Category: Uncategorized

Alright kiddo, let’s get it all out there.

Yesterday the Heart o’ Failure sold in 34 minutes. For a lot of you, it was gone before you even got to see the email letting you know it existed. Knowing this, I’ve decided to put everything out on the table BEFORE the preorder opens up tomorrow, so if you really want one of the physical items, you can camp out on the release time and grab it before someone else does. I hope that’s fair. It’s as fair as I can make it, anyway. I will send out an email tomorrow morning at 8am EST (That’s 1PM GMT) with a link to the preorder. Mark your calendars and set your alarms.

SO! Here’s what’s up for preorder tomorrow. Everything will release/ship on February 10th.

1. $10 – Hand numbered and signed cassette tapes. Only 30 available.

Side A will have the new Love Bites EP on it.
Side B will have A Night In The Life Of… on it.
It will include a download code for Bandcamp of Love Bites.

2. $18 Cassette with Dad Sweater Koozie. Only 10 Available

Same deal as #1, but with an adorable little dad sweater wrapped around your cassette. Keep your cassette warm when it’s not in use. Dress up your dolls as VSD. Hang it on your christmas tree like an ornament. WOuld this have made more sense to do with Sweater Weather? Yep. Did I have the idea back then? Nope. I blame Stilz. He came up with the idea, but he decided to not share it until NOW. Jerk. (#synthbeef)

3. Love Bites – Digital Download 
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A digital download (WAV and mp3 available) of Love Bites. 6 Brand new songs. You will also receive a Bandcamp code, so you can grab it from them and add it to your collection if you so wish.

A few notes about this release:

In the past I sold everything through Bandcamp. After a month or so, I would then put my music up on the major streaming services. I do this to try to encourage people to actually PURCHASE my music, so that I can keep making things like vampire hearts, sweaters, and even the cassettes themselves. I appreciate any support you can offer, even if that’s just a friendly tweet, but for those of you that only use streaming services, as an example, I made only $14.67 off of ALL streaming services for the entirety of 2016. I’m not going to turn this into a whine-fest, I’m sure you’ve heard this before, but I just wanted to let you know what that looks like for an artist like myself.

For this release, I’m trying to focus entirely on my website for sales. Bandcamp takes a 15% cut, and while I think Bandcamp is a great service, and I will keep using it, I’d like to try and see what I can do with 15% more support coming from you guys. I’ve got some big ideas, and I want to be able to pull them off, and every little bit counts.

So that’s why you’ll see that the preorder will be going through my website, instead of Bandcamp. I hope you understand. If you have any reservations, PLEASE LET ME KNOW. I would LOVE to hear from you. This is ultimately FOR you, so if there’s a good reason why you don’t like this, I’d love to know it.

Finally, this is my first foray into physical media. I didn’t expect it, but shipping is kinda of a nightmare. I promise you I will try to price my shipping as fairly as possible. For those of you outside the US, if the shipping costs seem high, I promise you I will refund any significant difference through paypal. I’m learning as I go here, and I hope you guys understand that.

I’m really excited about this release. It marks several new ventures for me, and I look forward to getting a chance to further foster your trust in me. Plus, you know, cool music.

Thanks for reading this novel of an email. I swear, I am NOT good at being concise. Here’s hoping you like to read as much as you like my music :/

Keep being awesome,
Vlad, your Vampire Step-Dad

Hey kiddo!

The mastering of Love Bites is finally finished. I just sent off everything to the cassette manufacturer. I’ve got envelopes, and labels, and I am ready to ROCK.

I don’t think I’ve ever been prepared this early before a release. Cassette wise, I had to pay for a rush job. (Who knew it takes a month to make 40 tapes…Live and learn.) But the digital stuff is DONE. So now I just kind sit here and wait for Feb 10th, right?

Nah, just kidding! I’ve got a few little fun things planned to promote. I think you guys will enjoy them.

I gotta tell you, I was pretty surprised by the groundswell of appreciation for the story about my sad attempt to make this cover myself. It’s good to know you guys enjoy seeing how the sausage is made, cause I plan on doing more of that.

