Getting Back to Work – Finally!

All right – I’ll try to stay focused, but no promises.

November 2006 – we started this band and played our first shows in early 2007.  We were younger, no comment as to whether or not we were dumber then than now, and probably a little bit skinnier.  We have spent a lot of time as a band, arguably all of our time as a band thinking about how hard things are.  How hard it is to play in a band and still move forward with your life.  How hard it is to be successful in this music juggernaut.  You know what?  Things are hard.  But not anymore. 

No, this is not a high school photo.

We love our name in lights.

Pooping face.

We will forever love cargo pants.

This is how we defined sexy.

Chris makes St. Louis his bitch.

Look alive there big fella.

We have spent the past eight years playing music together.  Some nights to no one and some nights to 15,000 people.  We’ve had the great fortune to do every single thing that we had hoped that we’d ever do as a band and more, with the exception of one little thing (topic of a blog post yet to come).  And yet, we’ve seemingly found a way to look back and lament on what we haven’t done. Ha! What more evidence do we need to prove that we are fools?

Maybe it’s the time of year, maybe it’s the place that we’re in as a band or maybe, it’s just growing up (although growing up for us is doubtful).  Many of you may not know that in October of 2013, we TRIED to break up as a band. We all sat in dressing room (and undoubtedly over stayed our welcome to the host venue that evening) and gave ourselves 12 weeks to start writing new material. If no new music emerged, we were calling it quits. 12 weeks turned into 16, 16 into 20, 20 in 30 until finally we call came to the conclusion that we weren’t getting rid of each other that easily, but that we had to get back to work. We couldn’t quit. We couldn’t walk away. We weren’t done yet, despite our best efforts to call it a day. Damnit, we tried. But we couldn’t do it.  Finally new songs began to emerge.  The same new songs that we’re looking forward to rolling out in early 2015.

What does all of this blabbering horseshit have to do with anything?  Well – I’ll tell you.

Doing things like playing in a band is hard.  But do you know what? It’s a hell of a lot easier than waking up every day and going to work, raising your kids, being a good parent, being a half-responsible adult, working on projects at the old homestead, saving enough money to go on vacation or to buy that new car or hell, to go out to a nice dinner with your guest of choice.

I mean seriously.  Who the fuck have we been kidding?  Hopefully we have always been really good about telling you how much we love you and how much we appreciate you coming to our shows, listening to our music, reading our blogs, watching our videos and squeezing us in between the items on the list above which surely doesn’t include a million other things that are important to you.  But honestly, we’ve spent the past eight years wondering how it was that we were going to get to the next step, when in reality – we were taking the steps that were important with you.

Andrew’s Will joined us for a writing session for Too Far to Feel

You had kids, so did some of us. You got married or engaged, so did some of us. You got divorced, we’ve had some of that too. We’ve bought and sold cars, bought and sold houses, taken new jobs, moved from city to city, we’ve lost some friends and gained others. Hopefully we could all say that we’ve grown together. Life can be hard, but not if you navigate it with the right people.

We’ve lost some friends.

We’ve gained new friends and family members.

 

We won’t be so cliché, arrogant or rude as to think that we are writing the soundtrack to your life.  Not in the slightest, but to even be a little bit of noise in the background is pretty damn cool for us.

So thank you.  Thank you for seeing us through the hard times.  Thank you for allowing us progress.  Thank you for providing us hope.  Thank you for making us feel that our countless hours locked in rooms late at night writing songs hasn’t all been in vain.  Thank you for listening.  Thank you for watching.  Thank you for sharing.  Thank you for being there for us.  We only hope that we can provide a fraction to you that you have already provided for us.

2015 will very soon be here…and that’s pretty damn cool.  Let’s kick the effin’ door to the New Year in together (see picture below)!!

KICK PUNCH!

We are working on seven brand spanking new songs.  We haven’t named the new EP but we hope to wrap that up and start sharing some artwork very soon.  We are finalizing some details on a few live shows for the first quarter of 2015 and are incredibly excited about it.  We can’t wait to get out, test some of the new songs, share them with you, hit the road and hear what you’ve been up to as well.

