It's a Tour Baby

By Monica Ortwein

August 21, 2002

The Lehigh Valley music scene will be taking a bite out of the Big Apple starting August 24 with the kickoff of TourBaby in NYC.
 
One of the bands from our area playing the gig has an unusual name that's hard to say.  If you're wondering why, it's because they are known simply as the unpronounceable.  (Clever, eh?)
 
Have you ever wanted to hear an acoustic version of Black Sabbath's Iron Man?  Then this band and this tour are for you.  The organizers of TourBaby tout their brainchild as "a national tour of the best local music" on their official website, HYPERLINK "http://www.tourbaby.com" www.tourbaby.com.
 
What's unique about the tour is that the lineup will change as TourBaby makes its way across the country, and it will feature local artists from their respective areas.  The New York kickoff is set to feature musicians from our area such as Kathy Fleischmann, Speedsters and Dopers, Mehuman Jonson, Robin Greenstein, Carla Hall, and The Izzys, which is a band formerly known as The Satellites.
 
And, of course, the unpronounceable.
 
"TourBaby is an intimate connection between artists and fans," said founding member Dave Mann.  "It's a grassroots co-operative effort created entirely by musicians."
 
The performing artists behind TourBaby share one thing in common: they all sell their works on CDBaby, an online store that specializes in independent music and is based in Portland, Oregon.  The brains behind CDBaby claim to listen to every CD before they sell it in order to ensure their product is top quality.

CDBaby is trying to keep it real for musicians, too, since they’ve cut out the middle man and will only sell CDs which come straight from the artists, not even considering those which come from distributors.

Sounds like a sweet deal if you’re a starving artist and don’t want to sell your soul to the Saddam Hussein of a huge corporation.

The unpronounceable are members of the not-yet-mainstream team, since they’re currently selling four releases through CDBaby.

Their newest album, Elementary Physics, will be released on CDBaby sometime in mid-September. If you just can’t wait that long, you might be able to score a copy this month at one of their shows.

TourBaby may be their first official organized tour, but the unpronounceable have already danced with disaster right here at shows in the Lehigh Valley.

In fact, their first show with Said Sadly at the Funhouse in Bethlehem found them upright bass-less after either the wind or some drunk dude knocked the instrument off the pool table, breaking the fretboard and rendering the bass unplayable.

Said Sadly’s drummer had a bunch of vice grips and stuff so he ran and got some wood glue and rope and we glued the neck back on and waited like 20 minutes. It was pretty scary, and we were like, oh my God, it’s our first show; we’re doomed. But it was cool because it was a crisis and we managed to pull through it and not kill anybody or anything,” said Dan Kinsley, guitarist and pianist for the unpronounceable.

Three of the four members of the unpronounceable attended Lehigh University. Their style was described in the university’s newspaper, The Brown and White, as “eclectic rock,” and their press release has deemed them “an unwitting cocktail of orange juice and toothpaste.”

Anybody thirsty for this eccentric mixed drink? If so, check out the band’s live show. We keep hearing how great these guys are; maybe it’s time to see what the buzz is all about.

The unpronounceable will be playing the Main Street Pub in Bethlehem on August 30 if you can’t make it to TourBaby’s NYC kickoff.

You can almost smell the citrus and Colgate in the air.

Only a few more days until you can taste it.

© 2002 & 2004 Pulse Weekly, Allentown, PA

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