Video - A day in the life of Eric Coomer

Nick Waugh, bassist from my band KNAPSACKHEROES!, is a great friend and it turns out he's a great videographer as well. Check out this video he shot of me over the course of a few hours in downtown Nashville. The soundtrack is of me playing ambient electric guitar, which was challenging because I had broken my volume pedal the night before. I think this turned out great.

Eric Coomer

Update! The Kickstarter page is now live.

As you may have heard, I am going in the studio next month to work on a solo EP.

The only way I'm going to be able to this is with your help. We need to raise $6000 and every dollar counts. That's why I've launched a Kickstarter campaign where you can donate money to help me get the record done. I have great incentives on the page, so check them out.

We are in an age when anyone can record music on their computers. So, it may seem odd to you that I am asking for so much money to record a five song EP. But to do what I am wanting to do I need to work with the best - the best studio with the best equipment, the best musicians and best production possible.

I will be working Andrew Osenga to make the EP. Andrew is known for his solo music as well as from being a member of The Normals and Caedmon's Call. He's also toured as a player with Jars of Clay and Andrew Peterson and has produced many excellent projects including his own. When I decided to do this project, he was my top choice.

The Kickstarter page is live today and will be throughout Lent. I need to raise the money by Easter Sunday. With your help, I can do what I've dreamed of doing since I was a little boy.

Thanks always for your support!

30 Days 30 Covers

I've been neglecting this here blog for a while now.

Mostly as a challenge to myself, I've started a project on Facebook and YouTube called 30 Days 30 Covers (#30days30covers on Twitter) in which every day for 30 days I'll post a new video of myself covering a song.

You can watch all of them right here:

Movie Trailer(s) of the Week - Snow White

It's amazing how certain stories can be told and retold and reimagined and if done well, we will never tire of them.

One such story is Snow White. Here are a couple trailers for projects about the classic character.

Daphne and I have really gotten into ABC's Once Upon A Time lately. It imagines a modern day American town called Storybrooke in which all of the Brothers Grimm fairytale characters live but have no remembrance of their past lives. Snow White is now a school teacher. The evil queen is the mayor. Rumpelstiltskin is a powerful and mysterious man named, appropriately enough, Mr. Gold. And each week, the story unfolds a little further. It's been on the air for a few weeks now, but here's the original trailer:

There are several theatrical releases in the works as well. The first trailer to be released is for Snow White and the Huntsman. Twilight's Kristen Stewart plays Snow and Charlize Theron plays the (hottest possible) queen. This film looks as though it takes itself unfathomably seriously, but it could be good. The interesting twist in Huntsman is that Snow White has been training in the art of war with a huntsman (Thor himself, Chris Hemsworth). It looks like it could be good.

While some of you may have seen last weekend's new film 11-11-11 or the Jennifer Lopez creeper or The Cell from director Tarsem,  most of us first encountered him through his gorgeous award winning video for R.E.M.'s "Losing My Religion". Obviously Tarsem is more than capable of making trippy and quite beautiful pictures come to life, so a Snow White film in his hands could be amazing.

His film, which only very recently came to be titled Mirror Mirror, stars Julia Roberts as the evil queen, Lily Collins (The Blind Side, Abduction) as Snow White, and Armie Hammer (Social Network, J. Edgar) as Prince Charming. There's no trailer for this one yet, but recent photos in Entertainment Weekly are pretty incredible.

Yet another Snow White movie will be released sometime in the next year or so. This one sounds very interesting and despite being released by Disney, seems to be the most original take on the story.  Currently titled Snow and the Seven, the film has gone through dozens of changes and is still not in production. Once titled (or maybe now titled?) The Order of the Seven, the film will focus not on Snow, but on her seven companions. Set in China in the nineteenth century, seven expert warriors (not dwarves), each from different parts of the world and each with a different fighting style, are brought together by a British woman who returns to Hong Kong for the funeral of her father, only to discover her evil stepmother is plotting to kill her.

