NewYearsDayProject | a song a day blog

In 2005, Denison Witmer released Are You a Dreamer ?  The album was released on the now defunct Chad Pearson -owned record label The Militia Group , home to a plethora of Christian and secular acts in the late '90s and early '00s. The former A&R guy at Tooth & Nail Records founded The Militia Group on similar values as the legendary label: musical variety. From underground punk rock bands like Brandston and The Beautiful Mistake to indie rock gems like Copeland and Lovedrug to mainstream successes like The Summer Set and Cartel  and to indie folk acts like The New Frontiers and Denison Witmer, the label fostered talent for nearly 10 years before the label folded.   HOW YOU FOUND ME, I STILL NEVER UNDERSTAND.  " Little Flowers " opens  Are You a Dreamer?   with  simple acoustic guitar plucking. But in addition to guitar, Denison Witmer's dear friend and occasional housemate Sufjan Stevens appears playing banjo on the track. Stevens' 2005 releas

  I'm working on a new system for my blog so that I stop saying the same thing over and over again. I don't always have time to research an album cycle or the artist around the time of the album cycle, but I have written considerably about certain albums and artists. I want to provide links to those posts in album posts, like today's. I haven't written a lot about the tracks on Anberlin 's seminal record Cities , but it still is one of my favorite albums. In the future, this post can be a jumping-off point for other tracks on the record. I could write books on each track and my experiences with them, but today you'll just get a few sentences about each. Enjoy the album as it turns sixteen today. 1. ( Début ). For about a minute and a half, Anberlin introduces us to a dark world in an instrumental composed of city sound effects and noisy guitars. The song reminds me of Jerry Martin 's Sim City 4 soundtrack. (Début) leads into " Godspeed ." 2. "

A few Saturday afternoons circa 2015-17, I went  down a rabbit-hole, looking for the best   Paper Route ,   Anberlin , and   Copeland   covers on YouTube. This was long after finding artists like   Tyler Ward   who covered pop music. I wondered if anyone had recorded high quality covers of my favorite bands. It turns out that there were   a few . These artists weren't on the level of popularity of   Kurt Hugo Schneider   or   Boyce Avenue . I had hoped to created a cover playlist of a Copeland album, but there weren't enough high-quality covers on YouTube at the time. Charles Angell's   YouTube account   has 7 videos, 77 subscribers, and the singer hasn't posted anything in 3 years. From a quick Facebook search, it turns out that Angell is still active as a musician, with a new haircut and some designer rims, now under the moniker of   Snarly  (link to his social media presence).  YOU'RE STILL A BREEZE UPON MY SKIN.   Of the Copeland covers, Charles Angell's ver

  Waking Ashland was a band signed first to Tooth & Nail Records then Immortal Records . The band release two records, Composure in 2005 and The Well in 2007 before disbanding. Lead singer Jonathan Jones went on to form the band We Shot the Moon with two members from Sherwood , Dan Koch and Joe Greenetz , who also played in Waking Ashland. As for Waking Ashland, Composure was a sleeper hit on Tooth & Nail Records similar to Watashi Wa 's music. The two bands both relied on calmer, often organic sounds that failed to garner the audience to compete with the harder bands the label steered toward in the mid-'00s.  TO PROVE WE'RE SOMETHING, BUT WE'RE STARVING. Another comparison between Waking Ashland and Watashi Wa is that both bands went on to form other bands, moving from Tooth & Nail Records to the now defunct, often calmer emo label The Militia Group . In Watashi Wa's case, the band formed first Eager Seas and then Lakes . Interestingly Tooth &am

  This week, Copeland announced that they would be touring to celebrate the twentieth anniversary for their debut record, Beneath Medicine Tree . Copeland's sound has changed a lot from the indie nineties-rock inspired band to digging deeper music school band mates (particularly frontman Aaron Marsh 's) classical, jazz, and broadway influences. Before all of that, though, we have a song cycle about a young man affected by his grandmother's death, pinning over a girlfriend--Paula--even named on the record. Some consider Beneath Medicine Tree an indie classic, while others consider it an immature effort for a band with much greater potential.  THERE ARE BIRDS SINGING ON LAMPPOSTS. My sister and I fall on different sides of this debate. Back when I was going through my Copeland binge on their first three records, I liked their first two records best, while my sister liked their second two better. She admired the musical theater experimentation on Eat, Sleep, Repeat , while I

