First of all, thank you SO MUCH for all of the support with the release of our debut self-titled album with Pocket the Moon! The album is available on CD Baby and iTunes as well as here on my website and on the Pocket the Moon website. We have already gotten some positive reviews of the album from local music blogs The Silver Tongue and Latest Disgrace, and they have been playing tracks from the album on the Georgia Music Show on Album 88 (88.5 FM WRAS) Wednesday nights from 8:00 to 10:00 PM. So tune in, and give them a call to request our tunes!

We've got one more Atlanta show before we hit the road in August for our mini-tour!

Upcoming Pocket the Moon Shows:

• July 31 - Sunday - The Music Room - Atlanta, GA - FREE! - with nerdkween - send off show before we hit the road
• August 3 - Wednesday - Tin Roof - Charleston, SC
• August 5 - Friday - The Boiler Room - Asheville, NC
• August 8 - Monday - The Elbo Room - Chicago, IL
• August 13 - Saturday - The Edge - Big Stone Gap, VA with Savannah Shoulders
• August 23 - Tuesday - Smith's Olde Bar (upstairs) - Atlanta, GA

We are still trying to pick up some extra shows in between August 8th (Chicago) and August 13th (Virginia) so if any of you musicians or Midwesterners have booking suggestions or would like to play with us, let us know!


In other news, my one-act play, The Spins, was a finalist in the Essential Theatre Playwriting Contest and will have a staged reading on Wednesday, July 27th at 7:30 PM at Actor's Express as part of The Essential Theatre Bare Essentials Reading Series. This event will be FREE (with a $5 suggested donation), it is going to be directed by Curtis Krick, and it will feature many incredibly talented actors and musicians from the Atlanta area including Rachel Kemp (Painted, Leapfrog). I'd love to see everyone out and hear your thoughts about this play! I'm hoping this reading will lead to a production sometime in the near future.

Hey everyone!

First of all, I got another acoustic cover up on YouTube (finally). This is me doing a version of Anna Domino's "Summer" as requested by one of my Kickstarter donors. I'm hoping to start getting these covers on YouTube on a weekly (or at least every other week) basis! So if you have any requests, leave me a comment!





Secondly, I'm sure you've all heard about the new Pocket the Moon release. In case you haven't checked the blog in a long time, Pocket the Moon is the indie/folk duo that Geoff Goodwin and I are in. We've been playing around town in places like Drunken Unicorn, The Earl, Wonderroot, Smith's Olde Bar, and Highland Inn Ballroom.

We are releasing our debut self-titled ten-track album on June 24th. We will be playing a CD release show at The Drunken Unicorn on Friday, June 24th along with Molly Parden and Richard Parsons. It's only 5 bucks, and I'm making cookies. That's right FREE COOKIES and live music! I hope you can join us!



If you don't live in the Atlanta area but still want to be a part of the experience, Drunken Unicorn is now doing live streaming of their shows on the internet! So the show will be streamed live at www.livestream.com/drunkenunicorn. If you can't watch it live, it will still be up there for quite a while afterwards so definitely be sure to check it out!

You can also pre-order a copy of the album on the Pocket the Moon website or in my store if you aren't able to make it out to the CD release show but still want an album.

What people are saying about the album so far:

"Pocket the Moon is using this record as a tool to prove themselves as a band, not a duo, and to exemplify some of the rules (or lack thereof, actually) of songwriting as a band of multi-instrumentalists. Crawford’s easy-listening voice spills tales that are tonally matter-of-fact, and that helps drive Pocket the Moon away from folk and towards something, musically, more transgressional. Atlanta doesn’t need another distraught artist becoming one with his or her Taylor to deliver us C-to-D-to-Am flops about lost love and inner redemption. I think Crawford and Goodwin are telling us, with this record, that they agree." - J.Criss of The Silver Tongue - Click here to read the full review



Also, The Essential Theatre will be doing a staged reading of a play that I wrote called The Spins as it was a finalist in their playwriting competition! The staged reading will take place Wednesday, July 27th at Actor's Express and you're all invited. :-) For more information on this reading series, click here.

And that's what's going on with me. I hope you all are doing well!!

Hey everyone! It's been a while since I've updated. I've got quite a few things going on right now, so I thought I'd let you know about them!



First of all, I just finished a new book of poems called Driving Downtown to the Show for a poetry writing workshop I was taking for grad school. As you may recall, this is the project where I had to use the name of a band playing at The Earl, the Star Bar, or the Drunken Unicorn in each poem. I'm really happy with the way it turned out, and I'm planning on going the self-publishing route with this one and releasing it sometime in August or September. So stay on the look out for that!