This movie has been in the works since 2002 and has had several directors, screenwriters and actors attached, so it's anyone's guess as to how the final crew sheet will look. Francis Lawrence (I Am Legend, Water for Elephants) was attached to direct but later bowed out and was replaced by Michael Gracey, a first time director who has done visual effect on films such as The Magician and Ned Kelly. At one point Natalie Portman was thought to be playing the film's title character, but now that seems to be up in the air.

Of course, if you can't wait for these to be released, there's no shortage of choices available on DVD.

The man behind the robot voice

Movie Trailer of the Week - The Raven

I thought it only appropriate to post a trailer for a horror movie on Halloween. The Raven looks interesting. Looks sort of like a cross between From Hell and Se7en. Check it out.

New Solo Music's A-Comin'

While my band, KNAPSACKHEROES!, is still very much alive and kicking, Vinyl Jones and I are both working on solo projects.

My first new project, which will be out before Christmas, will be Eric Coomer & The Kinesthetic Learners. That's the name of the band even though I am the whole band. Haven't decided on a title yet. This short EP will be made up of electronic music with lots of sampling and loops. I will be singing on it though. It's going to sound unlike anything else I've done. Musically, it falls somewhere between KNAPSACKHEROES!, St. Vincent, La Roux, and maybe Art of Noise...for lack of a better description. Thematically it has sort of a post-apocalyptic sci-fi Blade Runner feel. Yeah, I can't wait to hear it either.

The Cardigans
Long Gone Before Daylight

I will start recording the second project next March with Andrew Osenga producing. This will be a six to seven song EP with more of a singer/songwriter vibe that's very electric guitar driven. Influences for this record include The Cardigans' "Long Gone Before Daylight",  John Mark McMillan's "The Medicine"  (check out those Spotify links!), and albums by artists like Sixpence None the Richer, Over the Rhine, and Derek Webb.

Andrew Osenga
Choosing Sides

One of the biggest influences is Andrew himself. I asked him to produce it because I've been a fan of his ever since he was in The Normals. The sound of his solo albums like "Choosing Sides" is really what I'm hearing in my head for my music. You may have seen Andrew with Caedmon's Call (he's been a member for a few years now). Or maybe you saw him play guitar on the Andrew Peterson Behold the Lamb of God Christmas tour. He also co-produced that particular classic holiday album (sorry, it's not on Spotify).

Vinyl Jones
Vinyl Jones & The Indie Fit Club

I'm really excited about both of these projects as well as the Vinyl Jones & The Indie Fit Club project, which I'm also a small part of. And KNAPSACKHEROES! is currently writing new material and has (finally) taken the reins of our long awaited full length album.

So, stay tuned for more info. I'm going to be giving the Kinesthetic Learners album away for free and relying on your help to fund the second project with donations at kickstarter.com.

The first thing I need everyone to do though, is to go to http://facebook.com/theericcoomer and click Like. Then go check out the official Eric Coomer music website.

Oh! Listen to the Vinyl Jones project below. I'm on two of the songs.

Movie Trailer of the Week - The Odd Life of Timothy Green

I don't know what this movie is about. It's definitely intriguing. Is the kid an alien? Is he an angel? Where did he come from? Is it a tragedy or a comedy? It's a Disney film?

All I know is, it looks really good. The trailer only touches on the excellent cast which also includes Ron Livingston, Dianne Wiest, and M. Emmett Walsh (who I would have absolutely bet you twenty bucks was dead...who am I thinking of??? And no, it's not J.T. Walsh).

The film was directed by Peter Hedges who, in my opinion previously did movies I really loved such as What's Eating Gilbert Grape, About a Boy, Pieces of April and Dan In Real Life. He also wrote the screenplay which was based on a story by Ahmet Zappa. Yes, that Ahmet Zappa. Is there another one?

Good electric guitar tone on a cheapskate budget

This picture is old. Pedals are all different. New pics this week.

I was reading one of my favorite blogs, Guitar For Worship, and posted a comment that I said should probably be an entry on my own blog. So, here's the blog version:

Guitarists spend unbelievable amounts of money on gear. Non-guitarists (and especially non-musicians) are usually amused and mystified when they look at a pedal board. The other night an older gentleman who plays piano in the band at a church my worship team was guesting at looked at my pedalboard and said,

"That's a whole lot of doo-dads you got there. One of them things surely has to be a microwave!"

