CarSeatHeadrest225

Family Dinner Stream

Get in here before your dinner gets cold! I made salmon with rice and asparagus.

study group tape loops w/ seth

today we're making 1/4inch tape loops with a bunch of thrift store finds. come explore the warm layered textures and embrace the imperfect nature of analog tape! feel free to sample if we come up with anything cool!

April Stream Schedule

Greetings all! We'll see you later this week:

April 24, 3:30 PM: Band's Delight stream with Seth, making tape loops in the practice studio

April 25, 1 PM: Family Dinner Stream

New material coming soon as well!

WT

Live Show Archives: Palace Theater, St. Paul, 2022

I'm back! Apologies once more for the late upload, but here's a very exciting show archive: our very first stop on the 2022 Masquerade tour, the Palace Theater in St. Paul, Minnesota.

I picked this night because I found it an interesting counterpoint to the "Faces" live album from this same tour. The set changed significantly throughout the year, with the band constantly pulse-taking and vibe-checking different parts of it each night, and these recordings present two interesting poles-...

March Live Show Archive

Hi everyone! Ethan here. You may be wondering where this month's live show archive is. The answer is: I was out of the country for part of last month, got slammed with a bunch of things that had piled up on my return, and then immediately got sick. I'm better now, but running a few days behind. Apologies to everyone on here, and thanks for your patience. When it's done it'll be a good one!

April Newsletter

Happy April! Today, another piece of Scholars comes out - “CCF”, one of the first musical ideas for the album, but one of the most difficult to complete. I’m still figuring out what it’s about, but it seems to have something to do to coming back to a love you’d forgotten was there.

I can’t predict why anyone might like my art, but one reason I think I’ve heard is that it’s fun to go through the works of someone who engages with their own work - going back to older pieces...

Tator Carrot Diamond - WAV download

Here's the high-quality download for those who need it! April newsletter coming your way shortly (along with some new Scholars content!).

March 4-Track Song 2: Tater Carrot Diamond

Art by Billis Helg

(Will post wav later, I don't have it on me right now!)

I’ve been learning some American folk songs collected by Alan Lomax, and the first seeds of this song sprang out of that well. I couldn’t tell you what a “tater carrot diamond” is, but I know one thing - not everyone hopes for it. Among those folk songs was one called Mr. Rabbit:

“Mr. Rabbit, Mr. Rabbit, your ears are mighty long!”

Yes, bless God, they were put on wrong 2025-04-01 01:46:53 +0000 UTC View Post

Family Dinner

Get down here, dinner is ready! Your food is going to get cold!!!

March 4-Track Rerecord: Overdrive

Art by Billis Helg

I wrote this song around 8th grade - 20 years ago! That year, I was in my first-ever band, with Leo Ciarlone (later of Whiting Brothers and American Holly), Brandon Smead, Michael McKew, Leo's sister Anne, and occasionally Amanda and a few other friends. On the few occasions we were able to gather enough of us together to practice, this was one of the songs we sort-of knew. I wrote it after a night of laser tag, when I had to guide Leo's dad, who was driving us, back...

March 4-Track Song 1: The Night Army

Art by Billis Helg

For this month, I decided to write on the theme of hope, after reading Friedrich von Schiller’s poem “Hope”:

This is no empty, flattering delusion

Generated in a fool’s brain,

It manifests loudly in our heart:

We were born for something better.

And what the inner voice says

Does not deceive the soul that hopes.

(Translation by Stanley Appelbaum)

I wrote a first verse and it seemed to have...

March Stream Schedule

This month's Band's Delight Stream will happen on March 30th at 1 PM PST. I'll take a stab at explaining a few basic ideas on how to read poetry, and we'll read through some poems. Maybe the first of a series if it goes decently?

The Family Dinner Band Stream will happen on March 31st at 4 PM PST. No topic decided yet - you can post questions/ideas below if you'd like us to discuss something!

As usual, content will be filling in towards the end of...

March 2025: The Scholars

Today is the official announce of the next Car Seat Headrest album, “The Scholars”! It comes out on May 2nd; its first single, “Gethsemane”, is out today, with a music video by Andrew Wonder. I'll just link to our website here, because I'm drafting this on Monday and I don't have any of the other links yet.

 I’m happy to have the first piece of this record out, and thrilled that we had the opportunity...

Family Dinner

Start Eating!

February Double A-Side: The Colossus

Mastered by Andrew Katz

Art by Billis Helg

Couldn't decide which track I liked more, so this month is a double A-side!

Writing: My schedule this month was shaped around a weeklong visit to New York for promotional work in advance of the album. Before leaving, I started work on a song pretty different from this one called “Good Hard Work”, with a mellow chorus and style. As I worked on it, it developed a verse melody that was more ardent and fierce than the chorus; this v...

Live Show Archives: Feb 15, 2019, MASS MoCA in North Adams, Massachusetts

Hi Patreon, Ethan here--it's that time again, where we dig up holes on Old Show Beach and try to find what dormant sea-chests may lie beneath. I'm mixing old concerts from our archives every month, for your ears only!

