Ready for some new Leda!

Ok I know  I suck, it's been a little while. SL's pretty damn busy with the new record and shows upon shows upon shows upon shows. Things are great! We'll be releasing our single "Can't Stand" on iTunes and Amazon every soon... probably late November early December and going live with our new website all in one day. 2010 has been a great year for us and we are definitely looking forward to en even more eventful 2011 (jeeze how time flies!)

We wrote a new song a few weeks ago called "Let Her Love Her". The same sex marriage debate is really pretty silly if you think about it and this song addresses that, and it's pretty funky too. We're going in to track it this Thursday and Friday and maybe Saturday afternoon. Really excited about that. Jaime Omar and I could be in the studio everyday and be pretty happy, but poor Juls would rather just do live albums. Boys and their toys I guess right?

We've got a busy rest of the year too. Here's the calendar so you can plan on getting your Leda fix:

Sat 11/13 Stan and Joe’s - Annapolis

Sat 11/20 Tortoise and Hare - Arlington, VA

Wed 11/24 Big Bats - Stevensville, MD

Fri 11/26 Market Street for Omar’s bday! Denton, MD

Sat 11/27 Middletons - Annapolis

Sat 12/11 Middletons - Annapolis

Fri 12/17 Whiskey - Annapolis

Sat 12/18 Rams Head Savage - Savage, MD

NYE Frogg Pond - Rehoboth Beach, DE

Our NYE gig this year is at the Frogg Pond in Rohoboth. This place is really fun. We have a line on cheap hotel rooms right around the corner from the club. If you haven't seen us here this is going to be the night to do that! The staff there is the coolest and the bar is very generous! The deal for the hotel rooms are Brighton Suites. Great rooms and if you tell them your part of the Sweet Leda group you will get a sweet rate. Their number is (302) 227-5780. Give them a call!

Ok that's it...thanks and see you from the throne! -DonBoy

this is only a test

Festivals, new album etc. etc. etc.....

Hey everybody! Holy cow we've been busy... well Omar and our producer Steve have been busy in the studio. We just got back rough tracks of new guitar for a bunch of tunes.. Let's see if remember we've got: It Wasn't Me, Just For You, Karma, Let Them Go, Need The Music, One For Two, Trouble and, What You Don't Know. They're all sounding pretty great with two exceptions... Need the Music and It Wasn't Me, these two are turning out pretty damn awesome!

We're getting really excited about the album and hope we can get it out soon. We're tentatively looking for a mid-late fall release. So hold tight, I know it's been a while since we've given you anything new but hell you've waited this long, just wait a little longer. I promise it will be worth it!

Just a heads up but we're throwing around the idea of trying to "fan fund" the album. That basically means that we ask for donations and in return for those who donate they (or you) get a cd and shirt and a back rub from Omar or something like that. We're still working out details. Records these days aren't cheap to make man and we're trying to do this one the right way. But we're not makin John Mayer money...yet?

We've got three, yeah three festivals left this year (at least for now there could always be more). Hot August Blues is this weekend! Check out this line up:



Main Stage
8:00-10:00pm - LYLE LOVETT and his Large Band
5:30-7:00pm - Keb' Mo'
3:30-5:00pm - Black Joe Lewis & The Honeybears
1:30-3:00pm - The Bridge
Noon-1:00pm - Jackie Scott and the Housewreckers

Side Stage
1:00-2:30pm - Dean Rosenthal
3:00-3:30pm - Choo Choo Charlie (Children's Show)
4:00-5:30pm - Sweet Leda
6:30-8:00pm - Higher Hands

Nice... We just got our very first lanyards....sweet. That probably doesn't mean much to most people but this is our first show where we have to wear a lanyard instead of a wristband or sticker so that's pretty cool. Some of my other music people are probably thinking "aww ain't that cute, Sweet Leda's first lanyards". Some of my friends have a bunch of lanyards from a bunch of shows they played.... Derrick Dorsey I'm talkin to you!. Anyway we're pretty darn excited. Tickets are still avaliable at the gate. Just go to hotaugustblues.com for more details.

