SECRET SHOW!

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Friday, July 4, 2008 "SECRET SHOW!":

Brand New Sin has a side project called The Undesirables. We host open mic night here in Syracuse every Thursday night at Mac’s Bad Art Bar. We’ve been doing our open mic since July of 2006 (originally at Station 58) whenever we are home from tour.

Week to week there are new faces, new bands, guest karaoke singers, young, old, male, female, bikers, yuppies, metal-heads, punk-rockers, radio junkies, rich, poor: a cross-demographic of the Syracuse test-market. What better way to showcase your new songs than to sign up for the open mic night and get on stage and jam? We have some regulars that sit in every week. Every now and then an unknown band surprises us. We also get some unknown out of state musicians just passing through or visiting relatives. It’s exciting and different every week.

Can you keep a secret?

That’s tough sometimes. Especially this secret: Brand New Sin is slated to debut Joe Sweet to the world tomorrow at a party in the Utica area…but it's too late for a debut…WE PLAYED A SURPRISE SHOW LAST NIGHT AT OPEN MIC! Sorry if you missed it. Don’t be mad. That was the hardest part of keeping this one a secret – we wanted everyone to be there to see it but we did NOT want the hype. I love the way it went down. No one knew. There wasn’t an army of haters standing with their arms crossed thinking, “impress me”, with their presumptuous attitude of, “I’m not going to like this new guy”.

There was no introduction or planning. The Undies played their usual first set to warm up the crowd and proceeded to let the next band play (which happened to be Schmied; Grant, the lead singer of The Undesirables, is the drummer). Once they were done, I got on stage and prepared my drums while Kenny, Chuck and Kris were tuning. Joe Sweet has been in the local news recently and our fans know what he looks like. After witnessing him in the bar all night I’m sure some people figured it out. Most of the crowd assumed that The Undesirables would jam again until Joe walked on stage. Suddenly, the pit in front of the stage started to fill up with anxious and curious fans…

Did You ever wonder…

Deep breath…here we go - 1, 2, 3, 4…………well, all I can say is that there is nothing more refreshing than playing your own tunes after a 6 month hiatus. Two seconds into “Did You” we had the crowd. I know they were still skeptical but the energy was growing into a fireball. By the time we got to the chorus Joe Sweet was a unanimous hit to the unsuspecting crowd that didn’t know what hit them. Kenny let his hair down (holy shit he has hair). In public, I don’t recall seeing his actual hair length since he had a Mohawk. Who knew that it was as long as mine? He thrashed out hard! Hell yeah! Joe Sweet didn’t say much. I think it was 4 songs in and he said, “Thank you. You’re too kind” to the excited and appreciative fans who seemed more than happy to welcome Mr. Sweet into the family.

He’s in. “you’d better hold on to this guy!” – BNS fan.

I heard that the strongest song we played last night was “Know Yourself”. That’s a given since Joe wrote the lyrics and cadences to that song and he’s pretty much singing covers for the old Brand New Sin stuff. Give it time, they will become his own. We’re just scratching the surface here with Joe Sweet. Wait until we write and tour for a couple of years. I can’t imagine the music we are about to create.

It was really intense watching the first few rows of people singing all the words. I guess being dormant skews your perception of the band you’re in. I almost forgot what we had done in the past as if I watched it on TV as a documentary of some ‘has-been’, “where are they now” band that used to be. I almost didn’t remember that there are people who grew to love our band and couldn’t wait until we were back in action. It was also overwhelming to witness the high energy coming from my band members. I hadn’t felt or seen it since the last tour we did with The Cult. We just recharged the batteries!

So, if you missed it I’m sorry. No offense.

Stay tuned…