We’re thrilled to announce that our new single, “Revolving Doors” is now available on iTunes, Amazon, and other fine music retailers and streaming services the world over.

“Revolving Doors” is a big milestone for Empire State Express. It’s the first full-fledged studio recording that the three of us have done in the year and a half that we’ve been playing together. The narrative will be familiar to anyone who’s ever watched “Behind the Music” or read Keith Richards’s autobiography. The full-band sound halfway in is as concentrated a blast of ESE as we could fit into two minutes. “Revolving Doors” seemed like the natural choice to kick off the series of singles we have planned for the next several months.

Our not-so-silent partners in all this were producer/post-engineer Nick Messitte (Brooklyn) and recording engineers Matt Schlachter and Eddie Kerpan (Chicago). Their skill and talent shepherded the recording through equipment failures, postal mishaps, a major tropical storm and a slew of smaller gremlins. For all this and more they have our heartfelt thanks.

We had a blast putting the final track together and hope a little bit of that joy comes through in the listening experience.

For those of you who missed it, our July 8th set at the Double Door was about the most fun that can legally be had in Chicago city limits. The bill featured standout sets from top to bottom, including performances from Jessica Robbins and her band, Peter Terry and the Chicago City Profits, The Main Squeeze, and yours truly. As a special treat, Paige DeChausse joined us for the second half of our set, showing off a bigger set of pipes than Holy Name Cathedral.

Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve been trickling out some high-quality video of the show on our YouTube channel, but in honor of a very rainy, dreary Sunday in Chicago, we’ve made a little playlist for your enjoyment:

• Part One (“Revolving Doors”, “Old Soul”)
• Part Two (“Keys”, “The Girls I Used to Know”)
• Part Three (“Jackie Chan”, “White Rabbit”)
• Part Four (“Big Bad Wolf”, “Empire State Express”)

Before the show, we also did a little interview with one of our favorite local music blogs, Reviewsic, talking a bit about where we’ve been, where we’re going and which Beatle Derrick would most like to high-five.

Lastly, don’t miss some of the stunning photos that our fans took during the show. Do we look this good in real life? Amazing what a little dramatic lighting can do.

That or we just make Tim weak at the knees.

ESE is not a cover band, but we like good cover songs as much as the next music fan. A good cover is like a pithy quote at a cocktail party: most people know it’s not your idea, but they dig your style; and those who don’t know any better think you’re a bloody genius.

Not long ago we reached out to our fans on Facebook for some song suggestions to help us with a new project we’re working on. What we got in return was an embarrassment of options (thank you, by the way). So we could use some help in narrowing things down. Have a look at the “sushi menu” below and check off whatever you want to hear Empire State Express take a stab at. If there’s another song you want us to cover that’s not on this list, just post it to our Facebook page and we’ll add it to the poll.

If you’re wondering what we’re going to do with all these covers, we’re not quite ready to blab just yet. For now, let’s just say we’ll get to a lot of these songs in short order.

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October rocks. The best beer, the best food and the least obnoxious celebrations all land this month. If that alone doesn’t get you over the end of summer, Empire State Express has a few tricks for you to look forward to this month (we’ll leave the treats to the twee crowd).

On 10/8, we’ll be playing a headlining set at The Red Line Tap in Roger’s Park. Our last show at RLT was for the International Pop Overthrow Festival, where we rocked the pants off a room full of Roger’s Park hipsters and a couple of very confused Leninist punks. For one night only we’ll be joined onstage by Jack Burr, who will be filling in for Tim while he guest lectures at a national summit of high-energy particle bassists.

But this will just be a teaser before we play our biggest show yet, on 10/22 at LaSalle Power Company in Chicago. Along with our good friends in Markit 8 we will be throwing a kick-ass rock show while helping to raise money and awareness for Hands of Hope, a local charity that helps women, children and schools in Africa. Both bands will be donating their profits from the evening to buy goats for impoverished families. Personal donations will also be accepted at the event, but all you need to do to make a difference is show up and rock out with us. There will be no cover charge.

If for any reason you can’t make the show but would still like to make a donation to this great cause, please click here to send the gift of a chicken, goat or drinking well to a family or school in Africa.