Click here to download as an album

This month is a 2019 gig at the Museum of Contemporary art in MA, a huge and fascinating venue we've been luc...

February A-Side: The Apple Orchard

Mastered by Andrew Katz

Art by Billis Helg

The vocal melody of this comes from a hymn, “Lord, It Belongs Not To My Care”, by Richard Baxter:

Lord, it belongs not to my care

Whether I die or live;

To love and serve you is my share,

And this your grace must give…

The courage and simplicity of the original hymn amazed me. Not graced by such simple assurance myself, a different verse came to my mind in the wake of some troubling dreams: 

...

February Re-record: Firefly

written by Amanda Schiano di Cola and Will Toledo

Art by Billis Helg

Mastered by Andrew Katz

This song started with lyrics from Amanda, who posted them to the forum where we would share songs in high school. I wrote music to fit the words. She doesn’t remember what it’s about, but says it’s “probably Twilight”.

Tracks:

1 and 2: 12-string guitar

3 and 4: vocals

Lyrics:

You’re the dregs in my coffee mug

Your eyes are lightning bu...

February Schedule

Family Dinner stream will happen February 28th at 4 PST. We will talk about our recent trip to New York!

Band's delight stream: this Sunday, February 23rd, at 2 PST. Join Will for a work stream. Got homework? Taxes? Something you've been putting off? Let's all do it together and chat a bit.

More content to follow next week!

WEBQUEST

02/18/2005 - Hi Class! In the last few weeks before we return to school, I've prepared something fun for you: a webquest! Between now and the end of the month, you'll get three sets of riddles, designed to turn your 'thinking brains' on. Each one will lead you on a different search: some inside your own mind, some through the archives of the internet, and some through the real world! Participation is optional, but each correct solution to a riddle will give you a 2025-02-18 17:39:35 +0000 UTC View Post

February 2025 Newsletter

Winter appears as a time of concealment. In spring, life bursts forth in front of our eyes in many magnificent colors, as trees leave and flowers bloom, and people leave their shelters for the sunshine. What revelations does winter offer? In the cold snap that has lasted the past two weeks, I have sat in the cold, wondering this. After some days, I started noticing a few things. First, it reveals breath. As a kid, I always enjoyed that “fake cigarette” that comes with stepping outside on ...

January Re-record: Ancient

Art by Billis Helg

This song was written for my friend Amanda; I believe I wrote a small EP of them to give to her for her birthday, possibly her 16th, but this was the only one I saved. The story in the first verse is true; for years she harbored guilt on account of some mild bullying she gave me in elementary school due to me dropping out of a “gifted student” program that I found excessively torturous. I did not retain her words at all, and was thoroughly confused when I received...

Live Show Archives: Showbox Recording - downloadable album

Ethan here, hi again. As promised, I've settled on a way to upload this month's live show archive as a downloadable album, with properly tagged and separated tracks (no artwork, maybe someone can provide their own!) It's available here in a .rar archive:

(NOTE: since the original upload I caught some backing vocals that accidentally got dragged out of sync, these are fixed in the below version, so grab this one even if you've heard the earlier upload! NOTE NOTE: let's try that again. it...

January B-Side: That's How You Made Me Happy Again

Art by Billis Helg

Writing:

This was the first track I fleshed out for this four-track project. I came up with the vocal melody playing with my 4-month-old niece. Babies are a great test audience for songs - if they don’t like what they’re hearing, they’ll let you know pretty quickly. I tried to take that mentality with me, and make a song cheery and simple enough that you could sing it to a baby. 

As with “The Drum Strikes Back”, I was intentionally trying to...

Live Show Archives: Oct 13, 2018, Night 2 of the Showbox in Seattle

Hey patreon land, Ethan here! In what will be a continuing monthly series, I present to you a mixed-by-me recording of one of our older live shows, uncut and in its entirety. In 2018 we played the Showbox in Seattle two consecutive nights, the second of which included some amusing antics and covers which I thought would make it an enjoyable first entry.

For those who don't remember, this was on the Twin Fantasy (rerelease) tour which also included our friends Naked Giants as part of the...

January A-Side: The Drum Strikes Back

Cover art by Billis Helg

Writing:

This first idea to come up for this song was the chorus vocal melody, originally backed with a different chord progression. The two-note guitar riff and accompanying chords that start the song came separately; when I tried marrying the two together, the song really took off, and music was completed in short order from there.

Lyrically, I wanted something that matched the brightness and optimism of the music. I looked back on an old track lik...

Family Dinner

Let's eat!

January Content

This month's band chat stream for Pit tier and above will take place January 28 at 4 PM PST. It will be a casual conversation between the four of us, engaging with y'all as well and answering questions when convenient. If there are subjects you'd like us to discuss, let us know in the comments here!

4-track material and this month's archive show recording will start rolling out next week!

Delight Stream with Andrew

Let's Delight!

Delight Stream Tomorrow

I (Andrew) will be taking the delight stream this month. Planning on tomorrow, Jan 18th at 11AM PST. Who knows what we'll get into! You can pick and I'll do it.