Hi everyone, it’s Arthur Hatton here.  It has been around three and a half years since I created Linescratchers, and as many of you may have noticed, our productive output has decreased over the last year or so.  This is directly attributable to the fact that I’ve had my first kid (he’s one year old now), and started graduate school.  Those two things have really taken away my energy to micro-manage things and make time in my schedule to talk with artists, listen to new music, and go to concerts.  Our fundraiser was an attempt at providing the incentive necessary to take Linescratchers to the next level, but it was not successful enough to really meet our minimum goals to do so (though we will have plenty of money for web hosting bills for the indefinite future).  I have given this decision a lot of thought and have decided that, in order to make room in my life for graduate school and research, being a father, and new blogging interests, I’m regretfully going to have to step down as the in-charge person at Linescratchers.

This was not an easy decision to make.  In a lot of ways I feel like I’m giving up a baby for adoption.  However, I also know that I’m a perfectionist, and I get very dissatisfied with myself if I do things half-way.  Either I do them right or I don’t do them at all.

However, I also did not want to just shut Linescratchers down.  So we have worked out a new system whereby contributors will still post articles, interviews, and reviews, without me telling them what to do.  On our Staff page I will compile a list of active contributors along with the styles of music they specialize in.  If there are any new artists who wish to be featured on Linescratchers, you can contact the contributors directly.  Expect lots of great new content over the next months (and hopefully years).  Don’t go away!  It’s just that I won’t be directly involved anymore.

One thing I just want to say here is that, in my mind, I consider Linescratchers an unqualified, total success.  When I created Linescratchers, I had reasons for doing it, and goals that I wanted to achieve.  Some of them were more abstract, like that I wanted to create a safe place for LDS artists to be able to really express themselves.  Some were more concrete – I wanted to interview Alan Sparhawk.  Along the way I’ve met some amazing artists, writers, fans, and people, and seen some amazing musicians live.  I was even able to create a couple dozen podcasts, some of which were great interviews of some amazing musicians.  I love Linescratchers and I really hope that it continues long years into the future.

If you are interested in what I’m doing nowadays, you might have noticed that I was recently interviewed about an album I just released, Odes.  I have also started a personal blog that I have been using to record my thoughts about my personal musical journey and other random things, and if you’re interested in following me there, I promise to try and entertain you as best as I can.  If you want to follow me in my music, you can find me at my Facebook fan page or on Reverbnation.  I am also involved with a psychology of religion blog called The Value of Saintliness, related to my graduate studies.

The thing I want to express most here is my gratitude.  I am so thankful to each of you – each contributor, each artist that really believed in us, each fan who follows us, each listener of the podcast, every family member that offered support, and every person that donated to the fundraiser.  You’ve all made this wonderful site possible and I wish I could just shake your hands individually.

You’ll still see me lurking around Linescratchers, and hopefully posting every now and then, and I will still be happy to answer questions or press inquiries about the site, I just won’t be pulling the puppet strings anymore.  To get in touch with me personally, please email me at arthur@linescratchers.com.

Arthur Hatton is a singer-songwriter based in the southern US (first Kentucky and now Georgia). He has just self-recorded and self-released Odes, his first full-length album.

Arthur is also the founder and honcho here at Linescratchers. He sat down to talk with us about the desperation that bore his new album, why anyone should care that he’s Mormon, and how Eastern Orthodox Christianity has influenced his work.

Deep in the heart of Texas is a town known for live music, cowboys, and the blues.  When I think of Austin, Texas, I really don’t think of pop music… until now.  Allow me to introduce you to Tristyn Elizabeth.  After a couple of years of paying her dues as a singer-songwriter at many of the open mic events in Austin, she has emerged from the studio with her first real studio effort, an EP entitled Kiss Me in the Rain.  Like a butterfly emerging from a cocoon, she has used her time in the studio to transform herself from a singer-songwriter into a more polished pop artist, without abandoning her roots.  I actually know Tristyn, after being in her ward for a couple of years in Georgia.  I recently connected with 21-year-old Tristyn to hear her story about her development as an artist.

How did you get started in music?

My dad is a songwriter/producer type as well and he’d always be writing or playing or talking music all the time. That was a huge influence all my life. I remember when Britney Spears and N’sync and Backstreet boys were  huge, I’d blast it in the living room and sing and dance to it with my siblings and imagine growing up to be a singer. I started writing sometime in high school. It started when I would listen to songs on the radio and it didn’t fit how I felt. There wasn’t a song I could sing from my soul I guess, I was in high school and I was dramatic. So I started writing music on my guitar.  All the songs I wrote were kinda bad and embarrassing. Over time they got better with re-writes and new life experiences. I wrote better ones when I went off to college. Also, when I was in high school  my dad would need vocals for various projects and songs and I’d record on those. That’s basically where it started. Read the rest of this entry ›

Upon hearing rumors that I had been working hard to wrap up an album project for December release, I decided to sit down with myself for an interview. Here are all the facts for our loyal Linescratchers readers.

