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August 10, 2023August 10, 2023

Tickets are LIVE for the Edmonton Fringe!

Ticket links are now LIVE for the American Songbook: Redacted at The Edmonton International Fringe Theater Festival!

I’ll be doing 7 performances of the show at the lovely Chianti Yardbird Suite, a jazz club in the heart of the Old Strathcona Neighborhood, not far from the epicenter of the fest. Here are the dates and times:

Friday, Aug 18, 2:30 pm
Sunday, Aug 20, 4:30 pm
Monday, Aug 21, 9:45 pm
Tuesday, Aug 22, 12:30 pm
Wednesday, Aug 23, 11:15 pm
Friday, Aug 25, 7:15 pm
Sunday, Aug 27, 5:15 pm

Tickets for all shows are available here.

I’ve been honing the show for this festival and I’m really excited about it. There’s even a brand new song! And don’t forget the merch and swag! So much merch and swag!

I even have a button giveaway exclusively for this festival! The fest is a “no handbill zone,” meaning no flyers! So I’m giving away buttons with a QR code for the show’s website. Track me down at the fest and I’ll be happy to give you one. And if you ask nicely I may even be able to give you a comp ticket to the show, just let me know you read this post 🙂

See you in the wilds of western Canada!

July 24, 2023July 25, 2023

Shake it Down Tonight EP released!

Shake it Down Tonight EP!

This past Friday the new single and EP from The Green L.E.D.s was released worldwide! The EP features 4 songs and is available on bandcamp, Apple Music, Spotify, YouTube music, and most other digital platforms! Here, have an embed of the whole thing:

I am really excited to have a new Green L.E.D.s single out and I’m really happy with the way the lead track turned out!

It is definitely influenced by my power-pop roots, especially in the chorus and the backing vocals, and I think it fits in well with the angsty-yet-hopeful vibe of the previous Green L.E.D.s album. “Shake it Down Tonight” will be on a full album by The Green L.E.D.s due out this October.

This EP also features a fun cover of “Don’t Stop ’Til You Get Enough” by Michael Jackson (with some obvious other influences), a mellow bossa nova B-side that I had a lot of fun working on, and a live-in-studio version of “I Can Feel It (Can You?)” which was the first track I wrote under The Green L.E.D.s name and is still one of my favorites.

If you’d like to support the project you can buy the EP on bandcamp, or on Apple Music, and if you follow and like The Green L.E.D.s on Spotify or Apple Music it’ll really help other people find it!

Enjoy the tunes and let me know what you think!

July 10, 2023July 10, 2023

New Song! “Were Those Really Days?”

Microphone with blue and light blue rays

“Were Those Really The Days?”

“Were Those Really the Days?” the new opening number for the stage version of The American Songbook: Redacted, just went live on bandcamp! It’s now part of the full studio album, available individually, OR you can get a free download code with any merch purchase between now and the start of the show’s run at the Edmonton International Fringe Theater Festival!

As the staged version of The American Songbook: Redacted evolved, through the development of the lyric videos and the refining of the stories and jokes between songs, I worked to come up with a new opening number that would capture the energy, intelligent silliness, and the vein of dark satire running through the show. I’m really happy with how “Were Those Really The Days?” hits all of those notes, with its nostalgic wall-of-sound production and its allusion to how people use false (or at best idealized) memories of the past to influence the present.

The sharp-eyed among you may notice that the previous opening song, “Remember It Better,” which hits the nostalgia theme through the lens of Heartland Rock, now closes out the album. I still really love the song and I think it makes an excellent epilogue for the project. If and when I get the budget to do a proper video special of the show I imagine this song running over the closing credits (complete with a Cannonball Run-esque blooper reel).

If you’re free in mid-August, come on up to Edmonton, Alberta, and check out The American Songbook: Redacted at the Fringe. I’ll be performing at the lovely Chianti Yardbird Suite, which is a nice mid-sized jazz club and the perfect environment for this show. Until then, enjoy “Were Those Really The Days?” and “Remember it Better” as the nostalgic bookends to a satirical look at American history and culture!

June 21, 2023

Merch Drop!

Welcome to the virtual merch table!

