Our newest EP, “Another Stripe for the Tiger” releases to all the major streaming networks on Tuesday, October 5th, 2021. To celebrate this release we added new t-shirts and stickers to our store!
The t-shirts are a 4-color silkscreen design based on the cover art for the new EP. These are hand-screened by the band in our garage studio.
The stickers are 3″ x 3″ vinyl stickers, that will look amazing on anything you choose to stick them to!
Please visit our Store page for more details
Our friend Hygge Boi just released a new single called “Double Check”. It is a great song from this talented singer/songwriter. We were honored to be his backing band on this song. It was a lot of fun to work with him, and can’t wait to hear more!
Listen here: Double Check by Hygge Boi
Congrats Shane!
Ubisoft used Neel’s “Walking Under a Rainbow” as the feature song for their trailer of “Rainbow Six Extraction”, a new video game in their Tom Clancy Rainbow Six franchise.
Walking Under a Rainbow is from Neel’s awesome “Gemini” LP, released in 2014. Pete (drums), Pat (piano), and John (trumpet) played on that song.
In the trailer, the first thing you hear is the chorus of “Walking Under a Rainbow”. As the camera zooms out, you see a computer in a lab, which has a music player up that is streaming the song – which was a cool way to include the song. If you look closely you can see on the music player that it is by Neel Daniel:
A lot of people were trying to figure out what the music was, and a few have put this song on YouTube, where there are a lot of new fans of this song because of the trailer.
Trailer on YouTube: Rainbow Six Extraction – Official Teaser Trailer – YouTube
Neel’s website: Neel Daniel Music
Neel’s music on Spotify: Spotify – Neel Daniel
Congrats Neel!!!
Our good friend Shane Broughton (aka “Hygge Boi”) just released a new single called “Dancing with Lucy”. It’s a great song, and it is one of two singles that we helped record with Shane. Pete (drums), Neel (bass guitar), and Pat (keys) played on these tracks, which was a lot of fun. Shane is a talented dude, you should definitely check out his new song, and also his first EP which was literally recorded live under a bridge by a river.
Spotify link: Spotify – Dancing With Lucy
Neel released his third solo record today, titled “A Thousand Words”. It is available at his BandCamp page: Neel Daniel (bandcamp.com)
Pete played drums on this record, and both Pat and John Stirrat made cameos (keys and trumpet, respectively).
Neel has two previous records that are also excellent: 2010’s “Blue Eyed Monkey” and 2014’s “Gemini”. Both of them are also available on his BandCamp site. Pat, Pete & Neel also made a pretty cool video for Neel’s song “Beautiful“…
Congrats to Neel for making another great record!
In the last month, you may have noticed a bunch of stories and social media about how Spotify is evil based on some really stupid and tone-deaf comments made by CEO Daniel Ek. In a recent interview with Music Ally (link here), he suggested that to be viable, artists need to make more content, that putting out a record every 3 to 4 years just isn’t good enough anymore. The pandemic is really hurting smaller bands, so this was extra tone-deaf for him to say right now as he has made millions and millions while companies like Spotify have gutted revenue streams for the very bands who create the music he is streaming. A lot of artists were rightfully pissed off about this, and many posted about it online. Some even went so far as to stop using Spotify to distribute their music.
For artists, the economics of streaming are really bad, which we don’t think a lot of music fans really understand. Let’s use Stellarator to illustrate this. We have both of our EPs on Spotify (11 songs), and make about 0.3 cents per stream (yes, 1/3 of a cent), which is a pretty common royalty rate for Spotify. Since we publish our own music, we are not splitting royalties with our record company. However, many bands do split royalties with record companies or publishing companies, some as high as 50%, which make that 0.3 cents per stream much much smaller. Stellarator pays a small percentage to our distributor, so we pocket about 3 cents every time someone streams all 11 of our songs (both of our EPs).
We self-produce, self-record, and self-release our music, so we keep our costs really low. If you ignore CD manufacturing costs, we released “Pins & Wires” for about $700 and we did “Under Different Stars” for about $900. So we spent $1,600 to release 2 EPs (11 songs). How many streams are required just to cover our modest production costs? It would take more than 53,000 streams of songs, or nearly 5,000 listens of each EP just to break even. Our average song length is 3:30, so this is something like 3,100 hours of listening, or 130 days of straight streaming just to cover the costs of making the music in the first place.
