Archive for October, 2007

WRITE A REVIEW FOR THE BALLS VOLUME STRENGTH TOUR

Tuesday, October 30th, 2007

Write a review of your experience at the Balls Volume Strength tour and post it in the comment section below. The best ten reviews will win a signed copy of HELLYEAH’s new DVD, ‘Below The Belt.’ The best three reviews will be featured on HELLYEAH’s official site HELLYEAHBAND.com MAKE THEM GOOD!

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Mudvayne/Hellyeah Singer Chad Gray Discusses the Proliferation of Illegal Downloading

Wednesday, October 17th, 2007

Guest Blog: Mudvayne/Hellyeah Singer Chad Gray Discusses the Proliferation of Illegal Downloading

10/16/2007

As the singer of Mudvayne and Hellyeah,
Chad Gray’s a pretty busy guy. Right now, he’s wrapping up a Hellyeah
tour with Korn, and when that’s done, the band will head out with
Bloodsimple and Otep. At the same time, Gray is helping finalize plans
for Mudvayne’s live and B-Sides album By the People, For the People, which will come out November 27 and feature two new songs, the recently released single “Dull Boy”
and a cover of The Police’s “King of Pain.” Yet between the playing and
planning, Gray accepted an offer to contribute a guest entry for the
HBB Blog in order to vent about the bane of every recording artist’s
existence — illegal downloading. And Gray’s argument is pretty
convincing:

If I take a bunch of wood and build a chair, and somebody walks up
and steals it, no one in their right mind will say that’s not theft.
There’s a lot of work that goes into making a good chair and if that
happened to me, people would feel sorry for me and be pissed off at the
guy who took it. Yet that exact situation is happening all the time to
hard working musicians, and no one seems to care.

Let’s look at it another way: If you want a Diet Coke, you will go
into a store and pay money to get it, and then you’ll walk out of the
store with it in your hand. But if you didn’t pay for that Diet Coke,
you better know if you walked out that door and that buzzer goes off,
you’re going to jail. It don’t matter if it costs $300 or 30 cents. If
you steal something that you’re holding in your hand and you get
caught, you’re going to jail. They don’t jack with that crap anymore.
Shoplifting is pretty hardcore. They will bust your ass for nothing.

Yet, I can literally work for months and months and months and put
all my creative energy into something, and, I guess, at the end of the
day it’s just a bunch of “zeros” and “ones” to a lot of people. I mean,
who are we kidding? Stealing is stealing.

Recently, the alternative rock band Radiohead did something
interesting. They put their new album online and gave it to people to
download at a price of their choosing. It’s like the Amish with their
pumpkin patches. It’s the honors system. You go into the pumpkin patch
and weight your pumpkin, then leave the money in a little box. It’s
bizarre, but it works because at some point your conscience comes into
play. Maybe Radiohead are on to something.

I think one of the reasons people are so willing to download stuff
without paying for it is because music isn’t really a tangible thing.
It used to be. It used to be something you could hold. But now, you
have everything in the palm of your hand. You literally have your
entire CD collection that will fit in an iPod in the palm of your hand,
and that’s where we missed the boat. Somehow, that’s where everything
started to go south.

When people pay to see shows, they get a ticket, which lets them in.
People will buy a t-shirt at a show because it’s something real –
something they can put on their back. In my day, you had a cassette and
then a CD – or back in the early days, an LP. You had this thing and
you felt good about having it. But now you just have this file you’ve
downloaded and it’s not a tangible thing that you own.

And that’s such a shame and a crime because if somebody’s working on
something and doing something that takes time, they deserve to be
compensated for it. And if people who download music illegally think
they’re sticking it to the man that’s bulls—t because the man is going
to stick it right back to the band. At the end of the day, you’re
hurting the people that you look up to or that get you through hard
times, or people you just love. Next time you download something
without paying for it, remember that it’s the bands that’s really gonna
take the hit.

