Austin Texas meets Mojo Folk

It is the month of August, and the year 2015…

5 years ago, if you’d asked me where I thought I would be in 2015, I sure as hell would not have said “Austin, TX”! 🙂

Addison and I arrived in Austin via bicycle almost two years ago (January 16th, 2014 to be exact!).

The first few months of us being here, we lived with a family of 6 in the loft of their small, suburban house. We helped them with gardening projects, turned organic dumpster produce into meals and canned delights…

…and learned about the value of clear and consistent communication (I emphasize ‘consistent’ because it’s easy to have one conversation or meeting about something–not nearly as easy to maintain open communication as things change and shift and problems arise!).

We got to know the back-roads and hilly streets of Austin pretty quickly, as our only mode of transportation was bicycles. We were able to start making money by street performing, nude modeling, doing freelance writing and editing jobs via the internet and writing songs for folks via Fiverr.com.

After transitioning out of the first family’s house, we camped in our upright-bass player, Watson,’s backyard until we found a room to rent from a lady in the neighborhood who had chickens and a free spirit.

During this time we began having band rehearsals with Watson and Pete (our drummer/harmony master) and played some of our first gigs together.

Watson

Pete

Here’s the very first gig we played as four piece band:

In June 2014 we flew back to Vermont to visit family and get some of the stuff we’d stored in Addison’s parents’ attic. We also wanted to get my Subaru so we could drive her back to Austin.

I had mixed feelings about going from only cycling to driving a vehicle again…

While we were in Vermont I hit my noggin pretty dang hard on a ceramic bath-tub’s edge and suffered a concussion that left me bed-ridden and wearing a blindfold for weeks. My eyes were extremely sensitive to light and I had great difficulty in looking at computer screens (ironic because my job at the time was being an editor for a publishing company).

I spent a lot of time in bed and listening to audio books, feeling incredibly depressed at my inability to exercise. Addison kept me fed and alive, though Zoso (our dog) suffered the neglect of his mother and made some irrational choices during this time (such as pissing on furniture and shitting in the house at random).

We decided this was a perfect time to launch a Kickstarter project and do a tour back to Austin! 😀

Zoso loves road trips!

As we drove back along the bike route that we’d originally taken down south, we promoted the Kickstarter campaign while hanging out with friends who’d hosted us along our bike trip, and were able to raise $3500 to record an album with!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/thelovesprockets/the-love-sprockets-nobody-wants-to-die/widget/video.html

Once we arrived back in Austin, it was back to camping in Watson’s backyard until we were able to rent an apartment at Tramor Oaks.

Paul (left) and Watson (right)

Thanks to our friend Paul, we were able to get in there pretty expediently (he lent us money for the depost ;).

For the first time since Addison and I had embarked on our romantic relationship, we had a space that was entirely our own.

We also added a new member to our family:

Shiva the friendly and fearless cat

During the winter of 2014-15 we recorded Nobody Wants to Die with our sound engineer, Aaron Glemboski at Music Lane Studios.

Studio recording days were long and sweaty…

Maria Pugnetti designed the album cover and layout with her mad skills…

…and The Love Sprockets released Nobody Wants to Die at an epic party held at the Historic Scoot Inn. Over 150 people attended!

We were playing at more and more venues around Austin including Poodies Roadhouse, Eastside Showroom, Craft Pride, The Parish, Empire Control Room, El Sol Y La Luna, and Blackheart. We were beginning to carve out a space for ourselves on the face of this mad, music frenzy of a city.

The Love Sprockets at The Parish

And that leads me to the present day of August 13th, 2015!

Our August residency at Scoot Inn has been a blast, and was even featured on Austin’s Music Minute by Laurie Gallardo of KUTX (a dream come true for a band who has loved this DJ long time ;).

Check it out: http://kutx.org/austin-music-minute/that-mojo-folk

Addison came up with a way to describe our music: ‘Mojo Folk’… and you will understand this title better and better as you hear the new songs we’ve been developing with our bad-ass rhythm section, Pete and Watson.

They’re bringing some funk and spunk to the picture and we are really enjoying the new flavors!

We’ve got a ridiculous amount of shows lined up this month, but we’ve been able to add a lot of new songs to our repertoire, and you’ll be able to catch us debuting them when you come see us:

https://www.reverbnation.com/control_room/artist/3011167/manage_schedule

…and that’s the latest from The Love Sprockets!

Thanks for reading, and feel free to download our album at www.thelovesprockets.bandcamp.com

Love,

Jahnavi