We Have Moved!

To continue following The Great Collide, head to our new blog location:

http://thegreatcollide.com/blog

What? – according to Jane Dance Commander Lee.

Things have a funny way of falling into place. If anyone had told me a year ago that I would be living in Nashville with two guys I hardly knew and a friend from high school, I’m not sure which part would have been the least believable.  The Nashville part? The two unknown dudes part? The David part? The me singing in a band part?

I was pretty wary of the whole situation as I sat on a Syracuse balcony listening to Wyatt and Drew’s proposal. I had other crazy ideas of my own; of moving to LA or NYC, of finding a piano somewhere to write with, of finding a stable job and eventually locking my rockstar dreams into a drawer somewhere. I laughed at the idea, and peaced out of there. So how did I find myself with these three guys in a Nashville basement, drinking discount Red Oval beer while composing my very own bicycle themed, racy hit – “Grease that Chain”? (coming to an ipod near you!)

The thing is, the music felt good. Creating with the guys came naturally, and I couldn’t say no, no matter how hard I tried. And I’m so glad that I said yes. This year I put my voice on a CD. I think we can all agree, that’s pretty cool. I get to sell that CD to people who don’t know my name! People who want nothing more than to hear the music. That’s the coolest! I get to stand on stage and model all my pairs of shoes. And this year I get to bring even more of myself into my songwriting, into our performance, and that’s something I didn’t/couldn’t do before.

You couldn’t ask for better people to go on this adventure with. People ask me a lot, “What’s it like to live with three boys? Is it the worst?” I love it. Yes, there are days when I’m pissed about having to watch Mythbusters all day, the days when they make fun of how many exclamation marks I use in emails, or how I’m constantly being told to shut down my laptop for “it’s health”. All those moments are instantly erased by the days when we sit together over a gravy buffet (yes, it’s a thing – you’re welcome) and laugh ’til we cry over an episode of food party.

It’s been a defining year, with plenty of ups and downs. But I’ve found a space where I belong. I don’t know what this next year holds but I know that at the end of the day, things have a funny way of falling into place, and I’m down for the ride.

Round Two

About this time last year, I was cat-sitting in Brooklyn in exchange for a place to live rent-free when I was contacted by none other than Jane Lee of yet-unnamed The Great Collide. I hadn’t spoken to Jane in years, but she had just moved down to Tennessee with these two dudes from school to start a band. The problem, she explained, was that the band was short a bass player, and she asked if I was interested in coming down to visit. I didn’t own a bass, and I had not played the bass since high school, roughly around the time I had last spoken to Jane. However, I had also spent my post-graduate months searching for a job to no avail, and I thought, what the hell, let’s give this a shot. Armed with my newly purchased $100 Craigslist bass and my keen sense of adventure, I bought a one-way ticket to Nashville.

I flew down with high hopes but few expectations; it wasn’t until I bonded with Drew and Wyatt over Clueless and a case of Miller High Life that I started thinking, maybe this could work out. After the band asked me to join (via a PA announcement at a minor league baseball game), I moved into their basement and started writing, practicing, and playing with the band.

After making as big a decision as moving to a new city and pursuing music with such haste and spontaneity, I sometimes think about what I would be doing had I not moved to Nashville. In truth, I would probably be making more money doing something a little more stable. But I also would not have professionally recorded an EP, gone on a tour that we put together ourselves, or even stepped foot in the South. Or have met such wonderful people. Cue tears.

So yeah, pretty much what Wyatt said.

-David

A view of the universe – one year later

One year.  One year. What does that mean, really?  If time were linear, why would we care?  It must not be.  Time is a three dimensional spiral; a spring, perhaps.  As you travel along it through space-time, you arrive each year at the same point in one plane, but a very different point in another.  As we move along the z-axis of that spring, farther and farther from our beginning, our memories fade with distance.  We can only see so far, you know.  As we spiral through time and space we encounter others.  Some we touch just briefly; others begin to intertwine their spirals, and destinies, with ours.  As a partnership forms the spirals begin to align and spin in perfect synchronization.  A double-helix.  Our DNA.  Our life-blood is not just composed of ourselves, but of those we meet.  I am myself.  I am others.

Over the past year my single spiral of life has become not a double, a triple, but a quadruple-helix, tightly interwoven with three others’ lives.  Their lives are my life.  My life is their life.  At times the quadruple-helix can be beautiful and in perfect synchronization, spinning and flying through the ether.  At others, the gyrating dance can be a shaky sight.  As we pass through the same point of revolution, one year from our beginning, I no longer lead my own destiny, but rather, simultaneously lead and follow three others.  It is a great responsibility and a great comfort to be more than yourself.

