Smile Like You Mean It

So it's become obvious to me and perhaps you that amidst the still-newish-job, the other jobs, the school, the basement remodeling, the family, and, perhaps most significantly as it relates to this blog, the breakup of the band, that I'm not very good at focusing on the music of Champaign-Urbana...as I had hoped when I first set forth on this mildly interesting blog journey. I blame Dan Beahm in many ways, since his move to Boulder from Champaign in July abruptly ended my rock star days just months into them, just as we hit our stride with a (brief but legendary) mainstage performance at the Canopy Club. With his departure went my valid excuse for leaving my family and responsibilities a few times a month to attend and/or perform a late-night local music rock spectacle. Since then, my ties to the "scene" have become tenuous at best, and I haven't been able to devote the time I need to research the bands I want to highlight. Thus, my blog has consisted mostly of random but (hopefully) fun links to non-local goodness. I'm writing now to simply state that, for at least the next few months until my medic class ends, this blog will continue along the lines of what I've been doing recently, without the C-U focus that I'd like to hit on. I do have partially-written posts on the Andrew Bird concert that was at Krannert back in September and a couple of bands like The Beauty Shop that I'll trot out here one of these days...


BUT, in the meantime, I eagerly invite you to visit Smile Politely, a rather-new blog/website focusing on all things Champaign-Urbana that I mentioned briefly a few posts ago. The rag-tag band of all-Chambana writers includes local music guru Seth Fein, local music superstar Larry Gates, local omnipresent film critic guy Chuck Koplinski, and the former founder and publisher of alt-weekly The Octopus, Paul Young, among many other interesting blokes. They've had very interesting local music updates recently, along with food, theatre, sports, gossip, and everything else, so I invite y'all to point your browsers that'away!

www.smilepolitely.com

Just for kicks and related to nothing, I'll add here for your listening pleasure an **unfinished demo** of my favorite Dan Beahm & the Invisible Three song, as yet unreleased. There is a chance that I may receive a cease-and-desist letter from Dan for this, but he's skiing in Vail right now, so whatever. Again, this is a low-quality DEMO. When performed live, I was the dude on tambourine, who very successfully annoyed all with my overbearing ching-chinging. This is all Dan on the recording, and I invite you, as I have before, to visit his website to listen to all of his most recent album (written, produced, and recorded in a spare bedroom in a house on the corner of Washington & Elm in Champaign) for free. This song is the first of a new genre of music Dan has deemed "swank rock"... rock music with a loungey-hipster flair. Enjoy.

Dan Beahm & the Invisible Three -- "By the By" [MP3 (in a new window)]

C-U Thursday: Dan Beahm & the Invisible Three

Every Thursday or Friday this here blog is gonna focus on a local Champaign-Urbana band that La Tete finds to be sexy. Certainly the sexiest band in the C-U land is none other than Dan Beahm & the Invisible Three. Sure, the dude's head is smaller than his hands (as you can see in the picture above) and his last name has an unnecessary and potentially dangerous "h" in it, but that is quickly forgotten when you hear the music this man pulls out of his whatwhat. DBi3 is the mellow, lovely, passionate, multi-instrumental, indie-tastic baby of Beahm, a man with many different musical offspring (check out his label's website...psst, those bands are all different incarnations of Dan Beahm, but don't tell him I told you). Dan's been in Champaign for around three years, and came to us from Columbus, Ohio, where he helmed the power-pop bar-rock trio DB3, which gained a loyal local following. After the band went their separate ways, Dan returned to solo work, and crafted the album Amplifier, which he released this past February. Dan plays all the instruments and sings all lead and harmonic vocals, as well as pretty much every damn other thing involved in making the album. So, on the album, the Three are in fact invisible; however, it seems that Dan has yet to discover how to replicate the playing of multiple instruments and the singing of multiple harmonies on the live concert stage (we can't all be Andrew Bird, now can we...), so over the past few months following his album release Dan has been appearing in a number of venues around Champaign-Urbana with a visible Three: a cellist, a drummer, and an auxiliary vocalist/random instrument dude. Unfortunately for C-U, Dan will later this summer be moving to Boulder, CO to follow the magical musical call of the mountains. But, neverfear C-U, you have a few more chances to catch him live.

Amplifier is quite a departure from the electric guitar rock of DB3. The album is almost if not entirely acoustic, and Dan shows his chops on guitar and keyboard in particular. "Mackinac" is a beautiful song that is a good representative for the rest of the album.

Dan Beahm & the Invisible Three - "Mackinac" [MP3 (in new window)]

"Half as Cool as Han Solo" brings out the nerd rocker in Dan, and while it is quite different from the rest of the album, it provides a great final track. I predict this song will play a role in Dan's ascent to fame and glory. Whether the picture above will help or hinder that ascent is yet to be seen.

Dan Beahm & the Invisible Three - "Half as Cool as Han Solo" [MP3 (in new window)]

I encourage you to check out Dan's website at www.danbeahm.com, where you can listen to the entire album streaming for free. Other personal favorites include "Kandahar" (a must-listen), "The Visitor", and "Two Hands". Check out the upcoming Champaign-Urbana concert dates as well. And maybe, if we're lucky, Dan will finally update the freakin' site as he's been promising to do for quite some time.

FULL DISCLOSURE:
I've been fortunate enough to be playing the role of "auxiliary vocalist/random instrument dude" (as mentioned above) with Dan and the band the past few months, and I consider him to be a very close friend. However, I had nothing to do with the creation of the album (though, in the interest of fuller disclosure, I did receive a shout-out in the liner notes), and I won't be moving out to Boulder with him (just yet anyway), so my days in DBi3 are in limited supply, and I will be but a forgotten blip on the VH1 DBi3 special in 2040, a la Pete Best. Plus, I don't really like him all that much; I'm just using him to get the groupies. So, all that being said, I don't feel all that bad about this being a very-slightly self-serving post. Rawk.

Official Band Site | Buy the Album
MySpace (listen to "Kandahar" & "The Visitor")