We just added a few shows that we are super excited to play including the PLY:stl Festival in St. Louis, MO in September and The FEST 9 in Gainesville, FL over Halloween weekend.
We are also quite pleased to be a part of a momentous occasion, the release of Rat Jackson’s CD. We’ve been waiting for it for a while and it can’t come too soon. Join us at the Broad Street Cafe in Durham, NC on August 7th for their CD release party.
The first annual Rad Fest is taking place this May 14 and 15th in Wilmington, North Carolina and has attracted many great bands that have booked to play. While Rad Fest may be in it’s first year, the idea of hosting local, regional festivals goes back decades. Promoter Chason had this to say about his motivation for starting this festival.
Rad Fest started as a small idea: to bring some of my favorite bands and people to the modest port town of Wilmington, North Carolina. This city plays host to a quiet creativity and I have every intention to shake it up! Inspired by the amazing times I’ve experienced at The Fest in Gainesville Florida, I set out to give music nerds an opportunity to share in a carefree two-days of camaraderie and party-hardery. To have so many bands that embody the reason I love music right here in my own town is an overwhelming imagery. If you can have a passion for something that enhances life so much and be surrounded by it for two-days straight, that is the ideal recipe for an amazing experience. Add to that the amazing friends old and new that you get to share it with and I can’t imagine a greater thing. This isn’t a brand new idea, but I’m thrilled to bring that idea here, to my friends and to my town. We’re going to have a great fucking time!
Over the two days of the festival, 5 venues will play host to close to 100 bands. With prices at $25 for a 2-day pass.
For the entire lineup of bands click read more. For more information on Rad Fest and ticket information, click here.
Jay Kutchma has been doing a few solo shows around the southeast US. Here he is performing a solo version of “Pilgrim” at a recent Songwriter Round Table show in Raleigh, NC at Tir Na Nog.
While on tour this past year, we had the opportunity to visit many thrift stores throughout the US. And we came across some t-shirts we just couldn’t pass up. We decided to hand-screen them DIY and share them with you. If you are interested in ordering, please follow the link below the catalog to our online store. Place your order via the Thrifty T link and just be sure to note the title of the shirt in the notes section. Sold shirts will be marked as such, as orders are placed.
Please let us know if you have any questions-email us at info@redcollarmusic.com.
We hope you like them as much as we do.
Order here: http://redcollarmusic.bigcartel.com/product/one-of-kind-red-collar-t
We’re extremely excited to make a couple of fairly significant announcements on this nice, fall morning
First of all - at long last, the pre-order for the limited vinyl release of Pilgrim is open now! Visit our merch store or click on the cover art to pick one up - We have only pressed 500 copies. All of them will be hand numbered and on nice, red vinyl. All of the sleeves were screen-printed. The track order was re-worked to give the album more of a Side A/Side B flow and the first 100 copies will be printed with special metallic silver ink, with assorted colors throughout the remaining quantity. Don’t worry, all the colors look pretty sharp. Due to the length of the album we could only fit 9 of the original songs on one record so every copy will also have a download card with every LP that will have all 11 songs plus a cover of Jawbreaker’s “Jinx Removing” that will only be available with this release. Thanks to Scotty, Neil, Josh and all of the gentlemen at Loose Charm for helping to make this happen.
For our local friends, we’ll also be taking pre-orders at our Troika Fest show, this Saturday at the Trotter Building (11:30pm set time).
Next - For the first time since its release this past March, Pilgrim is available IN STORES. We’ve made a partnership with Suburban Home Records for physical distribution and CDs should be popping up on shelves before you know it. We cannot thank Virgil and his crew enough for the help and support they’ve shown over the last few months and their dedication in helping band’s who are putting out records on their own figure out how to get their music into indie retail stores around the country.
Finally, we’ve posted a video for “Hands Up”. It’s a mash-up of video footage taken by Chris Carter at Tir Na Nog in Raleigh, NC on July 4th, paired with a live audio recording from a show in New York City at Pianos on July 14th. Take a dramamine, strap on your sea legs and enjoy.
Jonathan here,
It was a tough few days in the Big Apple. Or, as Mike might say, “It’s no joke”.
I seriously dislocated and fractured my elbow before we even played. However, we still managed to pull off both of our scheduled shows and I had an appointment with a surgeon and a titanium bolt the day after we got back.
We gritted our teeth and got through it and we’re still getting through it, and we will continue getting through it. I do want to re-confirm that RED COLLAR WILL BE PLAYING the Troika Music Festival this Saturday night at the Trotter Building in downtown Durham with The Travesties, Maple Stave, and The Bronzed Chorus. It’ll be a one-armed show for me, but the one arm that I’ve got is ready to go double-time.
Unfortunately, we did have to postpone our tour dates in December. I apologize, but I still have quite a lot of physical therapy to undergo and we didn’t feel we would be able to give 100% for that length of time.
Finally, and most importantly, I wanted to thank everyone for their support and encouragement over the last week. It means a lot to me and to all of us and I hope to thank everyone in person this weekend at Troika!
Until then!
Our new t-shirts have arrived!
***We want to thank Steve Oliva for creating the dove design featured on the American Apparel Tanks. Jay’s created the Hanson design.
Most of the time after a show, we head out to the next city. Generally this gives us a nice jump-start on the next day. We’ll drive an hour till we get to a Flying J, a Rest Area or Wal-Mart parking lot then draw the blinds and get a nice restful sleep. That sleep varies from four hours to eight hours. I’ve found that the duration and restfulness of said sleep depends on the temperature and how stealthily we parked the van.
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We had a fantastic time in St. Louis last week during PLAY:stl Festival and were lucky enough to spend some of that time on Friday with the good folks at KDHX . We were able to play a few songs for them, including one of the new ones. Anyone who’s come out to one of the shows over the past few months might recognize “Choices”, we’ve been trying it out on the road and are really happy to be able to post it now. You can stream it along with “Pilgrim” and “Used Guitars” on the KDHX website.
A couple bits of news for you: First, we have confirmed a last minute show tomorrow night at Blueberry Hill in St. Louis. Check the venue website for door times and if you’re in the area be sure to come and see us at our PLAY:stl Fest shows throughout the week.
Secondly, Spinner.com has been classy enough to stream our entire album, Pilgrim, on the site. Check it out right here
From KEXP.org. May 2009
This Durham, NC band follows up their promising initial EP with an even better debut album, injecting the EP’s anthemic, post-hardcore sound reminiscent of Fugazi and Mission of Burma with a healthy dose of blue-collar Springsteen rock, a natural fit for the band’s class-conscious idealism, expressed in catchy songs with bristling guitar hooks and shouted gang choruses.
From RCRD LBL. August 2009
Durham, North Carolina’s Red Collar were clearly vigilant about recruiting members that shared favorite bands–their DNA rests on like three major touchstones (Hüsker Dü, Hot Water Music, Leatherface), all worthy of emulation. Basically, they’re like a good version of The Gaslight Anthem, which is to say they have some balls.