Hope you had a great holiday season!  Hope that you have an unbelievable New Year.

From the absolute bottom of our hearts.  Thank you.  From here on out – we’re taking no prisoners.  It’s us against the world. We Borrow from Tomorrow no longer.  We’re grateful for today.

With that being said…kick this mutha in!

Like, Follow, Share, Etc…

Interweb
Facebook
Tweet Machine
Instagram

Andrew

Queen Latifah

So, as we continue to navigate the depths of social media, music, the interweb and God knows what else it takes to get people to listen to our music…we stumbled across this little gem on our SoundCloud account.

She’s badass.

We did this whole band thing backwards.  Start a band, write some songs and hope that people like you.  Five years down the road, we’ve got some pretty hot and sexy music, but have just now scratched the surface as to what it’s really going to take to hit the masses, share our masterpieces and eventually conquer our goals of world domination.

We figured this was a step in the right direction.

Thanks Queen Latifah.  You’re one bad Larry.

An Oldie but a Goodie

While we’re busy writing some new music, we don’t want to disappear from the face of the planet.

Speaking of disappearing from the face of the planet…has anyone seen this?  Some of the most spectacular abandoned places in the world.  Incredibly interesting.

Anyway, I digress.

We’ve played a few shows, had a few laughs over the past few years and we wanted to share them.  We were saving this for a rainy day.  While (at least where we’re at) it’s not raining so much.  In fact, we’re looking at about 8 inches of snow on the ground on our way to 10 or 12.

Speaking of which…I have seen more pictures of grocery stores and empty bread aisles in the past 24 hours than I can ever remember.  Please, explain this craze to me.

I digress again…

Here’s a video of our song “Shy Away.”  We recorded this song in Nashville at the SAE studios with our good friend Kyle Ferguson along with the help of Brett Baird.  We knocked this thing out in about two days and had an absolute blast doing it.  The trip and recording sessions also served as inspiration for our song “Nashville” which was later to be recorded for Too Far to Feel. 

Anyway…enough dilly dally.  Here it is.  Enjoy and as usual, please feel free to share, but only if you like it.

Rock in the New Year – Part Deux | Kessler Mansion New Year Gig Changes!

Let's rock this mug, eh?

Oh loyal Botons, we’ve got some good news and some bad news. Bad news first:

As of about 5:30 pm today (Friday), we were informed that the Kessler Mansion/Hollywood NYE party would either need to be moved or cancelled due to some last-minute zoning issues that arose between the event organizers and the Kessler Mansion owner. We were as surprised as you are, no doubt. We can assure you that the issues were unforeseen and far beyond the control of your old friends, BoTo, Mardelay, DJ OhBeOne and friends. But, we were not about to let you down…or let you ring in the New Year without a little BoTo. So before we get to the good part, let’s take care of business first. Here’s the deal with the Kessler Mansion show:

– The show at the Kessler Mansion has been cancelled.
– Refunds will be processed through the Event Brite site and will be processed tonight (Friday night) and according to Event Brite, refunds may take up to 4 days to process depending on your financial institution.
– We are terribly sorry for the inconvenience.

So, that’s the bad news. The good news is that, we tried our best not to let you down. Our offices full of staff (that’s a massive exaggeration) have been working since we got the word to make sure that we could offer the BoTo loyal another good party alternative and a little BoTo. So…here’s what we’ve got!!!

