Thursday, November 27, 2008

An album?

Is it on the way?

Well as of Wednesday night we think so, after much heated discussion and anger, Sierra has finally decided that its time to stop waiting for the rest of the world, to take things into our own hands and to write, record, produce and release an album. So thats what were doing, as of this Saturday the process will begin.

It was a tough call to make, we really wanted and somewhat needed funding to do something like this, but after doing a reasonable amount of searching around and presenting our music we ran into multiple dead ends. So while doing it ourselves with limited gear may take a chunk out of the potential quality of the sound, we think we can make up for it with the passion we can put into the music with taking our time and
doing it right.

So it will probably be a few months before it all really starts to come together but we will definitively keep you all informed!

Matt

Sierra

Sunday, November 23, 2008

Still.... writing.

Writing.

This process is starting to take a toll on me, strangely enough because really im not the person doing most of the work. Its Sam, Sam and Richie because they somehow began taking responsibility for the two main parts of the song (vocals and backing respectively) there is lots of pressure on those guys. But its hitting me as well, i try to be involved with every step of every song (as we all do) but with 5 rowdy boys at Sam's place while he does vocals it doesn't get any eaiser. So helping Sam, helping Richie and then writing the most amazing killer bass lines is not easy.

I have come to quite a confusing point in my journey as a bass player.. i play day in day out but i don't feel i am improving, even though i know there is lots of improving that needs to be done, timing perfection, rhythm, sheet music and then writing bass lines that can successfully stray from richies root notes without killing the songs.

So what do i do next? I was thinking lessons, but the issues there is money, lessons cost lots.. i have none so thats a dilemma, maybe i need to spend more time listening to other peoples bass work rather than my own? and grab idea, i know thats how i did it earlier in my bass playing journey.

Anyway i will keep you guys updated with how it travels but wish me luck in making something good!

Matt Montana

Monday, November 10, 2008

Writing and Recording.

Sorry for the long time since the update guys,
Uni exams and a whole lot off work have had me pretty much out of service for the past few weeks.

That being said, we are making some decent progress on our next few tracks. Last night we wrote up a listing of what songs we want to achieve and when we want to achieve them by.

Luckily we have a whole heap, the trouble is actually getting them done. But as a taste here are the next few...

1. 1985
2. Slow Motion Cowboy
3. Dance Along
4. Nothing Could Go Wrong

A few of these we have played at shows but were giving them all a good re-working so they sound fresh and how we want our music to now.

I know we havent been keeping you guys very updated. But soon we will have some demo's for you to listen to.

Maybe even an acoustic version of headlights to download.

Matt

Sierra.

Sunday, October 19, 2008

Vocal Booth





Hey guys,

This week we have STILL been writing and on sunday (without me) the boys built a vocal booth to try and make sams vox sound better when we're recording our promo songs. So i'm pretty keen to see it. Other then that, not too much exciting has been happening. Just the usual but as i mentioned before hopefully we will be able to do some samples of the writing on Myspace.

Matt

Thursday, October 16, 2008

Theives and Liars.

The title of our new track.

The lyrics take an interesting look at all the fucking around we've had from management and within the band.

It means a lot to us, and the track has some very cool instrumentation written by richie.

Anyway hope we can show you a snippit sometime in a few weeks.

Sierra.

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

How is the writing going?

Hey guys,
The songwriting, is coming along somewhat slowly. We are about half way through 10 songs and close to finished one. Ha.

No but seriously this is not an easy process! But we are working very hard and putting alot of our time into it. For two main reasons i suppose

- For us
- For our fans

We have been very caught up a few times in writing songs for people who are helping our career (ie managers, producers) but it just takes the passion out of the music.

The music we write, we need it to be from us and that way it will come across much better. But what we love is when you guys give us inspiration to write it because you guys are one of the reasons we write it.

So anyway, just a quick update, i hope you are all well and have a great day!

Matt

Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Last show of the year!



Hey guys,
This is a show from a wonderful fan at our public holiday monday show at janalli.

We had a great night with a great turn out. Angelas Dish who we apparently Co-Headlined with were absolutely amazing. I think i saw some video footage being recorded so i will post it if we ever find it. If you have myspace and want to see a few more shots from the night check out



So now we are having 3 months off to write and do some demos of an album. We will keep everyone posted through it will some audio samples and hopefully some video content.

Will speak soon!

Matt

Monday, September 22, 2008

gweyneville on Saturday.

Hey guys, we played at the magnificient Relay for Life down near wollongong! i must say we had an amazing day, let me run you through it...