Speaking of sausage, I’ve got a gnarly peice of meat for you: I’ve taken my dead-on-arrival album art failure, and I’ve mounted it on a plaque. It is an homage to making the best out of your failures. One Vampire Heart, Slightly Used.

The only one of it’s kind. A great conversation starter with a goofy story behind it. You can own a tragically dissapopinting peice of the VSD Universe right now.
Grab it here: https://vampirestepdad.com/product/vampire-heart-slightly-used/

I’ll be happy to sign it with whatever message you like on the back. Or not. It’s all set up to hang just above that picture you took with your family at the reunion 12 years ago. I bet it’ll really tie the room together.

I think I’m going to announce the super special extra thing and open up preorders with the Spotlight on Friday. I think that’s a good way to do you. How about you?

Alright, I’ve got work to do. Have a great rest of your day!

Keep being awesome,

Vlad, your Vampire Step-Dad

Hey kiddo!

So now that you have intimate knowledge of the failure that is my album cover creation process, (unless you missed those ones, which can be found here in the archive) I think it’s time to show you what actually made it to the final cover.

After lamenting about my failures with my buddy Sean Cusson of COMPUTRONIC, we started spitballing ideas. After trying to salvage the staked heart idea, we decided it just wasn’t going to deliver the message I wanted, so we scrapped it.

A classic bite mark was suggested, but we decided that was a little to cliche. It’s been done a million times before. Plus, it was a little too on-the-nose for the Love Bites title. I really wanted to play both sides of the idiom; “Love Bites”, the playful nibbles that a puppy might give you on your fingers, and “Love Bites” the idea that sometimes being in love (or out of love) can feel like more pain than it’s worth.

So Sean came up with the brilliant idea to turn the blood dripping from the wound into a heart shape. Does it perfectly encapsulate the idea? No, not really. Does it look cool? HELL YEAH.

From a humble sketch, to the final product:

Pretty awesome, huh? Wait, does that sound like bragging? Again, I just feel like I’m along for the ride here, just as surprised as (hopefully) you guys are. I went from bummed about the crappy heart picture, to totally blown away by Sean’s artwork.

Not only that, but he went above and beyond to design a GORGEOUS cassette package, making it something really special. You’re gonna love it. But I’m not going to show it off here, cause I want the cassette owners to be surprised by how awesome it is.

I’m waiting on one last detail before I launch preorders. I’ve got this super awesome extra thing in the works, but I can’t announce it until I’m 100% sure I can pull it off. It’ll be unlike anything you’ve ever seen sold by a musician, and it will be so Vampire Step-Dad you’ll laugh and roll your eyes and want one all at the same time. Hopefully, anyway.

Thanks so much for all the positive response to the last two emails. I had a lot of fun writing them, and I’m glad you guys are enjoying them. I plan on doing this sort of thing more often.

Actually, I have something ELSE in the works that’s directly related to your response on the last two emails. One lucky person is going to get something one-of-a-kind from your dear ol’ step-dad.

OK, enough of my babbling. I hope your week starts off awesome, and stays that way.

Vlad, your Vampire Step-Dad

Alright kiddo, let’s get back to our little talk about failure.

So yesterday we left off with me back at square one, needing a heart for this damned album cover.

The liquid latex was a total flop, but I remembered that I had a bag of alginate. It’s the stuff dentist’s use to take molds of your teeth. It hardens in MINUTES. (I had it because I have a plan to cast my sons’s hands, and make key hooks out of them. It’ll be cool, trust me.) So grabbed that, and mixed up a batch, and threw it in a mold. After 10 minutes, I had a great looking little pinkish white heart. Wish I’d thought of it two days earlier.

But, I don’t need a white heart. I need a red heart. Cause hearts are red. And that pink was fading. So now I need to figure out how to paint this thing. The trick with alginate is, it kinda sweats for a very, very long time. So keeping paint on top of a wet, semi slimy surface…it doesn’t work very well.

Here’s a photo of me painting a portion of the heart, and letting it dry over night (hidden in the microwave so the cats don’t try to eat it or something. Damn cats.)

Next morning, the paint had dried, but it still sat upon a wet surface, so it just kind slid off as soon as you touched it.