We were able to track down (through some good old BoTo faithful) some of the fine folks that are hosting the Masquerade Ball downtown at Union Station. They were kind enough to find a home for us performing between 8:30 – 10:00 pm. Here are the details on this one:

– Tickets are NO LONGER AVAILABLE TO THE PUBLIC…but, organizers have held a limited number of tickets for anyone that wants to come to see Borrow Tomorrow.
– Tickets are available at the door, for $49.00 (cash or charge), but you have to mention that you’re coming to see BoTo to get access to the tickets set aside.
– Tickets include access to the party hosted by Dave Smiley, costume contests (with cash prizes), door prizes, face painting, a magician and in addition to Borrow Tomorrow, a number of other great bands!
– Unlike the Kessler party, the Masquerade Ball does not include drinks or food. However, the Masquerade Ball will offer reasonably priced drinks. We hear that food will not be available, so you’ll need to feast on BoTo.
– Learn more about the Masquerade Ball here.

Seriously, as much as we hate that there was a change in plans and we do apologize sincerely on behalf of all involved, we wanted to be sure that if you wanted to party, that we’d be there to help you. We’d love to see you there and want to thank you for a great 2011 and here’s hoping that we’ll be able to kick 2012 off on the right foot with you!!

P.S. Our set will be badass.

New Vocab Term: Progress

We’ve been fairly quiet as of late with the exception of Mr. Jerles’ most recent blog post. Probably appropriate considering the past few weeks have been filled with recording, gigging to pay for said recording and the beginning of what will soon be the finishing touches on our first full-length album.

Sample album art.

As Chris alluded to in our most recent blog post, we are about three to four sessions away from having every single instrument for every single track “in the can” as they say. As I take a few minutes and look back not only at the past three or four months but the past three or four years, it’s hard to really say what an amazing feeling we’re experiencing right now as we approach the finish line on the yet to be titled project. For lack of a better term, a dream come true.

This band has been riddled with mistakes, long nights, tough gigs, etc. We’ve had more than our fair share of car trouble, sleepless nights, stolen gear, flawed execution, scheduling conflicts and not to mention the fact that every time we play, our gear gets packed up and set up twice. I mention all of the above not because we want a pity party. We don’t. We chose to do this because we wanted to. We will spare you the details on all of the trials and tribulations mentioned above (at least until the Behind the Music airs) for the sake of your interest and our time and cut right to the point.

Chris mentioned in his last blog that the beginning of this album really dates back to about 18 months ago when we finished up our latest EP Retrospective. We had recorded four songs with our great friend Kyle Ferguson and his (and soon to be our) good friend Brett Baird. As we all packed up and drove home from Nashville, Tennessee each of the four of us will probably tell you a different story as to where the dream for the next album began. I’ll do my best to do all four of us justice.

Randall will tell you that shortly after returning from Nashville, he felt so comfortable working with Kyle (Ferg as we call him) that we needed to find a way to get him involved in our next project. If I remember correctly, we hadn’t been any more than 15 minutes outside the city limits when he told me this. Mind you, we didn’t have a single idea for a song for said “album” at that point.

Robert in the control room working out a part.

Robert will probably tell you that recording an album was always the goal. We talked about it very early on in this band and although we always knew that we wanted to do it, we didn’t ever really know how we were going to get it done. As the idea came together and as we realized that we might have a shot at achieving this once lofty goal, Robert came through big. He started writing songs, writing lyrics, coming up with ideas for guitar parts, hand claps, wood blocks, tambourines, etc. He really grasped the idea of this project and ran with it.

 

Chris may tell you something similar to that of Robert and Randall. We all left Nashville with a renewed vigor and desire to make this thing work. I probably couldn’t tell you a lot about Chris’ thoughts on this project and as I sit here reflecting on it, I wish that I could. Most of the conversations that I had with Chris regarding this project were about the overall feel, pushing him to keep writing songs, discussing the direction of the album and helping him keep the creative process moving while we found ways to book shows, cover the costs of keeping this thing moving and keep everyone out of jail.

Deep in studio thought.

I don’t think that any of the four of us can take credit for the overall feel, vibe or direction of this disc because I think that all four of us should. Countless hours of writing in a barn (literally a storage unit), rehearsal in Randall’s basement, working on new songs at our favorite rehearsal space and the arguments, hugs and priceless moments that ensue brought us up to the point where it was time to start laying tracks.

