1)  Saying goodbye to Matt…

It’s with a heavy heart that we say goodbye to one of our founding members, Matt Hart, as he moves out to Seattle on April 30th.  He’s got a hunger for salt water and topography, and will be broadcasting his experiences diving into a completely new music scene on a new music blog called Mid-By-Northwest.com.  Please go check out the articles he’s already got up there, drop him a comment, and subscribe to keep up with him and his future musical adventures in the Pacific Northwest!  He will also be retiring his @CobaltMatt twitter handle, so now you can follow him at @MidByNorthwest.

So Tuesday’s big show at Subterranean with Big D & the Kids Table will be Matt’s last big club show with the band for a while – until the enormous Album Release Show in the fall (more on that later) for which he’ll fly back.  Also, in case you were worried, the newer songs Matt sings, like “Uptown” and “Wreckage,” WILL be on the new record!  Matt will definitely be missed, but we also have a lot of excitement about the next musical chapter in the Cobalt story, and we’ve got some cool ideas brewing for what that’s going to look and sound like.

2)  Announcing a new member to the Cobalt family!

As is often the case, as one door closes others open, and we are super-stoked to announce a new member to the band and Cobalt family – Amanda Raber on saxophone. She’s been playing with us at pretty much every show since last fall and we are smitten with her talent, energy, dedication, and general awesomeness.  Now we’re making it official!  We asked her to prom, er, to be in the band, and she said yes.  We’ll be working her in on sax, kazoo, jumping around, and any other instrument she’s willing to try – plus she designed the sweet posters around Chicago for the Big D show!  This is going to be awesome…

3)  We’ve been making a new album!

If you follow us on Twitter you’ve probably been getting our weird, tired messages about amp-forts and and Lady Gaga.  That’s cuz we’ve all been hard at work making the new Cobalt record!  We’re adding layer upon glorious layer to six new tracks and we’re learning a lot by taking our time with it.  Look for a HUGE release show in the fall. There is also something really special we want to do for a certain Cobalt Super-Fan across the Atlantic Ocean for this show, so keep a lookout for more info from us on that…

Thanks for reading, thanks for your support, and see you soon!

Love,

-Cobalt & the Hired Guns-

First of all, a big thank you to everyone who helped us with the Metromix Rock’n'Vote competition, you got us into the final four, and helped us get prominently featured in the RedEye three times in here Chicago. That’s huge for us, you rock. You are all dedicated and we owe you a debt of gratitude. There are a bunch of amazing photos that were taken at the follow up show we played at LaSalle Power Co. (Which, by the way, is the old Michael Jordan Restaurant. So that’s basically the coolest thing ever.)
At the end of April we played for the first time at the Empty Bottle - thanks to everyone who came out and supported us. We were there with our good friends the Dirty Rooks, and it was a great show. The next day we played with Goodbye Home and Heather Styka at the Lakeshore Theater for Chicago Acoustic Underground. That sentence has 4 of our favorite things about Chicago in it. Special thanks to those of you that came up on stage with us and rocked out. You know who you are.

We’ve been super busy lately – in April we wrapped up our Double Door Acoustic Residency a week early on April 13th. We’re really sorry that we had to cancel that last show – apparently Double Door had some plumbing problems, but thanks to everyone that played those shows with us. We really had a good time both times we played it and we’ll be back there again soon. They promised.

Oh man it’s been a while, hasn’t it? Most of you probably don’t know about that UU Youth Conference we played down in St. Louis. That was a fun homecoming for Matt and I – it was the first place we ever played on stage together, years ago. It was different being back and being older, but the crowd still gave it up. There isn’t really much of a difference between the “stage” and the “audience” at those shows. Thanks for singing with us and dancing with us and generally losing your shit.

We’ve been super busy preparing for the tour, and the full tour routing should be coming out soon. As part of that, we’ve finally gotten on the bandwagon and created a twitter account. Now every time we run out of gas, have a flat tire, play an amazing show or pull and all nighter, you’ll know about it. You can find us at : www.twitter.com/cobaltandthehgs. Yeah, we were skeptical too at first, but really, it’s not as bad as all that. Sometimes it’s even actually fun.

We had a blast out in Highland Park at the Trek Store where we played a benefit for the Active Transportation Alliance. They had a bike that hooked up to a margarita maker. It was pretty exciting, and pretty delicious. I’m not gonna say “we were drunk” but we were kinda drunk. Well, Jesse was anyways. And we won a bunch of t-shirts and other fancy stuff. Rod, the owner, is a sweet dude. You should check out his shop: http://mytrekstore.com/

Last weekend we played the Climate Cycle Festival outside of Soldier Field. And it was about 34 degrees. Thanks, Chicago in May. But we still ended up with like 20 kids on stage with us, and they helped keep us warm. Hopefully they post that video they took to youtube. Later that night we played Robbie Ventura’s poker party for his friends. Yes, that Robbie Ventura, the one that is a former pro kick-ass bicycle racer. The food was delicious, the beer flowed like wine and his friends were all really nice. What excellent hosts.

Also, we recently created a Flickr account, and we’ll get a group for fan pics up soon, so all those old Cobalt photos you’ve been sitting on, or haven’t tagged us in, or haven’t already put on facebook already, you can share them with the world. And more importantly, wth us. Especially if we look good.
we love you all!