Electric City Boxing Club, the second Cat Positive album, will be released on Friday, June 6th. The album took a year to write and another year to bring the band together, rehearse, and record. I am immensely proud of the work we did.
Today, we released the first single from the album, "The Misfits." This song is a vignette of thoughts about my time in the Great Falls, MT punk scene. Some bands wanted to play the main stage at Warped Tour; some just wanted to annoy everyone and fuck shit up. For some kids, this was just a phase. For me, it’s a lifelong commitment.
Thanks to The Monsters, The Substandards, Beyond Nothing, The CHUDS, Hometown Heroes, X’s and O’s, Battery Operated Boyfriend, and so many more—you changed my life forever.
This song—and the entire album—was recorded by Dylan Hanwright & Erik Takuichi Wallace. Dylan mixed the record, and Erik mastered it. Anna Arvan sings on this track, and I want to give a huge thank you to her for appearing on our album.
More words about the album will come in the months ahead. In the meantime, please enjoy our new song. And if you have the chance to go see your friends' bands live—do it while you can. They may not be here for very long.
The new Cat Positive song "The Misfits" is available to listen to and purchase on Bandcamp Today. It will find its way to streaming platforms in the coming days.
Stay punk,
Tyson
No Guts was everyone's favorite house show band when I moved to Bellingham back in 2012. They hosted legendarily fun house shows at their house venue called The Little Wisco. They made a fair amount of EP's and albums that are sort of hard to track down. But their best work was their last album released in 2019 "4033." Thanks in part to Cat Positive bass player Justin Taylor, I have copies of this work on Compact Disc. Each order will come with a boat load of stickers. Next time you see the guys ask em to put the rest of their records on Bandcamp. Snag your copy HERE
My friend Shmed died in his sleep on January 24th. He laid down, put Star Wars on, and never woke up. He was 51. I was told it was peaceful. I can only hope he was carried into the cosmos by Carrie Fisher herself—I think he would have liked that.
Ryan Maynes was a gifted musician from California who played in the bands Arlo and Secret Powers. I never called him Ryan; I only ever knew him as Shmed. I have written a few drafts about my time with him that I haven't been able to share. It's impossible to keep it concise.
I spent a lot of hours in Club Shmed making music with him. We made three albums together, and he recorded the two Scribblers studio albums we released on Tummy Rock Records. I break up my musical life into three waves, and wave two is defined by the work I did with Shmed.
Hank Green described working with Shmed perfectly—you didn't just get a studio; you got a producer and a multi-instrumentalist session musician. Shmed was down to work with anyone and play on everyone's albums. My song Notes to Self was one people liked, but I’m not sure it would have been noticed without the work he did on that recording. The crushing piano, arpeggios, and doubled vocal effects made people take notice.
Much like Hank, Shmed was also the first person to introduce me to comped vocals, auto-tune, and truly fleshing out ideas in the studio. He wanted us to be in tune and in time but also knew I wanted to keep it authentic and lo-fi. I think he enjoyed the challenge. Much of the groundwork for how I approach recording albums today comes from the lessons I learned while working with him.
But it wasn't just music. Shmed loved to tell stories, and we had lots of conversations. He really just wanted to be everyone’s friend.
After we recorded our first album together, he invited me to eat Thanksgiving dinner with him and his family. I think he could tell that I was struggling and really broke. When we decided to make a second album, he only charged me $900 for the recording session of The Escape Artist Kids—just $100 per song. We spent a year making the album. About once a week, I came over in the morning after dropping the kids off at school. Some weeks, we got a lot done; other times, we were less productive. I think he did this to help me afford to record in the studio, but also because he enjoyed experimenting with the songs and wanted to spend time with me.
I learned a lot about him, and there were nuggets of wisdom he shared that I still pass on today.
The last story I’ll share (for now) about Shmed is my favorite.
He once told me about his time living in LA, when everyone there was making fun of the band Ozma for how much they sounded like Weezer. People wouldn’t stop talking shit about them. One day, the guitar player in Arlo told Shmed that, "We should be friends with that band." So they went out of their way to be kind to them, and became friends with Ozma. This led to touring with them, and building a lifelong connection.
