Tag Archives: Rock N’ Roll

Breaking down the songs of Mountain, day three – “Killing Machine”

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7 Days till the release of “Mountain” now. ARE YOU READY?
I know we are. Watching “Sleeping With Lions” stream 15,000 plays last night alone has us on cloud nine. Thanks to each and every one of you for continuing to demand your friends add it to their music libraries!
Today I’m going to break down- “Killing Machine”.

This is my (ct) current favorite song on the record. I like the cinematic visual of the song, the meanings and references. I’m hesitant on a few of these songs to continue to describe them too accurately, because I know that they can mean a lot of things to a lot of people. But for now, I’ll tell you what the song means to me.
I had finished up the last season of “Hell on Wheels” (which is great if you haven’t take the time to watch), and was thinking about some of the characters. Thinking about who we are as people, and the things that add up to make us into that specific human who can take another’s life. Someone who has had his wife and family murdered and sets out on revenge during the civil war. My father, and step father sent to vietnam to fight and kill other humans for reasons they didn’t understand. My wifes’ grandfather sent to Germany to fight and destroy evil. Indian warriors fighting to save their land. All these situations that have brought men to the point where they would take another humans life. It’s heavy to me. First verse in my head is an obituary of a civil war soldier when our nation killed it’s own, brother against brother. The second verse the plight of the Native American post civil war. The last verse the great world wars. There are some hidden references and meanings in some of the lines, and I will leave that to the listener to decipher. The song is a character study on why these men became men that could kill and the heaviness and scarring that killing left upon them.
I would love to see the song make it to a television show in 2019, it’s certainly visual to me. Thanks for reading…. See you tomorrow with a break down of “Gone Not Dead”.

“Killing Machine”
Another man dead I didn’t want to kill
Another soul lost that I didn’t will
Another man’s pain that I didn’t feel
Another dead soldier laid on a hill

Killing machine, oh Killing Machine
you bought yourself a Killing Machine

Run for the hills navajo let’s go
Run through the streams and the valleys below
Run through the dreams of our fathers before
Passed in the night with blood on the door

Killing machine, oh Killing Machine
you bought yourself a Killing Machine

Pitch them down from the 2nd floor
Pitch them down to the dirt below
Kiss their mothers with lips so cold
Foreign soldiers never do grow old, do they?

Killing machine, oh Killing Machine
you bought yourself a Killing Machine

Breaking down the songs of Mountain, day two – “Wade in the Darkness”

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EIGHT Days till the release of our new album “Mountain”. Today I’m going to break down “Wade in the Darkness” from the album.

After the good fortune of landing Sleeping With Lions on Animal Kingdom, I had started to really focus on cinematic themes. I had always written visually, and anything that I write I “see” in my head before and during the writing process. That keeps any lyrics from showing up in the songs that are generic or not connected personally to me. For about a week I re-emersed myself into a few of the shows I had watched that really impacted my writing in the last ten years. Carnivale and Deadwood from HBO, Heat, Sexy Beast, Unforgiven, some classic westerns. One theme that I kept coming back to was how we suffer things or go through things in our past that we try to leave behind, and disconnect from. Could be almost anything, and not always super negative, but sometimes when it’s something that was very emotional for us as humans we don’t really want to visit that place in our minds and relive through something with that kind of weight.
“Wade in the Darkness” is about entering those areas in our mind where those memories lie, and how those things in our past affect our future and our decisions. I wanted the song to stand on it’s own with drums, to have an eerie slide guitar in it, and be somewhat of a dark Daniel Lanois feel. We had pitched it to “The Walking Dead”, and were very close to a license with it but didn’t happen. I have a feeling it still might land in something this year. One of my favorite off the album for the feel. In my mind, visually the narrator was walking down a flight of steps into the darkness to deal with what he had left behind. I hope you enjoy it when you hear the song.

Wade in the Darkness
They say there are some things we never leave too far behind
Traces of faces, places in the back of our mind

Wade in the darkness, away from the light, and pray that we just make it out alive

Banded together, the fears that burn in your chest
Haunted by dreams that never seem to let you rest

Wade in the darkness, away from the light, pray that we can make it out alive

I hear you calling, I still hear you calling….
through the echo’s of this rain, that never stops falling,
that never stops falling

Wade in the darkness, away from the light, and pray that somehow we make it out alive
Wade in the darkness, away from the light, and pray that somehow we make it out alive

Breaking down songs of Mountain, day one – “Sleeping with Lions”

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We are 9 days away from the release of “Mountain” now. We thought it might be cool to break down some of the songs from the album for you guys. We’ll start out with our single “Sleeping With Lions”.