This 360-degree cycle in two dimensions has produced a great distance in the third.  I have passed through a new city, three residences, countless hours of writing, playing, perfecting, learning, discovering, and knowing.  I have made three of the best friends and worst enemies I could have ever hoped for.  The future is no clearer to me now than it was one year ago, but for all the uncertainty, the blindness, the unknown, we have spiraled through it all together and accomplished more than we could have dared hope for.  We are ever on the brink of greatness and disaster, of winding tighter or pulling apart like liquorish.  I am a different person than I was one year ago, a different person that I was this morning, different than I will be tomorrow, and different than I will be remembered.  As my quadruple-helix of life spirals on, four times larger than myself, I can only imagine the possibilities, the excitement, and the worlds I’ll pass through before I arrive back in this plane, 360 degrees from now.

-Wyatt

ONE WHOLE YEAR!!

What a year.

It was June 2009, we loaded up two cars and drove south ’til we hit Nashville. It was exciting, it was terrifying, it was new. And so far it’s been an incredible journey with lots of ups and downs. In a year we’ve created a band, recorded an EP, gone on tour, been featured on the radio, and become best friends.

Since we usually write as a collective, we want to take the chance to present the year in retrospective from each member of The Great Collide. So each Friday, starting this week, we’ll be featuring one member’s story of our first year as a band.

Do it. Tune in this Friday July 16th (This week it’ll be Wyatt!).

Thanks for being there with us, we are so excited about what’s to come in the next year.

TGC

Radio Airplay

Exciting news!

The Great Collide is being featured on Nashville’s Lightning 100 radio station as their Local Spotlight. To see the feature, click HERE.

We will be played on Lightning 100 at 2:45 and 8:45pm all week long, and you can listen online by clicking right HERE.
Tune in!

Also, we’ve got three Nashville area shows coming up so mark your calendars:

June 16th at the End, Nashville

June 22nd at the Five Spot, Nashville

June 26th at Yeah! Houseparty, Murfreesboro

The EP, The Tour and The Flood

It’s a month for firsts.  In anticipation for our first ever tour we finished our debut EP.  If you haven’t already download a copy of the EP (for free), grab it at http://music.thegreatcollide.com

You can send it to friends, enemies and anyone else you know who would be willing to listen.  We feel like proud new parents, something that would not have been possible with the help of our friend, James Stewart of 761mph.

The tour was a blast.  Morgantown, WV gave us the opportunity to play on a festival stage, something that we could get used to. We ate Philly cheesesteaks (some were less steak and more soy, but still delicious) not once, but twice while we were in Philadelphia.  It was the city that we knew the least about so it was great to explore.  Both shows we played in Philadelphia were a lot of fun and we’re excited about going back.

New York was amazing. Arlene’s Grocery is an awesome venue, and the crowd was spectacular.  Jane became a 23 year old while we were there!

Boston gave us the chance to meet up with a lot of friends.  We got to check out Boston Commons and ride tandem around the Charles.  The show in Somerville had the most surprisingly large crowd size.  What a city!

The final show at The Red and the Black in DC gave us all an opportunity to finish strong and spend a couple of extra days relaxing.  We went to Great Falls Park on the Potomac River, got a tour of the Capitol (during which a fellow tourer claimed to have heard of us), and ate some real deal Singaporean food.

It was an awesome experience and only made us amped for our next tour.

On a serious note, we missed much of the flooding that hit Nashville while we were on tour, but since coming back we’ve seen the result.  We cleared destroyed personal belongings out of a home that is due for demolition.  We got lucky that our part of town was not hit as hard.  The damage in our house is minimal, a couple of blown electronics and carpet that needs replacing.  But there is still a lot to be done.  Here is the website for Hands on Nashville which has been coordinating much of the volunteer effort and which is currently taking donations:

http://hon.org/

Listen to the EP and tell us what you think. And of course, thanks to everyone who has supported us up to this point.  It wouldn’t be possible without the support of everyone around us, something which we all saw during the tour. We’re truly grateful.

- Drew and the gang

New Blog Location

Hey Everybody,

Our blog is from now on only going to be updated at our new location: www.thegreatcollide.com/blog (legit right?).  So update your bookmarks and we’ll see you over there!

-TGC

EP Sampler!

Just press play.

EP Sampler!

Just press play.