Signals Midwest @signalsmidwest - Tumblr Blog

We are touring Japan for the first time in February and March of 2024. Tickets are on sale here.

The entire tour is with ANORAK! from Tokyo, and we're very lucky to be playing with a multitude of talented bands at every show. This is a dream tour and we are endlessly grateful to HAJIME / THE LOST BOYS and Shore & Woods Recordings for inviting us over. There are also some other suprises that we get to tell you about soon. Happy new year! - MAX / SIGGIES

#signals midwest

We are going to the UK in April with our friends Misfortune Cookie. It’s been six years. All tickets here: https://linktr.ee/signalsmidwest

#signals midwest

what’s up y’all?! i never use this thing anymore. in fact, before today (january 13, 2020) we hadn’t posted on this site since 2017. wild.

the one thing i still like tumblr for is its archival capabilities. since we started this site in 2010(?), i’ve been keeping track of every show we’ve ever played. as of writing this, we’re at 409 shows. that ain’t bad for never having had a booking agent or a manager.

anyway, in the very unlikely scenario that you happen to follow us here but not anywhere else, we put out a record called PIN a few months ago on Lauren Records from Los Angeles, California. we’re really proud of it and we think you might like it. listen / stream / purchase here: http://smarturl.com/signalsmidwestpin

so yeah. 11+ years in, still a band. i live in philly. i work a lot, and am making music both on my own and with some wonderful folks out here. steve and jeff are holding it down in cleveland. steve’s working with animals. jeff just bought a house. ryan has been playing in our band in some form or another since 2016 and officially joined us on bass in 2017.

things haven’t been easy, but they have been good. we make it work.

that’s all i got. be good out there, take care of each other, vote bigots out of power and drink plenty of water. happy new decade. <3 max / signals midwest

Hey guys I saw you last night at the Beat Kitchen with the Smith Street Band and you were AWESOME! I just wanted to know what your setlist was so I could try to track down a couple of songs I really liked

this was 3 years ago so we probably played Golden, West Side, Alchemy, Painter, Tensions, Monarchs, Limnology and Quiet Persuader

looks like this acct hasnt been active in a minute but if you dont mind, i was just wondering what the chords were on sanctuary city. love the tunes, thank you guys so much for this album

i just logged in for the first time in 18 months. sanctuary’s pretty easy. tune down a half step. i pretty much use B, G#m, F#, C#m and E bar chords for the whole thing. the intro riff is 221xxx and then 01xxxx 02xxxx 06xxxx. once you’re there you can get the rest of it. i’m sorry i hate tabbing things out.

please come to brazil

please fly us to brazil

Hi! I'm with ACRN Media, and I'm writing a preview for the show you're playing in Athens next week. Would you have time to answer a few questions for me?

oops, this is from three years ago. yes we have some time.

figwithbands

Fig with Signals Midwest (Cleveland, OH)

hi folks.

max here. i made a solo "mini-record" called "There's A Time For Everything". it's up for pay-what-you-can on Bandcamp right now.

https://maxwellstern.bandcamp.com/…/theres-a-time-for-every…

please download it (no minimum price!) and share it!

thanks for listening.

<3 maxy

#maxwell stern #signals midwest #max stern #cleveland #philadelphia

Gotta be honest: I could kinda give a shit about year-end lists. There's a massive amount of good music being produced all the time. However, this was an especially tough year for a lot of people that we know and many, many more that we don't. Music has always been a means of catharsis for us, and that became especially pertinent over the last 12-18 months. We're very grateful to anyone who checked out "At This Age" this year. When I listen to it, it continues to feel like a realization of everything we've been working towards creating for nearly a decade now. If you haven't listened, you can do so here: https://signalsmidwest.bandcamp.com/album/at-this-age-2 The record is available pretty much everywhere through this portal-like website: http://lnk.to/atthisage Lastly: Other than a few small tours and local things, I don't think we have a clear idea of what's next. We do this ourselves, at the beck and call of no outside agency. Real life has been hitting hard lately. New jobs, new cities, new paths. It's healthy and exciting and challenging and more than a little sad. I do know that this band has been a massively positive outlet over the last 8 years and we still have more to say. Looking forward to figuring it out. - max / smw Photo by Tommy Calderon

#signals midwest #tiny engines #at this age

“At This Age” Track-By-Track

I wrote this a few months ago and it never went up anywhere. If you’re interested in a pretty in-depth look at our most recent record, read below: Our goal with this record was pretty clear from the beginning: we wanted to write concise, energetic songs that didn't meander in the way that some of our earlier material does. There was a lot of self-policing, but we also had an amazing team of people helping us realize that goal: Evan Weiss produced it and helped us out a ton with structures and arrangements in pre-production. Matt Jordan engineered it and was an absolute genius Zen master in the studio. Adam Beck assistant-engineered, ran a few vocal sessions, drum-teched, contributed to arrangements and was a truly vital part of the process. Lyrically, I wanted to examine how people progress through the world while maintaining connections to the things that excited them when they were young. I invented a few characters and storylines, which was the first time I'd ever done anything like that. There is a character named "Ana" who surfaces in a few songs. She's kind of an amalgamation of a few people I've known who have left the comforts of home for an uncertain future as a means to force a personal change or progression.

