Author Archives: brendan

Walking Long Distances to Write Better Songs

Val and I live in greater Los Angeles, California. There are a lot of cars. Cars are, you might say, necessary to the economy and to a life in LA.
Recently, I found myself mysteriously without either a car or a bike. Millie Van Lily, our aging yet functional monstrous van, was on its way to [...]

WC Demo #6: Leap.

Forgive me for being inconsistent with these “weekly” demos. It’s been kinda tough lately–and I’ll get into that shortly. But for now, here’s this week’s song, way more “adult contemporary” than we usually roll, but it still feels appropriate to the subject matter. Here’s “Leap.”
Leap (rough demo) by GrooveLily
http://groovelily.bandcamp.com/track/leap-rough-demo
If you like it, download a [...]

All shall be well.

Midsummer is consistently one of our favorite GrooveLily albums, if we’re allowed to pick favorites–partially because we got to REALLY stretch out with the music, and play with themes and variations in a way that we don’t usually get to–and partially because the experience of MAKING the show was so sublime.
One of the sublime parts [...]

WC Demo #5: Standing In The Shadow.

This week’s song is about a guy who discovers too late that he’s lost his chance with a girl he used to date. It’s my hope that this song will become part of our live set with Gene singing lead…but in the meantime, this demo has me singing lead and Val playing the role of [...]

WC Demo #4: I Want You For Real

When I was in high school, it became clear to me that I needed to get my hands on a Nintendo Entertainment System. It had the best games available, games that played pretty much exactly the same as they did in the arcades. I finally saved up and bought one, and many hours were wasted [...]

WC Demo #3: Crazy For You.

Take a listen at the link directly below this sentence, and download a copy if you like (and throw the band a little cash).

A couple of years ago, our manager Ben asked us if we might want to submit a spec song for inclusion on the soundtrack (and perhaps in the film) of an upcoming [...]

WC Demo #2: That Technique.

Take a listen at the link directly below this sentence, and download a copy if you like (and throw the band a little cash).

This week, it’s a song intended for a young female singer–maybe late teens, early 20’s–who is trying to maintain a reasonably “nice girl” image, and yet find her own identity. And rock [...]

WC Demo #1: Up, Up, and Away.

If you want to simply hear the song, dive right in with the play button beneath this sentence.

If you like it, do us a favor and buy a download in the format of your choice (including FLAC for all you audiofile geeks). The money goes straight to us, not to Apple or Real Networks or [...]

Who needs a bass player when you have a sousaphone

Paul Sabourin, of Paul and Storm, just turned 40, and his wife threw him a surprise birthday party. We weren’t able to be there, but Storm invited us to participate in a mashup video where we would reminisce about something absolutely fictional in Paul’s history. Accordingly, we filmed a little something in the lobby of [...]

We’re going to finish Wheelhouse. I swear.

Okay, we’re going to do it. We’re going to finish Wheelhouse. For real.
For those of you who don’t know anything about this, Wheelhouse is the 2nd GrooveLily concert-musical-hybrid thing, the one we started in 2004-5, after Striking 12 was proving to be a successful venture and we wanted to do more of the same.
TheatreWorks supported [...]