Does your album project have a general theme?

To me, these are guitar-driven songs about life. They are real, they are raw, and they are relevant.  That’s pretty much the theme of the project.

Read the rest of this entry ›

I can’t tell you how unsurprised I was to learn that Church Williams was a musician. Sharp-looking guy, snappy dresser, coolest spectacles I’d seen in some time. Of course he’s a musician. The only thing that could have made me more certain was if he’d been an utter slob.

Well, no. I’m listening to his album Touch the Sun as I type this, preparing to send you on to the interview, and realizing that “slob” is not an option for Church.

My recommendation? Pop that link open and take a listen while you check out this interview.

Read the rest of this entry ›

…okay, not an unqualified success, I’ll admit.  The fundraiser was a success in sort of the same way that Abinadi was a success.

We didn’t reach our fundraising goal, which means that unfortunately, we won’t be able to expand Linescratchers quite the way we were hoping we would, meaning we won’t have the quarterly PDF edition just yet, nor will we have any custom graphic design.  However, we still made enough to pay for a new pretty theme, and we’ll try to keep up the awesome content.  Your donations have also paid for quite a bit of our web hosting fees for a while, so that was a success too.  We’re also about to kick into gear our plans for the 2nd annual Linescratchers Awards (2011), given to the best LDS artists and bands of the year!  Stay tuned for that, news, interviews, and more from Linescratchers!

Linescratchers contributor Joseph Mecham recently interviewed Brandon Kitterman (guitar aficionado of Utah’s indie rock band Fictionist) for GuitarJunkie.net. Linescratchers gets to join in on the fun.

Brace yourself, dear reader, for a lesson in being awesome. Brandon Kitterman is what I would call a sonic knitting artist. You know those really ugly knitted blankets you always try to warm up with at your Grandparents house, and they’re so riddled with holes they have a 10% heat retention rating? Then you end up freezing to death on their couch while developing terminal asthma because they have 40 years of dust collected in the couch cushions? Well yeah… that sucks, and I share your pain. However, if Brandon were to knit for you a blanket with his sonic textures and tones, it would be made of silk, be your favorite color, smell like vanilla, have a 99% heat retention rating, and it would wrap you like an Egyptian mummy. Yep… he’s that good. Read on for everything you wanted to know about Brandon Kitterman’s guitar set-up and technique.
Read the rest of this entry ›

Hi folks.  We have one week left on our fundraiser, and we are currently only a fraction of our total goal.  But that’s okay.  Even if we only raise $400, we can still redesign the site with a new and better design (we just can’t do some of the more extensive stuff we had planned).  So, in order to help us reach our minimum goal, I’ve decided to have a sale.  From now on, ANYONE who donates anything will receive a copy of the Linescratchers Compilation Album, regardless of the amount (this will apply retroactively to anyone who donated less than $20 earlier in the month).

Yeah, you heard me – you’ll receive our special first Linescratchers Compilation Album, featuring 12 awesome artists including Kirby Heyborne, Rumbo Rumba, Young Sim, Idiot Glee, and more, NO MATTER HOW MUCH YOU DONATE.  But you still have to donate something.  Please CLICK HERE TO MAKE IT HAPPEN!

For more information on the album itself, click HERE.

Most of you know that Simeon Lawrence (AKA Young Sim) is a good friend of mine from our missions, and we’ve stayed good friends ever since. So it is with an acknowledgement of complete and utter bias that I present to you the following video. I’m not sure if anyone who doesn’t know us will appreciate the full meaning here, so I realize perhaps I’m breaking some sort of journalistic code by posting this, but Young Sim, founder of Feel Good Music, is engaged to be married. Life is good.

I guess it’s official now, Brandon Flowers is a Mormon.  If you haven’t seen it yet, HERE is Brandon Flowers’ profile on Mormon.org.  That’s right, it’s mormon.org/brandon.

I can’t believe the LDS church could get an interview that we couldn’t!!!  Okay, I guess I can kinda see it.  There’s an awesome video interview on the website, but here’s a YouTube link to give you an idea.  I love it.

I have been asked on numerous occasions why Linescratchers features LDS musicians. One of the earliest forms of this question came from extremely early on in Linescratchers history – before I even published my first post. I had sent out a bajillion emails to various and sundry musicians to try and find active Mormons who were musicians. One of the random folks I sent an email to wrote back and said something along the lines of (I don’t have the email anymore): “I have some friends you should interview! They’re not Mormon though. But they totally deserve a little publicity!”

And I responded to them by saying, “Well, that’s awesome and everything, but really the point of this website is to feature Mormons only.

