Courtney Collins

3 December 2009

Christmastime already? Merry Christmas! If you happen to be at Barnes and Noble, Borders, or various other bookstores or music stores any time soon, check out the latest issue of The Big Takeover (issue #65, with Sonic Youth on the cover). They gave our Welcome To Christmastown CD a really good review. See the "Music" page on this site for ordering information - and if you order directly from Maypole Records and would like it gift wrapped, just indicate that in the comments section!

The CDs are also available at the following fine stores in Madison: Shakti, Savoir Faire, Little Luxuries, Orange Tree Imports, B-Side, Exclusive Company, and Mad City Music Exchange.

Chad Vader Season 2 has come to a close. The DVD is now available at Blame Society and features all the episodes, behind the scenes footage, and many extras. My favorite might be a mini documentary on Baby Cookie, in which I get to talk about the storied past of my now semi-famous baby doll...

Happy Yuletide!

24 August 2009

Happy Summer! Spring was very busy... I did a public service announcement for national radio. The PSA is for the Collaborative Summer Library Program, and I read a poem with my friend Benson Gardner. It's now airing nationally, and can also be heard here.

More information is available on their website. Chad Vader season 2 is in full swing, and the first few episodes can be viewed at: http://youtube.com/blamesocietyfilms.

I've started a Twitter page - I haven't been too diligent about updating it, though. We'll see what happens. But here I am, at least very minimally: http://twitter.com/Ms_Courtney_C And I'm having a little end of summer sale on CDs - cleaning up inventory and getting some of the discs ready for digital downloading. You can find the physical CDs at cdbaby.com.

That's all for now!

22 December 2008

Happy, happy Christmas! We're so thankful to everyone who's taken the time to listen to our Welcome To Christmastown CD, pick up a copy of it, give it as a gift, or write nice reviews of it! Here are some links to what reviewers are saying:

Carol Swanson of ChristmasReviews.com

Jessica Steinhoff of Isthmus

and more from Jessica

Rob Thomas of The Capital Times

And Kristian Knutsen of Isthmus linked our video for Come On-A My House here

Many thanks to Blame Society Productions for making our video!

Happy, happy Christmas!

10 November 2008

Merry Christmas! A little early maybe, but I do have some Christmas-related news. My friends and I have just released a new CD - it's called Welcome To Christmastown by Courtney Collins and Jeremy Ylvisaker with J.T. Bates and Michael Lewis.Â We spent many weeks this Summer and Fall whipping up what would best be described as a dreamy, sometimes melancholy/sometimes cheery, wintery holiday disc. Jeremy recorded most of my earlier CDs and we've been friends for years - last Christmas we decided to make a CD in time for this Christmas. Jeremy plays guitar with Andrew Bird and Carbon Carousel, and Jeremy, J.T., and Mike are also in a great band together called Alpha Consumer. J.T. and Mike play in the jazz trio Fat Kid Wednesdays - JT also drums for A Prairie Home CompanionÂ and Mike is a multi-instrumentalist and plays in Happy Apple and with Dosh. A lot to keep track of, yes? They're all amazingly talented and it was a fun summer spent making music with these guys.

You can hear samples from Welcome to Christmastown at Amazon, CD Baby, and on my MySpace page. The CD is for sale at those websites, and also available at record stores listed on the "Music" page of this site.

Snowy, happy wishes to you - more news soon...

4 July 2008 - Happy, happy summer ... Just got back from a week of recording in St Paul and I'm super excited with what we've done so far. We have the bulk of instrumentation done for about ten songs - a few more songs to go, and then we'll record vocals. Jeremy (Ylvisaker) and I are a duo for this one, and like he always has for any recording I've worked with him on, he's found some great people to work with on this one. Let me tell you about this cast of characters... JT Bates has been over to play drums. He's a cool, amiable guy who plays in several Minneapolis bands - Fat Kid Wednesdays and Carbon Carousel are two that come to mind immediately. He also drums for A Prairie Home Companion. Micheal Larsen is engineering - he's also known as Eyedea (of Eyedea And Abilities) and is in Carbon Carousel with Jeremy and JT. And interesting to Atmosphere fans perhaps is that Mikey used to emcee in Atmosphere. Doing vocals with Mikey is going to be a challenge because he's always making me laugh - some of these songs are kind of somber, and giddy vocals probably aren't going to work(?). And Jeremy's been a good friend for many years - he played most of the instruments on my last CD and is one of the most talented people I know. He suggested doing this recording a few months ago, and I have to snatch him up before Andrew Bird (who he plays guitar and bass for) and other cool people steal his skills away from me...! Mike Lewis, also from Fat Kid Wednesdays and from Happy Apple is coming by next time to play upright bass and maybe clarinet - he, too, is a tres talented guy.

All in all, nine or ten hour days in a studio are more fun than work when you're surrounded by funny and talented gentlemen.

The recording in its still unfinished state is pretty varied - there will be a bit of the swanky-ness of the Christmas CD (Yuletide Swank) I did with my old band a few years back, but overall it has an 'indie Christmas' vibe, if there is such a thing. Jeremy was hearing some Radiohead and Velvet Underground in some of the songs so far, and I'm hearing Feist and Julie London.

Merry Christmas way too early, and have a lovely summer - bye!

21 March 2008 - The first day of spring... and lots of things going on. I’m going to be recording a CD of Christmas songs with my friend Jeremy Ylvisaker this spring/summer, and we’re in the process of choosing songs and doing some pre-production for it. A while ago, we
were talking about doing a collaboration of original tunes, but the mood hit us both to do a Christmas CD first, so that’s the current plan. I have some upcoming video projects with Blame Society Productions, and Jeremy’s busy touring wiht Andrew Bird and his own band Alpha Consumer, so much of the recording is going to be done long distance (him being in Minneapolis and me being in Madison). But we’ll take more time in the summer for actual studio time.

