Yeah, yeah, yeah!! we're coming to the Sunset this saturday with a pocketful of new songs and the best album we've made yet, Steal the World. Come on out and join us and Stag and the Stereo Embers for a quality night of songs and lead bass! We'll have cd's of the new record for sale, some posters and swag, but most of all it'll be a great night of Seattle rock n roll with some of the best players. Rick will give select hugs. I may tell a story or two. C'mon saturday night!!
Review: Danny Newcomb’s “Steal the World”
Posted by bookwalt April 7th, 2019 No Comments »
Danny Newcomb – Steal the World
By Andy Bookwalter
Danny Newcomb lives on a tiny island, surrounded by sheep and millions of bees (he’s a farmer, they’re not after him). Once a year or so he puts down his bee and sheep stuff, summons the Sugarmakers, and spits out a really good record. I reviewed 2015’s Masterwish a few years ago.
I loved the record, and apparently Danny liked my review, because every once in a while he’ll get in touch with news about a show in a bike shop or an upcoming record. This makes me feel like a big man, and he gets access to the NadaMucho.com juggernaut. Everybody wins!
His last album, All the Way, (the review of which I thought never ran, now I’m not totally sure I wrote it) was a touch darker than the power pop goodness of Masterwish.
Steal the end World feels like a return to something a little more positive, at the very least a “Hey, we aren’t dead yet!” statement. The opening song “For Lou”, is a full on homage/tribute/crush song for Lou Reed and a salute to stripped down simple music. It’s sort of sung in a Reedish cadence, which works better than I expected. The title song (“Steal the World”, makes me think of Jackson Brown for some reason. “Pain” is the song to end the show, you know the part where a bunch of band friends suddenly appear on stage with borrowed guitars and tambourines? And then when the song ends the lights come on and you have to remember what chair you left your coat on, and oh crap did you even have a hat? Yeah, that song.
There are more, but I can’t spend all night comparing songs to other songs. It’s a great piece of guitar pop, check it out.
Been some crazy hours at Studio Litho in Seattle, getting the last tracks done -- 14 tracks!! now off to the golden ears of John Goodmanson for the next couple weeks for the final mixing. The last 3 songs we cut, Burning Brightly, 14 Days and the potential single: Cold Release with Fiia Mcgann singing with me, came out better than I'd hoped and were a little like opening different shaped christmas presents full of things that I had no idea I wanted. Eric Corson engineered, John Goodmanson stopped by and brought his 1970 les paul that I usually do leads through cause its got some strange juice, and Eric Eagle slayed with Rick Friel playing some lead bass that made the roof shake. the Sugarmakers always record live in a big room, but Cold Release was recorded at Eric Eagle's small studio, for a more personal sound. We tracked the entire song and all vocals in a day.
Hey All, crazy, crazy with working on new tracks and thinking Im done and then having to touchup a little guitar here, rewrite a verse, but now were down to our last session at Stone's studio Litho in Fremont at the beginning of October, so we'll be starting to make a little noise around the hollidays with a single or two and a video and a release show (TBA)!! Its going to be a humdinger of a record, if I do say myself and I cant wait for it to be out. But first, we'll be doing another indie campaign for vinyl with some very special perks for people who want to get an uprfront copy and support us. (I'll be talking about that more in the next few weeks, but it's going to be a super special event AND a copy of the vinyl --) So stay tuned here, and catch our last few shows: Harvest Festival on Vashon October 13, and then a show with our friends Big Wheel stuntshow in Tacoma at the awesome Jazzbones on December 14th. November 23 I'll be playing the Last Waltz tribute show to support Northwest harvest at the Neptune Theater.
Hey Sugarmakers -- we had a great time with you all at the Tractor show on the 8th! Sold out crowd and a great feel in the room. Kim Virant played a great set and so did the Stereo embers with full rock flavor. A nice line-up! weve been tossing some mixes back and forth for record number 3 the past couple weeks, with John Goodmanson tweaking some keyboard sounds and us getting ready to record the last 2 songs on the 1st and 2nd of October... I'm thinking we'll start releasing a couple singles by November and then drop the whole enchilada in January. Videos with singles seem to be a good way to get a hold of some peoples' attention, besides, we haven't really dived into the visuals as much as we could, and we have some talented friends who I think will have some good ideas for the new songs.
thanks to everyone that came out to the Royal Room -- great to have people who know the songs in the front singing! Rick, Joel and I had a great time! We're looking forward to the next few summer shows we have -- August we're playing at Seafair on the 5th in Seward park. Then doing a Hockeytalkter show at the Tractor with Kim Virant and the Stereo Embers on the 8th. We're playing the Kirkland Summer fest Sunday august 12th at 3;30. We'd love to see you if you can make it for any of these!