Saucy Seth & the Clams of Death before our performance at prom May 7, 2004. From left: Jon Dorn, Seth McFadyen, Andrew Thompson, James Grinsell, Phil Hulse.

Sure, this is kind of a self-happy-birthday wishing, but that’s okay, I love my band and I figured I’d write something quick about them/us.

It’s been exactly 6 years since the band originally known as Saucy Seth & the Clams of Death took the stage Friday, May 7, 2004 at Lombardo’s in Randolph as the band for the Class of 2005 Plymouth South High School junior prom. We officially changed our name to The Eagle Hill Band in July 2008, and played our last show as the Clams of Death on December 30, 2007, but the band hasn’t changed a whole lot except for the name and a little thinning out of membership. What is now a 3-piece of Seth McFadyen, Phil Hulse, and myself (James just practiced with us yesterday, so we may be +1 this summer), was once us three, plus James Grinsell on the rhythm guitar, and the ridiculously talented Andrew Thompson on piano.

I think one of the big reasons we changed our name is that we don’t really consider ourselves Saucy Seth & the Clams of Death without the full 5-piece. It may sound weird, but to us, ‘Saucy Seth’ is a sacred name. It’s the first band I was ever in, and we achieved a pretty good amount of popularity at South HS – we had the honor of being in the long line of bands like the Skakopaths, the Leftovers, Leftout, Drive It Like You Stole It, Underage, and [our immediate predecessor] Comboguy. It’s not a lot in terms of the world of music, but it’s a pretty big deal to be the popular band in a high school for a short period of time. The big difference between us and those other bands was that we played classic rock. We all came from pop-punk and ska backgrounds, except Thompson, but we took that and decided to start a classic rock band. And it was damn fun.

And it still is damn fun. We’ve played a bunch of shows as a band over the past 6 years, sometimes with 5, 4 or 3 people, sometimes with our friend Nick Amendolare, and once as a 3-piece we called Nantucket Sleigh Ride. We’re still going strong as the EHB with Seth, Phil, and me holding down the fort all these years. We’re probably one of the more casual bands around, and I’d say that’s our best quality. We play when we want to – when we have time and when we can find a show. We’ve never once gotten too serious, or taken ourselves too seriously. We’re not a band “trying to make it” – we’ve already made it as far as I’m concerned – we’re a group of friends who can get together whenever they can and play music with incredible chemistry, and people seem to have fun watching us play.

So if I have a message to all you young musicians out there it would be: Make a band with your friends, don’t try to make friends from a band. If you’re only goal as a band is to get a record deal, chances are you’re not going to have much fun with it. If you’re looking to have fun, you’re much better off getting a group of your own friends together to play. With Brewster Productions, I’ve seen a lot of different young band scenarios, and my anecdotal evidence suggests that the laid-back attitude of my beloved EHB is the one that lasts 6 years (and counting).

Have fun with music – if you’re not having fun, what’s the point?

Yours in nostalgia,
Jon

(ps – check out some Clams of Death stuff below)

Happy April everyone,

I hope anyone who visited yesterday enjoyed the show announcement. It’s entirely true – it wasn’t an april fools joke. Did you also know that April 2nd is Opposite Day?

Anyway, we’ve been getting geared up for the School’s Out Summer Concert Series for a little while now, it things are starting to get real exciting. If you haven’t been over to the CONCERT SERIES WEB SITE, please do so, there are many fun things to behold. You’ll notice the SCHEDULE, how to DONATE, and how to GET BOOKED to play. If you’ve always wanted to play on the Plymouth Waterfront, now is your chance. If you check out the schedule, you’ll also notice we’ve got an amazing field of musicians playing: Jeff Conley, Nate Cristofori, Jesse Boncek, Amy Mercier, Boston & Bosco, Barroom Heroes (a middle school punk band), 3rd Left, Jake Hill, EHB, The Release, 14th Union, Bones & A Curtis Rhythm, and a Warped Tour send-off show for The Empire State. We’ve also got a few incredible dudes who’ll be playing but we haven’t solidified their dates yet: Greg Loftus, Jake Hill, and Sean P. Rogan of Big D and the Kids Table. And we’ll be adding a ton more as we get closer.

Needless to say, it’s going to be an incredible summer of music. But wait, there’s more! Starting April 8th, we’ll be up in Boston every Thursday night presenting SINGER-SONGWRITER THURSDAYS at Sweetwater Cafe. They’re going to be awesome shows, and if you’d like to play get in touch!

