Time to do some housekeeping. Let's see...
Thanks to everyone who came out to our past few shows in November and December. We had a great time playing an acoustic show at The Bend Studio in Dallas last Friday. It's a true pleasure to play such a lovely venue. The Bend has a real cool thing going on. Be sure to check out the entire lineup of their "Intimate Evening" concert series. Thanks Ally and Brandon for a great evening! A live CD of the show is now available for sale from The Bend's website. Click here to get it.
On Nov.12 we played our favorite venue in Oklahoma, the world famous Blue Door. If you live around Oklahoma City, pick up the Dec 7th issue of the Oklahoma Gazette. Tory Troutman wrote a nice review of the show. You can read it by clicking on the "Press" link up top. We will be playing there again sometime in the spring when we start booking shows again, so watch out.
We have a new CD that is going to be out soon... we swear... It should be back from manufacturing any time now. More details later...
The O&A Music Staff
Welcome to everyone who may be here for the first time from the Bend website or the Blue Door website! Thanks for stopping by. If you are here by some other means, please visit both www.bluedoorokc.com and www.bendstudio.com. These are two great venues in which we are lucky enough to get to play! Read the article about the Bend Studio from the Fort Worth Star Telegram below for an idea of what kind of venue it is. It's a great article.
Please help us sell out both of these upcoming shows: November 12 at the Blue Door, and December 2 at the Bend. You can purchase tickets to these shows in advance at both websites and we want to encourage everyone to please do so - we want to get an idea of how many folks we can expect to see. We will have a special guest or two at the Blue Door show, and C. Thomas Cole will be opening for us at the Bend, and we'll be playing a good mix of old and new songs. Both shows will be really cool so come join us for a night of music and fun! Thanks to everyone!
The O&A Music Staff
Posted on Mon, Oct. 31, 2005
Dallas venue combines club scene, yoga
By MALCOLM MAYHEW
STAR-TELEGRAM STAFF WRITER
DALLAS -- The first sign that the Bend Studio is not your average live music venue: Upon entering, a strange request is made of you -- "Take off your shoes."
That's because the small upstairs room near the Knox-Henderson area of Dallas doubles as a yoga studio. During the day, owner Ally David and a half-dozen other instructors teach various levels of yoga and meditation. In the evening, usually a half-dozen times a month, Bend Studio turns into a candlelit, cozy, live-music space. Because the floor is made of hardwood, and David doesn't want concertgoers scuffing it up, off come the shoes.
Bend Studio's "Intimate Evening Series" has quickly taken off, with both fans and bands. The "intimate" part is Bend Studio's selling point: The crowd sits on the floor, on pillows, in chairs, in a tiny room; the artists, usually Texas roots-rockers, perform within spitting distance of them -- literally.
"Did I spit on you?" Old 97's singer Rhett Miller, of Dallas, asked someone on the front row of one his recent Bend Studio shows. "I think I did. Sorry."
"I'm not sure Ally wants to emphasize that -- come get spit on by your favorite artist," says Guy Forsyth, an Austin musician who has performed at the venue several times. "But it's true -- you're right there. You can smell the artist, you're so close to them."
The Bend has been hosting shows for more than a year now. Texas blues musician Ian Moore christened the venue in May 2004.
"[The] venture started last summer when I brought in a pretty famous yoga teacher named Rodney Yee," says Ally, who graduated from the University of North Texas with a degree in biochemistry. "He draws quite a following, and I was trying to think of something for the attendees to do after the classes. I'm very good friends with Guy, and he had been telling me for some time that he would come up and play for a studio event if I ever needed him to. He wasn't available for this event, but I got up the nerve to ask Ian Moore."
Moore took the gig. "He said it'd be a nice change from playing in a smoky bar," says Ally, who is in her mid-20s. "Guy heard that it went really well, so he wanted to come and play. Once both of those talents had come, it gave us a little bit of clout."
Since then, some of Texas' best-known talents have played the venue, from Forsyth and Miller to Patrice Pike, Bob Schneider, Kacy Crowley, Monte Montgomery and Billy Harvey; the next show is Friday with Creede Williams. Trish Murphy plays Saturday.
Most of the shows at Bend Studio sell out. Of course, 85 people is considered a sell-out.
"I can honestly say we are the purest form of a listening room in the D-FW area," Ally says. "The artists love playing our space because they receive the kind of attention that they rarely, if ever, get in a bar or club environment."
"It's like hanging out in the living room with all your friends, and playing songs to each other," Forsyth says. "Usually, people have a certain amount of game face on when they go to shows -- people are on the make, or protecting themselves from people on the make. Or people are talking over the music, which is aggravating to others 'cuz they paid a lot of money to see a show.
"Bend's not like that. It's for storytelling, for music. It's like black-and-white photography -- very naked and simple."
Bend Studio
5014 McKinney Ave., Dallas
(214) 841-YOGA
hello to all of you first time visitors to our site! spend some time looking around, listen to songs, watch a video or two, and PLEASE sign our guestbook so we know you were here!
also please visit wholewheatradio.org and give it a listen. it's another online radio station - this one out of Alaska - that only plays 100% independent artists, and our album just got added to their playlist. their programming is driven primarily through listener requests. so, if you request any of our songs, they WILL automatically get played! click the picture below to request O&A (you'll have to sign up as a listener to make requests - it's free and you don't have to give any personal info). if they're in non-request programming just try again later. thanks ya'll!
O&A Music Staff
first let us thank all of you who bought our cd from cd baby in our attempt to get on their promotional cd. it was a valiant effort but alas, i think we are going to come up a little short. we'll get 'em next time, right?!?
we are playing at the famous Brothers in Norman, OK on September 30, the famous Blue Door in OKC, OK on November 12, and the getting-famous Bend Studio in Dallas on December 2. more on all these shows later, some of you will be getting a new edition of our newsletter PDQ.
our next album (we are calling O&A II, for now) is being mixed and mastered and we are al...most...there. Should be "out" just in time for the holidays! so be thinking of us and check back here often! Bye for now!
O&A Music Staff