Moving and writing and learning

I realized today that it's been a year since we made a big announcement about doing something every day to work on our music. The announcement was supposed to be a way of holding us accountable, because we said it publicly.

Turns out that saying it publicly doesn't actually mean you do it.

Yeah. Disappointing, right? So, we haven't done something on our music every day, but we've done tons of other stuff, so...you know...there's that.

One monkey wrench in not only songwriting but also in blogging has been that we (Johnny and Suzy) moved this summer. We'd been in the same house for nine years, so moving was a pretty big deal, and it kind of took over our lives for entire summer - moving stuff into storage, doing some renovation, painting, moving stuff out of storage, turning on all new utilities, making landscaping changes, etc.

Note: Even if you live in a tiny house, you have more stuff than you think you do.

One of the music-positive results of our move, though, is that we have a more substantial studio now. We got some new equipment, and we can actually keep all of our studio equipment up and ready to go. It's taken us a while to get everything set up and functioning the way we'd like, but we are now locked and loaded to record new stuff on a moment's notice!

Aaaaand, thanks to completing the studio and participating recently in a songwriting challenge that kicked us back into gear with composing, we've been busy in recent weeks writing several new songs. So, we should have some new tunes ready to release before the end of the year.

Lesson learned from the last year: don't make any big proclamations about doing something every day, or writing a certain number of songs every month, etc., because you never know when something big is going to interrupt your plan. But as long as you come back around, it's all good.

A new love song...for the dangerous ones

How do you feel about Valentine's Day? Do you love it and think it's a beautiful celebration of love? Do you hate it and feel like it's just a commercialized made-up holiday designed to sell cards and flowers?

Or do you forget about it until you log on to Facebook and see everyone professing their love for their significant other - or bragging about the amazing dinner out they had the night before and suddenly realizing you're in trouble with your spouse?

We know - love is a battlefield, Pat Benatar.

And sometimes you fall in love with someone who's no good for you. It's a fine line between passion and peril.

Take Bonnie & Clyde for example. They had passion in spades. Young lovers with eyes for only each other, adventure and excitement. From the moment they laid eyes on each other, it was the two of them in it together, come what may. It's the "it" that was the problem.

If only they could have been into a circus life together, or a hardware business, or a band.

They went another way, though. And it ended, as we all know, with a hail of bullets, the two of them slumped in a car - together.

The stuff of legend and Hollywood. So, we wrote a song about it! And we released it this week on Valentine's Day (see - I wrapped it back around). We present for your listening pleasure "Bonnie & Clyde":

If you stream music, please add it to your favorite play list. And if you enjoy actually owning your music so you can play it even if you don't have a wifi signal, you can buy a copy at our CD Baby site for a mere $1.29. Now, that's a bargain!

A decade together - kind of

Well, I can hardly believe we're in 2018, but that's an exciting landmark for The Staylyns. This year marks a decade since we started making music together...okay, not the whole band, but at least 2/3 of The Staylyns...and not AS The Staylyns. Okay, so it was a decade ago that the groundwork was laid for The Staylyns!

Here's the story. In 2008, Johnny was in a band called Leatherhand with two of his brothers.

Leatherhand had been active on the Austin scene for several years, but the band was starting to fracture, as bands often do. Years of arguing about drinking, drugs, the band's direction, the band's power dynamic, etc. was taking its toll, but they still believed something great could happen.

They were all living together in a little compound in East Austin, and Johnny had started dating Suzy a few months before, and everything felt like it was at a crossroads. The band discussed moving to Las Vegas to shake things up, and Suzy was pulling Johnny in the opposite direction and asking him to get more serious about their relationship in Austin. Johnny had a decision to make. He made the wrong one.

Well, no, not THAT wrong.

Johnny ditched Suzy and made a renewed push with the band. That lasted just over a month. One night, after a gig and several hours of drinking and debauchery, the band had one final implosion when Johnny found himself locked out of his own house on a cold night, sleeping in his van because his brothers had locked him out and passed out inside. That was it. He was done. He called Suzy.

Johnny started a solo project, Johnny Austin. He started adding band members, and within a couple of months, Suzy joined the band. The rest, as they say, is history.

It would be February 2009 before Joe joined the band, and we rebranded as The Staylyns in 2011, but it was 2008 when the magic began. We can't wait to see what the next 10 years brings!