets more intense. Toss in religious extremists, uber-wealthy power freaks and unstable world leaders and, yeah, things are gonna get disturbing. But all that knowledge doesn't help when you see what's going on out there, day after day, year after year. Sometimes it makes me want to scream.
MARIA (Monday Mar 4, 2019)
Sometimes there just ain't no SONGO. Last Monday was big fun but nothing really clicked. It happens. Instead, I offer up this rare gem from deep in the vault. Way back in 2006 we some how struck up an email correspondence with Chris Harford, one of our all-time favorite musicians. Chris has long been part of the East Coast music scene and has jammed and recorded with a long list of diverse greats including Gene and Dean Ween (Ween), Sim Cain (Rollins Band), Michael Hampton (Parliament-Funkadelic) and Richard Thompson. I have no idea why we ended up inviting Harf to take a break from touring and fly across the country to help us work Harvest at the winery for a couple of months for very little pay. And I have no idea why he accepted the invite. Turned out he was (and still is) a beautiful human being and we made both great wine and music that year. This tune is one of the few surviving recordings of our post-grape stomping jams at Hanta that season. We had never actually heard the song before which explains the ongoing tutorial while we play. Damn, that was fun.
Sometimes there just ain't no SONGO. Last Monday was big fun but nothing really clicked. It happens. Instead, I offer up this rare gem from deep in the vault. Way back in 2006 we some how struck up an email correspondence with Chris Harford, one of our all-time favorite musicians. Chris has long been part of the East Coast music scene and has jammed and recorded with a long list of diverse greats including Gene and Dean Ween (Ween), Sim Cain (Rollins Band), Michael Hampton (Parliament-Funkadelic) and Richard Thompson. I have no idea why we ended up inviting Harf to take a break from touring and fly across the country to help us work Harvest at the winery for a couple of months for very little pay. And I have no idea why he accepted the invite. Turned out he was (and still is) a beautiful human being and we made both great wine and music that year. This tune is one of the few surviving recordings of our post-grape stomping jams at Hanta that season. We had never actually heard the song before which explains the ongoing tutorial while we play. Damn, that was fun.
URGE (Monday, Feb 25, 2019)
Songs like this are a major reason we're so fired up to come up to Hanta every single Monday (although the friends and the food and the horseshoes and the fire and the dogs and all that help, too). On very special evenings we may end the night with some instrument-switching, mind-bending, free-forming jams. In this case, everything just flowed, start to finish, and the lyrics simply poured through a shining hole in the sky. Could be THE dance hit of the year.
Songs like this are a major reason we're so fired up to come up to Hanta every single Monday (although the friends and the food and the horseshoes and the fire and the dogs and all that help, too). On very special evenings we may end the night with some instrument-switching, mind-bending, free-forming jams. In this case, everything just flowed, start to finish, and the lyrics simply poured through a shining hole in the sky. Could be THE dance hit of the year.
QUIMBY (Monday, Feb 18, 2019)
This track is not from Monday. We didn't record. It happens. But recently I was pouring through boxes of cassette tapes (anybody remember those?) and came across this gem from the band vault that I digitized for posterity. I gotta think we recorded it 1995 or 96. But check it out -- it's a great example of what happens when 2 hyped-up guys with guitars come home from the second-hand music store with a cheap drum machine and a beautifully ancient analog 4-track recorder. The whole thing was done in a single day -- right after hearing this weird message on my answering machine (anybody?) one fine morning. Not long after that Peaches Midland drifted away to live the contemplative life in the woods of Washington. But the music kept going.
This track is not from Monday. We didn't record. It happens. But recently I was pouring through boxes of cassette tapes (anybody remember those?) and came across this gem from the band vault that I digitized for posterity. I gotta think we recorded it 1995 or 96. But check it out -- it's a great example of what happens when 2 hyped-up guys with guitars come home from the second-hand music store with a cheap drum machine and a beautifully ancient analog 4-track recorder. The whole thing was done in a single day -- right after hearing this weird message on my answering machine (anybody?) one fine morning. Not long after that Peaches Midland drifted away to live the contemplative life in the woods of Washington. But the music kept going.
BLACK BLOOD (Monday Feb 11, 2019)
Right next to Hanta Virus Studio, right across the fence, is a small cabin with a very small outbuilding beneath a beautifully-creaking old wind turbine. For a very short period of time, maybe 15 years ago, the sadly now-forgotten local band Mark Twine would jam in their shed the same nights we jammed in ours. We would hang out a bit. They seemed pretty cool and they were seriously laying it down. At some point around then, we lost Shocka -- he packed up his git and moved to the other coast. It happens. Meanwhile, Twine got booted from the property and we didn't see them for a bit. Then it seems like Cole Black showed up at Hanta one fateful Monday night to grab a guitar he had stored there while they were moving their gear out. It wasn't hard to get him to sit in for a tune or two. And, really, that was it, perfect fit -- this guy was gonna be lead guitar in our band. And this little protest song was one of the first tunes Cole brought to the band, just to clinch the deal.
Right next to Hanta Virus Studio, right across the fence, is a small cabin with a very small outbuilding beneath a beautifully-creaking old wind turbine. For a very short period of time, maybe 15 years ago, the sadly now-forgotten local band Mark Twine would jam in their shed the same nights we jammed in ours. We would hang out a bit. They seemed pretty cool and they were seriously laying it down. At some point around then, we lost Shocka -- he packed up his git and moved to the other coast. It happens. Meanwhile, Twine got booted from the property and we didn't see them for a bit. Then it seems like Cole Black showed up at Hanta one fateful Monday night to grab a guitar he had stored there while they were moving their gear out. It wasn't hard to get him to sit in for a tune or two. And, really, that was it, perfect fit -- this guy was gonna be lead guitar in our band. And this little protest song was one of the first tunes Cole brought to the band, just to clinch the deal.