And they responded by saying, in effect, “That’s pretty unfair and judgmental that you would only feature Mormons, there are lots of good musicians out there who need publicity who aren’t Mormons. You shouldn’t judge them just because they’re not Mormons.”

And I responded by saying, in effect, “…”

It seemed obvious in my head that I would be accomplishing something very specific and important by only featuring LDS musicians. I was completely caught off-guard by the idea that this was judgmental and unfair, and I didn’t have much of a response to that. Now over the years, I think I’ve refined my message a bit, but in a lot of ways the response I got that day has stuck with me. I have asked myself more than once, “Why LDS musicians? What’s the point?” Read the rest of this entry ›

It’s been a hope of mine ever since I created Linescratchers to eventually make a compilation album that featured the best of our artists every year. I discovered that this is a legally tricky endeavor. In order to obtain copyrights for 10-12 songs I’d have to have each artist sign dozens of pages of paperwork, pay legal fees, and keep up with a ton of legal ramifications of selling somebody else’s music. Lacking sufficient time and resources to do all that, I put the idea on the backburner until a time when I could fully focus my attention on it.

However, with the advent of our newest fundraiser and plans to expand Linescratchers, I have been able to realize that dream in some way. We’re not actually selling the album – it’s a bonus gift for those who donate $20 or more to our fundraiser – and that means our artists could just donate their favorite or most unique tracks to us and we can give out free digital downloads to those who participate! It’s a win-win-win situation for our artists, our fans, and Linescratchers.

But some of you have still asked about the track listing, and I’m happy to oblige. Here are the songs on the first official Linescratchers Compilation Album:

Kirby Heyborne – The Hard Way
Rumbo Rumba – Ya Va A Salir El Sol
Young Sim – I Apologize
The Barefoot Movement – Find Ourselves
Good Morning Passenger – Empty Beds
Australis – Sacred Earth
Idiot Glee – Don’t Go Out Tonight
Mayan Fox – Move
Colby Miller – Collapse!
Kristen Lawrence – The Ghost of John
Roxy Rawson – (new track – to be determined)
(NEW!) The Neighbors – (to be determined)

I didn’t ask all our artists to donate a track. You can see that I really focused on having as broad a variety of music as possible: from rap to indie to violin to Latin to Halloween to acoustic to New Age and more. I think this is an important step in really showing what Latter-day Saints are capable of creating artistically in modern times. No doubt in 100 years, Mormon historians would probably be interested in these tracks, just to see what Mormon artists of the early 21st Century did. Once again, this album is available to those who donate more than $20 to our fundraiser (downloads will be made available as soon as the fundraiser is over at the end of the month). Enjoy!

Dear fans, musicians, and readers,

We have until October 30th to win your support!

Linescratchers has been around for over three years now. We’ve existed in pretty much the same form since we began: a little blog.  As much as I loved putting distance between us and the “LDS musician” industry and sending out “Are you Mormon?” emails to semi-known celebrities, I soon realized that I couldn’t do it alone.  I recruited a group of bloggers from all over the country who are committed to finding and promoting LDS musicians everywhere.  We’ve slowly grown into the biggest website of its kind.  Where else can you find Alan Sparhawk talking about the “fluke” of making money with music; Ian Fowles talking about punk rock, The Aquabats!, and theology; Kirby Heyborne talking about being an actor, songwriter, and the woes of being a “celebrity” in the Mormon church; Young Sim on his family’s escape from Liberia and so much more?  Linescratchers features the largest network of LDS musicians in the world, and we now celebrate the best of LDS musicians in our Annual Linescratchers Awards, the only award of its kind.

Our loyal fans and readers, you have provided the greatest input, comments, suggestions, and general motivation we could ever ask for.  Many of you read regularly, comment, and listen to the podcast. Because of that, we want to grow, improve, and continue providing the content you deserve.  After a solid run in the group blog format, working out the kinks in our system, we are ready to take this to the next level. And this is where you come in.

Blogs are great for what they are, but we want Linescratchers to be much more.  Great blog posts get buried soon after they’re published.  Our design doesn’t lend itself to compelling pictures or a polished format.  Furthermore, our contributors are a core team of volunteers.  Life happens, and creating solid and consistent material can be tough.

Therefore, we’ve decided to expand Linescratchers into an online magazine.  

“What’s the difference?” you might ask.  Well, the new Linescratchers will have:

1. A professional site redesign.
2. A quarterly, downloadable PDF/mobile edition featuring the best articles and interviews of each quarter, so you will be able to access Linescratchers on your mobile device and e-readers.
3. More LDS art-related categories, such as film and theater.  While music will always be our primary focus, an online magazine format will allow us to venture out into other categories that you might also be interested in.
4. A network of advertisers and other professional relationships.  While ads normally suck the cool out of good websites, we will feature neat and relevant partners like venues where our artists perform, studios, music shops, LDS-related sites, and labels.  Above all, this will allow us to provide you, the readers, with…
5. Higher-quality content.  We aim to produce even better content than we ever have before.  We will be able to do this by giving our contributing staff and editors compensation for their work, so they can make more time for it.

