IMPORTANT NEWS: THE LAST CHANCE to See Reverie in Chicagoland for a Loooooooooong Time....

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT:
Reverie will be performing this weekend, on Saturday September 19th, at Chicago City Limits in Schaumburg. These shows are always packed with great people and the sound at City Limits is always fantastic. We are playing with 3 great bands. The show starts at 9:00 and goes all night.

It is a great way to go out for 2009. That is right, this will be LAST REVERIE SHOW IN THE CHICAGOLAND AREA FOR QUITE SOME TIME. I'll say it again. SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 19TH is REVERIE'S LAST CHICAGOLAND SHOW.  It is not that we will not be performing live, butbecause we will be performing on the road.

Also performing at Chicago City Limits this Saturday September 19th: From The Broken, Moxxy (last show of 2009), and The Innocent - three very different and very good bands. Please come early and stay late!

BELATED BIRTHDAY FOR BRAD
Last weekend we spent traveling and performing out of town so Brad missed a chance to celebrate his birthday with ALL of his friends, instead of just us. Sadly we didn't do anything other than a bunch of shots of whiskey for him, so we are going to use this show as a celebration for Brad turning 27! Please come by City Limits and give Bradley a birthday hug and kiss and send him his most favorite thing on stage.... Whiskey!!!

BUT WHY, REVERIE, WHY?
People all day have asked me, "Why are you not going to play for so long in the Chicagoland area?" There are quite a few reasons for this. First of all, we have a great fan base and local band support in Chicago and I hate to continue playing if we don't have new material to offer them. They have been more than devoted and most wonderful to us in 2009 and really if we continue to drill these songs and this set in, I fear it will get old...because it will. At this point we already have some shows booked out of town and will continue to hit the road into the winter. Just no more Chicagoland shows.

OTHER THINGS ON THE HORIZON
Outside of those shows a majority of our next few months are going to be put into writing and doing pre-production for our upcoming full length release.  Since last August we have sold over 1000 copies of A Boy and His Crown and we cannot wait to finish what we started with our next release!

There is a lot of NEW coming and we are excited to bring it to you... Many opportunities are brewing and when we come out on the other side, we hope our fans are ready for everything that comes with this next transition! Keep your eyes on this blog for updates on Reverie from the road and in the studio. Video, pics and music will be posted occasionally through the process of this upcoming record!

We hope with all of our heart to see as many of you as we can on Saturday Thank you for such a great year and thanks as always for reading!!

Stephen Francis

A Return to Springfield and our first visit to Little Rock, AR. Happy Birthday to BRAD ELLIOTT!!!

This past weekend we did a short run down to Springfield and Little Rock. When we were invited to perform down at Midtown, a  late night billards bar in Arkansas, we were slightly hesitant because of the distance from Chicago to Little Rock. After deciding that it was worth it, we set up a show on our way down at the Keg in Springfield on Friday. Brad Elliott decided to spend his birthday performing. A beautiful sacrifice! Happy Birthday Brad!

When we arrived at the Keg it was great to see that almost everyone that had seen us when we played there in July was present. We had a 34-song set list put together for them and ended up performing a very long and hot 3 hours. Overall, the show went very well and Brad was feeling nice and loose from all of the Birthday shots that were being delivered to him.

To our surprise, on top of all of the return clientele, we also had quite a few people from Chicago and also some of Coate's friends. A few very devoted fans drove down from Chicago not only with a birthday gift for Brad but also with an open hotel room floor.  In addition, Coate had invited some of his friends from Illinois State University to watch us perform. Very nice sized crowd and great energy throughout the night. Thank you for a fantastic night Springfield, and thank you to new friends Alyssa, Adam, Matt and Craig from ISU and to old friends Vince and the ladies (you know who you are)!

After the show we headed over to the hotel room that was provided to us by our dear fans/friends and we were able to catch some  sleep on the hotel floor rather than the van floor.

When we woke up, we had a 7.5 hour drive ahead of us. It was at this moment that I thought... We are out of our minds. We were literally driving about 20 hours round trip to do 2 shows. In my gut I knew it would be worth it, though. Not only had I heard great things about Midtown, but I also knew that a late night crowd would be fun and rowdy.

Poor Brad got a ticket on the drive down. Happy Birthday Brad Elliott... Here is a speeding ticket. We arrived at the venue at about 9:30 pm, and still had 4 hours until we performed. We had a burger and a beer and set up our merchandise. Coate sent me around the venue to put down matches and at one point a drunk and angry patron took the book of matches I just put down and threw them at the back of my head. Just on par for an after hours bar. Drunk and rowdy.