Also, my band, Pocket the Moon, has been super busy. We are hard at work getting ready to release our debut self-titled 10-track album. We also have a couple of really cool shows/events coming up that I hope you will join us for:

• Pocket the Moon Benefit Show at Kavarna - All proceeds go towards the American Red Cross and Tornado/Disaster relief - Saturday, May 28th -Come join us for this great night of music! Pocket the Moon, Divine Isis, and additional artists will be playing! It's only 5 bucks to get in, the money goes to a great cause, and we will be having a raffle with some really great prizes!
   
• Pocket the Moon CD RELEASE SHOW at Drunken Unicorn! - 5 bucks - 21+ Come out and support us as we release our debut album!!

We are also continuing to book shows for our August 2011 tour! A complete list of tour dates will be announced soon!

And stay tuned to the website for more of my YouTube cover series and the Poem of the Week, both of which are returning next week!

I'll leave you now with:

Five Things I'm Diggin'



The new album from Today the Moon, Tomorrow the Sun - W I L D F I R E - Definitely check it out!!



The video for Verge of Bliss's "Dreaming on the Eve" - this is one of my favorite songs that they do



Decoupage! I took an old acoustic that I had just laying around and made it a Pocket the Moon guitar! I'm planning on giving it away in the raffle at the 5/28 American Red Cross Benefit Show!



The fact that Avenue Q is playing at Horizon Theatre starting tomorrow, May 20th! Check it out everyone!



Carolina Wallin Perez - Anyone who has known me for longer than a year probably knows about my obsession with Swedish band, Kent. I just discovered this artist who has AN ENTIRE CD OF KENT COVERS which are AMAZING. And that makes me excited :)

Please go "like" us on Facebook and/or follow us on Twitter!

You can stay tuned about our upcoming shows, CD release, music videos, AND we do lots of fun things like giveaways! (We just gave away some Pocket the Moon unicorns...seriously!)


The kinds of things you can win by being a fan on Facebook or following us on Twitter

When we reach 500 Facebook fans, we're going to do another giveaway. It's going to be a Pocket the Moon decoupage something like my album cover table!


Isn't that awesome? Don't you want a Pocket the Moon decoupage lamp or something?

Anyway, help us out :) We'll <3 you forever.

http://facebook.com/pocketthemoon

http://twitter.com/pocketthemoon

Atlanta by jkelley1 on deviantart

As many of you know, I've always been one of those artists who must be doing multiple things at once. Writing plays, writing songs, playing music, sometimes acting, writing screenplays, sometimes film making, writing poems, decoupaging tables...there's really nothing I won't at least try when it comes to art. I've decided lately, though, to kind of put everything on the back burner and focus on music, specifically Pocket the Moon. I spend most of my time promoting, booking, writing music, practicing, recording, etc. (Well, Geoff's really doing most of the work on recordings. I just show up and play/sing. He's the one who makes it sound badass.)

I am still doing my grad school program, though. I'm pursuing my MFA in Creative Writing with an emphasis in Playwriting. And while I'm sort of taking a break from writing plays specifically to really concentrate on Pocket the Moon, I am still working on poetry for my poetry writing workshop.

My professor in this class, though, wanted us to come up with these incredibly elaborate procedures. We are basically writing enough poems over the course of the semester to have a chapbook of poems at the end, and he wanted us to come up with "rules" that decide the content, length, and writing schedule. He also wanted us to come up with a title for our books.

I decided that since I am focusing so much on music right now, not just my own music, but also being a part of the Atlanta music scene that my procedure (and my book title) would incorporate this theme.

Here’s my procedure:

Writing schedule: Every Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday, I will write a poem after band practice.

Content: I will look up the bands on the bill of a certain music venue, and in my poem I will have to use one of those band names in the first five lines of my poem. (Tuesdays - The Earl, Thursdays - Star Bar, Sundays - Drunken Unicorn - because those are probably my favorite venues.)

Length: When I sit down to write, I will put my iPod on shuffle. Whatever song plays, I will look up the lines of lyrics and that is how many lines my poem will be. If it is an instrumental song, the length will determine my line count. (i.e. a song that’s 4:57 would be 57 lines in 4 stanzas.)

