Starting as a 2009 bicentennial birthday tribute to Edgar Allan Poe, “The Edgar Allan Polka” became an annual Halloween extravaganza. Known simply as “Dark Songs,” these notorious week-long collaborative songwriting marathons began with bottle spins, culminating in darkly humorous, audiovisually stunning live weekend showcases.
From 2020 to the present, various permutations of these events have come about. Adapting to the pandemic with a livestreamed version (bottle-spin collaborations via Zoom, videos made for each song) Dark Songs has evolved more recently into a Steel Bridge Radio live broadcast called “TAMBOWEEN!” The split-level concert starts in the Tambourine Lounge and migrates downstairs to The Lab (studio/underground rock venue) for darkness of the more bombastic kind.
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Released October 31, 2010
Recorded at the Holiday Music Motel, Sturgeon Bay, WI during DarkSongs2009, Oct. 25-31 by Steve Hamilton and Billy Triplett. Produced by pat mAcdonald, the engineers, and the artists themselves Cover art by Geri X.
All proceeds & royalties donated to the Steel Bridge Creative Foundation.
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THE TAKING OF THE TOWER SONG
Released October 26, 2018
Recorded at The Holiday Music Motel and Tambourine Collaboratory in Sturgeon Bay, WI during Dark Songs 2017 by Steve Hamilton, Dan O Stoffels, Steve Smith, Barrett Tasky and Liam Hall.
Thanks to Marcus Trana for studio assistance at Painted Recordings. Produced by pat mAcdonald. Admin by melaniejane (air traffic controller) with help from Teresa Young. Mastered by Steve Hamilton at Makin’ Sausage Music (Milwaukee, WI).
Cover Art by Carley Baer with pat mAcdonald (design and layout).
Special thanks to Third Avenue Playhouse for their undying support.
All proceeds & royalties donated to the Steel Bridge Creative Foundation.
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Released October 25, 2019
Cover art by Teflon. Stage photo Ty Helbach. Package design Greg Welsh.
Mastered by Steve Hamilton at Makin’ Sausage Music - Milwaukee, WI. Air traffic control melaniejane. Produced by pat mAcdonald.
Dark Songs 2018 was a glorious seven days of conjuring and co-scheming in the darker musicalyrical realms. In the crisp autumn of pre-Halloween, 36 songsters converged upon the Holiday Music Motel for inspiration, fellowship, and free sustainance. Following strict guidelines – No glitter in the bedsheets and all shall respect the quiet hours (5am until noon) – they nightly formed a huge circle and surrendered their individual personas to fateful spins of a bottle. These fate-ordained threesomes wrote, played, and intoned together as if lives and souls were at stake. The resulting body of work, this double-disc, 43-track song cycle woven from threads of fear and fascination, carries the momentum of those initial spins, spiraling out into a dizzying psycho carnival ride for all to enjoy.
Special thanks to: The Holiday Music Motel, Steel Bridge Radio, Third Avenue Playhouse, Steve Hamilton, Makin’ Sausage Music, Teresa Young for admin assistance and endless other things, Teflon, Door County Screen and Sign, Flanigan Distributing, Tony Menzer, Sturgeon Bay Music Exchange, Mark Theide, Adam Goettelman of Healthy Way, Jon Calhoun of Tadych’s EconoFoods and all of the wonderful people who helped to feed the artists, take tickets, hang posters, shared photographs, and on and on and on… the outpouring of support we receive is essential to making it happen.
Engineers: + Steve Hamilton % Steve Smith !¡ Liam Hall & Barrett Tasky ^^ Bruce Butkovich
All proceeds & royalties donated to the Steel Bridge Creative Foundation.