The Beanstalk Library

HFS Semi-finals this weekend

2011-08-09T13:57:00.000-04:00

Dear friends,

This Saturday, August 13, is a big day for us. Because of all the voting you did, we will be performing in front of HFS judges for one of 3 coveted spots in the final round of the HFStival contest. The winner of the final round will perform at the legendary HFStival on September 17th at Merriweather Post Pavilion! So many of you have told us how excited you are to see us get this close and how much you'd love to see us up on that stage. Well, we're not there yet.

Our semi-final performance will take place on Saturday at Wild Willy's in Annapolis, MD (2072 Somerville Rd). In fact, the venue is not even quite as far as Annapolis proper; it is located just off of Rt. 50, about 18 miles East of the Capitol Beltway. We hope to see many of you there. While this round is not apparently based on draw, any possible tiebreakers will be decided by audience applause. Plus, we would love love love to see a bunch of you guys there cheering us on as we play. Showtime is 9pm. According to the current information we have, this venue and event are 21+; if that changes we will certainly let you know.

We have already talked to some of our friends and family members about joining us in the area for some activities earlier in the afternoon, including a meal. If you haven't heard from us directly and are interested in making more of a day out of this and hanging out with us for a bit before the show, by all means get in touch and we'll fill you in on details.

Thanks for your enthusiasm and all your help as we finish strong! See you soon!

Love always,
The Beanstalk Library

Surprise! IOTA this Friday and HFS semi-final. . .

2011-08-04T08:34:00.000-04:00

Greetings,

Thanks to everyone who's been encouraging us, coming to see us and letting us know how much our music means to them. It's been incredibly energizing during this busy time.

The Past
Thank you to all who came to the shows in Manassas on Saturday and the Black Cat last night and welcome to those of you who joined this mailing list for the first time at either of those shows. At the Drop In The Ocean show in Manassas we met more than 100 eager young music fans who intently listened to 6 acts including a slightly stripped down Beanstalk with Ryan, Brian, and our new drummer John Werthmann. We met some really kind and talented bands and singer/songwriters and the folks who put on the show were lovely and made us feel really welcome. We hope to do it again soon.

At the Black Cat, we got to let loose with the full band. Crowd and band were as sweaty as expected after spending a hot August evening together. Chris Mills was stellar and invited Ryan onstage for a couple of songs. Lots of cameras were spotted in the audience and photos and video will be posted as they surface. Please feel free to send stuff in; you'll be appropriately credited.

The Future
For any of you who haven't yet gotten to see the latest incarnation, or who haven't had nearly enough, opportunities will not be scarce.

THIS FRIDAY, August 5--IOTA Surprise!
This very Friday, August 5th, we will be performing a full headlining set at our home base IOTA Club and Cafe (2832 Wilson Blvd, Arlington, VA 22201), with Wurlitzer-fueled soul/funk-ers The Blue Transfer Band opening. We know you don't need much of an excuse at all to spend your Friday night within earshot of a variety of great music. If you didn't make it to the Black Cat: second chances don't come often--don't pass this up! 9pm, 21+

HFStival Semi-Final--Saturday, August 13
We will take the stage at Wild Willy's in Annapolis (2072 Somerville Rd., Annapolis, MD 21401) on Saturday, August 13 to perform for the HFS judges in the semi-final round of the HFStival competition. The venue is only 20 miles east of the Capitol Beltway, so we'd love to have as many of you as possible come out to cheer us on. So much so, we've decided to make something of a day out of it, including some sightseeing and dinner. If you're interested in joining the band for the day and being part of our HFS "entourage," please get in touch or stay tuned for more details. Beanstalk will be one of three bands taking the stage starting at 9pm.

We appreciate so much your kindness and enthusiasm. See you soon!

Love always,
The Beanstalk Library

Lots of news and upcoming shows!

