February 17, 2012 Hope all are doing well. It’s been a busy few weeks, and I wanted to catch you up with all things zod. We are in the middle of a very busy Spring with many projects, doing songs with our artists Danielle Aument, Betsey Long, Dane Estok, Ashley Merrill, Freddy Litwiniuk, and April Kry. We have been writing for some pitches and have been busy growing relationships with some strategic partners. We are also working with a few other artists that have been coming in and out of our studio. So it’s been pretty exciting around here! On the live front recently, we’ve had a few cool gigs happen. We had the chance to play live on-air with Shannon Labrie on WRLT the other afternoon. This has long been one of my favorite radio stations here so it was a both a thrill and a privilege. We then got to play their WRLT Nashville Sunday Night Live Simulcast at Third and Lindsley. We have a few gigs coming up this week: We are playing Third and Lindsley with Shannon Labrie on Mon, Feb 21st. Tuesday, Feb. 22nd, we will play with Shannon Labrie at The Kobalt Publishing Night at The Listening Room on Tuesday. Friday, Feb. 24th, we will do a full Zod Night. Many of the Zod artists will be performing. We will also have a special guest, Matt Brouwer from Houston, and joining us also will be music legend Michael Omartian, who has become a great friend and mentor to us over the past few years. The Zod Night will be at 12th and Porter on Friday, Feb 24th. Look for more information on the Zodlounge Facebook page. We are really excited to be gearing up for our trip to Austin, TX in March for the Red Gorilla/SXSW festival. We will do our full Zod Night at two clubs on March 14th and March 15th. We will then close the week with an hour long Saturday night set on the 17th. The artists performing will include: Charity Vance, Betsey Long, Shannon Labrie, Holly Elle, Dane Estok, Kree Woods, Ashley Merrill and John Cox. It will be a great chance for all our artists to get exposure and mingle with the whole music industry as it descends on Austin. Finally, I wanted to share an entry that was written about paying your dues. It comes from a band called “The Cold Stares”. They are some friends of ours that are on the verge of breaking and I thought it was good reading for everyone as they work there way thru the music industry. Peace! Todd
Paying dues. Tell you what paying dues are. It’s picking up an instrument at 5-6 because you are naturally drawn to it, and not being able to put it down for the rest of your life. It’s not letting a week go by that you haven’t had hours in. Missing out on ballgames for recitals. It’s missing out on dates, and dances, family occasions to rehearse in freezing garages, or hot pole barns trying to make something sound close to what you hear in your head. Its girlfriends, wives and friends walking away from you because they can’t always be #1. It’s setting an age when you’ll put it down, and then reaching that age, and knowing you can never set it down. It’s sleeping in cars because the $30.00 that you made at the gig won’t cover the Super 8. It’s sleeping on the floor in the Super 8 when you do make it in, and lying that it’s just you for a lower rate, when the rest of the band and the sound guy are all snoring within 5 feet of you. It’s cutting that ham sandwich into 4 because you had to spend the rest of the money on a PA head rental when yours got beer poured in it. It’s getting on your knees and praying 30 minutes before walking onstage at the county fair, asking for help to win so that your family can find some sense of value in all the time and effort you put into it. It’s letting your folks give up on it. And your friends asking you if you are still fooling with it. It’s 40 different band names, members, 100’s of venues, radio stations, styles, and decades of sticking it out. It’s being bumped by club owners for the national coming through. It’s being underpaid by club owners because your friends were too poor to drink the magic number at the bar you needed. It’s headlining bands hitting on your girl, cutting your set short, and being general dicks. It’s selling that bike that you always wanted to fund that recording that ain’t going to be what you needed anyways. Its bad sound men. Bad food. Bad cars, trucks, rentals, busted radiators, flat tires, bad directions and high gas. Lying agents, lying A&R. Bullshit contests that you bragged about getting into, only to find out the labels pricks made $400.00 a band and are staying at the Hyatt while you are sleeping in the van. Its bad guitars, broken sticks, amps that die mid set. It’s passing up finishing the degree to stick it out a couple more years. Passing up the higher paying job for the lower paying job that lets you get off in time to make it to the show. It’s going without sleep to finish that bio, or that song, or that interview when you’ve already put in 8 hours at work, and 4 hours with the kids. It’s watching bands that have been together for a couple months get signed, get the gig you wanted, get the press you needed. It’s dealing with the bullshit establishment setting up a series of events that catapult their darlings, and keep you out because your dad sold tires, or fixed breaker boxes instead of playing golf with the publishing CEO. It’s bad reviews by folks that have never seen you live. It’s doing it all for years, and years. It’s giving up on the picture that you thought you would see, and settling for something that at least still has you doing what you were born to do. And then, after you’ve walked through the desert, lost your way, found yourself, and made peace with it all- the call comes. It’s Roy Hobbs in the natural. It’s the bottom of the ninth, but it looks like after all you are going to get in the game. Take what you can get. For what it’s worth. For believing in God’s plan. For trust. Faith. Don’t talk to me about paying dues. We’ve paid them. It’s been a long time coming.