Pre-cancer, so around late 2011 I had the main riff of the song and it had morphed into a song called “Come Apart”. At that time it was angsty relationship song with what I felt were sub-par lyrics. We were playing the song out some and had even cut a demo in the studio. “Come Apart” didn’t feel up to snuff to me, and so it didn’t make the cut. Move forward two years and I was in the middle of chemo and radiation fighting cancer. We were doing everything that we could to move forward and keep recording. I literally was in the studio with Brian and Greg with a rash covering my body from the chemo trying to cut guitars. It was during that time that I kept coming back to this powerful guitar riff, and the opening anthem type melody. It just felt like it deserved lyrics that would match the power of the riff. I had been reading and focusing on people that had faced great adversity and overcome through faith. Two men really stood out to me, one was Job and the other Daniel from the bible. Both having to survive on nothing but faith. I could really relate to that. At the time I was also thinking about legacy, and that if something happened to me, any lyrics I left behind I wanted to inspire people. I was driving home one night and starting singing a line in my head over the guitar riff. “I hold the light that lights the pathway”. The way I write a lot of times is to construct the entire song in my head. I write a line, repeat, add another, repeat two, and another repeat three, until I’ve written and memorized something until I can make it to a pen and paper. By the time I had gotten home I had the chorus. “I hold the light that lights the pathway, I hold the key that locks the door, I mark the steps that lead to freedom, I swim the sea that leads to shore”. It was a declaration of giving 100% trust and faith to God that he would lead me through whatever was to happen.
I sat down and wrote the rest of the song in probably 2-3 minutes. The first verse I imagined a prisoner, locked away with no hope. Metaphors for a woman trapped in an abusive relationship, a kid stuck in a bad home, someone fighting disease, people silenced for their views, anyone trying to overcome. “Well they took them a hammer, and they took them a nail. And they built you a prison, and they made you a cell. And they gave you no ransom, and they set you no bail. No view of a heaven, yea they gave you their hell.”
Second verse came easily as well, and it is the story of David which still makes me shudder to think about. “Daniel on his knees, he continued to pray, and the king he forbid him, and they led him away. And they laid him with lions, and they told him goodbye. They returned in the morning, just to find him alive.” It is the universal story of faith and perseverance.
Forward months later, and I was on the mend and we cut the new song which was now “Sleeping With Lions”. With no releases immediately coming up we sat on the song. Forward a couple years and we had given some songs to our new publisher who was synching songs to television. Out of all the songs he had to pick from he kept telling me that “Sleeping With Lions” would land somewhere. I wasn’t so sure, and didn’t see it as a single. Sometimes this happens when you are very close to a song and it seems like it was just written for your circumstance. Regardless, I said sure, give it a shot. A few months later I got the call that it had been chosen out of our songs for the “Animal Kingdom” show on TNT. The rest as they say is history. “Sleeping With Lions” then followed up to be placed on ESPN’s coverage of the X-Games this fall. We have a good inclination that you will also hear it on something big in 2019. It was released October 1st 2019 as the first single off of “Mountain” and was added to 12 Spotify Editorial Playlists. To put that in perspective, on our last album “Break My Fall” and “Head Bent” were added to ONE each. Previous releases saw NO playlists placements. “Sleeping With Lions” is currently doing 10-15,000 streams per day and has done 180,000 since October 1st at the time I’m writing this.
I want to add one more note while we are on this subject. Bands ON record labels release records and spend tens of thousands of dollars to have consultants recommend their songs for Spotify playlists. Even after doing that, most do not see any of their songs make the editorial playlists. Those lists are the new top 40. The fact that we have released this record, WITHOUT a label, without consultants, paid for by our fans, and had this success solidifies that it’s a new world out there and this can be done without labels. It requires a lot of hard work, a lot of hustle, and more than anything a lot of FAITH. See you tomorrow with another track explanation. CT

Sleeping with Lions on Spotify

Call or post a request for “Sleeping With Lions” on SiriusXM Octane or email Octane@siriusxm.com them and help us continue the success.

