December 23, 2009: We Are The Lucky Ones

As the intro for the BarMac Sisters show said so well, we are the lucky ones. Lucky to be able to hang with friends, create music and just play what inspires us.

Hard to believe it was six years ago that Mike and Doug, Walnut Ridge High School classmates and 60’s survivors, re-connected at Reynoldsburg’s legendary (and now gone) Pour House Cafe and decided to get together once again to ‘just jam’. No plan. Just jam. Before long, bassman John and drummer, Bad Bob, jumped in and suddenly we had a band. We still weren’t sure where we were going, but we instinctively knew that, wherever this passion led us, it would be to a good place. We learned some covers, played a couple of patio gigs and somewhere along the way realized that creating our own material would be the ultimate way to go. After all, isn’t the whole point of music to just express yourself?

Starting with Mike’s “Bad, Bad Man”, the epiphany occurred: we instantly knew that we could do this and do it well and, most importantly, do it our own way. The culmination of the vision was 2009’s release of the self-produced Windrush CD – 16 original songs, professionally mastered and packaged. Our CD could be found on Amazon, iTunes, AMG, CDBaby and Soundclick, right alongside all the major artists of the day. And on Soundclick, we even had three songs hit #1 on the charts. And a huge turnout at the CD release party at Gatsby’s during the summer of 2009 was icing on the cake.

Who could have known six years ago that we would accomplish so much?

So now we are looking at 2010. The flame is still lit. And the journey continues. We’re still writing and recording new material, with another CD certainly in our future.

We are truly the lucky ones.

September 23, 2009: Paris Hits #1 on Soundclick.com

Windrush hit the trifecta of #1 hits today, with our third song, Paris, topping Soundclick.com’s Rock charts (out of 185,002 songs in this category). This follows our previous #1 hits Flashflood and That’s All I’ve Got To Say (The Retirement Song).

Please, Kanye, don’t steal our moment.

June 13, 2009: Flashflood Flashes to #1 On Soundclick

And yet another moment for Windrush: Flashflood hit #1 (out of 175,382 songs) on Soundclick's Rock chart. It was also ranked #1 (out of 36,508) on Soundclick's Rock General chart. And apparently there was some spillover clickage, as 7 Deadly Sins rose to #34 (out of 33,979 songs) on Soundclick's Alternative General chart and #146 (out of 144,262 songs) on the Alternative chart.

We're still trying to figure out what all this means, but happy nonetheless that someone is obviously listening to our music.

Windrush will get back to recording the follow-up album in the next few weeks. It will be another collection of originals - we've got a bunch of them waiting in line.

June 2, 2009: Windrush Scores #1 Hit On Soundclick

Another momentous event in the journey of Windrush: That's All I've Got To Say (The Retirement Song) climbed to #1 (of 2,435 songs) in the Soundclick Unplugged Rock category and to #2 (of 174,924 songs) in the Rock category. The song was featured as the 'Promo Song Of The Day' on Soundclick 6/1/09 and apparently was clicked often enough to bring it to the top in one day. And, as a byproduct, it looks like Soundclick surfers also checked out a couple of other songs on the Windrush CD, bringing 7 Deadly Sins back up to #112 (of 33,508 songs) in the Alternative General category and Issues up to #48 (of 4,706) in the Funk category. Even though Simon Cowell has yet to call, it's truly a 'rush' to know that someone out there is listening.

And we received the first independent review of one of our songs, Paris, by Taxi, which is the world's largest independent A& R company. Their business is finding artists and songs and connecting them to opportunities in the music industry. Paris was submitted to Taxi for review as part of the arrangement we had with Discmakers to press the CD's. Taxi's review said the song, "has great ambience and a great instrumental sound", but could benefit from a tighter structure (verse/chorus/verse/chorus) and a hook to tie everything together. On a scale of 1 to 10 (10 being best), the ratings were: music=8, lyrics=7, marketability=7, arrangement=8, production=8, engineering=8. Pretty damn good for a first-time basement project and, ultimately, very encouraging. Wonder how the other Windrush songs would be rated......