I currently have (I think) thirteen pedals on my board (I'll do another post soon with pictures and descriptions) and thus far, the most expensive one was the one that does the least: the volume pedal. It was around $100 and actually, come to think of it, it was a Christmas gift from my parents. So, I didn't actually pay for it. I just bought it!

This is not to say I don't have semi-expensive pedals though. I have a Boss DD-20 and a vintage ProCo Rat for instance. The DD-20 will, at the very least, cost you $150 used, and the Rat I have is a difficult to find model that can go for as much or more. But I went to Music Go Round in Louisville and traded in a bunch of gear that had been sitting untouched in my garage for years, and at the end of that transaction I ended up spending 4 bucks to get those two pedals.

I’ve gotten just about everything on my board from eBay or bandmates. Justin and Kevin of my band are generous and have loaned me a few great pedals. The eBay thing requires a lot of patience (instead of just going out and getting stuff at Guitar Center new) and a lot of review reading on Harmony Central and other sites of pedals you may have never heard of before. For instance, I went through the typical phasers like the Small Stone and Phase 90 before realizing the less expensive but more adjustable (and true bypass-ier) DeltaLab Phaser was a better fit for me. I found it while browsing eBay's pedals, and when I saw the price, I looked it up and found nothing but glowing reviews of this (for some reason) hard to find pedal. I ended up getting it brand new for $21.

I also love used section on GuitarCenter.com. I got a Danelectro Tuna Melt tremolo pedal there for $9.99. Ten bucks plus a little shipping! Sure, I would prefer a $250+ Tap-A-Whirl or Empress Tremolo but I a.) don't believe in using credit cards or store credit and b.) have a mortgage and bills and kids. Kids are expensive. Oh yeah, and I don't have a real job. But the truth is, the cheapo Tuna Melt sounds great. If it had tap tempo, I wouldn't even care about upgrading.

Sometimes you just have to make due with what you have or what you can afford. I play a Mexican Fender Strat through (and I’m not proud of this) a Vox AD15VT amp with a shiny silver metal grill. It has a single tube and a bunch of modeling crap I don’t use. While I'd of course love to have a $4000 Matchless or a $2000 Fender Twin or Vox AC30, I don’t have the money for a new amp. It’s just not going to happen right now. So I compensated a little by buying a Behringer (yes, Behringer) MIC200 Tube Preamp for $11 on eBay and leaving that last in my chain. While that only adds one more tube to the mix (those other ones have six to eight), it fattens up the tone a bit and sounds pretty good.

Come to think of it, that amp isn't even mine! It's my friend Britain's and he's been nice enough to let me borrow it for a while now. I had a little 15 watt Vox Pathfinder (with no tubes at all) but accidentally left it at a venue and was never able to get it back.

Anyway, I make due with the gear I have and try my best to make it sound good and people tell me I have good tone often enough. I doubt the frequency of being told that will increase drastically when I get a better amp after (hopefully) getting enough money or giftcards for my birthday and/or Christmas.(Seriously, my birthday is coming up and Guitar Center has giftcards, y'all.)

Really? That's a lot. And your volume pedal is in the wrong place.

Guitarists often spend so much money on gear simply because they're lazy. I know that won't make me popular among tone freaks, but buying a $400 pedal because your favorite guitarist uses one instead of a cheap used alternative is stupid unless you are regularly touring and make a good deal of money playing. In other words, if your band only plays once in a while and when you do you get paid crappy club money or you're playing for your church and not getting paid at all, it doesn't do you much good to spend that much money. You can if you want, but you don't have to. No one is going to be able to tell the difference between the standard tremolo settings on those three pedals I mentioned.

Some people buy expensive pedals and/or are afraid to play cheap ones (like Boss or DOD or Danelectro) for the same reason some people buy a Mercedes instead of a Kia. It's all about the status when they both are going to get you there. But it's even dumber to buy an expensive pedal than an expensive car because next to nobody is going to look at your pedals. Truth is though, the only time I look at someone's pedals is if someone sounds really good (or maybe really bad so I can avoid that gear) and if I see them using cheap stuff and thought they sounded great, I'd be way more impressed!

