rodman @montereymantaray - Tumblr Blog

MNTRYMNTRY and Sandlot Jory, same night in my garage.

Unfortunate night, while our guitarist and drummer were driving to my house from the city over, they ran over a curb and it completely ruined the car. Our guitarist had driven that car all the way from Pennsylvania to California, and he was driving from the Central Valley to Oakland to paint houses everyday for work, so it completely messed up everything he had going on.

I played my set first and went to get changed, up until then I was using a makeshift guitar strap out of twine and duct tape that I taped stickers with my logo onto: it broke during the first SJ song and I had to fix it, which was a little embarrassing. Why couldn’t I just buy a guitar strap? Because I’m an idiot

My Halloween costume, based on the move ‘Son of Frankenstein’ with a couple pictures for reference. I made the mask a few years ago for a little video project.

Same night at the Halloween show I also played a set with Sandlot Jory. Wasn’t my favorite performance personally but I think the other two guys would say it was their favorite. It was our best crowd for sure, and our loudest set. I lost my pick early on and was just playing it raw with my hand, at some point I felt blood splashing up my arm, at the end my hand was covered in blood and there’s still dry blood on my bass right now. I put a sticker over it to preserve it.

Some pics from a Halloween show I threw in my friends backyard. This was the best turnout I’ve gotten at a show I threw, and the only time I charged entry. I bought my friend a cheap metal detecting wand and he wore a security vest and took money at the gate, it was so funny to me. I had made the witch head and the goblin skeletons specifically for this show and painted them earlier that day. Handful of other rap acts plus second ever set by Sandlot Jory. It was a fun and energetic set and everyone had a good time. My friend was making tacos in the back and nobody wanted any, more for us. I wish I had pictures of that!

This was the first show Sandlot Jory played back in October. It wasn’t that long ago but it feels so long ago. I set up this little Halloween event at our local college and it was a lot of fun playing and it actually sounding good. Our set was only 5 songs so we were gonna play the set twice, we ended up playing the first song again and then deciding to cut it haha.

I had just started busing tables at a “fancy” mexican restaurant so I was wearing my pants and nonslip boots.

These pictures are from the first couple times I hung out with Stephen and Jesse, they had started a band called Sandlot Jory a couple years before. Jesse lived in Pennsylvania and Stephen lived where I do and they met online and made music together, Jesse moved to California to purse the band with Stephen for real and they reached out to me wondering if I wanted to play bass. So we immediately got to work on practicing Jesse’s songs.

I was reluctant at first but so excited because we got along so well and the music was so good. They were both such talented guys.

How I came up with the MNTRYMNTRY witch logo.

I had an idea for an album that was based on an eBay auction I lost where I had actually dodged a bullet because the item was cursed. I’ve always been obsessed with Halloween nostalgia and I collect Halloween antiques, so I wanted to make a classic witch to represent the object I lost. I thought it would be cool to make some rubber witch hands, and of course, she had to be giving the finger.

“Witch” was a good idea because I’ve never seen that done before. As for the actual face in the logo, I realized I needs to start making tik toks since that’s one way to get noticed, people still ask me for advice from my old videos so that’s cool. It was a few days leading up to Halloween so I decided to make a classic goblin. After I put the hands on the face and took a photo to post on Instagram, my dad convinced me it was a really good design so I ran with it and made a bigger version to have a my shows. It’s obviously reminiscent of Edvard Munch’s “The Scream”.

These are some flyers that I made for my bands merch. I designed everything, with the exception of that MNTRYMNTRY Creature From the Black Lagoon design, which was drawn by our guitarist. I’ll make some posts of the different logos and how I came up with them. I usually sell a handful of shirts at each show, I hate taking people’s money though, but I spend a lot of time and money I don’t really have to print them. I see people wearing them at shows though and it’s really cool.

I guess this is my most listened to song on Spotify. Definitely my favorite from this project, one person out there must like it.

I plan to remove this album and re upload it with some songs taken out and a different album cover. It was the first thing I felt confident enough to share.

This is the only show I threw where nobody showed up. The rest of the lineup by this point was always just my friends and they’d just do their rap thing on my loudspeakers. Since no one came and it was in my friends backyard we just did karaoke with my friends projector on that wall. As we were doing that a whole group of kids showed up and we had to tell them the show was already over.

A few days after this show I was asked to join another band, and things changed a lot because it wasn’t just goofing off with my friends anymore. But this was a really fun show. The set was tight for what we were trying to do, and the crowd was good as well.

This was the first show I played with a drummer. Crowd was good that night, garage door was open so people were goofing around outside. I had to keep a fight from happening later on and kick a dude out. Dressed like that. I felt like an idiot.

If you come across my blog, I really encourage you to follow and check out my creative output. I’m open and honest on here because nobody I personally know is on Tumblr. So you get the scoop that no one else has. I promise you would like my music, I play in a band and I record all of our music myself. Feel free to reach out as well. I could really use the support.

Figured I’d end today with a few pictures of me playing with my band from recent shows. I’m the bass player if you didn’t already know.

Here are some pictures I took of different possible compositions with the zombie heads I made for Zombie Tsunami, along with the album cover. The name was inspired by a novel my dad’s friend wrote when I was little. It always stuck with me and felt fitting for the concept. I designed the cover in Gimp using parts of old tiki postcards and menus. Then I printed it out and scanned it to give it a more authentic look.

Musician from Turlock, CA

This is my favorite project I’ve made. It had been in the works for a while but playing in Sandlot Jory inspired me to finish it as a way to have some music I could actually play live and promote with a band. I like it because it’s just garage rock, but I know it transcends that a bit. I’m not the best musician but I can write songs and it’s displayed well on this project. I made the zombie heads for the album cover myself and it ended up looking even better than I had envisioned when I first thought of the concept. As a whole it’s something I feel I can rep the hell out of until the day I die.

This was an album I recorded about a year ago, released last December. I like it a lot, just feels like I was copying a lot of indie stuff I liked when I was a younger. I think it’s a very good album with fun songs and sounds if you’re willing to look past the unoriginality of it.

Trending Blogs

Recently Viewed Blogs

rodman