No major statements. No lamenting the current state of music. It’s quite simple really. The day after our awesome CD release show for Boneslinky! we were hanging out, drinking beer, and our conversation kind of went like this:

“That was an awesome show last night!”

“Yeah, we really packed The Wind-Up Space!”

“Was anyone from the local press there?”

“Of course not. But we got rid of all of our CD’s…”

“Really?”

“Yeah, everyone got one.”

“Awesome. So what now?”

“I dunno, I don’t really feel like doing all that work to pack houses anymore.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, it’s a big giant pain in the ass.”

“I know!”

“So…”

“Yeah, fuck it let’s quit.”

“Cool.”

No more talk of our goals or getting an endorsement deal from Party City. Or even collaborating withour hero Benny Mardones.  As it turns out, being in a band affords a lot of great opportunities and quality time with friends, but it’s surrounded by a ton of heartbreak as well. For example, you’re constantly vying for the favor of the press, who’s hardly competent at what they do. It’s sort of like trying to get your drunk deadbeat dad to play catch with you. You know he should, he knows he should too. He may even muster up enough strength to humor you for a few minutes every once in a while. But deep down, you know you were way happier when his existence didn’t even cross your mind.

Or like when your biggest fan gets life in prison for shooting his girlfriend in the chest. Nobody else cares, but the letters keep coming. What’s sadder than telling a newly-sentenced inmate that his favorite band now feels that eating pizza and watching “The Walking Dead” is a much better way to spend their time?

It’s not all bad though.  For example, this blog will live on in some form or shape (’cause writing is a great way to get free shit.) We probably won’t update once a week. But really, whenever we find something interesting enough to write about, it will find its way on here.

Father Ryan O’Graham will continue to produce music starting sometime in the next 3-4 months. So if your band is ready to bring the “magic”, I highly recommend contacting us through this page.

As for me, I’ll be spending more time working with Mondo Baltimore, and figuring out what makes me happy after making music under the same brand for 8 years. Oh and I’ll be laughing (with the rest of the guys) at Horsepower as he begins his self-sacrificial work on an alpaca ranch. Ha- to the motherfuckin-Ha!

—

DMFS Boot photo by Marc Hartley. Click here to see all of Marc’s photos of the Boneslinky! CD release show.

What does this mean? Well, hopefully bigger and better gigs. We did the NACA thing last year as The Dirty Marmaduke Flute Squad, but we were not picked to showcase. After talking to alot of the attending students, it turns out that bands who don’t showcase tend to not get booked. So I decided that this year we would put a bid in to showcase, and only if we were picked would we do it.

But first, we had to find an agency. After the last NACA fest where we played a prank on Scott Alexander of Yomyamyeemyaz Agency, it was obvious that he didn’t want anything to do with us. Luckily, we weren’t (just) fooling around at last years NACA:

See that girl who won the 3rd place in our Hot Ass Contest? That’s Amanda from Amanda Kay Entertainment. She’s our agent and has totally hooked us up.

Most bands would say “What a waste of time, we didn’t get booked!” But we’ve already learned a ton from our experience at NACA and met a lot of cool people like Amanda who are shaking things up.

***

Learn more about Wild Bonerz here!

The Dirty Marmaduke Flute Squad is hosting Mondo Baltimore next week, and what better way to celebrate cult video than by showing interview clips from The Greatest Band In The World: KISS!

Yeah, yeah, I know their music sucks, but boy can they give a good interview! In fact when it comes to interviews and stage banter, KISS really is our main influence.

So as a bonus, I’ve decided to giveaway a collection of Paul Stanley’s best stage banter available on one full length compilation. This underground collection entitled: “People Let Me Get This Off My Chest” is a cult classic and is sure to make you laugh, cry and maybe inspire you to do something great. Scroll down to hear a sample and then download the whole thing!

“KISS night” is on August 5th and will feature screenings of KISS interviews and oddities picked by The Flute Squad followed by Never Too Young To Die (starring Gene Simmons).

***
What: Mondo Baltimore’s KISS Night!
When:  Thursday, August 5th 2010. Weird Shorts at 6:30 pm, Feature at 8 pm
Where: The Windup Space, 10-12 W. North Ave, Baltimore



Our weirdly fated children’s band side-project, The Hilltop Hightops has been sitting tight all year as The Flute Squad finish our second album Boneslinky! and Wild Bonerz rip it up at Bourbon Festivals (and get kicked out of chain restaurants.)

The cool thing is that dormant good projects never die, they tend to just spread on their own. This phenomenon is demonstrated by this strange clip featuring the song “Davinci Jacks” spotted on YouTube just the other day:

This scene, from a film called Malice Manor Rock Concert directed by Baltimore no-budget film mainstay Jimmy Traynor and written by Marlene Zechman, has been described to me as:

“a comedy short about a retirement home where the residents really run the place and the staff only think they do. They get away with all kinds of antics and pranks. Malice Manor is not your ordinary retirement home.”

I especially like the dude rocking out in the wheelchair at about :28 seconds in.

No word yet on when Malice Manor Rock Concert will be released or who will see it. Either way it’s lovely to see our kidz music incorporated into such a delightfully twisted project.

About a week ago, Steve and I went to the yet-to-be-opened Dick’s for an audition. We had been invited by the chain’s National Entertainment Director after responding to an ad we found on Craigslist. Among about 8 other bands, which were of the full-band-cover-show-extravaganza style, we were an unlikely duo. But we killed!