What if we wanted to make a living on this? Assume all four of us would need to at least make Seattle minimum wage of $15/hour. As a band, we would need to earn $2,400 per week. To get that level of income from Spotify, we would need more than half a million fans to listen to both EP’s every week. We can assure you we are keeping our day jobs.
OK, so if the economics suck that bad, why are we on Spotify at all? For Stellarator, the answer is pretty straightforward: it is the easiest way for people to hear our music. At the scale that we operate, we really only do this for the fun and buzz of making music, the opportunity to hang out with good friends, and to have a creative outlet. We would put our music on Spotify for free if needed. Here’s why: It’s cool to be with someone who says “oh, you are in a band?” and then grab their phone and follow ourselves on their Spotify app (with extra hand sanitizer in the pandemic of course). We all decided long ago that trying to be full-time musicians just isn’t worth it, so what we care about most is people listening to our songs, whether or not we get paid. So (for us anyway) Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, etc., all help with that mission.
But now you should think about all the bands that you love that are full-time musicians (or are trying to be). Streaming makes it super easy and convenient for you to listen to their stuff, and I’m sure that they love having you as a fan. But they are not making any money from you listening that way. These bands and artists typically make their money by touring (selling tickets & merch). This pandemic has killed live music for now, so most of these artists have no real way to make money in the current circumstances. The timing of Daniel Ek’s comment about “artists need to put out more content” was particularly bad when you look at the situation most indie bands are in right now.
Spotify didn’t create this problem. Frankly, the music industry has always been bad for musicians, going back to the beginning of time. It got worse with Apple and iTunes, when they started pricing all songs at $1, and people could buy individual songs (not the whole record). This started a major disruption, and Spotify, Apple Music, Napster, Tidal, etc., were just the next logical steps. But the situation really sucks for musicians today and the pandemic has turned the level of suck up to eleven. Even some very successful indie bands that we listen to can no longer make a living just being in a band. We bet more than one of your favorite bands is in this situation today.
If you really love a band or an artist (who isn’t named Taylor Swift), you should assume that they are struggling right now. One way to help is to buy CDs, vinyl, or other merchandise directly from the band’s website, or through bandcamp.com. Another way to help would be to donate to them directly – most smaller bands or indie artists have some form of Venmo or Paypal account, and would be happy take a donation. We have done this, and it is a nice way to connect with bands that we love!
By the way: please do not donate to Stellarator – the best thing you can do for us is to convince one of your friends to listen to us. We all have day jobs, and we make our records “on the cheap”. We’re doing OK. But we also do zero marketing when we release our music, and depend 100% on word-of-mouth. So if you like our stuff, tell your friends. 🙂
If you made it this far, thanks for reading!
Hey – this is Pat. I am sure that a lot of people have extra helpings of anxiety right now — I know I do. One thing that has helped calm my brain is listening to podcasts.
Here’s a quick rundown of some podcasts that I have been listening to recently, helping me keep my sanity through this pandemic. Most of these are music-related, as I am pretty obsessed with listening to stories about songwriting and also the Beatles. But there are a few non-music podcasts that also have been helping to keep the anxiety in check, either because they are funny, or they are providing good information about the world, or just something interesting to listen to.
Enjoy! If you have suggestions, feel free to drop a note through the Contacts page! Thanks!
(Click on the images to get more info.)