So, i woke up about 20 Mins away from home at 7:10, then i quickly drove home got there at 7:30, ran upstairs got some clothes to take with me and struggled by myself to get my stupidly heavy amp into the back of my my car. Realising i had some spare time to get to Sam's at 8:30 i went for a detour to Mcdonalds breakfast being the first time in about a year i have been up early enough with enough spare time to eat it! me and Tom got to Sams and then we quickly went over to Richies as he had just arrived home after a rushed plane ride from queensland as he was filling in for another band! We took off in a four car convoy as dave was already down there setting up. Tom and cass (Richies driver) took off and left me and Sam in smoke which is never a positive as i was following Sam now and he has zero sense of direction, even with the assistance of a GPS. At the top of Mount Ousley we saw richie and tom pulled over, and almost crashed pullling into the same rest stop again, somehow after we took off together from there we lost them in the 10 minuites to the venue, and of course that means me and sam were left driving around in circles. We arrived after much confusion and drove through crowwds to park our can in the venue and loaded our gear backstage, it was a very nice day down there but hot, we did a few laps of the relay as it started up and cheered on Jordie a goood mate of ours as he was an ambassador (sp?) on stage. I had a wildberry ICEE and richie enjoyed and apple flavour to keep out of the heat, we signed up to get some cool relay for life shirts wwe got on the hot stage and after some more fun technical difficulties we got started, played headlights without an acoustic guitar (well covered by Tom) and the on-stage bass was in and out (i think my head might be fucked which makes me very angry) Anyway, we wrapped up teh set and got a very warm welcome from all who came to watch!

After not long we headed on the long road home and i had the joys of going to work!

Matt

Sam with the fans
Sam With Fans

Sunday, September 21, 2008

Sierra Updates Via Twitter!

Well,
As you might have seen on the Sierra Myspace, we have set up a Twitter account (http://twitter.com/sierramontana) and i have finally set it up so that i can contact the twitter account via my phone, so we will keep posting short Sierra updates on a regular basis via Twitter, i may even also see how it goes sending a text while we are on stage giving an update on how well.. or not so well the show is going! I must say it was quite the task to set it up from australia because i had not clue when i had confirmation to send text but anyway we are there now!

anyway thought this was an interesting way of communicating with fans and critics alike!

so make sure you check it regularly, i'lll post a link on the side here and the is also a link on the Sierra myspace as i mentioned earlier its the big blue T!

matt

Ps - I will give an update on Saturdays show if i get some time at Uni today!

Friday, September 12, 2008

Last night...

Wow,
Last nights show was a comedy of errors to say the least, i arrived at 5:55 because the band was SUPPOSED to be there at 6. but after waiting 20 mins i called around and found out sam was still in the shire, Tom/Richie were still yet to leave and we had not heard from Dave, seeing as we were in leichardt i thought i would get some dinner so i had a very nice europa pizza (this will become relevent later) After getting back to the venue, it was 7:20, Sam was there, and dave had arrived sound check was in 15 mins and the boys were no-where to be seen. I was getting very worried but in true Sierra style Richie and Tom came running in about 5 mins AFTER we were due to do our sound check, which did mean that it was cut short but at least we got something. The turn out was not incredible but it was something, mainly friends. So we started the set... first song was fucked because my bass was cutting in and out throughout (mainly out) so my frustration almost drove me to give up, but after a change of instrument cable we were back on track.

The rest of the set continued without too much of a hitch, the backing tracks were playing up slightly but the venues PA was just a joke so no fault of ours. Now me and Dave still being sick probably didn't help our playing quality but it was decent. During Slow Motion Cowboy, the last song of the set, tom decided he would go just a little too wild and he fell over and popped his knee out of joint. Of course i found this absolutely hilarious and it turns out funny things can fast become not very funny at all when you are sick with the flu, mostly because you start coughing, and with how i have been feeling, coughing quickly turned into me running to the side of stage pushing past 5 people in the bathroom and losing my beautiful europa pizza to the bottom of a toilet bowl, after spending about 5 minuites throwing up and coughing up copious amount of mucus i decided i was going home early.

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

How the Flu stuffed sierra

Thats right,
influenza has struck Sierra Montana, it started on Monday night when dave announced he wouldn't be coming to practice because he was feeling unwell, then practice Tuesday rolled around and dave was yet again a no show and the boys sent me packing because i was very sick.

So we had to pull out of wednesday nights show, which was very sad as we were looking forward to performing with avalon drive and the sundance kids. Now we will just have to see how things pan out for friday night...

*fingers crossed*

Tuesday, September 9, 2008

The Video!

Here it is guys! Turned out pretty damn good for a free, 20Hr video?

Monday, September 8, 2008

Wednesday

Hey guys we are playing this wednesday night!

Check it out.

spectrum this wednesday

Sunday, September 7, 2008

From concept to creation in... 20 Hours!

Well yesterday we shot a music video, but it was the most random spontaneous thing that we have ever done...

So it was 8PM Friday, and we all get a message from Richie "are you guys free tomorrow?" luckily we were and his mate had a whole stack of video equipment he had hired and nothing to do with it that day so he asked if we wanted to shoot a video, so of course we said yes, i mean what an opportunity a free video clip!

Its not like its a shit one either (although we are yet to see the finished product) from what we saw on the monitors while we were filming it was very good.

