Why I Love Spinto Band

The Shy Pursuit - A new album by The Spinto Band In 2002 when I was a Junior at Syracuse University, I made a very close friend named Albert Birney who was part of a 7 member band called The Spinto Band. Over the next few years, I got to know the other band members quite well, and when they came to town on tour, I would screen print wobbly handwritten "SPINTO BAND" logos on thrift store tshirts, and sell them out of a suitcase at the concerts. Fast forward 3 years to Baltimore, MD where fresh out of college, I have a job I hate, and my friends The Spinto Band have been signed to a huge record label. They need LOTS of tshirts for tours, so I print them in my spare time (which happens to be at 2 in the morning) in my studio (which happens to be an unheated shed in my backyard). Despite getting frostbite, Getting paid to print these very tshirts makes me enough money to buy my first tshirt press, with which I find confidence and bad-assery enough to quit my job, buy warmer socks, and start my own screenprinting company. I print my own designs, I print other peoples designs, and The Spinto Band goes on to order hundreds more tshirts, as well as a few painted album cover designs from me and music videos from Phil. Move ahead to present day 2012, where NBC news just listed the Arts as ALL of the top five "useless" majors in college, and my dear friends The Spinto Band (now a 5 member band) have decided to produce their latest (and in my opinion, BEST) album "The Shy Pursuit" on their own. They're having a flash sale, offering this album as a download for only $5.99 for a limited time. FIVE NINETY NINE, for an album that my intern Casey says "Is actually really good - I'd like a copy!" by a band that I say "funded the start of Red Prairie Press." $5.99 is the cost of many coffee drinks at Casey's part time job at Starbucks, and is also the cost to own the work of 2 years for 6+ people. It is also about what I make when I sell one of my own tshirts. The music industry is strange, and we are lucky that so many talented musicians make their work and support the visual arts (paying for posters, album designs and tshirts) regardless of how much people are willing to pay them for their work, aren't we? I sent Casey the album this morning, by clicking HERE. Then I pumped my fist for my friends, because they produced an outstanding album. I should know, it's been on repeat in the studio while I print this box of Spinto Band tshirts and Phil finishes up a brand new music video. Hope you love their music as much as we do!