There has not been much activity ’round the ol’ CST compound lately. After our show in October with Buddy Mondlock we sort of went into hibernation, and we’ve pretty much stayed there since.

Considering the early onset of winter, I’d say hibernation has been appropriate. I was not prepared for temperatures so low so early on, and I hadn’t yet dragged out the snow shovel and ice melt when that first big snowstorm hit. But they’re out now, and looking at the forecast for next week, it’s a good thing. Christmas travel might be interesting this year…

About this time every year Charlie and I start to talk about whether or not we should record a CST Christmas CD. It seems like a good idea (though one we’d need to consider much earlier in the year in order to have it ready when it’s seasonally appropriate), but we just can’t ever seem to arrive at what sort of recording it might be. We’ve talked about doing all instrumental versions of Christmas songs. We’ve talked about vocals. We’ve talked about a combination of instrumentals and vocals. The one thing we seem to have decided for sure is that if we ever do record a Christmas CD, it will be a collection of traditional Christmas hymns and carols. I’ll be surprised if we ever do a CST version of “The Happiest Christmas Tree” or “Santa Baby” or “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer.”

We still have other projects in mind and/or in the works, too. A re-recording of Lord, Look Down will still happen sometime; in fact, we’ve started on it a couple different times. We’ve both written a few new songs, so we’ll be looking at possibly recording an all-new CST CD sometime in the not-too-distant future.

For now, though, we’re looking at filling some dates in late winter and spring, so keep an eye on the calendar for a show near you (or one at a location to which you’re willing to travel).

We hope you have a blessed Christmas season.

We’d like to think so. To make our friendship electronically/virtually official, though, why not visit our Facebook profile and become a fan or cruise on over to our MySpace page and send us a friend request? No doubt you’ll find vast amounts of entertaining and informative tidbits on both.

And hey, while you’re logged on, feel free to post a link to our page(s) on your profile and help spread the word about CST.

Thanks for your friendship and thanks for listening (and reading).

Hi there. Well, in case you hadn’t heard, Charlie got married this past weekend to longtime friend and CST fan Kristen. Now, for quite some time she and another friend of ours, Greg, have debated which of them is Central Standard Time’s #1 fan. They’ve both offered compelling arguments, and I think the title has unofficially gone back and forth between the two of them. But now Kristen has married Charlie, which seems like a pretty significant display of fandom.

Time to step up, Greg.

Moving on… We have a number of shows coming up in a fairly short time. In just over a week on Thursday, July 16, we’re playing Coralville’s Music in the Park concert series. We’ll be playing in S.T. Morrison Park, right next to the Coralville Community Aquatic Center, and show time is 6:30.

Just two days later we’ll be back at EWALU Bible Camp for our annual show for the summer staff. That one’s at 7:00 on Saturday, July 18.

On Monday, July 27, at 7:00 p.m. we’ll be playing in the semifinals of the Acoustic Idol contest at Daniel Arthur’s restaurant in Cedar Rapids. We need a big turnout for this one to help move us on to the finals the following week on August 3 (and we’ll subsequently need a big turnout on August 3, just so you can plan ahead).

As always, we urge you to check the calendar frequently for new shows, check back for exciting news, etc., etc. Hope to see you soon. Thanks for listening!

There are only a couple days left in online voting for the Last Banjo Standing contest, and we could sure use some more votes! We’ve slowly and steadily climbed the ranks over the last week and a half or so, but we’ve a lot of ground to make up before the 17th. About a thousand more votes would put us in the top five…

So please, click here to go to our profile on the contest/festival web site and cast your vote for Central Standard Time. And remember, you can vote every day, so be sure to go back and vote as often as possible, and tell your friends to do the same.

Thanks for your support and for your votes.

We’ve gone and entered ourselves into a little online battle of the bands sort of thing, called “Last Banjo Standing.” The winner gets to play the Chicago Bluegrass and Blues Festival, which will be held Nov. 22 in… you guessed it - Chicago. Clever.

So here’s what we need from you:
Step 1 - Click here to go to our listing on the contest/festival web site (If the link doesn’t work, just follow the links on the site to search or browse for our profile.)
Step 2 - Vote for Central Standard Time
Step 3 - Repeat (you can vote once a day per email address, so go ahead and stack the vote)
Step 4 - Tell your friends! We need all the votes we can get so we can institute real change in Washington. Er, Chicago.