2011-07-26T15:57:00.000-04:00

Greetings, everybody! Staying cool? No, not in the sense of being hip. We know you're all "cool." But temperature-wise. You haven't all melted, have you? Not if you're reading this, we suppose. Which is good. Because we have news for you. Some of which might even involve complete sentences. We have a couple of things to make you aware of and a couple to remind you about, which will now be presented chronologically.

1) Ryan has agreed to begin hosting a monthly late-night Open Mic at Busboys and Poets in Shirlington every last Friday of the month. This ALL AGES event will feature a few songs from Ryan before becoming a platform for music, comedy, poetry, dance, acting, magic, whatever it is you think others may enjoy seeing you do. If you like to get in on the ground floor of things, come out to Busboys this Friday, July 29, for the very first one! The sign-up will open at 10pm and the show will run from then until midnight. Arrive early to sign up if you want to perform. [Facebook Event Page]

2) This Saturday, July 30: Ryan, Brian, and our new skinsman John Werthmann are proud to be participating in the 3rd Anniversary show of the VA-based activism group A Drop In The Ocean, at Bull Run Unitarian Universalists in Manassas, VA. The show, which is stuffed full of great music, will include the three aforementioned Beanstalkers playing a scaled down acoustic-ish set. Headlining the show will be KOJI and Jeff Pianki who are on the Amplify Peace tour to raise awareness about ethnic violence in Africa. Please visit this link to learn more about this great cause, the show, and the organizations that will benefit. Feel free to purchase your tickets in advance for 2 dollars less than they'll be at the door, which opens at 6:30. ALL AGES. [Facebook Event Page]

3) We are really getting excited about our BIG headlining show at the Black Cat Backstage next Tuesday, August 2. It will be BIG, and we all know BIGGER is BETTER. But this particular room isn't TOO big, so please consider purchasing your tickets in advance through the link below or at the club. We would hate for any of you to miss out on this great night, which will also include the stellar Chris Mills from NYC. Please click on his name in the box down below and check out some of his great songs before then. Doors at 8pm. ALL AGES. [Facebook Event Page]

4) Thanks again to everyone who voted in the HFStival contest and got us into the Top 9. Many of you have shared how much you enjoyed being able to help in such a tangible way and asked what you can do in the remaining rounds. There will be 3 different semi-final shows, each featuring three of the 9 acts, and each producing one finalist, as decided by HFS judges. Those 3 finalists will perform once more for the judges, to produce a winner. Mark your calendars: our semi-final show will take place Saturday night, August 13th at Wild Willy's in Annapolis, MD (2072 Somerville Rd. Annapolis, MD 21401). We'd love to have as many of you as possible come out and cheer us on, so we are planning a few special events surrounding the show and we'll be getting back to you soon with more details on how you can be part of the festivities. Please don't hesitate to get in touch if you'd like to lend a hand.

Plenty of opportunities for you cool people to come in out of the heat. We can't wait to see all of you!

Love always,
The Beanstalk Library

On to the next!

2011-07-13T10:28:00.000-04:00

Ahem, tap tap tap, attention:

The Beanstalk Library is now a top 9 act in the 2011 HFStival Battle To Break Out. Thank you, thank you, thank you to anybody and everybody who helped get out the vote. We owe you one. We owe you a big one! We'll be in touch to let you know when you'll be able to come cheer us on in the Finals. In the meantime, we look forward to seeing you at the Black Cat on August 2nd. Tickets can be purchased here. Talk to you soon!

Love always,
The Beanstalk Library

HFStival Voting and Black Cat Show

2011-07-01T20:46:00.001-04:00

Hello friends,

We hope you all are well and fancying the summer so far. We're spending much of it working on a new record that we're really very excited about. Hopefully, it will be ready for you to spin and enjoy by the end of the year. But you know how these things can go. ;-)

We know many of you keep in touch with us in other ways too, but there are a couple of big items to make sure you are aware of if you aren't already.

HFStival Battle to Break Out
The Beanstalk Library is one of 40 finalists in a contest to open the mainstage of this year's HFStival, September 17, at Merriweather Post Pavilion, which will also include The Avett Brothers, Flogging Molly, Dr. Dog, and others. We don't usually end up competing in too many "battles," but we thought this one was too good to pass up. So we would like to encourage you to help us.

