we make love

Just got back from playing our first acoustic set ever at Guelph’s St. George’s Square as part of War Child Canada’s Busking For Change tour. After being invited by War Child a few weeks ago to play this show on a bill with The Balconies, Bass Lions, Dinosaur Bones and a bunch of others, we set out to break down our usually overdriven, synth-fueled tracks into something simpler… and the process of stripping our songs down into their simplest form was awesome. But it wasn’t quite as awesome as what happened just after our set when Bass Lions were playing. Germany had literally just lost to Spain and minutes into their set a bunch of Spanish fans descended on the Square and began singing. But rather than compete with them, Bass Lions invited them over to jam.

And they all came over, but there was no confrontation at all. Just a few guitars getting passed around and a few new songs getting learned.

Then, after a few songs, some improvised, some soccerized, the Spanish supporters moved on to take the party elsewhere (and it was really going elsewhere)…

Thanks to everyone who came out to see us and donated money to War Child by buying our CD and throwing money into the case.

And thanks to War Child and Audioblood Media for inviting us.
-Scott Birke, The Craft Economy

OH… guess Bass Lions weren’t the only ones to get the Spanish treatment.
Schweinsteiger OWNED!

The Craft Economy is on the new Hi-Hat compilation, along with our friends, Black Hat Brigade and Burn Planetarium and a bunch of other awesome bands. Check it out: Here it is on iTunes.

I had an egg in a basket this morning. Probably my favorite breakfast choice right now.

TCE is writing some songs and preparing to record them in the New Year. We are all BA-nanas busy with our full time jobs, the holidays and band stuff. Everything should get back to normal by January 2010. If you’re at Blue Mountain Dec.19th then come to Kaytoo. We’ll all be there rockin’ the new songs (and some old ones).

Here’s something cute. It’s somewhat brilliant, actually.

http://fc01.deviantart.com/fs13/f/2007/077/2/e/Animator_vs__Animation_by_alanbecker.swf

The Craft Economy’s “Big Purse, ‘Lil Dawg” has been featured in the new snowboard film, “Cool Story” by Think Thank in Chris Beresford’s part. Here’s the think to get it if you want to check it out:
http://thinkthank.com/coolstory.html

So Canada is on the copyright blacklist.  Really.  Seriously?  Really!?

Michael Geist responds.

So do we.

Well, we didn’t make NxEW’s Mixtape #1, but we did make it into NxEW’s Mixtape #2!  If you’re not familiar with what they’re trying to do, go check out NxEW’s blog for more details.  It’s a great attempt to aggregate what’s going on across an impossibly huge Canada.  

 

Justin, a big force behind NxEW, has been a solid supporter of what The Craft Economy has done in the past.  You can check out some of his other work at publicbroadcasting.ca.

Lauren Burrows, the very cool radio host from CBC Radio 3, interviewed Andrew about creative commons and our remix project.

You can hear the interview here.

(And if I sound like some heavy breathing perv, it was because I completely out of breath.  I was wrestling with my daughter - who actually hung up on Lauren the first time - when she called).

I talked to Jeff Lee of minisystem over the weekend. He’s excited about working on one of remixes, and we’re incredibly excited about having him do something with our songs.  His first release on Noise Factory, madingly, is lush, rich and melodic as all hell.  Can’t wait to hear what he does.

Like everybody else, we’re on twitter: http://twitter.com/thecrafteconomy.

All of our work is released under a Creative Commons license, but we’d also like to help people creative derivative works. To that end, let us know if you’d like to remix any of our tracks from the new EP.

We’ll send you whatever you want, you remix it in whatever way you want, and license it under the same Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 license. And if it is good, like really good, maybe we can put it on our next CD single, due for this spring (and even give you a cut of all the millions we’re making doing this music thing). Email us at theband@thecrafteconomy.com if you’d like to remix something.