Seume

Yesterday morning, I joined Mark Manning for an interview on 90.1fm KKFI in Kansas City.  Mark plays a wide variety of music on Wednesday’s Mid-day Medley and really supports the good music happening here in the city.  

The interview is uncut, aired live, and I played 2 acoustic tracks during the segment — Revolution Son (11:00 min mark) and Will Ya Be My Friend (24:17).

Have a listen if you’d like hear about the album process and what’s happening next!

There isn’t anything getting ready to come outta your screen that’s gonna hit you right in the kisser. No… I’m pretty sure that technology is sitting next to Smell-O-Vision in a secret vault!

I just wanted to you to be the first to know that there are only 50 CDs left from the first 1000 printed. I’m not mentioning this to talk about my sales… au contraire, mon frere… many of these first prints were given away to promote the album. Part of the process, really.

I AM letting you know because this first batch is special, and not just because it is the first run of the first album (both pretty good reasons for specialness, yeah?). It’s also unique because the next batch will have different track start/end times for “Something You May Wanna Know” and “Will Ya Be My Friend”. (The locusts at the beginning of the latter will be moved to the end of the former. Got that? Haha!)

The track time change is to prep for “Will Ya”’s release as a single, in the coming months. We got a stop animation video brewing for it and everything! Check out the progress here.

So, that’s a small variation, yes. But, it’s just another reason why, if you want to buy a CD, getting it from this first batch is the way to go! Otherwise, they’ll soon be going to radio stations, press outlets, etc… And they won’t appreciate the significance like you.

It really comes down to this. I think this first print is special — I’m biased, I know! — but I thought you might agree and would appreciate the “heads up!”. Especially since it doesn’t come with getting hit in the face by a flying object! Though, you might get your face slapped if your friends find out you didn’t give them the low down too, eh?

The album is packaged in a tri-fold digipak with original artwork by Liverpool design group, Smiling Wolf (album cover photo shot by Alexandra Wolkowicz, of Arctic Monkeys album fame). The insert has all the song lyrics, credits, and a photo of yours truly (uh-oh… fold out!) shot by Chicago photographer, James Exley. All that’s to say, it’s wrapped up pretty.

You can pick up your CD at the Grassland Records Store (store.grassland-records.com). Your support, as always, is much appreciated.

Thanks for listening.

-Seume

P.S. Great show coming up with another great poster, courtesy of the one-and-only DJG.

Hoi from Holland (where I’m spending a couple weeks with my parents and sisters)!

As you probably know, college and independent radio are some the few remaining “offline” outlets for new music, not dictated by corporate shysters. People who care about music can still decide what they wanna hear. What a concept…

So, I’m stoked to have earned several more Weekly Top 30 album spots on college/indie radio nationwide (and one in Calgary) as well as the #5 slot on KVSC in St. Cloud, MN. And one of the things I’m most happy about is that the album as a whole is getting airplay, as opposed to just a couple tracks.

Thanks for listening, my friend. Hope you’re doing real well.

PEACE
AND
LOVE

-Seume

Over the last few weeks, I’ve gotten some overseas press–in the UK.  On my birthday, April 21st, I got a message from Simon, the director behind Seume album art and web design, about being mentioned in The Drum UK.

To read the article on their site, you have to create a sign-in (why?), so here’s the text for those of you who won’t wanna do that (don’t blame you).

Smiling Wolf has worked with musician David Seume on a number of design tasks.

The Liverpool-based agency developed branding, sleeve art and packaging for the singer as well as launching his new website – davidseume.com – featuring motion graphics and a blog.

Seume’s recently released debut album cover featured a specially manufactured and photographed typographic installation.

So yeah, a design based mention, but good to be mentioned no doubt. Thanks Si, for the heads up, and to John from Smiling Wolf for recently giving my myspace some new threads.

Also, just last week received a nice review for It Is What It Is from UK based online music mag, Room Thirteen. For this one, you don’t have to do anything but click to read Joanna Vallance’s remarks on what she calls “A Varied and Promising Album”.

And, It Is What It Is is getting airplay at nearly 100 college/indie radio stations nationwide (and Canada) and is a weekly top 30 album at WLFR in Pomona, NJ. Hopefully I’ll be soon be cracking more top 30’s and start grabbing some top 10’s (or the top spot, yeah?), but the reception thus far even for a self-released debut has been proper cool. Mos def.

I’m off to Wheaton, IL tomorrow for a week at my brother’s house. Gonna landscape his crib. If I can get it together, I’ll shoot some before and after photos to throw up on Flickr. I know you wanna see ‘em.

So that’s about it for now. I’ll soon be writing an post about stuff from the last month: the L.A. show, some KC shows, the “Will Ya Be My Friend” video, some local recognition, and just generally why it’s been a while since the last update.

cheerios,
seume