It was a turning point for him—realizing that being kind to others was more valuable than seeing everyone as competition. That building connections was more powerful than isolating yourself. That when it’s easy to be a shithead, you should try to be kind.
He told me once that his life felt like a made-for-TV movie—how he turned it all around when he moved to Missoula. I wish that had stayed true for him.
He was weird and complicated at times, sometimes a total mess. But he changed my life forever. I loved all the time I spent with him. I’m glad I got to be a part of Missoula with him when he was at his best. That’s something I will treasure and hold close. Thank you Shmed. You can listen to all the albums we made together on Bandcamp.
Cat Positive is playing two shows coming up starting Thursday January 16th at Shakedown with locals Salt Pine and Sceneric. This is the first C+ show in Bellingham in 7 months! Please come. The band has new songs for you to hear.
The next evening the band travels down I-5 to play at Jules Maes Saloon in Seattle with Bird Bones and Straight To Video. Tickets available HERE C'mon out. We want to see you and spend time together IRL before the year start's to get weird.
Cat Positive plays their 1st show in 6 months in Seattle at Vera Project with an incredible lineup of bands! Each band playing are lifers in the local music scene having been chugging away for years. Sunnyland is a band of brothers featuring members from CREECH, FELL OFF, and ROB JOYNES. starbird features members of SPECIAL EXPLOSION.
Excited to see and reconnect with some friends at this one! Cat Positive has new songs to play from their upcoming album. Tickets on sale: TICKET LINK
We are staying quietly busy over here at Tummy Rock. We’ve been digging through the past catalog and working on getting music up on streaming platforms, because we believe in these records and we want you to hear them. Next up on our reissue campaign is the 2014 keyboard driven pop record, “Live a Little,” by the band Pancakes. Pancakes was a band comprised of songwriters Mikki Bauerly and Kaylen Alan Krebsbach based out of Missoula, Montana. The band is interesting because
the duo come from very different musical backgrounds. Mikki had been fronting weird and aggressive no wave bands where Kaylen came from more of an indie rock background. Together the duo made a cohesive album that is fun, silly, and an incredibly beautiful batch of short humorous songs with a lot of heart.
The band ended at the same time the album came out and so the record never really found the audience I think it deserved and just became a quirky obscure gem on my Bandcamp collection. An extremely limited 10 cassettes and 25 CDs were ever printed. Nothing would make me happier if in the 10 years since the release of the album songs like “Real Pretend Boyfriend,” “Mutual Ex-Boyfriend,” “Party Goth” or even the wintery ballad “Too Cold (4 Snow)” see some kind of Tik Tok viral moment (hint hint kids). One can always hope right? Thank you Kaylen and Mikki for letting me continue to distribute this record these last 10 years. I love this album so much. “Live a Little” by the band Pancakes is streaming now. Link in bio.
Short lived Missoula Montana punk band Cat Heaven is now up on streaming services. You can listen to our album “Fear of a Cat Planet” and a few demo’s from our “Litter Box Sessions” EP wherever streams are sold.
The band was composed of Grant Gieger (The Western States, Buddy Jackson) Ethan Uhl (Whoopass Girls, Go Hibiki, Mido Skip) and myself, Tyson Ballew (Xavier’s School and Cat Positive). Somehow in that short time the band played 20 shows, including a couple of reunion shows. While we never formally disbanded, considering all three of us live in separate parts of the country, and the likelihood of some sort of viral moment spurring a robust reunion tour seems unlikely.
In 2011 I had just released my 2nd Tyson Ballew studio album “The Escape Artist Kids.” I don’t remember whose idea it was but Ethan and Grant agreed to play those songs live with me as a band. We played a couple shows that way before I decided it would be more fun to convert the lineup into a band with its own name and work on some unreleased punk songs from a defunct earlier project. We dropped most of the solo songs from my set with the exception of “Garden City Hardcore,” which we turned into an anthem of sorts.
We recorded a demo EP before Ethan moved to Wyoming for a few months. We had fun making it but it's not that great to listen to. I mixed it poorly and the performances are pretty loose. All but three songs we re-recorded for our studio record, but three of the demos came out nicely and they are featured on the streaming reissue of the record. Grant and I played two shows as a two piece before Ethan triumphantly returned. It was heaven to be a three piece again.