Title: Driving Downtown to the Show

This is obviously not how I usually write poems. I might start with a particular form in mind or even a writing prompt, but never something as elaborate as this. But so far, I am really loving the work that is coming out of it. And having to write three poems a week after coming out of a period where I haven’t written any poems for at least two years was definitely a challenge at first. But now, I’m right back into the swing of things.

These are some of the band names I’ve used so far:
Hip to Death
Wild Nothing
How I Became the Bomb
Dead Rabbits
Quiet Life
The Future of Airports

Another reason I'm loving this project is because it further reinforces the idea that all of the artistic projects I am involved in are connected. I can never just be a poet, playwright, musician. I am always all of the above. My poetry is greatly influenced by music, my music is greatly influenced by theatre, my plays are greatly influenced by poetry, it's all connected!

I’ll leave you with one of the poems I’ve written for this project. The band name I had to use that day was Siberia My Sweet (which is also one of my favorite local bands ironically.)


Frozen Tundra

Last August, when the salty, suffocating air
nearly strangled us

as we crept through the Deep South
you took my hand and said,

"Let's travel to Siberia, my sweet
and become one with the frozen tundra.

We can become snowmen with
little black hats, and at least we'll

know that we'll never melt away,
our hands frozen together

in miles of ice and snow." You smiled
at me and kissed my cheek.

I untangled my fingers from yours
and kissed the night air of the Deep South.

From the Pocket the Moon blog


Hey everyone!

Thanks for coming by the Pocket the Moon website/blog.

First of all, we have our first official show as Pocket the Moon on Saturday, February 5th at Drunken Unicorn. We played a few shows in December with the new set-up, but those were more like preview shows for our new sound. Well, now we are geared up and ready to go. We're really excited about the show on Saturday, and we're really excited to hear Athens-based Audiophile featuring Brennan Johnson as well as members of Dubconscious, Collective Efforts, and Entropy and our friends in Ether Overdrive, which features musicians that both Geoff and I have played with in various projects (Goodland, Nigh Eve, Novo Luna, to name a few).

We've been working extremely hard on recording our full-length album. (Well, Geoff has been working extremely hard, really. He's doing most of the recording, mixing, arranging, etc. etc. All I do is show up and play/sing.) The album has a tentative release date of May 17, 2011. For now, you can hear two preview tracks on our music page and if you come to the show on Saturday, we will be giving away free sampler CDs with a few preview tracks as well.

As many of you know, I raised money in December on Kickstarter to go on tour this summer. Originally, I was planning on going solo/acoustic in June, but now that we are both going together as Pocket the Moon, we will be going in mid-August. We're both really excited about putting out the album and hitting the road!

Check out our new band photos taken by Oberonia and KG photography on our photos/videos page!

We've got a few really exciting shows planned for the spring as well. We'll be playing with Sydney Eloise in March and Nerdkween in April (Help her get to South by Southwest by buying her homemade pet treats here!). We're continuing to book shows as well, so check back to stay updated.

Also, you can follow us on Twitter and Facebook or you can sign our mailing list!

We really appreciate how supportive everyone has been so far! Thank you so much, everyone. Your support means the world to us! We'll see you on Saturday!

Sara

Photo by Patrick Duffy


Well, we've been in the middle of a snowpocalypse here in Atlanta all week. It seems like the entire metro area has basically been shut down since Monday.

Fortunately, though, Geoff and I have still been able to make some progress with Pocket the Moon, and I have some updates for you on the project!

You can now check out the Pocket the Moon website to hear a preview track and see what we've been up to! Click here to listen to "Bridge." This is a song Geoff and I have been doing together since the Novo Luna days, but I'm really excited about the Pocket the Moon version.

You can also find Pocket the Moon on Facebook, Reverb Nation, and Twitter. So add us on there! We may be giving away promotional tickets to shows on Facebook and Twitter, so you could get FREE stuff!

Pocket the Moon website - http://pocketthemoon.com
Pocket the Moon on Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/pages/Pocket-the-Moon/130546320341615
Pocket the Moon on Twitter - http://twitter.com/#!/pocketthemoon
Pocket the Moon on Reverb Nation - https://www.reverbnation.com/pocketthemoon

We managed to squeeze in a photo shoot with Belenen before the ice storm hit on Sunday night, so those photos will be coming soon! We're also planning a photo shoot with Alisha Gaspard (I'm ending the "every time a band I'm in gets awesome photos from Alisha, we break up right afterwards" curse). Haha. We're excited to be working with such talented photographers, and we're excited to see what comes from it!

