BEAT CONCRETE

An Eclectic Night of Original Music

worldblee — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 18:45:51 +0000

We'll be playing with our new friends Michael Tobias and the Acidic Swamp Band and The Black Penguins on April 9 at Cafe Flo--details in the poster below. We'll be playing at 8:40 PM after Michael Tobias, probably for about 40 minutes. However, no matter when you come, you'll get a great show as the other two bands will be fantastic and we're looking forward to hanging out and watching after we play.

Hope to see you there! Peace, the Beats

(Updated on 3/26 to note the new start time for us as we're going second instead of first now.)

Slipping Away

worldblee — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 02:09:08 +0000

At the end of September, we finished a more rocking version of our song Slipping Away, but it didn't really fit the subject matter of the song, which is a sad ghost story about a fey woman (who may or may not be human) who has departed this mortal coil. So took another crack at it with a softer, more mysterious take. It's still packed with probably too much instrumental detail (the song sounds good with just acoustic guitar and voice), but have a listen and let us know what you think. It's just your normal folk/rock/reggae/jazz song with guitar, harp, reggae bass played on an upright bass, ethnic instruments, and old-fashioned synth stuff. It's almost (shudder) progressive rock!

Slipping Away (5 Dec 2010) by beatconcrete

Peace, David.

Strings and Things

worldblee — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 03:43:03 +0000

Have spent some time in the studio recently, completing Big Hit Song and doing some remixing on Open Now. Big Hit Song needs a little more mixing, but it's close. None of our songs are ever truly finished—they always need a little more work.

Also did some songwriting with a poet friend, adapting her poem and writing music for it and performing the whole thing. I actually love R&B and I did my best approximation of smoovness with her lyrical concept. Beki did some nice harmonies with me on it. It's up on SoundClick, where it shot up the charts to a high of #8 in the 'Funky R&B' category (out of 4,200 songs). You can hear it here.

Speaking of charts, we reached #1 on the Alternative charts for Chico, CA on ReverbNation. Not sure what that's worth to anyone, lol, but we're happy that our pals around the world helped us get there. We have a great group of artist friends from the UK, Canada, Spain, Germany, and other countries that we stay in touch with. You can see some of those artists on our Recommended Artist page at ReverbNation.

We're playing at the DCBA Thursday Night Market on August 26th. Come one out if you're around.

Cheers,

David

June Happenings

worldblee — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 19:12:13 +0000

I've been writing some new songs and exploring my singer-songwriter side a little bit lately. Most recently, I've been working with English folk artist Richard John on a new track. He came up with some chord ideas, then I worked out a verse riff based on them and put a new chorus on it. It's fun to swap ideas back and forth across the Atlantic and I'm pleased with the results so far. You can hear the track I recorded using contributions from Richard on guitar and banjo here. It's a sad song called "The Years"—not sure if we'll play it with Beat Concrete or not; we'll see.

For folks in the North Valley, we're playing the Thursday Night Market in Chico this coming Thursday, June 10, from 6 to 9 PM. Come by and groove with us for a while if you're around. Keep it peaceful and easy, OK?

Thursday Night Market Video

worldblee — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 22:56:01 +0000

Quick vid of us playing last week. Playing on the street; that's our style! Playing for the people! Yeah!

Upcoming Things

worldblee — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 17:42:18 +0000

We are emerging from our winter slumber (yaaawwwwn) on this site with a couple tidbits for our faithful listeners. First, we have a new recording of Desiree, which you can hear on the music player on the right. We put out a version in January, but decided it needed a radical overhaul. We think it turned out pretty good, but your opinion is the one that matters.

Second, we have two upcoming gigs: April 1 at Chico's Thursday Night Market at 6 PM, 3rd and Main Street. We'll play until 9 or so and would love to hang out with you in between sets, so come on by.

On April 17, we're playing a benefit at the Chico Grange's annual Open House. They have a great stage and the hall will be set up for dancing--plus, the Grange is a great community organization and you can learn about their mission. And it's FREE, although donations to the Grange (as well as memberships) are invited. You can get more info here. The event is at the Grange Hall at 2775 Old Nord Avenue (one block east of Nord) and we hope to see you there.

Lastly, we bought a little HD video camera and are starting to shoot some videos. We'll let you know when we have something ready to show.

Enjoy your Spring!

Back in the Garage

worldblee — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 02:05:38 +0000

Since late December, we've been taking some time to work on recording. We've been working on our live performances, and recording is very different, so we've had to take a look at songs we've been performing and approach them differently. For the two tracks we're working on now, we have taken two diverging paths.

The Girl In Number Six is a song we know the recording arrangement for pretty well, having recorded a demo for it previously. While there are several guitar parts we can't cover live, it was just a question of syncing the drums and the bass together more tightly and knocking out our parts. There are still a few tweaks to make, but the version you can hear on the player is pretty much complete.

Desiree, on the other hand, required a complete re-think. The entire song really only has four chords and there are lots of ways to approach it. Finding the right way has been quite a journey, and we're not quite there yet. We need to add one more drum part to the choruses and tighten up a couple of other things to make sure the chorus drives, but the vocal harmonies we've added and the guitar parts are working pretty well together. The important thing is getting the raw emotion of the song across without making life seem hopeless.

If you'd like to download the current versions of these two songs, you can go to our band page on SoundCloud to get 256 kbps MP3s. Get 'em while they're hot! They'll be coming to thesixtyone.com soon.

Thesixtyone

worldblee — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 02:52:04 +0000

We've been fans of thesixtyone.com for some time now. It's a great music site that combines music, social networking, and a game aspect all in one unique package. It's a free site for listening to artist-submitted music, and users control what songs rise to the top by 'hearting' songs they like.

Beat Concrete reflection logo

If you're already on thesixtyone, you can hear us by going to our new band account at thesixtyone.com/#/beatconcrete. We'd love to see you there—if you enjoy our music we can use your support, and it's a fun place to share music and interactions while discovering tons of really cool bands.

Unlike MySpace, there are filters on T61 for finding new music you like--whether by genre, popularity, mood, or by what your friends like. It's a very democratic process and there are thousands of rabid music fans you can make friends with through listening to each other's radios, sharing comments, hyping bands you like, etc. If you just want to listen to free music, you can do that to, but it's really designed for people who want to interact with artists and listeners in a more active fashion.

"One Quarter Full" is the first song we posted, and it's up now at thesixtyone.com/#/beatconcrete.

Peace.

One Quarter Full

worldblee — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 00:28:55 +0000

We did some recording over the holiday break, and One Quarter Full is the first song to come out of that. Starting with a stereo track of drums of rhythm guitar recorded at rehearsal (no click track, so the tempo is um, natural), we layered 3 guitar tracks, 2 vocal tracks, and 1 bass track to make what is (surprisingly) probably our best-sounding recorded track to date.

Kudos to Beki for playing upright bass at 160 bpm and making it sound so easy. We added a little drive to the bass, so it doesn't really sound like an upright (maybe a fretless electric), but it is. She also did a great job singing harmonies and we had fun working out new harmonies on the fly—each verse has a different feel even though the main vocal melody is the same.

For such a gloomy song in terms of lyrics, it sounds very happy. The backing vocals are just one track of Beki and I singing together on one mic, Beatles-style, but they came out pretty lush. Ken's going to have a hard time learning his background parts while keeping up his drumming!

If you want to download the track, you can get it on SoundCloud right now for free--click here.

Hope you enjoy the song, and as always, we value your comments.

Peace.

Healthcare is a right for all

worldblee — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 00:16:10 +0000

This pretty much sums up how I feel about the political struggle to the health care problems afflicting our country.

Peace, David