This will be the first show with our new guitar player!

I’ve been playing music with Nathan Blank for the last 5 years. We’ve been in three different bands together: Camorra, Dead Echo, and Chris Margolin & The Dregs. He was the first person with whom I ever really felt comfortable writing a song, rather than simply showing a song. It’s been a fantastic run, and I know I couldn’t have gotten this far without his constant pushing; however, Nathan has decided to move back to his home state of Minnesota.

While it is definitely sad for myself and the other Dregs, we must push forward and make the best of the situation. I believe we have accomplished that in finding our new guitarist, Jeremy Kester.

We are very excited to see where the new era of the Dregs will take us. I see good things in the future.

Jeremy’s first show with us will be at the Tonic Lounge on July 24th. Hopefully you can all make it out for this awesome event.

Jeremy Kester (Guitar)

Chris

Last weekend we spent some time with Gunnar at Northern Lights recording studio. I have to say were pretty excited about fruits of our labor. Aside from tightening up sloppy guitars, unleashing the worst case of gas known to man on my fellow band mates, getting sick the second day and subsequently losing my voice it was a fun experience. I think ultimately it brought the band even closer together. On Sunday we invited a bunch of people over to sing with us on the song “Anything”. It was a blast. Chris Margolin and Ryan Aiello loaned us their voices for some adlibs and a group of about ten other friends sang the chorus. One of Mike’s friends recorded the whole thing and, as soon as the song is mixed, there will be a video streaming on youtube for all to see. On behalf of HEMA I would like to thank all of you who participated.

This weekend we had a show lined up in Dundee that fell through due to legal restraints so we’re not going to be able to showcase our new songs until we play Kelly’s Olympian on July 11th. I want to say I’m very excited about our new material. I feel like we’ve grown up so much this past year and I think it will be apparent in our performance. A couple new songs even made it on the new album. We’re looking forward to the coming year. I hope all of will tell your friends about the Candy For Your Ears tribe and come out to support our efforts much as you can. See you July 11th

Rock,
Jason
HEMA

It’s now been over 11 years since the first time I (Ryan Aiello) stepped into a studio to do a recording. My first experience was with engineer Bob Moon at Moonsong Studio in Riverside, California in 1998. I was writing songs under the name Kocauli, and current guitarist, Marcus Young (with his band Starbelly) and a couple other buddies took a Spring Break drive to So. Cal and laid down 9 tracks between all of us.

The outcomes were a descent demo for Kocauli and Starbelly for which I hope never sees the public again, but more important than the product was the experience. I remember the first time recording was extremely frustrating. I wasn’t use to a click track and most of my live experience had been playing solo shows with an acoustic guitar. I remember thinking during the recording, “This isn’t music . . . I hate this . . . it feels so mechanical.” By the time I finished tracking one song I remember I wanted to quit. However, I am glad I didn’t and that my friends were a great support. There is nothing better to make you work harder than hearing your own mistakes, over, and over, and over . . .

The final mixes were done and I passed them out at live shows at first. A lot folks seemed to like them and they turned into the E.P. “Waterfront Stories” which sold for $5. I think I sold maybe a 100. However I am grateful to Velvet Blue Music (Huntington Beach, CA) because one of the songs ‘Star’ (Water Front Stories version) ended up being on one of Velvet Blue Music’s Compilation album, Burning Ears, which you can still get at www.velvetbluemusic.com

Through the next few years I began to gather recording gear for myself, which taught me a lot about song writing, recording, and mixing. I started working with a PreSonus FirePod (the first version) recording everything in Cubase. It was amazing to work on my own recordings, which over time, got better, and better.

By 2004 I had played over 300 shows within my music experience and wanted to pull off a full-length album. I moved back to the Portland, Oregon area in 2002 and Marcus Young (I.L.O. guitarist) and I were playing in his band Starbelly, but that ended by 2003. I came up with the name Ill Lucid Onset sometime in 2003-2004. I chose this name to represent any music I was writing/playing whether I was playing in a band or doing solo shows. The name wasn’t really out there in any way, shape, or form, but really came alive with the first disc ‘Something Unconditional’ which was released in 2005 and recorded during the last quarter of the 2004-year. My buddy Nate Vick and I took on this project recording everything in Cubase and through the Presonus. Tim Denny recorded three of the songs, ‘Never Enough,’ ‘Selfish Rhymes,’ and ‘Ockham,’ in an actual studio in Vancouver, Washington. Those were the only three songs that reminded me of my first experience in the studio where we locked ourselves up for a few days and punched track by track out. By this time I was a little better of a musician and it was clear that the experience wasn’t as painful. Tracks were laid down quickly and Tim did his magic in Pro Tools.

The rest of the disc was literally recorded in Nate Vick’s basement, which we fondly named, The Underground. It was so relaxing and peaceful to take our time on the project. In fact, it almost became too relaxing. I started realizing I was getting frustrated and began to worry that I would end up doing what many of my musician friends have done by not actually getting a finished product. With that I realized we needed a deadline and to know we were going to finish this project. I went forward and purchased a couple plane tickets for Nate and I, which gave us our deadline. We were getting on that plane no matter what material we had. We flew down to Corona, California where Bob Moon (former Moonsong Engineer) was working for the Fender Museum in their studio. We had Bob do all the final mixes, lay down some B3 tracks, and master the project. Really at that time both Nate and I were extremely happy with the disc and we felt we at least accomplished our goal of having a full-length disc, regardless of how good it was.

The recordings actually came out very professional and clean. We didn’t have any production beyond ourselves, which as time went by we began to hear as I would cringe when I heard my vocals or ask myself, “Why did we do four more measures in the song?” However, we still were proud of the end product and the truth is it was with the two songs, ‘Never Enough’ and ‘The girl from Livermore’ that we got some success in the indie world. Both songs ended up on compilation albums and some college radio and it was clear that fans truly loved these two songs during our live sets.

