EchoMix Records

CHAPEL HILL NEWS

Chapel Hill’s The High and Mighties Release ‘Town Anthem’ Chapel On The Hill for a Cause
10-17-2008

Chapel Hill NC — A favorite on the
local music scene, Mark Belk and his band The High and Mighties have
released a single perfect for a story about their journey as musicians
in Chapel Hill and how they are using their success. Entitled “Chapel
On The Hill “, it’s a love song to the town and its tremendous college
experience.
Chapel On the Hill embraces the college life which is really what the
town of Chapel Hill is all about. It’s currently being used on sports
radio broadcasts of UNC games and is a hit at the band’s local
concerts. The song is upbeat, positive and reminiscent, capturing the
essence of the college experience in the town of 30,000+ students. This
year the unofficial anthem is also used in the stadium to pump up UNC
fans and athletes.
“It’s about the Chapel Hill experience,” said Belk, UNC graduate (class
of ’95) who tends bar at Top of the Hill restaurant when he’s not
making music. “It’s about the way people come here and fall in love
with it. Once you’ve lived here, every time you come back you reconnect
with it. That’s what makes Chapel Hill so cool.”
Belk’s younger brother, Brian Ray Belk died nearly two years ago at the
age of thirty due to complications after a successful heart transplant
which he received in 2001. The High and Mighties together with EchoMix
Records are donating all the money from the song “Chapel On The Hill”
MP3 downloads via their website to The NC Children’s Promise charity
through the end of 2008. The NC Children’s Promise enables children to
cope with and receive organ transplants and treatments for serious
illnesses.
Belk adds, “I began supporting NC Children’s Promise after Brian got
sick, before he passed away. With the song, it just occurred to us that
maybe we could use it to keep his memory alive and also do some good.”
The High and Mighties includes former members of other well-known
southeast bands (two dollar pistols, regatta 69, squirrel nut zippers,
the jumpstarts, the independents, etc.). They are currently promoting
their new “Evolution EP” recorded by Grammy nominated producer Ian
Schreier (Velvet Revolver, Clay Aiken, Corrosion Of Conformity, The
Never, Roomful Of Blues, etc.). The EP has been serviced to 485 radio
stations in the US and Canada by EchoMix Records. The band will launch
a nationwide tour in January 2009 with the release of their second CD.

ECHOMIX SIGNING!
You probably haven’t heard of this “EchoMix Records”
before, but don’t let its obscurity fool you. Here sits a label owned
by a group of underground musicians who on average have been producing,
touring and releasing records independently for a decade and a
half. Did I mention that they are already on both sides of the Atlantic?
It is a multi-national partnership involving a Frenchman, a couple of
Germans, and a few Americans! With international distro in place EchoMix
will execute a detailed marketing plan, and a strong-arm approach to
media such as radio and traditional print press. According to an EchoMix
spokesperson, the stars lined up just right to organize in such a way
for the start-up to keep staff and overhead low but still push things
into high gear for our label’s first US
release. “Expect more signings!…as we have releases already planned
well into ‘09 and our feelers are out and about for emerging artists
who blend well with the current roster,” boasts one of the label’s
co-founders. Because of their various funding sources and clever use of
digital media as well as online distribution an EchoMix
signing can be a much sweeter deal than the standard issue record
contract. Several partners have their hand in beautiful audio studios
in Europe
and The States where some of the label’s records are being produced. It
seems like when most record companies are figuring out how to drop
artists and downsize, Echomix is poised to thump the
underground in a way which hasn’t been felt in the last five years and
they are quite excited to see how The High & Mighties are received on a national and international stage.

www.OnTheQuietMusic.com

It’s Friday Sept.12th - and a very special day for us at Echomix/Freefall. First of all today we’ll be turning in the artwork for the new High&Mighties Single: It’s gonna be Chapel Hill’s unofficial anthem - CHAPEL ON THE HILL - keep your eyes and ears open! And - best of all - All money received for downloading “Chapel On The Hill” is instantly donated to The NC Children’s Hospital at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, NC! So please check out www.thehighandmighties.com and download the shit out of this song!!!

That’s it for now, got work to do, but here are 2 more reasons for making this day special: a) it’s Ben Folds’ Birthday and b) we’ll pick up my friend Inga a.k.a. Jenny Greenteath from Germany tonight at the airport! can’t wait!

Have a great weekend everyone!

nane

I guess most of what we are currently working falls under our freefall management duties. The last few days we have been designing, printing and packaging, and mailing press kits for The High & Mighties. The 250 press kits will go to venues and some press contacts in Virginia, West Virginia, North and South Carolina and Georgia. These are the states we will focus on while building a grassroots following among concert goers. The first show which kicks off a three week local “Tap The Triangle Tour” was on Sunday Sept 8th at Goodfella’s on Franklin St. in Chapel Hill! The Good Fella’s At Goodfella’s were kind enough to open a concert patio out back of their bar to have a great space to hold the up-words of one hundred people who attended throughout the two hour concert! The show featured keyboardist Tim Smith, formerly of The Squirrel Nut Zippers and The Jumpstarts, as well as the fabulous Wayne Kee who is ripping it up on lead guitar as well as Matt Brown, formerly of The Two Dollar Pistols, The Independents and Regatta 69, Eric Mrozowski who plays with a number of jazz, blues and world beat groups, and the one and only Mark Belk! The show was a great success and perfect launch to the string of upcoming tour dates. Tomorrow we push on designing the new stage look for Mark and the guys as we re-vamp the live show with some extra special bells and whistles!

