With all of us at home, we have been seeing a lot of livestreams from local solo musicians, or sit-down-acoustic videos. There have been a lot of new acoustic cover songs as well, which are always fun to see! Today we bring you a collection of songs Kate Laine has presented on her bandcamp, called Covers in Quarantine. Right now those are three songs which you can find on the player streaming below, but Kate might be adding more to the collection! So far groups covered include Big Thief, Julia Jacklin, and Feist. Head over to Kate’s bandcamp page where you can download these songs for free.

Kate also released a new original solo song called “Sway” at the beginning of this stay-at-home-order.

Haha! It’s an April Fools day post! Because it’s April Fools Day! Something about The Rock-A-Fire Explosion not being able to catch any diseases or viruses because they are robots! And guess what, we are opening our venue back up to robots only! If you are an animatronic robot you can come to our space and watch the Rock-A-Fire! If not, then you have to still stay at home! Ahahahahahahaha oh boy.

“This is a great thing for our community and local bands because the Rock-A-Fire can be programmed to play different bands songs” said Jeff Black, co-owner of Dumb Records. “For example, tonight I will be doing some programming to make the Rock-A-Fire perform a Timmy’s set, which we are all very excited for.” “They are the only band we will be needing from here on out. We are working on getting a live stream up and running.”

Springfield / Chicago based pop punk band Hospital Job have surprised us all with a release of four new recordings on their bandcamp page under the title Covers. The four songs are different covers of songs originally by Old 97s, Woody Guthrie / Wilco / Billy Bragg, Ryan Adams, and Blaze Foley. Check those out streaming on the player below. These set up covers are also being released for a good cause during these times. From the Hospital Job bandcamp:

Covers of some of my favorite songs. 100% of money collected will go to Direct Relief. I will also match the funds, giving the same amount to Protezione Civile, the Italy national emergency service, so please give if you can.

Head on over to the Hospital Job bandcamp page and pay what you want to go towards the cause.

Hospital Job don’t have any shows lined up… but neither does anybody right now!

Here we are, one year later, using the exact same flier that we made for the downtown Springfield St. Patrick’s Day Parade last year. We are once again participating in the downtown parade that is happening this Saturday at noon downtown, and being pulled by the Miles T Shirts van. What’s different this year? Our elephant is supposed to be completely fixed with a brand new coat of paint! So that should be exciting! Check out the parade route on the parade website right here.

Throughout all of this, our store will be open at 418 E Monroe during its regular hours of 10:00 am to 8:00 pm all day on Saturday. Actually no wait! We’ll be open even later than that because we got a show going on that night!

Here is a nice little post to know that your local straight-edge hardcore band Prevention will be hitting the road later on in March along with the band “Gumm” from Chattanooga, Tennessee. You can check out those dates on the tour flier above, and if that’s not good enough for you we’ve typed them out below.

March 10th – Springfield, IL at Dumb Records
March 11th – Kansas City, MO at Parker 2
March 12th – Omaha, NE at Reverb Lounge
March 13th – Minneapolis, MN at Caydence
March 14th – Milwaukee, WI at Sky High Skateshop
March 15th – Indianapolis, IN at Atomic Bowling

You can stream music from both bands on players below. And as you can see, the kickoff for this tour is right here at Dumb Records on Tuesday, March 10th. The lineup for that show includes Prevention, Gumm, Direct Measure, Bull Cult, and Black Box.

Today we bring you a brand new album from one of the acts performing at our big hip hop show lined up tomorrow night (hopefully the weather should be warmer by then). That is long time running local rapper Dirty Da Don, who is back at it with a new album called Project Legendary 5 Built 4 This. The album is streaming in full on Audiomack right here. Is the embedded player going to work for that site?? Looks like it does! Stream the album on the player below.

Looks like this is going to be local release #501, added on to this year to our Springfield album archive page! Don’t forget Dirty Da Don is also performing at our space tomorrow night (Saturday) along with six other artists who have not yet performed at our new space downtown.