‘Something Unconditional’ was never really pushed and Ill Lucid Onset with the line up of Marcus Young (guitars/BGV’s), Nate Vick (bass), Tim Hensley (drums), and I played maybe twenty shows and maybe sold 200 discs. We were still proud, but we definitely spent way too much money making the disc and if Ill Lucid Onset were a business at the time we would have sunk.

Nate Vick decided to pull away from Ill Lucid Onset for personal reasons mainly revolving around time commitments, family, and his job. In some ways this sort of forced “the band” to take a break. I began to write a number of new songs and recorded many demo versions of new material. This time around I was able to record all my demo versions of songs through an MBox2 Mini. I’m not a tech geek, but from what I understand this box is the “low end” of the Pro Tools rig, which in truth I think is better than any of the older large Pro Tool rigs in the last decade.

One night in the fall of 2007 Tim Hensley, Marcus Young, and I went to Marcus’s brother’s Land Line party. A quick disclaimer: (For the record, I’m not a gamer and I don’t even really know why I went except to hang with Tim and Marcus. The last video gaming system I actually ever owned was the original NES. Of course this party was a bunch of computer geeks playing some sort of “shooting” game, which I know people could talk to each other through headsets. Needless to say, I played for 15 minutes then just enjoyed good beer and pizza.)

During this night Marcus, Tim, and I went for a talk in my car. I decided to play the guys some of the demo material I was working on. Marcus didn’t even believe it was me on the recording! He said the songs were way more complex, the singing was remarkably better, and the tone, song structure, and material overall were just great! Of course this made me feel good. That batch of songs meant a lot to me and was very personal. It was with this night we took off with another launch and playing shows out as a band. Of course we were short a bass player, but fortunately Marcus Young’s buddy, Marcus Phelps wanted to give things a try and his skill was very welcomed.

Over the next year this line up of Ill Lucid Onset as a band played over 30 weekend shows, mainly in the Portland area. We had a great set and met and connected with many other bands, such as Chris Margolin & The Dregs, HEMA, and Violet Isle. We also got a chance to play some live festivals and even a little TV spot on one of Metro East’s shows by Dirty Dog Productions. I also played a number of solo shows off and on and we began to see the songs develop more and more and what songs the fans loved! After a long year of playing out (especially while keeping the “day job”) we decided to get some tracks laid down . . .

So here is the introduction to yet another Ill Lucid Onset recording. There isn’t an end product in mind, regarding if this will turn into a full-length, E.P. or just a single. Right now I just know this is what we need to do. We have the great opportunity to work with Producer Sean Flora who did The Shins last Grammy Nominate album, ‘Wincing the Night Away’ and has also worked with King Black Acid, Cake, Franz Ferdinand, and The Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs. We are looking forward to this experience and want everyone to come along with us . . . . we are grateful for all the support and love!

Be prepared for something good . . .

“Reckless” has been chosen to be a part of KINK FM’s Plug into Portland Compilation CD.

We are stunned by the voter support that we had in order to be a part of this. Thank you to everyone who had a hand in helping us out, and everyone who has been to a show or taken the time to listen to our music.

This CD will be available for your listening pleasure in July.

Please take the time to turn your radio stations to 101.9 fm in the Portland Metro area, and call in to request “Reckless” by Chris Margolin & The Dregs at 1-877-567-KINK.

This is the biggest thing we’ve been involved with, and we couldn’t be happier to share the news and music with you.

You can visit the KINK website by clicking HERE

We hope to see you all out at a show soon!

Thank you,
Chris, Nathan, Gunnar, Jason, Johnny.

A lot of CDs coming soon!!

On Friday night, Nathan and I, along with Christian from North Head, went out to the Ash St Saloon for The Day The Nights’ CD Release show. I have known their drummer, James, for the last 8 years, and have always been a big fan of any bands for which he has played. The Days The Nights are no exception to that. Lead by Michael Draper, this band can be seen as a slightly more technical version of Queens of the Stone Age. They have a hard driving, no-ballad, balls to the wall attitude, and it oozes from every musical pore.

Their debut CD, Radical Sabatical, has been finished for well over 8 months now, but somewhere in between lineup shuffles (which finds them with both a new bass player and guitar player since the recordings were completed – a much better lineup now than prior), and artword holdups it hadn’t seen the light of day until Friday night.

The Ash St was absolutely packed, and Diamond Liar (members of Aspalt Thieves and Clarity Process), and The Mediam, were absolutely amazing. I had not had the opportunity to see either of these bands live, so this was a real treat.

The Days The Nights took the stage around 11:45 and blazed through the majority of their CD, and a few newer songs, which showed off the amazing guitar antics of Eligh, who has only been with them for a matter of months. The crowd screamed along to every word – which is pretty impressive, considering that up to this point, there is very little recorded music. It just proves that their live shows are worth going back to multiple times.

They were quite impressive. Please go check them out by going to their myspace page.

I’ve just added my twitter account to the bottom of the site. If you scroll all the way down, you can see my “tweets.” If you want to follow my Twitter account away from this site, simply click here to do so.

-Chris

I went to play my show last night, but unfortunately, the roof of the cafe had fallen into their kitchen. Show was cancelled. They are building a brand new section of the cafe. The section happens to be right next to the stage room. The ceiling decided it would be a good time to cave in. Luckily I live close enough that it wasn’t out of my way to turn around and go home. Luckily for them, they don’t have to keep the business closed and were able to stay through the night and clean up the mess. Marcel’s is one of my favorite places. It would be sad to not be able to go in there.

-Chris