We just added some cool new merch to our online store! We’ve got a spiffy embroidered patch, an awesome 4-button pack of 1.25″ buttons, a nifty keychain, and a fun sticker sheet, all inspired by The American Songbook: Redacted, my latest album and the solo show I’m taking to the Edmonton International Fringe Theater Festival in August!

4-Button Pack for American Songbook: Redacted

closeup of American Songbook: Redacted patch on black background

American Songbook: Redacted sticker sheet

ASR Logo button In fact, it’s the trip to Edmonton that inspired this epic merch drop. I was pondering putting together a kickstarter campaign to help support taking the project to the Great White North, but it felt weird to do a big drive for a live event where there was no ‘thing’ to send to supporters. And since my favorite part of kickstarter campaigns is coming up with the fun extras people can get with different levels of funding, I decided to just make the cool stuff and sell it directly without guilting anyone into supporting a campaign.

But wait, there’s more!

Between now and the festival, any merch purchase will come with a free download of the newest song from the show! The song will be released July 7, only on bandcamp, so it won’t be on any of the streaming services.

And if you want to support the show without a merch purchase, you can always pick up a digital copy of The American Songbook: Redacted, or any of my other digital albums, over at bandcamp, where they let you support the artists by adding to the asking price.

It was a lot of fun putting these items together. As soon as I got the patches I put one on my Dickies jacket, and then a navy trucker hat, and both look super cool. The 4-button pack turned out even better than I hoped and will definitely stand out on the merch table, the keychains have my favorite show logo, and the 5-sticker sheet was great to put together because I could put a bunch of sticker ideas in one place!

Look them over and let me know what you think! And if you order between now and the festival I might just sneak in an extra Songbook or Green L.E.D.s sticker as a surprise!

patch on a trucker hat (hat not included), expertly modeled by Rob P.

patch on a dickies jacket (jacket not included), also expertly modeled by Rob P.

May 9, 2023May 9, 2023

Official AS:R Merch Coming Soon!

It’s becoming more real every day! The planning and organizing are ramping up for The American Songbook: Redacted’s trip to the Edmonton International Fringe Theater Festival! And to help raise money for the tour I’m selling Band Candy!

No, wait, that’s not it. It’s merch!

Official show merchandise will go on sale sometime in June, but here’s a sneak peek at a few of the cool items that have already come into the RobPRocks warehouse (my hallway bookcase).

There are official tour jackets and hats! Jackets and hats not included because It’s a patch! A very cool, 3-color embroidered patch, 3.5″x2″

Sticker sheets! A sheet of 5 stickers related to the show: the show’s logo, Plug Your Ears and Sing!, “Trust The Invisible Hand!” Now That’s What I Call Fraud, and Corporations Are People Too!

Bigger “Corporations Are People Too” sticker! 3″ trapezoid shape

Custom guitar picks! Color show logo on .80mm white Derlin guitar picks. I was pleasantly surprised when I gave a few to fellow guitar players and they said “sweet, this is the gauge I use.” Functional AND promotional!

I have some more items in the design and production pipeline so get ready to hit that virtual merch table in June! All proceeds will go to me getting to and from Canada in one piece!

January 16, 2023January 26, 2023

The Invisible Hand! Lyric Video debuts Jan 26!

The Invisible Hand: New Lyric Video debuts Jan 26!

One of my favorite tracks on The American Songbook: Redacted studio album is The Invisible Hand, a 60s-era James Bond style theme song about Adam Smith’s famous metaphor for laissez faire capitalism. The joke being that “invisible hand” sounds like some kind of underworld organization that you’d find in a James Bond movie (fwiw I wrote and performed the song before a secretive organization named The Invisible Hand appeared on the animated spy comedy Archer).

When it came time to record a studio version of the song I wanted an arrangement that sounded as much like a classic James Bond theme as possible and I’m really proud of the orchestration and performance I put together.

When I did the song live in the debut performance of the The American Songbook: Redacted, I had a very simple slideshow animation projected on the screen behind me. My good friends Peggy O’Brien and Steven Rosenthal, amazingly talented filmmakers, asked if I had thought about doing a video montage in the style of a James Bond title sequence. I said I had but added that my video and after effects skills probably weren’t good enough to do something worthy of the arrangement I hoped to put together.