In this round, the 40 bands are being whittled down to 9 by a voting process that YOU can participate in by visiting the contest's site, checking the circle next to The Beanstalk Library (listed under T, not B) and clicking the "Vote" button. Voting will remain open until one week from today, Friday July 8, at Midnight EST. Wherever you are in the world, it would mean so much to us to have you vote and to spread the word among your families, friends, co-workers, and other spheres of influence. Thanks in advance and we'll keep you posted.

Black Cat
On Tuesday, August 2, the band will headline the Black Cat Backstage (1811 14th St. NW, Wash. DC). We're excited to be back east of the river at such a beloved, storied institution playing an ALL AGES show. Opening the show will be an amazing singer and songwriter named Chris Mills. We highly recommend you check out his latest release 'Heavy Years: 2000-2010' and get familiar with his excellent music before the show.

The Black Cat Backstage is a fairly small venue so please consider purchasing tickets in advance. Facebook users can RSVP here. This is going to be a great night of music--don't miss it!

It's been very nice chatting. Stay cool. Take care of yourselves and yours and we'll be back in touch soon.

Love always,
The Beanstalk Library

Breaking News: This Friday at IOTA!

2011-04-27T18:27:00.000-04:00

Dear everyone,

Please take note of some late-breaking news. The Beanstalk Library has just been confirmed to open for Athens, GA's Modern Skirts, this Friday night (4/29) at IOTA Club and Cafe (2832 Wilson Blvd, Arlington, VA). We are very excited to have this opportunity and we hope you'll all come out for this great bill. We also hope you'll take the time to learn more about Modern Skirts and check out a little of their music.

We will kick off the evening at 9pm with, for the first time, drummer John Werthmann behind the skins. IOTA does not sell advance tickets, so if you would like to make sure and see us, please plan on arriving as early as you can. Also, as always, IOTA is 21+. There will be plenty of opportunities for our under-21 fans to see us this Spring and Summer. Hope to see you soon!

Love always,
The Beanstalk Library

IOTA Show Saturday & Social Networking Update

2011-02-16T22:39:00.000-05:00

Happy day after Valentine's Day and thank you for taking the time to read this correspondence from us, The Beanstalk Library, a rock and roll band that you can sing along to. This note contains TWO (2) major pieces of information.

The first (1) is, in case you haven't already heard, The Beanstalk Library will be headlining IOTA Club and Cafe this coming Saturday night, February 19. If you have missed the last couple shows, this is a great chance to see our new 5-piece lineup and hear music from our second album, which we'll be recording this year. Joining us will be Hans Chew from New York, as well as our hometown friends Light Pillars. Both are great and we're confident that you'll want to get to the club by 9pm to see the whole evening of music. The cover is $12 and as always IOTA is 21+. (More all ages shows will be happening soon.) Facebook users can RSVP here.

Secondly (2), we wanted to give everyone an official head's up about something many of you have no doubt already experienced evidence of. Coinciding with our great new lineup and gearing up for record number 2, we are in the middle of majorly overhauling our internet presence. Some of these changes and additions have already happened and some are still to come, but there are a few things we wanted to draw your attention to.

We are now at Reverb Nation, a site that will hopefully make it easier to coordinate our profiles on different social networks and deliver news, updates, blog posts, etc. to all of our fans at once, no matter how they normally keep up with us. There is other fun stuff, like a detailed list of upcoming shows complete with Google-powered maps of venues. Feel free to check it out by clicking on the above link and if you have a RN profile, become a fan.

Soon, in fact, we will be using Reverb Nation, instead of the current program, to send these very e-mail updates. You will receive a notification when this has happened, but you don't need to do anything to remain on our mailing list during the changeover.

Furthermore, The Beanstalk Library has finally entered the limitless frontier of (drum roll, please) Twitter. If you are a Twitter user, please follow us in order to receive all sorts of updates, insights, and probably some super secret surprise insider info, as well.