See, our set was from 1:30 am to 4:30 am which had new implications - playing to a crowd of people already hammered and performing when we are usually getting off stage. This was going to be interesting.

Brad, Kevin, and I laid down in the van and took a nap until midnight when Coate woke us up. It was time to sound check...

The crowd was nice and full when we started. The previous night we came out with some 'softer material', but after I had been assaulted I figured we could come off with our 'heavier' (which is a funny word in Reverieland) material. This worked well! We performed some of our earliest songs in our catalog first. By the 5th song of our first set we had the crowd engaged, and over the next 2 hours we ended up winning them over. Many shots were delivered to the stage, the tip jar was hefty, and we sold a good amount of merch. So in the end we made new friends, we performed well, and came home with some cash in our shallow pockets. Not to mention, most importantly, the booker was satisfied.

We finished loading up at 5:30 am. Coate had stayed sober and somehow energized enough so he could get us on the road and back to Chicago promptly. With the sun coming up and 10.5 hours of driving ahead of us I layed down to get some rest. Shortly after hitting the road we had to pull over just once so Brad could puke up some whiskey, but before I knew it we were about half way home. I got up and took over the wheel bringing us the rest of the way home. I finally made it to my house about 6:00 pm. I was asleep by midnight.

Long weekend. Lessons Learned. Thanks for reading.

Stephen Francis

ROAD TRIP PLAYLIST:
So with a 10.5 hour drive ahead of them, what tunes does a band listen to?

COATE DRIVING, KEVIN SHOTGUN:
The Dissociatives - some tracks from their Self Titled album
Mute Math - "Armistice" album
Radiohead - "OK Computer" album, "Kid A" album
Foo Fighters - first few tracks of "Skin and Bones" live album
Phoenix - "Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix" album
Stereophonics - few tracks from "Pull The Pin"
Kenny Loggins - "Danger Zone" and "Footloose" tracks (Kevin's choices)

STEPHEN DRIVING, BRAD SHOTGUN:
Bright Eyes - "Fevers and Mirrors" album, "I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning" album
Derek & the Dominoes: "Bellbottom Blues" and "Layla" tracks
Fleetwood Mac - "Don't Stop", "Go Your Own Way", "The Chain" tracks
Harry Nillson - "Without You", "Coconut" tracks
Lou Reed - "Transformer" album
Muse - "Black Holes & Revelations" album (Much to Coate's delight)

LATER ON DURING THE DRIVE:
Pearl Jam - Vitalogy
Nina Simone - Greatest Hits
One Black Tooth - Ball Coffee

Interview with Stephen Francis for Bandcamp.com

Taken from http://www.bandcamp.com

Stephen Francis on "A Boy & His Crown":

WHAT INSPIRED THIS ALBUM?
I was personally shedding skin at the time and spending a lot of time listening to a lot of David Bowie, Beatles, Radiohead and other ambient pop formats. I wasn't consciously going for anything when I was writing other than not repeating what we had done with our previous album "Shaky Coma", which I was not very happy with. I wanted to shed musical skin also and 'get to the point' in our songs. Not in a pop way but avoid excess instrumentation and have stronger arrangements overall so the songs could be played with just an acoustic guitar if need be.

WHAT IS IT ABOUT?
The EP is kind of a short narrative, not in any chronological order, but the themes represent innocence and power.... A Boy - Is the youth/delusion/hope and the Crown - represents entitlement from age/responsibility/power. And in the end the message is to hold onto what you believe. The perversion of innocence is a painful experience that most of us never truly get over.

For example 'Sound the Sirens' is about this make believe king in this make believe kingdom who suffocates everything he loves, but he doesn't know any better. "... karmic horses are changing courses..." - He is delusional believing that inevitably those who do not love him back will pay for it. You put a person of power into a situation of love and he doesn't view it the same as a young and naive boy.

IS THERE A THEME?
Yes. The theme is a more of a question of whether or not we, as humans, can hold onto our peace of mind when we are put into unwilling positions of power. Some people are not ready to grow up, some people do not want to lose their innocence. It is a rite of passage that we all go through worthy of us studying as a collective. Take 'Monster' for example.. The music is jangly but the message is dark. Every adolescent goes through these trials and I still haven't decided if I am okay with the things that were taken away from me.