I heartily recommend Joyo pedals. I bought the Joyo Tubescreamer clone (and aren't all good overdrives basically Tubescreamer clones?) new for around $40. I should be getting the Joyo Ultimate Drive in the mail in a few days. Amazon has ridiculous deals on them. Like $28 deals. For real.
 
There are so many other things you can do to make your sound great that don't involve spending tons of cash. I am not an expert by any means, so this list is far from definitive, but here are some things I learned to be true.

• Play a good guitar: this is one place, where buying a cheaper model is not always a good idea. If you have a crappy guitar there's no amp in the world that will make it sound good.
  
• Use a good tube amp (even if it's not the expensive tube amp you really want). If you have a crappy amp there's no pedal in the world that will make it sound good. And yes I know that I just told you I don't really have a tube amp.
  
• Set up your guitar properly. Take it to a proper luthier (if you can find one) or Guitar Center (if you can't). If you can't afford that look up how to set up a guitar on YouTube. I set up my Strat really nicely after thanks to a collection of videos from Expert Village on YouTube and also found out I'd been stringing guitars incorrectly for fifteen years! Which leads me to...
  
• Learn how to properly string and tune your guitar.
  
• Try lots of different strings until you find the kind that best fits your sound.
  
• Change your strings often. The Edge changes them (well, he pays someone to change them) after every single show. Don't have to go that crazy but once a month wouldn't hurt.
  
• Practice. 
• Learn about eBay sniping.
  
• Play with good picks. Or better yet, be like Lindsay Buckinham and learn to play with just your fingers.
  
• Speaking of Lindsay Buckingham...the man is living proof you might not need a ton of pedals. Lately he's been using a Boss (Yes, Boss!) Super Overdrive and two Boss DD-5's (I don't know why he doesn't just get a DD-20). Seriously, that's all.
  
• Look up shielding a guitar on YouTube too.
  
• Buy good cables. Look, I can't afford (or justify) George L's either, but I can at least get two quality Planet Waves cables to and from my board.
  
• When it comes to cables, the shorter the better.
  
• Don't put your amp on the ground. Put it somewhere higher. If you can't get one of these, find a chair. Or a pew.
  
• When you're EQing your tone, make sure your ear is in line with the cone of the speaker.
  
• Practice.
  
• Really get to know the pedals you have. Sometimes "practice" means tweaking knobs for hours on end.
  
• Put your pedals in the correct order. Check that link. I disagree with putting the tuner first and you can put an EQ last if you like, but that's a pretty good start.
  
• Research the pedals you already have. Chances are there are mods (modifications) you can do or have someone else do to make them sound even better. These may be as simple as cutting a wire or resistor or it may be that just by opening up the pedal (like I did on the Carbon Copy Delay) to find there are extra controls inside.
  
• If you or a friend can't do a mod, send it to someone who can like Dan at This 1's Myne.
  
• PRACTICE.
  
• Buy a buffer (or two or three). I use Dan's Mini Buffer and it only cost me $39.
  
• Always keep the tools you need with you. And buy multi-tools like this one to save space.
  
• If you use a capo, make sure it's meant for an electric guitar. Better yet, just buy this one.
  
• Read this.
  
• And this. And all of the Guitar Tone links in that post.
  
• Definitely read this.
  
• Oh and in case I haven't mentioned it, practice.
  
• And tweak. Tweak. Tweak.

P.S. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could have tone showers? You know, engaged couples get wedding showers, new parents get baby showers, why can’t I get a guitar shower?

P.P.S. I’m totally "registered" at Amazon if anyone ever cares to anonymously donate gear.

Movie Trailer of the Week - We Bought A Zoo

You really can't go wrong with Cameron Crowe.

Movie Trailer of the Week - Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

It's rare that a movie trailer makes me cry. This one did. Maybe it's that it's about 9/11. Maybe it's because I'm a dad and the boy reminds me of Jackson. Maybe it's because I recently lost my father. Maybe it's just the wee hour at which I saw it. Whatever it was, this is a trailer that should be seen.