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HELLYEAH’S BALLS VOLUME AND STRENGTH TOUR IS FIRST FAN GENERATED NATIONAL TOUR

Tuesday, October 9th, 2007

HELLYEAH’S BALLS VOLUME AND STRENGTH TOUR IS FIRST FAN GENERATED NATIONAL TOUR
TOUR PARTNERS WITH LEADING HIGH SCHOOL SOCIAL NETWORK MYYEARBOOK FOR LOCAL BAND OPENING SLOT COMPETITION
FOURTEEN OTHER SOCIAL MEDIA COMPANIES PARTICIPATE IN ALL ASPECTS OF THE TOUR

New York, NY – HELLYEAH’s VINNIE PAUL, CHAD GRAY, GREG TRIBBETT, TOM MAXWELL and BOB ZILLA today officially announced a partnership with16 social media companies to promote their upcoming fall and winter headline tour dates. In late September, HELLYEAH used a polling community to name the tour, BALLS VOLUME AND STRENGTH and the leading events global web site to route the approximate 30 national cities. Today, the band has partnered with the nation’s largest high school social network, myYearbook to host an opening band competition. To learn how your band can open for this tour, visit http://www.MyYearbook.com/ballsvolumeandstrengthtour.
“Our fans helped name the tour and chose the cities” says rock icon and drummer of HellYeah Vinnie Paul. “Now we want to let our fans favorite local bands join the stage with HELLYEAH, OTEP and Bloodsimple.” For a complete list of all 15 social media promotions please go to http://www.hellyeahband.com/BVS.
HELLYEAH’s headline tour BALLS VOLUME AND STRENGTH officially kicks off October 30th in the motor city; the day both Otep (Koch Records) and Bloodsimple (Warner Brothers) release their fourth and second respective studio albums. The tour continues through mid-December with new dates added daily. For a complete list of dates, please go to http://www.hellyeahband.com/tour/.
HELLYEAH’s self-titled CD has been called “One of the best metal discs of 2007” and has received rave reviews from around the world. Their latest and second single, “Alcohaulin’ Ass” is the #7 rock track while “You Wouldn’t Know,” the band’s first Top-5 single (and accompanying video) from HELLYEAH’s self-titled CD is also included on MADDEN NFL 08.
HELLYEAH tour dates with Korn and Droid
10/09 – Portland, ME – Cumberland County Civic Center
10/10 – Wilkes Barre, PA – Wachovia Center
10/12 – Marion, SC – Carolina Amphitheater
10/13 – Birmingham, AL – Verizon Wireless Amphitheater
10/14 – Biloxi, MS – Mississippi Coast Coliseum
10/16 – Little Rock, AR – Alltel Arena
10/17 – Austin, TX – Frank Erwin Center
10/19 – Corpus Christi, TX – Concrete Street Amphitheater
10/20 – Hidalgo, TX – Dodge Arena
10/21 – Beaumont, TX – Montagne Center
10/23 – Tucson, AZ – Anselmo Valencia Amphitheatre

HELLYEAH off dates
10/24 – Albuquerque, NM – Sunshine Theater
10/26 – San Antonio, TX – Sunken Gardens Amphitheatre
10/27 – Tampa, FL – Guavaween Festival
10/28 – Fayetteville, NC – Jester’s

HELLYEAH with Otep and Bloodsimple
10/30 – Detroit, MI – Fillmore
10/31 – Indianapolis, IN – Egyptian Room
11/02 – Grand Rapids, MI – Orbit Room
11/03 – Minneapolis, MN – First Avenue
11/04 – Chicago, IL – House of Blues
11/06 – Sauget, IL – Pop’s
11/07 – Kansas City, MO – Uptown Theater
11/09 – Denver, CO – Fillmore
11/10 – El Paso, TX – Cohen Stadium (Radio Show)
11/11 – Tempe, AZ – Marquee Theatre
11/13 – Santa Ana, CA – Galaxy
11/14 – Los Angeles, CA – Key Club
11/16 – Ventura, CA – Majestic Ventura Theatre
11/17 – Las Vegas, NV – House of Blues
11/23 – Oklahoma City, OK – Diamond Ballroom
11/27 – Memphis, TN – New Daisy Theater
11/28 – Atlanta, GA – Roxy Theater
11/30 – Fort Myers, FL – City of Palms Park (Radio Show) *No Otep and Bloodsimple*
12/02 – Orlando, FL – Hard Rock
12/04 – Norfolk, VA – NorVa
12/05 – Baltimore, MD – Ram’s Head
12/07 – Worcester, MA – Palladium