Lo and behold, they offered to put together something, and what they delivered was so unbelievably cool that I wanted to do more with it than project it behind me in the live show. With their permission I put lyrics over their great visuals to create a lyric video for the song. It’s the 4th lyric video from AS:R after Satanic Panic, The Great Disappointment, and The People Who Were Already Here, and it will be released on Thursday, January 26 at 9pm NYC time, 0100 Friday, 27 of January GMT.

There may be a live stream on premiere night, I’m still figuring out what to do (and I need to reconfigure the laptop I used to stream all those Cover Tuesday shows after an operating system upgrade) so stay tuned, I’ll update here and post on the various social medias that I still can tolerate (post, mastodon and instagram).

Update! (Jan 26, 2023, 2pm EST)
The premiere is tonight at 9pm NYC time and I’ll be doing a 30-minute pre-premiere live stream to talk about the video, James Bond Themes, and maybe even laissez faire capitalism if people are into it! Here’s the lyric video will be here, and will go live at 9PM, and the pre-premiere live stream will be on YouTube and Twitch! Come through if you can!

It such a cool video, I can’t wait for you to see it! Until then, check out the cool arrangement in one of the embedded players below 🙂

December 7, 2022

Accepted to the Edmonton Fringe!

First Fest Is On The Calendar!

One of my goals for The American Songbook: Redacted is to take the show to performing arts festivals and I just secured my first slot! It’s in the Edmonton Fringe Festival, one of the top 5 fringe festivals in the world and the largest, longest-running fringe theater festival in North America. Not a bad start!

Fringe theater festivals are an amazing experience, with theater companies from all over the world descending on a city and filling it with creative energy and a variety of diverse and unique performances. I won’t have to explain to anyone that my show is different from what they’re used to because things at a fringe festival are supposed to be different from what people are used to. You do juggling while explaining particle physics? Great! Shakespearean mime? Awesome! Comedy songs satirizing U.S. history and American culture? Perfect!

The festival runs from August 17–23, 2023, and I’ll update with dates and venue information when it becomes available. I also have applications in with a few more festivals so hopefully this is the first of, if not many, at least a pleasant handful. See you next year, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada!

October 4, 2022

Pre-orders live for The American Songbook: Redacted CD!

Order today, ships Friday!

My online store is now accepting pre-orders for the CD version of The American Songbook: Redacted! And it’s even on sale for only $12 for the rest of the month! Shipping is $5 flat rate for everything in your order so if you wanted to pick up The Green L.E.D.s debut album or maybe the Rob P. Digital Box Set, it’s still only $5 to ship it all!

The album officially comes out this Friday, October 7, and if you order by Thursday morning, Oct 6, I may just send it out a day early! There are only 100 pressed, hand numbered, so don’t wait too long! And I’ll also include a bandcamp download code so you can grab a digital copy of the album without having to dust off your old CD player 🙂

I’m really excited about this album, it’s very me, in that I like a lot of different styles of music, like weird stories from American history, and love making fun of the stupider parts of American culture. Be the first (and most likely only person ever) on your block to own it!

See the CD packaging in action! 👇

September 26, 2022

Pre-Sales for The American Songbook: Redacted are live!

It’s (almost) here!

The American Songbook: Redacted is now available for purchase! On Apple Music at least. Pre-sales have begun on the platform from Cupertino and if you buy in advance not only will the album download the instant it’s available on October 7, you’ll get to download the preview track “Corporations Are People Too!” right away!

I am really excited for you all to hear this new album. The songs are inspired by oddities of U.S. history and American culture and I got to play with a bunch of different styles of music. The preview track is Sunshine Pop, like Up With People or The Fifth Dimension’s “Up, Up and Away!” There’s heavy metal, disco, emo, 90s boyband pop, jazz, western music and more.

The album will be available on all platforms on October 7, and there will be a limited number of physical CDs for sale right here through my online store. In fact, the only way to get the original cover is on the physical CD. Check out the 2 versions below:

See what’s missing?

“Original Cast Recording” will only appear on the physical CD cover because the streaming services are really picky about what kind of text you put on the cover. The album is comprised of songs from my solo show, solo meaning the entire original cast is me! Get it?

They did not.

I even had a chat conversation with customer service where they asked and I explained, but they said the rules were that the artist name had to be more prominent than any other text on the cover aside form the title. So my cute little joke didn’t make it to the streaming services.

