News » Archive

Amanda and Zach stand among mountains in the desert

love morris + rbk = new music for you

As a band name, rushmore beekeepers kinda started (and continued) as a joke. When I saw the film Rushmore I immediately claimed the name, regardless of a lack of both band members and bees. Off and on over the years rbk has had guest musicians, sometimes improv at live shows and a recorded song here and there, but it’s been some time since this was a band.

(Cue dramatic music)

Meet love morris! If you haven’t heard her electro folk mini-album, have a listen here. You may already know love morris rbk-wise from her singing and bass on “the name of every building.” We’ve performed together in various musical settings over the years and, for the first time in many years, have collaborated on a bunch of songs.

love morris (also know as Amanda Hawkins) is all over the new album, co-producing and contributing vocals and a variety of instrumentation. It’s the first album we’ve recorded as a duo (!), which not only makes the songs sound one million times better but is also seriously overdue; Amanda is an amazingly talented musician and one of my favorite people and we should just always be in bands together.

We recorded semi-Postal Service style, mostly because I live on the road and Amanda’s house doesn’t have wheels. I recorded my parts, sent the files to her digitally, and she recorded at her home studio in Arizona. Every time she sent a finished song to me it was like getting a birthday present, or whatever the better version of a birthday present is. The band, as it were, has never sounded so good, and I’ve never been more excited to share new music.

The new album, a reasonable distance, will be available for preorder soon, so until then here’s our first single, “fighting monsters.”

After quite a bit of time spent not writing, I managed to get productive and wrote three songs this October. Carrie shot a video of her favorite of the three, “fighting monsters,” on a cold fall day at Charlestown State Park, Indiana.

Lyrics:

don’t think you have to go down that road alone
someone is on your side
don’t wonder how you’ll do what you need to do
hope is endless as the sky

but it’s long and twisted, the path that you’re headed
there’s no way to get through but to go through it
if you’re fighting a monster, you know how that goes
there’s no way to get through but to destroy it

wind blows cold and leaves rattle, fall on the roof
sirens whine, don’t see the lights
when you do what you need to do you’ll see
hope as endless as the sky

it’s long and twisted, the path that you’re headed
there’s no way to get through but to go through it
if you’re fighting a monster, you know how that goes (2x)
there’s no way to get through but to destroy it (2x)

Roadrunner sculpture next to truck towing an Airstream travel trailer

Carrie, the dogs and I are leaving Texas for Arizona. Then Arizona for New Mexico. Then, after a string of states along a route we haven’t quite mapped out, New Mexico for Rhode Island. We’re hitting the road and going full-time mobile in an Airstream travel trailer. We’ve been talking about it and planning for years and we’re finally in a position where we’ve happily accepted that the reasons to do it outweigh the reasons not to.

Read more at Faux Bold.

Zach Fountain (rushmore beekeepers) at Couch by Couchwest 2015

For this year’s Couch By Couchwest music festival – in its fifth year! – I moved some instruments into the living room to record an electrified, drum-looped version of “your pretty black bow.” Carrie, the wearer of the pretty black bow, staged the couch very nicely. Unlike last year, Kyla doesn’t make an appearance (in this video, anyway).

Watch rushmore beekeepers play “your pretty black bow” at CXCW 2015, and spend the rest of your week couch-surfing (or working, or doing whatever you need to) with some good tunes from musicians all over the world.

Page 2 of 6 1 2 3 4 5 6