So much so that they booked us for four weekday gigs and one weekend gig in a two week span.

Our first date was last Monday night; Dick’s first official night of business. As we strolled in well before our set time of 6:30pm, we found out that none of the gear from the audition was left on stage for us to use. In fact, they had nothing in-house besides a mixer and a house PA. I had to roll back up to Northeast Baltimore to get our own mics and mic-stands. We went on an hour late, but the management understood the miscommunication.

Our first set lasted 40 minutes (their policy is 40-on 20-off). I left the stage to go to the bar and received praise from some random folks. Then I received a text from Steve, who was only 30 feet away from me.

“We have been sacked!”

I went over to him to ask what that meant exactly.  As it turns out, the restaurant manager felt that we were not a good fit. Furthermore, he explained that although he would still pay us for the night we were definitely not to go on stage anymore, that night or any following night.

“What happened?” I asked Steve.

“Something about the banjo not being a good fit in a place like this…”

I was confused. Then the manager approached, handed me a check, and apologized. I handed him a CD. He seemed kind of baffled by that.

Looking for some value in the experience we quickly got to work, taking advantage of our 1/2-priced band discount which, at a place like Dick’s, really gets the prices down to about where they should be ($4.75 Natty Bohs, just sayin…). From the bar, we got a good view of our replacement act, as management opened up the stage for little kids to jump around and throw balloons at one another.

After spending an hour or so in delightful drunken rejection we decided to milk a little bit more out of the night. We asked the bouncer, a dutiful fellow by the name of BooBee James, to throw us out on our untalented, podunk, and down-right disrespectful asses.

We left with fat pockets, full bellies, and a great press pic and we only had to play for 40 minutes!

***
If you like this post check out:

You Band Is On A Broken Down Bus In The Desert: Have A Good Time! – True story about the Flute Squad getting booted off national television, being abandoned in the Las Vegas desert, and having the time of our lives.

So how is the Flute Squad involved? Well the story goes like this: Back in the winter of 2010, Mother Nature decided to snow her soggy balls off for 403 days straight. After several parties, cookouts, games of Scrabble, and experimentation with alcohol, everyone at my house seemed to get a little… hmm… how shall I say it: BORED OUT OF OUR F#*$ING SKULLS. So I happened to notice that DuClaw was holding a “Make Our Video” Contest for 13 Degrees. I looked out of my window and rested my eyes onto the cold white abyss and wondered loudly, “Hmm… 13 Degrees?… What natural metaphor could possibly represent a beer called 13 Degrees?!”

….150 long days and nights passed. I scrapped at least 7.5 different ideas. Until finally it hit me: “SNOW IS COLD!!!” In a fit of joy, I leapt off of my pizza and got to work.

The film stars Flute Squad poster-child Brian Holsey, and Matt Shacka. The Flute Squad of course provided instrumental tracks off our upcoming album Boneslinky!. But the kicker is, we actually wrote and recorded a new song exclusively for this video that will end up being on the new album. It’s called “Lonely Man” and it is featured at the end of the video.

You can get 13 Degrees at any DuClaw BrewPub through August. And there’s a special beer release party at their pubs tonight where they will be playing the video. Go out and drink it up. They make some pretty exceptional beers.

That’s right, for the past few months The Dirty Marmaduke Flute Squad has been busy launching a monthly film series with some of our favorite Baltimore filmmakers. The film series, Mondo Baltimore, will show some of our favorite hilariously bad movies (plus some we’ve never seen before, that’s the beauty of this collaboration). Mondo Baltimore will happen from 6:30pm to 10pm on the first Thursday of every month at The Windup Space.

This Thursday (June 3rd) we will screen The Room, which is by far one of my favorite films of all time. It is not humanly possible to accurately give a description of the plot but the tagline says it all: “A film with the passion of Tennessee Williams!” If you don’t believe it, scroll down to catch a particularly memorable scene from the film.

In the coming months we will show everything from sex education films for the mentally-challenged to futuristic-robot-on-a-killing-spree flicks.  Best of all, The Flute Squad will be hosting “KISS night” on August 5th which will feature screenings of KISS interviews, Never Too Young To Die (starring Gene Simmons), and maybe even an acoustic performance from us (I’m pulling to do a cover of “Lick It Up“)

***
What: Mondo Baltimore screens The Room
When: This Thursday, June 3rd 2010. Weird Shorts at 6:30 pm, Feature at 8 pm
Where: The Windup Space, 10-12 W. North Ave, Baltimore

For those that don’t know:

FluteSquad.com’s country bluegrass pop cover duo Wild Bonerz will be touring the dinner, happy hour, and seedy dive bar circuit. Meanwhile FluteSquad’s children’s rock extravaganza The Hilltop Hightops will be playing exclusive holiday shows, suitable for kids and parents.

Check out our schedule over on the Shows page.

Fans of knitting, spinning, and/or mustaches should head over to MustStashYo and subscribe to the podcast. The podcast is labor of yarn-love created by Cindie of Studio Loo and Mat from Manspun.

We (Nikc & Mike of) The Dirty Marmaduke Flute Squad had the distinguished honor of creating the theme song for this podcast.

I emailed this link to my mom, who is a knitter, and she assures me there is plenty of good knitting and spinning info in there.

If anything else, check out the theme song, and the bonus song “Do U Got A Disease?” from our upcoming release.