“Sleeping With Lions”
Well they took them a hammer
And they took them a nail
And they built you a prison, and they made you a cell
And they gave you no ransom, and they set you no bail
With no view of a heaven, yeah they gave you their hell

But I hold the light that lights the pathway
I hold the key that locks the door
I mark the steps that lead to freedom
I swim the sea that leads to shore

Daniel on his knees, he continued to pray
And the king he forbid him, and they led him away
And they laid him with lions, and they told him goodbye
They returned in the morning, just to find him alive….

I hold the light that lights the pathway
I hold the key that locks the door
I mark the steps that leads to freedom
I swim the sea that leads to shore

Over 100,000 streams on Spotify for “Sleeping with Lions”

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“Sleeping With Lions” from the TV show Animal Kingdom is the first single off our new full length record “Mountain” set for release on Halloween. Yesterday we crossed over 100,000 streams in the first ten days! Thanks to everyone streaming and saving and sharing.

Get the song here-
Sleeping with Lions
And request it here!
SiriusXM Octane

Tracks off for mastering!

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Tracks sent off for final mastering touch up for vinyl this morning. Here’s the song listing for-

MOUNTAIN

1-The Great Unknown
2-Stickemup
3-Under His Command
4-Friend of Mine
5-Gone (Not Dead)
6-Wade in the Darkness
7-Child of God
8-Sleeping With Lions
9-The River
10-Cold Black Water
11-The Plan
12-If Your Way Gets Dark
13-Two Keys and a Good Book
14-Killing Machine
15-Mountain

TCS - Mountain

Kickstarter for album “Mountain” to help self fund “Ways”

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Please check out our Kickstarter for “Mountain”, share and tag your friends. And thank you very much for playing a role in Cold Stares history- TCS

A tale of two records, publishing rights, and the struggles of a roots rock band in 2018.

As we began to discuss our next record which would have been titled “Ways” we decided together to pass on the record label offers we had and try to self fund the album in an attempt keep our music publishing this time. For those of you that don’t know when you see our music on a Monster Energy commercial, ESPN or a show on TNT, the money made from those performances actually go back to the record company instead of the artist.

Every record deal offer out there for us at the moment had the record label holding our publishing. Our last record deal the record label held our publishing. At this point in our career we were no longer willing to give that up, and artists shouldn’t have to. It’s hard enough to be a rock band out there right now, and for us to sustain our career we have to hold our licensing. So we decided to try to fund our record with our fans.

Here’s the dilemma. To properly record, produce, and promote “WAYS” we needed to raise around 20k. We have been really struggling on asking our fans to contribute that kind of money. We are a working class band, and we know a lot of our fans are blue collar working folks and to be honest it just felt a bit heavy to us. We built a kickstarter and then mulled for weeks over a discussion on what to do. We lost a lot of sleep, but through a lot of prayer and meditation we came to an answer.

What we decided. We decided we wanted to try to pay for the “WAYS” album ourselves. But how could we do that? Release “MOUNTAIN”.

Backstory- In the beginning of 2016 I was a bit over 2 years out cancer free. At that point I wasn’t for sure what life held ahead, but I knew my goal was to just live and make it to the goal we set with my doctors, five years. I also knew a lot of my friends that had gone through treatment with me had lost their battles. Not knowing exactly what we might have to deal with in the near future, we wanted to write and record everything I could so that if something happened to me I would leave a musical legacy behind for The Cold Stares. So we went in the studio with Greg Pearce and recorded “Dark Dark Blue”, and then “The Southern”. Both of these EP’s were released in 2016 with ZERO PR budget, zero buzz behind them. We also released some singles “Stickemup”, “Sleeping with Lions” and our version of the Allman’s classic “Whipping Post”. What we thought at the time, was that later when we got more well known our new fans would find these older EP’s. What we didn’t understand and what we have learned over the years is that without some PR budget behind ANY release- no one will hear or find it. No one is exactly pushing rock music onto the front page of Spotify or iTunes these days to be seen if you haven’t noticed. Those EP’s were very difficult to find online and most of these songs have never been heard outside of our close immediate fan base. So what we decided to do was take that group of songs, along with a few others our fans had never heard, remix and master them together and release as one album “Mountain”.

This group of 15 songs, all written around the same time, share a common theme and feel and we have always felt that they are just too important not to be presented correctly. Releasing “Mountain” will do a couple things, it will give these songs an opportunity to be heard, give our old fans a few new songs and remasters, and it will also give us an avenue to raise money for our February release “Ways”. We felt much better about raising the money with our fans in this fashion and we think it’s the proper way to move forward.

