WAMMIE Nomination

We have been nominated again for a Best Roots Rock - Duo/Band WAMMIE. Thanks to whoever nominated us!

Taking a Break

After a very productive and successful year and a half, The Hickories are taking some time off the next couple of months. Happy holidays!

Dewey Beach Americana Festival

From 9/15/06

We will be playing the first-ever Dewey Beach Americana Festival on Saturday, October 21! Check out the details.

Now on iTunes

From 7/19/06

Our EP, Lost in Pennsylvania, is now available for purchase on iTunes.

Brew at the Zoo

From 7/20/06
We are so excited to be playing at this year's Brew at the Zoo! Come out to the National Zoo to enjoy microbrews and hors d'ouvres from area restaurants. Plus, all proceeds support Asia Trail: A Campaign to Save Asian Elephants. Last year's event sold out--so be sure to buy tickets in advance.

NXNE a Success

Our showcase in Toronto for the NXNE (North by Northeast) music conference went very well. We also met a lot of great people, and were a Critics' Pick in Toronto's NOW Magazine!

NXNE!!

We are very excited to announce that we've been invited to play in the prestigious North by Northeast (NXNE) music conference in Toronto. We'll be playing at the Gladstone Hotel on June 8 at 10 pm. We'll keep you posted on our experience at our first show in Canada and at the conference.

48-Hour Film Project

Writing the melody and music for the 60-second "theme song" to Travesty Films' 48-Hour Film Project entry was a very cool experience. Dave Nuttycombe of the Washington City Paper and Travesty Films wrote the lyrics, and we recorded with Phil Stevenson at his studio, Scary Clown. Our assigned genre was foreign film and the required line of dialogue for all DC entrants was "This is absolutely the last time."

You can see the film, "Den Forgpagter Hus," at the "Best Of" screening at the AFI Silver Theater on Thursday, May 25. We'll be posting the song to our site soon....

NYC Plus More

It was a 22 hour long day, but playing Pianos in NYC was cool. Driving up, hanging out for 8 hours, and then driving back in one day isn't something we'd like to do every weekend but it was worth it nonetheless. HUGE thanks to the people who came out to our show!

This weekend we are planning to do some quick and dirty songwriting and tracking at a yet-to-be-decided recording studio in support of a film in the 48 hour film project. Should be interesting...

Millennium Music Conference

We recently found out that we've been invited to play at the 10th annual Millennium Music Conference in Harrisburg, PA. We'll playing Friday, June 23, 9:30 pm at Marysville Tavern.

Billboard Song Contest

All 5 songs on our EP, Lost in Pennsylvania, are Honorable Mentions in Billboard's 2005 Worldwide Song Contest! The songs are among the top 1500 out of thousands of entries from around the world.

Wash Post's Nightlife Agenda, Going Out Gurus

Check it out--our show at the Six Points Fest tomorrow night is recommended by David Malitz in The Washington Post's Nightlife Agenda and in the Going Out Gurus online chat today!

Festivals, Personnel, Press

The Cherry Blossom Festival this past Saturday was a blast! Hundreds of people were on the steps of the Jefferson Memorial in front of the stage--and walking around--we had a great time playing, and we sold lots of CDs. :) It was also our new bass player's first show with us. We are sad to see Brian Vradenburg go, but are happy to have Phil Dennison as part of The Hickories now.

This Friday we're looking forward to our show at the Six Points Music Festival at the State Theatre. Earlier on Friday, you can catch us on Metro Connection on 88.5 WAMU talking to host David Furst and Melissa DePaulis, one of the festival coordinators.

And check out some new press: A CD review and interview on DCist, and a CD review on the Irish site Whisperin & Hollerin.

Thank You and Washington Post--Again!

We are so excited about the great review of our show with Frog Holler Saturday night at IOTA in the Style section of today's Post!

Thanks to everyone who came out to hear us, and to all of the new friends and fans we made.

Press! Washington Post, City Paper, Music Monthly, Collected Sounds

March has been a very busy month for Hickories-related press. :) Take a look at the Press section of our site for the text of each these reviews:

* The Washington Post
* Washington City Paper (One Track Mind feature)
* Music Monthly
* Collected Sounds

New York City Show Just Added

A show in NYC has just been added to our schedule: On Saturday, April 29 we'll be playing at Pianos NYC at 9 pm. Stay tuned for more details....

Six Points Music Festival

We're excited to have been chosen to be a part of this year's Six Points Music Festival! Not only that, but we will be playing at the State Theatre, which we've never played at before--pretty cool. We're one of 40 bands out of about 200 applicants. The line-up for the show we're playing on Friday, April 7 is Emmet Swimming, Getaway Car, the Taylor Carson Band and us (we're opening the show). See our Shows page for more information....

