The Project

We get that a lot -- fans suggesting songs for Endless Blue to cover. The suggestions come especially heavy after we play our interpretations of Peggy Lee's Fever or Sade's No Ordinary Love. One day, after hearing the hundredth cover idea from a friend, we started thinking, why not do an entire album of reinterpreted songs?  It would be exciting for us and a lot of fun for listeners.  And the perfect name for it would be: Undercover.

Unfortunately, Undercover hit a brick wall almost immediately. The licensing costs for doing a full album over covers was, well, a bit out of our league. Although we had offers from patrons to fund some of the covers, we never had enough funding to do an entire album like we dreamed. 

The Band

Endless Blue was formed by Laura and Nick Mitchell in 2003 in Minneapolis, MN. Hanging up the electro-rock sounds of our previous band, we decided to chill out a bit and pursue the grooves of some of our favorite trip-hop bands -- Portishead, Massive Attack, Tricky, Baxter, Lamb, and Hooverphonic, to name a few. In 2005 we moved our home base to West Bend, WI and have been there ever since. We've had guest musicians come and go in the project since its inception, but it wasn't until late 2011 that we added our first permanent member, the monster of bass known as Scott Feldstein. The three of us are ready to get to work and make Undercover a reality.

The Funding

We've released three full length CDs, a soundtrack, and an EP since 2003. We've got the self production thing down to a fine art. Releasing the CD by itself wouldn't require us to get outside funding, something to the tune of $350-400. That's pretty doable. What's different about Undercover is the need to secure licensing for all of our cover songs. This gets expensive really quickly on an album of all covers, essentially doubling our cost to release the CD. After running the numbers, we felt that $800 will get us a nice CD package, distribution, and cover all the licensing of up to 12 songs. Any extra will go toward more songs on the CD and maybe some other goodies (t-shirts, posters, maybe a second disc of B-sides). If you fund us to crazy levels, we'll even make it a 2-disc CD!

Song Guidelines

Now, as much as we want to do every song that our fans ask for, there are a few ground rules when suggesting or picking a song:

• No overly profane songs. We love N.W.A. and Butt Trumpet as much as the next guy. But still, we'd prefer to keep it PG-13 for Undercover.
• No songs overtly schilling for a political figure or product. I heard about a conspiracy at Scott's work that was going to force us to do Stand With Governor Walker... Lemme just put the kibosh on that (and any will.i.am songs while we're at it).
• No instrumentals. This would make Laura cry the tears of a thousand kittens. You don't want to make Laura cry, do you? Okay, even if you do, we have to live with her, so please don't. 

Finally, just remember that we're going to trip-hop-ize your song, which will likely take it in a different direction than the original. We reserve the right to take "artistic liberties" with it, sprinkle it with emo fairy dust, and make it generally do naughty things. But trust us -- you'll like the outcome.