 | Sodajerker on Songwriting. These guys have set the gold standard for interviewing songwriters and musicians about their craft. You can tell that artists love to be interviewed by Simon & Brian because they do their homework and ask really great and insightful questions. With more than 150 interviews, it seems like they have interviewed just about everyone (although I’m still waiting for them to interview Chetes and Ken Stringfellow, but they know that :). I have listened to every episode they have put out. If you are looking to binge something, this is a great place to start! |
 | Song Exploder. Artists decompose one of their songs to the piece parts and show how it comes together. Really cool glimpse “behind the scenes” of songcraft and recordings. Also a very eclectic set of artists. This is another podcast where I will listen to every episode, even if I’m not familiar with the artists. Very engaging, very well produced episodes. |
 | Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcom Gladwell, etc. These are really candid and interesting interviews with musicians about their process, or backstories about records, etc. Rick Rubin has such amazing history in the music biz, and loves music so much. It is really cool to hear him engage with these bands/artists. |
 | My Favourite Elliott Smith Song. Each episode features a prominent musician talking about their favorite ES song, as well as how ES has influenced their own music. I am fan of Elliott Smith, so of course this is on my list. But the interviews are great, and it has been interesting to hear how ES has impacted other artists. Recommended even if you are not already a fan of Elliott Smith… |
 | I am the EggPod. One of the two best Beatles podcasts out there. In each episode, host Chris Shaw talks with a super-fan about a Beatles record or solo record. This is probably my current “go to” podcast if I need a break. Partly because the subject matter is great, but mostly because Chris Shaw is a fantastic host and gets really interesting and engaging guests. I think I could listen to Chris Shaw read the phone book and find it engaging 🙂 |
 | Nothing is Real – A Beatles Podcast. This is my other favorite podcast about the fab four. In each episode Jason Carty and Steven Cockcroft go deep on some aspect of the Beatles career (a record, a time period, and event, etc). The hosts are extremely knowledgeable, and are passionate about the Beatles and everything Beatles-adjacent. |
 | Chris and Rick Talk Guitars. Two local Seattle-area guitar players talk about different aspects of guitars, gear, playing, modding, etc. Sometimes it is hit and miss, but for the most part I find their discussions really fun to listen to. They are good friends with a long history being guitar geeks and if nothing else it is great to hear how passionate they are about guitars. Plus one of the hosts has my same guitar amp (a rare transition model 1964 Fender Princeton) so that’s kind of cool. |
 | U Talkin U2 2 Me? aka RU Talkin REM RE: Me? aka <something about RHCP> aka U Talkin Talking Heads 2 My Talking Head? This is a completely absurd but entertaining series by Scott Aukerman (Comedy Bang! Bang!) and Adam Scott (Parks & Rec, tons of other things). It started as a U2 podcast where they would do an episode on each album, for each of U2s records. Once they were done with U2, they did a series on REM (where I found it). After REM they started Red Hot Chili Peppers, but bailed after the first episode and switched to Talking Heads. The episodes are absurd and bizarre and funny, but when they talk about the records the discussions are really interesting and they are both very knowledgeable and big fans. If you are a fan of one of these bands and can deal with some of the strangeness, it is really a great podcast. |
 | The Adam Buxton Podcast. Adam is a comedian, actor, TV personality, etc in the UK. Each episode he interviews someone (usually an actor, comedian or musician). He’s a great interviewer, has really interesting guests and stories, and has great rapport with his guests. Usually the episodes are both interesting and funny. His recent interview with Radiohead’s Ed O’Brien was one of the best interviews I’ve heard in while. |
 | Binge Mode Weekly. From The Ringer, this podcast started out as a 60-episode binge of Game of Thrones, where in the run-up to Season 7 of GOT, the hosts watched all 60 prior episodes of the show and for each episode did a 1-hour podcast debrief/discussion. Their depth of knowledge from both the show and the books is amazing, and the original GOT episodes were great. I found this while I was recently binge-ing the entire run of GOT. I had never seen it before, and watched all 73 episodes in about 45 days. I found Binge Mode along the way, and it was very helpful to understand some of the details and complexity of the show. They have moved on to other TV shows and movies, such as Harry Potter, Star Wars, Mandalorian, West World, etc. Pretty consistently good, especially if you are interested in whatever they are talking about. |
 | Today Explained by Vox Media. There are a lot of decent daily topical podcasts (The Daily, What a Day, News O’Clock, etc) but this one continues to be my “go to”. They have good, well-researched explainers of topical issues. No agendas, interesting topics, good sense of humor. I’ve learned a lot listening to this one. |
 | Lions Led By Donkeys. This one is a bit out there, but I really like it. In each episode, Joe (host) explains some historic battle or military event to one of his co-hosts, over cocktails. Joe has a very deep understanding of history, and as a veteran of GWOT his personal experiences add a lot to the narrative. Funny and educational. Kind of like hour-long “drunk history” episodes. “The Lions Led By Donkeys podcast is a military history podcast for laughing at the worst military failures, inept commanders, and crazy stories from throughout the history of human conflict.” |
 | Reply All. Kind of a tech geeky podcast about interesting aspects of internet culture and experiences, chasing weird stories, etc. If nothing else, I suggest you listen to the episode about The Case of the Missing Hit. It is pretty remarkable story with many twists and turns — it may be one of my favorite podcast episodes ever. |
| Wind of Change. This is more of a documentary than regular podcast, but it is a really interesting story that is told very well. The premise: the host is trying to figure out if the CIA wrote “Wind of Change” by the Scorpions as a piece of cold war propaganda. There is a lot more to it than that, and it is a very engaging story and investigation. I listened to the whole thing twice, it was that good. |
We finally designed and printed some t-shirts, using the “Under Different Stars” artwork. We are silk screening these in the garage, so the costs are low – just $7 plus shipping – what a deal!
