The latest music news, stories, and events of The Original Celtic
Renaissance music group, the Brobdingnagian Bards.
CELTIC GEEK at its Best!
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Last night, we saw Fellowship of the Ring. It was amazing! Andrew has posted his review. I'm hoping to get my up tonight.
My congrats to the winners of yesterday's contest. I've had three responses thusfar. All are enthusiastic.
Oh, and ta da... thank you for all your votes to Celtic Ways! The Brobdingnagian Bards overwhelmingly received the most votes to record Something for the "George Harrison - Celtic Tribute"! We'll be working on that in the upcoming weeks. Thanks!
--posted by Marc Gunn of the Brobdingnagian Bards, Celtic Folk Music
Thursday, December 20, 2001

Well Andrew and I have my tickets for Fellowship of the Rings. If you're not able to see it today, we'll have reviews tomorrow. So stop by. If you do see it, drop by and write us. I'd love to hear your review too. I'll post all that come in.
After I get back home tonight, I'll find out who won the five copies of Songs of the Muse. This means you still have time to win. Just sign up on our mailing list between now and then, and I might be contacting you tonight!
--posted by Marc Gunn of the Brobdingnagian Bards, Celtic Folk Music
Wednesday, December 19, 2001

A week ago, I told you we were wanting to record a Christmas album. Obviously, we won't have one ready for Christmas this year, but next? Possibly. But we do have our first song for a Christmas album, it is Carol of the Bells.
This was one of the first Christmas songs Andrew and I worked out together. It has that perfectly classical touch recorded entirely instrumentally. It is a beautiful composition that I hope Yule love. ;) We're working on a couple others, and if we can put together a Christmas single by the end of the week, we'll call it Carol of the Bards. :) But right now, it doesn't look hopeful. So enjoy this song for the meantime.
--posted by Marc Gunn of the Brobdingnagian Bards, Celtic Folk Music
Tuesday, December 18, 2001

I just dropped by Roger McGuinn's homepage. Roger McGuinn played with The Byrds back in the 60's. After they broke up, Roger started on a solo career. His first album was recorded in 1973 (and Bob Dylan performed on the album). In 1995, he started recording a new song every month to preserve a lot traditional folk songs. You can listen to them on his website. He also was one of the early pioneers on mp3.com where he sells his Folk Den CDs.
What I found really interesting about this was the dedication of putting out a new song every month. Now that Andrew and I are mastering the home studio, we'll be trying to do similar. We had quite a bit of success this weekend at matching the sounds of our home recordings with our older CDs. So hopefully, you'll be hearing a lot more recordings in the future. I'm hoping to put out a new album every three months. But we'll figure out how realistic that is as we finish up Songs of Ireland.
--posted by Marc Gunn of the Brobdingnagian Bards, Celtic Folk Music
Monday, December 17, 2001

I got notice that Ren Radio has setup a Celtic Christmas station. I haven't heard if our Greensleeves was added or not. I'll have to ask since as I started to listen, I was sidetracked with the MP3.com Folk Music Charts. Looks like several our less known songs are climbing the charts now. Songs like Satisfied from our first album, Marked By Great Size, is topping the charts. That's awesome! I've had a renewed interest in that song. Andrew did a great job with the melody. I've been trying to get him to finish the extra verse, but haven't heard a word yet.
FYI. I did lower the cost of CDs in The Bard Market. Their now all back down to $13.50 per CD. But I have A Faire To Remember on sale for just $11.50. That includes the actual insert with all the lyrics included in it too. And you can order toll-free if you want a copy. Just call 1-877-692-7999.
--posted by Marc Gunn of the Brobdingnagian Bards, Celtic Folk Music
Monday, December 17, 2001

Good evening all! I hope you like the updated homepage. I'm in the process of making a few changes. One of which is to make the website more profitable. We get a lot of sales on mp3.com, but not as many on our own website. We're also trying to raise the money to break even thus, we are now accepting donations. And starting in 2002, we'll be giving away exclusive MP3s every month for any donation you care to give. I'm thinking our first will be a much wanted Robin Hood Medley that we do. We recorded it at at live show, but due to copyright probs, we decided we aren't going to give it away on a CD or MP3.com. But let me talk to Andrew and we'll figure out if that's what we'll be donating for January.
Speaking of which, we still have Tolkien in the MP3.com Top 40, even after we stopped promoting the song. It's doing amazingly. The movie comes out on Wednesday, and I'd like to see if there's anyone in Austin interested in going? I'd like to get together a nice group to go see the movie. Drop me a line if you're interested in going. Laterz!
--posted by Marc Gunn of the Brobdingnagian Bards, Celtic Folk Music
Sunday, December 16, 2001

