Help us be smart!

We want to get our free music out there. Got any bright ideas? Here's an example of the kind of thing I'm talking about -

"On a busy corner in São Paulo, Brazil, street vendors pitch the latest "tecnobrega" CDs, including one by a hot band called Banda Calypso. Like CDs from most street vendors, these did not come from a record label. But neither are they illicit. They came directly from the band. Calypso distributes masters of its CDs and CD liner art to street vendor networks in towns it plans to tour, with full agreement that the vendors will copy the CDs, sell them, and keep all the money. That's OK, because selling discs isn't Calypso's main source of income. The band is really in the performance business — and business is good. Traveling from town to town this way, preceded by a wave of supercheap CDs, Calypso has filled its shows and paid for a private jet."

If we use your idea we'll love you forever.

- Jesse Kates / Download Kinda Like Fireworks for FREE

This Saturday, March 28th!

The Sexy Accident will rock the books off the shelves at Prospero's on Saturday night at 10pm. Cover is only $3. We'll be playing our soon-to-be-recorded third album in its entirety!

Chuck Whittington of namelessnumberheadman is opening with an acoustic set of his brand new pop material.

As always, if you bring three people who haven't seen us before, you get one of our amazing American Apparel T-Shirts for FREE.

Oh, and if you haven't heard our music before, all of our tunes are available for free download at sexyaccident.com

Prospero's is located at the corner of 39th & Bell in midtown KC. Near KU Med and across from D'Bronx. Come out, grab a bite, and enjoy the rock!

- Jesse o' The Sexy Accident

- Jesse Kates / Download Kinda Like Fireworks for FREE

Recording - how we roll

I thought some of you might be interested in our process in terms of what we do to prepare to record.

It all starts with the song. Those come from me, at least for now. :) I'll usually write a single guitar part, sometimes two, and the vocal melody and placeholder lyrics. Sometimes I bring just the guitar part to the band and I mess around with vocal melodies as we start to experiment with parts. I tend to write one "keeper" song a month, with many ideas getting discarded along the way.

Then we spend a good deal of time working on the arrangement. We experiment with feels, keys, different drum approaches. We'll work on omitting instruments in various sections to see what kinds of moods we can evoke. During this process, we also establish a baseline tempo for the song. We'll try it faster and slower, narrowing down in smaller and smaller BPM increments to just the right core speed. (Daniel plays to a click). When we find it, we write it down. This process usually takes about 2-3 weeks per song (with one group band practice per week.) We then record the first demo of the song so we have a reference we can all listen to at home.

In terms of album prep, what we then do is have a second practice in two "groups." The guitars (bass, two guitars) get together at my place and we play quietly to a metronome. Daniel works on his own as well. This allows us to focus on our individual parts and iron out timing and tempo issues that you can't hear when everyone's being loud. We do these on Wednesdays.

For the final check-off procedure, each week, we focus on two songs. We rehearse them on a Saturday, then practice in sections on Wednesday, then "certify" them on the next Saturday. To certify your part in the song, you have to nail it on the first or second try - no mistakes allowed whatsoever. So the band plays the song twice on the second Saturday - no more, no less - and if you nail it, you get a check by your name for that song. If some of the parts don't get played perfectly within the first or second try, we try again next week, but again, we only do two takes. The goal is to have a check by everyone's name for half the songs by the end of this month, and the remaining half by the second week of April, a week before recording. The reason we're soooo focused on this is everything you have to play twice in the studio costs you time, which in this case (because we have a fixed budget and amount of studio time) means less time for the fun parts: multiple takes, overdubs, experiments. So it's important to be really, really prepared.

On top of all that I practice my vocals in the car, though the intent here is to do those later, in Seattle, at Steve's home studio.

So that's a view into how we work. It's a lot of effort, that's for sure. I have a great band. :)


- Jesse Kates / Download Kinda Like Fireworks for FREE

Aw heck - it's ALL FREE!

You know, I've been doing some thinking.

The Sexy Accident is a rock band. We play shows. We rock the hizzy. That's our business.

Our business isn't selling shiny plastic discs, and everyone knows that most people don't pay for .MP3s.

So, we're going to the extreme. As of RIGHT NOW, you can download our newest album, Kinda Like Fireworks, from our website for FREE.

We even encoded it at 320BPS for all you iPod-wielding audiophiles.

So go get it. And spread it far and wide! We want as many people to hear our music as possible, and we want you all to show up to take in the rock action when we play your town!

I'll encode and post our back catalog (and the Whitford and Jesse Kates albums) sometime in the future.

All this said, we truly do appreciate (and need!) financial support, so if you want to show your love monetarily, buy a t-shirt or button!

- Jesse Kates / Download Kinda Like Fireworks for FREE

Skies - Download it free!

The Sexy Accident have released our third and final "single" from Kinda Like Fireworks - the spectacular album closer Skies.

You can download it for free from sexyaccident.com and iLike, or stream it from Facebook or myspace.

Enjoy!

- Jesse Kates / the Sexy Accident > listen on iTunes