The Cold Stares http://www.facebook.com/thecoldstaresmusic
January 7, 2012!!! Hope everyone had a good Holiday break! It’s already been a busy month at Zod. We’ve just had another “Night of the Zods” at 12th and Porter last Friday. The night featured Ashley Merrill, Dane Estok, Shannon Labrie, John Cox, Kree Woods, Aaron Moses, Danielle Aument and Heather Batchelor. The idea of these nights is that we get a chance to play a full night of music behind several of our artists. It’s always a great time, a diverse musical night, and a great chance to network and get exposure with other artists and their fans. The next one is scheduled for Feb 24th at the listening side of 12th and Porter in Nashville. Also, our artist in residence (literally) Shannon Labrie is featured in the Indie Section of the BMI website (http://www.bmi.com/news/entry/555373 ) and we spent all weekend working on a great placement that just needs one more “ok” to secure it. Additionally, Kree Woods’ song called “Cave In” (which was featured on a few different occasions on last year’s Real World:Las Vegas) hit the front page rotation on thesixtyone.com. If you haven’t checked out that website, it is a great website for discovering new music. It is both rich in music and great graphics and is a fun community to be a part of. January will not slow down for us in writing, recording, and gigging with artists. We’ve got several things on the books, NAMM weekend, and we will finish up the month with some gigs in Green Bay with John Cox, and a show in Chicago with John Cox and Danielle Aument. Drop us a line and get plugged in! December 26, 2011 We have great news to cap off 2011 and to start 2012. Music Connection magazine reviewed both Shannon Labrie and Dane Estok in their January 2012 magazine. Shannon Labrie received 9 out of 10 in all categories, which was the highest given for anyone for the entire year of 2011, so she will land in the top 3 reviews for 2012. Dane Estok received an average of 8.2 out of 10 which will put him in the top 20 of 2012 (Last year, Charity Vance received an 8.4 which put her 10th for 2011). We are proud of our artists and our work with them. Please check out their music on i-Tunes. Things continue to look up for Zod and our artists! December 15, 2011 We’ve had a fast and furious end to 2011. Zodlounge Records has signed a deal with Grooveshark which will give our artists a huge amount of exposure and access to social media expertise. The press release of the signing made it all the way to The Wall Street Journal. We look forward to seeing this utilized in early 2012. On another distribution front, we’ve just found out that many of our artists will now be represented in all of Latin America. We are excited to see how this new audience impacts things in the coming year. As for our artists, we’ve had a flurry of activity here at the years end. Holly Elle had a really great placement last night with the zod-produced song “Don’t Come Home” on Real World San Diego. It is featured as a free download on the MTV site. Congratulations to her and her co-writers Betsey Long, Jennifer Adan and Freddy Litwiniuk. Joanie Leeds and the Nightlights music has been on several top ten children’s/family music lists to end the year, including People Magazine and Parents Magazine and The Washington Post. She has also recently been featured in the New York Times and The New York Post. Great things for her! And Finally, one of our favorites, Christa Wells, has been on several year ending Top Ten Lists and Blogs as well. She is one of the best songwriters that we have ever had the opportunity to work with and you should definitely check out her latest album “How Emptiness Sings”. We are really excited for her and proud of the record we did together. We are SO excited for 2012, the music industry and our artists. In the past few weeks, we’ve