Our approach to the band was unconventional and nonchalant in many ways. I was inspired by other local bands eschewing having social media pages so we had no online presence outside of Bandcamp. Ethan’s other band had a pay what you want model for all of their records and I was excited to also try that out. Our two releases each had a healthy amount of downloads at the time but no one ever paid for anything. On one hand this approach meant that I didn’t have to maintain a data graveyard of a band that has nothing going on but it also means that overtime our time spent as a band has grown more obscure. I can’t find any photos of us online and the reviews of our records have also disappeared due to the consolidation of media platforms.
In the time since we disbanded another band called Cat Heaven from New South Wales appeared and seemed to have the exact same life as our band. They too have limited online presence, one studio album and seem to have also disbanded. Their record “Living Room” is an excellent post punk record that you should also listen to. I am happy to share the band name with them, just know we had it first. If Cat Heaven NSW ever reunites I am also happy to release a split 7 inch with them and my current band Cat Positive!
Ethan is a prolific songwriter with a ton of music online and he brought three incredible songs to the band. We ended up doing a version of The Whoopass Girls hit song “Scout’s Honor.” It became a setlist mainstay. He also brought us two incredible songs “Senorita Gamera” and “(Fuckin' Up) In Montana.” The latter of the two I think is the best song ever released on Tummy Rock Records. It was fun having another songwriter in the band. I only wish we would have had more of Ethan’s songs to play!
I had a lot of fun in this band. The whole time I lived in Missoula I wanted to be in a band. Aside from a few one offs and collaborations my efforts in Missoula were often solo. We were never the best band in town. We told everyone we were the shortest and sloppiest band in town. By the end of the band though, we got dialed in and got better at playing and we all improved as musicians. We moved quickly through our recording sessions and while that may leave the recordings a little rough around the edges, I wouldn’t change anything. I had fun the whole time we were doing it. Thank you Ethan and Grant for playing music with me.
CAT HEAVEN "FEAR OF A CAT PLANET" featuring three demo tracks from "THE LITTER BOX SESSIONS" Streaming everywhere now!
TAXPAYERS SHOWS UPDATED AND TICKETS ON SALE at www.thetaxpayersband.com
ALL SHOWS ALL AGES!
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Saturday June 1st
@ Champlin Guitars 1121 N State St, Bellingham, WA 98225
Doors at 7:30 Music at 8:00pm ALL AGES
Suggested $10-20 for performers
Advance Tickets
ADVANCE BASE
the melancholic soft rock recording project of Chicago, IL singer/songwriter Owen Ashworth (formerly of Casiotone for the Painfully Alone). Using a two-handed arsenal of electric piano, Omnichord, samplers, effect pedals & drum machines, Ashworth builds minimalist, heavy-hearted, & nostalgia-obsessed ballads around his conversational baritone. The warm, electronic sound of Advance Base has been described as "lo-fi," "depressed" & "weirdly uplifting."
advancebase.bandcamp.com
KARIMA WALKER
Tucson, Arizona interdisciplinary artist Karima Walker walks a line between two worlds. Aside from her long resume of collaborative work with artists in the diverse fields of dance, sculpture, film, photography and creative non-fiction, Walker has long nurtured a duality within her work as a musician, developing her own sonic language as a sound designer in tandem with her craft as a singer/songwriter.
karimawalker.bandcamp.com
NATALIE DAY
1800sunny.bandcamp.com
Cat Positive has announced a batch of shows culminating with a 10 year anniversary show in June at the Shakedown.
CAT POSITIVE
May 11th 2024 Shoreline WA @ Darrell's Tavern w/ Darbi Dhufo, Panic Grass, Moon Organ (21+)
May 18th 2024 Bellingham WA @ Karate Church (519 E Maple St) w/ Worms In Dirt, Gated Community, Grant Summerland (all ages)
May 25th 2024 Bellingham WA @ Ramble Tamble (1313 North State St) with Mom Sport (21+)
June 15 2024 Bellingham WA @ Shakedown 10 year anniversary show w/ Cottage Corpse & Benny Camps and The Bastards (21+)
