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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ GRASSHOPPER TAKEOVER'S The Official Grasshopper Takeover Email Newsletter Greetings Hoppers, It's been a while since we've been in contact, and believe me, I've been wanting to write you for a while now to keep you more abreast of our travels from the road, and give myself a chance to reflect on all the craziness we've been through in the last few months; but the insanity of road-life has had me doing not much more than trying to catch up on sleep where ever possible, and when not sleeping, working, and when not working, rocking the house! Since we began the tour nearly a month ago, it has been as though we were given an all access key to Willie Wonka's Chocolate Factory. The places we've played and the people we've met, old and new alike, have made this tour the most absolute kick-ass thing Grasshopper Takeover has done for itself and our fans and friends. I want to extend a personal welcome to the many new Swarm recipients from across the country whose email addresses we got from you on any given night we played a club in your area. If you do not remember giving us your email address, well... this is your reminder (as well as a possible reminder of how messed up you may have been when we met you :).
When we arrived in Ft. Collins we were told by the club that the two outside dates we had booked there were cancelled due to crappy weather. Being true players (in every sense of the word :), we didn't let it stop us from playing. When you're on tour, one of the worst things to do is sit idle in a hotel room and not play at all -- especially since the three of us spend hours upon hours driving in the van together and get real sick of each other's smelly breath. So, in Ft. Collins (which is a great town to play), we went around to all of the bars that host live music and told them our situation and finally this bar called the Back Alley Lounge said they would let us play. We asked the band that was already scheduled to play if they minded if we jumped on the bill with 'em and they were cool with that, which was super cool of them.
Then in Denver... Denver kicked our asses! We played with Carolyn's Mother at a club called Herman's Hideaway and the place was packed. The show was the quintessential rockin wrap-up to the first leg of our tour, and hopefully a sign of things to come. After our gig, we meandered throughout the club, meeting about everyone present and receiving excellent feedback. You Denverites are incredible people, and made us feel right at home. As a side note, the club was supersaturated with the most gorgeous people we've seen since we played the Imago Modeling Inc. Model Search at the MGM Grand in Sin City. We can't wait to get back to the mile-high city and frolic with you cats once again. There's been some fantastic news on the GTO front as of late... First, GTO will be touring with 311 and Incubus during the month of June for the Levi's/SFX tour playing amphitheatre dates in markets like New Jersey, New York, Kansas City, Boston, Virginia Beach and others. Check out our website tourdates section for all the complete details. This we are naturally very excited about and since the day I found out I've had butterflies in my stomach as I ask myself, "What the hell am I gonna say to 15,000 people?!?!?" I just wanna play hard and better than we ever have before. This is such a great opportunity and will be great to rock with good friends again. Shout out to 311 and Peter and Adam for making it happen. Also, Esta Vida, the first song on our new CD, "International Dance Marathon," reached #10 in the finals on garageband.com, which considering that there were thousands of bands in this round of "competition," we are really pleased about that. It's made us aware that people from across the world, young and old, male and female, even hermaphrodites and aliens, enjoy that tune. Thanks to all that supported us on that.
On a personal note from me to "B" (our webman): the site has never looked better... Man you're getting brilliant at this shit!!! Thank you. I've also heard that we're receiving around 6000 hits a week which is fantastic. Go to www.grasshoppertakeover.com and check it out. Also, if you have the time, forward this along to friends far and wide as we are sure to be playing in their city sometime this Summer. I've had many requests from friends/fans to come and play their city and the moment I receive a letter like that, I forward it to our booking agent and tell him, "Duffy (that's our booking agent's name), we have someone in CITY X that wants to see us play there, get us a gig there as soon as possible." So email us, we always reply back, pass this on to friends, and ask them to sign up on the Swarm newsletter from the site so we can get in touch with them as part of the ever-growing Swarm. GTO has just finished the band's first music video to the song Bonecrusher with videographer, Chris St. George. The video was filmed in our rehearsal space in Burbank, CA, and from the pre-screening that we saw a couple weeks ago, it turned out great. Keep an eye out on Secondary Emission for its debut in the next month or so. Yesterday, for twelve hours in the pouring rain and cold, we filmed our second video for the song Esta Vida which will be completed at the end of Summer, following post-production. The filming was shot at the Aksarben Grandstands in Omaha, NE. For those of you not native to the Cornhusker State, Aksarben is Nebraska spelled backwards. (Who are the marketing geniuses that came up with that one?:) We'll keep you posted as to the progress of both videos and how you can see them and possibly get your hands on them. We are hoping to have the video for Bonecrusher up on our website too so keep an eye out for that in the future. Recently, music critic Christiane Dumont of 45 RPMs, named Grasshopper Takeover as "one of the best kept secrets in rock 'n roll...without a doubt one of the best unsigned rock bands in the U.S.A." And Background Sounds' Richard E. Bishop says, "Grasshopper Takeover has the sound, songs, presence and attitude to single-handedly take rock 'n roll to the next level.... A&R reps open your ears and show us you know what the fuck you're doing." Lastly on the "good news" front, GTO has been added to farmclub.com as one of the bands that people can vote for. Unlike garageband.com, where you can only review songs randomly, farmclub.com allows you to vote specifically for your band and song. for those of you who have not visited farmclub.com, it is a totally kick ass site and has a lot going on as far as the industry is concerned. They also have a television show on USA Network, which Grasshopper Takeover was asked to be filmed for. I will let you know when that is going to take place. There's a possibility it might happen this Friday at the Ranch Bowl show in Omaha when we play with Goldfinger for Big Party's one-year anniversary party. Go Big Partaaaaaay! You can link straight to the place on Farmclub.com that you can vote for GTO by clicking here. Thanks again to all who have come out to support us throughout the tour and to those who have let others know, as we are meeting "friends of friends" literally everywhere we go. It is truly awesome. Overall the van is holding up, spirits are high and you all are making it all better than we ever fathomed. We'll see all you--the greatest fans in the country--this weekend in Omaha. See ya on the road. All the best to all. May rock be with you. Spread your wings and fly!!! Curt Grubb / GTO |
Recent
shows of note are Seattle, where we got to play with long-time friends
and musical comrades, Sick Girl, who are also originally from
Omaha. They rocked their own special, ethereal brand of sexy rock
and brought lots of people out to see us at a club called Graceland.
For a Monday night, the house was goin' off da hook! Also, we once
again had an awesome time in Denver/Ft Collins. 
When
it was time to rock we came on kinda unexpectedly and once the music
was rollin', the entire house was goin' nuts. The floor was moving
like a trampoline and, since there was no stage to speak of and we
were basically playing in the corner of the bar, we were rockin' like
1 foot away from the crowd right in front of us and that was great.
Thanks to the Back Alley Lounge for letting us play on such short
notice. We'll be back. Also thanks to Jupiter's Thigh and Jones
Infinity who let us play their equipment. 
Recently
we received a write up in Album Network that listed GTO as one of
the regional best sellers. I believe we were #23 overall in the region
which is pretty cool, too. If you haven't done so lately, check out
our website as our Master Webmaster has done so much cool stuff with
it. It looks really good and has all new pages and information and
a whole new look, etc...