  I've talked about Eisley , the named-for- Star-Wars  sister/cousin band from Tyler, Texas. Their major-label debut garnered indie cred, but due to some issues in the music industry, the band's label de-prioritized their sophomore release, delaying it almost a year from its recording and mastering. As for promotion, the record label pulled radio support as they weren't sure which format to market the band and canceled plans for a second music video to the band's only non-radio single " Invasions "  and never released the video for today's song, " Many Funerals ." Eisely can be added to the list of Christian-adjacent bands that were failed by major labels. Some of these groups saw initial success, whether radio, video, or touring, but ultimately they were left abandoned by the major label. Although  RadioU  plays some of their latest singles, by the end the  Room Noises   cycle, Eisley's creative path didn't have them marketed to the Chri

First appearing in 2001,   Lovedrug   released their   eponymous EP   in 2002 and their   Rocknroll   EP in 2004 before releasing their debut record,   Pretend You're Alive ,  in June of 2004. Selling over 20,000 records soon after the record was released, the band was signed to   Columbia Records   and their song " Spiders " was intended to be marketed as a radio hit. But rock star grandeur was never really in Lovedrug's reach, as the label dropped the band in the middle of restructuring. Lovedrug was a hard-working band, touring with acts such as   The Killers ,   Robert Plant ,   Sam Phillips ,   Switchfoot , and   Copeland . They would enjoy some success with their follow up record,   Everything Starts Where It Ends ,  but would continue making music until 2020, although they are probably best remembered for their first two records.   SEARCHING ON A WIRE FOR A WIRE .  The Militia Group  was a record label founded by former  Tooth & Nail Records  employee  Chad

Let's take a look at one of my favorite fall albums, Copeland 's 2005 sophomore record In Motion . I consumed the first three Copeland albums around the spring and summer between senior year and college.  I think that Beneath Medicine Tree was on sale at Best Buy  so I picked it up maybe around April. Then I picked up In Motion in the summer and Eat, Sleep, Repeat in the late autumn. I always associate Copeland albums with the seasons in which I listened to them. And like the brown leaves on the album cover of In Motion, I'd like to talk about a short memory with each song.   1. " No One Really Wins ." The album opens with grungy guitars, a sound that Copeland would soon abandon in later albums. The song also sets the album up with a spiritual theme--the fight between "heart and mind" and "grace and pride." The message of the song is to "change if you want, but don't . . . change for me" which was something very different fro

A short lived indie-rock band from Dallas, Texas,  The New Frontiers  released one full-length album on  The Militia Group  in 2008 before calling it quits the following year. Their album  Mending   was produced by  Matt Goldman , the Atlanta-based producer known for heavy-hitting bands, like Underoath , The Chariot ,  As Cities Burn . Goldman, however, isn't exclusively a hard rocker. Working as the drummer of the Christian Rock band Smalltown Poets , Goldman's early production credits include Luxury , Copeland , and Casting Crowns . The New Frontiers' mellow folk-rock album,     Mending  drew critical acclaim from Paste and Daytrotter. The band contributed the track "Mirrors" to the the 2008 Cornerstone Festival digital mixtape along with many other indie rock acts who performed at the festival. "Mirrors" deals with coming to terms with an inescapable realization of who one is by "mak[ing] peace with the world." TURNED 22 WHEN YOU WERE FOUND

Edison Glass was a Christian indie band Long Island, New York. Forming in 1998 as Mannafest (not to be confused by the Christian rapper Manafest), the band released three records. Then they released an EP called Starting Over  as Edison. Starting Over produced a hit, " Forever ," that found its way to RadioU and its video to RadioU's sister music television channel TVU. The video for "Forever" is no longer available online, but it was one of the typical low budget videos of live footage with studio sound often played on TVU at the time by independent bands or low budget labels.   SLEEPWALKING . After releasing Starting Over Edison signed with Credential Records and changed their name to Edison Glass. The band derived their name from the inventor Thomas Edison and the composer Philip Glass . As Edison, the band equated creating music as a kind of experiment in the garage. The music business for them them was "1% inspiration and 99% perspiration." But

  It's officially spooky season, so I decided to make a playlist celebrating the spookier songs I've blogged about or artists that had a spooky song. The 31 tracks that I included perhaps won't make you writhe in horror, but they have a loose connection to Halloween. Maybe there's a lyrics or a creepy video, or maybe it was just a song that I listened to a lot in October. I will post the Spotify playlist below and links to the posts and the tracks so that you can read the spooky stories behind the tracks.  1.       " Ghost " by Yellow Ostrich 2. " Closer " by Kings of Leon 3. " Unholy " by Sam Smith ft. Kim Petras 4. " I'm Pretty Sure I'm Out of Luck and Have No Friends " by Underoath 5. " Two Graves " by Anberlin 6. " Moonlit " by Falling Up 7. " Panic Switch " by Silversun Pickups 8. " Killer " by Chvrches   9. " Midnight City " by M83 10 " Edge of Seventeen "