Another failure. But again, I tried to think how I could turn it around. So I started to think, this is a vampire heart, right? So maybe vampire hearts are pale and gross looking? Sure! This could be cool! Instead of paint, maybe I could dust it with something dark to bring out the details. Well, I ended up using paint anyway, painting it on, and then rubbing it off all the high areas, leaving the crevices and cracks dark. It didn’t look too bad.

So with a half decent looking heart, it came time to photograph the thing. Now, I’m a hobbyist photographer at best. I have a nice camera, but that’s it as far as photography supplies. Luckily, I have a semi-pro friend who loaned me his lightbox. This was perfect, as I wanted a nice solid white background for this photo.

Here’s the thing, though. Just cause you have a lightbox doesn’t mean you have the lights or knowledge on how to use it. And my reluctance to ask for help from others meant it never even crossed my mind to call my friend. (Dumb, I know) Luckily I had several lamps left over from my Stranger Things Halloween decor, so I used those to to light the box as best I could. I’d say I had about 75% of the light I needed. So, I took my alginate heart, put it on some white foam board, and stabbed it with my custom made stake. To my surprise, it worked! I thought for sure it would topple over and I’d have to figure out some way to hold the stake up, but sure enough, that alginate was heavy enough to balance it. Now I just needed an excessive amount of blood on top! I whipped up some corn syrup and food coloring (remember, to add green, or else it won’t be dark enough) and had more than enough fake blood to stage a massacre. (Yes, I used fake blood. Don’t act surprised. I’m not gonna waste the good stuff on a silly photograph. )

Whilst applying the fake blood, I needed it to kinda splatter to have the right look. So I tried flicking the blood onto the foam board, but it just didn’t look right. It didn’t have the angle I needed. So I tried getting deep into the lightbox, and flinging it from an angle. So, there I was, flinging dark red liquid inside a perfectly white box, not thinking about the consequences. As I stood back up to look at my progress, I see that I’ve gotten blood all over my friend’s lightbox. I don’t know how expensive this thing is, but I can’t imagine it’s cheap. I panic for a moment, but ultimately come to the conclusion “Well, if it’s ruined, I might as well go all in.” and I start splattering blood all over the place, lightbox be damned. If I’m going to have to buy him a new one, at least I could get good photos out of it.

I snap as many photos as I can from as many angles as I can, but because of the nature of the lightbox, I’m limited to only slight variations. I’m trying to move quickly, because in the back of my head is a little hope that maybe I can wash out the red if I get to it quickly enough.

Once I get all the photos done, picture a man standing at a kitchen sink, with a lightbox half the size of a refrigerator, frantically hosing it out and cursing quietly to himself. Much to my surprise, IT WORKED! Not a scrap of evidence. No blood anywhere. (If only it were always that easy!)

So, photos taken, it was time to sit down with Photoshop and see what I could create with this mess of photos I’d taken. Without further ado, here’s the cassette cover I came up with:

As you can see, we have a white thing, surrounded by a bunch of black stuff, smoking a giant blunt. Totally the effect I was going for. It just screams love, loss, and heartbreak, doesn’t it?

No? My thoughts exactly.

So here we are again, back to square zero.

This whole experiment was an abject failure, but you know what? I didn’t mind at all. I’d given it my best, and while it didn’t work out, I had fun experimenting. I was trying new things, throwing all my effort into it, really flying by the seat of my pants. It was FUN. If nothing else, I have a good story to tell.

But the best part of all is, I was able to do it because of you. When I ran out to the grocery store at 11pm to buy corn syrup, I was thinking about how your support is what motivates me to take my silly ideas and actually try them. I’ve had ridiculous ideas all my life, but most of them stay in that “yeah, that would be fun” part of my brain, and rarely make it to the “let’s get this made” section. But now, because of your support, those ideas keep bubbling up, and actually doing them makes sense, because I know you’ll enjoy it, and you’ll have my back the whole way. It’s really one of the most amazing feelings. I hope you can appreciate how much it means to me. I hope you’re having even half as much fun as I am with all this.

So then, if that atrocity up there isn’t the final album cover, what is? Well, I’m going to show you. But not right now. I want to make sure it’s just right, cause you deserve the best.

Keep being awesome,
Vlad, your Vampire Step-Dad