Track by Track – “New Berlin” by New Berlin

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Track by Track” is written by the Artist who make the music possible. Today we feature – “New Berlin ” by New Berlin

Hardcore Punk –The goal here was to put a song together with bass, guitar, drum and vocal parts as efficiently as possible. It turned out pretty well so the ball kept rolling and the rest of the songs started coming together in a similar way. The lyrics draw on my experiences going to DIY punk shows here in Texas.

Seed – This song is about being frustrated with disrespectful and inconsiderate people. It remains hopeful though, that in the long run, a good persons actions will prove to neutralize the negativity.

Fan Boy – Just because a persons songs sound good doesn’t mean you should emulate their personality, there’s a lot more to people than the music they make. This song is about unhealthily obsessing over others. Your work can become flaccid and unoriginal, and you can be influenced into adopting their bad habits.

I Don’t Care – Before getting a band together I used to play solo sets. Sometimes I used a pedal to loop drum parts that I’d play on a keyboard and then play along to them with a guitar. I wanted to cover a song by The Ramones, so I looked for one where the drum part didn’t change so that I could play it on the keyboard and loop it. I listened to their first three albums and this is the only one I found. When having trouble putting together my own songs, I would think back on this one and remember to keep things simple.

Bird on a Wire –There are a lot of things that get called punk that don’t fit my ideal definition of it, and then there’s things that aren’t usually thought of as punk that do. A lot of Leonard Cohen’s work fits in to the latter category. I recorded this cover as a bridge between his songwriting and a more typical punk style.

Taco Madre – This song started out as a re-recording of Hardcore Punk. By this point though, the song had developed while being played live and didn’t sound quite the same. We decided to have it be a new song, and while we were recording one of the guys in the band got back from picking up some food at a place called Taco Madre, so the lyrics came from that.

Face in the Mirror – After a few weeks of not coming up with new songs, this popped out. Its about realizing that if you can be all right with yourself in a really basic and honest way, then no matter how inconsiderately someone treats you, you should be able to brush if off and move on without much difficulty.

Radium – This is another song that I had worked on before I’d gotten a band together. I had been playing music alone for a few months and was really frustrated at not having other people to work with. Most of the music I was making at the time was abstract noise, so I put together something that felt like a band was playing it to help myself feel better. The original version was still a bit weird, but once New Berlin started happening I decided this would be a good song to re-work, re-record and play live.

Warehouse – At this point I was pretty happy to have a band together and a set of songs that we were playing live. I started feeling nostalgic about the time spent playing weird music alone on a keyboard so I decided it would be nice to have something that incorporated the style of the songs that had been coming together and add a synth part to it. Warehouse was originally intended to be the name of the band before New Berlin was settled on.

Dec. 12th – Austin Tx – Hotel Vegas

Jan. 2 – Austin – Hotel Vegas
Jan. 11 – Dallas – 1912 Hemphill
Jan. 12 – Wichita – Kirby Beer Store
Jan. 13 – Kansas City – miniBAR
Jan. 14 – St Louis – FOAM
Jan. 15 – Chicago – TBD
Jan. 16 – Bloomington – TBD
Jan. 17 – Nashville – Drkmttr
Jan. 18 – Memphis -TBD
Jan. 19 – New Orleans – TBD
Jan. 20 – Houston – TBD
Jan. 21 – San Antonio – Limelight

New Berlin will be putting out a 7″ Flexi disc record with new recording through Austins Super Secret Records. They will have it with them on the January tour dates

New Berlin:

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Scott

Co-founder of 50thirdand3rd, stepped away to spend time with family and write. From Pittsburgh, now in Florida, Cool Canadian artist wife, 4 great kids, and two granddaughters!! I'm a lucky guy!

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