We wanted to address this issue publicly, so today we are releasing this official announcement, that as of tomorrow, Life Stage will no longer exist as the band we’ve been for the past few years. Yes, we know, this is heartbreaking. Everything we’ve said up till this point has been nothing but promise, and hope for the future of our little band, but today, we come to you announcing our exit from the stage.

So what happened? Well, let me briefly sum up what’s happened, and why we’ve all chosen to peacefully move on in different directions.

1) We are all moving in different directions. This summer and fall, Andy will be out of town, and out of state pursuing academic obligations, as he strives to become the best player he can be. He’s been given so many opportunities in the academic world, and to not pursue them to the fullest extent of his capabilities would be wrong. Also, Ross now runs a full time social media/online marketing business, that, in order to truly be successful, needs his undivided attention. The thing with both of these guys, is that they’ve always had multiple responsibilities, but for the first time since the band’s inception, their responsibilities OUTSIDE the band, have truly made it impossible to keep up with their responsibilities WITHIN the band. You can’t serve two masters, and we’ve all come to this realization in the past couple of weeks.

2) Rather than go on, limping, and trying to fit Life Stage into the gaps of life, we’ve decided it is just best to leave the pieces and move on. It’s best to either do something to the fullest extent of your capabilities (i.e., go all out), or not do it at all – and that’s the challenge we face now. Thus, we’ve decided to go on, and do the band (and all the individuals involved) a favor, so that no one can say we didn’t do our best, or put in our best effort. We legitimately have tried, and tried our hearts out – and we’ve made it work so far! But now, we have to move on, it simply can’t work the way it has been, any longer.

3) It’s not about the music, but then again, it is. Let me make VERY clear, that we all LOVE the music we’ve made, and we’re currently making at the time of our disbandment. In that regard, it has absolutely nothing to do with the music. No one in the group is angry, bored, or unhappy in any way about the music – most of all, we are all just disappointed with the outcome, and that we CAN’T continue to make the music we love. Thus, in that respect, it IS about the music, because we realize, that to keep going in this direction, means sacrificing the time and quality we would be able to put INTO our music. Again, this isn’t fair to us as a band, as individuals, and as fans of music ourselves, we just couldn’t let this happen.

And so, there you have it. Tonight, we are playing our very last show as a band in Austin, TX. We truly, TRULY, appreciate every single one of you who have stood behind us and our music. You’ve given us so much encouragement through the years, and we regret that we cannot continue under the burdens we all face at the moment.

But will Life Stage ever reunite?? Well, this my friends is yet to be seen, but know that we are absolutely NOT ruling it out. We can say though, with a fairly high amount of certainty, that at least within the next 2 to 3 years, there will be no more Life Stage. It’s difficult to see what will happen after that (after all, you’ve been listening to our words, and you know life is always changing, right?), but of course, we would love to see a time when our other obligations become a little less burdensome or restrictive, and we can get back together to make some great music once again.

Thanks for all of your patience, dedication and support. We’re sorry it couldn’t continue to work for us, but we hope you’ll understand, and we hope we can continue to keep in touch with all of you as we move on from here. Keep in mind we WILL be streaming our show tonight, so if you can catch it, great. Please chime in, and let us know how you feel any time. Thanks again, and see you tonight!

Ross, Andy, Chris,
Life Stage

Now, if you don’t know what this is, it’s a music festival (duh), but it’s put on by FUSE TV, hosted by Mistress Julia, and sponsored by cool brands like Jagermeister, Blueprint Artist Development, Stand and Deliver Records, and a whole bunch of others. Most importantly about this music festival, is it features local, “unsigned” talent, and it’s whole purpose (other than to make money), is to give serious, independent artists some extra exposure they may not otherwise get. We were lucky enough to be invited to play this year, and we’re very excited to be a part of this event!

So now, here’s the rundown the event tomorrow, and if you’re in the Houston area with nothing to do – Come out to this event! It WILL be worth your time and ticket price, so bring a friend, come hang out and hear some awesome local talent, at a great venue, Warehouse Live. Here are the event details:

WHAT: Exposed Music Festival hosted by Fuse TV
WHERE: Warehouse Live, Houston, TX (map)
WHEN: Doors Open 4pm – 12am
WHO: Life Stage, and plenty more great acts
COST: $12 at Door

Come out if you can tomorrow, we’re looking forward to this event! See you there.

Life Stage

I’ll never forget the first song he asked me if I could play, (which should have given me some serious indications of the level he was on as a musician), was this song – Liquid Tension Experiment’s Acid Rain.  I almost fell out of my chair when he asked me, but quickly averted embarrassment by noting there were far too many keyboards in that song for me to really learn as a guitar player (haha, yeah, that’s it).

At any rate, this song has always been a favorite of ours, and no, I still can’t play it, nor will I ever even attempt to *See the performance below and you’ll understand why*. So check it out, LTE’s Acid Rain, Live:

This week, we have to start this category with probably the most influential band (and one of the best bands) of our genre – Dream Theater. While we certainly have a broad list of influences, Dream Theater is a great place to get the conversation started. And what better way to do that than with a song known for one of the coolest riffs of all time – The Dark Eternal Night. This comes from their 9th studio effort, Systematic Chaos, and while the album as a whole isn’t our favorite, this song really gets the blood flowing. John Petrucci, you have quite possibly annihilated the entire human race with one freakin’ sweet riff – Kudos.

Here it is. Dream Theater – The Dark Eternal Night. Enjoy, and let us know what you think below.

Life Stage

So what are we talking about here? Well, first and foremost – we’re working on a new album. Most of you may already know this much, and we sent a few of you who are on our fan list an email a couple of weeks ago, detailing exactly what’s going on. Plus, you may remember from late last year, before we took a blogging hiatus, we were talking about the new studio that was being built above our old practice facilities – well now that studio is complete, and we have finally begun tracking what’s looking like a grand total of 10 completely new songs. More to come on that in the coming weeks, including a video update or two, so check in when you can.

Another topic worthy of a re-launch post, is that along with our upcoming release (which we can’t tell you the exact date yet, but think summer), we’ll be doing some cool new stuff to interact with our fans, and be more engaged here on the web. And we know you’re thinking, you guys have fans?, but yes, we do have at least 5 good fans, and we’re going to work hard to connect with them as much as possible. In fact, we’ll be blogging more, social webbing more, sharing more, and we’ll even be rolling out a forum here pretty soon – so get ready to chat us up with your comments and stern disapproval!

Finally, we have a few words to say about this moment in time, the right here and now. If you’re reading this, we think you’re cool. AND, if you’re reading this, know that you’ll be able to look back in a couple of years (when we’re all the way up to 25-30 fans), and say, yeah I supported those guys before they made it big! HA. We laugh and mostly cry at the thought of ever “making it big”, but on sort of a serious note, we truly believe that right now is a moment in history for us. We’re on the verge of releasing our second album, and our first full length record. We have over 2 years, the making of our last album, and tons of other crazy events that have contributed to our experience and maturity as a band. And most importantly, we know now, more than ever, exactly what we are going for as a band – and that includes our music, niche, appeal, and even our look. We may not be a trendy band, but our confidence is unshaken, and in fact is now stronger than ever as we face the biggest moment in our short existence thus far – and we couldn’t be more excited. Hang with us as we make the journey through this year, and chime in every step of the way; it’s gonna be a great year!

Look for more posts very soon.

Life Stage

October 29, 2010
Jet Lounge | Houston, TX
Doors at 8pm
Life Stage at 9pm.
Jet Lounge Website

November 5, 2010
Dean’s Credit Clothing | Houston, TX
Doors at 9pm
Life Stage at 12:15am
Dean’s Website

We are stoked about these shows, and we hope you are too. We’ll be playing a couple of un-recorded new songs as well, so don’t miss it. Stop by and say hi!

Let us know if you can make it, or if you have any questions. See ya soon!

Life Stage

First off, let’s set the scene: Back in May, we started talking about recording studios. We had about 4 or 5 songs completed for what will eventually be our next album, but we needed to go ahead and start thinking of where to record this thing. SO, being that we’re musicians, one of the first things to come up was the fact that, we have no money. In other words, if we actually wanted to record this thing, we would have to raise a whole bunch of dough, in a fairly short period of time. We thought about options, thought about crowdsourcing and the gamut of options there, but then a thought hit us: what if we could cut the cost of recording by using the gear we already had, and the space we already had, to record most of the instruments ourselves – better yet, what if we could just record the entire album ourselves?! That would save us a ton of money, and if we just picked up a few pieces of gear, using the software and limited experience we already had, we could actually make this happen.

One problem though: Though we had enough space to record in, the practice space we had (with a window, a window mounted A/C unit, bare concrete floors, a door that didn’t shut all the way, and only sheetrock on the walls) wasn’t exactly ideal for making a record. This wasn’t necessarily a deal-breaker, but we certainly had to think about what we could do to counter the sound problems in the room.

Now, fast forward a few months to late August. We had just put together our 8th full song to go towards this album, and something crazy came: Ross’ dad, who owned the garage and practice space that had been home to Life Stage practices for years, decided (completely coincidentally) that he was going to do away with that practice space, add a second story to the garage, and build out a new, fully functional, acoustically engineered recording studio upstairs! Crazy! Especially considering that he had really little to no knowledge at all of our progess on the album, and was simply doing it because of some things he wanted to do personally with music.

So where does that leave us now, here in October? Well, after deciding to make this project happen, the ball officially got rolling, and construction began about 3.5 weeks ago – and man they are flying! I don’t think any of us expected the size and scale of this project, nor did we expect this type of progress in just a few weeks. We’re obviously very excited, and you can check out the progress too: just take a look at the pics below that Andy took from his phone. We don’t know exactly when to expect the entire project to be done, but rest assured we’ll keep you posted on the progress! Look for more album, studio, shows, and other updates very soon, right here, on Facebook, or on Twitter.

Point #1:
- Over the course of the summer, we’ve had some big goals, and in spite of the many obsiticles we were facing, we managed to hit a lot of those goals. The biggest one of course being our new homepage! If you haven’t checked it out yet, you can see it at lifestagemusic.com, and though it’s not a $10,000 website, we’re pretty proud of it, and we’re working on more updates and changes that will make it even better, as we speak. So look for those little additions to the new website over the course of the next month or two.

Point #2:
- As you know, we have been on the course of writing a complete new album for most of the year now, and I’d say we’ve been especially fervent in our writing since about May or so. Well, again, in spite of the challenge of not being able to get together much at all for most of the summer (mid June – mid Aug), we’ve fared quite well, and as of the last time Andy was in town (before he began his semester at UT in Austin), we have appoximately 8 or 9 full blown songs, ready for the early stages of the studio process! We’re super excited about these songs, and we even have a handful more to hash out before we actually are ready for the studio, but expect that to happen in the next few months. And this brings me to my next point..

Point#3:
- Inside my dad’s garage resides the home, practice space, and current headquarters of Life Stage.  Needless to say, this practice space has been very, very good to us, and we’ve spent countless hours there, writing, rehearsing, and just plain goofing off. Well, after many, many years of this room only existing as an air-conditioned haven for loud noise, my dad has finally (FINALLY) decided to bite the bullet, and turn it into an all out, fully functioning recording studio! I know, awesome right? Well, it is if you’re me (or us really), because it’s something I’ve been begging him to do since I was 15, and now, with it finally coming to life just at the right moment in time (this project is already underway, set to be done in the next month or so), this MAY mean an almost zero budget for the recording of our next album! That’s a musician’s dream right there, and hopefully, it’ll work out just the way I’m hoping it will.

We shall see, but in the meantime, we have plenty of music to keep us busy, plenty to do in terms of getting ready for the studio (if we’re recording it ourselves, we had better know what the hell we’re doing! ), and plenty on all of our minds, as we’re already looking to make 2011 the best year yet for Life Stage. Keep an eye out for more updates as we move forward; we’ll be keeping you posted every step of the way!

Take this chance to sign up for our mailing list if you haven’t done so already, and leave us your comments here, or on our Facebook page, we’d love to hear your feedback.

Until Nextime,

Ross | Life Stage.

Obviously, this thing is not perfect (no website is), but we’re stoked to have an official homepage. One of the coolest features of this site is the sweet toolbar at the bottom of the page. This toolbar allows you to check out our videos, pictures (when we get some!), and share everything immediately with your friends on ANY social network – we highly encourage you to do this! Not only are we excited about that, but you can also chat it up with other fans on any network via that same toolbar. Perty cool huh? Give it a look while you there, and as always, let us know what you think.

So that’s it! New website is up and running! Go check it out now, bookmark it, and respond to this post to let us know what you think. There will be more updates soon, so keep an eye out.

Until Nextime,

Life Stage