For this to work, we need your help.  I am happy to officially announce a month-long RocketHub campaign to fund our website overhaul!  Funds raised throughout the month of October will go to graphic design and other costs associated with running a slicker, higher-traffic site for the next year while we wait for advertising to kick in.

You might ask, like Peter of old, “Behold, we will donate and follow you (on Facebook and Twitter); what shall we have therefore?” The answer: our Linescratchers Featured Artists are behind us 100%.  We are offering a special bonus compilation album featuring tracks from some of our best LDS Featured Artists to everyone who donates more than $20 to Linescratchers!  This compilation will include songs personally donated to us from:

Kirby Heyborne
Young Sim
The Barefoot Movement
Roxy Rawson
Idiot Glee
Colby Miller
Australis
Canoe
Kristen Lawrence
Good Morning Passenger
Rumbo Rumba

This compilation is not for sale. It will only be available for those who donate more than $20 in our RocketHub campaign.  Anyone who donates at least $10 will receive a special mention in our first quarterly magazine.  For our high-roller fans, donations of $50 or more will receive the compilation album and Linescratchers merchandise.  All reward levels are available on our RocketHub site.

Thank you to everyone for participating in all our struggles and joys over the last three years.  We hope to be around for a long time, and we want you there with us!  So what are you waiting for?

PLEDGE YOUR SUPPORT FOR LINESCRATCHERS NOW!

When I review an album, I listen with pen and paper. I take notes song-by-song, recording the vibe and mood of each song, how each flows, and how they work together to make a complete album.  While listening to ELiZA WREN’s Returns to Oz, I wasn’t able to do that, and I could not be more delighted.

This double album of 110 minutes of music is set to the movie Return to Oz, one of my childhood favorites.  If you are not familiar with Return to Oz, watch it right this minute. Otherwise, here’s a three sentence synopsis:  It’s a very dark, somewhat creepy non-musical 80′s sequel to the 1939 musical The Wizard of Oz in which an inexplicably younger Dorothy, played by Fairuza Balk (who I had a crush on as a kid and again later after watching The Craft), gets sent to an asylum by her loving aunt and uncle to get electroshock therapy to rid her mind of the Oz mumbojumbo that she won’t shut up about. Whilst escaping the asylum, she falls asleep and wakes up in Oz, only to find it has been ruined by the creepy wheelers (imagine less cool flying monkeys on rollerblades), a gnome king who is sporting the ruby slippers, and a headless witch who has a varied collection of heads she can swap.  Oz can only be returned to its former glory by stopping these evil characters, and the only ones who can stop them are Dorothy and her verbose chicken, along with the help of a robot soldier, a jack-o-lantern headed dude, and a flying couch with a talking moose head.

If that amazing preview didn’t immediately compel you to watch Return to Oz, I have yet another excellent reason: EliZA WREN’s album Returns to Oz.  Much like Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon and The Wizard of Oz (the syncing of which is commonly known as Dark Side of the Rainbow), ELiZA WREN’s album can be synced with the film Return to Oz.  However, when playing Dark Side of the Moon and The Wizard of Oz, coincidences are few and you really have to be generous in accepting things that seem moderately in sync. With Returns to Oz, the songs are purposefully and amazingly crafted to accompany the movie, and they do a fantastic job of enhancing each other.  The moods of the songs fit perfectly, and the lyrics are usually, though cryptically, describing what is happening in the movie.  I can’t quite describe the audio/visual aspect of the whole experience, all I can do is recommend you try it (start by watching the trailer).

Apart from the visual, the music definitely holds on it’s own.  The album uses ongoing motifs and recurring song themes that range from old timey bluegrass and folk music to indie rock to piano-based spacey tunes that would fit very well on a Pink Floyd record.  Whether you experience the album on its own or accompanied by a delightfully creepy Disney movie, I highly recommend giving it a watch and/or listen!

A few weeks ago I was contacted by my good buddy and first cousin, Will Hatton, about a radio show he got at K-UTE at the University of Utah.  That in itself is very cool, but what’s even cooler? Will told me that he was going to have a Linescratchers Segment.  In that segment, he’d be featuring Linescratchers artists. Because radio and podcast copyright laws are different, Will would be able to feature lots of artists that I can’t on the Linescratchers Podcast. Linescratchers will finally find itself on the radio, where good music deserves to be played.

Will has agreed to answer some questions about his new radio show, The Mix-Tape Invasion, including information about where interested listeners can tune in!  Highly recommended from Linescratchers. Read the rest of this entry ›