1. You're Gonna Be Golden This was one of the first songs we wrote for the record, and adheres to a classic A/B/A/B/C structure in a way that a lot of our other songs don't. I think it really set a tone for what we were trying to do. Starting with a bunch of songs off of Light On The Lake, I started using an open tuning (open C#, to be specific), which means that you can play all of the strings without fretting any of them and they make huge, booming chord pretty easily. That's where the big "power riff" came from, as well as the arpeggiated verse chords.

Lyrically, it was a pretty linear song, but Evan scrapped some stuff in the second verse and asked me to repeat the "You don't get to look at me like that..." line, which kind of turned into a chorus by accident. When I visualize it in my head, I imagine Ana singing that part. The song's content kinda jumps all over the place, but it's largely about shedding a perceived identity and trying to create something new. The "Chris" referenced in the second verse is actually a weird inside joke / nickname for our friend Jeremy from Worship This. We were having a late-night state-of-the-nation type conversation at a great bar called Prosperity Social Club in Cleveland. I was freaking out about something or another and he very casually said "Don't worry, dude. You're gonna be golden!" I texted it to myself and now it lives here. Also, the bass at the ending of the song is double-tracked with like three different fuzz pedals on and I think it almost knocked Loren over the first time he played it. It was awesome.

2. Should Have Been A Painter Jeff (Russell, guitar) wrote the main riff to this song and the lead part I wrote over it was modeled after a song called "Most Likely A Spy" by our friends in Restorations. I initially thought it'd be more of a mellow song with half-time drums, but as we worked it out in the practice space, the tempo kept getting faster and faster and it transformed into one of the most straightforward punk-pop songs we've ever done. Lyrics from the first verse were again inspired by a conversation I had with my friend Josh Voland, who has been filling in on bass for us for a few months and is a great songwriter in their own right. After we demoed it out and I sent it around, I realized that I had subconsciously taken the title / chorus from a Jena Berlin song of nearly identical name, which was the pre-Restorations band. I think we have their blessing. My bad, Jon. Also, that little delay/swell before the last chorus is created by an Earthquaker Afterneath pedal, made right here in northeast Ohio. 3. West Side Summer If you compare the Live from Bad Racket session of this song we did about a year prior to the actual recorded version, you'll notice some distinct changes, especially lyrically. Evan helped me get the verses to a point where they weren't such a mess of syllables. We also cut the guitar solo in the bridge in half and moved a bunch of the ending vocals around. And I really love that Moog delay / swell at the end of the recorded version, which was all done manually, laying on the floor of the studio and turning knobs. Something that I was really blown away by was how Matt, Evan and Adam are able to play effects like actual instruments. This song is about moving to a new city, or a new part of an old city, and feeling invigorated by the possibilities the future holds. It's something oddly new for us - a positive song.

4. At This Age This is the first title track we've ever had. Oddly enough, it was the last song we worked on and almost didn't make the record. We had a 10th song we were going to use that just wasn't clicking in pre-production, so Evan asked if we had anything else and we showed him this. He really liked it, and it barely changed from that initial pre-pro sketch. I love how spaced-out the beginning is, and how that sub-synth bass halfway through the first verse creeps in and hits directly in your sternum if you listen to it loud enough. I think the guitar tone is an Afterneath through a Fender Twin. Lyrically I feel like the song is pretty on-the-nose, and kind of tie back in with "Painter". "Should I be in a different place than I am now? Should I have progressed further?" Ana is also introduced here in the second verse, but it's really about my friend Andy Johnson. The bridge initially didn't have any lyrics, but after doing a scratch vocal of the rest of the song, Evan told me to go home and write some, and I have a very distinct memory of scribbling to myself while playing a left-handed guitar upside down at our friend Matt (Arbogast, a.k.a. The Gunshy)'s house in Logan Square. I think "talking is either a bridge or a brick wall" is one of my favorite lines on the record. A few days later during vocal tracking, I sang the bridge and went to go get some tea. When I came back, Evan had done a massive high harmony on top of it and we listened back and all just lit up. It's one of my favorite moments on the record. I love how Loren and Jeff's parts intertwine over the end of the song, too.