It's pretty much without a doubt that Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close will be nominated for Oscars. It opens on Christmas day.

Movie Trailer of the Week - Catechism Cataclysm

It seems to me that Christians are finally being better represented in film with multi-faceted three dimensional characters. Scroll down the blog and you'll see that over the past few months the trailers of the week have included Blue Like Jazz, Higher Ground, and Machine Gun Preacher. Soul Surfer was an enormous success. Several other upcoming movies about Christians look promising, such as The 5th Quarter starring Aidan Quinn and Andie McDowell.

This week's trailer is a comedy called Catechism Cataclysm starring Eastbound & Down's  Steve Little as a priest who embarks on a canoe trip right after dropping his Bible in a toilet. I'm definitely not saying this is a "Christian film" (you can tell that from the line below the title on the poster), but it is nice to see a clergy represented as a real and flawed human -- something that was commonplace in the days of black and white film (A Man Called Peter, The Bishop's Wife, Boys Town, Bells of St. Mary) -- and we can hope that there is some truth in the movie.

I think this looks like a gem. The trailer is charming, which is good because the poster makes it look like it would probably be a horror movie about exorcism.

Here's the official synopsis: Father Billy (Steve Little), an eccentric young priest, is forced to take a sabbatical by his superiors when he is discovered telling inappropriate parables to his flock. Billy tracks down his high-school idol Robbie (Robert Longstreet), who begrudgingly agrees to a canoe trip. On the water, the two men reminisce about Billy's days as the keyboardist in a Christian band and Robbie's as a guitarist for a metal band. When night approaches, they realize they have lost their way--and that's when things get weird.

Check out the trailer:

Catechism Cataclysm hits theaters on October 21 and On Demand October 26.

Arrested Development returns!

I knew about the movie, but as of last week, there was no new news. But at an Arrested Development reunion (I wish I could've gone to that!) yesterday at the New York Festival, show creator Mitchell Hurwitz said ten episodes will air on Showtime, each one focusing on a different character and leading up to the movie in which the entire cast will reunite during the opening scene.

Plus, Will Arnett tweeted:

"I’m peeing with @batemanjason at the moment..and we can confirm that we are going to make new AD eps and a movie."

Jason Bateman replied with:

"It’s true. We will do 10 episodes and the movie. Probably shoot them all together next summer for a release in early ’13. VERY excited!"

 Looks like I need to get Showtime...at least I do next year! Now, if only we could get somebody to greenlight the Anchorman sequel.

Movie Trailer of the Week - American Teacher

This looks like an excellent documentary. It's a subject very close to my heart as my wife is a high school teacher and my mom is a retired elementary music teacher. Let's hope this film ushers in some change...not to be a pessimist, but somehow I doubt it.

The Worship Experiences Blog

I've started a separate blog where I (and hopefully other people soon) will write about experiential worship and ways to incorporate it into church services. Check out the Worship Experiences Blog.

This is something that's very important to me, but I haven't really nurtured it lately, so it's a nice outlet. I led a workshop on this stuff a couple weeks ago for an Aldersgate Renewal Ministries worship conference and was really encouraged that interactive worship is something a lot of people are interested in, but just don't know quite how to go about doing.

So, in addition to this blog, I'll be posting there from time to time with ideas and things I've done in the past.

I'd like to get other folks to write for the worship experiences blog as well, so if you're interested in this sort of thing, please email me at eric(at)ericcoomer(dot).com.

Movie Trailer of the Week - Machine Gun Preacher

Music Video: Wye Oak - "Holy Holy"

I love this song.

p.s. Starting this week we'll be posting a music video of the week every Friday (yes, every Friday) at the KNAPSACKHEROES! blog.

Movie Trailer - Blue Like Jazz

I am beyond excited.

Movie Trailer(s) of the Week - The Muppets

I. CAN. NOT. WAIT!

Movie Trailer of the Week - Higher Ground

Wow. This looks powerful.