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About this project

The time has come for us to leave the safe confines of Los Angeles, and bring our music to foreign cities and unknown persons. There is always a thirst for new sounds, and we feel quite strongly that it is time for us to push to take this relationship to the next step. We are not afraid of commitment, is what we're saying. We're rare dudes.

The plan is to start in Santa Barbara and then hit cities along the way until we arrive in Seattle--all in a 10 day duration. Since this is a self-booked tour, our cuts from shows will be minimal to nonexistent. We're well aware that doing this is purely a) for the passion and b) to gain greater exposure outside of our city sphere. We've all requested time off of our jobs, and many of us don't have the option of taking paid time off.

We started this project because we wanted to find a way to raise money so we didn't go into the red financially, while also allowing our friends, family and fans to feel a part of our journey as we expand and grow. All of the money raised will go to van rental, gas costs, food, insurance, purchasing new merchandise, and covering the losses we will have from not being at our 9-5's for one week. We've budgeted very precisely what it would take to cover each of these items, and know that with the proper backing, we can go into our tour focused solely and entirely on the most important element: the music.

We need to reach our minimum goal in order to get this tour off the ground, and we know we can do it with your help. Sweet.

Here's the schedule:

Friday April 23rd - Santa Barbara, CA
Saturday April 24th - Santa Cruz, CA
Sunday April 25th - Ashland, OR
Monday April 26th - Portland, OR
Tuesday April 27th - Seattle, WA
Wednesday April 28th - Seattle, WA
Thursday April 29th - Salem, OR
Saturday May 1st - Fairfax, CA

Our music:

http://www.myspace.com/hihosilveroh

Our blog:

http://www.hihosilveroh.blogspot.com

Our website:

http://www.hihosilveroh.com

And a place to buy music and stream all of our songs:

http://hihosilveroh.bandcamp.com

Ask a question

Have a question? If the info above doesn't help, you can ask the project creator directly.

54
Backers
$2,150
pledged of $1,600 goal
0
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Funding Successful

This project successfully raised its funding goal on April 18, 2010.

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4 Backers

Thank you for 5 dollars! You get peace of mind knowing you contributed to such a great cause and you will not be forgotten! We're gonna learn a lot about you so the next time we see you at a party it will be super good conversation.

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14 Backers

Download code for the album "Put It All In One Place and Burn It" or we'll send you our 6 song EP from our Friday the 13th themed side project "The Happy Campers."

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12 Backers

-Personalized bonus CD of demos and unreleased Hi Ho Silver Oh tracks -Download code for the album "Put It All In One Place and Burn It" or we'll send you our 6 song EP from our Friday the 13th themed side project "The Happy Campers."

Pledge $50 or more Pledge $50 or more

4 Backers

-Personalized bonus CD of demos and unreleased Hi Ho Silver Oh tracks -Download code for the album "Put It All In One Place and Burn It" or we'll send you our 6 song EP from our Friday the 13th themed side project "The Happy Campers." -DVD of Hi Ho Silver Oh videos Pick 1 bonus item: -Personalized mix CD from band member of your choice -Signed headshot/photograph of Phil Eastman -Compilation of band member solo demos

Pledge $100 or more Pledge $100 or more

6 Backers

-We record a song WITH YOUR NAME IN IT, essentially, dedicated to you. -Personalized bonus CD of demos and unreleased Hi Ho Silver Oh tracks -Download code for the album "Put It All In One Place and Burn It" or we'll send you our 6 song EP from our Friday the 13th themed side project "The Happy Campers." -DVD of Hi Ho videos Pick 1 bonus item: -Personalized mix CD from band member of your choice -Signed headshot/photograph of Phil Eastman -Compilation of band member solo demos

Pledge $250 or more Pledge $250 or more

1 Backer

-We record a song WITH YOUR NAME IN IT, essentially, dedicated to you. -Personalized bonus CD of demos and unreleased Hi Ho Silver Oh tracks -Download code for the album "Put It All In One Place and Burn It" or we'll send you our 6 song EP from our Friday the 13th themed side project "The Happy Campers." -DVD of Hi Ho videos Pick 2 bonus items: -Personalized mix CD from band member of your choice -Signed headshot/photograph of Phil Eastman -Selected anthology of Hi Ho member output

