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Friday, September 17, 2010

The Making Of A Band

Hello again! It's Hoyt, this is starting to turn into a real blog! Perhaps now I should give you some background on the making of our band.

Candy Apple Blue was formed by my sister Carly Emerick and myself as a creative musical outlet. We are from and currently reside in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania ("The City of Bridges" "Home of the Pittsburgh Steelers") and we are proud of it! We love to write songs and we have been doing just that since we were in our early teens.

Music has always been a real sanity saver for us! It really is true what they say that "a painter must paint" or your soul will starve. We came up with the band name back in 1999 as a side project from our band at the time, The Inertia Case. We just moved back to Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh Pennsylvania from New York City and were ready to write and record again. Once we had our feet firmly planted back in familiar ground it was time to compose the first track. It was then after we demoed, the haunting song, "Easy Target" that Candy Apple Blue was born.

We both simply enjoy the process of making music. We always have. It's absolutely amazing when you have this really great end product that you know would never have existed if you hadn't created it. I sometimes wonder where it all comes from. Carly once said that she believes that "all songs are out there in the universe just waiting for their number to be called". I thought that was such a poetic thing to say!

Ok, so back to the band, Once upon a time in the mid 90's we started in a "synth-pop" group called, The Inertia Case. (Think Depeche Mode, Yazoo, Erasure & OMD) The project was fronted by the cool edged lead vocalist Elton Lin. He had the sweetest pipes that we ever heard! His angelic vocal delivery was a perfect fit with the synthesizer produced music we were making. The three of us gave it a good two year run by doing all of the typical New York City gigging out thing. I have a certain fondness for our first band and have great memories of playing/gigging out. One of my favorite shows was at this fantastic "new wave" goth club in Manhattan called "The Bank". Although we had a loyal fan base, we didn't kick up enough dust to actually get signed by a label. If you are interested in hearing what The Inertia Case sounded like, feel free to download our entire 12 track self-released indie album "Running Out Of Forever". The link is provided for you below.

the inertia case synth-pop band nyc my
The Inertia Case (1998) NYC, NY (Synth-pop Band)

Once back in our home town of Pittsburgh, we more or less put our musical dreams on the back burner to pursue other careers. We both completely stopped writing new music. In fact, we took more than a 7-year hiatus! It wasn't too long after we received a phone call from, NYC indie film director, Casper Andreas that we got back on our feet again. Casper called stating that he "wanted to use some of our songs in his new movie". He liked one song so much, in fact, he wanted to name his new movie after it, a little synth-pop song we wrote called "Between Love & Goodbye". So that's how the film officially got its title. It should be noted that the YouTube music video for the song we wrote currently has over 110,000 hits and is still going strong! Our most heard song so far! Okay, so after we got on board with that project our second musical life began. Candy Apple Blue was then resurrected/repurposed. So there you have it, fast forward to the present day, we are strategically planning our attack on the Billboard charts! :) Currently, we are writing new compositions for our debut album "Prone To Panic!".  So stay tuned as more details unfold!

candy apple blue 2010


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Friday, September 3, 2010

The Artists That Inspire Us Daily

Candy Apple Blue InspirationsThe artists & songwriters who influence us and continue to inspired us daily are: Holly Knight, Barry, Robin & Maurice Gibb, Neil Tennant, John Farrar, Stevie Nicks, Tom Kelly and Billy Steinberg, New Order, Vince Clark, Rick Nowels, Chas Sandford, Ric Ocasek, Debbie Harry, Pete Burns, George O'Dowd, Giorgio Moroder, Jim Steinman, Simon Le Bon, Patrick Cowley, Kim Wilde, Thompson Twins, Stock Aiken Waterman, Hall & Oates, Crystal Gayle, Cheap Trick, Romeo Void & The Cure just to name a few.

But make no mistake about it, there are so many other current day acts out there that we just love; LadyHawke, 3OH!3, The Killers, Neon Trees, Robyn, Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Rihanna & P!nk all rock our world! Yes, music is a beautiful thing! There's nothing like a song to speak to you in a ways that other mediums just can not!

Thanks for sitting in with me here.
Let me quote ABBA here and say to all of the artists above,
"Thank you for the music!" - Hoyt Emerick