Reunion with Hard Proof, Solo Album #2 Now Streaming
As alarmed as I am at the speed with which 2025 is cruising by, it’s tempered by my excitement for our recording session in October, which will bring a long-overdue reunion of Progger folks from around the globe to beautiful Church House Recording Studio in east Austin. The new music is coming together swimmingly (and I gave myself quite a bit of homework by writing a number of tricky melodies…) and we’ll have a few local shows before the big event, starting with a great one at the end of this month!
On the eve of Labor Day, Sunday, August 31, we’ll be rejoining our good friends Hard Proof – who we haven’t played a show with in many years – at the legendary Sahara Lounge, where we haven’t played in over a decade! Our new friends from out of town, the Gilmore Quandary, will be joining as well. I was so stoked for this show that I had to enlist my dear friend and former roommate Jared Stone, who’s also doing our album artwork, for a poster. He nailed it. It starts early with doors opening at 5:00pm and it’ll be a full night of funk, jazz, and Afro-Beat at one of the coolest, vibiest historic venues in the country.
“Soundtracks for Visual Novels,” my second solo album (of sorts), has been available only on Bandcamp for several months, but as of August you can stream it on all the usual suspects. It’s a compilation of soundtrack work I did for a Canadian visual novel artist, Argonbolt, whose work is available on itch.io, and it was thoroughly enjoyable. I love how these tracks turned out and I’m contemplating arranging them for Progger at some point in the future, but in the meantime give them a spin and enjoy the moodiness.
If you can’t catch us at the Sahara this month, I’ll be continuing to upload clips from our shows at Monks Jazz Club periodically throughout the year on our YouTube channel. Tons of thanks once again for the people of Austin and the Austin Live Music Fund for the support that’s making so many of these things happen, particularly our joyful reunion in a couple months. We’ll see you out there somewhere!
Brian and Progger