The shirts are available in 3 colors: black, dark gray and heathered forest green. You can order them in the Store. If they are in stock, they usually ship out the next day. If the size/color you want is backordered, it will probably take 2 weeks. But it will be worth the wait!
If there is a color or style or size that you want that is not currently available, please drop us a note on the Contacts page and we’ll see what we can do! Thanks
Hey – this is Theron. Here is the story of our song “Aligned” from Under Different Stars. Thanks for reading!
As I recall, when Pat brought me the original skeleton for the song Aligned, it had chords for the verses and chorus, and the phrase, “wait just a moment.” I don’t recall if there were additional words, because I knew with that phrase that I was going to make this song about Heidi, my girlfriend at the time. We were in love, and living together, and both agreed that we were on a trajectory towards marriage.
There’s no “right” way to get to that destination—to get engaged. Either person can make the proposal. It can be a surprise, or something you both gradually fall into. In our case, I knew that proposal would come from me. I just didn’t feel like I was a good enough prospect at the time to make that commitment. She was our primary breadwinner. I was figuring out how to run my own business, and I couldn’t afford to split the rent, let alone buy a ring. When you think you’re close to that point, there’s a temptation to talk about things you’ll do “when we’re married”, but I never felt okay talking as if our marriage were inevitable before I’d stepped up and officially committed to it. We both knew we were bound for the long haul, but we were both careful to speak in terms of “if we get married …”, rather than “when”.
So, I sat in my work space with my spare guitar, trying to put into words what I was waiting for. I needed to get my shit together. I needed to know she had faith in me. I needed the stars to align. I worked on the arrangement a bit, finished the words, and when I sang it, it really felt right. I sent my rough sketch to Pat, but I didn’t play it for Heidi until all of us had recorded our parts, and the rough mixes came back with Ken’s beautiful keys and harmonies. She knew exactly what the words meant, and she loved it.
Maybe just getting the words written and the song recorded helped me realize that I didn’t need to wait for anything in order to make my commitment to her. One day, I finished my work, dashed into a thrift store, and bought a ring that looked close to the right size, and came home and put it on her finger. She didn’t need anything else to say “yes”. We were engaged around the same time the EP came out. In October of 2019, with a nicer, better fitting ring on her finger, Heidi and I danced to Aligned at our wedding reception. It really did feel like the stars were smiling on us, and it still does.
–Theron
Hey – this is Pat. This is the story behind Escalera, from our “Under Different Stars” EP. Enjoy!
On “Under Different Stars” (2019) we recorded an English-language cover of Monocordio’s “Escalera.” Monocorodio is a band out of Mexico City, led by Fernando Rivera Calderón, and “Escalera” was one of the singles from their 2005 LP, “La Hora Del Tiempo.”
In the past couple years, I have become an obsessive fan of indie rock bands from Mexico. This started in November 2018, when my wife and I heard some really cool Spanish-language indie rock while at a local Mexican restaurant. After Shazam-ing some of these songs, I realized that there are some amazing bands out of Mexico and Latin America that we would never hear in the States, and I fell into a deep rabbit hole of listening to tons of rock bands particularly from Mexico. Along the way I found a few of my favorites, including Monocordio, Chetes, Zurdok, Cafe Tacvba, Porter, Hello Seahorse!, fLIP Tamez, Zoe, La Gusana Ciega, and many more, all from our neighbors to the south. I don’t even speak Spanish, but I really fell in love with some of these bands, and I thought it would be fun to do a cover of one of these songs on Under Different Stars. In the end, we narrowed the choices to “Escalera” by Monocordio, and a couple songs from Chetes (“Completamente” or “Efecto Domino”).
I got in touch with Monocordio (Fernando) and explained that we wanted to do his song in English, and asked if he (or anyone) had translated his original Spanish lyrics into English. No one had done this, so I asked his permission to do so, and he was very cool about saying “yes.” So we picked this one for our record. Maybe we’ll do Chetes cover in the future.
