Jersey or Bust

See you in NJ at Starland Ballroom on October 22! http://www.axs.com/events/253464/gerard-way-tickets

Catch Gerard on The Conan O’Brien Show tonight on TBS! http://teamcoco.com/schedule/2014-10-13/wednesday

Stockholm & Helsinki!

Just added! More info soon, stay tuned to Lola’s Twitter for on sale times and more.

02/03/15
Klubben
Stockholm, Sweden
Tickets: http://www.livenation.se/

02/05/15
The Circus
Helsinki, Finland
Tickets: http://www.lippupalvelu.fi/

New European shows added!

Psyched to announce the following shows! Stay tuned for more info!

01/14/15
Armazem F
Lisbon, Portugal
Tickets: http://www.armazemf.com/

01/15/15
Joy Eslava
Madrid, Spain
Tickets: http://www.livenation.es/artist/gerard-way-tickets

01/16/15
Sala Apolo
Barcelona, Spain
Tickets: http://www.livenation.es/artist/gerard-way-tickets

01/18/15
La Trabendo
Paris, France
Tickets: http://www.avosbillets.com/home

01/20/15
Birmingham O2 Academy
Birmingham, United Kingdom
Tickets: http://www.gigsandtours.com/search/?q=gerard

01/21/15
Southampton O2 Guildhall
Southampton, United Kingdom
Tickets: http://www.gigsandtours.com/search/?q=gerard

01/24/15
Melkweg
Amsterdam, Netherlands
Tickets: http://www.melkweg.nl

01/25/15
Gloria
Cologne, Germany
Tickets: http://gloria-theater.com/programm/25-01-2015/gerard-way

01/27/15
Heimathafen Neukolln
Berlin, Germany
Tickets: http://www.eventim.de/gerard-way

01/28/15
Lucerna Music Bar
Prague, Czech Republic
Tickets: http://www.musicbar.cz/

01/30/15
Proxima
Warsaw, Poland
Tickets: http://www.ebilet.pl/

02/01/15
Pumpehuset
Copenhagen, Denmark
Tickets: http://www.billetlugen.dk/da/event/gerard-way

02/02/15
Vulkan Scene
Oslo, Norway
Tickets: http://www.billettservice.no/

02/06/15
Glavclub
St Petersburg, Russia
Tickets: http://www.glavclub.com/buy-ticket.html

02/07/15
Glavclub
Moscow, Russia
Tickets: http://ponominalu.ru/

Here’s some video from the recent signing at Hot Topic in Hollywood. You can also check out Lola Lovesu's page where there are literally hundreds of photos from the event!

My new album Hesitant Alien lands today. You can pick up at copy on iTunes, Amazon, GerardWay.com, or anywhere else that sells music. Thank you for your continued support and I’m looking forward to seeing you on tour.

"Hesitant Alien" Album Stream

Stream the full album below (here)! Also, Gerard will be doing a special Q & A with fans on his Facebook page tomorrow at 3PM PST. (Mod note: go to his facebook to see his answers.)

Pre-order Hesitant Alien on iTunes.


Vacation Vinyl & Hot Topic Signings!

LOS ANGELES/HOLLYWOOD: Gerard will be doing some signings next week, details are as follows:

Vacation Vinyl – Tuesday September 30th – 5:30pm

Come down to Gerard’s favorite neighborhood vinyl shop, Vacation Vinyl to celebrate the release of “Hesitant Alien” with Gerard. He’ll sign your copy of “Hesitant Alien” and you can help create a custom art piece to commemorate the album release!

Vacation Vinyl
3815 Sunset Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90026
http://vacationvinyl.com/

Hot Topic Hollywood & Highland – Saturday October 4th – NOON

Gerard will be signing copies of his new album “Hesitant Alien” at Hot Topic Hollywood & Highland! Beginning Friday 9/26 purchase a “Hesitant Alien” cd + t-shirt bundle at the Hollywood & Highland location and you will receive a wristband that guarantees the opportunity to meet Gerard on 10/4/14.

Also, LOLA will be making a special appearance at this event. Take your picture with LOLA and enter to win a pair of tickets to see Gerard live on Tuesday 10/14 @ The Fonda Theater!

Hot Topic – Hollywood & Highland
6801 Hollywood Blvd #345
Hollywood, CA 90028

New Shirt, New Project

Something I wanted to do this album was to invite some of my favorite and most personally influencial comic artists to create shirts and posters. Well the first one is complete!