Mr. B… signing off!

Hello out there this time it’s Nane writing - I decided to take over the blog writing for now!
What happened during the last days? - Quite a lot. Today we finally got done sending out all 485 packages to 485 College radio stations throughout the US. I can’t describe how EXCITING it can be to do the exact same movement fourhundredandeightyfive times for every single step of the process!! You don’t believe me? Try it out: Get 500 envelopes, fill them each with 1 CD (that needed taken out of its shrink wrap), 1 poster (that needed folded to be the right size), 1 OneSheet (also folded) and the individual Radio Station ID burned on CD - which has to match the address sticker that goes on the outside…………yaaaawn……..bla bla bla - I guess it is clear what the whole process looks like. Well, here in our home-office it definitely looked like quite a mess and we had the floor covered with all the necessary utensils that needed assembled. The trip to Downtown Durham’s post office turned out (at least for me…coming from Germany…) to be like entering another climate zone. After every stack of 50 envelopes that I labeled with stamps, I had to go outside to “warm up”. The whole airconditioning situation in the States is just out of control!!!
Anyways - back to the High & MIghties’ Sendout - it’s done and now we’re looking forward to seeing some results!
We’ll keep you posted.

Also - there is a new really good review up for one of our latest releases - Regatta 69’s “The Aim Is The Way”:
www.voiceofculture.de then click on cd-reviews
Yea yea - it’s in german - but anyways - it’s good! Thank you to Krizn from Voice of a Culture!!

And one more thing - cause I’m very excited about this: I finally got a great little digital piano on this side of the ocean!! Yeehaaa!

Last night we recorded nearly 450 radio station IDs for the US and Canada with the drummer and bassist of The High & Mighties. The session lasted well into the night and involved a few beers;-) Now the task haunting us is to edit them all and somehow deliver them too the stations on CD which is my job over the next days. Eric and Matt had us rolling on the studio floor with the funny antics and sounds they where incorporating. I was quite impressed with their consistent energy put into the six hours of rattling of hundreds of city names and call letters… Props to them both! Also of note… it was Nane’s first time at the controls of the recording console and she did a fine job at keeping all the file names straight and helping to produce the session!… off to the editing room… B

So… all is good! We arrived in the US safe and tired! The last days have been spent organizing “to do” lists. The freefall*management website is nearly finished for now. It seems it will be mostly a business card site since most of the functions used for selling artists are done by the the label and booking agents. With encouragement by the label The High & Mighties’ lead singer Mark Belk is personally writing a note and signing 500posters for the mail-out this week. We also got our first glimpse of the merchandise…The Evolution EP, T-shirts, and Posters and I must say they look fantastic!!! Tomorrow starts the recording of the station IDs in the studio. This is a simple concept, but quite tasking to execute. We must record the band giving 500 station IDs… “We are … and you are listing to …. on WXXX 88.9″  then seperate all the audio files and burn them to CDs while trying not to mix up the CD-Rs with the wrong station’s package… I guess we’ll see!

till next post,

B

We will launch The High & Mighties’ radio campaign as soon as we get settled in the USA again. We are all packed to travel tomorrow from Frankfurt via Paris. Over the next week the packages will be assembled and sent to at least 485 radio stations, a variety of press and venues! Packages will include Posters, The Evolution EP, Station IDs recorded by the band, and some other goodies! Echomix’s hired Radio Guns will follow up on the release for eight weeks following the radio release date which is set for SEPT. 15th!

The Evolution EP from Chapel Hill, NC’s The High & Mighties are in hand!!!
The printing disc makers did looks tight! The CD sounds great thanks to Ian at Osceola Studios in Raleigh, NC and Brent at The Kitchen Mastering in Carrboro, NC! We did a preliminary pressing of 3000 copies which will be sent to Radio, Press, and used as tour support. After the EP Release Party on Sept. 26th at The Mansion in Chapel Hill the EPs will be for sale for $5! We are currently pumping out the necessary press materials for the radio promotion and distro… yeeheeee!!!

We are just getting started but things are really looking up! Nane and I are still in Germany but will arrive in the US on Thursday to launch the label and management projects under Freefall Management! We are quite excited about all the hard work ahead. Today we have gone skydiving near Heidelberg Germany from 4000 meters! It was my first time and Nane’s third. I guess calling ourselves freefall management is officially appropriate!

Thats all for now!

B