ECKOBASE: News

Well, it has been a long time. Unfortunately, eckobase will continue to rest. Clay moved to Little Rock this summer, and has just left Little Rock for NYC. Carter moved to Little Rock as well, but has stayed there to work. Clayton opened his own successful restaurant (with long-time friend Jerrmy), and is expecting a second daughter in the coming weeks. Needless to say, we have all been very busy, and have been unfortunately delayed from doing what we love most.
That being said, we are all still pursuing music in our own lives, and practicing away. Eckobase is not over, but we each have several other tasks at hand that have taken precident. Nonetheless, we expect to see you all soon, and have had some of the best times of our lives in this band.
Thanks for all of your support, and we hope to see you soon!

Thanks everyone for coming out and making our late-night Wakarusa experience so much fun. We played from 4:20 AM well into daylight, and stopped around 7:45 AM. Thanks also to Brock of Perpetual Groove and Mickey of Future Rock for sitting in during the set.

Thanks to everyone that came out and supported the SAVE THE DAVE Benefit. We sold out George's and raised over $10 thousand. Many musicians and volunteers put a lot of time and effort into the event, and we would like to thank all of them as well.

We played in the Fayetteville Battlerusa on the 25th at George's Majestic Lounge and won a spot in the '06 Wakarusa Festival! Thanks to everyone who came out and supported all of the bands, as well as Loyal Family for their hard work putting this all together. We will put some of the beginning of the show on our site, but it is all up at http://www.archive.org/audio/etree-details-db.php?id=33191. Also, check us out on myspace at myspace.com/eckobase

After taking several months off, we will be playing shows again soon, including a March run in Colorado. Currently we are performing as a 3 piece band since the departure of long time Eckobase member and friend Jeff Gray. We will all miss the sounds of Jeff's trumpet, though we will continue to carry on as Eckobase. We have spent the past few months refocusing our efforts to write, play, improv and understand electronic music in greater detail, and are excited to share some of it with you all. Carter has been practicing his keybaords lately, and will be shifting some of his focus from guitar to make more time for synth playing. Clayton and Clay have both been polishing their breakbeat and trance skills, and have many new thoughts to share as well. We are all very excited about the future of Eckobase, and look forward to seeing you on the dance floor. Also, check the sounds page as we are putting up new music now.

Eckobase is taking the next few months off to refocus our efforts and practice and write new material. We may play a few local shows, but will be taking the rest of the year off and playing no out of town shows. Thanks to Donkey Circus, George's and all of our fans for making Halloween such a memorable night. We can't wait to see you all again soon.

-Eckobase

Colorado was an amazing time. Thanks to JB, Keith, and everyone else that helped make it happen. The most exciting event of the trip had to be when our Grease powered Excursion ( yes, it only cost $130 in Diesel and several trips to the grease vat to carry us 2400 miles. For more info on Grease powered vehicles check out www.greasel.com.) was form tackled by a nine by nine royal bull elk !!! Can't wait until we get back out to the Rockies.

See you guys Halloween @ George's Majestic in Fayetteville.

We just added a show in Little Rock for the 11th of August. Also, we will be playing at the US Pizza Copper Bar in Fayetteville this week for the first time. Most of the Eckobase equipment will be left up an extra day for a night of improv Saturday with some of Fayetteville's finest musicians and some of the Eckobase crew.

We played at the New Daisy in Memphis and George's in Fayetteville this last weekend with Pnuma. Both bands had a great time and the shows went well. We came to the Eckobase practice space in Fayetteville and had a great late night jam after the show as well. Thanks to Pnuma for their work and great music, and thanks to Joe Brooks, Dave and AJ for the lights.

Eckobase is going to be taking off the majority of July to work on some new material. However, we are excited to anounce two shows with Pnuma at the end of July. The 29th we will be opening for Pnuma at the New Daisy Theatre in Memphis. The following night, we will be hosting them at George's Majestic Lounge in Fayetteville. We hope to see you all then.

Thanks to all of you who came out and stayed up late with us at The Great Unknown Spring Extravaganza this past weekend. We all had a blast, and Future Rock brought a party along with them as always. Those guys drove over 10 hours here and played a set, then drove home after their set at 5 AM. Props to them for their dedication and incredible music. We hope to see you all at Wakarusa, where we will be playing at 4 AM Thursday night at the CPJS Own Grown stage next to the campground.

Eckobase's post-panic show in Tulsa was an evolutionary leap in our progression as a band. Thanks for everyone that made it out on a Sunday night after an entire weekend of shows. We would also like to thank all our friends that helped pass out out handbills.

We have a few weeks until our next show which will be the late night set of The Great Unknown Spring
Extravaganza on May 20th. We hope to see everybody there.

Our first run to Colorado was great. Thanks goes out to JB, Prism, Shrinky, The Goat and The Starlite. Everyone we met and kicked it with were great people and we look forward to keeping our relationships going. Both shows were packed and the drive was beautiful.

