Mercury Lounge Monday May 18th!

I'm very excited to play The Mercury Lounge on Monday, May 18th. I'm opening for Alexa Wilding and it's an early show. Doors open at 6:30pm/$10.

I NEED YOUR HELP promoting this show! Please copy and paste this poster image and send it to your friends. If you plan on coming to the show, if you bring 3 or more friends with you, I'll give you a free CD!

I need to bring some people out so I can play this room and other rooms at Bowery Presents again. Thanks for spreading the word!

Featured act for April on Indie Sounds

Pete Harris who founded Harris Radio and Indie Sounds has been sort of a champion of mine. I'm the featured act for April on Indie Sounds NY & Austin. He also used my image for the logo on a new website, Violin Femmes, which is "Devoted to Rocking Goddesses of the Violin".

Anyway, you should check out Harris Radio and Indie Sounds NY & Austin because these are great resources for new music. Check it!

Electric!

It happened by accident. Yes, that's me playing Chris Masterson's red Fender Telecaster. Where is he, you might ask? On tour somewhere....

I was playing a set at the National Underground in NYC for Shayni Rae's Truckstop. I brought my acoustic guitar with a brand-new pickup and all my equipment that worked fine the night before. It didn't work. We changed the cables, changed the direct box, changed the channel on the sound board. Nothing worked. I tried to borrow my friend Aaron Lee Tasjan's acoustic guitar and a string was broken. My friend John Kengla was changing the string, and the peg broke off in the saddle! I was getting pretty stressed at this point, as you can imagine.

I had no choice but to play John's electric guitar. The strap was too long...trust me, I like to wear a guitar low because it looks cool, but boys have long arms like monkeys;)

It wasn't so bad. It was actually kind of fun despite the fact that I was flustered - all starting with my late arrival to the club.

So, I worked on it for a couple of weeks and got a few pointers from Masterson while he was in town for 48 hours and I officially went ELECTRIC at the Living Room on April 9, 2009. Not quite the impact of Bob Dylan at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, but I did feel like I was having my Al Kooper moment anyway. If you haven't read Al Kooper's Backstage Passes and Backstabbing Bastards, I highly recommend it.

Anyway, I'm loving it!

This is a picture taken at the Rubin Museum of Art, where I played a completely acoustic show with Slaid Cleaves over the weekend. This was such a fantastic gig. Slaid is one of my favorite people to play with and has a great new record out called "Everything You Love Will Be Taken Away". How's that for dark? If you don't know his music, I promise you will love it.

I have been playing out as much as possible and was lucky enough to open a couple of shows for Slaid this weekend. I sold 58 CDs in 4 days!

The making of 'airplanes'...the packaging anyway. All painted, stamped, and signed by me. I'm somewhere around 800, which kind of boggles my mind a bit. I would like to sell a lot more than 800 records, but I'm not sure I want to make many more than 800... we'll see.

The photos were taken by Beth Oliver.

Canvassing door-to door vs Self-Releasing a Record

This is a little note I wrote today to my friend Dan, who I used to work with at Texas Campaing for the Environment (TCE) in Dallas, TX.

I took a three-year semi-hiatus from my music career to canvass door-to-door and campaign-direct for TCE. Talk about an intense job. Full of highs and lows. The kind of people that are capable of taking door-to-door rejection for the sake of environmental and social justice are REAL. They believe in something greater. A strenghth in numers. People, when organized, can become a powerful force. I witnessed TCE, along with the Electronics Take-Back Coalition, organize thousands of voices to get Dell and Apple to start recycling computers. And more importantly, designing those products to be recycled. Now they are working to do the same for TV manufacturers.

So releasing a record on your own is actually much harder than canvassing. It's more natural for me to talk to people about helping the environment than helping my music career. It's a little awkward actually to cold-call someone and say "hey, my record is great and here's why you need to help me get it out into the world. my music is meaningful and marketable." That's self-centered and wierd. It's noble to serve a community and improve our environment. The truth that separates the two is that I am now in sales, releasing my record 'airplanes' (booking myself, blogging, etc) where before I was a political activist. I never pictured myself going into sales...

I sold a CD today! To my good friend Dan I was telling you about. I'm glad my parents and friends are buying my record anyway. As passionate as I am about the environment, I cannot deny my passion in music. I have played the violin since I was 5 and now I'm on to writing songs and playing guitar. I am fortunate to support myself doing things that I love. Hopefully I can use my stratigic campaign skills and passion for music to market my record. It sure felt good to have a fellow campainger and friend buy a record today!

I can promise you that my music is REAL. The production value on my record is impecable thanks to Chris Masterson. And it's something that I'm very proud of. I hope you like it. If you do, please tell your friends. Maybe if enough people catch on, my 'airplanes' will get off the ground.

You can get your collectors copy of my hand-painted CD, 'airplanes' from IndieKazoo or CDbaby (I am up to #800 and it's a lot of work!) Or you can just download it on itunes, etc... it's out there.

Thank you for supporting!

Cheers-
Eleanor

Recorded at the legendary Sugar Hill Studios in December in Houston, TX, the Sugar Hill Session has finally aired. If you missed it, you can paste this link in your browser:

http://archive.kpft.org/mp3/090327_140003rhonda.MP3

If you have any problems with that, try http://archive.kpft.org/
The date and time of the program is 3/27/2009 at 2pm RadioActive