I’m excited today to unleash a bunch of songs from the days when I was performing a lot of solo shows under the Custom Drinker name. Although Chasmatic and The Bright Men played several of these tracks live, only one of them (Girls in Love) ever made it onto one of our recordings. These twelve homemade recordings represent most of my Custom Drinker / Legendary Wings solo output. The first 8 tracks were recorded with considerable assistance from Shaun Jones of the Needies. The last four are home recordings. Some of these were originally posted on the HandsUp Houston board. But most of them haven’t really been available before. You can now download them in two ways. Grab them individually from Box.net or get them all at once from the zip folder on Drop.io. Enjoy.

Girls in Love
Your Slide
The Man Who Sold My Baby Out
Broken Ballad
Fake Ophelia
Life is a Thrill
Our Nights Will Be Your Days
Instant Message
Bat
Richard III
Life Is a Thrill (Home Slice)
We Wait

Unfortunately, we’re not going to be able to play the Feel Good Hits of the Summer Festival after all. We’ve had some pretty heinous scheduling conflicts arise, and it’s just not worth killing ourselves to try and make the show.

The good news is, there are eight other rock bands who will be happy to take your five bucks and play you some sweet f**king jams. I encourage you to heed their call.

This Saturday, the Bright Men of Learning will perform at the Proletariat as part of a day-long show celebrating some of Houston’s best pop music. Organized by Gilbert Alfaro of Spain Colored Orange and Ryan Clark of the venerable Skyline.net blog, the show brings together a cohort of like-minded bands determined to bring you insanely catchy, melodically sophisticated indie rock.

If you come on Saturday, you’re likely to hear actual singing. Maybe more than one singer at a time! Pianos and guitars will help you organize these vocal melodies. You might even hear some memorable verses and choruses. In a word, we’re are going to unpack some sweet f**king jams.

Don’t be afraid. We’ve made it easy to enjoy these sweet f**king jams. Just go to the Proletariat (903 Richmond) on Saturday at 3 pm. Use this schedule to find the jams best suited to your particular tastes:

The Watermarks 3:30pm
Program 4:30pm
Bright Men of Learning 5:30pm
Dizzy Pilot 6:30pm
The Kimonos 7:30pm
Paris Falls 8:30pm
Western Civilization 9:30pm
Spain Colored Orange 10:30pm
Arthur Yoria 11:30pm
Tody Castillo 12:30am

Notice the sets are all exactly 30 minutes! We are not going to bore you with drones or crazy, interminable feedback. All we need is jams. See you there!