This was only a matter of time, really. I got the newsletter today explaining that I Fight Dragons has been signed by Photo Finish / Atlantic Records (the same label that handles 3OH!3, my guilty pleasure). Needless to say I’m really happy for them, but I’mma let you finish. Nah, just kidding. Just happy for’em. Below is the e-mails.
When we began to work on demos and recordings back in 2008 for what would become I Fight Dragons and Cool Is Just A Number, we didn’t have a specific 5-year plan for how things would go. Personally, I had spent the preceding couple years trying to find the kind of music I most wanted to be making, failing again and again. For half of the band, this was the first real ‘band’ they had ever been in, having come more from classically trained musical backgrounds.
I say all of this because at the heart of it, our fidelity has always been to the music. I think that’s how it always should be. The music comes first.
Then came 2009, and we finally pushed ourselves out in public for the first time, armed only with our newly-minted EPs with their comic-booky art and our NES controllers, clad in Justice League shirts. We were scared shitless, but somehow it still felt right.
The amount of welcoming energy, support, help, and love we received right from the get-go was simply astounding. We were completely blown away by the support of people who loved our music, who agreed with what we were doing, who became a part of all of it.
I say this all because in 2009 things changed for us. We realized that although the music always has to come first, there is another layer. The true joy (at least for us) is in sharing it with people who love it as much as we do, and connecting with them, and helping them connect with each other. It’s all one big self-reinforcing exponentially-expanding music-art-emotion-thought network of amazingness.
So in the fall of 2009, we took the big plunge, hitting the road full time across the nation on tour with mc chris. It was without a doubt the most exciting experience of our musical lives, playing 45 shows in 55 days over 15,000 miles, meeting new fans and connecting faces with people we had only connected with online before.
So far, so good, right? Well, yes and no. It was hard to admit for enterprising new-minded folks like ourselves, but during that tour we started to hit our limits. We were still doing the bulk of everything ourselves, marketing, distribution, web design / development, social media, PR, and more, and trying to do that while driving hundreds of miles every day and playing a show every night was simply an impossible task.
To top it all off, we’re a six person band. In this brave new internet-age, artists like mc chris, Jonathan Coulton, and a handful of others have been able to forge 100% independent music careers for themselves, but almost without fail they’re solo artists. They are self-produced, and more importantly they can tour with almost no expenses, which is where a lot of that living is earned. We’re still just one band, one income, but with 6 mouths to feed.
So we had to admit that we needed to grow.
This is where the big news comes in. Since late August of 2009, we’ve been talking with Photo Finish / Atlantic Records about signing I Fight Dragons and helping us expand what we do and connect with even more people on a larger scale.
They have been amazing throughout the whole process, incredibly excited about everything that we’ve done already, and very interested in preserving our creative control. They’re also incredibly open to continuing this new kind of connection we have with fans, and helping it grow in new and exciting ways, which is incredibly important to us. Not to mention the fact that so many of our musical inspirations have been on (and continue to be on!) Atlantic Records. It’s a label with both an incredible history and a desire to grow and change with the future. Photo Finish is an arm of Atlantic which has acts such as 3OH!3, and they are really awesome with internet-centric cool ideas, which we definitely love.
So, as of February 4, 2010, we are officially announcing that I Fight Dragons is joining the Photo Finish / Atlantic Records roster.
Now some of you may know how big a deal this is, but some may not. So just what does this mean?
Well for one, “Heads Up, Hearts Down” is currently #5 on Denver’s top Alternative Rock station, KTCL 93.3. Atlantic’s awesome radio team will start to take it to stations all across the nation in the next few weeks, and before you know it, you might start to hear Chiptune-Rock on your radio dial. Nutso, right?
Another difference is that we’re going to record and release our debut full-length album with Photo Finish / Atlantic. It will be available in retail stores across the nation, and the new singles will also be taken to radio by their intrepid team. To top it off, they are giving us huge amounts of creative control, and we are incredibly excited about the album.
The final, partially related, HUGE piece of news is that we’ll be headed out on tour this spring with our fellow Atlantic Records bands 3OH!3 (Photo Finish), Cobra Starship (Fueled by Ramen), and Travis McCoy (of Gym Class Heroes, on Fueled by Ramen). The tour is called the MTV “Too Fast For Love” tour, and the first announced dates are up on our site: ifightdragons.com/shows.html, with more to come. We are going to be playing some huge rock shows!!
So to sum it all up, this is a big big step forward for us. We hope you will join us in celebrating, and we’re happy to answer any questions you have, since we know this is a lot to take in. You can reply to this email, or post a comment on the blog entry that contains all of this info Here. We sincerely hope you’re as happy as we are, and that you’ll take this step with us on this crazy road to wherever the heck it is we’re going 🙂
Sincerely,
-Your Friendly Neighborhood Dragon Fighters:
Brian, Bill, Hari, Laura, Packy, and Chad
PS – we only have a handful left of the 500 DVDs that went on sale 2 weeks ago! We’ll probably run out by the end of this week, so make sure to get yours asap if you want one: (Click Here for DVD Info)
