Holiday Message from Ken

By now I hope you're all resting well after a days full of egg nog, presents, family, friends, lights and all other things related to your holiday of choice! I'm writing to you from a cold basement in NJ and enjoying every minute of it......both the cold NJ and the basement bliss. (basements are unheard of in TX)

Every year when I return to the east coast to visit with family and old friends I always get the same question "How's the band doing?". Each year I'm proud that I can honestly answer and say that things are going great and continue to get better and better each year.

We started off 2005 by winning "Best Group", "Best Metal Band", "Best Male Singer" and "Best Bassist" in the Edge Magazine's annual readers poll. At the 2005 Austin Music Awards we walked away with the "Best Metal Band" award for the 3rd year in a row! We were invited to play on the Spring Jagermeister Music Tour opening for Alter Bridge. (Believe it or not, they were some of the most down to earth guys we've ever met in this business)

In July we were invited up to Des Moines to play the Iowa Metal Fest along side tons of great bands like God Forbid and Full Blown Chaos, it was quite a fun road trip and show that we'll never forget. A few months later we were 1 of 80 bands in the country to make it to Round 3 of the Zippo Hot Tour, all thanks to the never ending support from the fans. (If the whole contest had been geared a bit more towards heavy music, I believe our fan support would have been enough to take us to the top.)

"A Bloodstained Memory" was the song that was chosen to be part of a two disc compilation cd put out by the Edge Magazine this year. This was the first official Powderburn recording to ever feature the drumming of Patrick Swift. (Yes, that's his real name....no it didn't come from a romance novel)

However one of the things I'm really proud of that we did in 2005 were the things that no one saw. We spent a lot of time really talking to each other about music and life in general and in turn we wrote more songs in 2005 then we have in the history of this band. (In the not so distance future i plan to elaborate more on this and give you all the juicy details)

The support from the local TX scene was definitely at it's best in 2005. There were lots of great TV coverage supporting the Powderburn cause, including Robbs Metal Works, Pure Metal Sickness, The Scene and One Nation Underground. On the radio front, 101.5 in Austin grew some balls and started a 2 hour radio show dedicated to all things heavy; "No Control" is it's name and it's hosted by Chuck, the most bad ass local scene supporter DJ the Austin metal scene has encountered in quite awhile. San Antonio radio certainly wasn't lacking in the support area either. Both KISS 99.5 and K-ROCK 102.7 spun the hell out of Powderburn throughout the year! Of course no one can forget the Edge Magazine based out of San Antonio. These guys have been covering the heavy scene and doing it right for many years now. Find me another magazine in the country that does a free compilation cd like they do!

Speaking of support, this past year we landed a sponsorship by a little company based in St. Louis called Budweiser. Many thanks goes out to both them and long time sponsors, Jagermeister, for keeping us loose, entertaining and feeling good in '05.

I could go on and on all night thanking various people for their help this year, but all i really wanna say is THANK YOU to everyone who's been by our side, stood up for us, gave us a hand, introduced us to their friends, came out to show, bought stuff, voted for us, kept us out of jail, drank with us, and jammed Powderburn at maximum volume while doing whatever it is you do! You know who you are and we certainly do as well!!



I, Josh, Greg and Patrick wish you the best in 2006!!!

Until next time,

Ken

Recording update from Ken

Powderburn studio update from Ken
What up everyone!? Hope December is treating you right and you're not going too crazy with all the upcoming holidays preparations. Down here in Texas the weather can't make up it's mind. One day there was an ice storm, two days later we were wearing shorts. I've lived here many years now and i'm still not used this crap.

This past Saturday was our last show of the year and we couldn't have asked for a better end to close out 2004. It was an awesome lineup to say the least and the fans were bad ass as always. We played over an hour, did some new songs, drank lots of Budweiser and Jager and lots of crazy crazy things happened that night. The funny part was is that Pat got the most drunk that night and he was the one that had to actually record the next day.

So far the recording is going very quick and smooth...which is a first for us. At 4pm on Sunday, the drumkit was in place at the studio and Pat tore through the 4 songs with little trouble. At one point he did start to tire, however that was quickly over after Paul, our producer, gave him a beer to replenish his strength. (I guess a little hair of the dog does actually work.) Greg slapped down the bass tracks in about an hour and they sound mean as hell. It's funny because he says that his playing on these new tunes is simpler than in the past, however most upcoming bass players would simply give up before learning his bass lines to these new songs.

Sunday's quote of the day:
Greg to Pat: "How come every time you get drunk it costs me time, money and gas?"

Monday's quote of the day:
Paul: "I'm going to hang a sign up:
If you're not engineering or recording, please leave the room to fart."

Josh and I wrapped up recording the guitars on Tuesday. Recording guitars with Paul is always interesting. In the end, the guitars sound very cool, very big and very in your face, however the way he gets them like that is really an art. You'd think we'd just plug in our amps and go for it but that's actually not how it goes down, we use a very combination of guitars and amps compared to what we use live. I don't want to say too much because i don't wanna give away his secrets, but i will tell you that the guitars on these new songs sound better then ever.

Tuesday's quote of the day:
Ken (being very sarcastic) to Paul and Greg: "I think we could write 60 songs in 2 weeks. A couple of them might suck though."


We start recording vocals today. On these 4 songs I'm doing most of the singing, as opposed to the last album where we all sang in almost every song. The only reason for this is because Josh is busy playing golf today and Greg is trying to land an endorsement from a cigarette company. ha. I'm joking actually, these 4 songs just suited me well and that's the main reason i'm doing the vocals on them. Speaking of which, i still have a few more lines to write so I must wrap this up, and i don't have time to proof read it, so please excuse any mistakes. :)

Thanks for reading this and if you'd like to know more about something in particular in regards to this recording process, just post a comment/question on our myspace page.

The name of the songs we're recording are:
"Echoed in Red"
"Perfect Line"
"Oceans"
"Here's to the time"