But the music did! And you can get a track before anyone else if you pre-order on Apple music! If you’re more of a Spotify person make sure you follow me there and you’ll be notified as soon as the album is available. And bandcamp is always a good place to get the album digitally, it’s one of the more artist-friendly sites out there so give it a look.

And check back here (or on socials) on October 7th, I have some lyric videos ready to debut on release day!

August 5, 2022August 9, 2022

The American Songbook: Redacted studio album!

The American Songbook: Redacted—The Original Cast Recording?

The American Songbook: Redacted—The Studio Album?

I haven’t figured out the official title but I do know that an album of fully-arranged studio versions of the songs from my new show will be released on CD and streaming this fall! The official album release show will be Wednesday, October 12 at Caveat, and it will be live streamed! The show is going to be fun and I’m really excited that these songs will be able to take the spotlight on a studio album.

I’ve been hard at work getting the arrangements together and I’m having so much fun with it. It may be the most “me” album I’ve done because it’s full of songs about lesser known episodes in American history and it plays around with so many different genres. There’s jazz, disco, heavy metal, Western, emo, and—possibly my favorite arrangement of the bunch—a James Bond style theme song on which I do my best to channel the vocal style of the great Shirley Bassey, who sang Goldfinger, Diamonds are Forever, and Moonraker.

I’m excited to continue to develop the show and plan to take it to a few other cities and theater festivals in the next year so stay tuned on that front. I’ll be posting a couple of lyric videos starting in late September with a tentative official album release date of Friday, October 7.

This will be my 7th full studio album (along with my live album, an EP, and The Green L.E.D.s album I released in 2021) and I have a strong feeling that it might be my best yet. I can’t wait for you to hear it!

June 24, 2022June 27, 2022

Summer Fridays-new single-out today!

My new single “Summer Fridays” is out today! It’s a southern rock jam about trying to get out of town a little early on Friday but never quite being able to make a clean getaway. Roll the windows down and crank it up!

Or put your headphones on and listen while you’re stuck in a last-minute zoom with your team because one of the higher-ups wants a new presentation ready by Monday :-/

The track is available on Spotify, Apple Music (soon), bandcamp, and I made a lyric video for YouTube!

update June 27, 2022: added Apple Music link

And since I think Summer Fridays is the perfect song for a road trip playlist, I made one! If you’re hitting the road this summer give it a listen and you can rock out while you’re stuck in weekend traffic!

June 22, 2022

Moving Sale!

We’ve moved!

Hopefully you didn‘t notice a thing, but we moved the entire RobPRocks website (and all subdomains and email) to a new hosting service! We made the move at the very beginning of June and we were so happy everything went relatively smoothly we decided to have a moving sale at our online store!

Through the end of June, 2022 you can use the coupon code “Moving10” for 10% off every item in the store!

Oh man, I’ve been meaning to make the move for a while now. Every year when my old hosting service would get renewed I’d begrudgingly re-up because I didn’t want to deal with the hassle of moving. But they weren’t a great service. Their server software was old, it was a pain to get the SSL certificate renewed smoothly, and everything about them felt out of date.

So poke around the site, I think everything made the trip and is right where it should be. Plus I got some new stuff, like the promo page for my show The American Songbook: Redacted! Enjoy the new digs and the sale!

May 23, 2022

AS:R had debuted!

AS:R debut, May 18, 2022!

The American Songbook: Redacted has finally hit the stage! The show last week at Caveat was a lot of fun and I’m really excited by how everything went, from the material to my performance to the crowd and the all the tech. Performing 11 new songs (with detailed intros and slides, no less) is a daunting task and something I would never consider in a regular standup set. But this show—an attempt at understanding American history and culture through music and humor—is near and dear to my heart and something I’ve been eager to try.

I want to give a huge thanks to everyone who came out the the show in NYC, it was on the later side on a Wednesday night in the middle of yet another Covid variant surge, so I know it wasn’t easy to show up in person. The team at Caveat was also top-notch, from front of house to the tech, everyone there was helpful, friendly, and damn good at their jobs. When I checked out the video of the live feed I was blown away by the quality and was so excited to realize that the people watching the live stream (thank you all so much for tuning in!) got such a great view of the show. If you’ve seen any of my Cover Tuesday DIY livestreams from home you’ll know that I know that tech is hard!