FlightSafe Music Honorable Mention

We just found out that the song "Killers" is an Honorable Mention in the Rock category in round 2 of FlightSafe Music's QuickLaunch Song Contest! FlightSafe Music is a publishing company that places music in film and TV. That would be pretty cool. We hope this Honorable Mention will help us out with that pursuit. :)

WAMMIES Nominations

We just found out that we have been nominated for WAMMIES in three categories! Roots Rock - Duo/Band, Roots Rock - Recording, and I am nominated for Roots Rock - Vocalist. I'm very flattered. :)

Thanks to everyone who nominated us. It's a great feeling to know that there are people out there who dig what we're doing. The winners will be announced at the State Theatre on Monday, February 20. Cross your fingers for us!

IOTA a Success - Thank You!

Thanks to everyone who came out to IOTA last night for our official CD release. We filled the place to capacity and there was great energy in the room. We had new and familiar faces dancing and cheering--it was the most fun I've ever had at a show. We also sold a bunch of CDs. All I can say is that we have the best fans ever. Thank you again!

Pop Quiz, Release Show

The band is featured in this week's online Pop Quiz, City Paper's "superficially revealing inquiry into the musical mind." Check it out here. The folks at CP must have enjoyed our CD--they plan to keep it "in heavy rotation until at least 2009."

Our official CD release show is only days away! We hope you'll come out to hear new tunes and, of course, songs from the EP. In addition to being our CD release show, it's an Actiondale Studios Artist Showcase. We'll be joined by fellow Actiondale musicians Shannon Brown and Dave Kitchen.

IOTA
Friday, Jan 13, 9:30 pm
Metro: Clarendon (Orange Line)
w/Shannon Brown and Dave Kitchen
2832 Wilson Blvd
Arlington, VA 22201
703-522-8340
$10

We'll see you there!

Happy 2006

Happy new year, everyone! We are gearing up for our CD Release/Actiondale Showcase at IOTA in a couple of weeks on Friday, January 13 at 9:30. It's going to be a great show and we hope you can join us. You can find the details on our homepage and shows page.

Also, we have recently announced some new shows: January 25 at Polly's with the super-talented Laura Tsaggaris, and April 1 at the National Cherry Blossom Festival. Stay tuned, as more shows are in the works....

CD Cellar, Cool Noise Review

Hey, everyone. Just wanted to let you know that our CD is now for sale at CD Cellar in Arlington (2614 Wilson Blvd 22201, 703-248-0635) for $8. If you don't yet have a copy, stop by and pick one up!

Also, check out a new review of Lost in Pennsylvania on the UK site Cool Noise. Good stuff!

Photos!

It took a while, but we finally posted a bunch of photos from the past year or two. Mostly shows... but there's some other stuff too. Thanks to all who contributed!

Lyrics Now on Website

In response to all of the requests we've gotten about making lyrics available, we have now posted them to our site. Feel free to comment on them--you can find our contact info on our Band and Contact pages.

IOTA CD Release Show

We just found out that our CD release show is going to be at the legendary IOTA on Friday, January 13, 2006, so save the date! And yes--that is Friday the 13th. However, I've always had good luck on these days, so I'm not worried. More details are TBA.

Editor's Pick, Smother.net

Our first review is in--and it's great!

Hurricane Benefit Thank You

Thank you to everyone who attended and took part in the Band Together for Hurricane Relief concert yesterday. It was definitely a success: at last count, I was told we were able to raise more than $5,000 for those affected by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Every little bit counts!

All of the performers did a wonderful job, and Congressman Chris Van Hollen gave an inspiring speech.

Debut CD is Released!!

Our debut CD, Lost in Pennsylvania, is officially released! The EP is for sale at our shows and will be for sale online via CD Baby beginning next week. You can get a taste for the EP at our myspace page where we have a couple of MP3s available.

Lost in Pennsylvania was produced by The Hickories and Mike Harvey. It was engineered by Mike Harvey at Actiondale Studio; Mike was assisted by Bob Tozzi, a student at American University. It was mastered by Mike Fossenkemper (Medeski, Martin & Wood, Moby, Super Furry Animals and the Crash Test Dummies) of Turtletone Studios in New York City. And the design and layout of our disc (and concept/art for the redesigned website) is by Rikki Campbell Ogden of pixiedesign.

Also, we now have some photos of some live shows on our site.

Stay tuned for more information--like info about our CD release party!!

Austin Grill, Silver Spring, Etc.

Thanks to everyone who came out to Silver Spring last night--we had a great time at the Austin Grill. Thanks also to Brendon Mills for having us.

In other news, the EP songs have been mastered and they sound pretty damn good, if I do say so myself! :) Pretty soon we'll be sending the artwork and disc to the manufacturing company, and pretty soon we'll have the final product.

Austin Grill, Old Town

Thanks to everyone who came out to the Old Town Austin Grill this past Thursday. It was a fun, laid back show, we got to meet a lot of people, and we got to eat some good chips and salsa. Thanks also to Dave Greksouk from The Reserves who hosted the show and asked us to play.

If you weren't able to catch us, we'll be back in Old Town, Alexandria in August (the 19th) at the Old Town Theater, where we'll be opening for Lou Black.

Links

We were finally able to take a break from listening to CD mixes to put some links on our site to other bands, artists, friends and organizations. Check it out!

