'Birthday Suits for Bender' - Sept 5th @ the Elbo Room

This past year I have made many new friends in the 'industry'. A lot of them have been made by attending shows, others have been made when touring, but a majority of these new friends came out of my experience working with Chicago Noise Machine. It is easy to make friends when you are joining a group of like minded individuals, but I never thought I would get so close to so many bands and individuals! One of the closest friends I have made in these experiences is Brian Bender.

I first met Brian booking a show at the Elbo Room. I was upset to find that good ol' Skip Warner had moved on from talent buying and this new guy, Brian Bender, would now be handling the shows. He vibrated at a higher frequency and his laughed creeped me out. Needless to say our first conversation turned out pleasant and I looked forward to working with him again. The date has slipped away from me. It was sometime last year...but ironically enough the first bill we booked with Brian had one of the bands cancel. In order to not leave a gaping whole in the night A Birdsong Valentine, a band that Brian sang in, rushed over from an earlier gig and filled up the slot. That was a really stand up thing to do and also gave me a chance to meet Brian face to face and for Reverie to melt his face off.

Later on in August of 2008 we joined forces with Chicago Noise Machine and ever since I have been working with Brian (and many other lovelies) on a day to day basis. Even without Chicago Noise Machine I would have seen Brian out at shows or on stage, but Chicago Noise Machine keeps us REALLY close. We have since had the opportunity to work closely on all Chicago Noise Machine endeavors. I probably spent at least on hour on the phone with him daily and had endless number of emails shared during the grueling creation of the first I AM FEST.

Every year Brian has an annual birthday bash. If you have ever seen the flyer it says "Brian Bender's ______ Annual Birthday Bash" and there is a picture of Brian's face smashed up against a pane of glass (example from last year HERE or to the right if you're reading this on Blogger). This will be the third year he is having it at the Elbo Room. I was surprised to recently find out that Brian has never seen the Elbo Room sold out. This is surprising because he WORKS really hard with the bands he books and on the Elbo Room. This man deserves a sold out show. Usually A Birdsong Valentine performs at Brian's Birthday Bash, but unfortunately the band has decided to move on to new opportunities, thus leaving a gaping hole in the night of Sept 5th. When Brian offered the slot to Reverie I couldn't resist. Not only would I love to perform at my friends birthday party, but if you can recall from earlier REVERIE owes A Birdsong Valentine a solid.

I want to sell out the Elbo Room for Brian and I want to be part of the first sold out show since Brian has been at the Elbo Room. Brian is an integral part of the 'scene' or 'industry' if you prefer, and any and all bands, other industry folk, and friends should help make this happen! Reverie is making the ultimate sacrifice. Say goodbye to cool jackets and tight jeans....

In order to give Brian his ultimate birthday wish we (Reverie) have agreed to play naked if the Elbo Room sells out on Sept. 5th (Brian Bender's 3rd Annual Birthday Bash). Lets give this man what he wants. After all.... It is his birthday!

'Birthday Suits for Bender' - Sept 5th. @ The Elbo Room.

Exciting News from Reverie!

A YEAR IN REVIEW

Hey Everyone!
We wanted to take the time to thank all of you for the fantastic support you have given us over this past year – and oh what a year that has been for Reverie!mTo take a look back on the year we have highlighted some of our favorite moments.

August 2008: ‘A Boy and His Crown EP’ release party at the METRO!

September-November 2008: Creation of
Chicago Noise Machine and massive sold-out Launch Party at the Cubby Bear!

January-February 2009: Filming and release of official music video for “MONSTER”.

March – May 2009: Creation of the I AM FEST

June 2009: Performance in the I AM FEST at the Congress Theater, Reverie signs with Andrew Coate from Collaborate Management

July 2009: Taste of Chicago show, NASCAR Chicagoland Speedway show, 15-show-in-16-day tour!




JULY TOUR FOLLOW UP
What a wonderful year it has been! Outside of the many numerous 3 day runs and one off shows in college towns, Reverie spent 2 weeks on the road this past July. This tour was full of both triumphs and trials, it served as a great time of growth, both as a band and as individuals. Overall it was a huge success for Reverie. For those of you just becoming familiar with Reverie or just joining our various groups spread across the vast and magical Internet-land, we kept a journal of our adventures – complete with pictures and video that you can access right here (just scroll down the page after reading this entry!)

Please take some time to read our entries and share in our experiences with us. We would absolutely love to hear your feedback on what’s here, and also on what you would like to see and hear from us as we move forward! We’ll continue to update that site regularly.