Now that the debut has has debuted I’m excited to develop the show further with performances, festivals, and more. I hope to do the show many more times here in New York, perhaps even an extended run somewhere. I’d also like to take it to select theaters and venues in other cities, and now that I have video of it to prove it actually exists, I’m going to start reaching out to places. If you have thoughts on a venue that could be a good fit let me know! I’m also going to start recording studio versions of the songs for a companion album. Maybe I’ll release it as a live/studio double album!

So many possibilities, and the possibilities feel even more real now that show #1 is in the books! Thank you to everyone who helped get it going!

April 13, 2022

The American Songbook: Rescheduled!

Timing is everything, right? Yesterday, the day before the big show, I felt pretty achy, tired, and had a slight fever, so I took a home Covid test and it was positive. That of course meant I couldn’t perform The American Songbook: Redacted, the show I’ve been working on for about 5 months, tonight at Caveat.

Thankfully the wonderful people at Caveat were very understanding and we’ve rescheduled for Wednesday, May 18, 9:30. All advance tickets for the live show and the live stream will be honored on that date.

So far the symptoms have been mild and I hope that trend continues. If the worst thing that happens is I have to reschedule my show I guess that’s acceptable. I’m really excited to get this new material up in front of people, I’m really happy with it and the songs have gone over well when I’ve worked on them at The Odd Rock Comedy Hour at QED over the last couple of months.

Speaking of which, I hope to be back and virus free in time for this month’s Odd Rock Comedy Hour on April 23, which will be more than 10 days after my initial symptoms from Monday night. I’ll test before the show and if I can’t make it I’ll find a very capable replacement and the show will be in good hands

Take care of yourselves out there and I hope to fist-bump you at a show soon!

RobP

March 7, 2022

2nd Annual Telethon will benefit Ukraine relief

Cover Tuesday 2-Year Anniversary Telethon!

The 2-year anniversary of Cover Tuesday is fast approaching and to commemorate the occasion I’m going to do another telethon! Last year I set the goal of raising $500 for Food Bank of NYC and we ended up with over $1,400! This year, because I’ll be playing my 1,000th cover in the show and because the need is great, I set the goal of raising $1,000 for Direct Relief, a charity that delivers medical supplies around the globe to those in need and have been especially active in sending medical supplies to Ukraine.

And because the need is immediate the donation link is live right now! To help keep track of the campaign I’m partnering with streamlabscharity, which is an offshoot of streamlabs, a company that makes plugins and helpful little widgets for us twitch streamers. They have a partnership with Direct Relief and I looked them up and they have a solid rep. The New York Times even recommended them as one of the charities to support to help Ukraine.

And there are premiums! A $10 donation gets you a digital download code for either The Green L.E.D.s debut album or my latest concert album Rob P. Rocks a Jazz Club. Donate $20 and get both!

So give now if you can and you’re impatient like me, or give during the telethon, when I’ll hopefully have a cute progress bar on screen to track the progress toward our goal.

And I haven’t forgotten about Food Bank of NYC! I set up a 2022 Cover Tuesday fundraising campaign with a modest goal of $250. I truly believe we can meet both goals and I’ll keep the Food Bank drive open throughout the year to support during future twitch streams.

February 16, 2022February 16, 2022

New Solo Show Debuts April 13!

The American Songbook: Redacted!

I’m very excited to announce that a brand new show filled with brand new songs will officially have its very first performance on Wednesday, April 13 at Caveat in NYC! The show is full of original songs inspired by American history and poking fun at American myths and culture. Song styles will include everything from jazz, heavy metal, emo, and disco, to western and Stephen Foster-style parlor songs.

This show is a preview/trial run/proof of concept that I plan to develop into a longer running show that will hit festivals and play in various cities. I’ve started working on some of the songs in my monthly show at QED, The Odd Rock Comedy Hour, so if you want a preview of the preview come on out to Astoria, where you’ll also get to see other great comedians and musicians.

And if you can’t get to NYC on April 13 there will be a streaming option! Info for streaming and the theater are on Caveat’s site.

The American Songbook: Redacted!
9:30 pm Wednesday, April 13
Caveat
21A Clinton St. NYC 10001