If all of this is as bewildering to you as it is to us, don't worry. Very shortly, everything will be linked and widgeted and shackled at the ankle to everything else, so you'll be able to find it all and not miss a thing. Some parts of the new layout are still very much under construction at the moment, especially the MySpace page, so we appreciate your patience.

Thanks for being so good to us. We're glad you like our music. If it wasn't for that, there would be no reason to pull our hair out over online promotion. We love you all and look forward to seeing you Saturday night. It's going to be a good year.

Love always,
The Beanstalk Library

1st Annual Beanstalk Library New Year's Eve Throwdown

2010-12-18T14:20:00.000-05:00

Ring in 2011 with The Beanstalk Library and friends at Creative Cauldron (410 S. Maple Ave., Falls Church, VA), a great local arts venue.

New Year's Eve/ALL AGES/$12 in advance, $15 day of show
Buy Advance Tickets

9:00 pm Doors Open
9:30 pm Dialect
10:30 pm Grammar
11:45 pm The Beanstalk Library

DJing before and in between bands: Jay Smith (of Middle Distance Runner)

CHEAP Cash bar, party favors, and other surprises!

First Friday's Show Poster 9-03-10

2010-08-19T19:26:00.000-04:00

Black Cat Show This Friday!

2010-08-09T18:27:00.000-04:00

It's been long awaited! It's finally coming! It's time! The return of The Beanstalk Library to the Black Cat stage this Friday night, August 13th! What luck!

This will be our first full band show in quite some time, as we've been rehearsing with new band members and working on new music. We are equally excited to be sharing this milestone with our friends The Moderate and The NRIs (featuring Beanstalk alum Gabriel Fry).

The show is ALL AGES and Beanstalk opens the show at 9pm. Feel free to click away at the links for more info.

It's hard to be too afraid of a little bad luck when there is such a formidable night of music ahead of us. So, spend your Friday the 13th at the Black Cat. Heck, walk under a ladder and break a mirror while you're there. Looking forward to catching up with a bunch of you!

Sincerely,
The Beanstalk Library

The Moderate w/ The NRIs & The Beanstalk Library
Friday, August 13th
Black Cat (1811 14th St. NW, Washington DC 20009)
Showtime 9pm, $10, All Ages

Beanstalk full band All Ages this Friday!

2010-02-23T17:04:00.000-05:00

Hello,

Snow melting fast enough yet? If you live in the D.C. area and you are a person, you are most definitely enjoying finally being able to get out and do stuff. Here's a suggestion.

The Beanstalk Library will play its first full band show in a while along with some good friends, this Friday night, February 26, at Austin Grill (801 King St., Old Towne Alexandria, VA) to help kick off several DC bands' trips to Austin, TX for this year's South By Southwest Festival. How appropriate.

For the first time, we'll be sharing the bill with one of our favorite bands Middle Distance Runner, along with Deleted Scenes and old friends Typefighter. Great music, Tex-Mex food and beverages, and all ages are welcome; please join us for what's sure to be a blast. Kapow!

Love always,

The Beanstalk Library

DC DOES TX SxSW Party
Austin Grill   801 King St. Alexandria, VA
Friday, February 26, 2010       All Ages        $5
Middle Distance Runner   11:45p
Deleted Scenes   11:00
The Beanstalk Library   10:15
Typefighter   9:30
Doors open 9:00

Shows in July and August!

2009-07-14T16:05:00.000-04:00

This Thursday, July 16, we will be opening for our good friends Hello Society at Iota Club & Cafe (2832 Wilson Blvd., Arlington, VA 22201). We are going on third, following Marbin and The Armchairs, at around 10 p.m. We look forward to having Tom Hnatow and Kate Rears from These United States join us, as well as Phil Chow from Hello Society.

In addition, we will playing at the Black Cat (1811 14th St. NW, Washington, D.C. 20009) backstage on Thursday, August 6. We will be opening for Detroit band Oscillating Fan Club, and our fellow Washingtonians Olivia Mancini & The Mates.