Gilbert Hernandez, one part of the legendary family that created Love And Rockets was kind enough to agree to being a part of this project with me.

My first exposure to Love And Rockets was through my best friend in elementary school, Anthony. His sister, Sharon was a drummer and a photographer, and she went to SVA in New York (years later, she would help me get into SVA by photographing my portfolio). I looked up to her tremendously.

She knew Anthony and I were really into comics- his favorites were Wolverine and Iron Man, I was a general X-Men fan, but my favorite was Longshot. But Sharon introduced us to Underground or Indie comics, and the one that had the most impact was Love And Rockets. I remember asking, “What’s it about? Do they have powers?” and she told me no not really, it’s about life, and music, and what happens to these friends. It took me a minute to fully grasp the concept of a comic book that didn’t involve super powers, but once I did I was hooked on all of it, and found out about some really cool music too.

So this is a big honor for me to be able to have Gilbert make the art. And I also get to color the poster! Hopefully that part comes out good and we can stick to it- I’m still learning the digital color thing. But the idea is to have the shirts and posters available online as well as on tour. I wanted to do one of these posters per tour, and sold at the shows. So I think when we look back in a year there will have been some very cool art along the way.

Here is a look at the mockup

U.S. Shows Announced!

Gerard is playing a string of headline shows in the U.S. in October. Tickets go on sale this Wednesday, August 27.

10/12/14 San Francisco, CA (The Fillmore)

10/13/14 West Hollywood, CA (Troubadour)

10/14/14 Los Angeles, CA (The Fonda Theatre)

10/17/14 Philadelphia, PA (Trocadero Theatre)

10/19/14 Boston, MA (Paradise Rock Club)

10/20/14 New York, NY (Irving Plaza)

10/22/14 Sayreville, NJ (Starland Ballroom)

10/23/14 New York, NY (Webster Hall)

Ticketing and on sale info here: http://www.gerardway.com/tour

Pre-order Gerard’s debut album Hesitant Alien now at http://hesitantalien.gerardway.com/ and also on iTunes and Amazon. Hesitant Alien lands September 30.

"Hesitant Alien" available for pre-order NOW!!

Gerard’s debut album, Hesitant Alien, lands September 30th and you can pre-order the exclusive deluxe bundle now.

The Hesitant Alien Deluxe Bundle includes a t-shirt, a limited edition Hesitant Alien handmade zine (only 5k printed), and the album. The first 2,000 orders will also receive a Hesitant Alien button pack. All orders will get an instant download of the new songs “Action Cat” and “No Shows.” Click HERE to pre-order now.

Hesitant Alien is also available for pre-order on iTunes and Amazon.

Watch the new music video for “No Shows” now at http://hesitantalien.gerardway.com [below]

Be seeing you.



For "No Shows" lyrics go here.

GERARD WAY TO RELEASE DEBUT SOLO ALBUM, HESITANT ALIEN, ON SEPTEMBER 30TH ON WARNER BROS. RECORDS

Former My Chemical Romance frontman Gerard Way will release his debut solo album, entitled Hesitant Alien, on September 30th via Warner Bros. Records. The new album will be available for pre-order at all digital retailers beginning Tuesday, August 19th. Exclusive album bundles will also be available for pre-order on GerardWay.com on the same date. Fans who pre-order the album will receive the track “No Shows” instantly as a free download. The music video for “No Shows” will also be released on August 19th. Please see below for the full track-listing.

Working with producer Doug McKean, Way knew immediately what he wanted Hesitant Alien to sound like. “I wanted to make the small things sound big,” he says. “My intention was to make 100 percent uncompromised art, using the currently least radio-friendly instrument, the guitar. I knew there would be lots of fuzz pedals. I knew I would play Fender instruments. I knew I would look at who my guitar heroes were in art school, Mary Timony and Carrie Brownstein, and I drew a lot of influence from shoe-gaze and Britpop. I want the record to sonically galvanize people.” Hesitant Alien was mixed by Tchad Blake (Arctic Monkeys, Black Keys).

Lyrically, Way wrote about what he knew at the time, “which was struggle, beginnings, finding a newness in the mundane and the abstract,” he says. “I looked to the Britpop poets like Jarvis Cocker and Damon Albarn, drawing upon every day life. I also experimented with the abstract, and looked at Frank Black’s work both with the Pixies, and as a solo artist. There was no concept and no call-to-arms.

