Category Archives: Band Stuff

Anybody hear the outro music to the NBC Olympic telecast last night? Yup, it was Mere’s song “Higher” (which isn’t even the song on the Olympic soundtrack).

Corinne and I turned off the TV literally right before it started, so I didn’t find out about it until this morning—which is just as well. My heart was already pounding from the gymnastics all-around (how exciting was that?); if I’d heard our song right after I probably would have had a heart attack and Mere would’ve had to find a new bass player.

BTW, the song’s available exclusively thru AmieStreet.

Totally excited about this: All the stuff we did for the Olympics is now live, including the full music video and a couple band interviews. You can check it out here, or click the band’s Olympic banner thingy at the top of this page. I’m in the second interview a bit, talking about—what else?—technology. Geek.

The soundtrack is on the iTunes homepage today, so if you dig the tune, go leave a review!

Good news! The preview of Mere’s Olympic music video for “Hold On” is now online at AT&T’s promotional site, along with the previews for most of the other participating bands’ videos. My own incredibly biased opinion: I think we stack up nicely. Our lead singer is just so darn telegenic! (Mere Fun Fact: He’s also telekinetic)

You won’t see much of my face in the video, but you’ll know me by my shirt because it’s the same one I wore to work today. Rockstar 24-7-365.

This post comes with two homework assignments:

1. Go watch the video and lemme know what you think. Unless you don’t like it, in which case you’re a communist who hates Team USA.
2. Get the Mere Olympic badge and add it to your Facebook profile, MySpace profile, or blog.

That’s all for now. Enjoy!

Here’s the new full-page Mere ad that’s running in the August issue of Paste magazine. It’s the middle page in a fold-out section with three other ads for bands that are participating in the Olympics promotion (Lady Antebellum, Army of Me, and 3 Doors Down). The picture is by Dave Mead, and the placement of the ad is perfect…the magazine kind of falls open to this page.

The best part about the ad, though, is that it (correctly) links listening to Mere with patriotism. And I gotta say, the song and video are pretty darn patriotic.

Anyway, what’s double cool is that Corinne and I are already Paste subscribers. They send a free CD with each issue, and it usually has some pretty good music by up-and-coming indie bands. If you’re looking for a cheap way to discover new artists, Paste is a good option. And pick up the August issue!

So, here’s the big Mere news of the day/month/year: NBC and AT&T announced Mere’s participation in the US Olympic Team soundtrack. That’s about as big a deal as an unsigned band with day jobs can possibly hope for. We’ll be joined on the soundtrack by Sheryl Crow, Three Doors Down, Colbie Caillat, Army of Me, Nelly, and a few other big names, and NBC will be using the music and a video we shot for its Olympic promotions.

So far, there have been stories on today’s announcement in USA Today, CNN Money, Rolling Stone, Billboard, and, oddly, Mobile Crunch, so Mere’s been getting some good name-checking.

It’s crazy/awesome that we’re being included on an album with such big names, but Brian wrote the perfect song for it and the video looks great. I’ll post details on where you can check out the video/song/album as soon as I can.

[Photo by Dave Mead, www.davemead.com]

So, this is by far the raddest picture I’ve ever seen–and not at all because it’s of me and my beloved bass. Mary K was snapping pics at last week’s Whiskey Bar show, and had some fun with this one. I think it turned out completely, utterly awesome. Nice work!

BTW, that’s a guitar pick in my mouth, not a cigarette.

BTW2, come see Mere play at Fat Baby on the Lower East Side on Thursday night at 8. It’s a free show…cover’s on us! Fat Baby’s quickly become one of our favorite places to play. Great sound quality and a cool neighborhood. Speaking of which, we’ll be at El Castillo De Jagua (across the street) for dinner beforehand, and the afterparty will be at Marshall Stack on Allen Street. Love to see you at any/all of the festivities.

If you haven’t checked out Mere on AmieStreet yet, you’ve missed the gold rush, sorry! The free market has spoken, and has heaped accolades and sales on my humble band, driving up the price of our tunage.

Every album starts out costing $0.00 on AmieStreet and only goes up if lots of people download/buy it (tracks max out at $0.98 each). For a while, AmieStreet’s version of Switches and Dials cost a lot less than our same album on iTunes. As of now, though, the iTunes album is $9.99, and AmieStreet’s has crept up to almost $7. Interestingly, because listeners tend to buy after hearing only a 30-second sample, you can kinda tell which songs people think are the hits. Obviously the song from the Haier commercial is maxed at $0.98, and our up-tempo “hits” (Falling, Crawl, and Anything At All) are in the sixty-cent range. The slow burners, You and I, Circles, and Red in the Dark, are a bit cheaper though. Interesting, because those three are all great songs.

Mere’s been doing really well on AmieStreet.com since uploading our tracks on Monday, culminating in our album actually being featured on the site’s homepage today. Songs on AmieStreet start out costing nothing, and the price only goes up as demand increases. So our Switches & Dials album was around $1.50 on Monday, $2.75 last night, and today it’s up to $4.15. That’s a pretty good deal on a whole album though…it’s $9.99 on iTunes.

The title of the post says it all. Come hang out with me and my band at Knitting Factory on Friday. It’s one of the best, coolest rock clubs in town, and we’ve got a fun group of fans and friends coming out (I’ll introduce you around). We’ll take the stage at nine–not sure what the cover is but it won’t be more than $10.

Also, it’s like the easiest club in town to get to on the subway. We’re talking express trains!

Mere said goodbye to our horrific practice space in Hoboken tonight. It was basically a run-down warehouse that we called Saw Studios because it looked like the set of a horror movie. Seriously, it reeked of death and decay, with over 30 years of old musical equipment, bongs, mold, and spiders. It wouldn’t have surprised me to find a dead drummer or something under the stage, either. I’m sure it’ll be bulldozed to build some condos. Maybe they’ll be haunted by dead drummers.

So congrats on going so long without being condemned, Saw.

The Falling video (below) was shot on location at Saw, as was the Switches and Dials album art.