BRIAN BENDER'S 3RD ANNUAL BIRTHDAY BASH @ THE ELBO ROOM
Speaking of moving forward, now seems as good a time as ever to announce our first big “homecoming” show in Chicago! Mark your calendars right now because here’s this info: (seriously – stop reading this and grab a pen to write this down. We’ll wait…………..)

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 5TH
Reverie @ ELBO ROOM
(2871 N. Lincoln Ave)
9PM

We’ll be playing with some very talented artists named Mason's Case, Digital Mindy and Band Called Catch (Matthew Alfano of Mason's Case and Digital Mindy played with us at I AM FEST!) The show starts at 9pm and is also a birthday bash for our good friend Brian Bender. For those of you looking to catch up with us since we toured, and anyone else who has yet to catch us live, this show will absolutely be for you. So….BE THERE!

MA – MAAH – MA – MONNN – STERRRR!
OH! And if you haven’t seen our official “MONSTER” music video, view it as part of our brand new video playlist (complete with some live clips from I AM FEST and our tour) HERE:



OUR GRATITUDE!
If you’re still with us here, thanks for reading all this! We appreciate your time. We look forward to hearing from you all and seeing you on September 5th! Check back often, as we’ll be adding quite a few new shows and have many more exciting updates in the coming weeks.

REVERIE:
Stephen Francis – Guitar, Vocals
Kevin James – Bass, Vocals
Brad Elliott – Drums
Also Featuring:
Aaron Hosek – Guitar
Thomas Miller – Keys



In the meantime you can keep up with us here:
http://www.youtube.com/reveriechicago
http://www.facebook.com/reveriebandchicago
http://www.myspace.com/reverieone
http://www.twitter.com/reverieband

*It has come to our attention recently that some of you have been receiving requests or messages from other sources claiming to be connected to Reverie. We want to apologize for any confusion caused by this and let you know we don’t condone such actions. We won’t tell anyone else to message/spam you on our behalf, we promise.* :-)

Reverie...Acoustic? Really? Really.

Way back on August 1st, we arrived back in town from our tour and played an acoustic set at our good friend Jacqueline's "Cosmic Circus" Art Opening (you should check out her art. It's fabulous, and it's right HERE.) at Star Lounge in Chicago. A great time was had by all. Below you'll find a few pictures we stole from people's Facebook pages and two videos taken by Kevin's brother Chris of the set. Enjoy!

MONSTER [ACOUSTIC]

SYCOPHANT [ACOUSTIC]

1,000 Lighters, The 'Real'Job In My Life, and An Ordinance That Kept Me from From It

Here is a brilliant concept and stolen idea...

I am in a band.
I need to get my band's name heard.
I have no money to buy materials and flyers suck. (Yes, I hate them too...
Get away from me band guy! You AND your lame ass flyer! Nice flyer dude...get a job...Do you really think that helps? Buy me a beer and I will show up?
Or my favorite... "Thanks. I am in ______ and we are playing this day. See you there.")


Nearly 30,000 Reverie flyers a year are trampled on and blown away by the wind. No one actually holds onto a flyer anymore, ESPECIALLY at a festival. How can you hold onto a flyer when you have to hold two beers and get your cigarettes out of your pocket?

Even if you put the flyer in your pocket you keep pulling it out thinking you have more money...but you don't...just someone asking you to spend money that you don't have. I hate that. I really do.

Sometimes these flyers go into the sewers where the feces and urine of my neighbors bleeds the ink that once used to spell REVERIE across the cheapest paper the Uptown Kinko's could sell us. And no one is at the show... not even the guy that told me about his show. He seemed nice. Maybe they didn't remember? Maybe they are waiting to come to the next one? Maybe people DONT LIKE FLYERS.

Last year I received a lighter from a friend. Okay, scratch that. No one gives away lighters. Lighters are stolen only. Suckers pay for lighters. People hate buying lighters. I hate buying them too. I ALWAYS lose them...ask Brad, Kevin or Coate....sometimes moments after I buy them, even. Hey, they all look the same!

So anyway, this friend's lighter said 'Thinner Teed". I lost it a few times, but then I would find it. And when I found it in a friends hand I said, "HA! That is my lighter!" Then they would agree, hand it back to me, and in the process ask, "What is 'Thinner Teed'"?

Eventually, curiosity killed the cat.