Also, we have our first official show on Saturday, February 5th at Drunken Unicorn. We will be playing with Ether Overdrive and Audiophile with Brennan Johnson, featuring members from Dubconscious, Collective Efforts and Entropy. This is sure to be an awesome night of music and for just five bucks to see three bands, you won't want to miss it! So bring your friends!

In the spring of 2011, you can expect a full album release from Pocket the Moon, and you can also expect to see us play shows with the incredibly talented Nerdkween (who is actually going to play South by Southwest!) and the also incredibly talented Sydney Eloise (who some of you may have seen at The Star Bar when we played there last month).

Speaking of the Star Bar, you can check out a few of our songs from that set in this video, thanks to Dominant Sound.




So make sure you "like" us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, and come see us play at the Drunken Unicorn! And thank you so much for your support!!




Shortwave Society

If you're looking for some new things to check out this weekend once the ice thaws, 1880's Dance Party will be playing with Pink Pompeii and Shortwave Society at Drunken Unicorn on Friday, January 14th. It's only 5 bucks, and it will definitely be an amazing night of music you don't want to miss. I will definitely be there so throw on your coat, scarf, and gloves, and come hang out with me and hear some great live music. For cheaper than the price of a movie!


The Head

Also, The Head will be having an EP release show at Vinyl with Young Orchids. I'm definitely going to that show as well. I got the opportunity to see The Head at Star Bar last month, and these guys have a really solid sound. Check it out!


If you're looking for something a little more visual and you missed the Ponce Crush art crawl last weekend, Young Blood Gallery, Kibbee Gallery, and Beep Beep Gallery are still running their exhibits - Anima/Animus at Young Blood, Picturing the Beast: Animal Imagery in Contemporary Prints at Kibbee, and Year of the Rabbit at Beep Beep - featuring some of the cities most talented local artists. Anima/Animus and Picturing the Beast run through January 29th, and Year of the Rabbit runs through February 3rd. Check it out!

There are so many artists doing amazing things in Atlanta, so get out there and support them. Most of the time it's pretty cheap, and it's great to be a part of the community and see what kind of work local artists are creating (in all mediums!). Plus, you can get cheap beer at most music venues, theatres, art galleries, etc. And who doesn't love that?

So I'll end this blog post with a new segment called five things I'm diggin':





1. Jake Shimabukuro's version of "Hallelujah" on Peace Love Ukulele






2. This piece by Kelly McKernan, local artist, entitled Hit Me






3. My friend's blog domesticationfail.com - I'm pretty much the opposite of domestic, but it's really fun to read about her domestic adventures!





4. These hothlanta t-shirts







5. My little brother's writing for DeadJournalist.com now! (Hey, Kev, think you can hook Pocket of the Moon up with a solid review? Kidding, kidding.)

Christmas by  kiiw from Deviant Art

Well, we're officially in the thick of the Holiday season, which is always a fun and exciting time.

There are a lot of exciting things going on with me musically right now!

First of all, thanks to everyone who came out to the Smith's Olde Bar show, which was the first show Geoff and I played with the new two-person band set-up. It went over really well, and I was told by many people that they absolutely loved the new sound, that the songs sounded a lot more stripped down with the perfect amount of instrumental accompaniment. I’m really excited about the new sound, and Geoff and I are hard at work writing/arranging new songs (both songs I’ve written, songs he’s written, songs we’re working on together, etc.), recording our songs, and preparing for upcoming shows! Also, we got the opportunity to play with 1880s Dance Party and the Sarah Mac Band, who were both absolutely incredible. Check them out!

1880s Dance Party on Myspace




Sarah Mac Band's website

Geoff and I have decided on a new band name, Pocket the Moon. Be on the look out for new photos, songs, a new website, etc. We’re currently working on an album, which we’re planning on releasing in the spring of 2011.

We have a couple of upcoming shows as well!

December 18th - Uptown Loft - 9700 Medlock Bridge Rd. Ste 120 Johns Creek, GA - We will be playing with Ravens and Wolves and Part of the Problem - FREE show!

December 23rd - 4th Ward Heroes and Mixtape Atlanta present an Industry Holiday Soiree at the Star Bar - 437 Moreland Avenue Northeast Atlanta, GA 30307 - FREE show!


Also, I am so close to my goal for my tour fund on Kickstarter, and there are just 18 days left to donate! Please stop by and donate what you can (even a dollar!) or re-post the link to help me reach my goal!

I hope everyone is staying warm and having a wonderful Holiday season so far!