In the meantime, I’ve been working with Blame Society in producing a series of short comedy videos for Turner Network’s website, Super Deluxe. You can watch the videos on Blame Society’s Super Deluxe page here. I did the usual behind the scenes-type producing for these, and also appeared in two of them.

Happy Spring - more news soon!

19 September 2007 - Autumn is upon us (I love autumn!), and there are lots of things going on... I just returned from Toronto, where I (with Blame Society Productions) was a guest at Fan Expo Canada. We were honored to be invited by the Expo, and we had a great time meeting fans of the 'Chad Vader' series. Our Chad Vader signing booth was next to several Star Wars and Star Trek actors' booths, and being a bit of a 'Star Wars geek,' I was especially excited to meet and spend time with David Prowse ('Darth Vader' in the original trilogy), Temuera Morrison, Daniel Logan (Jango Fett and Boba Fett, respectively), and Jake Lloyd (Anakin Skywalker in Episode 1). We hope to start work on Chad Vader season 2 later this fall... I should mention that Chad Vader won the George Lucas Selects Award a few months ago, too. I'll also be doing some live shows over the holidays. Arena Venus (my former band) is getting together for a few Christmas shows this year - it's been a while since I've done a live show, and I'm excited. Not sure if we'll only do holiday tunes from our Yuletide Swank CD or if we'll throw some of our other songs in as well... I'll do another update when we make these very important decisions(!). Enjoy this lovely season - autumn flies by too quickly...!

19 November 2007 - Happy Holidays a bit early...! I'll be doing a Christmas show with Arena Venus on Thursday, December 20 at The Brink Lounge in Madison, Wisconsin. The show starts at 8pm, and we'll be doing songs from our Christmas CD Yuletide Swank. Rebound Jazz will be closing the night with some 1940s style jazz. And I should mention that if you know someone who likes Christmas music, I've been told that Yuletide Swank makes a good gift (or stocking stuffer!). It's available at Amazon, at CD Baby, directly from Maypole Records, and at these fine stores. There aren't too many left, and I'm not sure if we'll be re-ordering. Check out the video of I'd Like You For Christmas (from Yuletide Swank) here. Happy Yuletide!

15 July 2007 - Springtime... Summer's flying by, yes? So a bit of summertime news... the newest issue of The Big Takeover features a cool review of my music - check it out next time you're at Borders, Barnes and Noble, etc. It's Issue 60, with The Shins on the cover. In late August, I'll be appearing at Fan Expo Canada in Toronto, for my role as producer of the Chad Vader series - it looks like it's going to be an exciting weekend, with over 50,000 attendees. Other guests include Hayden Christensen (Star Wars), Malcolm McDowell (A Clockwork Orange), Sean Astin (Lord Of The Rings), Hayden Panettiere (Heroes), Adam West (Batman), and lots of other movie and television actors. If you happen to be attending, stop by our "Chad" area and say hi!

15 May 2007 - Springtime... May is my favorite month, so much so that I had to name my record label after it... We wrapped up season one of "Chad Vader" this month. Episode 8 just went online last week and can be viewed here. And I got to do some singing in it! I've also been writing songs for a new CD which I plan on recording later this year. The video for one of the Violet Night songs I mentioned earlier is still a work in progress - it involves changing seasons, so it may not be finished until October, when leaves start changing color. This is turning out to be the longest making of a video ever - for a 3 minute song! More news soon, and in the meantime, Happy Spring!

05 February 2007 - Special thanks to Chris Jorgensen of the Billings Gazette in Billings, Montana for his review of Violet Night. This is my first comparison to Hank Williams Sr.! Read it here. Also, check out the in-depth feature on Chad Vader by Kenneth Burns of Isthmus. He interviewed crew and cast, and I had a nice interview with Kenneth in which we talked about some of the crazy fan mail, among other things...

06 October 2006 - Hi! It's about time that I write a few lines. I spent most of the summer working with Blame Society Productions on a film series called Chad Vader (watch for it on Good Morning America on October 11!). Music has taken a backseat for just a bit... But the song "So In Love" from my CD was featured in Chad Vader episode 4, and I'll also be on an upcoming Christmas compilation to benefit the Madison Area Music Awards. Hopefully a video for Don't Forget will be done soon to coincide with the Magnet Magazine end-or-year issue that I'll be in. Happy Halloween!

27 April 2006 - New reviews of my CD ar in this week's Isthmus and this month's Rick's Cafe. Many thanks to Rick TVedt adn Tom Laskin for taking the time to review Violet Night...

24 February 2006 - Hi. Anna Maria Stjornell of Sweden's Luna Kafe and Collected Sounds was kind enough to review my CD...

15 December 2005 - So my CD is finally finished! It's called Violet Night, and you can listen to some of the songe by clicking here...

19 September 2005 - Hi! Skipping Discs, a record company in Massachusetts, is releasing a tribute album to the 1960's band The Turtles, titled 'Shells: Women Artists and Female-Fronted Bands Cover for the Turtles.' Skipping Discs has released some really cool compilations in the past (tributes to David Bowie and Joe Jackson, to name a few), When I found out about...

27 June 2005 - This album that I mentioned earlier is almost half-finished! We've assembled a studio band, which consists of my uber-talented friends Jeremy and Andy, a fabulous drummer named Brett who Jeremy recruited...