“Wait,” you might say, “You guys play neither bluegrass nor blues.” Our reply to such a statement might be something like, “Meh.” Our music defies categorization, blurs the boundaries between genres, etc., etc. We have used a banjo on at least one of our recordings, so that’s something.

As I mentioned already, each email address is allowed one vote per day, so if you have two or three different email addresses, you could use each of them to vote each day, thus stacking the vote in our favor. If you really wanted to rack up the votes for CST you could even go out and sign up for a bunch of free email, then vote for us with each of those. Well, you probably don’t have to go that far. Unless you want to.

Voting begins October 2nd and ends October 16th, so you’ve got two weeks to get the votes in for CST. They’ll announce the winner on the 17th. Thanks for your support!

We’re Central Standard Time and we approve this message.

Wanna see the cool press kit we send out to places we want to play? No? Well, I’ll give you a link to it anyway.

Click here to see our Electronic Press Kit!!!

It’s a pretty nifty lil’ introduction to CST, and awfully slick to just paste the url into an email. Incidentally, if any of you are so inclined, please feel free to direct the music-booking person(s) at your favorite venue to our press kit. Be sure to mention how awesome CST is! Here’s the url, in case you’d like to do a little cutting and pasting of your own: www.sonicbids.com/centralstandardtime.

Thanks! Have a fantastic day.

As I’ve watched our state, our hometowns, our adopted hometowns, our friends be overwhelmed by floodwaters, I have been overwhelmed by the goodness of Iowans. Most people from other places around the country probably don’t realize it, but Iowa is truly a remarkable place, populated by remarkable people.

Even as we sank into despair amid the rising floodwaters, I was impressed and inspired by Iowans. People here have shown the world what it means to be a part of a community, how to help others even if you’re in desparate need of help yourself. This is a great place to live. I’m proud of Iowans, and proud to be an Iowan.

Over the last couple of weeks, thousands and thousands of people answered calls for help with sandbagging efforts, and subsequently with gifts to recovery efforts. It has been amazing to see so many people come out to give their time and energy to help in the efforts to keep the flood at bay. While there were many disappointments where dikes and levees failed, there were also many victories. And even if the sandbagging didn’t always work, it still brought out the best in people.

Again, I’m proud of Iowans for answering the call to help each other and to help ourselves. I’m proud of our resilience. I’m proud of the fact that no one appeared on national television pleading for help and asking why no one was coming to save us. Instead, when we needed help, we found it from our neighbors, our friends, our fellow victims–we found help from each other and in ourselves.

So thanks, Iowa. You’ve shown the world how great our state is and how great our people are. I’m anxious to see how we continue to rally around each other and emerge from this devastation an even stronger, better community than before.

This morning my daughter and I went for a nice, long walk out by the lake. We saw trillium blooming and just a hint of green through the woods as the trees are just starting to bud.

According to the calendar, spring arrived a few weeks ago, but until now it really hasn’t felt like it. Last Friday, for instance, it was cold and rainy and even snowed and sleeted a little bit, which is what led us to cancel the outdoor show we had scheduled that day. You see, when I originally scheduled that show, I assumed it would be nice and warm by then, with that fresh smell of spring in the air… Well… so much for that first outdoor show of the year.

If you take a look at our shows page, you’ll notice that we have several outdoor shows scheduled this year. In fact, five of the six shows currently on the calendar (we’re working on more) are outdoor performances. I, for one, always enjoy outdoor concerts, especially during the summer.

So now that the weather feels somewhat more like outdoor concert-type weather, we hope you’ll be sure to join us for one or some or all of our shows (even the indoor ones). Enjoy the warm temperatures!

Right now (well, not at this very moment) we’re preparing for the upcoming Dirty Feet Retreat (weekend retreat for jr. high youth) at EWALU Bible Camp. As you likely already know if you’re reading this (assuming that most of the people who read this are people who already know us (if that’s not the case, post a comment to let us know, ’cause I think we’d find that interesting)), Charlie and I met at EWALU in the summer of 1993. I don’t think either of us would have guessed then that 15 years later we’d still be singing and playing guitar together. Of course, at the time I didn’t play guitar at all, so it would have been a little weird to guess that anyway.

Charlie loaned me a guitar and taught me a few chords in the summer of 1994. That fall I transferred to Wartburg College, where Charlie was already a student, and we started playing guitar together regularly as I continued to learn (I think he kinda humored me for quite a while at first). Somehow our playing together for fun turned into us playing a few songs together on stage at campus coffeehouses and open mikes, which we discovered was also quite fun. Then we started writing our own songs and playing those together, and… well, here we are in 2008, still playing together, still having fun, and getting ready to go back to camp, back to where it all began.