Pledge $500 or more Pledge $500 or more

0 Backers

-We will do ANYTHING for you, within reason, legal limits, and in the state of California. -We record a song WITH YOUR NAME IN IT, essentially, dedicated to you. -Personalized bonus CD of demos and unreleased Hi Ho Silver Oh tracks -Download code for the album "Put It All In One Place and Burn It" or we'll send you our 6 song EP from our Friday the 13th themed side project "The Happy Campers." -DVD of Hi Ho videos Pick 2 bonus items: -Personalized mix CD from band member of your choice -Signed headshot/photograph of Phil Eastman -Selected anthology of Hi Ho member output

Project By

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A short biographical essay about Hi Ho Silver Oh.
By William Randolph Brafford.

A week or two ago, I was watching my friend Casey play his songs for a small crowd at Chapel Hill’s Nightlight club. I hadn’t seen him play solo-acoustic at a show in I don’t know how long, and I was a little bit surprised to find that the things I love about Casey’s music now are basically the same things I loved back in high school when we played shows together in church rec-rooms. And now Casey has asked me to write a short biographical essay for his “one sheet,” whatever that is, and so I get to try to put some of what I observed in the Nightlight into prose. As I see it, the point of what I’m writing is (1) to explain to you something about who Casey Trela is and where he comes from, (2) to say something about what his band, Hi Ho Silver Oh, sounds like, and, if all goes well, (3) to give a glimpse of what I think Casey is about, deep down. I’m not sure that I can do it right, but here goes.

Casey spent the first part of his life in Rome, New York, which is somewhere in the upstate, but he moved to North Carolina and went to middle school, high school, and college there. While in high school, he wrote and home-recorded a couple of largely acoustic albums that sounded a little bit like unplugged Jimmy Eat World, but more expansive and autobiographical. It was during this time that he started developing his penchant for house shows, playing, for example, in my family’s living room for maybe fifteen people who all liked his songs. (He’d also play for bigger audiences churches and coffeehouses; we were too young to hang out in bars.)

In college, Casey started a band called Sweater Weather, and he kind of blossomed as an arranger, bandleader, and songwriter. They’d play everything from fantastically loud and intense songs about the eschaton to whisper-quiet songs about moving away from a childhood home. But college ended, and so did the band, and Casey moved to Los Angeles. On the West Coast, he started writing songs that he could play either by himself or with whoever else showed up, and he called the project Hi Ho Silver Oh.

But what does it sound like? There are some things that hold constant over Casey’s entire output: the introspective-with-bright-flashes-of-humor lyrics, the intuitive sensitivity to dynamics, the catchy-enough-to-sing-along choruses that beg you to participate, the home-recording ethic. But with this project Casey has started to do things I haven’t heard him do before: a few Roy Orbison-style love ballads, sunny California harmonies, and delicate instrumental lines and chord progressions. The guitar is the central instrument, so everything works for the solo shows, but the sound gets fleshed out in the recordings by keyboards and tambourines and the occasional violin, depending on what the song requires.

And I think I can shed some light on why Casey writes these songs. One time when we were driving south from Washington DC back to North Carolina, Casey explained to me why Roy Orbison’s version of “Love Hurts” is better than any other version he’s heard. There’s this one line — “love is like a stove / burns you when it’s hot” — that some covers omit. Even good covers, like the one by Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris, tend to make love’s hurt sound like something that’s good in the long run, but not Roy. When Orbison sings about getting burned, he means that love actually hurts. Badly. It’s not a no-pain-no-gain kind of thing, it’s just hurt. Some of us know this from experience. Of course, Roy Orbison also sang “Running Scared,” so he knew that love is good even as love hurts, and these parts of love can be separate or they can be mixed, and that these are truths that can be hard to sing without being sentimental. These are the kinds of truths that Hi Ho Silver Oh wants to get across, and to get them across in a way that we can sing them together and maybe be somehow better for it. Or at least, that’s my take on it.

I hope that answers all of your questions.

-wrb

  1. hihosilveroh.com

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