Who knew that 4th grade 2 on 2 baseball with ghost runners would turn into all of this?

Shortly before Christmas, we started recording music. You’ve seen all the updates so we won’t walk you through day by day what it took to get this thing done, but all we have left to do is this: 1) Robert is going to work on guitar tracks for one more song, 2) Chris is going to play some keys for a couple more songs 3) We are going to a special undisclosed location in which Chris will record piano and vocals in one afternoon to close out the album. 4) We will name what we’re dubbing arrogantly our “first masterpiece” and 5) we’ll select pictures and design for the cover, insert and disc art and 6) we’ll turn it over to you.

Tuning drums before the Saturday sessions.

I suppose that what I’m getting at, in more than enough words, is that recording an “album” has been a dream of mine for years. Spending time in the studio with your band mates who are essentially either family or lifelong friends creating something that you all together have created from scratch is a pretty incredible feeling. We set out to do a few things when we started this project. We wanted to write an album that first and foremost had an overall feel. We wanted it to be a compilation of songs that while all different, were all the same in that they told the story of us. And by us, we mean you. We wanted it to tell the story of all of us. We spent an awful lot of time discussing what kind of songs we wanted to put on it and decided that the only songs we wanted were good ones.

 

The disc will have 13 songs that are filled to the brim with the heart and soul of this band. This thing has been built from the ground up. It has been taken apart and put back together and here in the next couple of months, we will be very excited to share it with you. Stay tuned, get excited. Many of you we will probably be asking to take a sneak peek at it and if you’ve read this far into this blog, we’re hoping that you’ll listen to it.

The man behind the curtain. Ferg-a-mania.

Luckily, rarely are we this serious. So along with the new disc, get ready for new videos, new pictures, some new exciting gigs and more of our pretty faces. Cheers!

Vogue/Homecoming

Ahh friends…think back to a simpler time. The days of old where few things mattered more than getting together with your friends on a Friday night. Think back to a time when as long as you had your lady friend, a terrible movie and no parents, then it was on. See: Hot High School Heavy Petting Preparation Material Go to that time, whether it be in college or high school, when you celebrated homecoming.

For us, in many ways, playing the Vogue this coming Friday is very much a homecoming. Although there are many more worries, probably just as many for you as there are us now-a-days, many more balls to juggle and far fewer minutes to spend doing nothing other than trying to figure out what to do with your friends, we want to take you to a place where none of that matters…at least for 90 minutes or so!

The past few months have been a busy few for your old friends in BoTo. In backwards chronology: Countless hours in the studio, countless hours writing new songs, what seems like countless hours on the road, not to mention the countless number of times we load and unload the gear! Important to note here however is that countless, at least in this instance, is not intended to have any negative connotation. This is what we live for!

While playing shows in Chicago, Kalamazoo, Terre Haute, St. Louis, Cincinnati, shooting videos here or there, practicing in anything from a storage shed to a basement to a lavish rehearsal studio and driving the many miles in between, the one thing that has been discussed more than anything else over the past few months has been……..coming home.

We finally get to do it, this coming Friday. If you read the Facebook or twitter posts, you know that we’ve been busy. You know that we’re working on new material and you know that we are about to enter the bullfighting ring in which we will make fame and fortune our collective bitch. Before all that…we’ll play for you and your friends in our own backyard.

I could try to tell you how excited we are to be back home and what a thrill it is to play again for our family, friends and friends of friends, but I still probably wouldn’t do it justice. So instead of rambling on for countless more paragraphs (this is where countless does have negative connotation), I’m going to do something much more fun. I’m going to invite you to come to the show, bring as many or as few of your friends as you like (just so long as you come) and forget about what you’ve got going on. Forget about what you have to do on Saturday. Go out to dinner with your friends, come see the show with your friends, go out in the Rip-Nasty after the show with your friends. Make this Friday about what music is all about…taking you someplace else. It’ll be fun…we promise!