Update:

We are also thrilled to be opening for Jenny Owen Youngs at Iota on Monday, August 10 (8:30 pm).

New Tracks Here and Pics

2009-05-26T21:04:00.000-04:00

The new tracks are now available on the website. click here

Thanks to everyone who came out to Iota last night--we had a great time! Here are some pictures from last night courtesy of Andrew Ratliff.

Locations of the Five New Tracks

2009-05-18T01:09:00.004-04:00

As of Monday, May 18, our five new recordings are online. They can be found in the following locations. If a particular song is not up yet, try again later on Monday. The songs will be exclusive to these host sites until Tuesday, May 26th, at which point they'll be available here for download. See the band live, Memorial Day, Monday, May 25th at IOTA Club And Cafe in Arlington, VA.

"Feeling My Way In The Dark" (and interview with Ryan):
www.districtofsound.com/archive/qa-with-the-beanstalk-library.html

"Cry Harder":
http://www.brightestyoungthings.com/downloads/exclusive-download-beanstalk-library/

"The Only Things I'll Take With Me":
http://dcist.com/2009/05/exclusive_new_track_from_the_beanst.php

"This Line Is Not For Me":
http://instrumentalanalysis.blogspot.com/2009/05/return-of-beanstalk-library.html

"It Has Made All The Difference":
http://www.babystew.com/?p=3546

Enjoy!

New Music and Memorial Day Show!

2009-05-16T21:09:00.000-04:00

Hello, friends.

Last we spoke, we were prepared for two big things coming down the pipeline: 1) The release of five new Beanstalk Library tracks recorded before we parted ways with Mike and John last fall. 2) The debut of the new live lineup of The Beanstalk Library. It is with a great deal of pleasure and excitement that we write to tell you that after much waiting and anticipation those things are finally upon us.

The Music

The band is proud to release five new songs recorded between October '08 and March '09. Most will be familiar to those who've seen us live regularly in the past year. They all feature the lineup of Ryan, Brian, John, and Mike, joined by various instrumental collaborators.

To celebrate the release of these five new tracks, we've decided to partner with five DC-area music related blogs who will each host one of the tracks as an exclusive during the upcoming week; then, after May 25, all of the tracks will be available through our website, MySpace and Facebook pages. A few of these blogs have been very kind and supportive of us in the past; others are new friends. Our hope is that if any of them are unfamiliar to you that you will bookmark them, read them, and support them. They all do a great job of keeping DC informed about what's new and interesting to listen to and see, and make a strong case for the undying importance of the tastemaker. Likewise, they are doing us a tremendous favor by allowing their regular readers to hear our music.

As a special treat for all of you that have trouble with delayed gratification, one of the tracks, "Feeling My Way In The Dark" is available NOW by visiting District Of Sound (www.districtofsound.com).

District of Sound is a relatively new DC Music blog, which is already doing some cool things and should hopefully experience a bigger profile in months to come. As of this very moment, you can download "Feeling My Way" and read an interview they did with Ryan, here: http://www.districtofsound.com/archive/qa-with-the-beanstalk-library.html.

The other four songs, "Cry Harder," "It's Made All The Difference," "The Only Things I'll Take With Me," and "This Line Is Not For Me" will all be available this Monday, May 18. Information and links to where to find these four songs will be posted at that time.

The Show

The Beanstalk Library will play their first area show in 8 months this Memorial Day, Monday, May 25 at IOTA. Joining us on the bill will be In Technicolor (from Charlottesville, VA) and our newest local friends Typefighter. We hope to see everybody out for a great night of holiday-weekend-capping music; we're eager to see old friends again, as well as introduce you to some of the newest members of The Beanstalk Library family.

Thanks for bearing with us all this time. We love you. Stay tuned.

Record Store Day 2009

2009-04-25T20:06:00.000-04:00

Ryan outside Crooked Beat Records last Saturday.

After enjoying our breakfast as we waited, we were happy to purchase most of the exclusive Record Store Day releases that we were looking for. Looking forward to next year!