Fans will get their first listen to some of the songs on Hesitant Alien when Way performs his first solo shows at the Reading and Leeds Festivals in England. He will perform at Reading on August 22nd and at Leeds on August 23rd.

( track listing, image, and song preview behind the cut )

The Zine - 7/29/14

One of the things I learned over the years is that projects grow and change, and you need to be prepared to change with them, providing a new structure for them to stand on.

About 4 months ago, one of the ideas kicking around was a special edition version of Hesitant Alien, and like usual- it was ambitious (maybe a little overly so) and elaborate. Lola played a key element in it, but as time went on and deadlines loomed, the complex nature of the boxed set required more lead-time than we had. And I would rather get my music out there than wait around for factories to turn around art-objects. I also felt that, for this particular album, since I had already done so many things differently than in MCR, I would also handle the launch differently.

Easy peasy pumpkin peasy.

Read the rest here.

PHOTO - July 22, 2014


Working it out

TEXT - 7/8/2014

Fudge Lord Notes

Some scenes I’ve been writing for Fudge Lord on my phone…

Part I: Beef Liege
“How do you feel?”
“How does the precious life-slime make you feel?”
“Sad.”
“Powerful- but mostly sad.”
“Squelch the sadness with MURDER. Though I caution you, waste none of it.”
“Yes. Let’s raid the Starcophagus- at ONCE.”
(later)
“I can’t shake this sadness- tis a moist burden.”
“Sluggish.”
"Slug mouth."
“My lord- up ahead- a beacon.”
“Snuff it out, snuff it all out-“
“Fire upon it with your Razoros.”
“Indeed.”

PHOTO - 7/5/2014


Meatron

Text - 06/28/2014 - The Happy-Sads

I was having a conversation with someone important to me a few months ago and they said something I had never heard before.

We were talking about depression. More specifically- the flash-flood of bulletproof mania, and it’s inevitable descent into lengthy, paralyzing anguish- our shared condition.

“The Happy-Sads.” they said. “That’s what my doctor calls them”.

I rested in the hum-quiet lapse that happens every so often on the phone.

It seemed such a simple way to put it, but it summed it all up. I hear these little pieces all the time- I think we all do- someone says something, a turn of phrase, or a sentence fragment- and it sticks. It resonates. It becomes a short story or the subject of a comic, a song title- sometimes more.

The Happy-Sads.

It felt like something larger and smaller at the same time- it made sense of everything, boiling it down to a simple phrase- and I laid down under it’s gravity.

I remember being a boy, and the times where everything was quiet. Those were the briefest moments, and you had to catch them like comets. Then came chaos and noise- reckless, indestructible enthusiasm. That part lasted longer than the quiet, but not nearly as long as the empty.

I think it was easier for those older than me to say I was simply shy, and I wasn’t to hear the word “introverted” until I got to high school, and I didn’t hear anyone seriously talk about “depression” until I was in college- and even then it was just something you could “will away”. No one’s son or daughter was “crazy” or a “manic-depressive”. Labels. From youth to adulthood I would bounce back and forth from “very artistic” to “quiet”.

If my depression was robbing the bank, then my anxiety was waiting in the get-away car outside, masked and armed. There would be stretches that would go on for weeks where I thought I was going to Hell. These would segue into stretches where, knowing that everyone was going to die eventually and I would lose everyone I knew, I couldn’t spend more than 2 minutes in school before going home in hysterics. I just didn’t want to lose a single moment with people I loved- moments I could never get back.

My anxiety found different ways of manifesting itself- more subdued versions as I got older, but the back and forth, the up and down, stayed the same. You couldn’t wind a watch to it, but you could see it just over the hill, and you’d wait for it to hit.

Years of it.

Then I learned to use it, to tap into it, but I was hiding, not facing.

Being a singer in a band allowed me to tap into 2 very extreme emotions, and ones I knew very well- violent happiness and theatrical despair. This worked for me for years. And the more I could use them every night, the less I had to deal with them during the day, or night afterwards. Zeroes in a bunk, zeroes in the morning, drinking coffee, watching mile-markers.

Zeroes. Years of them.

I then decided to deal with it.

I had another conversation, again with someone important to me, but this person was life-threateningly ill. They said to me one thing that was the most important.

“Everything is temporary. When you’re happy- it’s temporary. Sad? Temporary. Job? Temporary. Bought a house? It’s only yours until you no longer need it.“

There were two ways to look at it- happy or sad. But everything was temporary.