Although I really love the arrangement of the original studio recording of Escalera (link above), I realized the “live” arrangements that I watched on YouTube would be a better fit for Stellarator. They often played with a horn section that featured trumpet, and with me having a kid who is great on trumpet, it seemed like a great way to get my son involved and also pay homage to the live versions of this song.
(Quick aside for a “dad brag”: John played all the horns on this track, and Henry played drums. Ok back to the story…)
The other cool thing about Monocordio’s live performances is that they would often finish the song by jamming out to some iconic chord progression, such as “She’s so Heavy” from the Beatles, or something from King Crimson, etc. This gave us a fun idea to play with, to come up with our own jam on the outro (the ending of the song).
Translating the lyrics was hard, but luckily Theron knows some Spanish, so he did a lot of the heavy lifting. I think we ended up doing a pretty good job.
Escalera translates to “staircase” in English. Theron had suggested working in some kind of reference to Stairway to Heaven in our translation, which was a great idea. Which got me thinking… I had been trying to figure out what to do about the outro jam part, and realized that the Stairway to Heaven chords were very similar to the Escalera chords, and by making one change we were able to morph the outro of Escalera into Stairway to Heaven. So this is how we both came up with a cool outro and worked the Stairway to Heaven easter egg into the recording. It is kind of subtle, but if you know it is there you will definitely hear it! (The “morph” starts at the 3:33 mark in the song… it begins with Theron’s lead guitar playing Escalera melodies over the Stairway progression, and then the horns pick up the Stairway melody lines….) This was a fun way to put our own spin on the song, and also to pay homage to Fernando, and work in Theron’s Stairway to Heaven reference…
We finished the song in the middle of March 2019, and so I sent a link to Fernando to make sure he didn’t hate it or want to have us remove it from the record. This would have been a bummer, since we had gotten the record mastered assuming Escalera would be on it. Luckily he was super cool about it, loved it, and even helped promote it on his social media accounts. This was amazing, as Fernando is not only a successful musician, he’s also a radio and TV personality in Mexico, as well as a published author and poet. He has a large social media following, and was very generous to promote Stellarator to his fans. He even played our version of Escalera on a radio program where he was playing his favorite songs. To this day, we probably have more fans in Mexico than we do in the USA due to his promotion of this song.
It gets better: In late September 2019, I had to got to travel to Mexico City for work, so I reached out to Fernando to see if he would be up for grabbing a beer or something. He said he’d be happy to meet up, and even suggested taking me out to see Lucha Libre, which would have been amazing. Schedules ended up being tight, but we were able to spend a few hours together over a few glasses of wine, and had an amazing conversation. Ever since I’ve known him, he’s claimed not to speak English… Since I don’t speak Spanish I was worried it would be hard to communicate. Turns out his English is great! It was such a special thing to get to meet him, talk music, family, culture, politics, etc. Music is so cool for making connections like this, which I truly treasure. Thank you Fernando…. ¡Abrazo!
By the way, Fernando has a great Instagram feed – he’s a good follow! @fernandoriveracalderon
I wanted to bring Fernando an appropriate thank-you gift, so I asked Ken Stringfellow (of The Posies, who also played on a few songs on Under Different Stars) to sign a copy of The Posies iconic “Frosting on the Beater” for Fernando. Frosting on the Beater was a pretty seminal record, and influenced my own musical tastes, so I thought it would be a great gift for Fernando. Ken was super cool about this, as he was on the road when I asked him to do this, and made it work out I could send it to him and get it back before my trip. Thanks Ken!
This trip to Mexico City was short, but truly magic. I arrived late Saturday night and had to work Monday-Thursday and fly home Thursday night. So I only had Sunday open to do sight seeing. A colleague and his family took me to some museums in the morning and afternoon (thanks Rogelio!). In the evening, I got to see Chetes perform a set at the SeptemberFest festival… which was so amazing that he was playing 5 miles from my hotel when I was in town – what are the odds??? Seriously! And of course later that night I got to hang out with Fernando. It was a day I won’t soon forget.
I am now such a huge fan of rock bands from Mexico. I have spent so much time looking at Mexican bands on the Internet that I now get Spanish-language ads on Twitter…:) If you have Spotify and are interested in hearing some great music, I have a playlist that showcases some of my favorite songs from favorite bands:
Thanks for taking the time to read this!
– Pat