2013: The year I do a bunch of cool junk

Hello friends and “fans”! I’m not good at writing a blog and I don’t know if it really matters if I am or not but I haven’t written anything in a while so I felt like I should! Anyways 2013 is looking to be The Year Of Rad Hos. I’m working hard on a new full-length that is starting to shape up nicely. Whenever I set out to make a full length there is usually a long period where I don’t have the songs and so I’m freaking out and it seems so daunting, but now that the ball has started rolling and I’m getting more of a sense of what the record will be, the songs are coming out! I think it should be real real cool. The hardest part has been writing with the intention of doing it with a full band. Usually when I make a record I just sort of do it, and for the most part any time there has been full-band Rad Hos junk, it’s just different versions of songs that I had done solo. So usually I’ll sort of write it as it’s happening but that hasn’t really been how it’s going with this record so it sort of started slow. But now I’m figuring out how I want to do it and it’ll be cool. Whatever you don’t care about all this stuff!

Before the LP comes out though, we will be releasing a 7″ version of the tape we released last spring, Can You Feel My Heart Beating?!!! I’m super excited about it, I think those are some of the best full-band Rad Hos recordings we ever did so I’m excited to see them make it onto vinyl.

We are hoping to do a tour at some point this spring but I’m not sure exactly when or where! If not in the spring then at some point in the summer and also in the fall we will be going places! Especially once the LP is out we will be playing a bunch more shows.

In the meantime, we have a few cool shows coming up! Mostly in Philly.

1/25- (solo) with Spoonboy & Mikey Cantor and Adult Braces @ the Great Indoors

1/26 Ladyfest Philly Benefit with Batty and Bike Crash at Kung Fu Necktie

2/4 with Ghost Light and Soft Spot @ the Great Indoors

2/16 (solo) with Waxahatchee, Quarterbacks, and Little Big League at SUNY Purchase

Keep on keepin’ on and stay tuned for more fun stuff in the future! -Sam

FREE DOWNLOADS

One of the best things about living in the modern age is how incredibly easy it is to share music. Radiator Hospital started with me making tapes and giving them out to my friends, and thanks to the internet, I can keep giving it out to people all over the world. I’ve never been west of Minnesota or south of Maryland, never been on a plane, and until September hadn’t been away from MI for more than 2 weeks at a time, but my songs have been to Japan, Europe, South America. Places I never dreamed I could ever go to. Which is humbling and exciting and amazing. 

I want to be able to share my songs for free. When I started posting stuff online, I used a site called CLLCT, which is a free site that has tons of amazing music on it. I made a bandcamp page about a year ago, and I totally love it, it’s super user friendly and looks really good, and is over all a better site for hosting music. The biggest bummer about it is, you only get 200 free downloads a month.  The more records I put on bandcamp, the faster the downloads go. I understand the folks at bandcamp gotta make some dough, but I still want my music to be available for free to anyone who wants it. 

If you want to “donate” or pay for downloads through bandcamp, that’s super awesome of you and is much appreciated. I would recommend just buying the new 7″ here and downloading the songs free here. There’s a bunch more free Rad Hos stuff here. Not everything from bandcamp is on cllct, and vice versa, but at the end of the month it’ll all be free to download again.

Thank you all so much for liking this stuff, for listening to it and downloading it.

-Sam 

SOME DISTANT MOON RELEASE

So psyched that Some Distant Moon is finally available for you to buy/download! Get the record here and download it over at the rad hos bandcamp. This record was super fun to make and I’m so thankful to Rick, Brandon, and Amber for playing on it, George for designing the covers, Joe Kasey Joe and Colin for all making super amazing videos for the songs, and incredibly thankful to James and Ibrahim for putting it out! They are doing lots of cool stuff over at Forward Records so be sure to check them out!

We just played a couple of shows in NY this weekend which was really fun. I love my band so much, they are all the sweetest folks I could possibly be playing music with. The first show was at Purchase College like 45 minutes out of the city. We played with Emperor X and Saintseneca who are old homies so it was nice to see them. They are both making the best music, if you haven’t heard them check them out! Then last night we played in Brooklyn with the Sidekicks and Glocca Morra who are both really awesome. Since being out here I’ve been super lucky to play all really awesome shows with bands I like.

We are taking a little break from playing live until December because the Boltman is gonna be on tour with his real band Swearin’, but in his absence I’ll be working on a new LP, which is going to be released on the best little label in the world, Salinas, sometime next year. Hopefully sooner than later! Anyways sorry if you read this whole thing and it wasn’t even very interesting!

Radiator Hospital is now a proud retailer of RAD DUDES trading cards.

RADIATOR HOSPITAL PRESENTS: SOME DISTANT MOON PT. IV: “A GAME OF YOU”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjVbNxyP8qk

Here it is, the final video for the new record! When I first thought up this project, I just thought it would be a fun way to preview the songs for people before the record comes out. It’s also been a super fun way to work with people who I really like to make cool stuff. My goth hero JOE MOON made this for me, starring his cat Ichi and the coolest little girl in Grand Rapids MI, my hero, Junior Riot Grrl Eleanor S-B!

This is also one of my favorite songs on the record, my friend Amber who does a lot of cool stuff sang it for me! It’s about when a relationship ends but you still just want to make out with them but you know it’s a bad idea.

So stay tuned for release info for the record! It will be available to order/download in less than 2 weeks.

-Sam

RADIATOR HOSPITAL PRESENTS: SOME DISTANT MOON, PT III: “DEAD AS DREAMS”

I asked my friend Kasey to make a vid for one of the new songs on my record. She is one of the best music photographers in MI, and she is also a fellow huge dork, so I should have known she would make THE GREATEST MUSIC VIDEO OF ALL TIME starring a ton of KITTIES!

This is a song about long distances and wondering why people do the things they do and what they are feeling when they do them.

GHOST STORY

“I think it would be probably be the best for all of us if you would record a novelty halloween song or two.”

My friend James just wrote this on my FB wall and I thought it sounded like a really fun idea so even though it’s just about 4am I finally got it done. It didn’t really end up being a novelty song but I don’t know if I could write a novelty song that would actually be any good. “The ghost” is the lingering feelings that haunt you after a break up. I hope you dig it.

Dedicated to Mr. James Duke: Ghost Story

RADIATOR HOSPITAL PRESENTS: SOME DISTANT MOON, PT. II: “SOME DISTANT MOON”

 

http://vimeo.com/50647946

The coolest thing about this project is that I don’t really know what I’m going to get, I just sent a song each to 4 of my cool friends and told them to make rad videos. This one turned out so awesome! I haven’t even seen the last 2, I’ll see them around when you do!

This is a song about when you are just laying around with a cool girl and drifting in and out of sleep and how the sleepy parts are the best thing ever and then you keep waking up and remembering that it’s hot and gross and you aren’t actually happy.

-Sam