Category Archives: News

Kick Out the Jams

So thanks to the miracle of the internet, we’ve secured the financing to manufacture vinyl for Termination Without Prejudice, Volume 1, a 10″ EP set to feature some of our songs (we’d originally figured on 4, but we’ve been thinking of expanding it to add another track to each side for a total of 6). There’s still time left to pledge until 8pm EST on Cyber Monday (11/28). If you miss that deadline, we’ll be putting a pre-order option on our bandcamp page once everything is mastered and ready to roll.

We also announced that our cover art is being done by Brian Dewan, artist/sculptor/renaissance man extraordinaire who’s know best in the music world for the art on the cover of They Might Be Giants’ Lincoln album and on the inside of Neutral Milk Hotel’s On the Aeroplane Over the Sea.

While our last show of the year will be Chandler Travis’ Christmas bash at Once Somerville on Wednesday 12/21, the band is also in the midst of working on scheduling events for 2017, so if you’d like to see the band play near you, let us know the name of art galleries, museums, or other venues across the Northeast that might serve us well so we can present our sounds. Already in the works is a return to the Catskills for the 2nd Annual Typewriter Arts Festival in June and we’re looking to perform around the area when the documentary that we’re featured in, California Typewriter, premieres at a few locations around New England.

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We’re open to further treks, but getting us there is a bit prohibitive, so let us know…

 

 

Starting to Kick

Most bands spend half of their time at shows shilling for a table of merchandise hoping to make gas money to get themselves to the next gig. The last time I can recall that we even toted t-shirts to a venue, they never actually made it out of the trunk. However, the people they clamor for things and conveniently enough, we’ve got some new songs recorded to share with the world.

Instead of merely posting some songs on the internet and calling it a digital release and disappearing into the night, we’re gonna put these songs on vinyl. With 4 songs of an EP ready to go, we figured they’d fit nicely onto 10″s of wax. Plus that format evokes 78s which are as old as some of the manual typewriters that we use to make our music. We’re using the Kickstarter platform to crowdsource the funding of this project, so please donate and let other folks know what we’re up to

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We hope that you’ll support our mission to put out a record. Please give all you can.

BTO Kickstarter

 

Thanks Vermont

Weirdly there was more color on the leaves of southern New Hampshire than there were in the still verdant Green Mountains, but aside from the lack of crayon box foliage, we had an awesome time. Along with Martha Barnette, we were able to have a standing room only event to benefit the Burlington Book Festival.

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Plus we did find good places to stop along the way.

And while we haven’t read any reviews of our performance, we got great press in advance from Pamela Polston at Burlington’s Seven Days.

Going Green

You know how Jimi Hendrix opened for the Monkees? That’s sort of like what’s going on here as we’re in the opening slot of the centerpiece, Saturday night benefit concert at the Livak Ballroom at the UVM Davis Center. We’ll be warming up the crowd for Martha Barnette of the public radio program A Way With Words.

Somehow it’s taken more than a decade for it to happen, but BTO is finally getting the last check mark to complete the New England states where we’ve played concerts. We’ll be in Burlington, Vermont on Saturday, September 17 as part of the 12th Annual Burlington Book Festival. Apparently these people didn’t realize that we don’t actually type words when we bash away at our typewriters, so don’t tell ’em until afterwards and we’ll see just how much fun we can have. And seeing as this is Vermont, we’ve even worked up our first bona fide Jam that we’ll be premiering at the show.

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Saturday, September 17th, 2016  
A Very Special Benefit for the Annual Burlington Book Festival 7pm
Livak Ballroom, UVM Davis Center, Burlington, Vermont
$20 in advance/$25 at the door

Going Coastal

Sure, as the Boston Tpewriter Orchestra our sphere of influence is generally focused on the East Coast, having never ventured further than Washington DC for a live performance. Thankfully, one of the joys of making music in this era of technology is that recordings and videos can be seen and heard anywhere at all.

