Happy Birthday to Me

Please, please, I (Jamie "JJ" Hellgate, founder and CEO of H Is for Hellgate) am not accepting gifts...unless that gift is your presence at the Sunset Tavern in lovely Ballard for a show featuring some of my most favoritest local bands:

9 PM - Panther Attack (Shredding. Sweet, sweet shredding.)10 PM - H Is for Hellgate (That's us)

11 PM - Hungry Pines (Rock. Ness. ROCKNESS!)

12 PM - Emblematic (Ass-shaking indie rock.)

Because it's my special day, I wrote a special I-don't-give-a-f*ck setlist featuring our weirdest and most instrumental songs (plus one cover). Here it is, with notes, in case you care:

1. Engineering a Loose Cannon (From our forthcoming second album, inspired by something a homeless guy said to me last summer outside the QFC on Broadway and Pike, "You wouldn't be my first choice, but you wouldn't be a bad choice.")

2. Description of the Prior Art (An old song from my Henkensiefken days about feeling bad for dumping someone. I'm a jerk.)

3. Cool Your Jets, Four Eyes (Instrumental from our first album. It's not really about anything other than rocking.)

4. Dusk at Devil's Tower (From our forthcoming second album. References the a Native American story of seven sisters being lifted to the heavens [into the constellation named after the Greek Pleiades]by the monolithic Devil's Tower in Northern Wyoming in order to escape a bear attack.)

5. Thunderbolt (From our forthcoming second album. Based loosely on Athena and trying to find some of her mythical traits of courage and strength within myself.)

6. What It Is (Mostly instrumental song from our first album. The name was taken from a t-shirt given to a friend when he asked the WestCostanostra for a cigarette. The phrase "what it is" was repeated ad nauseam over the course of the drunken weekend that followed.)

7. Quid Pro Quo (Instrumental piece from our forthcoming second album. I tried to write a ten-minute piece. I failed...it's only seven or eight minutes, depending on how fast we play it. The name means "this for that"....I was doing a lot of compromising when I wrote it.)

8. The Chain (yes, the Fleetwood Mac song.)

Please join us for a fun night!

SXSW video diary

I attempted to log Marie's and my time at SXSW. I'm sure by this point, one could read about or watch every moment of SXSW on the intermet, but here are some clips from our first festival experience.

(Note - we did not meet Dolly Parton.) (Sorry about the shaky camera work).

March 12th - Day 1 - traveling and arrival



March 13th - Day 2 - Out and About




The grand, Grand Archives at Red Eyed Fly



Black Mountain on a parking garage

South By...too much!

I've made a major life decision. Your support is needed, thank you. This is the year I, Jamie Hellgate, will introduce myself to South By Southwest, the monster indie music festival that takes over Austin, TX every spring. Marie will be there to make sure I don't hurt myself.

When I first decided to go, I thought, "Gee, I'm sure going to see some neat bands." but now that I've taken the time to check out the full schedule, it's totally mind blowing how many goddamned bands are playing! How!? Why!? I get stressed out just looking at the roster. It's going to be fun, right? Where do I go? How do I make sure 1) we find the cool shows and 2) we don't attempt to get into the shows that are so rad that we'll never get in anyway?

I'll let you know how this goes...how many awesome or not awesome bands we get to check out. How much bad food we can eat. How many ways the phrase "south by southwest" is cleverly co-oped.

Really, I just hope we run into Dolly Parton.