Here are a few demos…click on the links to have a listen. These are rough demos that the lovely and talented Chris Jerles has put together. These songs are just a small preview as to what you’ll hear this Friday. We made the set list and we’re looking at no fewer than 5 brand new songs. We share these not so that you’ll know what to expect on the new album, but because selfishly, we’d love to hear and see you singing along! When you hear them Friday, you’ll start to get a feel for what the new album is going to be like.

Basement Song
Brand New Start
Born with a Broken Wing
How Could You Let Me Down
Sometime Back in the ’70’s

Oh don’t worry…we’ll play some old favorites too. If there is something that you’ve just gotta hear this Friday…drop us a line and let us know. As long as you pay $5.00 to come and see us, that makes you the boss. What do you want to hear? We’d ask what you want to see, but Andrew would then think that is an invitation to do some stupid Jim Morrison shenanigans. Anyway…

Check it out…looking forward to seeing you on Friday! Much love,

BoTo

Outtake Video

So, as I type this afternoon, we’re into day six in the studio. Things are moving along very nicely and we’ve started working on bass tracks. As I sit here and listen to the tracks get played back, I figured that instead of sitting and doing nothing all day, I’d make a funny little compilation video of some of our ridiculous antics.

A few things that you should keep in mind while viewing.

1) The answer to your question is, yes. We are all grown adults.
2) That answer to your next question is also, yes. We are actually being fairly productive and you might see the finished product before the time I turn 40.
3) The answer to your next question is, no. I will not tell you how old I am now.
4) Fortunately, this is only a small glimpse of what goes on behind closed doors. I sifted through about 4 hours of video to track down these four minutes. Only adding validity to the theory that people in bands are losers…at least this band anyway. This video is just from the last three days in the studio. Days 1-3, thank God, belong to Chris at the present time and while he parties in Canada…we’ll spare you more of this rubbish.
5) We hope you like it.

Being in a band for us is hopefully like listening to music for you. It’s an opportunity for us to do something that we absolutely love. We like to make music hopefully as much as you like to listen to it. We’ll gladly share all of the funny stuff that we do and keep all of the hours of us sitting at our instruments to ourselves. It’s all part of our ploy to get you to fall madly in love with our charm. That being said, what you’d find if you were to come sit next to Chris and I during the next couple of video editing sessions is that things are progressing nicely. In between the silly antics and ridiculous-ness, there are some really amazing takes being laid down. Day by day, each song takes shape and gets a little bit closer to being the one that will undoubtedly become the most played song on your iPod.

If you don’t hear from us again before the New Year…have a great one. Be safe, have a great time, and drink one for us. We’ll be back after the New Year cramming more music, tour dates and mindless videos down your throat before you know it!

All the best & happy New Year!

Andrew

Studio – 0, BoTo – 1

Hope you all had an amazing holiday. We spent the final days leading up to the holiday laying down the first round of tracks for the forthcoming album, which to date has yet to be named.

So, when you put together a studio from scratch, this is kind of how it plays out…read one if you dare.

Day 1: This is the toughest. We started at 11:00 am this past Monday and setup gear, worked on microphone placement, trying to get some sounds and more or less worked through the endless list of challenges and issues that present themselves as the “studio” gets put together. Fortunately, with Producer Ferg and Engineer Ferg (yes, he does both) at the helm, things came together much better than anticipated.

Ferg is cold. Randall cuddled him later.

Producer Ferg is busy with computers fixing all our shitty tracks. Just kidding...we're referencing the often used Ben Folds line.

By 10:00 pm, we were laying down drum tracks until about 3:00 am.

Day 2: Drums all day! The first night we were able to do about a song and a half…we were just getting warmed up on “Curtain Call” when it was time to call it quits. Day two we came in ready to rock. Andrew belted through about five more songs and then we called it an early day. Chris was sport enough to stick around all day and help lay down scratch vocals and guitar tracks. Sorry…Day two is all Andrew and therefore boring. Except for when he would get a bit giddy and want to see more of himself on camera…big shocker.