With your help we can meet or exceed our goal of 5k that will allow us to release “Mountain” and have a reasonable PR budget to get “Mountain” heard. Sales from “Mountain” and any additional money that might be possibly raised from this campaign will go to the funding of “Ways”. Any money we might be short of for “Ways” we will be funding ourselves. We honestly feel that “Mountain” will be our best album release to date, and when we look at the song listing I can’t say any other release comes close to summing up who we are musically. “Mountain” symbolically means so many different things to us, but more than anything what we’ve overcome, on our terms to be here with you. Thank you for your support in getting us here, and beyond. God Bless-

THE COLD STARES

“Break my Fall” hits 1 million streams on spotify!

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FREE GIVEAWAY!
So this happened this weekend. Our track “Break My Fall” slipped over a million streams on Spotify alone. I get messages from around the world weekly about this song and cannot tell you how much it means to me in this day and age, that a song like this connects with so many of you. We wanted to do a giveaway as part of a thank you. We will draw a name from anyone sharing this post tomorrow morning at 9am and that person will receive an autographed Cold Stares CD or Poster, your choice in the mail this week. Many of you have asked about a tuning/tab break down of #breakmyfall so I’ll also put together a video for you guys as well this week. Please continue to add #breakmyfall to your Spotify playlists and thank you all so much-

Announcement – The Cold Stares – “Sleeping with Lions” licensed for spot on ESPN

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Announcement- We learned over the weekend that The Cold Stares song “Sleeping with Lions” has been licensed for a spot on ESPN that will begin to air in August. Please share with your friends and add #sleepingwithlions to your Spotify playlists
Waited all weekend to announce, and just didn’t want to detract any focus from honoring our soldiers. We are very excited to continue to land these spots-

Sleeping with Lions

NEED YOUR SUGGESTIONS! GOOD NEWS ANNOUNCEMENT!

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NEED YOUR SUGGESTIONS- AND GOOD NEWS ANNOUNCEMENT-
Ok folks. A bit of a heads up on the WAYS album project and our Kickstarter fund raiser. When we posted about the project a couple of weeks ago we got an outpouring of support and interest in the project. Lucky enough for us, one person that we caught the interest of was our friend Mark Needham (Fleetwood Mac, Imagine Dragons, The Killers). Can’t tell you what how much Mark has done to try to help get us where we are. We spoke to Mark after the announcement and to our surprise he has offered to engineer and help us produce the album. He knows how important this record is, and is determined to help us make “THE” record we need to make. Mark obviously brings a ton of validity into the project. This part of the project is moving from Memphis to Marks Studio in Nashville. The acoustic work will be done in Sante Fe, New Mexico as planned. We are shooting to launch the Kickstarter May 15th, our goal is 20k. This will allow us to record the album, master it, produce the physical cd/vinyl, and our first actual budget to promote the album. Everything we’ve done so far in our career has been 100% word of mouth, part of the project will allocate some money towards PR so that people can actually hear about our new album. Amazing right? This still leaves part of the budget to be covered by the band, but this will give us enough steam to compete with the labels and actually get a rock and roll album in front of some people again.
Questions for our fans. Here’s a list of SOME of the items we are including in the kickstarter campaign that will last 30 days. IS there something else you guys would like to see offered that would help raise the money?

1-Obviously signed cds, vinyl, t-shirts, posters.
2-House concerts anywhere in the continental US. YES we are actually doing this as part of it, and yes if you meet the contribution we’ll bring the rock and roll.
3-Naming a song on the album. (We are reserving one song, and yes- one lucky fan contributor will name it.)
4-Naming our record label. (ONE fan contributor will actually be the one to name our label that our first release will be on, and hopefully some other great albums to come.)
5-Framed WAYS vinyl album presentation boxes for wall art.
6-WAYS coffee table book with images from the making of the album
7-Liner note mentions of some of our contributors

What else? Before we launch this, which is really for the fans, by the fans, we’d love to hear your feedback. Nothing is off the table if you guys are willing to contribute to helping us do this without outside help. Love to hear your suggestions- Reach us by email – info@thecoldstares.com or on Facebook – The Cold Stares

“Head Bent ” Release Date!

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And…. we finally have a release date. More behind the scenes (as usual), but “Head Bent” will be released world wide June 6 2017. Digital, CD and Vinyl. Single and video coming just weeks prior TBA.

Head Bent - TCS