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“All My Friends”
Two free MP3s for your kids! Download “All My Friends” and “Count On My Hands” now.
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2 songs a month
Kids Songs
October 7th, 2008 · 4 Comments
Okay, I get almost 1 e-mail/day asking for a download of “I’m So Happy I Can Dance”, the song that we recorded for Yo Gabba Gabba. The problem is that Yo Gabba Gabba owns the song (they paid for the recording), and Nick Jr owns Gabba, so no one at the Salteens or Yo Gabba Gabba can decide to give you this song. The only person that can give you this song is an exec at Nickelodeon.
The good news is that a YGG album will be released on iTunes next week. Even better, they decided to include a song by the Salteens.
The only problem is that they included “Be Nice To Animals”, another song that we did for the show. So, for the time being, you can not in any way have a download of the “I’m So Happy” song, even if you do e-mail me and describe at length how your kid moves in inappropriate ways to it. You’re just going to have to tell little grindy-hips that that’s the way the real world works and sometimes you don’t get what you want because someone else has all the money and you don’t. A lesson every toddler needs to learn. On the upside, the money people decided to make Season 2 of Gabba, so they can’t be all bad. At any rate, the purpose of this posting is to let you know about music.
Now averaging out at about 1 song per month, the Salteens 2 Song/Month Club has two more songs for you all for free. And as an attempt to pacify the throngs of parents who keep asking for kids music from us, we recorded two children’s song. “All My Friends”, and “Count On My Hands” are two songs that were actually written for YGG. They use one of them in season two, but with different lyrics so I won’t say any more about it for now so that you can be surprised when you hear it on TV.
The songs are written for a pretend kids show called “Timbrites Go!”. The premise to this show is of a down and out songwriter who gets depressed when he can’t finish a song, so he takes a nap. When he wakes up, he is in a dream world where he is accosted by four Timbrites, strange animated characters who happen to be pretty good musicians. And so our hero and his new friends sing songs together. Typically, the songwriter character starts the song, and then the other characters take over once they get the hang of it. Scott sings the role of the musician. Original Salteens drummer Dion Willis re-appears as the tenor character, and current band member Carrie sings the alto parts. Our neighbor Chad Warford makes his singing debut as the bass, and we were very fortunate to steal former Plumtree member Amanda Bidnall away from her young daughter for an evening to sing the soprano part.
The characters are shown in the art for the downloads. We haven’t named any of them, except for the big yellow guy. We are pretty sure his name is Malmumus. We are taking suggestions for the others. Due to freak sports related injuries to Kevin (broken hand playing hockey) and Rob (broken hand one week later playing soccer) and other scheduling conflicts, we brought in some other friends to play in the band. Allison Gorman on trumpet, Shawn Mrazek on drums, Kevin played double bass on one track once his hand healed a bit (I played bass on the other when, quite literally, no one was in the room to stop me!) and I played guitar. Todd Simko recorded everything in his Rock Shed ™, the first time that a recorded was attempted top to bottom in that facility. I played my patented “Michael Stipe-style” harmonica solo on a dare, and any other noises were probably done by Todd when I was in the bathroom. Hope you like, and if you have some ideas for character names for the Timberites Go! Show, please let us know!
Click here to download the new songs.
scott
Month 4 - All We Want Is What You’ve Got
July 21st, 2008 · 2 Comments
Welcome to the fourth month of free downloads from the Salteens. This month we are offering up: “All We Want Is What You’ve Got” - the most prog the band has been in a while (and maybe the longest Salteens track ever!), this song was recorded at the Hive many moons ago with Colin Stewart. Brent on drums, Rob on guitar, Kevin on bass, and Erin Jane on rhodes piano. Scott played guitar and sang and did the hammond organ by mistake in one take when he was “trying it out”. Sometimes it just happens. Group vocals is some combination of Rob, Brent, Kevin, Erin, and Carrie. We’re not sure anymore as to who was all there when the final take was done, but I think it was everyone. Todd Simko recorded the lead vocal and mixed and mastered the track at his “rock shed” studio in New West.