A Nagian wrote the other day asking when we were going to put out a Christmas album. Of course, we are planning one. We were hoping to have it out by Christmas, but to do that, we'd need to do a home recording, and right now we're still working out the recording details. This weekend we'll be at Andrew's working on it. But the Christmas season has done wonders for our recording of Greensleeves which is in the Classical Top 40. And some of our other Christmas-sounding songs as well. Check out our Great Celtic Christmas station filled with some of my favorite Christmas songs. It's a pretty mellow station filled with relaxing music.
Oh and right now, we're leading the way for our pick of George Harrison songs. So, thanks!
--posted by Marc Gunn of the Brobdingnagian Bards, Celtic Folk Music
Friday, December 14, 2001

Celtic Ways is putting together a Celtic tribute album to George Harrison of the Beatles. He's looking for artists interested in performing certain songs. Here is his message: "As you can imagine most of our artists want to record Here Comes The Sun and Something - but we can only have one artist per song on the CD...... so here is what I would like to ask you to do.... Listen to the tracks in our chart today, over the next day or two, then email us harrisongs@celticways.com and tell us
1) Which artist you thing would do the best
"Here Comes The Sun"
2) Which artist you think would do the best
"Something"
There will be prizes .......... The voters of the winning artist who records each song will get FREE CDs of "George Harrison - Celtic Tribute" Three voters from each song ballot, will be picked from a hat, and sent free copies of the CD when released. Please listen to the tracks below and email votes to harrisongs@celticways.com by next Wednesday, DECEMBER 19TH."
Andrew and I talked about recording Something for the album. But it now stands that in order for us to get on the album with that song, we need your votes. So if you think we should record that song or another, please place your vote.
--posted by Marc Gunn of the Brobdingnagian Bards, Celtic Folk Music
Thursday, December 13, 2001

It looks like today, we'll be taking over the Celtic charts. We have a LOT of songs that are moving into the Top 40, like I was hoping. And our Best of the Bards CD is now one of the 7th most popular selling World/Folk CD on mp3.com. On Amazon.com, Tolkien (The Hobbit & Lord of the Rings) is still the 3rd most popular Indie download behind Alison Krauss and Christmas comedy, and it has slipped to #18 for downloads as some Christmas songs climb onto the charts. So all in all, our musical popularity is growing by leaps and bounds. Also, I talked to Andrew last night, we're going to try and complete the Nagians Only, Vol. 2, featuring the Jedi Drinking Song and Angel's Lament this weekend. So we hope to have the CD ready before Christmas as promised. So look for all new live tracks on mp3.com. Today I decided, it is time that I start promoting our music on other sites. One of the first that came to mind was Vitaminic. Vitaminic is the most popular site in Europe to find free downloads. So drop by and check out the site.
--posted by Marc Gunn of the Brobdingnagian Bards, Celtic Folk Music
Wednesday, December 12, 2001

Thanks for all your help at keeping Tolkien (The Hobbit & Lord of the Rings) at the top of the charts. I just saw a couple days ago that we were the 7th most listened to band in November. That is just awesome! Meanwhile, the Lord of the Rings movie is rapidly approaching. If you're interested in more news about the movie, check out the Lord of the Rings Fanatics site. We were reviewed on it not to long ago. If you're looking for more Tolkien resources, click here. When our first CD, Marked By Great Size came out. We thought up a wonderful variety of promotional t-shirts and stuff, but due to the cost, we never followed through. Finally, along came Cafepress and inspired, I redesigned the t-shirt. Now you can order a " Size Does Matter" T-Shirt exclusively through CafePress. Cafepress lets you upload graphics and they handle all the printing and shipping. If this works out, I may just see about designing some other shirts too. Meantime, drop me a line and tell me what you think of the shirts and other bard merchandise. Labels: publicity, swag
--posted by Marc Gunn of the Brobdingnagian Bards, Celtic Folk Music
Tuesday, December 11, 2001