We’ve done several of these retreats before, and it always feels like sort of a homecoming. In the past we’ve played some of them with Jesse on keyboard or bass, but this time around we’re playing with Greg on the drums and Kristen on bass. Man, it’s been fun so far! We’re all really looking forward to getting up to camp again and sharing our music.

Anyway, that’s what’s going on with us right now. We have quite a few shows on the schedule in the coming months, if you hadn’t already noticed, so please try to come out and see us! Hope you’re all enjoying our pre-Easter thaw. Blessed Holy Week and a happy Easter to you all.

Matt (& Charlie)

2007 was a good year around the CST compound (and I don’t know why Charlie keeps saying the CST compound doesn’t exist; I’m hanging out there right now). I will now present some highlights, as best as I can recall them, in no particular order other than that in which I recall them. Should be some good reading.

In the early part of the year we were focused on finishing up the new CD, which we did. We released our third full-length, all original CD, called What I Know Now, in March. Following its release, we played a bunch of shows to promote it, including some at old favorite venues and some at new places. We returned to the airwaves on KUNI’s Live From Studio One and played our first show at Luther College, where we also played on their radio interview show.

We also threw a CD release party in the lodge at Palisades Kepler State Park, just outside of Cedar Rapids. We grilled, ate, played some frisbee, ate some more, and then settled in for some music. Our friend Aaron Schutte played an opening set, and then Charlie and I played two sets, the first of our older stuff and the second all songs off the new CD. It was a really fun night. We have some photos posted on here if you’d like to take a look.

We also debuted our completely redesigned web site this year. We owe many thanks to Greg, who is an absolute genius when it comes to this kind of stuff. He did all the design, etc., and we think it looks pretty sharp.

We expanded our other web presence as well, by creating our MySpace page and an artist profile on iLike.

At the end of May we traveled up to Camp Courageous, just outside of Monticello, Iowa, and performed for the campers and staff there. It was a great time! First of all, the setting was beautiful. They have a stage out in the middle of a pine forest, and it made for a very pretty place to play (alliteration… that’s genius!). It was incredibly rewarding to see the joy on the campers’ faces as we played for them and they danced in front of the stage. I don’t think we’ve ever played for a more genuinely appreciative audience. They seemed especially appreciative of our efforts to play their requests, though I don’t think we did justice to Elvis’ “Hound Dog” or John Denver’s “Rocky Mountain High.” Didn’t seem to bother the campers, though. We have photos of this show up on the site, too.

Speaking of camp, the summer months were a bit of a break for us with Charlie back at EWALU. We did, however, play for the summer staff there, which has become an annual event for us. Hopefully the staff enjoy it at least half as much as we do. It’s always nice to be back at camp, and lots of fun to play for the staff.

Charlie played solo (Charlie Standard Time) for EWALU’s annual alumni weekend over Labor Day, as I was on vacation. I wish I could have been there, too…

In the fall we picked up a few more shows, and again got to try out some new venues. We played in Des Moines for the first time, at a little coffee shop called Mars Cafe. It was a nice place, and we had a surprisingly good turnout. Hopefully we’ll get back over to that area soon.

We also provided the music for a friend’s wedding in October. We’ve both played in weddings before (together and individually), but it had been a while. Playing in a wedding is a completely different experience than playing a regular show. It’s much more nerve-wracking! I was really nervous when we first began playing, though I did manage to calm down pretty well by the second and third songs we played. Overall I was really pleased with how it went, and we got many, many very nice compliments from guests and from the wedding party.

2007 was a banner year for CST in terms of the number of shows we played. I think there were 20 gigs on the calendar, which is a pretty modest number for most bands, but a pretty good number for us.

As the year has drawn to a close, we’ve again been playing fewer shows, choosing instead to spend time with our family and whatnot. We’re also thinking about what might lie ahead for Central Standard Time (see Charlie’s earlier post below). And as 2008 quickly approaches, we’re working on filling up the calendar with more shows, in both familiar and new places. Hopefully we’ll see many of you at our shows in the coming year.

And that is the 2007 Year in Review. I’m sure there are things I’ve omitted… Maybe Charlie will fill in any blanks I’ve left.

We hope the new year finds you richly blessed. Thanks again for your support and for listening to our music, and we’ll see you again soon.

Matt & Charlie