May 16, 2009: CD Release Party at Gatsby's

Saturday night was another 'one of those nights' in the journey of Windrush. Somewhere in the vicinity of 100 friends gathered at Gatsby's in Gahanna for the official Windrush CD release party. Number one fans and friends, Susan and Neal Hirsch, flew all the way from Houston for the occasion and Coni Chancellor made the long trek from Florida. Friends, family, great pizza, plenty of beer and Windrush music - it doesn't get any better than that. We savored every moment and cannot thank everyone enough for being there. What a night!

So what's next? One thing for sure - we'll start recording again. We've got a backlog of songs that we think may even be better than many of theones ont his first release, so we're eager to apply what we've learned on the next project. Hopefully, we'll dig up a bass player soon and get geared up to play 'live' from time to time when the opportunities arise.

In the meantime, CD's are for sale at www.cdbaby.com, www.digstation.com and www.soundclick.com. And be sure to check out the medley of Windrush tunes on YouTube. Just search for "Windrush cd".

April 18, 2009: CD Release Party 5/16/09

The Windrush CD Release Party will be held at Gatsby's, 151 North Hamilton Road, Gahanna, Ohio, on May 16, 2009, from 6:00 to 8:00 PM. In case you're not familiar with Gatsby's, it's a casual local indoor/outdoor hangout with great live music, excellent food and, of course, plenty of beer. We will be in the indoor room playing the Windrush CD on the sound system and hanging out with both old and new friends. We will have plenty of CD's for sale and even Windrush posters. We are excited about the event and look forward to seeing everyone there.

In the meantime, you can preview all 16 CD tracks at Soundclick, as well as purchase MP3 downloads (either singles or the entire CD). Also, in a few days, we will have physical CD's available online at CDBaby.

April 16, 2009: The Motherload Has Arrived!

Today was an epic day in the continuing story of Windrush - the first batch of CD's arrived in all their shrink-wrapped glory. The folks at Discmakers did a phenomenal job on the artwork, the mastering and the packaging. The cover art by Will McCarthy is beautiful and the other surprises inside the gatefold cover came out even better than we had hoped.

We are still in the process of setting up the online accounts so fans can purchase the CD or individual tracks. As of today our account at Soundclick us up and running for MP3 digital download sales, either as individual tracks or the entire 16-song CD. Also, at Soundclick you can listen to previews of all 16 tracks. In about 10 days the account at CDBaby will be active, where you will be able to purchase either the physical gatefold CD or MP3 digital downloads. Also, Digstation will be selling MP3 downloads in a few days.

For those of you who purchase the physical CD, the titles and band info will be registered with Soundscan and AllMusic, which means that when you drop the CD in the tray on your PC, the song titles will automatically be displayed. You can also find us on Facebook.

The next step will be to finalize the date and place for the CD release party, which we hope to have scheduled in a month or so. We hope to see all of you there, so please check back for details.

And a huge thanks and congratulations to Becky Rutherford for being the very first person to purchase and download the Windrush CD (from Soundclick). We are now well on our way to realizing our vision of selling well under a million CD's.

March 24, 2009: A Long Time Comin'

Where does the time go? We haven’t posted a blog in quite a while, but that does not mean we haven’t been busy. We’ve been writing and recording songs continuously and are excited to report that our long-awaited CD is now in the hands of DiscMakers, who are doing the mastering, finishing the artwork and packaging the CD’s for us. The CD will include 16 songs written by Mike, Doug and Bob plus original artwork on the cover by nationally renowned artist Will McCarthy, who happens to be Bad Bob’s brother.

Tracks on the CD will be:

1. Flashflood
2. Forever
3. 7 Deadly Sins
4. Iraq
5. Paris
6. Lies
7. Paco Bill & Constance
8. Hold The Phone
9. Enuff Is Enuff
10. Issues
11. Chambana
12. Call Me
13. Bad, Bad Man
14. Favorite Position
15. Lightning
16. That’s All I’ve Got To Say

The CD will be available for purchase at CDBaby as both physical product and as MP3 downloads (entire album or individual tracks). It will also be available at Digstation (album or singles, MP3 only) and iTunes. We are expecting the CD to be ready for distribution in 3-4 weeks and are already making plans for a CD release party as soon as we have the shrink-wrapped CD's in our hands, so keep checking the blog for party dates and updates.