Now I’m not sure exactly how Doug Nichol came to hear of us, but he brought his cameras in and recorded us performing a few years ago. That footage has finally surfaced in the midst of his new documentary California Typewriter that debuted at the Telluride Film Festival this past weekend. While the film focuses on a shop in Berkeley, Jay and Chris both (separately) stopped in there with Doug while they were on vacations in the bay area.

For now all we get is that trailer, but we’ll keep you informed once it’s gonna be showing on this side of the country.

We’re going to a drive in, everybody pile in..

It used to be that the summers were the time to stop going to dark theaters to watch the latest Hollywood fare, and instead get a group of friends into the biggest car and head to a drive-in. These days those outdoor theater viewing options are getting more and more limited, with only Mendon, Leicester, and Wellfleet offering such a chance in Massachusetts.


A bit further west, just past Albany at the northern tip of the Catskills, the Greenville Drive In is like an art house cinema outside. They have invited us to come join them in celebrating the joy and magic of the machines that we use to make our music as they host the 1st Annual Typewriter Arts Festival on June 11. In addition to our performance, and an open call for the community to bring their own machines to show off, there will be screenings of a couple of typewriter-related films, The Typewriter (in the 21st Century) and Populaire.



So whether you are in the upstate New York area, or are up for a weekend trip, come out and join in on all the fun so we can make our drive out there fun and worth it for everyone involved!

Typewriter Arts Festival
with The Typewriter in the 21st Century and Populaire
Saturday June 11, 2016
Greenville Drive In
10700 NY-32, Greenville, NY 12083

@bostontypewriterorchestra

Technology has got the better of us again it seems. This time our desire for expanded promotional efforts has brought us to the world of Instagram. After learning it was not an app that provided grandmotherly advice at the drop of a hat, we decided to give it a go. So we tested things out with this tried and true logo.

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If you click on that picture it will take you right there. We’ve also added some visual effects on the sidebar over there >>>—————————————————————–>>>

One of those follows our pictures, the other pictures tagged with us… so if you want to show up on this website, just tag your selfies #bostontypewriterorchestra and take over that feed.

@bostontypewriterorchestra

How You Type is More Important Than What You Type

People often ask how it is that we do what we do. In an age where the only QWERTY most people interface with is on a tiny touch screen, hitting manual keys in sonic manipulation is unfathomably archaic. While the concepts of rhythm rarely enter into most people’s concept of typing, with an ensemble that doesn’t produce any paper artifacts, that is the most integral part of what we do. For those interested in joining our ranks or setting up satellite branches of our orchestra in their own city, the key is to learn your basic typing methods and practice, practice, practice.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCpZ3CP7IAs

Start with good posture.

Oh Smith Coronie

UPDATE: We’ve posted the music so you can hear what we did sans Perry


back to the original story……………

Everyone knows the degree of geekery that it takes to create a crew of people who set out to make music on manual typewriters alone. Ok, maybe not everyone, but hey something about what we do intrigued you enough to come visit this site, so you probably are too. While Boston may be the only place that’s produced a group like ours, other crews of people have gathered together for similarly ludicrous enterprises. Among those is the group responsible for the seminal internet video series Yacht Rock that put a name to a specific brand of smooth music. Now they have resurfaced with a great new podcast, Beyond Yacht Rock, and this week we have contributed to the mayhem by adding bumpers to help announce each step of their countdown.

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Usually the episodes of this podcast develop arbitrary genres and count down the top 10 songs that fit into this paradigm. We’ve been tapped to fill in one of their special episodes that come on the 5s with a more particular theme(#5 was Van Halen vs Van Hagar). This time around it’s an in depth exploration and discussion of Journey frontman Steve Perry’s solo magnum opus “Oh Sherrie.” Sometimes these podcasts are tough to describe to someone who’s never listened before, this one is nearly impossible, so just listen and you can hear some fine snippets of Boston Typewriter Orchestra wedged between each track.

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If you are a neophyte and need to catch up with the past, Hunter Stair (Kenny Loggins) has HD versions of all of the Yacht Rock episodes on his YouTube channel. Start here and don’t stop until you are done. It’s an hour that you won’t regret wasting online.