New EP art, and the work of Jessica Rae Gordon

So yesterday on my Facebook page I debuted the track list for my new EP "Sunday. Quiet.". 4 tracks, ukulele and voice, recorded by Ryan Warner and mastered by Shawn Jurek.  They are as follows:

1. Love Death and Other Ailments
2. Tranzac Club
3. Boxing Day
4. Sunday Quiet

Today is the day to debut the EP cover!  Designed by my long time artistic collaborator Jessica Rae Gordon!  But first here's some work we've done together in the past:




Green Room EP 2006

Like Birds Too Tired to Fly 2010

Stray Birds EP 2011

And finally, 


Sunday. Quiet. 2013

Well, what do you think?! 

Mudtown Fest, and Craft Beer Fest

Hey there, just wanted to let you know about a couple exciting shows coming up in the next few weeks.  First up, Mudtown Music Festival! 

Formerly OtherFolk, this wonderful fest looks like it'll be one of the highlights of the year!  They asked me to specifically play an all Ukulele set, so it'll be a first!  It's the weekend of Aug 9-10 in Owen Sound, and you can get tickets here: http://mudtownrecords.com/mudtown/2013/tickets

Also playing are Stars, Hannah Georges, Daniel Romano, Weather Station, EON's, Zues, Young Galazy, Del Bel, Wax Mannequin, Legato Vipers, Megan Hamilton and more!  I'm in good company.

On Aug 11th, I'll be back in Toronto for the Craft Beer Festival being held at Steam Whistle Brewery!  I've been to this as a beer lover and it's a great time.  Some of Ontario's finest breweries all in one place, and to top it up, live music!  Not sure the set times, but I'll keep you posted.  You can get tickets for that right here: http://www.craftbeerfest.ca/#tickets

Oh one more thing, keep your eyes out, because this weekend I plan on filming a couple videos with a certain popular music video site.  More info soon.  Bye.

Top Ten Fan Favourites! (So Far)

Well, I'm just over half way through these Ukulele videos!  I honestly didn't think I'd get this far, in general, I'm a really lazy man.  But I'm really enjoying it, and apparently, so are you!  I asked around and compiled some of the fan favourites.  There were a lot of ties, so in those cases I just went ahead and put them in an arbitrary order (remember that laziness thing I mentioned earlier?).   Here we go!  Let me know if you agree with everyone else!

10. "Fish And Bird"  by Tom Waits
    
    Featuring the wonderful Sara Ciantar on Accordion, this is a nice little Tom Waits tune we performed for week 6





11. "If I Could Only Win Your Love" by the Louvin Brothers
    
    This one is a lot of fun, we really did this last minute out in the cold in front of Habits Bistro! the first of 3 appearances by Melissa Dalton! Week 13
    



12. "Love Song" by The Cure
    
    A song for Valentines day!  Week 5 with the Cure!
    
    



13. "Make You Feel My Love" by Bob Dylan
    
    Week 21 was the end of my Bob Dylan tribute month.  I decided to cover this beautiful little song from "Time Out of Mind".
    
    



14. "Crying" by Roy Orbison
    
    For some reason I thought I'd start this whole project off with this Roy Orbison song.  A tough one on the pipes, hopefully my voice has improved a bit.



15. "Happiness is a Warm Gun" by The Beatles
    
    I'd been hoping to get together with Olenka for a while, I finally cornered her in the back room of the Rivoli and recorded this for week 25!



16. "Mushaboom" by Feist
    
    Inspired by the Arts and Crafts X show earlier this summer, I tackled this Feist tune! 



17. "Everybody Wants to Rule The World" by Tears for Fears
    
    Week 15, this is one of my favorites to play, I was surprised how adaptable this was to the Ukulele! I also fell in love with Tears for Fears after this.



18. "Teach Your Children" by Crosby Stills Nash and Young
    
    One of my favourites as well!  Getting together with Graydon and Laura was amazing.  We ran this a couple times, and we have a wonderful outtake from this session that I will have to put up soon! It's also the only hug recorded... so far.



19.  "Mr. Tambourine Man" by Bob Dylan
    
    This was a really great session.  Mellisa made her second appearance, and this time we added Lara Martin to the mix!  Love these girls, their voices are perfect!!

Well, thanks for watching! And keep checking back for more at my blog:

Mudtown Music Festival

Hey there, some great news, I've been asked to play the Mudtown Music Festival in August!  Formerly known as OtherFolk this wonderful festival takes place in Owen Sound on the weekend of August 9th, 10th.

I'll be performing at the Bleeding Carrot on the 10th at 5:30pm.  There are almost 50 bands playing through out those 2 days, including a few of my favorites Daniel Romano, Weather Station, Stars, Zeus, Hannah Georges and more!  You can see and downlod the whole schedule at this link right here!

They have been following my Ukulele blog and asked me to perform an all Uke set!  So get ready for that!

Here are some of the new videos in case you've missed any.  Please paruse my blog www.notmy52songs.tumblr.com !


 Teach Your Children by CSNY featuring Laura and Graydon from Graydon James and the Young Novelists  
Mushaboom by Feist        Trouble Weighs a Ton by Dan Auerbach

New Album plans.