Here we are today to bring you another release from a local artist that has come out already this year in the year 2020. That is Ricki Marvel‘s new album, The Prisoner. You can stream that full album on the bandcamp player below or find it on bandcamp right here where you can also purchase the download. Here is a description of the album from Ricki’s bandcamp page:

This was written and recorded on cassette tape during an 18 month period of time. The goal was to make the process as free as possible. This means no deadline, no pressure, no genre, and definitely no dread. The result is a labor of love. A snapshot of my emotions and self reflection leading up to me realizing I am transgender.

Keep your eyes and ears peeled for any Ricki Marvel shows coming up at our space being announced at some point soon. We are also adding this one on to our Springfield album archive page for the year 2020, it’s our second release for this year!

Is it too late for top 2019 posts? Yes? We are already over half way through January? Okay. Well, just in case anybody out there cares, we were looking at what our most viewed website posts were in the year 2019 and we thought we’d share with the class. Here, we’ll just do the top ten and list them out for you. We’ll link each article too.

1. “Good Heart Tattoos” Coming Next Door To Dumb Records Later This Fall

This did indeed happen, and Benny of Good Heart Tattoos has been our neighbor next door since his grand opening back in early November. The announcement was made back in September.

2. Vote In Our Best of Springfield Music 2019 Year End Poll!!

(Posted on December 8th, 2019) Our year-end poll is a hit every year, and hundreds of you participated in this one yet again! The results we’re posted until early this year so those are 2020 posts we guess (sorry).

3. Best of Springfield Music 2018: Songs

(Posted on January 4th, 2019) Ha! Well there you have it! Now we are talking about a year that is now two years ago! Part of our Best-Of results from 2018.

4. WQNA FM Community Radio Ending After 40 Years

(Posted on August 8th, 2019) Well, this is a sad one. And it’s especially sad because a few months after this the plug was pulled without warning at the studio and the station license was officially sold to a Catholic Radio group, and 88.3 WQNA as we knew it remains off air. A lot of people come into our store asking us for updates on where Springfield Community Broadcasters (the group of DJ’s) are at with acquiring any sort of new license or getting back on air. Their live stream is in fact back up online right here, but there still have been no updates on anything with a new station being obtained yet.

5. Illinois Times Best Of Springfield 2019 Nominee Voting Has Begun

(Posted on August 10th, 2019) The Illinois Times Best Of’s are a big deal to a lot of local businesses and people every year. Sometimes people go wild over trying to get those votes. It turns out we must have gotten some votes, because we were awarded winner of the “New Business Downtown” category.

6. Our List of Expected Record Store Day Releases

(Posted on March 28th, 2019) Every year in April, Record Store Day for us constantly ends up being our biggest day, and constantly shatters the record for previous years. With this being our first Record Store Day downtown, we went all out for this one. We carried close to 2/3rds of the total releases that came out this day (which is hundreds of titles), and had our biggest day ever by far. We are excited for the upcoming Record Store Day to be even bigger for us than the last! (Which is happening Saturday, April 18th by the way, mark your calendars)

7. Best of Springfield Music 2018: Albums/Releases #1-10

(Posted on January 6th, 2019) What do you know, it’s another part of our best of 2018 series.

8. We Are Searching For Sponsors To Make A Really Big Show At Rock N’ Roll Hardee’s Happen This September.

(Posted on July 3rd, 2019) This was an interesting one, where we were attempting to pull off a huge show with the help of local sponsors for a big international act that we couldn’t announce just yet. Turns out this post ended up being bigger than the actual announcement! Probably because it got everyone scratching their heads trying to figure out who it was. Who was it??? It was Shonen Knife, from Japan! Yes we were successful in pulling off this show, it recently made it to the list of top shows of 2019!

9. Kate The Band: “Wine & Dine” / “Starry Eyes”

(Posted on June 12th, 2019) Interesting to see a local band’s release end up on this list! It makes sense for this one, because Kate The Band approached us about exclusively releasing the songs from our site, which we were more than happy to do! The two songs are also great – they made it on to our best songs of 2019 AND best releases of 2019!

10. Thank You To All Who Helped Make Last Night Possible!

(Posted on October 1st, 2019) Haha ohhhh, this one was about Shonen Knife playing at Rock N’ Roll Hardee’s. What a successful night indeed, we estimated somewhere between 400 and 500 people out there in the crowd, and then we pulled off an aftershow at our space featuring the band Slingshot Dakota from Ohio.