Twin Cities Dopers: come to my husband's CD release show!

Cafe Society
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(Posted with permission from the mods)

My husband, Randy Casey, has been a professional musician since age 15, and he’s played every dive from here to New York, some of them twice. He’s done many cool gigs as well, having opened for John Mellencamp, Melissa Etheridge, Meat Loaf, Eddy Money, Robert Cray, Buddy Guy and others. But, perhaps the coolest gig ever is yet to happen.

His Late Bloomer CD hits the street February 12 (available at the Electric Fetus and online at cdbaby.com).

We are celebrating with an album release show on Saturday, February 16, 2008 at the beautiful Varsity Theater in Dinkytown. The Varsity truly is one of the premiere showcase venues in North America and we’re SUPER excited that he’ll be there.

It’s an early show:
6:00 – doors
6:30 – special guests 40 Watt Bulb open the show
7:30 – Randy Casey & the Scouville Unit

We’ll have a gathering after the concert next door at the Loring Pasta Bar, so it could be a little mini Dopefest.

It would be such a thrill to have a good crowd at this event. Randy’s re-entering the music scene after holing up (following a bad divorce from a local music critic and manager, no less). Please come if you can – I promise it will be an terrific show with fabulous performances from excellent local musicians including Noah Levy (Five for Fighting, the Honeydogs, Peter Frampton) and Janey Winterbauer (Astronaut Wife).

To see if this is something you’d be interested in, check out the February 2008 edition of Mpls / St.Paul magazine (page 187) or visit:
www.randycasey.com
www.myspace.com/randycaseyrocks

Hope to see you there! I’ll be the chick at the merch table. :slight_smile:

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Ooh, I’d like to go. I put it on the calendar, two tourneys that day, but I’ll see what I can do.

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I’ll be nerding it up at Con of the North, but it sounds like fun. Best of luck!

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Thanks for letting me know about this. I hope to go, especially since I messed the get-together last October by being out of town. I don’t have a prior commitment and now have it on my calendar with high hopes of attending.

The question is how my wife will react. She goes all :rolleyes: when I mention the Straight Dope, but there is no reason I couldn’t attend on my own. Or, better yet, she might like another night out.

It’s been ages since I’ve been to the Varsity, and Dinkytown is always fun to tromp around in again. Plus, of course, Randy’s music sounds like the type of stuff I would like.

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It would be great to have you there, if you’re able to go, Mycroft H. In fact, you don’t even have to mention the Dope if you don’t want to. There’s an article about Randy in Mpls / St. Paul magazine, and it’s now online here: http://www.mspmag.com/entertainment/music/83924.asp?ht

The nice thing about an early show is that it doesn’t tie up your whole evening, and afterwards you guys could poke around town, go get dinner, whatever strikes your fancy.

Have fun at the Con, Brainiac4!

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If I took the time to figure out how many years ago this really was, I’ll probably feel old…but I saw Randy a number of times back when he was with Ol’ Yeller. We even road tripped up to Duluth once to see them at the old Norshor. He’s a hell of a good (and tasteful) guitar player. Fatherhood has put a serious dent in my intake of local music, and it’s pretty unlikely that tonight will be any different than the rest of the last three years. I hope Randy gets a good crowd though. He certainly deserves it.

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He sounds great! “It Must Be” has a nice Beatles feel and he’s a solid Tele player.

Tons of luck at the show!

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Thanks for the kind words, WordMan and Ass for a Hat (and very cool that you remember him from his Ol’ Yeller days – that was before I even lived in MN!) .

Three days 'til the show! The rehearsal kicked ass, so I think everyone is set to rawk.

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Sweet! He got talked up on the Cities 97 Club Crawl segment tonight, and they played one of the songs about ME!

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Not The Denial Song, I hope. :wink:
So much for my reading comprehension…I thought the show was last Saturday. :smack:

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Well now you can make it! :stuck_out_tongue:

I’m planning on being there. Cool about the Cities 97 coverage. Is he ever played on The Current?

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I Must Be, right? Totally kickass song. Why is it not on the radio? [baffled]

I hear a single; I expect to hear it in rotation by this summer. :wink:

And I’m buying a CD so I can say I knew you when. :smiley:

Great stuff. Very…crisp…sound. Country-blues but without the boot-scootin’ cutesy smarm and the caterwauling. I do admire a man who just sings. :cool:

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So glad you can come, Mycroft! I look forward to meeting you in person.

And also glad you liked “I Must Be,” DDG!

Radio promotion began three weeks ago, and so far he’s been picked up by 63 stations in the US, and quite a few in the UK, Belgium, Germany, Italy and France. We get tracking reports once a week listing the stations, how heavy a rotation, and sometimes which song. It’s all very interesting. We’re also starting to see reviews pop up – all favorable except for one that damned with faint praise. Funny how that’s the one I could quote off the top of my head.

The Current, for the time being, has passed on playing anything, saying the disc is “under review.” It’s a sore point in our household (Randy has played charity show for Mary Lucia three years running), but what can you do. I hope that they’ll come around once the record has been out a little longer, and – with luck! – gathers a following.

Fingers crossed for a good turnout Saturday and good momentum afterward.
(I am using an entire year’s allotment of exclamation points on this thread.)

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Tonight’s the night!

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Hey, tell Randy to break a leg. I’m a thousand miles away and can’t make the show, but I totally dig his stuff.

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Bumping this because (A) I wondered how the show went, and (B) I got my CD, and Bonus Track 12 made me go Um a lot. Am I supposed to back-mask it or something, and a secret “Paul is dead” message will appear, or what? :smiley:

Also Bonus Track 13 made me actually lean over and check my computer’s CD drive to make sure it wasn’t stuck on the chorus…and then I remembered that CD drives don’t get stuck the way record players used to, so I just sat there and stared at it for a while. And then finally it stopped. Musician humor, I guess. :smiley:

Other than that, lovely. :slight_smile:

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Thanks for the good wishes, An Arky.

DDG: The show went great! There was a fairly decent turnout (including Mycroft H., whom it was a real pleasure to meet) and the crowd was very supportive. Randy was nervous as hell (and so was I) and it took him a long time to say anything to the audience, but once he warmed up he really rocked. The sound was good and the Varsity is a really beautiful space to be in – think lots of red velvet, greenery, twinkle lights and low shaded lamps. I gotta say it was kind of a thrill to pull up outside the theater and see his name in huge letters on the marquee.

Review and photos here – there’s a link to the full photostream toward the bottom:
http://www.howwastheshow.com/index.cfm/action/potw

There were two other photographers there, and we should be receiving those photos early next week.

The only downside to the night was we learned how hard it is to make money on that room. The Varsity takes 10% off the top for taxes, and another 30% for their cut. Then the booking agent took 15%. Then Randy had a 60/40 split with the opening act. By the end of the night we made way more off of CD sales than tickets, but at least there was some cash flow.

Anyway, thanks for checking in on it.

As for the CD: glad you got it! And, in all honesty, I totally hate track 12. It just cracks Randy up no end. Originally, he had that one (called “Sweet Sewage Segue”) meshed into a single track with #13 (“I’m Your Favorite”), so at least I got him to separate them so I can skip #12 when I listen. And yes, the ending to #13 goes on way too long, so you’re right, it must be musician humor.

I do dig that one, though. The rhythm at the beginning is windshield wipers, the music box tones are from a music box he had as a kid that playes “If I Only Had a Brain,” and both the melody and harmony vocals are Randy’s voice, set to different pitches. He recorded the whole thing as a suprise for me and I still grin whenever I hear it.