The Variety Store EP

The new album is out. The Variety Store EP is a four song collection that has some of my wackiest tracks yet. "Ants" is about how we all act sometimes. "Ricky MIA" is a goof on early 90's trippy-type style tracks. Never in a million years did I think I'd write a song about my own pet but...yep, "Johnny the Cat". "Variety Store" tells the story of my wasted youth hanging out a Checkers Variety in Oshawa with my friend Jeff.

You can buy the EP here for only $3.33 on Zunior.

To celebrate the release of the new stuff, I put together another video on an iPad using clips shot by my brother Bob. The coin catching stuff is a reference to this classic Happy Days episode where Fonzie's cousin tries to break a record by catching coins on his elbow. Back in the day, after this episode, everyone in the schoolyard was trying this for weeks. I got pretty good at it myself, not that you can tell in this dripping wet footage.

Variety Store EP Out on June 21

Here is the artwork for the new EP out in a few weeks. Trevor did an awesome job once again and even included the subtle touch of calling the store 'Checkers'. This is a tribute to the real store at the end of my street growing up in Oshawa. Many hours were wasted there playing Galaga and eating Mr. Freezies.

I also put together a new video for this song:



It tells the story of fictional rapper called Ricky. I made the vid myself on an iPad and it features some Creative Commons footage from a piece called 'One Night in New York'. It is old school footage of a guy riding his bike at night in NYC with a camera on his handlebars. It matches the story nicely. Thanks to Jackson Darby for adding the excellent scratching on this track.

Dave

Variety Store EP Coming Soon

Once again I used the March Break to record some new Egger songs. Similar to the Eggybeats EP from last year, I set out to try and make a batch of songs from scratch over a few days. Although I started with just a few small ideas and lyrics, I set up my laptop and cheapo tube mic to start laying down tracks.

I always start drums first, so I layed out a few simple patterns and put it to digi-tape. Guitars go next, then vocals. From there I usually add everything else including percussion, backup, etc. This is the way I did it for three of the songs called 'Variety Store', 'Ants' and 'Johnny'. Then Andrew Green showed up and added some great guitar parts to all three of these songs. He even added a backup vocal, or two.

The fun really started when we broke out a brand new (to us) vintage Moog that I picked up on Mike O'Neill's behalf. This machine is absolute classic from the era of Rush/Steve Miller/Cars. You could say it 'played itself' (in this case, Andrew let it play itself!), it was so good. The result of our noodling was a fourth track called 'Ricky MIA' that tries to dance like Stevie Wonder but slouches like Beck. I'm in the process of getting a friend to add some turntables and then we'll have a final product. Andrew is currently doing all the mixing at his place and hopefully we'll have something out in May. Even better, Trevor Waurechen is going to be doing the artwork and his illustrations have been included in many Zunior Label albums over the past few years.

I set up a dedicated Youtube channel for Egger stuff called Eggychannel. I'll use this to post videos, songs and few proper video-type ideas that I have for this album. Stay tuned for updates in the next few weeks.

Dave

Zunior 2010 Holiday Album

This is a belated update, but I put out a new track as part of the 2010 Zunior Holiday Album called A Country Blues Christmas.

The track is called 'Snowfort' and it an original collaboration between Andrew Green and myself. I set out to create a true 'county blues' track in the pre-war country blues style. Stuff like Mississippi John Hurt is the real deal...and Egger ain't, but we tried anyway.

I made up the words and vocal melody and recorded it here in Toronto. The file went sight unseen to Andrew Green and he cut a crackin guitar part. The result is simple, clean and fun.



Stay tuned for a new Egger EP in the spring of 2011.

Dave