Throughout October we will also be taking votes on our first ever band t-shirt, designed by UneekGrafix, rolling out some new live video, and embarking on our very first music video shoot with our good friend and video auteur Christian Doll. If you’d like to get in on these happenings and haven’t yet joined our mailing list or followed us on Facebook or Twitter, we highly recommend clicking here and joining the conversation.

Our visual guru and frequent partner in crime, Christopher Magruder (a.k.a. uneekgrafix) snapped some press photos for us a couple of weeks ago and worked his magic on the keepers (airbrushing the second evil head from Chris’s shoulder was especially tricky). Have a look at our band page and let us know what you think. Click here to see some of Christopher’s other photos and graphic design work.

This past month we’ve been on something of a content bender–crafting new songs, cutting live sets and, most recently, dipping our toes into the rushing waters of YouTube. The germ of this idea started with our good friend Christian bringing his Flip cam to one of our live shows and snagging a few minutes of the raucous dance party that ensued. Our erstwhile videographer has since accompanied us to the live taping we did for Radio One Chicago at BLAM Recording and will be stitching together the footage into something slick over the next few weeks.

Fascinated by this lightning in a bottle, we snagged ourselves a handy little video camera of our own about a week ago, just in time to capture last week’s show at the Horseshoe with Paris Schutz Band. The we’ve posted so far is not exactly Scorcese (yet), but we hope it will give new listeners a sense of what we do live, and fans further afield a chance to keep up-to-date on our shows. Check out our new YouTube channel here and let us know what you think. We’ll be updating it regularly, with a few sweet clips coming down the pike soon, so consider subscribing if you like what you hear.

May is shaping up to be a media-tastic month for Empire State Express, with both TV and radio airplay on the docket.

If you tuned into CanTV earlier this month, you might just have caught a glimpse of us rocking out Silvie’s back on a frigid January evening. If you didn’t, you’ll get another chance on 5/29 to see us on the small screen (10:00PM airtime).

In the off chance that you don’t actually own a television or find the notion of ESE TV a mite over-stimulating, we’ve got you covered. Around 7:30PM on 5/27, our sweet, sweet voices can be heard on WLUW 88.7FM, melting hearts and candying inner ears. DJ Jabs will be interviewing us as part of Radio One Chicago’s nightly show and will be broadcasting a few cuts from the Land Speed Record EP across the Chicagoland area. For those of you farther afield, a live stream is available here.

See you on the air!

Last week I came across a fascinating infographic retweeted by Colin Meloy. In it David McCandless breaks down how much a solo artist would need to distribute across various forms of traditional and new media in order to scrape together minimum wage. It’s fairly intuitive that a self-pressed CD would net an artist far more a pop than internet radio. What’s breathtaking is just how vast this difference is. The orders of magnitude separating CD revenues from Spotify’s remind me of nothing so much as a planetary size chart. Scroll down slowly for the full effect.

These numbers are especially bracing when you consider that 1) this chart assumes 100% net profit off each sale or impression (i.e. it cost nothing to make the music in the first place–ha!), 2) the scale assumes a “solo artist” making that minimum wage (sorry, Polyphonic Spree), and 3) common wisdom holds that unless you’re MC Hammer circa 1987, successful music marketing requires more than just selling CDs out of the trunk of your car.

So it’s hard to avoid the nagging suspicion offhand that maybe Lars Ulrich was tapping into something other than the green monster way back during NapsterGate. However I’m a glass-half-full kind of guy and am inclined to think that there’s a warm fuzzy buried somewhere deep in here. For starters, it’s encouraging to see just how many options there are for unsigned, DIY bands to make scratch without a label in the middle. I certainly don’t interpret this as an indictment of internet radio, which is really more of an exposure tool than a profit engine anyway (and hey, at least the money is trickling in the right direction vs. payola).

Mostly though, this info speaks to the fact that most music is not divined through the cloud but built from the ground up through hard work, great fans and a touch of good fortune. Parachute pants optional.

We’re thrilled to introduce our new drummer, Derrick Martens, who will be making his ESE debut at our upcoming Silvie’s Lounge show. Scarcely a month ago, Derrick joined us in the studio as a last-minute candidate for auditions, then summarily schooled the competition, some of whom had been practicing the material for days. A few weeks in, he’s already bringing a new dimension to ESE’s material. Those of you planning to join us on the 7th might want to bring an airbag–you won’t know what hit you.

In the meantime, check out Derrick’s bio on the Band page and get amped.