Thick Syrup Records: Buy

Musicians across Little Rock and beyond(the amazing R Stevie Moore & David Fair got
in on this one also)have come together to record a Christmas
compilation entitled: A Very Little Rock Christmas! We ask that you please donate a minimum of three dollars as this CD was compiled... for toys for tots. You can donate here: Toys For Tots 

Here it is...The Last Album by Smoke Up Johnny!

Enjoy.

Jon, Alan, Cory, & Matt

Smoke Up Johnny - The End.

I’ll Be Moe.
David Fair has written and recorded two dozen stories detailing events, large and small, which occurred during his childhood in Coldwater, Michigan. Backed by original music and a large assortment of carefully placed sound effects, this collection is, at once, highly informative and wildly entertaining. All stories fall somewhere in the range of 80 to 100 percent true. The subjects covered include; The Three Stooges, a hissing bat, amateur smuggling, a menacing shop owner, scheming customers, buried treasure, clever spies, carnival fraud, marble trickery, Halloween tragedy, matchstick rockets, circus hotdogs, naked mannequins, social status, daring stunts, dangerous pranks and foolish activities with dramatic results.

Seasons Greetings From Jad and David Fair!
The Fair brothers have written more songs than The Rolling Stones and Beatles combined. Their subject matter once limited only to love and monster songs has expanded to a depth and range equal to that of the majestic Rocky Mountains.
This year they're back with 21 brand new Halloween songs. Rip up your movie tickets and park your car, Daddy. There are 21 new reasons to stay home.
If Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi wrote songs they would've sounded like this. 21 new songs about cackling witches, blood thirsty vampires and the walking dead. 21 songs to chill your flesh and blast shivers down your spine. You can shut your eyes and wish but it won't go away. 21 reasons to squirm. 21 reasons to leave the lights on. Play it if you dare and change your life forever. Whistle these in the graveyard, Tough Guy.

Marking a departure from his characteristically acoustic style, Bryan Frazier's latest release, Love in the Modern World (now available on iTunes), achieves a wonderfully multi-faceted quality underscoring a deceptively simple theme—love. With previously unreleased lyrics written as long as five years ago, the Little Rock musician describes the new record as a long-time collaboration with different people over various points in his musical career.
"I think that's why it has the depth that it does—it's taken such a long time to make it," Frazier said.
Unlike 2006's The Stars Are Against Us (still available on iTunes), this new record grew organically around Frazier's relationships with other extremely talented musicians, namely Jai Lambert, Steve Lane, David Stone and Matt Waller, who all appear on the album.
"The guys that perform on the record weren't just hired guns," he said. "These guys actually had input on the song-writing, the instrumentation. It's a solo title but it's definitely not a solo effort."
Don't be fooled, though—this record is anything but haphazard. In fact, it is precisely this complexity that makes Love in the Modern World that much more remarkable. Frazier has managed to take a group of songs, loosely tied only by the ambiguous theme of love, and knit them together so tightly that you'd think that one track was written for the next. From the solid, lighthearted pop track, "Angelene and the Alpha Ray," to the smooth and compelling "Love is Here," to the "big breakup song, 'Unwise,'" each song tells a story. They are sometimes fictional, sometimes based in reality, sometimes hopeful or mournful—but always relevant.
Following a packed listening party and CD release show at local venues Ciao Baci and White Water Tavern, respectively, the new record was hailed in Little Rock's Sync magazine as a complex work of "majestic pure pop rock bliss," reminiscent of such rock staples as Electric Light Orchestra and the Beatles.

The WeisenHeimers are four guys who love to play music. In this case, punk rock. Formed in the spring of 2007 they have been busy playing tons of shows and just Finished up recording their debut album. Full of Catchy punk rock in the Vain of Early Green Day and Teenage Bottlerocket . Ben Weasel would be proud.

You may have seen them open for The Foxboro Hot Tubs(Green Day) on a Short Tour in 2008. This S/T CD has gotten Rave Reviews. Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day said they Proved to be The Urban Cowboys!

“Smoke Up Johnny made hangovers worth it in 2007. No local band played later or louder or with more spit-in-your-face joy. Born in Levy of cigarettes, cheap beer and a mutual affection for bands like Cheap Trick and Thin Lizzy, the dudes in SUJ did plenty of punk-rock posturing onstage — bassist Matt Floyd could kick your ass with a cross-ways look — but if you dug a little deeper, you'd see them wearing their hearts on their sleeveless shirts. Their music is pure rock 'n' roll, an unmitigated blast of all that's simple and holy about rock, and Alan
Disaster's night-moves lyrics of one-night stands and rich girls slumming on 12th Street made Smoke Up Johnny one of the most visceral, earnest and funny bands to come around in years. No album can capture the furor of their live show, but this one came close.”
Lindsey Miller
Arkansas Times

Somebody give Travis McElroy a medal, gold star, plaque —
something. While Towncraft looks to expose folks all over to the
proud history of Little Rock's underground scene, just about no
one 'round here has done more than McElroy to turn people on
to the diversity of local underground music today. The hirsute
founder of the fledgling local label Thick Syrup, McElroy has, for
almost a year, labored to compile a wide cross-section of his
favorite bands, begging and borrowing and hosting benefits, all
so he can (maybe) break even and pay the featured bands for
their efforts.
"The Arkansas Compilation," the culmination of his efforts, tracks
the Arkansas sound through 24 songs from as many acts. White
dudes with guitars dominate (McElroy never said he was trying to
represent all types of Arkansas music), but within that formulation,
there's a tremendous amount of diversity.

The latest from San Antokyo, the raw cowpunk-ish trio fronted by the brothers Kerby, Josh and Kevin, with Bryce from the Contingencies on drums, and a dude who's been around for a while who everyone calls Slaughterhouse or sometimes just Slaughter, who plays bass. chunky riffs and elemental lyrics about blood, cigarettes and robots.

browningham - when i was in the 4th grade, two number 1 hits, both called "jump" came out. one by the pointer sisters (the better one), and one by van halen. the most popular of the 5th graders at my school formed two groups for the talent show. one lip synced van halen's jump, the other did the pointer's jump. i wished that was me . the same year, i was setting up g.i. Joe figure's one Sunday afternoon. i heard a car pull up outside my family's house. a Volkswagen rabbit convertible with the top down, playing Phil Collins' "one more night", and filled with college kids drinking, carousing, and making out. they kept playing the song over and over again. i taddled on them to my dad, who looked out the window, but didn't tell them to beat it. next year, on the way to six flags with my sister, cousins and grandmother, prince's new hit "raspberry beret" came on the radio. it took my full attention away from going to six flags and goof-in' around with my cousins.

fluke, #7
fluke is a great 'zine outta tucson, but its connection is strongest to little rock, ar, where it first came out, and where it seems most of the contributors and subjects are from. there's some long interviews with people you most likely haven't heard of but who are really interesting to read about in the i-can-relate kind of commonality that most people involved in punk and hardcore experience. there's also an interview with someone you most likely have heard of (mike watt) and a brief tribute to the ramones, and it ends with a short story. all in all it's a great read, well-written and laid-out, and on nice glossy paper. send $3 to: po box 41931, tucson, az 85717-1931

-Review from Thrasher Magazine!
Get his latest issue from using the info here.