Snow Day = Tracking

2009-03-02T15:24:00.006-05:00

Finalizing our new demos and enjoying a day off.

Farewells and Forging Ahead

2009-01-29T14:49:00.000-05:00

I. What's Going On:

Greetings, friends. We've been through a lot together since our last correspondence. The hustly-bustly holidays. Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, for us, maybe others for you. We've observed the changing of a season, a year, and, mercifully, a president. Those of us in the Northeast are finally experiencing some winter, these last couple of days. Now that things are breathing for a minute, we wanted to take a quick opportunity to fill you in on what's been going on; you see, we've been through some changes as well.

It is with mixed feelings that we report that drummer Mike Fellenbaum and bassist John Rapoza have left The Beanstalk Library. We say mixed because we are hopeful and excited for their future endeavors and will continue to enjoy close friendships and hold in our hearts cherished memories of the music that we made and the experiences we shared the last couple of years. John will still be in the area, while Mike has taken a job in beautiful New Zealand. Though the splits were perfectly amicable, they were relatively sudden and, at the time, left us in some disarray with regard to communication. Many apologies at the lag these last several months.

We also apologize for any confusion that arose due to our cancellation of two shows in October. One, a Halloween show, was canceled because of our personnel situation; the other, a benefit at Cafe Asia in Rosslyn, was cancelled by the promoters. This was unfortunate because it would have been our last hurrah together. The last time we performed together was at a wedding reception and, though it was a blast and a great way to go out, it was only attended by invited wedding guests. We would have preferred to have had a last public show together, complete with fair warning to our fans, but we just couldn't make it work before Mike had to leave the country.

Before he left, Mike wrote the following note that would have been included in e-mail promotion for the Cafe Asia show, had it happened. We thought we'd include it here:

"Mike Beanstalk here. Sadly, I'll be leaving TBL and DC at the end of the month for greener pastures in New Zealand. As excited as I am for New Zealand, I'm equally sad to be leaving the band. Thanks to everyone for all their support - especially those of you that I see at just about all our shows. Good times have been had by all. I'm super proud of our album and can't wait to hear the next. We've a lot of good stuff in the pipeline, and while I'm certain the next drummer won't be as handsome, charming, charismatic, etc., etc., as me, I'm sure he (or she) will be able to ROCK!

The last few years were really special and I'll miss everyone, dearly."

II. What's To Come:

Without any futher ado, it is time to look forward. Before it became no more, the most recent lineup of the band recorded five new demos together. All of these songs have been performed live, and range from a song written before the first album came out to a song whose arrangement was finished in time for it to be played just once before we parted ways. We've been putting the finishing touches on overdubs and mixes for these tracks and will share them all with you as soon as they're ready.

We've also been busy talking, auditioning, playing, and putting together a new live band. It is our intention that within a month or two, the new version of The Beanstalk Library will be back out, continuing to perform and write new music. We thank all of you for your support and patience, and know you are just as excited to continue this journey as we are! We also hope that many who have never seen us or heard us before will take this opportunity to jump on board.

III. Ryan sings on Exit Clov track:

In the meantime, we highly encourage you to visit the website of some of our dearest friends and a phenomenal band, Exit Clov. Last year, Ryan recorded vocals on a hauntingly beautiful song called "My Country's At War" for Clov's as-yet-unreleased debut album. The track has been posted on their site as a free download. Please download and enjoy, and while you're there check out the rest of their music, if you are heretofore unfamiliar.

IV. Facebook:

Before we say "'til next time," we just wanted to point out that the band is vamping up its presence on Facebook. If you're a Facebook-er and haven't visited us yet, please become a fan at our page. This is just like an official MySpace page and we'd love for you to join even if you're already a member of "Sigh...The Beanstalk Library is So Dreamy," because soon we'll phase that out as the other page becomes our official Facebook presence. (Plus, there were, uh, varying degrees of opinion on the accuracy of the title of the Group. Ahem.)

We're excited about what the future holds. Be back in touch very soon.

'Til next time.