The Princess Who Saved Herself
Look everyone, Len made an image for a new Jonathan Coulton song! That hasn’t happened in about 50 years it seems like. For those who don’t know (is there anyone?) Len Peralta is the talented visual artist person who made an image for each Thing a Week song way back when. Above is the image he made to go with my new song.
I was asked to contribute a new song to this CD of kid’s music called Many Hands, the proceeds of which benefit the Haitian People’s Support Project. It’s an amazing list of artists – Dan Zanes, TMBG, frigging Pete Seeger – so I was honored to be invited. I wrote a song called “The Princess Who Saved Herself” because my daughter is obsessed with princesses, so I am forced to think and talk about them a lot. None of them really kick ass as much as I hope my daughter kicks ass when she’s all grown up, so I made up one that does (she ate a whole cake!). All recorded at home old school style, with a little assist from my sister in the comedic harpsichord bridge.
It’s for charity, so I’m not going to give it away here, but you can listen and buy at iTunes and Amazon. The song is exclusive to this CD, and the CD itself is a fantastically large and delicious collection of family music, so you should probably buy the whole thing anyway.
AND, question for the parental section of the hive mind: what are your top five family friendly tracks of mine? What’s a hit with the kids and also guaranteed not to embarrass you in front of other parents? Radio stations are asking and I’m not sure what to tell them. Not First of May, right?
Cruise Contests
Hey, what’s this, a blog?
The world has caught JoCo Cruise Crazy Fever! Not the entire world, but at least some of it! I’m gratified to see so many people signing up for a good time on a boat with me and my famous entertainer friends. It’s going to be so off the hook that the dial tone is going to stop and it’s going to start making that fast busy signal sound and then a recording is going to play that says “Please hang up the phone and try your call again.” I AM SERIOUS!
If you share my excitement then probably you’ll want to know about these new JoCo Cruise Crazy contests. Here are the things you can win:
1. Cruise Giveaway: win a free cruise for two!
2. Video Madness: win free awesome things from ThinkGeek!
3. Monarch of the Seas: win a fake royalty title that we made up and be forced to wear a dumb crown or something!
All the details can be found on this page right here. And I can assure you that these are not the kind of contests where when you win you get sent to a mysterious island with a smoke monster. The smoke monster will be on the boat (hint: the smoke monster is John Hodgman).
Flansburgh Produces JoCo
I talked about this in an interview already (and before I was supposed to) so some of you may have heard, but the thing that makes me most excited about this new record is that John Flansburgh is producing it. And yes, that’s THE John Flansburgh, who might be a giant. I opened for them a few times in the Spring, and that’s when we hatched this crazy plan. Of course I’ve been a fan for a long time, so I’m thrilled and flattered and all that stuff. I also think he’s going to bring some fun, edgy weirdness to the sound of things, and I’m hoping he’ll prevent it from being all slow songs about dead dogs in space.
Just yesterday we went into a real, like, STUDIO studio and recorded ourselves running through the set of new songs so we could hear how we sounded and make some arrangement tweaks. We sounded pretty good. This is going to be fun.
Thursday: Iron Horse in Northampton, MA
Friday: Somerville Theater in Somerville, MA
Later: More
Band Shows, New Songs
Look out kids, six new songs coming atcha! The debut of this new enterprise is coming up next week when I’ll be trying out new stuff at shows in Northampton, MA on 7/22 and Somerville, MA on 7/23. Details on the Shows page – come on out and see us, we’re making HISTORY here people. At the very least I can promise you a lot of hilarious rookie mistakes. At best, they might be two kickass rock and roll shows.
Things are coming together nicely in rehearsals, and I have to say it’s sounding kind of awesome a lot of the time. Every day in every way I am a better and better electric guitar player. We’ve also got quite a few classic Coulton songs on the menu, and while they are not new, playing them with the band sure does make them shiny. We’re talking power trio right now: the drummer is Marty Beller (on loan from TMBG) and the bass player is Chris Anderson (on loan from Wired magazine JUST KIDDING IT’S A DIFFERENT CHRIS ANDERSON). They’re both great. We kind of rock sometimes even.
Also, any reports you’ve heard that the Somerville show is sold out are false – painfully, extremely, practically the opposite kind of false. Just saying.
Right, back to rocking.
Previously, on Twitter
On Instagram
Follow Jonathan
