Driving Music

Beautiful piece on Driving Music at the brazilian music website Tenho Mais Discos Que Amigos. You can read the whole thing here. Only in portuguese.

Driving Music – One Last Song About Summer (Live @Audio Rebel)

. The folks at Audio Rebel – the coolest venue in Rio – have recorded my latest solo performance there and are now streaming the two first songs on their Soundcloud page. You can check out “The Day” and “One Last Song About Summer” – an old Invisibles song, that turned out as a nice sing along that night – below, or at this link. It sounds raw and very true to what I recall from that night, including the missed chords and the usual blanks that leave me groping the dark for words I’ve written myself, when I was someone in a lot of ways I no longer am. I haven’t heard the entire show yet, but hopefully there’ll be more to share with you guys soon.

Driving Music by Audio Rebel

. Since last friday, MTV Brazil is now carrying our videos. Feel free and encouraged to write them asking for it. We definitely appreciate it.

One year ago there was a post here about our very second show as a full band, playing a pocket set at our own Raphael Erichsen’s wedding party, remember? Well, one year has passed and our friend Rodrigo Braga went through the footage he shot that day and made a video for our version of the National’s “Apartment Story”. It is now up on both Youtube and Vimeo as another official Driving Music video, so go ahead and spread the word!

Driving Music @Audio Rebel, by Clarissa de Oliveira.

My thanks to everyone who showed up at Audio Rebel for an intimate and memorable night. It was a fantastic audience and it left me with the desire of booking more solo nights like this in the near future. For those who can read portuguese, I’ve blogged about that show, the audience, acoustic guitars and eggs.

These are busy times in the Driving Music camp – a.k.a., my house. I’m almost finished with the mix of the Goodbye South, Goodbye single, and I can’t wait to get these songs out there and go back to work on my new stuff. It’ll be our longest single in the series so far, featuring a total of 6 songs. We’re also adding the finishing touches to a new video. Both the single and the video shall be online in the next coming days, so make sure you follow us on twitter, facebook or whatever to know first hand when it’s up.

As usual, here’s the setlist for the solo gig. I didn’t have a written setlist, so a couple of these songs might be in the wrong order, but I’m confident this is it. I kept things short and focused and left the stage craving for more. Let’s see what can be done about that.

1. The Day
2. One Last Song About Summer
3. Noite Americana
4. Watching the Wind
5. November Sun
6. Rain or Shine
7. Only Lie Worth Telling (Paul Westerberg)
8. Windowsill
9. I Am Trying Not to Break Your Heart
10. Saturday Sun (Nick Drake)

Southern brazilian website Underfloripa has just posted a review of our debut ep. Writer Luciano Vitor wrote a great review and you can read it here (portuguese only).

So my friends at Opallas have been putting up a few gigs to help raise funds to pay for the medical expenses of their guitar player Bobby, who was very seriously injured in a car accident, and they asked me if I wanted to join them and Phone Trio next sunday for a pleasant evening at Audio Rebel. Since pleasant evenings are one of my favorite things in the world – especially when it involves an acoustic guitar, singalongs and a chance to help a brother out – I’ll be there playing some of my tunes (and hopefully even some brand new ones) before the rock bands turn their amps on. So make sure you show up – it’s good music for a good cause – and try to get their early if you’re planning to catch my act. I promise to try to be as entertaining as I get on a sunday evening.

So things have seemed quiet on the Driving Music facilities these last couple months, but that doens’t mean work hasn’t been done. Actually, since the Noite Americana single came out, I’ve recorded about a dozen other songs. Some of them will come out soon in the form of singles and others will be saved for our first full length album. A few of these songs will already see the light of the day in the coming weeks, with the release of the Goodbye South, Goodbye single. I’ll be back with an update on this in a couple days.

Meanwhile, I’d just like to say that 2010 was a wonderful and productive year for Driving Music. It was rude of me to not have said goodbye properly, but better late than ever: it was a pleasure and an honor to work with all the talented people that have been a part of Driving Music in its first year of real existence, wether they were playing with me on stage, recording bits and parts of songs in my room with me, or working on our videos and other artwork. At the end of last year, I was able to get a bunch of those people in one place at the same time and we took some pictures as a keepsake of this collaboration. Unfortunately, there are other people who have also been of key importance in some of the band’s projects that weren’t able to be with us for the photo shoot, but I hope these pictures will serve as a symbol of my gratitude to them just the same. Let the new year begin.

It took us a little longer than we expected (as usual), but here it is: the Noite Americana single is up for download here. This release includes two versions of “Noite Americana” (original ep version and an acoustic early demo), as well as an unreleased track  – “Rain or Shine”, which had surfaced as a demo a year or so ago, but that comes back in a new and definitive form now – and a brand new cover of The Weakerthans’ “Confessions of a Futon Revolutionist”.

This new single was put together by yours truly and Clarissa de Oliveira, who took care of the artwork and sang with me on “Confessions of a Futon Revolutionist”. The cover art photo is by Melvin Ribeiro.

To celebrate the release, we’ve also posted a brand new video for “Noite Americana”, by Raphael Erichsen. You can watch it below. Enjoy!

While we get ready to release a new single in the next couple days, we thought this Mario Maria beautiful live rendition of Driving Music’s “The Day” would be the best way possible to close this first chapter. In a couple more days you should all be able to hear some new Driving Music stuff, so stay tuned.