In your worst moments, where you are staring into the blackest hole, the razor-lined mouth of a vicious, rabid animal- when you aren’t good enough, pretty enough, thin enough, smart enough- when the worst thing inside you chooses to attack- it is temporary. Likewise, when you are in those moments of pure joy, surrounded by your loved ones, high scoring skee-ball, holding your best friends hand at a concert- it is also temporary.

And that is ok.

It is life, and living, or the closest thing to it- but more than that there is help.

I go to therapy- my doctor and I don’t use labels, because she believes that every single person is a different case. What one person has more of, another has less of.

And in the differences, we are all the same- imbalanced, and some of us need an assist. I grew up in an era that came off the tail end of damning the notion of mental treatment, so it was a dirty phrase. Unfortunately it still is today. The labels linger, the stigma exists, and all of it keeps help further away.

This is the part where I get serious and say that if you suffer from severe depression, you should seek treatment. If no one takes you seriously- find someone that will. Knowing what I know now, I wouldn’t fear a single repercussion for taking my mental health seriously and in my hands. Nothing would stop me. Not a label, or a joke- nothing.

I hope you find comfort in this. I hope you know that a lot of people, including myself, battle the beast all the time, and we win. I have finally gotten myself to a place where I no longer face the extremes, but it takes work, every week- I get up, and I make sure I am at my session- even the days where I don’t want to be there. I would imagine you’d feel the same way sometimes, and that is ok. Maybe it’s even hard for you to take the first steps- and that’s ok too.

I know you can.

PHOTO - 06/15/2014 - Untitled, 2012

( photo )

PHOTO - 06/15/2014 - Concepts, 2011-2012

( photos )

TEXT - 06/16/2014 - World-Building

Almost every project I undertake requires a fair amount of world-building. This starts by gathering reference, mainly images that capture a specific energy or design- inspiring in some way. Then, from time to time, I scroll through them, usually fixating on what I like best, and then store it in my brain, never really looking back at them.

My brain becomes this soup that’s just a mash of inaccurately recalled images.
What has worked for me, over the years, is the theory that something is always different, or better for your project in your head. I sometimes apply this to writing music- I don’t listen to a song I love for inspiration- I recall it in my head, focus on the energy of it, the memory. The longer it has been since I last listened to it- the better.

This kind of imprecise storage can go on for months or even years. When the project needs decisions made- I think about the images, and I sketch. A lot of times it does come out of pure inspiration or “thin air”, but I can assure you that even “thin air” comes from something, some kind of experience or image from life that your brain captured, something overheard at a bar that you never forgot- pieces.

The newest (non-music related) project I’m working on requires so much design that I have started to create collages using a simple program, which organizes the best of the best onto pages, which I can then reference when needed, or even better- share with whomever my partners become. The project I’m working on is so detailed that I need to know what they eat, how they get it, and what they eat it with, what kind of cola they drink, pop-stars, periods of architecture- just a hyper-detailed world. Not all projects are like this- it is important for this particular project.

Before I go to hard-design, I make detailed lists of what I need to create.
This is a little snippet of what the pages look like-

( photo )

I don’t know how other people do it, but this is how I’ve done it for years.
G

Download “Action Cat”!

Join the mailing list and get a download of “Action Cat”: http://bit.ly/actioncat *

You can also get it on iTunes: http://smarturl.it/actioncat

or hear it on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gbk72F10Vgo

*If you are already signed up to the mailing list you will need to sign up again for the free download. You will not receive duplicate emails, no worries. After you sign up, check your email for the download.


Mod Note: Declaring amnesty on the posts I've missed int he last few weeks. Regular posting to resume now.

May 9, 2014 - The Zine



These days, with record releases come "special editions", and it is looking like my yet untitled album will get one of these. I have long wanted to do a physical zine, since I used to make them in high school and I miss them, collecting them, discovering them.

So, one of the things I am experimenting with is the possibility of a physical zine, Issue 1 being included in it. Print run limited to the special. Subsequent issues will follow, most likely on a quarterly basis, and most likely available at shows. I'd like to see what this evolves into, as I am sure it will change over time. Right now it includes everything from science fiction to photographs and observations, which obviously we can produce through social media, but I would like people to have an analog experience, similar to the way we listen to albums on vinyl. The idea is to only print material that is unpublished on the web. There are even posibilities of it turning into some sort of comic anthology at times, then reverting back to zine, then finding something else to become.

These are some color options I was playing with. The title, The Baby Animal Hospital, is final at this moment.