Like any good kid of the 2000's I went to Google and I typed in
T-h-i-n-n-e-r (Space) T-e-e-d

Voila! Boom.

Thinner Teed is a band. (That is the last plug I make for that band. After all I did have to Google them.)

What a great idea. I mean, why haven't we done this? They cannot be that expensive. Wrapping them cannot be that hard, and lighters go through hands as much as money. What if I could find a way to get my band name on a dollar bill? That would rock.

So low and behold when Lollapalooza came roaring around the corner and all of these music fans were going to be in Chicago ALL hanging out together, I was convinced we should do something to tell the Lolla folk who we are. Introduce ourselves via lighter.

We should gift them like that band but we should put our web address. What a great concept!

I told this story and discussed it a bit. It was decided that we were going to hand out 1000 lighters to see how it would work.

We ordered the lighters while on tour Thursday. We got home Saturday. The lighters came in on Monday. We remembered that we had agreed to wrap 1000 on Monday. We freaked out on Tuesday. We called our friend Jeffrey in California on Wednesday. We misunderstood his design on Wednesday. He resent folding lines on Thursday. We wrapped half of them on Thursday. We finished the other half on Friday. We handed them out all weekend. 1,000 lighters... and let me tell you, they went fast. People love free lighters.

Remember... No one buys lighters... They steal them... like the way kids and lazy twenty somethings steal music and the way artists steal marketing ideas... The files sizes get smaller, and the marketing ideas get shared and improved and shared. Squeeze it in. Not too much.. Just enough... Put peanut butter on both sides of that bread and the jelly won't leak through.

We put our band name on 1,000 lighters, wrapped them by hand and made them with love. We upped that band that I stole this awesome idea from simply by adding our website and leaving out the super groovy tie dye that made it impossible to read at a first glance. No one will ever have to Google REVERIE and NOT find us again!

Late Sunday I was feeling tired and I had some things to do for my 'real job'. I am a musician to the people that know and understand me but to the rest of the world I am only a guy on the 9th floor who plays in a band. I had to work on things for these people too, because they are good to me.

So I left Lollapalooza early. I had to get up for work early and it was almost 9:30 already. I still had band work to do and real work to do and other work to address. I walking out when suddenly I saw a glimmering sign in the distance. It said..

"The Chicago Promoters Ordinance Kills Indie Music"

I walked quickly up to the gentleman and I said. "You are god damn right it does. I have been looking for you. Aren't you with Jagoff?" and he said, "Yes I AM! Who are you?"

So I gave him a little background about how I am this guy in a band (Stephen Francis of Reverie), this is what we do (we play hard), this is what we are part of (independent music,Chicago,)this is what we are creating with friends (Chicago Noise Machine), blah blah blah and YOU should come speak at our next event about this ordinance!"




We chatted about a lot and I learned a lot. Gary is a hell of a guy with a heart of gold. For nothing in return this guy is sitting outside of the Lollapalooza gates sweating his nuts off in the heat. At this point he is trying to educate people on the dangers of the CPO. After all it does take away both the 1st and 14th amendment from Reverie and all of our favorite independent bands. At least in Chicago... for now.. if it happens. I can tell you if we do not stand up for our rights as artists, musicians, and more importantly as fans it will happen.

I ended up standing outside of Lollapalooza holding up this sign for nearly 2 hours, despite my previous engagements. What would another night lacking sleep do to me?

I got home an hour after my friends whom I left to get home early and no one believed my story.

"What?" I said, "I am not lying. They are going to tag me on facebook holding up the sign.... YES since I left. Why would I make that up? I have to get that work done now. Why are you laughing?"

I slept 3.5 hours last night.

We handed out 1000 lighters, I went rushing back to my 'real job', an ordinance got in the way.

If you don't know about this ordinance...Watch this documentary.

And this panel discussion.

Thanks for reading.

Stephen Francis

What Happens When You Break Your Own Rules of the Road

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMtkHQai-EE

Glory be to Gus's bar and all in Lansing

We almost made a big mistake today. We considered not playing a show for about 15 seconds. Thankfully we made the right decision.

When we showed up at Gus's Bar in Lansing I walked in to find out that we had been canceled. I was never notified that we were canceled. From what I knew we were still on to play "Happy Hour" at 4:30 for $XXX.XX, and now the club is telling me that they had no idea we were coming anymore. Mary, whom was helping us figure out the dilemma, had mentioned that at one point we were scheduled, but had been canceled. She called the gentleman who handled this show and came back and offered us half the money to play "Happy Hour". This show was set up third party, so from where we stood taking half the money was better than making no money at all. For all we knew we never were supposed to make the money we thought. It could have been pure miscommunication. Mary said, "If you guys want to play, you can start loading in, I apologize for the confusion". I felt like we weren't wanted and was feeling so tired that getting in the van and making it to Chicago by night seemed enticing.