Then next week is Annapalooza! It's the actually the second Annapalooza but this year it's at the Anne Arundel County Fairgrounds. August 28th.... Don't forget this one either here's the line up:

 stage 1 schedule 

noon “Summer of Rock” winners: Have Gun Won’t Travel, Synesthesia & High-brid

1:30p Afro Bop Alliance

3:00p The Cheaters

4:30p Bill Kirchen

6:30p Pietasters

8:30p Soja

 stage 2 schedule 

noonUnified Jazz Ensemble

1:30p Jarflys

3:00p Blue Miracle

4:30p Grilled Lincolns

6:00p Mambo Sauce

8:00p The Bridge

 absolut® alley schedule 

noon Rhythm Method

1:00p Bay Jazz Project featuring Justine Miller

2:00p Annapolis Bluegrass Coalition

3:00p Gary Wright & Leah Weiss

4:00p Skribe

5:00p Higher Hands

6:00p Pressing Strings

7:00p Dean Rosenthal Blues Review

8:00p Sweet Leda

9:00p Wax

Again nice... Cool thing is... if you notice in the lineups. We're playing with Dean, Higher Hands and The Bridge both times. Hell yeah I say. We haven't met the guys in the Bridge but I know they're from around here, Broadneck area I think. We'll have to meet up with those cats and do a shot or push-ups or something. Nah screw that, shots please.

So if you live anywhere near Annapolis.. or even Maryland you might want to check this out. The Ren Fest starts that weekend too...

The last one is Island Bay days Festival in Stevensville. Check it out here . This one is cool too. Cool lineup of local talent. Across all genres. Check this one out:

11:00AM - 11:40PM - Roadhouse Clams

11:45AM - 12:25PM - School Of Rock

12:30PM - 01:10PM - Fuzzbox Piranha

01:15PM - 01:50PM - Off The Hook

01:55PM - 02:35PM - Guthrie Matthews Method

02:40PM - 03:20PM - 88/6

03:25PM - 04:05PM - Sweet Leda

04:10PM - 04:50PM - Wicked Rosie

04:55PM - 05:35PM - Quagmire

05:40PM - 06:20PM - 8 Ohms Band

06:25PM - 07:05PM - Korupt

07:10PM - 08:15PM - No Pets For Noah

08:15PM - 09:15PM - Defrayal

09:20PM - 10:50PM - Kix

We hit kinda early on this one but that's cool with me man, we get to see Kix! That's gonna bring me back to metal days. I may need to break out my wrestling shoes and spandex and tease my hair for that. Never did I ever guess that I would be doing a show with Lyle Lovett and Kix. You just never know man, you just never ever know.

O my god I almost forgot to tell you about the single, "Can't Stand". We have tentatively decided to go with Drew Mazurek for the final mix and hopefully he can get it back to us pretty quick. Just his preliminary mix of sounded pretty friggin good, I mean really good. We've got a new logo and website in the works. We'll be releasing the single and going live with the website at the same time so wish us luck it should be fun... in a good way. Look out on WRNR and WTMD they're both spinning some SL pretty regularly, thanks to both! Best time to catch us is on WRNR is Naptunes at 9pm during the week. Ok I'm done. Too much coffee does this to me.

Check out a video from Artscape... pretty cool

Ok that's it...thanks and see you from the throne! -DonBoy

Studio and tracking No Time

Alrighty friends I'm back. We headed in to the studio a couple of weeks back and got a great start on the record (album, cd or whatever you want to call it). Started on Thursday July 8th and went until the following Sunday. We recorded 15 songs, plus a bunch of interludes and song ideas. Now the main goal of these four days was to get solid drums and whatever else we could get. Juls did an awesome job, she won't need that many punch ins or retakes mostly just backing vox. She's a one take wonder that girl. Jaime will need to punch a few parts here and there and Omar has to redo some parts and of course layer other parts. That poor boy has got a lot of work ahead of him. We all do really.