Have to say a MASSIVE thanks to Rashelle my friend who did our make up for free at the very very very last minute. So we had a location all set to go in crows nest until we found we had no access so the mission was on to try and find somewhere to shoot it!
After much searching around the shire, when all hope was lost we pulled into my basement and noticed the visitors carpark had some very good lighting and a very good backdrop to do some filming with. So Nate our very very good producer/cameraman/lights/filmcrew/driver man came and set up all the gear, all of this was very confusing expecting to see a movie star setting up behind the camera or something.

We started shooting at around 1PM on saturday morning and after everyone had done their individuals and Sam had done his little solo bit we finished up shooting at 7PM!

Talk about a whirlwind adventure of a day. in less than 24 hours we had finished shooting an entire video clip.

The question is now... what can we do with it!

xx
Matt

Sunday, August 31, 2008

Shows soon!

Next week we have two shows (oh fuck). And thanks to our stupid Bass Player we have no rehersal tonight...

But all is well, we're actually very preparred and we needed the time to do some recording! we have gone over the set a few times recently and its been pretty good, the big issue is, who the heck is going to come? Friday night should be alright because its a friday and people aren't sleeping on friday nights, but for Wednesday nights show, i don't really like our chances of getting an amazing crowd. But you know if you're keen for an intimate encounter with SM then go for it. Sam put some shirt designs in the blog on our myspace, i'll see if i can put them up at the end of this blog.

In other news.. Not much, its been a pretty hectic yet quiet week for Sierra, were trying to finish off three songs to have ready just crap demos but they're sounding good so far, thats a plus!

Shirts

Sunday, August 24, 2008

Frustration

Good news is...

- We got ANOTHER new song up on Myspace now
- 500 plays today! (Best We have had so far)
- Almost 50,000 views
- Tom is amazing

Bad news...

- Song writing is such a difficult and complicated process when there is 5 people involved
-Lack of motivation causes me much anger
- I have a University assignment due in two days and trying to do that, work and deal with this circus is almost impossible

But positivity is they key!

Truth is i just really want to start making a living out of this.

I think we have good songs, and we are all amazingly attractive so why aren't we famous yet?

oh well.. time i suppose.

Friday, August 22, 2008

Street Team & Recent Happenings

So,
I thought it would be nice to set up a little online street team for the band, as it is the digital age and we're really not doing much to go digital as a band.

In good news we FINALLY put a new track up on our myspace, make the most of it because as you know it doesn't happen much but hopefully we will change that in the future and start putting new tracks up every few months or more.

So yeah this street team is something i hope will take off, by using the passion that some fans have for the band we can attempt to grow as a band and get ourselves noticed as a band both in Australia and also right around the world.

If you are interested check out our myspace for details or just send an email to sierramontana.estreetteam@gmail.com and give us your Myspace, and first name. Then we will send details.

In other more exciting news we have two shows coming up next month and hopefully... i mean HOPEFULLY there will be another all ages show not too long after that, most probably down in the shire but if anyone knows where else we can play one TELL US NOW! Its not we don't want to play them, i wish more than anything i could start reaching more of our fans!

Ok thanks for the read.

Matt
x




Monday, August 18, 2008

Rehersal

We're back in the studio rehersing tonight, trying to get some of the new songs down and ready to put them into the set, hopefully it will create a new and much more interesting live sound for us, Richie has to get his hands on a laptop and a keyboard so we can start playing with synths live and get them to come out stereo!

It's also been a few weeks now since we have run through the set, actually since our last spectrum show so it wil be interesting to see how me and the rest of the boys have retained the set to see if we can pull it off without having run through it in about two weeks.

What i am most worried about at practice though is that indiana jones pinball machine is working again, or at least the new terminator one is there, as a bit of a background Sierra Montana spends about 50% of rehersal time rehersing and about 50% trying to beat Richies amazing 666,000,000 score on pinball.


The Best Pinball Ever!

Writing...

So sam has been doing some amazing work recently, writing some songs which i think are about 10 steps above what we have ever written before.

Finally we all have access to reason to write our own parts with so now we can share stuff and the song writing process can now become much more intricate and we can all become more involved.

So Sam sent us two demo's to write parts to and we're slowly getting through it, hopefully it wont be too long before we get it all together and start putting these on a CD!

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

The Fucking Music Industry

So this is my first post, i thought i would create a blog that talked about the music in my life, mainly (for now anyway) that is the band Sierra Montana.

So where are we at now...

Well it seems that we are in the same place as we have always been, writing songs and playing shows to the few over 18 people who seem to have an interest in the band. I think it is literally impossible to play and All Ages show in Sydney these days, as hard as we try there is just nobody willing to put on good All Ages shows and to be completely honest with you its killing our fanbase because everybody just gets sick of waiting to see us.

So our future? Who knows! your guess is as good as mine, but we have been starting to get ourselves organised to do some reasonable recordings at home finally and we actually finishes a new track yesterday that sounds great.

So while i say we are stuck in the same old spot of just writing and playing shows, the advantage is that the shows we are playing are of much better quality and the songs we have written recently are the next level or maybe even two above what we have been writing previously!

Ok so who knows if i will ever post here again, but it was fun.

Matt

Oh and if you want to check out the stuff i do

www.myspace.com/sierramontana

x