dormlife's Journal

SOME DORMLIFE BACKGROUND FYI
Hey,
This is Samuel (Singer of Dormlife),
This is our first official post on LiveJournal, I think Philip tried to post something a while back, anyhow, I'm gonna give you a nice semi detailed background on us (if you are bored enough to read this):

dL History:
I started this project as a solo project on the acoustic, back in Late 2002, I recorded a few songs with Craig Baker in December of 2002 with Craig Baker (The Phoenix Rising, Midwest Blue, Threefold, The Colour Blue, etc...)
Anyhow, I thought it was just gonna end up me doing one record for fun on my own seeing as I was in Midwest Blue full-time, but shortly after I met up with a random acquaintance that I knew from M.C.C. in Crystal Lake, IL in March of 2003. Michael, he was in my English class in 2001 and oddly enough was the only class I ended up passing at the college. Anyway, we met up at this restaurant through a mutual friend in McHenry, IL. Michael was in a band with a mutual friend Josh Geier who had just passed away due to complications of Hodgkins Lymphoma, I had Known Josh since Grade School, it was like Josh was bringing us together for a reason. So Michael told me he wanted to get together and jam, so I brought my acoustic to his basement and had a few songs written:
1.reasons for leaving
2.time vs. circumstance
3.what I've been missing out on
I had also been working on a new song entitled "The Saddest Girl To Ever Hold A Martini" inspired by a good friend of mine who helped me through some hard times. We jammed all those songs out and decided to keep at it, I loved the way he wrote drum parts to my songs, it complimented my strumming very well. So, the next thing was to find a bass player, Michael reccomended a guy who he used to play with that was working at Dr. Woods (a local music shop) in Fox River Grove, IL. His friend denied us because he was too busy, but told us about a co-worker by the name of Philip who was giving bass lessons there, he said that Philip was insane on the bass. (Funny side-tangent, Philip was teaching Adam T. Siska who later went on to be in The Academy Is...)
So, Philip came and jammed with us, we loved it, so instantly he was the one, we continued writing and practicing when I had free time on the side of Midwest Blue and by the winter of 2003/2004 we began tracking 9 songs (one of which was a cover "Scat" of my old pop punk band in high school called Flying South) which became known as "It's Not Me, It's You" our first release. I decided that we should just make it an even 10 songs, so I went back in to record one solo acoustic cover of "possibilities" by my friend Josh Geier. About that time, Philip moved from Barrington, IL to Santa Cruz, CA to live with his dad and go to school. So, naturally, this was a side project and seeing as we had only played not even 10 shows as a band, It wasn't a big deal, I was just glad to have those songs recorded in case we never jammed again, Plus, I was all about Midwest Blue at the time.

So, A year went by, we were in winter of 2004/2005, I was getting fed up with the guys in Midwest Blue, cuz they didn't want to tour and that's all I wanted to do. About the same time, Philip called me and told me he wanted to take time off of school to do this full time, he felt this album had something and that we should give it a shot, so I quit Midwest Blue, had my girlfriend, Tori, at the time take pics of us all over the Crystal Lake area which ended up being the album art for the cd. We booked a small one week tour which did okay, we pretty much broke even going all the way to Tampa, FL from Chicago and then just hiked it back in two days. We booked another tour which was a living hell because the CD's never got pressed in time due to complications I still don't understand completely, We got paid at about 5 out of 27 shows on the east coast. It was pretty brutal, anyway, we got back and were very drained, decided to chill and write a new record, we already had 5 new songs which we recorded as demos with Craig Baker again:
1.Choke
2.Leaving Through The Windshield
3.Medicine
4.Making Time To Waste
5.Aurora Borealis

Then wrote 5 more before I left on the Plea For Peace Bike Tour which was insane, totally the best time of my life, amazing. After I got back, Phil was still living in CA so Ryan Maz a.k.a. Midwest Maz from Midwest Blue filled/philled in for us, haha, dork.

We played a slew of shows and decided to get another member in the band, My sister Sarah on piano, it took us from Fall 2005 to Winter 2006 to have all the piano lines written and recorded. We tracked the whole album with Brian Peters, Philip's friend who is way better at recording than Craig, not to hate but we wanted a top 40 sounding record, these new songs were a lot more radio friendly and we paid just as much if not a little less with Brian cuz he knew how strapped for cash we were. So, Philip moved back in the middle of all of this and we started playing shows with him again, the album mixing to longer than any of us had hoped and we were all kinda frustrated so we took the whole summer off pretty much of 2007 to just chill and Michael and I wrote about 8 or 9 songs for a new record which is gonna be even better, though I shouldn't get ahead of myself, but let's just say we are prepared for a record contract now, so, we got the mixed album back in July, went through a friend for mastering which we got back in August, and our good friend Gino at Duckphone Records decided to release this new CD "Roses Are Blue" which will arrive from the pressing plant this week.

Recently, Philip has decided to pursue school instead of the band so Ryan is our full-time member now, we are planning on playing 250plus shows in 2008 starting in February. We are going to go everywhere we can, so if you want us in your city/state/town, just hit us up on our myspace or through email: dormlifemusic@yahoo.com

That's I think a pretty good briefly detailed history of dL, if you have any input or q's, just let a brotha know, k

Peace,
Samuel/dL

p.s. we have a real website, not just a myspace:
www.dormlifemusic.com
we are working on posting all of our past shows/flyers/pics/videos/setlists, etc... so you can see what we've been up to since we formed this band.