had meetings on the Red Gorilla/SXSW festival, as well as meetings with booking agents, college radio, publishing companies, and sync opportunities. It’s gonna be a banner year next year. Drop us a line at brett@zodlounge.com to see how we can partner together! November 11, 2011 It’s been a busy fall as we’ve been laying the groundwork here at Zodlounge for a lot of really exciting things to be able to offer our artists. Stay tuned for some big announcements early in 2012. In the mean time, we have been keeping our nose to the grind, working on some fun music. Holly Elle has finished her Dance Diva Pop EP called “Infinitude” and it can be found on i-Tunes. April Krysuik “April” released her EP on i-Tunes and it has been well received. We’ve continued to have luck with placements and are continuing to write and work with a growing stable of great artists. We just found out that Charity Vance’s EP will be included in next month’s Music Connections Top 25 Critiques of 2011! This is a big honor for Charity and for Zodlounge and we are very proud! For more information about Charity, go to http://charityvance.net. Drop us a line at todd@zodlounge.com and let’s see how we can partner together! Aug 24, 2011 Hope everyone is rocking! We are keeping busy at Zod. The last Zod nite was a success and featured several really strong performances. You should definitely check out the next one if you are in town. I think it is set for early Oct. We just found out that Jenny Ray (one of our artists) has 2 songs placed on this Sunday’s “Keeping up With The Kardasians”. That makes 14 placements so far this year. We are excited. Be listening and check out her music on I-Tunes. Brett has been in California all week taking meetings while the rest of us are busy tracking and writing with artists. Stay tuned for some new songs! Peace. Zod Nite at 12th and Porter, this Friday. It’s Free!~ Performing will be: Come on out!! Aug 5, 2011 We are excited for a few things that are happening. Taylor McMahon has been chosen as a staff pick by Tunecore this week. Check out his track “Hey Now”. Joanie Leed’s Zod produced record “What A Zoo!” will be featured in the People Magazine’s Aug 15 issue in a blog about great children’s music. Joanie’s music features really great writing and music that parents are loving as much as children! Betsey Long’s double EP “Gemini” is set to release next week. It features a heavy dance-pop disk, and a disk that shows off her more laid-back rootsy RnB side. We’ve been working on it for a long time and excited to get it out to you. http://betseylong.com/ Finally, we are really excited about the line-up for the upcoming Zodnite at 12th and Porter. It’s a free night, come on out! Peace. July 29, 2011 We just had a great Zod Nite at 12th and Porter. Tonight Charity Vance, Shannon Labrie, Everlife, Kree Woods and Betsey Long all rocked it out. Charity has a new video for her song Icicing which can be found on her Youtube. Shannon Labrie has printed out her cd’s and they look great. They are headed to College Radio. Everlife is rocking and we are writing some stuff with them that we are really proud of. Kree has a new EP that should be finished by the end of August, and Betsey had her double CD “Gemini” mastered by Hank Williams at Mastermix yesterday, and Fedex’d off to duplication. Other artist news includes The Zods featuring Dane Estok’s “Everybody Get up” will be featured in the upcoming Cinderella Story 3 movie. We received the Sync contracts today. Lot’s of great things are happening and we are busy at work making more great music. We have another Zod Nite at 12th and Porter on August 19th, and a Zod writers night at the Downtown Hotel Indigo which is more of an acoustic setting on August 16th. We hope that you can make it down! Drop us a line! 
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