I went outside and talked with the band explaining what had happened. Keep in mind that at this point we have played 13 shows in 14 days... We have played REALLY big stages, and we have played REALLY small stages. We have been asked to turn up, and we have been asked to turn down. Our last 3 shows... i.e. Pittsburgh, Annapolis, Cleveland we decided (based off of the crowd, feeling in the room, and size of the room) to play so unusually quiet that it was really messing up who we are as a band.

This was hard on Brad, and especially hard on my guitar tone. Guitar amps, especially tube amps, do not sound good at 1. So venturing once again into the unknown seemed intimidating. It takes nuts to lay yourself out there to a room full of strangers, especially when the elements are against what you usually do. Trust me when I say, and have been told, THIS WILL MAKE YOU A BETTER BAND. Playing outside of your element will force you to alter everything. Sometimes you find something you wouldn't have in a song or a move.. or how to move more with less space... or how to sing softer without sounding lame. "Stretching" as James from Union Pulse calls it. The life of an independent touring band is all about venturing into the unknown.

When I initially walked into Gus's I thought... "Here we are again". Small stage, older clientele, and no sound system. From previous shows this translates to... "Can you turn down?", or possibly and eventually some people taking offense to the volume of the band and leaving. Either one is bad for a rock band. We are not an extremely loud bands by any means. We play very dynamic... but when you are in a neighborhood bar... The locals decide what is loud not you.

Do not let this falter you. Like the note in my previous blog: Do not alter your performance based off of crowd analytics. The day after I wrote that note in my blog we played in Cleveland. A majority of the crowd had their backs turned and we sold only 1 cd. This was the down from the previous up in Pittsburgh when we sold a good amount of records and were tipped out very well by a lot of the patrons. Same scenario in Cleveland and completely different results. Sometimes, no matter how well you perform, you will not win over the room. This is a lot harder "Half - Staff", when you have even less control of how you are selling yourself.

With all of thougts on my mind; the heat, the thought of setting up the PA, loading in, and the thought of singing with a tired throat, I was ready to just say... "lets go". We discussed it and quickly my mind was out of the lazy and cowardly gutter. Reverie drove from Cleveland to Lansing... We are playing this show regardless of the outcome.

We set up quickly and got to our first set at about 4:30. The first 10 minutes or so I was unsure if these folks were just clapping because they wanted to be polite. Every performer has this insecurity. I just like talking about mine. Once again, I was wrong. By midway through the set a lot of the bar had changed their seating arrangements and moved closer to the stage. By the end of the set we had men and women from 21 to 60 whistling and cheering us on, not only between songs but while we were mid-song. Our set concluded and we were happy to see many of these bar patrons buying tee-shirts and CDs.

One of these patrons happened to be one of the owners. Ray was a co-owner and was just stopping in to have a drink. He ended up calling his friends and relatives and helped fill up the room for us. Ray and then Ralph, a regular, tipped us some extra cash and offered us money to do another set! I said.. "No way I can take that, but we can talk about doing another set with the bar". I can't take money from a stranger like that!

Ray assured me that we needed to stick around and perform again at 9:30. He offered us some more pay, some food and free drinks to do it all over again.

In all the years I have been playing, I have never come across a group of 20 people that wanted to hear the same 2 hours of music... again. Sheepishly, we agreed. Almost everyone in the bar stuck around for the next 3 hours until we played again and to our surprise more people showed up.

We did almost the same exact set, with some new covers thrown in and a few other originals we hadn't performed the first time. Once again we had the crowd lit up and when we finished all of the people that weren't there before, got in line to buy CDs and Tee shirts. We were happy to sign the tee shirts and CDs for them. We spent some time meeting a lot of these people... Ralph, Ray, Justin, DJ, Kaitlyn, Candance, and Doug to name a few! Thank you for a wonderful afternoon and night. I am so grateful for your support.

I am SOoooooooooooo glad that we made the right decision. Our final night out of town proved to be not only our biggest lesson learned but also our most lucrative venture. Making new fans and pleasing them is glorious.

Glory be to Gus's bar and all in Lansing.

Stephen Francis