I’m gonna go eat a Fluffernutter.
- Jon

Stephen Infascelli (left) was the special guest DJ for the Nike Indoor Nationals this past weekend. Brewster provided the sound.

Happy Monday,

So we got through our weekend of sound production at the Reggie Lewis Center, where we were in charge of music and a nice little bunch of announcers carrying around wireless microphones. If you were following our frequent tweets throughout the weekend, you probably heard about some initial troubles with the mics, which we swiftly solved on Saturday morning. And you probably heard about some crazy athletics going on. Being that this was Nike Indoor Nationals, it was the national championship for high school indoor track individual and relay team athletes. We saw people breaking national all-time records and having top-ten all-time performances right and left. You can read some of the results here.

Once we got past our first-day issues with an audio ducking system (we removed it and everything magically started working great), we had a great but occasionally monotonous time. Scott, Steve Infascelli and I sat up in a big scaffolding tower with our sound equipment and a bunch of food, where we diligently kept track of 4 wireless-mic announcers roaming about the stadium and 2 wired-mic announcers close by. Check out these photos, and we’ll be posting some more video soon.

Now, back to the music – and I don’t mean the Ke$ha and Miley Cyrus we were playing all weekend. This coming weekend, 3/19 & 3/20 we’ve got two awesome shows at Sweetwater Cafe: Shaun Dever, w/ Ben Carter and Nick Amendolare on Friday 3/19, then Jake Hill and Greg Loftus on Saturday 3/20. Saturday’s show will be the Boston launch party for Tranzmission, a really cool indie music blog by our good friend and journalist Ryan Wood.

CONCERT SERIES NEWS: This past Thursday, we officially started booking artists at the School’s Out Summer Concert Series! We are beyond excited about this. So far we’ve got a giant 3rd of July show, a Warped Tour send-off party for a band from Braintree, a couple old friends, and a bunch of new ones. Go to the concert series web site to read more and check out the schedule.

Have a tubular week. Happy St. Patrick’s day.

- Jon

Greg Loftus at Sweetwater Cafe March 5, 2010. Presented by Brewster Productions.

The rad tunes were pouring out of a little room downstairs in an alleyway club tonight in Boston. Greg Loftus and Nate Cristofori, two of south-of-Boston’s finest, tuned up Sweetwater Cafe’s downstairs stage tonight. Nate started off the show with some great sing-alongs with his contagious piano-ing, and Greg closed out the evening with some incredible bluesy guitar and singing work. Check out the photos. Good night, and see you next week.

Nate Cristofori at Sweetwater Cafe March 5, 2010. Presented by Brewster Productions.

Here’s what’s going on next weekend: The two big shows are THE OKAY WIN 3/12 and 3rd LEFT 3/13, both at Sweetwater Cafe. Also next weekend, Team Brewster will be tackling the Nike Indoor Nationals track meet as the official sound team. We’re going to tweet about the wacky time we’re having the whole time with fun photos, so stay tuned to that if you feel like reliving your former athletic days through a sound production company. Which reminds me: Follow us on Twitter! Who knows, maybe we’ll end up like that girl @lovelybutton if Conan discovers us.

Photo gallery and video below!!

- Jon

PS – HAPPY 23rd BIRTHDAY TO SCOTT!

I came about Mr. Rogan when I went to see Streetlight Manifesto at the Boston House of Blues back in October – he was great. Just him an his acoustic getting the 2,000 people waiting to see a punk-ska band to sing and bob their heads along. It was an awesome surprise act at the show, and I decided to e-mail him a couple days later on the off chance he might want to do a show or two with good ol’ Brewster Productions!

So we’ll be promoting the hell out of this one (and of course the other ones too), so make sure you spread the word to all of your friends who like Big D, or just good music in general. There’s a Big D show at the Paradise on March 19th, so if you’re there, tell everyone to come to Sweetwater on the 27th. Check out a few samples of Sean’s in our featured music player, and check out some of these at his web site: Rocking Chair Song and a whole bunch of other songs. And just for fun, I found this video of Sean playing subsitute guitar for Streetlight during Warped Tour because I guess Tomas broke his arm or something. Details!:

SEAN P ROGAN (of Big D and the Kids Table)
LIVE @ Sweetwater Cafe
Saturday, March 27, 2010
21+, $5 cover, presented by Brewster Productions

Tell all your friends and see you at the show!

- Jon

Ben Carter from lolo on Vimeo.