Our good friend and yours Elijah Wyman just got done working in the studio with Scott Solter, and we’re very proud of the results…
Particularly this one…
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“Small Towns” brings Elijah’s tiny mtns project to that next level. With the help of Scott’s studio wizardry (he has helped such artists as Jon Vanderslice and the Mountain Goats in the past), we find tiny mtns probably a mile further down the road of pop songwriting and sound quality than he has ever been before. With a taste of raggae, a heart connected to the average man, and rhythm that will stick with you for weeks and weeks, Elijah has found his new voice.
We really hope you enjoy it.
And while you’re at it… Why not check out this video by “In The Car Media“, friends of Grinding Tapes who are currently at work on a Dreamtigers video (goosebumps). This was their submission into this year’s Boston 48 Hour Film Festival:
The video is still in the running for awards from the annual film festival. But besides being a very well made film, it prominently features tiny mtns’ “Small Towns” during the credits.
Posted April 25, 2010 by Jason at 2:22 pm ·
Filed under DIY, Film
I recently had the opportunity to interview indie director, writer, and actor, Phil Magcalas about his most recent film, Skin and Bone. You might be wondering based on the title if it’s is somehow related to Elijah Wyman’s song from Butterfly Needles with the same name. Indeed, it is! Most of the music in the film is by Elijah. It’s also a pretty awesome movie. Check out the trailer here:
What is Skin and Bone all about?
Skin and Bone is a film which takes place over one day in a cardiac catheterization unit - the type of place where people with heart attacks and congenital heart defects go to have their hearts patched up and their arteries opened. It centers around the variety of people (not just doctors and nurses, but the patients themselves, techs and family members) who come together, from completely different situations, for one collective purpose - to focus their attentions on the care of people who are ill.
What inspired you to tackle such a dark subject after the much lighter subject matter of “Quarter Life Crisis”?
I guess I didn’t really venture to make something that was “dark,” per se. I spent four years working in a cardiac catheterization unit, and I just found the situations which took place absolutely fascinating - so more than anything else, I was trying to really depict situations honestly. Things like House and ER are fine, but there is so much dramatically interesting when you take a look at what happens every day in real actual normal hospitals. The people who work in health care are just ordinary people, so there’s a lot behind the scenes which gets pushed aside, but it’s still there. So, this movie is really an homage to the drama inherent in the situations which happen in real life, and I’d say the subject matter is just us trying to present you with relatively true-to-life experiences. For me, this nature of healthcare is uniting, and I think it comes across as a commonality that the characters share as well.I think that also, no matter what you set out to make, the film you end up with relies a great deal on what your audience takes from it. I think we’ve managed to leave certain aspects of the film open for interpretation - and I like the idea that what people get out of it depends on how they approach it. “The Quarter-Life Crisis,” our first film, was a comedy with a lot more dramatic elements than we had expected. I feel like “Skin and Bone” is a drama, and ended up with a lot more comedic elements than I expected. We had one screening at the Rainier Independent Film Festival in Washington, where it played after a pretty bleak disturbing film - and following that, “Skin and Bone” might as well have been a Marx Brothers movie - the audience picked up on every comedic thing I put in it. So it’s really subjective, and I like that.
What was the most challenging part of filming the movie?
Making this movie presented a number of challenges. I’m notoriously bad at naming characters - if you know me, and a character shares a name with you, then that character probably was named directly after you. Skin and Bone was difficult in this respect, because there are so very many characters. If you look at our credit page or our imdb site, you’ll see that we have about 35 or so cast members listed. The vast majority of these characters have at least some lines. So, getting that many people together for so many scenes which had dozens of cast members, especially when you can’t pay anyone, is incredibly difficult. We only had about 14 shooting days total, but they were spread over the course of the better part of a year, just because scheduling was such a problem.
Luckily for us, we had an incredible cast, many of whom helped behind the camera as well, and all the creative people who collaborates on this project were just unbelievably gracious with their time and talent. People stuck with us, and trusted that we were trying to make something worthwhile. We’ve gotten a lot of great feedback from people who have been able to identify with the ideas that this movie addresses, and that is due in a huge part to people like our cast, crew, and the awesome musicians, who supplied music that every reviewer has made note of, and who helped us achieve the appropriate atmosphere for “Skin and Bone.”
What are your next steps for getting the word out?
Well, on some good advice, we’re starting up an email list (drop us a line at macproductionsinc (at) gmail (dot) com if you’re interested!) and we’re hoping to get it out to one or two more festivals. The big thing we’re going for is good ole fashioned word of mouth, so if you get the chance to check our work out, please do! We have a trailer on our site at http://www.milkandcookieproductions.com/skinandbone.html and there are dvd’s available there. A good portion of every dvd sale goes to Partners In Health’s work in Haiti.
Side note: Check them out at http://www.standwithhaiti.org and if you really want to read one of the best books on humanity and medicine ever, check out “Mountains Beyond Mountains” by Tracy Kidder.
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Posted November 19, 2009 by Jason at 7:43 am ·
Filed under DIY, Local Art
Our good friends at Figs & Ginger have just announced a new limited-run necklace that they made to benefit Farm Sanctuary. For just $30, you can get this beautiful silver necklace and support Farm Sanctuary’s mission to end animal cruelty. Pre-orders will ship in early December, just in time for Christmas, so order yours now!
We finished printing the tracklisting for Slowest Runner’s Flophouse Session EP. Check it out:
Next up, we’re going to glue the jackets and print the CDs. The band selected these nice orange CDs, which we’ll print with the text, “The skies darken. The sea swells. And the good ship Tecora sleeps silent on the ocean floor.”
Yesterday was the first day of printing Slowest Runner’s Flophouse Session EP. The session was recorded live by our friends over at Band in Boston Podcast. Check out this video that we took of the recycled jackets drying at the Grinding Tapes House.
The cover art was illustrated by our good friend and super-great artist, William Collins.
I just wanted to mention that I have a new EP coming out called tiny mtns. I’ll be touring in Aug. in support of it, so if you’re on the East Coast be sure to check to see if I’ll be in your town. It would be awesome to see you at a show. Here’s a song off it called Thicket Holds a Ram. I hope you like it. If you do, you can pre-order the EP here
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My iPhone is completely integrated into every bit of my life. It gives me directions, controls my computer and my tv, tunes my guitar, and wakes me up. So I just downloaded the app TweetMic, recorded a song I wrote tonight and tweeted it! I’m excited about how easy it is to share music with friends all over the world within minutes.
The only downside I’ve found with TweeMic is that there is no way to save your recordings. While you can listen all you want off of TweetMic’s site I wish that I could save it to my phone and put it on my computer.