“All This Time”, by the War Amps - Hey, another song from our friends the War Amps! The War Amps are Scott and Kevin from the Salteens along with one-time Salteens producer Kevin Kane on guitar and vocals and all-the-time awesome guy Shawn Mrazek on drums. Produced and recorded, and mixed by Todd at Lemon Loaf studio and at the rock shed. Mastered by Jamie Sitar at Suite Sound Labs. The idea behind the War Amps was that there was supposed to be no keyboards, no hand claps, and most importantly no girls. Grrr-anger-guitar-man-rock. Well, Carrie recorded an “idea” for a back-up vocal that was too high for me to sing, and then Todd “forgot” to turn it off when mixing it, and by then we had tambourines on the track, and that is not much better than handclaps, and so much for Scott making rules, and that is that. Also, Kevin and I sing like sissy-boys anyway, so who are we kidding. Seriously, this is supposed to be angry stuff. I played one of the War Amps tracks for a friend and he said, “neat, sounds like Belle and Sebastien”. Arrrgh.
Salteens kids video up on youtube again
June 9th, 2008 · 12 Comments
The Salteens made a video for a kids show called Yo Gabba Gabba. The song is called “I’m So Happy I Can Dance”. This all happened about a year ago, when our friends from the band Majestic called us and asked us to record a song for their Nick Jr kids show. They sent us a song they had written, we went into the studio with Todd and recorded, they went all crazy for it, and we flew down to LA to shoot a video. It took us 10 hours to film the segment, mostly because we had multiple versions of ourselves in the video and that takes a long time to film. I like the part where we didn’t use digital technology to create copies of ourselves. We did it all 80’s style, like Phil Collins. Although, a droid army’s worth of me playing a guitar solo would have been pretty cool…
Month, um…er… 3!
June 2nd, 2008 · 3 Comments
Here we go again, two more songs from the Salteens. This month, we are presenting a double A-side split single with The Salteens song “Frequency” and a song by their friends the War Amps that they call “We Can Go On”. Click here to download the songs.
“Frequency” was recorded by Colin Stewart at the Hive Studios about 2 years ago. It is the only song from that period that we actually completed. Todd Simko did a nice mix of it last week and then mastered the recording and made it into an mp3. We recorded the drums and bass to analogue tape. The scratch bass track was so good that we ended up using it instead of the overdub that Kevin did. Brent on drums, Rob and Brent on back-ups, Rob on rhythm guitar, Scott on lead guitar and vocal. Brent and Colin did some nice work with the tape-echo machine to make the vocal more interesting. Brent played the wine glass (which we recorded in stereo, if you can believe it), and Scott played some hammond organ and piano in there.
The War Amps are Scott and Kevin from the Salteens with friends Kevin Kane (Grapes of Wrath) and Shawn Mrazek. What was meant to be an avenue for recording Scott’s “angrier and more noisy” songs turned into something that sounds pretty nice and poppy. No surprises then. Todd Simko recorded Shawn’s drums at Lemon Loaf Studios in November 2007. I believe we borrowed original Salteens drummer Dion’s drums for the session. Kevin Cooper and Scott recorded bass and rhythm guitar at Todd’s studio, and then Kevin Kane did the lead guitar a few months later. Scott and Kevin K sing, Todd might have played a guitar part or two, Todd produced and mixed. Old friend Jamie Sitar at Suite Sound Labs did the mastering a few weeks ago, and here we are.
As always, thanks for listening, and please send a link to this site to your friends so that they can download the songs too.
Month 3 -a minor set back
April 4th, 2008 · 9 Comments
I would say more, but it would ruin this neat video that we made of our producer Todd Simko. So check it out:
Month 2 -Everything They Know About Us
March 2nd, 2008 · 7 Comments
Here are the two songs for February, delivered to you all on the Salteens patented “two-days after the actual end of the month”. Come on, February is a short month, even in a leap year.
