We’ve been quietly tucked away in the rehearsal studio over the past few weeks, working on the show and adding more new songs, and very much looking forward to the CD release show weekend of Nov. 13th and 14th.  One of my personal favorites from the new record is a song called “Abigail, Don’t Be Long” – the song was inspired by Abigail Adams, an amazing woman who spent many years apart from her husband during the Revolution and not only ran the farm and raised a family, she was an early advocate for Women’s Rights and an outspoken Abolitionist.  This past weekend just happened to be the anniversary of John and Abigail’s marriage and now seemed like a great time to post the finished song Abigail inspired.  We released an early demo for this song a while back, and while some of the initial parts and ideas were kept, we changed a few things and had a lot of fun adding little details here and there.  Here’s the version that will appear on the new album, “The King Can Drink the Harbour Dry”, which we’ll be releasing in a few weeks – just click the link below to stream or right click to download the mp3 -

The Dimes – Abigail, Don’t Be Long (Click to Listen)

And speaking of the new album, we’ve had several very nice reviews of the record over the past few weeks – click the links below if you’d like to read what the bloggers are saying…

http://your-moment-of-zen.blogspot.com/2009/10/dimes-king-can-drink-harbour-dry.html

http://wildysworld.blogspot.com/2009/10/review-dimes-king-can-drink-harbor-dry.html

Here’s hoping you have a great week and for those in the Pacific Northwest, we hope to see you soon – don’t forget to mark your calendars for the CD release shows…Friday, November 13th in Seattle at the Tractor Tavern, 9pm – and Saturday, November 14th in Portland at Mississippi Studios – 7pm early show (all ages), 10pm late show (21 + up) – see you then!

Johnny

The Dimes at St. Cupcake from The Penny Jam on Vimeo.

The Penny Jam is a video series out of Portland that features artists in unique locales…so when asked where we’d like to shoot, we naturally chose a cupcake shop. A huge thanks to Portland’s beloved St. Cupcake for letting us in the doors…and for sparing a few cupcakes…and to Scott Carver and The Penny Jam Team for inviting us and for the great film work -

“Abigail, Don’t Be Long” is one of the songs slated to appear on our upcoming record, “The King Can Drink the Harbor Dry”, due out this fall. You can also find an early demo of this song here…

Here’s hoping you have a great week -

Johnny

It was 239 years ago today…the event that became known as the Boston Massacre was like pouring gasoline on an ever growing fire in Boston. The incident involved the deaths of five civilians at the hands of British troops on March 5, 1770, and it began a series of events that helped spark the rebellion in Boston and eventual revolution in America.

Now I’m no loyalist, but this thing wasn’t as one sided as history would have you believe. In fact, a young lawyer, and a favorite patriot of mine, called John Adams actually served as council in defense for the British troops in the trial that followed the incident…and he was certainly no loyalist either. The fact remains though, for me anyway, that the soldiers shouldn’t have been there in the first place, as the British were basically engaged in a military occupation of Boston. An interesting factoid: the picture above was actually a print made from an engraving by a local blacksmith named Paul Revere. Other variations of Revere’s engraving have been made over the years, such as the one below, which was made shortly before the Cival War and emphasizes Crispus Attucks in the foreground of the picture. Attucks, a black man, was the first one killed in the Boston Massacre and is frequently named as the first martyr of the American Revolution.

We’ve had a demo floating around for the better part of a year about Crispus Attucks and the Boston Massacre…it’s more of a round than a song, but I thought I’d post it given the history of the day…

The Dimes – Crispus Attucks (Demo)

Have a great weekend y’all -

Johnny

Hey y’all – hope you had a good weekend. Ours was a busy one…

We spent the day Saturday recording at Pierre’s place, mainly working on “Robert Goddard” and “Abigail, Don’t Be Long” for the new record.  We recorded a demo version of “Robert Goddard” the night before, just acoustic guitar and vocal (recorded twice over the top of each other) – it’s a bit slower than the version I play with the band, but it’s a nice listen. We ended up tracking what will most likely be the album version on Sunday, recording to the original demo from this past July – that said, I thought you might like to hear (or download) the acoustic version that would otherwise never be heard. Just click the player link below:

The Dimes – Robert Goddard (acoustic demo)

Sunday we spent the day at Secret Society Studios here in Portland – it’s a beautiful studio to record in, and Jordan, the house engineer there, is a great guy and incredible to work with. We spent most of the day recording a song called “Paul Revere“, a tune that became something of a favorite at shows last fall. Towards the end of the day I got a chance to do a little piano and vocal work on “Abigail, Don’t Be Long” as well. We all had a great time and we took a few pictures…

Have a great rest of the week – drink your coffee…we’ll post more soon -

Johnny