5. Alchemy Hour This is my favorite song we've ever written. It's in a crazy tuning - E G# B F# B D#, which is FACGCE a half-step down. Some music nerds like myself know that as the American Football "Never Meant" tuning, but I actually learned it from my friend Wil Wagner who plays in the Smith Street Band and has used it on a bunch of songs. The intro guitar is played through a Twin Reverb and filtered through a Roland Space Echo from the 1970s, and while we were tracking it, Evan was sticking his hands in the tape loop and letting it catch back up to itself which creates all these weird swells and noises. There are so many cool moments in this song, but one distinct one is that there are three different snare drums rolling at once in the bridge, played by Steve, Evan and Adam. You can see a little bit of it in the teaser video for the record. We also double-tracked fuzz bass again at the end. The term "Alchemy Hour" is a term that surfers in the midwest use. Yes, there are surfers in Ohio and Michigan. They wait until thunderstorms create massive waves out on the Great Lakes, and then at that point, the "Alchemy Hour", they're able to go out and surf the swells created by the storms. I'd like to say there was a lyrical connection to the song's content, but honestly, I just thought it sounded cool.

6. We Drive Forever Like It's Nothing Full disclosure: We borrowed the intro riff from a band called Ricky Fitts from Wichita, Kansas. Jeff grew up in Kansas and has exposed us to a bunch of great bands from there. Kind of a sonic tribute to his musical roots. I mostly just wanted this song to sound like an Against Me! song with a big, declarative statement as the centerpiece.

The guitar break in the bridge is me doing my best Mike Huguenor impression, who plays in the bands Hard Girls and Shinobu as well as in Jeff Rosenstock's band. He's got this amazingly spastic, fluid style of playing, and consistently comes up with some of the best guitar parts I currently hear in the genre of punk / indie rock / whatever the hell we're doing. As for lyrics - "Academic West" references a building in Bellingham, Washington. I saw a photograph of it taken by our friend Tommy Calderon, who took the photo of us on the record insert and has toured with us a bunch and is a very talented human being. There's a reference to Jason Molina in there as well, who's obviously a legend and has been a staple in our musical vocabulary for a few years now. He had roots in Oberlin, OH where Steve grew up, and started playing music in the greater Cleveland area, which is where "Songs: Ohia" originally came from.

7. Autumn Breaks This is a heavily re-worked version of a song I included on a project I did called The Harvest Month, which was a 30-songs-in-30-days project completed in September 2013. It was originally called "Time Is A Current". It'd been kicking around in some form since late 2010, which was when I wrote the chorus (it was almost the chorus of "Construction Paper" off of Latitudes and Longitudes), and I always envisioned it as a full-band song. I have to give credit to our good friend and very occasional member Toby Reif who plays in The Sidekicks - he helped me write that weird ending riff, as well as the stop-start bridge riff in "Song For Ana". This is the only song that is directly about a failed personal relationship that made it onto the record. I'm glad we made it a fast pop-punk song with a big chorus instead of something noodly and plaintive. And I love the bridge breakdown with Loren and Steve just hammering away on big low-end eighth notes. 8. Spillover More full disclosure: This song borrows an opening line from my friends Pinch Hitter who have an amazing song / LP called "When Friends Die In Accidents". There's also a reference to the Cheap Girls song "Short Cut Days" in the second verse. We trimmed it down a hell of a lot from the demo, and you can hear an unrefined acoustic version here. The second half of the song was almost the ending of "West Side Summer" but I tacked it on here at the end. The "you gave me a second home" that ends the song is in reference to the amazing community of friends and musicians I've met in Australia: Pinch Hitter, The Smith Street Band, Luca Brasi, and many more.

9. Who I Was Before We Met This captured one of my favorite memories of making this record, which is maybe a little weird because it's just me playing a guitar and singing in a basement in Chicago. If you turn it up loud enough, you can hear Matt telling everyone to sit down, and then Evan telling me to sing the first line a little softer. This was the second and only other take we did. Everyone was dead silent while I was recording it, and afterwards I had goosebumps and just knew it was the one. I reference "Ana" by name here, who is a person from whose perspective I am singing at various points on the record. It's pretty much a preamble to the last song - giving it context and letting the listener breathe before the heavy conclusion of the record. It also has a lyrical callback to "West Side Summer" which is a tool that we've used on our last few LPs to tie things together.

10. Song For Ana This song took 7 or 8 different shapes before reaching its final form. Writing slow songs that don't drag is hard as hell, especially when you're a band that consistently gets overexcited and plays everything too fast live like we do. A song that does that really well is Against Me's "Violence", which was a reference point when we were arranging this one.