Notes on the songs: Both tracks were started about 2 years ago with Colin Stewart at the Hive Studios in Burnaby BC. We got some great drums, bass, guitar and piano there, and recorded all the horns as well. The horns are played by the horn section we were using at the time. We didn’t have a clever name for them, so we called them “Gary”, which seemed like a good name. Tim Sars plays bari sax, Bryan Milks (oh gawd, I’m not sure that is his actual last name!) on tenor sax, and Alison Gorman played trumpet with our own Rob Calder rounding out the section. Let’s see, other details: on “Everything They Know About Us” we had Brent on drums, Kevin on bass and double bass, Rob played trumpet and guitar, and I played piano, hammond, and the guitar solo. Carrie and I overdubbed the vocals later at Todd’s studio last week and Todd mixed and mastered it in the last two days. The drums were covered in blankets or something to make them sound more dead, and technically I should be credited for bass clarinet on this track but I believe that only 4 notes of my track were actually used, and they were mixed quietly, so let’s please overlook that henceforth. I assume that Brent played the tambourine. And the gang vocal at the end of the song is everyone except me, I think. I almost forgot! The girls yelling “ya!” are Erin Nicholson, Erin Jane, and Nikki Hoshal.
On “Don’t Break My Heart” Brent played a really big bass drum and I seem to remember him and I making “rivets” out of paperclips for the cymbals. Kevin on bass and double bass again. I played the guitar, hammond, and the vibes and Rob played guitar and trumpet. Carrie makes her debut on clarinet with the members of Gary filling out the rest of the horns (Tim on flute, Bryan on bass clarinet). Rob, Brent, Kevin, and former keyboard player Erin Jane did the backups. Alison Gorman is featured on the trumpet solo. Brent recorded the vibes and the double bass at Maple Ridge Sr Secondary (which I have probably already mentioned is the school that Carrie teaches choir at). Todd recorded my vocal at his place on a very “wrong” microphone and then he mixed and mastered that.
honourable mentions
February 26th, 2008 · 6 Comments
Carrie found this today. (click on “this” to see what Carrie found).
Also, a nice person named Nichole sent us this video of her daughter dancing to the video we did for the Nick Jr show Yo Gabba Gabba.
Sharing Is Nice
February 25th, 2008 · 1 Comment
Hello. We are a few days away from releasing two more songs to everyone on the internet. Before we post the next pop gems here on salteens.com, we thought we would ask everyone to make sure that their friends have all heard the songs from last month. So, we are asking everyone to send this link to no less than 5 (five) of their music-loving friends: http://salteens.com/hallowedways/
Do it now!!!
thanks,
the salteens
oh yeah, it’s february and it’s vancouver
February 11th, 2008 · 1 Comment
couldn’t figure out why I was feeling blue this weekend. seems that I forget that i live in the darkest and rainiest and most depressing city. every year, I forget, and wonder why I am down, until I see the sun again and I say “oh yeah, this happens every year. nothing is that bad, it’s just vancouver.” This weekend I did manage to cure the blues with a little something we call the “Midge Ure”.
2 oz premium bourbon
fresh mint
ginger ale
lime
no less than 5 ice cubes in the glass, add a hand full of mint, pour bourbon and ginger over, top with lime. it’s a mojito/ginger/bourbon. a “mij-ger”. say it 5 times fast after drinking a few, and you are a better man.
update/backdate
February 8th, 2008 · 6 Comments
Hello again. End of week one I guess. Hope everyone is enjoying the songs and please send them out to your friends or tell them to download them from the site.
update: I am demoing new songs this weekend to record and release by the end of February. Been bouncing around the idea of polling people about what the next songs should sound like/be about. No official poll this month, but if you have suggestions, let me know. This site has the ability for people to comment, so please feel free to try that out.
backdate: you might notice that there are some photos of us in LA from last year. We did a song for the Nick Jr show Yo Gabba Gabba. One of the creators of the show is a friend of ours Scott Schultz that we know from tours from ages ago. Scott Schultz has (had) a band called Majestic that we used to play with in LA. Really great pop band. Super great, actually. Scott has a kids show now, so he got us to do a song and come to LA to shoot a video for it. Sometimes you can find it on Youtube, but it is owned by a major tv network, so sometimes they take it down. It was a pretty fun thing to do.
More as it happens…