Peace
Eckobase

We have some new material and are hard at work to keep on writing and practicing. There is a new live recording of us on archive.org. Check it out at http://www.archive.org/audio/etree-details-db.php?id=22934

Well, we finally got a few tracks mixed down in our studio. Though these are still not the final mixes, we are going to put the 4 tracks on CD to use as a demo. They are also posted on our music page if you would like to hear them.

A special thanks goes out to Speakeasy and all of you who spent your New Years Eve with us @ George's Majestic Lounge in Fayettevile, AR. It was a sold out show and the energy was insane. Our next show in Fayetteville will be Feb 10th @ George's. We hope all of you will join us agian!!!
Peace
Eckobase

Well, we used Pro-Tools to get an 8 track recording of our first practice as a full band with Belknap. The results were experimental, but we mixed down one of the jams and put it on the website for all to hear. This is only an idea and definately no final product. We just got the gear necessary for 16 track recording, so our future recordings will nonetheless be miles ahead of this one. If anyone has any criticisms or comments about the track, e-mail us or post a message in the guestbook. All of your words are appreciated.

We are going to take some time off during the holidays and new year to focus on recording our own cd. All of the recording and production will be done by us, and thus will take a little time. Clay Belknap has been practicing with us and we have constructed some new Eckobase charts and explored tons of other ideas. We have also done some test recording and worked it out to our liking. With the addition of some equipment to our studio, we will be fully armed to record our new songs along with some old ones. We are all really excited about the direction that the music is headed in, and hope that you will all get a chance to hear it soon.

Well, as you all know Eckobase has seen a lot of personell changes over the ensuing years. With the larger goal of becoming a progressive electronica band, Eckobase has parted ways with our longtime friend and 8 month bass player, Jake Cranston. This was an agreement that we all reached with Jake a week or so ago. He played his last Eckobase show with us on November 12 at Grub's. We all had a great time, and parted ways with smiles on our faces and understanding in our hearts. Jake is still a great friend of ours, but has decided to pursue different music and recording in his life. It is a little strange for all of us to lose a bandmate, and we will very much miss his spirit on future road trips and gatherings. However, we are all bursting with excitement to play with new people. We have come together a few times with our long time friend and new Fayetteville resident, Clay Belknap to play some Eckobase tunes. The musical territories that we have explored with him in a short time have been magical to say the least. Belknap has had intelligent things to say with his instrument, and has added an incredible compliments and driving force to our trance/jungle/fusion/electronica/dub vehicle. You can expect to see Eckobase in the near future with lots of new material and a 5-string-weilding-head-bobbing-crazy-man-bass-playing Clay Belknap holding up the low end.

Eckobase members Shane Morris, Clayton Suttle, and Jeff Gray, along with our good friend A.K. Blake threw down some all acoustic organic jungle after the Steve Kimock and Friends show on Oct. 31 Halloween at George's Majestic Lounge. The show was less than an hour long but featured all improvisational compostions on drums, cuban and african percussion, didjeridoo, trumpet, and sax. The infamous Martin Fierro from Dead/Legion of Mary/Zero fame joined eckobase onstage for the 2nd time with his saxaphone and vocals weaving crazy lines in and out of our frantic beats. Keep your eye out in the future for more eckobase and martin collaborations! Thanks for the inspiration Martin!!!

We are real excited for having been awarded as the most creative band by the Ozark Music Awards. A few of us made it out to the ceremony and must comment on the fun time that that was as well. Thanks to all of the judges who gave us recognition.

Last weekend's Great Unknown Festival was incredible! We got a chance to play the late night stage with the Chicago based band Future Rock. Their progressive music seemed to mesh so well with ours that we set up the equipment for both bands and did segway sets between bands. The music never stopped, but the bands changes. We give much thanks to the production crew and especially Future Rock's sound engineer Leif for making it all to go over so well. Kudos also to all of those who hung out with us untill the wee hours of the night.

Pipedream Productions, the same folks that host The Great Unknown, got a call from Umphrey's Mcgee looking for shelter from Hurricane Ivan. Pipedream, with 24Hrs to spead the word, put them up at George's Majestic in Fayetteville, AR. With the help of many the show went off without a hitch. After Umphrey's finished on the outside stage Eckobase threw down on the inside stage joined by Jake, Joel, Brendon and Chris from Umphrey's. What a treat it truly was. Thanks to Pipedream Productions for making this all possible. SEE YOU AT THE GREAT UNKNOWN!!!

Eckobase' Vibes/synth player Shane Morris now has a new website dedicated to all his music projects. Check out the site at shanemorrismusic.com and be sure to say hello,check the photos, and eventually download and listen to shane's music over the last 10 years! Peace

Check out the interview at www.livetronica.net