For a guy that has chosen to spend time behind the rest of the band, he sure takes every opportunity to be out front.

Day 3: Things really got exciting on this one. We for the most part finished up the drum tracks for the eight songs that we know are going to make the album. Some of the fun stuff came later in the day when we worked on the tracks for “Born with a Broken Wing.” We easily spent more time on this one layering as many as 25 different drum tracks than we did any other of the songs. Banging on trash cans, rim knocks on the toms, egg shakers, tambourine and more! We pushed through this and eventually wrapped up drums. At about 11:30 pm, we elected to push through into rhythm guitar. This, for us, is where things get fun. Chris belted out a number of tracks. Nailed them, each and every time. We got into “Let me down” around 3:00 am, about the same time that Andrew started to fall asleep on the couch. After hearing the second take, everyone got their second wind and we finished the last rhythm guitar track (at least on Chris’s magical tele) at about 6:00 am.

Everything to this point has been simply “electric.” Ferg has had some amazing ideas and is pushing the band pretty hard. We’re exploring some things that we’ve never tried before, we’re bringing Gracie out for inspiration, we’re taking a couple of days off for the holiday and we’re back in business this week.

In between takes, drummer cuddles his beefy dog.

We are still a ways away from being able to share it with you, but as we listened to one last take of “Let Me Down” and turned off the lights at 6:00 am on Christmas Eve, the only term to describe what we were hearing was unanimously, “Rock and Roll!”

We hope you that everyone had an absolutely amazing holiday. We’ll be sending out some updates on upcoming shows…be sure to come out. We’ll be debuting some of the songs that will be on the forthcoming effort. We’re looking forward to seeing you soon. Stay tuned for more updates!

BoTo

News

What up?

First and foremost, wanted to thank everyone that made it out to Martyr’s this past weekend in Chicago.  We loved the venue, loved the crowd and had a blast playing with Surrender Dorothy and On The Run.  Hoping to get back up that way soon!

We’re dark this week but coming back strong next weekend when we return to Hammerhead’s in Jasper.  This place is a blast.  Some of our favorite moments include the removal of shirts, the maestro and some incredibly fantastic dancing.  Oddly enough, those memories are all from the same person…just think what the rest of the show is like!  Anyway – looking forward to hitting up Hammerhead’s again on the 20th.  Oh ya – there are a couple new cover songs making their way into the set list…it’s going to be sick nasty.

Lots of things in the works right now that we’re very excited about.  We’re currently putting the finishing touches on our forthcoming EP.  This was a very special project for us that was recorded in Nashville.  We had the amazing pleasure of working with longtime friend, Kyle Ferguson who produced, mixed and engineered the project.  Nothing like combining some of lifes biggest loves (music and friendship) into one.  The name and contents of the EP will be coming soon.  Hope you’re looking forward to it…we had a blast making it and we hope that you’ll connect with it as much as we have.

Chris has been working hard on a special little video to a previously unreleased/unperformed song entitled “Nashville.”  It was actually written (or at least partially written) about our time spent recording the new EP.   We’re hoping to bust that out in the next few days…please check it out and share it with your friends. 

Last but not least – we’re working hard on some new tunes, producing our first professional video, wrapping up the EP and of course – performing live.  In a bit of a retrospective here – I think that performing and connecting with all of you makes all of the hard work, band meetings, long hours in rehearsal and travel worth it.  We really appreciate everyone’s support and hope to continually keep things interesting for you. 

All the best – hope you’re well – come see us sometime soon,

Andrew

February Made Me Shiver

Tonight we rolled 79000 miles on the band’s incredible ship the USS Boto. Admiral Andrew Newport celebrated a perfect 79000 miles showing on the odometer as we stopped south of Crowne Point Indiana to de-ice the ship [watch the video].
It’s been a long trip in what’s been the worst storm we’ve seen this year. I’m sure everyone will be happy to see the Marytr’s crowd and forget about this long wintery trip.
Cheers to 79,000 and all the good things coming in 2010.

In Music,
Rando