The Holiday Season is here!!!! (yippie)… I know you have pies to bake and lists to attend to, so I’ll make it brief and save some of the really exciting news and info for our End of the Year Spectacular Newsletter that will arrive in a few weeks. Let’s start with shows, shall we…

Hands and Knees have a few shows on the horizon of note. The band is playing out in support of their very excellent collection Et Tu, Fluffy? which was released on Midriff this past Spring. The album continues to garner the band well deserved praise and I’m betting it will end up on some Best of ’09 lists. The band is currently holed up recording their next album and we will have details on that as they develop. You can get Et Tu, Fluffy? now at the Midriff Records site (www.midriffrecords.com), Itunes, CD Baby and/or where ever fine music is sold. Feel you have to check them out live first before you commit to a purchase? Here are your next chances (one show is w/ The Fiery Furnaces – ohhhh, ahhhhh).

12/4 @ Bertlesman Campus Center at Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York w/ Fiery Furnaces
12/11 @ PA’s Lounge Somerville, MA

Ian Adams has been having a super year. He’s been playing out in support of his album Stay Up Late which Midriff released this past summer. The album was produced by The Beatings’ Eldridge Rodriguez and has been receiving a ton of airplay this year (particularly the bittersweet/spooky ballad “Oh, Dracula”) and we couldn’t be happier. He has a show coming up that you shouldn’t miss w/ former Husker Du guy Grant Hart. Here are the details.

12/16 @ Middle East Upstairs, Cambridge, MA w/ Grant Hart (Husker Du co-founder, Nova Mob)

Beatings co-front person Eldridge Rodriguez will be playing a solo set mid-Dec. The performance will include songs off his critically acclaimed release This Conspiracy Against Us as well as from his upcoming Midriff release, You Are Released. If you haven’t been introduced to the dark and beautiful song styling of Mr. Rodriguez yet, this intimate performance will be a suitable primer. Like all great misunderstood artist, someday E.R. will achieve cult status and the guy who your high school aged son and daughter buy drugs off of will talk of his genius. Here your chance to catch him before he inevitably become a recluse (Rodriguez that is, not your kid’s dealer).

12/16 @ O’Briens Pub, Allston, MA

The Beatings are taking a month off after a busy Summer and Fall supporting their latest release Late Season Kids. The new album has been showered with near unanimous positive praise from the blogs and papers and has charted respectably nationwide (high as #3 spot regionally). So after almost 10 years, 6 albums, 8 national tours, hundreds of pages of press, countless shows, a bunch of Best of Lists and 0 Boston Music Award nominations (way to keep your ears to the street BMAs… you should feel a little embarrassed… what?!? no Weezer nods this year?) the band is taking the month of Dec. off to take care of some personal business. But shows are scheduled for Jan and Feb including some NYC dates. We’ll let you know the whens and the wheres.

In getting with the holiday season, Midriff has prepared some cheap down loadable gifts for you and yours. Starting Dec. 14th we will begin making recordings of live performances by your favorite Midriff bands available for download on our Midriff Records Digital Store (at www.midriffrecords.com). Collect them, trade them, cherish them. These will be no frills live performances, many recorded by David Grabowski of Scuba fame. We will get them up as quickly as we can and in no particular chronological order. We can tell you the first couple up will be The Beatings in Cambridge, MA and Allston, MA in Spring and Summer 2009, as well as their Mobilize the Militia I and II albums recorded in Montana years ago. In addition we’ll have ready Eldridge Rodriguez in Somerville in Winter 2009. Maybe some Hands and Knees and Scuba to follow… we’ll see. It’s going to be just like those live Dead recording you used to pass around. Not enough giving you say. Well, every time you buy an hardcopy album directly from us through the Midriff Records Store on our web site we will throw in an additional album by another great Midriff band of our choice. We want you to sample our wares. You like The Beatings… maybe you’ll like Pending Disappointment. You a fan of Hands and Knees, you may get a kick out of The Autumn Rhythm. This offer is while supplies last. So order…… today.

In in-studio news…
Greg Lyon, formally of Kipper Tim w/ Sarah Borges and more recently front man for Pending Disappointment, The Spanish Armada, and The Beatings will release his a new album on Midriff Records next year. The album features many folks from the Midriff family and will be Lyon’s 4th studio album and first solo release. Release date and details will follow shortly.

Get Help (Tony Skalicky of Beatings fame’s project) will soon return to the studio to record their follow up to 2008′s The End of the New Country. As reported last month Get Help will have two songs featured in the PBS series, “Gourmet’s Adventures with Ruth”. The songs, “Carne Asada” and “SPF 45″ will appear in the episodes “Mexico” and “Seattle”, we assume respectively.

The aforementioned Eldridge Rodriguez album You Are Released which was to be released in early 2009, was pushed to late 2009 and then pushed again to early 2010… has been pushed yet again to Fall 2010. E.R. will return to Liberty and Union Studios in Tauton, MA with co-producer Ray Jeffrey to record some new tracks to be included in the collection and to give the album that “Tayor Swift-y” feel that the boys were going for… lets hope they don’t succeed.