UMM... (Monday Feb 4, 2019)
I blame the food. We always eat extra well at Hanta and Monday was no exception. Pokey-caught wild steelhead served 2 ways -- with fresh-cooked rice atop dried seaweed sheets with a touch of soy, and plopped on a fire-warmed corn tortilla with a swipe of tomatillo/avocado/lime salsa. Difficult to concentrate on music with that going down. Or it could have been the fact that it began to snow outside -- the last time that happened at Hanta was around 20 years ago. It certainly could have been the fact that a certain unnamed band member made bad travel plans and missed the jam (summarily, he was issued a formal written warning). Whatever the reason, we didn't bother recording this week. It happens. To amuse yourselves instead, check out this video treasure from the Hanta vault. God Save Pizza!
I blame the food. We always eat extra well at Hanta and Monday was no exception. Pokey-caught wild steelhead served 2 ways -- with fresh-cooked rice atop dried seaweed sheets with a touch of soy, and plopped on a fire-warmed corn tortilla with a swipe of tomatillo/avocado/lime salsa. Difficult to concentrate on music with that going down. Or it could have been the fact that it began to snow outside -- the last time that happened at Hanta was around 20 years ago. It certainly could have been the fact that a certain unnamed band member made bad travel plans and missed the jam (summarily, he was issued a formal written warning). Whatever the reason, we didn't bother recording this week. It happens. To amuse yourselves instead, check out this video treasure from the Hanta vault. God Save Pizza!
LULLABY (Monday Jan 28, 2019)
Where do songs come from? Sometimes somebody will come in with something that's pretty much good-to-go -- lyrics finished and written out, a basic chord sheet for all to follow, a quick walk-through and, BOOM, you have a song. As I recall, this tune was not that. A few years back Cole had this extra sweet tone going down and was picking some real pretty chords and the rest of us just kinda eased into the groove. Seems like somebody mentioned that it sounded like a lullaby. Then Joe did what Joe does and stepped up and delivered, on the spot. Thus began a song and the rest is garage history.
Where do songs come from? Sometimes somebody will come in with something that's pretty much good-to-go -- lyrics finished and written out, a basic chord sheet for all to follow, a quick walk-through and, BOOM, you have a song. As I recall, this tune was not that. A few years back Cole had this extra sweet tone going down and was picking some real pretty chords and the rest of us just kinda eased into the groove. Seems like somebody mentioned that it sounded like a lullaby. Then Joe did what Joe does and stepped up and delivered, on the spot. Thus began a song and the rest is garage history.
SPACE OUTRO (Monday Jan 21, 2019)
This is the tale of a man who is kidnapped, shoved into a tiny capsule on top of a rocket, and shot off into space. Or maybe he wasn't actually kidnapped but is confused and really, really panicking. Or he could be totally wasted on hard drugs and making the whole thing up. Anyway, in my fantasy this song is what would come out of putting David Bowie and Peter Green into a small, dim room together for a long time. The entire anthem is long and challenging and maybe not public-ready just yet. In the meantime, enjoy this edited outro -- the totally improv re-entry of the space capsule back to earth. Have a nice day...
This is the tale of a man who is kidnapped, shoved into a tiny capsule on top of a rocket, and shot off into space. Or maybe he wasn't actually kidnapped but is confused and really, really panicking. Or he could be totally wasted on hard drugs and making the whole thing up. Anyway, in my fantasy this song is what would come out of putting David Bowie and Peter Green into a small, dim room together for a long time. The entire anthem is long and challenging and maybe not public-ready just yet. In the meantime, enjoy this edited outro -- the totally improv re-entry of the space capsule back to earth. Have a nice day...
CEO MAN (Monday Jan 14, 2019)
Written around 2009 during the "Great Recession" when many people were losing everything while CEOs of big banks and big corporations who caused it were walking away with $30 million bonuses. Take it baaack!!!
Written around 2009 during the "Great Recession" when many people were losing everything while CEOs of big banks and big corporations who caused it were walking away with $30 million bonuses. Take it baaack!!!
WORKING MEN (Thursday Dec. 27, 2018)
Christmas on a Monday. Bittersweet. But we made up for it with a valiant effort by all on Thursday.
Right around the turn of the century there was this nicely dressed man who showed up one sunny day at work and was hanging out with some of the vineyard crew around an old picnic table under an old oak tree. We later found out he was from the Union and looking to drum up support. I guess the scene really struck us because we instantly made up the first line to the chorus and we would sing it, out-of-the-blue, all the time, for no good reason, for months. So, of course, we had to eventually write a song for that single line.
DO IT AGAIN TONIGHT (Monday Dec. 17, 2018) A straight up country-style drinking song, this version featuring Joe on drums, J on bass, Cole on lead git and Pokey laying down the rhythm git and vocals. And that's Pines, sitting by the fire, on cracky backups. This was the first jam of the night and things were still getting set up so the recording quality is a bit rough. But the spirit of men playing music shines through, I reckon.
DRAIN-O (Monday Dec. 3, 2018) This little ditty goes back maybe 15 years or more. As I recall, we made it up on the spot, in a single take. I think initially we had the slightly beer-influenced great idea of writing an advertising riff for everybody's favorite drain clog cleaner. We never actually got rich off the tune but it still makes us laugh every time we play it!
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