HOTB on PayPlay.com now too!

Check it out:

PayPlay.com

More ways for the people to buy HOTB!

HOTB is on iTunes!!

Now we've reached the big time: "Hats Off to Beer" is officially for sale on iTunes!  Click below to see for yourself:

HOTB - Another tribute

This is nothing more than one of the YouTube videos that has been snagged and put on someone's website:

Beertrek.com

From their website: "BeerTrek is your Number One Source for News and Information about
Beer and Travel on the Web."

Whatever... more exposure for my song!

'"Hats Off to Beer!" and Other Love Songs' Now on CDBaby

Is indicated earlier, the CD has been submitted to CDBaby.com, and now it is live!  I haven't yet figured out how to actually buy it, but that'll come.  I'm thinking that you can only buy it by going to one of the digital outlets that CDBaby sends it to.  None of those are live yet, but these are the thirteen companies to which it has been submitted:

I'm excited for it to go live on iTunes, if it even does.  Then, I'll know that "Hats Off to Beer" has arrived.

The Cutaways Practice HOTB

Last night my band, The Cutaways, had a band practice. We were going over songs for an upcoming wedding gig. We went over a few of the slow dances, waltzes, and polkas that we don't normally play at gigs. We also went over a few wedding essentials. One of the songs that we went through was "Hats Off to Beer". It actually sounded very good! I played bass, so it was a bit difficult for me, but by the end of the songs I had it down. We're thinking about putting it into the regular rotation at gigs. Perhaps it could become a crowd favorite. I will be sure to post an mp3 or video clip of The Cutaways doing HOTB as soon as one becomes available.

Coming Soon: HOTB on CDBaby.com

I just returned from the post office.  I mailed off a copy of a new CD that I just assembled entitled, "Hats Off to Beer!" and Other Love Songs.  All of the songs were recorded when I was with The Black Velvet Band, back in the early-to-mid-nineties.  I just took the songs that I sang - most of which I wrote - and combined them with a few instrumentals, and there you are: a full CD.

Of course, the whole purpose of this little project is a marketing ploy to get "Hats Off to Beer" a little more exposure.  I will post the link as soon as it has been activated by the good folks at CDBaby.

HOTB Collaboration

I am a member of a very cool online home recording forum:

HRC

I did a "Hats Off to Beer" collaboration with a few of the other members. Here it is:

Google Search

I did a Google Search for "Hats Off to Beer" (including the quotes) and this is what I got:

Google Search

About 2,640 hits, and almost all of them are somehow related to my song!

Another Video - Same Band

The band is called "Illegitimate Sons", but I don't know anything else about them. This seems to be a different performance than the earlier video. (And much better, I'd say!)

More Videos

A few creative people have taken my song and made a videos from it. Here are all the ones I have found so far:

"Hats Off to Beer" videos on YouTube

Video

This is the first time I've actually hear or seen someone else perform my song. I don't know who they are or where they are from.

Chords

"Hats Off to Beer" is even on the guitar tab sites. Here's one of the links:

Hats Off to Beer Chords

They don't even give me credit for writing it, or to the Black Velvet Band for Recording it!

Lyrics

Here's one of many sites that house the lyrics for "Hats Off to Beer":

www.triskelle.eu

Hats Off to Beer - START HERE!

I wrote the song, "Hats Off to Beer" back in the early 1990's, when I was a guitar player in an Irish Folk Band called The Black Velvet Band. We were based out of New Dublin (New London), Wisconsin, and we played Irish-related events all around the northeastern Wisconsin area. Here's a picture of us performing under the big top at New Dublin's annual IrishFest.  Left to right, that's Dave Mulroy banging on that Irish drum thingy, Judy O'Connell is seated at her keyboard, I'm singing and playing sloppy rhythm guitar, and Mike O'Connell is blowing on the tin whistle.  It's actually very likely, given the details of the picture, that we are singing "Hats Off to Beer" while this photo was snapped.  I didn't sing a whole lot of songs with the band, and I do remember that Mike used to play the whistle on this one.  Furthermore, it was a very popular song with the New Dublin crowd, so that just might be what I was singing there.

We actually recorded "Hats Off to Beer" in a real, live recording studio: Irish Sounds, in Appleton, WI.  That the name of the studio had the word "Irish" in it was more coincidental than anything.  I believe that "Irish" was the fellow's last name who ran the place.  Anyway, it made for good karma.  We recorded it live to DAT with the instrumentation that you see above, except that Mike played the mandolin instead of the tin whistle.  (In retrospect, I like it better with the whistle!)  If memory serves, we did it in one take.  Here is the result:

That's where the whole thing started.

Forward Fast about six or seven years.  Online music and mp3s are becoming the next big thing.  I decided to upload some of The Black Velvet Band's music to the now defunct website called mp3.com.  They had this deal called "Payback for Playback", whereby you would earn a fraction of a cent every time someone clicked on and listened to or downloaded one of your songs.  Somehow, "Hats Off to Beer" became a featured song on their home page.  That was all it took.  People were listening to and downloading "Hats Off to Beer" like they were drinking it.  We made a good chunk of change before the website realized that they could never pay their artists as much as they thought they could.  Nevertheless, the song was downloaded by thousands of people worldwide, making it an international success.