Okay, I don't know how MP3.com calculates listens I guess. I was waiting all bloody day for them to announce our totals, and thought I calculated correctly. Looks like they use total numbers which means...as of today, we have 1,000,193 Listens and are the latest addition to the 1 Million Listens Club on mp3.com. The youngest yet! Unfortunately, MP3.com still hasn't updated the charts. So our #29 song is not listed therefore we may not stay there very long. Ah well, easy come, easy go.
But hey! We did it!!!! Thank you all for your help, but don't stop now, let's push Tolkien to #1. Email Tolkien (The Hobbit & Lord of the Rings) to all your family and friends and ask them to listen. Perhaps we can push it to #1. Thanks again. Slainte!
--posted by Marc Gunn of the Brobdingnagian Bards, Celtic Folk Music
Thursday, December 06, 2001

254 listens to go. Well, we didn't do quite as well as I thought we would yesterday. We had over 3500 visitors, but Tolkien was listened to only 1500 times. Not that I'm knocking that. That's a helluva'n achievement! That puts at #29 on all MP3.com. But I was soooo hoping for a #1 hit. Ah well, the movie will be here soon enough.
Meantime, we had a great day. 7501 unique listens to our music. It brought us very close to our million listens goal, but that will have to wait until tomorrow. Now it's on to writing the press releases!
--posted by Marc Gunn of the Brobdingnagian Bards, Celtic Folk Music
Thursday, December 06, 2001

7,755 listens to go. We had one helluva day yesterday and today will be even better. The reason is, MP3.com gave us a long overdue feature in one of their newsletters. The song... Tolkien (The Hobbit & Lord of the Rings). It's not even 1pm and we've had over a thousand visitors to our mp3.com site. If we repeat that for the rest of the day, we will have a Number One hit song tomorrow!!!! And we'll also have easily broken into 1 Million Listens Club. Cross your fingers and go listen to our music.
Meanwhile, I checked out our Amazon.com Download page. "Tolkien" is #16 over there. If we can get into the Top 3, we'll be featured as one of their top downloads. So if you wouldn't mind, head over there and download Tolkien.
One last note, last month, no one claimed their CD Giveaway. So with the onset of the new movie, were going to give away FIVE copies of Best of the Bards on December 19th when the new movie comes out. How do you win? Head over to The Great Celtic CD Giveaway and sign up for our newsletter. I'll make a drawing on the 19th. If you're email address comes up, I'll email you. Respond ASAP and I'll mail CDs ASAP.
Oh, and check out Cynthia Jordan. She is a Celtic pianist with some amazing music. She even just put out a Celtic Christmas album.
--posted by Marc Gunn of the Brobdingnagian Bards, Celtic Folk Music
Wednesday, December 05, 2001

12,942 listens to go. Today's countdown to the Bard joining the 1 Million Listens Club continues. I'm excited. Sure we're not even going to get a congradulatory card from MP3.com, but sheesh, that's a lot of listens. If we continue having days like yesterday, we'll break One Million listens in just two days. Check out our complete station list here. Thanks...a Million...for listening. please forgive the bad pun Hey, that could even be a Million Ducats! Oooh! Stop that!)
--posted by Marc Gunn of the Brobdingnagian Bards, Celtic Folk Music
Tuesday, December 04, 2001

I just checked the Bard stats, and as of yesterday, we have had 982,359 listens to our music on mp3.com. There are currently only 26 other artists that have over one million listens out of millions of artists. We will join the 1 Million Listens Club by the end of this week!
What's really cool is that we will be the youngest group to join the Club having only been on mp3.com for year and three months. Most of the bands on the list have been on mp3.com since 1999! So I'm gonna start the countdown. You can help out by listening to all of our music.
--posted by Marc Gunn of the Brobdingnagian Bards, Celtic Folk Music
Monday, December 03, 2001

We did it at last! The Jedi Drinking Song and Angel's Lament, my parody of Angel from Buffy, the Vampire Slayer are both up on mp3.com now. We are also preparing our live CD for release, but we felt that those two songs needed to be up before the actual CD came out. So here they are, and that's not all...
We finally named our new Tolkien-themed song. It's called Fellowship of the Ring after the first book of the trilogy. The song is not yet complete, so we have only made this rough-cut version streaming-only. We still have a lot to work out in the song, but this is a great example of what you can expect from the final song. Make sure you add them all to your My.MP3 account and listen frequently. Slainte'!
--posted by Marc Gunn of the Brobdingnagian Bards, Celtic Folk Music
Monday, December 03, 2001

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