I wanted the closer to be kind of epic but not heavy-handed, which we I felt really guilty of doing on Light On The Lake. I think we realized that if we operated at volume 3 and only really got up to 10 for the last minute of the song, it was going to hit a hell of a lot harder than it would if we had just blazed through the whole thing at full volume like we're used to doing. It's a simple concept, but not so easy to enforce. The lyrics are a mixture of truth and fiction. I tried to make Ana come to life in the details here. I definitely have a friend who cut their hair and boarded a plane, who may or may not be the inspiration for our band's name and first-ever song. The hourglass tattoo in the second verse references a certain band that inspired us a lot in the early days. There's also a Smith Street Band reference in there if you dig a little bit.

There's a lot to this song - so much that even now it's hard to get my head around it. I think we succeeded in building a lot of tension in the bridge, and the release is carried by the vocal recall from the preceding track and the guitar line that mirrors it. I really wanted to end the record with a question and maybe invite people to dig back in for multiple listens. "What were you saying?" What did I just hear? I hope that people continue to revisit the record get something out of it, even if it's not what I originally intended.

We're more proud of this record than we've been of anything else we've ever done, and at 8 years in it kind of feels like we just started to figure it out. Thanks for listening. It means the world. - Max

#signals midwest #tiny engines #at this age #cleveland #ohio

mandexzine

Signals Midwest At This Age Tiny Engines

The way Signals Midwest writes their music transports you into the world of a twenty-something year old and lets you live vicariously through their experiences. Maxwell Stern’s lyrics are honest and poignant, his stories are detailed and still universal. I’ll be honest, it took me a couple listens to really dig into At This Age, but once I put both feet in, I was engulfed into his world, watching the sun set from an industrial apartment complex, sitting backseat on a drive through Nebraska, putting a loved on a plane to the unknown. Signals Midwest keep putting out great album after great album, even their rarely talked about debut, Burn the Blueprints, has it’s shining moments. Musically and lyrically, Signals Midwest put everything they have into their albums and it shows greatly on At This Age.

signalsmidwest

thanks to @mandexzine for the kind words.

youlovehiswife

Signals Midwest At This Age

Turquoise with White Starburst - /125

Signals Midwest have lived through a lot during their eight years together as a band. With their upcoming fourth record At This Age, the Cleveland-based alt-rock quartet is beginning to feel the weight of a changing world as they grow older around it. "I was asking myself questions like ‘How do I evolve as a person but retain what I love?'" says vocalist/guitarist Max Stern of his thought process behind the LP. "'How do I advance through the world but sustain the things that excited me when I was first discovering them?'" Working with producer Evan Weiss, of Into It. Over It. on At This Age, Stern — alongside bassist Loren Shumaker, guitarist Jeff Russell, and drummer Steve Gibson — taps into what it means to grow up and accept an unpredictable future. Filled with angst and anxiety on tracks like "Should Have Been A Painter," Stern questions his life decisions and past relationships through the lens of someone looking back on their formative years, over gorgeously crunching guitars and

Our entire new record is streaming over at SPIN.

#signals midwest #at this age #tiny engines #spin magazine

For its fourth album, At This Age, Signals Midwest recruited Evan Weiss (Into It. Over It., Pet Symmetry) to produce the record. It’s a pairing that makes sense, as Signals Midwest has always made distinctly artful post-hardcore, and Weiss’ production credits show he’s got a knack for pulling the be

thanks everyone for all the love for our new song "Alchemy Hour" yesterday. if you haven't listened, you can do so here via The A.V. Club. we've gotten a fair amount of messages from people both at home and overseas asking about where they can get the record, which rules. our label Tiny Engines is now distributed via RedEye, which makes our music a lot easier to find, but here are some quick links just in case: US/CAN | EU (based in Germany) | UK | AUS of course, the best thing to do is go to your favorite record store and request it there. "At This Age" is out 9/2. just a few short weeks now. we'll see you out on the road: http://signalsmidwest.tumblr.com/shows

<3 max / siggies

#signals midwest #tiny engines #alchemy hour #redeye distro #at this age #cleveland #ohio

thehorseisthewhiteoftheeyes-dea

Signals Midwest - Should Have Been a Painter

WE’RE GOING ON A LONG TOUR BECAUSE IT’S FUN AND WE HAVE A NEW RECORD COMING OUT.

Listen to new songs HERE and HERE. Pre-order our new LP “AT THIS AGE” HERE. SEE YA OUT THERE Y’ALL!

#signals midwest #tiny engines #the gunshy #choke up #at this age

Trending Blogs

Recently Viewed Blogs

Signals Midwest