Hey guys, quick note. After seeing Hayden, Timber Timbre, Dan Mangan, Broken Social Scene, etc last night, I found myself inspired to get working on this next album. As you know, albums cost a bit of money to do right, so I've been thinking of a few ways to try and raise the funds. One thing I've done is from now until the next album is out, my full length debut album and EP are both a pay what you can model. So if you want to chip in a buck that's cool, but if you want to give me 100 bucks that's even cooler. Anyways, albums can be bought in person (NXNE maybe?) or digitally at my Bandcamp site: http://shawnclarke.bandcamp.com/

That's it! Thanks for your time, please share with friends if you think they'd dig the music! And trust me, the next album is going to be great.

NXNE

NXNE!  My third year in a row, finds me at C'est What on Thursday June 13th.  12am!  Should be a great night, I have a special band playing with me that night, come check it out!

Canadian Music Week (and other things)

Hey!  It's been a fair bit of time since I last posted, I've been lazily making my way through the winter, and now it's time to start focusing.

First thing first, Canadian Music Week.  This is my first time at one of Canada's finest music festivals, and I'm pretty excited.  I'm planning on seeing lots of shows, talks, etc.  I'm also playing my own showcase, Wednesday March 20th at 10:00pm sharp, I'll be at the Cameron House, come on out if you can!

Next, my Ukulele project.  For Christmas I received a Ukulele, and took it upon myself to learn a song a week for the entire year.  I'm surprisingly up to week 9 and going strong!  So far I've covered Elvis, Hayden, The Cure, Irvin Berlin and others.  You can check out my project here at my Tumblr site.

Tune in Monday morning at 11am for a new song, in the mean time here's the last one I did, Bass Song by Hayden:




Hope all is well! Talk soon.

New Years Edition! News and Top 10 list!

I have a couple things to address today, first off, happy new year!  I had a lovely time hanging with friends on a horse farm in Coldwater Ontario.  Good times.  Also, for Christmas this year I got this wonderful little guy:

 

Yup, my very own Ukulele!  And it's all I've been playing for the last 2 weeks.  I love it so much, that tomorrow night (Sunday Jan 7th) I'll be playing a show at the Holy Oak, with only the Ukulele.  I'll play some old standards, maybe a couple Beatles tunes.  Should be fun! 

That brings me to my New Years resolution.  I started a new Tumblr account called "52 Songs Written By Other People".  (Click the title to go to the page).  I plan on learning a new songs every week and putting a video up!  I'm the worst at learning songs, so this will be a pretty big challenge.  Tune in this Monday, hopefully I'll have it ready!

Now finally, my end of year tradition, I give you my top 10 albums of 2012 (in no particular order).  Please check these out if you haven't all ready.

The Mouthbreathers- Appetite for Deconstruction

Godspeed You! Black Emperor- 'Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend!

  

Patrick Watson- Adventures in Your Own Backyard

Dirty Projectors- Swing Low Magellan

Lisa Bozikovic- This is How We Swim 

Grizzly Bear- Shields

  Evening Hymns- Spectral Dust

Olenka & the Autumn Lovers- Hard Times

Frank Ocean- Channel Orange

The Tallest Man on Earth- No Leaving Now

What were some of your favorites?  Leave them in the comments, I would love to hear some good new music! 

Tour and free NEW music!

Hey there people, how are things? Just wanted to update you on some very cool new news in the Shawn Clarke universe.

First and most important, I'm going on Tour! This is my second solo tour, you'll remember my first one was... quaint.  This time I'm bringing some friends along.  I had the pleasure of meeting Aaron Mangoff a few years back when I played a show in my home town of Orillia.  We communicated through the interwebs over a few years, and finally played a show together.  H'e really great.  Voice of an angel, that man has.  Christopher Thompson, I only had the pleasure of meeting a few weeks ago, but I've been checking out his music for a few months.  He's young, but plays the guitar like a man twice his age. 

And so the three of us will sally forth, on a 12 date tour.  Where?  Well, maybe this poster will answer your question:

2nd thing, the free music part.  To commemorate this tour, the three of us put together a little sampler of our music.  For me that includes two brand new recordings!  "Zombies, Clash, Cars and Kinks" and "A Song of Peace" were recorded by my good friend Ryan Warner.  You can listen and download them at http://autumntour.bandcamp.com/ or click the widget to the left of your screen!

Hopefully we'll see you in one of these towns.  If you have questions, don't hesitate to email me at shawnclarkemusic@gmail.com

See ya soon!

Indie Week

Hey there, long time no see. I just wanted to let you know about a great event happening this week. It's called... Indie Week! A bunch of great young bands perform for industry people, with one band going on to perform at Indie Week in Ireland! Sounds pretty good. While I don't normally go in for the pit bands against each other model, I feel like this is going to be a great chance to meet new people, and new acts.

 My first show is this Thursday, Oct 11th, at 9:15pm sharp. These things go by the book, so be there for 9!

And, in celebration of Indie Week, I have my 6 song free downloadable sampler available! You can download it to the left of the page, or by clicking on this Indie Week picture:

Also in Shawn Clarke news, I will be doing a 3 province tour in November! Keep checking back over the next week or so, and I'll have the dates up!!