Closer....

I am happy to say that we are now completely done with tracking and will begin mixing this Sunday. We will then send the songs off to Turtletone Studio in NYC to have them mastered in mid-July. During this time we will also finalize a CD design and other things like posters and stickers. I can't wait!!!

Washington Post MP3.com "Summer Sound Waves" Pick

This is so cool! The Post's MP3.com editor Maria Villafana chose "Under My Sky" as one of the songs in their Summer Sound Waves feature. She describes the song as "dreamy rock"...I like that. If you haven't heard the song before (or haven't heard it in a while), you should check it out!

Almost there...

Our recording session on Sunday was very productive -- we're pretty much down to the final touches. Then, on to mixing, mastering and pressing. It's been a lot of work but very rewarding. We can't wait to share it with you! On that note, we're starting to think about our CD release party (!!). Send us an email if you have any ideas!

In other exciting news -- the newest addition addition to our calendar is a showcase appearance at Austin Grill on August 8. We're looking forward to the show and meeting the folks at the grill; they're such outstanding supporters of the metro DC music scene.

time flies

Tracking continues on vocals, and frankly I'm amazed at this point at how good the recording is turning out. How the hell are we going to top this precedent on the next album we record!? I think that's a good place to be in.

This Sunday we'll also be doing some vocals and possibly a touch more guitar, in addition to tracking acoustic on "1965." Hard work, but I can't wait.

bringing you the very latest...

We've been quite busy these last two weeks... After barely enough time to recover from recording all weekend, we trekked down to JMU on thursday and did a little interview and some in-studio acoustic songs for the college radio station WXJM. Except for the speeding ticket from Mr. Big Shot Virginia Police Officer, it was a great trip.

We also put in a really fun acoustic performance at the Surfaid Benefit sponsored by the Capitol Chapter of Surfrider. It was a great show and a huge success in general. Over $4,500 was raised to continue assisting survivors of last December's tsunami disaster in southeast asia. We were honored to contribute in some small way to making the event a success.

Speaking of recording... tracking on the vocals continues for the new EP, and everything is sounding extremely good, to say the least... stay tuned!

Recording Update

The recording of our EP is going very well! After a long and intense weekend, all of the drum, bass, and electric guitar tracks are complete; almost all of the acoustic tracks are complete; and the first vocal session is this week. The rest of the vocals and acoustic guitar, and the finishing touches should be completed within the next two weeks. Then we'll move on to mixing, mastering and pressing....

Recording!!

Well, the big weekend is nearly upon us... we'll be locked away at Actiondale Recording for many hours of hard work, big expectations, and hopefully quite a bit of fun as we track the forthcoming EP. The plan is to knock out the instrumentation this weekend on five songs, including Heather Lane and others tba, with vocals completed in the coming weeks.

GMU & JMU

The show at George Mason University's Jazzman's Cafe this week went very well. I love universities! There was a great vibe there, and it was a laid-back show. Thanks to Lisa McCalla for all of her help and to Todd Wilcox for providing excellent sound.

For our next show, we'll be heading to James Madison University for an interview and and live acoustic performance on 88.7 WXJM Live. (The show starts at 8:00 pm, and will be broadcast locally on 88.7 FM and live on the Internet.) The host, LJ Sweet, has been playing our songs on the air in anticipation of the show--pretty cool!

Recording!!

In case you haven't heard, we are very excited to announce that we will be recording an EP this month! In late April we will be recording four or five songs with Mike Harvey of Actiondale. We will keep you updated on our progress and the release date.

Cherry Blossom Festival

It's unfortunate that our show had to be canceled yesterday (Sunday) because of weather. We hope you got the cancellation message--or just decided that the weather was too bad--before coming out. Had the weather been good, I'm pretty sure we would have had a nice crowd. At our Staccato show Friday night (which was very fun), Mike, who does sound, told us that Fox 5 news specifically mentioned The Hickories that night as one of the performers at the Festival--our first-ever TV mention! Oh well. I'm sure there will be a next time....

Old Town Theater!

Big thanks to everyone who came out to the show Friday night... we appreciate it! What a beautiful venue. Also special thanks to Scott Kurt and Jeff Johnston for turning in excellent performances.

Video from Jammin' Java

Check out video of our acoustic performance at Jammin' Java (01/03/05) when we were the Featured Peformer at their Open Mic! Drown (5.98 MB) | Under My Sky (4.47 MB)

New website

Welcome to our new website! Please keep checking back for updates as the site is still under construction. We'd like to thank Preston Hoffman for desiging the site, and Timothy Devine Photography for taking photos of the band.

Artomatic 2004!

We are excited to let you know that, out of more than 140 musical acts performing at this year's Artomatic, we are one of 21 acts to have been chosen for the 2004 Artomatic Music Compilation CD with our song "Sweet Time After All." CDs can be purchased by sending a check for $11 (payable to RCS) to: MCN Inc., PO Box 4827, Silver Spring, MD 20914. For more information, send an e-mail to info@ncninc.com. Proceeds support Artomatic and other such initiatives.