Once we started recording everything went pretty well. It took a little time adjust to working with a click (that's basically a metronome track we use to keep everything in time), but once the click and I became friends all was well in Leda-land. Everything was so cool and tons of fun. It was a great learning and hugely bonding experience for the band. Jaime, Omar and I def had a blast! And even though Juls hates the studio I know she had a great time! I think I see a few live albums in SL's future.

The one track that stands out to me as probably the best track of the session was when we tracked No Time. Man that was pretty intense. For those of you that aren't familiar with it, No Time was written about the loss of Jaime's stepfather Don E. Carlson. Jaime, Juls and Jaime's mom Dorothy were in a band with Don called Leda's Charm. Don passed a few years ago after a battle with cancer. The song is written from a mix of his perspective and I believe Dorothy's perspective. Before we started recording the song we listened to a song by Leda's Charm that Don had written. It put us in the right place to play No Time. Although I only met Don once or maybe twice I know how much he meant to Jaime and Juls. I could really feel their sense of loss and mourning for him and it reminded me of the loss of my father when I was young. This really helped me channel that emotion in to the song. We went to our respective recording rooms and got ready to record. Our producer, Steve Antenelli, suggested that we track this song with out a click. So Omar started and from the moment we all kicked in it felt amazing. Every note seemed to hit just right, the right tempo, the right feel at just the right intensity. The end of the song starts to build in intensity and man did it build that night. Once we were done with that track we were done for the night. I think I got misty for a while. It was definitely the most intense experience I have ever had recording a song. We were all pretty much exhausted mentally, physically and emotionally. We had just spent a solid 18 hours in the studio over 2 days and ended it with our most emotional tune. We just got mixes from those sessions and they sound pretty good. Can't wait for you guys to hear 'em! I'm sure you'll be able to hear the intensity of that song in the recording. What a song...

Ok that's it...thanks and see you from the throne! -DonBoy

Long weekend of shows... and other misc stuff

Well that weekend was tiring! Big Bats on Friday night, DC BBQ Battle Sat morning, then Middleton's Sat night. There was a huge snafu with my kit Sat night. Omar's car battery died in DC and he didn't have time to run back home and grab his truck (which is where my drums were/are). So I ended up using the practice kit that we keep at Jaime and Julie's place. I rocked a two piece with hats, a ride and a crash and dude it was awesome! Definitely a little more challenging than you would expect but very cool nonetheless.

Looks like we only have rehearsal on Tuesday then a Pre 4 of July party at Fishhead Cantina with Bond & Bentley, Cool Kid Collective, Fresh Competition, Flights Kool, Scarborough Sideshow, Tommy McGee, Guthrie Matthews, Skribe. Pretty damn good line up right there man.

We'll be starting to track next week! Thank god and more than that thank Steve! Originally the record was looking at a early spring 2011 release but we reworked the schedule and modified our process a little and now we're looking at a possible fall 2010 release. We will have a single out pretty soon. If you've seen us recently you've heard it. But just in case your not sure which song it is I don't want to ruin it for you. We're about a month or so out on that. We want to have the single and the website all ready at the same time so we can basically do a big single release thingy... not really sure how that works but we'll see!

Ok that's it...thanks and see you from the throne! -DonBoy

End of prepro!

Well just finished the last night of preproduction! Definitely looking forward to tracking next month. I could definitely live in a studio.... LOVE IT! We've got a total of 16 songs that we have to whittle down to 12. Not too sure which ones we'll cut but we'll see. Omar and I have been throwing around the idea of just releasing them as iTunes singles as we write the next album... cool idea.... O's got a bunch of em!

We've got 4 festivals left this year: Annapalooza, Artscape, Tincan and Hot August Blues! Damn that's cool. We are sharing most of those with The Bridge and our good friends Higher Hands. I'm hoping that we can somehow hook up with the Bridge and maybe do some shows? Anything to further the cause so to speak.

Ok that's it...thanks and see you from the throne! -DonBoy