Hello!
Into the White: The Early Recordings is now up on Cytunes.org!

Click on the album image to purchase:

A little about Cy Tunes: It’s “a download site that features exclusive music from artists who have contributed tracks (both live and in-studio) to help raise money in memory of Cy Rawls. All proceeds from CyTunes will be donated to the Tisch Brain Tumor Center, where Cy was treated.”

Wonderful cause with lots of great music!

Cheers,

Mark D.

Sorry my blog posts have been few and far between here lately. I’m swamped with schoolwork and my CD release, but here’s a short but sweet recap of what I’ve been doing, or thinking about, recently…

The Good Graces at Kavarna

The Good Graces’ debut “Sunset Over Saxapahaw” comes out officially at the end of October, but we had a release show to celebrate this past Friday at Kavarna. It was a ton of fun, and my friend Brian Slusher recorded the show so hopefully I’ll post some live mp3s soon!

On Saturday, Baby and I enjoyed the Harvest Midtown food & wine festival, thanks to a friend giving us free tickets! This is generally an overpriced festival for rich folks. But being that we didn’t have to pay, we rather enjoyed ourselves!

I’ve been to The Porter, the new bar in Little Five Points, twice since they opened a few weeks ago. That’s a lot for me; I’m not much of a bar-goer or beer drinker. However, I’ve vowed to go there at least once a week. Love it love it love it. The food is fantastic, drink selection is the bomb, and the vibe is perfect for me — laid back, but without being a total smoke-infested vibe. AND, they play awesome music, 90s alt. rock stuff like Dinosaur Jr., Social Distortion, Built to Spill. It’s my favorite bar, hands down… so much that I hesitated to write anything about it because I want to keep it to myself (and to Baby, who loves it too!).

Finally, I was saddened to hear that NC music fan extraordinare Cy Rawls passed away on Friday, after battling brain cancer for a few months. I didn’t know Cy, but many of my friends from the Chapel Hill area did. I was keeping up with his ordeal, mainly because I was moved by hearing about the outpouring of support for him, with numerous benefit shows planned around the Triangle area as more musicians heard about his condition (and lack of health insurance). And as someone who’s always tried to do whatever I could to help expose more folks to local music, I know just how important folks like Cy are to what we do. Just google his name and you’ll find so many testaments to how great a person Cy was. Makes me so sad to hear of such a young person (he was 33) being taken from us, but especially when I read of all the wonderful things everyone has to say about him. I guess if there’s an upside to the story, it’s that he truly was able to affect people and leave a very positive memory with everyone who ever knew him. I wish I would have had the chance to meet him… I spent some time at various Triangle-area rock clubs especially when I lived in NC, so chances are our paths crossed in some way but I didn’t even know it. Rest in peace, Cy, even though I never knew you I can appreciate all that you did.