WHERE DID THE NAME COME FROM?
I had this crazy idea that had something to do with a childrens book. Anyways, I was peeking around in libraries looking at childrens books and I wanted something that would be simple but say a lot. A Boy and His Crown... the innocent and the jaded. The angels and the monsters. Very simple themes that both children and adults could understand.

WHO DESIGNED THE COVER ART?
The cover art was done by Neil Danaher. He had assistance from Dick Thorn whom illustrated the boy and the crown. Neil did the formatting, layout and design with his graphic work and Dick's illustrations. Very great work.

HOW LONG DID IT TAKE YOU (FROM FIRST IDEA TO FINISHED PRODUCT)?
We actually were gifted some studio time so it took a lot longer than it needed to. It was not our time so we were only able to record when the studio was available. In addition our original drummer left after we recorded the first two tracks on the record. In the end we did it in three sessions... all on analog at Fat Recording in Mundelien, IL. David and I became very good friends when we met a few years back. I had sent him a few songs and he was supposed to pick one that he wanted to record.. He ended up liking them all so much that he offered to do the whole EP. We were in line to record a full length but do to the opportunity and the quality of his work and gear we went with doing only 4 songs as kind of a preview to what is coming next for Reverie. We ended up mixing it at our warehouse in Schaumburg, IL.

WHAT CHALLENGES DID YOU FACE IN RECORDING IT?

After doing "Shaky Coma" on our own we were well aware of the dangers and pitfalls of working in the studio. We spent a lot of time doing pre-production and trying the songs out at different tempos, thus eliminating the challenges we had our first few times through the studio. The biggest challenge was the transition of bringing (drummer) Brad Elliot in and basically starting over while we were still moving ahead. We went from doing a 14 song record to doing a 4 song EP that we virtually had no control or idea when we would be recording. For example, we were practicing one Saturday when my phone rang and David (FAT Recording) called me. He explained that it would be a good day to do a song. We then had to rush out and do all of the album takes for 'Monster'. Not being in the studio mindset and then being thrown in can really be a challenge, but in the end I feel we rose up to the occasion pretty well for the circumstances at hand.

TELL US ABOUT YOUR RECORDING PROCESS ON THIS ALBUM AND IN GENERAL:

Our recording process on this record was very different than previous sessions. Because our studio time was limited I did a lot of extra keys and guitars as 'just in cases'. So our arrangements were very crowded at the original mix. When we took it back to our warehouse Kevin, Brad, and I were able to take away from the mix and build the songs from the bottom up. Previously we had always figured out our arrangements before recording which left us always adding more.

ARE YOU HAPPY WITH THE FINAL PRODUCT?
Yes and no. For the circumstances that we were under we did a really good job. Essentially these are very good demos, however if we could afford the allotted time to do these songs with some more time and not so '1 take' mentality we possibly would have performed with a bit more confidence. It is a bit safe for my liking, but sonically and arrangement wise it is the best work we have been part of. The songs are fun and interesting. On my satisfaction chart I would give it 3.5 out of 5 stars.


WHO ELSE PLAYED ON IT OR WAS INVOLVED (MIXING/MASTERING)?
'Morning Paper' was mixed at FAT Recording. Everything else was mixed at our warehouse in Schaumburg. I also added some backwards guitar and synth to 'Monster' post production. Bruce Breckenfeld put down a really nice B3 solo. I basically told him my idea and he shredded it. Matthew Kittner (Reverie's previous and original drummer) played the drums on 'Morning Paper' and 'Hang On To Yourself'.

WHAT ELSE CAN YOU TELL US ABOUT IT?
It is a preview to a really exciting and colorful record that will be coming out near the end of the spring 2010. We have already sold a little over 1000 copies of "A Boy & His Crown" touring and through live shows... which shows me that this music translates better live.

PEOPLE WHO LIKE (INSERT ARTISTS/ALBUMS HERE) WILL LIKE THIS ABLUM:
People who like indie music will like this album.

ANY OTHER THANKS?
Thanks to David Martorana for his gift of studio time and his endless stream of brilliant advice.

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REVERIE'S "A BOY & HIS CROWN" IS AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD AT:
http://www.reverie.bandcamp.com

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FURTHER BOOKING/PRESS INQUIRIES CONTACT:
Andrew Coate - Collaborate Management
collaboratemanagement@gmail.com
708.259.4372

In Case You Missed The Elbo Room Show...

Watch a live performance of "Time Machine" HERE: