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

So let’s check out some stats:

Giveaway #2 – From 02/01 – 04/01
- 150 CD’s sent out/passed out/teletransported out (lol) in 2 months
- ALL CD’s localized around the Houston area this time (except for a few)
- ~500 TOTAL CD’S GIVEN OUT THUSFAR B/T GIVEAWAY #1 & #2!!! HUGE!

And that’s it! 2 HUGE CD giveaways have now come and gone, and we’ve GIVEN out approx. 500 since the first one started back in September. 500. Wow.

Thanks so much to all who requested CD’s, and told your friends about us. We know it sounds weird that we’re thanking people who, by the industry’s standards, are basically “stealing” from us, but for us, it’s simply a way to get OUR music into YOUR hands. And what a better, simpler way, than Free? Now granted, we don’t have an endless supply of these physical CD’s to give out, but we’re doing what we can, and we hope that by making an investment in our fans, they’ll make an investment in us for the long haul! So thanks!

Also, if you didn’t get one this time around, feel free to purchase a copy or download the album via our album page @ music.lifestagemusic.com, OR, who knows, we might just be doing this again sometime in the future, and you can grab one then!

Either way, thanks again to everyone for your support. Please, please continue to share us with your friends, family, co-workers, and pets, and help spread the word about Life Stage!

Until Nextime!

-Life Stage-

Facebook
Myspace
Twitter

Well you see, when you find something you like, it’s tempting to just hog it all to yourself. You think, “oh cool! I’m gonna be the only one that knows about this!” But what you soon find out is that nothing is ever quite as fun by yourself. I mean, sure, you can play catch by yourself, or go to the movies by yourself, or countless other team-sport type of activities, but when you do that, you’re missing out! And that pot of gold you found is really useless until you have someone to spend it on or share it with. I mean let’s face it – we were built for community! Humans need other humans and like other things that other humans like! We need to share the things we love, or else it’s no fun. Life is just… boring.

So. What’s the take home here? Basically, it’s this: If you like us, or love us – SHARE US. It’s that simple! We feel so honored to share what we’ve made and what we love with you, now turn around and pass it along so you can enjoy our music with ANYONE else who MIGHT JUST FEEL THE SAME WAY YOU DO! And that is the clincher – ANYONE MIGHT JUST FEEL THE SAME WAY YOU DO. You never know. So please take the time (all of 5 minutes) to share our page on Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter, (not to mention any other place you’re blogging, blurbing, or sharing) and be the first to tell your friends about Life Stage! It would mean the world to us, and it might just make you or someone you know’s world a little better too.

And that’s it for today! We want you to know we truly appreciate you. Stop by anytime, any place, and let us know what you think, and SHARE with your friends! We’d love to hear from you.

Talk to you soon,

Life Stage

Well what in the world does that mean? Glad you asked. It means, that aside from (or in addition to) iTunes, AmazonMP3, Napster, Rhapsody, Emusic, and a few others we were already on, (which is pretty much global as far as retailers go) we are now (or soon to be) up and running on several top streaming music sites and online radio stations, such as LastFM, Pandora, and MOG, and a few new retailers to boot, such as Puretracks, MooZone, & ThinkIndie! In fact, you can see the complete list of partners below, and feel free to check each of them out (do Bing search or something) to get a feel for what they do. Who knows, you may even find one you like better than iTunes! There’s other cool stuff included too, like the leading ringtones site, Myxer, and syndication through Wal-Mart online! Oh, and not to mention Zune for all you zuners out there! Cool huh?

Yes, indeed this is pretty sweet, but for now, we’re still giving away downloads of our EP, as well as FREE physical copies to those who ask, so don’t hesitate! Get your FREE copy or digital download before we end this offer – at which point you’ll have to find us on one of these mentioned sites – and have to actually PAY for our music! You wouldn’t want that would you? So go to music.lifestagemusic.com today and get your free download. OR, stop by anytime via Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, and ask for a free copy of Stage 1. Don’t be shy! Just shoot us a message, comment, @reply, whatever, and say “I want a CD!”, and we’ll get you one, we promise.

Thanks so much for all your loyal support, and look for us to be up on these sites – coming soon! In the meantime, keep in touch. Talk to you soon!

Life Stage

First of all, it’s no secret that I’m a married man. Yes I’m young, yes I’m a musician, but YES I am married! And I am quite happy being “tied up”. But really, that’s only the tip of the iceberg, and just serves as a preface for the next part, which is that I also have 2 kids! Well, make that, I have 1 kid, but after tomorrow, I’ll have 2! That’s right, my wife is scheduled to deliver around noon tomorrow, and thus will bring our new baby girl into the world! I know, crazy right? First there was the one (my son Remington), now it’s about to be two, and pretty soon it’s gonna be a farm around my house! But nevertheless, I’m super excited about it, and I wanted to share with you all this important landmark in my life.

SO. What does that mean for Life Stage? You may ask. Well..
Honestly, what this REALLY means, is that I’m going to work THAT much harder, and dig THAT much deeper in my creative and business endeavors here along with the rest of the band, and we’ll keep doing what we do! A New Life on the Earth – how much more relevent and inspiring can you get?

On a related note, just a week after my duaghter will have entered the world, we will be playing our next show down in Houston at a place called Dean’s Credit Clothing! (very cool place, check it out here: Dean’s Credit Clothing) Now this, unlike my daughter’s soon to be grand entrance, was completely unshceduled until this morning – i.e. we found out about it late last night, and were confirmed early this morning! We still don’t have all the details, but it will be March 26th at the aforementioned place, and we’ll be the middle of 3 bands. We’ll keep you posted on more info, I just wanted to mention it before my weekend just got totally crazy!

And that’s about all as far as news goes in my world! But if you want to know more about me or the band, and what’s going on, just ask here, or get on Facebook, Myspace, or Twitter, and give us a shout! We’d love to hear from you.

Keep in touch!

Ross
Life Stage

Basically, if you want to know how the progression started, we have to go back a little ways to our pre-Life Stage days. Back then, we didn’t really know what we were doing (ok, we probably still don’t, but at least we have a little better idea!), so admittadely, we did A LOT of beating our heads up against the wall. I mean, as far as succeeding in the music business, we thought what I think a lot of bands think, which is quintessentially this statement: “We’re gonna TAKE over the world and MAKE people listen to us and MAKE our own path and BREAK down the barriers! We’re awesome!!” haha how silly.

Fast forward a couple of years (although it didn’t take even that long to realize that ideology was, well, stupid), and we realized two things: a) the “music industry” didn’t give a crap about us, and no matter how “awesome” we thought we were, we were still “nobodies” to them, and b) when you use the “beat down the door” method of finding success, if you do find it, you find it alone – but when you care more about building lasting relationships with the people around you, and you give to them not expecting anything in return, you’ll be more fulfilled in the long run! (Not to mention you are actually building friendships with the very people who will be supporting you in your career anyway!) SO, the moral of this story is that by about the time we changed our name to Life Stage, and got in the studio to record Stage 1, another shift was happening as well, and we knew we had to do more to make real connections with the fans, musicians, and other people that make the music business happen.

So, as we got out of the studio around March of ’09, we decided to take it upon ourselves to find out just exactly HOW we would go about managing ourselves with this new philosophy in mind. And what we came up with was to do a multifaceted approach where we would use social networking tools (Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, etc), which took a while to research and find out the best and worst ones for us, blogging (keeping you “posted” on what’s up daily with us, in an official manner), and promoting selflessly (ie CD giveaways) in order to get the word out about ourselves, but not ask anything in return. We always saw that people were more likely to stick around and support us when they didn’t feel like they had to! And, so it was. That’s where our research led us, and that brings us up to where we are now.

Now, with that amazingly crafted preface in mind, let’s get back to this progress report! (This’ll be the easy reading part!)

OK. So here are a few things that we mentioned we were going to start doing (or already were doing) back in December, when we first got started with this blog. Let’s see where we’re at with those items, and how plans have been adjusted etc., so you can see what we’ve been doing in a broad sense, and see what we’ve got planned! Let’s go!

Here’s a direct excerpt from our blog post “What’s to come…” (The red words are the adjustments we’ve made)

-Launch web blog (check)
-Begin posting daily on web blog (check)
-Begin posting weekly VIDEO blog (check, when we can get together to record)
-Start a series of LIVE, interactive concerts from our garage, posted LIVE via Ustream.tv We’re actually just broadcasting our live shows now at http://ustream.tv/lifestagemusic – catch one when you can’t make it to the actual show!
-Get some REAL photos of ourselves (check! thanks to Sarah Phillips, we now have some “real” photos to share with the world. See our Myspace or Facebook)
-Keep better in touch with our fans through Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and others (Check. Or at least we’re trying! Let us know how we’re doing by messaging us on one of those sites!)
-Launch another massive CD giveaway, promotional campaign (Check – it’s going on right now! Let us know if you want one, we’ll send you one FREE OF CHARGE! you can’t beat that)
-Finish another album’s worth of songs, 7 of which are in the process as we speak Being that this was a long term goal for 2010, I’d say we’re definitely getting there. The album is really shaping up already, and we have enough starter material for almost an entire album as of right now!
-Preview these songs as we finish them to our fans, that’ll be fun! (Check. With one completely new song already being played at our shows, we’ll be releasing more as they come. Keep an eye out!)
-Try and do a couple of shows each month, at least until summertime (so far.. Check! Through March we’ll have done one show/month so far, and more are in the works to come)
and ultimately (pending funding)…
-Get in the studio
-Record another album
-Go on a tour!
Of course, these last three are still on hold, but are still on the agenda. Hopefully one day soon!

In addition to all of that (which I apologize if this has been hard to read, I couldn’t think of a better way to get all of this out there), We are also now making it a goal to get as many official Stage 1 reviews as possible from leaders in the progressive community! This has already begun, and you can read the first review of many to come here: Stage 1 Review

And finally, that’s it for this Life Stage progress report. Sorry if this was long or hard to read, but thanks for hanging in there. I’ll try to post these more frequently in the future, with obviously less to say per post, that way we don’t fry your brain! (or maybe that’s a good thing?) At any rate, thanks so much for sticking in there with us, and the take home message here is that we absolutely value your support, and we want to hear from YOU, how do YOU think our progress is coming?

Let us know anytime: Myspace Facebook Twitter. We’d love to hear from you!

Talk to you soon,

Ross, Life Stage

And here’s the simple reason behind that: it helps us better connect with you! Obviously, if you’re here, you share some sort of connection to us already through our music, and that’s great! We know that any connection has to start there, because after all, we are a band, and music is not only what we do, but it’s our passion, and it’s what keeps us alive (mostly metaphorically, but almost literally ). But, we also know that music has an even deeper connection when you can really relate to a band or a performer. It’s the same as when you go to a concert and there’s just an energy coming from the stage, and it radiates through the crowd, and they in turn radiate it back to the perfomer, and pretty soon you aren’t just sharing the music, but that almost inexplicable energy as well, and it grips you and makes it an EXPERIENCE, not just a concert. Yeah sure, you already knew the music was great, but man, it’s just not the same as listening to the CD, is it? There’s a deeper connection there. It’s real. It ties in your emotions, memories, and spirit into the music you already felt some small connection to in the first place. And that’s essentially what we hope to do as a band, is not only connect with you through our music, but on every possible level we can so as to build a lasting relationship with you – and trust us, that means a lot!

So, we know most people aren’t really gonna care. They’ll just enjoy the music, and that’s totally cool! But this isn’t for them. This is for you. You are the reason we exert ourselves daily to keep up with this blog, and all of the other “sites” and sounds on the web, and send out free CD’s, and make sure you know what’s going on! Because even if you are the only person we do this for, to us it’s all worth it!

Thanks for caring! Keep in touch – Myspace Facebook Twitter

Life Stage