News

We are extremely excited to announce the release of our third full-length album “Tribal Fires” (Double Crown DCCD 46)! After eight years of adventures through the Saharan deserts, with “Tribal Fires” the Madeira have gone Sub-Saharan, into the dark and mysterious depths of central African jungles. It’s a journey that finds the band exploring new sounds with a highly diverse album, ranging from the most aggressive to the most melodic songs (including a loving tribute to the British instrumental heroes the Shadows) the band has ever done – and everything in between. There are 13 songs in total, of which two are covers: an original arrangement of Ernesto Lecuona’s “Jungle Drums,” and the Atlantics’ “Giant”. Here’s the full tracklist:

1. Tribal Fury
2. Cities of Gold
3. Twilight
4. Fire Sacrifice
5. The Expedition
6. Witch Doctor
7. Jungle Drums
8. Arcadian Voyage
9. Mar Vista
10. Giant
11. Pre-Ritual
12. The Ritual
13. Zanzibar

You can now hear three songs (“Tribal Fury”, “Cities of Gold” and “Twilight”) on our MySpace site. The release date is March 6, 2012, though we will have CDs available for sale at our album release show on Friday, March 2, 2012 at The Melody Inn, Indianapolis, with the Cocktail Preachers and the Mystery Men?

More info soon – stay tuned. Until then, hope you enjoy the three new tracks, and that we’ll see you in Indy on March 2nd!

Hello Madeira friends!

We are very very pleased to let you know about the imminent release of Brave New Surf (Double Crown Records), a new compilation of modern surf music, with a brand new Madeira track! This is a collection of the best of modern instrumental surf music from around the world, compiled by Madeira’s own Ivan Pongracic, as well as Sean Berry, the head of Double Crown Records. It features 20 tracks by surf bands from around the world, all from 2008 or later, four tracks being previously unreleased. Among those is the Madeira’s “Witch Doctor.” Here’s the full tracklist (with the previously unreleased tracks in italics):

1. El Supernaut – Wonderman from Intiö
2. Los Twang! Marvels – Sea of Glory
3. El Ray – Cherry Cheeks
4. The Coffin Daggers – Borgo Pass
5. Aqualads – Washout
6. The TomorrowMen – Momentium
7. The Phantom Four – El Palmero
8. Atomic Mosquitos – Mosquito Royale
9. Los Kahunas – 7 Mares
10. The Bambi Molesters – As the Dark Wave Swells
11. The Barbwires – La Caja del Muerto
12. Frankie & the Pool Boys – Ewa on the Beach
13. The Thunderchiefs – Estratosfera
14. The Secret Samurai – The Khazar
15. The Madeira – Witch Doctor
16. The Eliminators – Walking Tall
17. Surfer Joe – The North Swell
18. The Deadbeats – Karabasan
19. Daikaiju – Laser Runner
20. The Anacondas – Floating Home

The CD will get a huge promotional push by the label, as our goal is to get it in the hands of as many radio shows, press outlets, zines, blogs, etc., as possible in order to expose the maximum number of people to the creativity, vibrancy and excitement of the modern surf scene. A Kickstarter campaign intended to raise some extra promotional funds was kicked off last night, and has reach the minimum goal of $300 within the first 12 hours! However, any extra money raised by the campaign will also go towards promotion, allowing the label to send more copies to more media outlets, so if you are interested in supporting the modern surf music scene, please consider donating.

There is also a new dedicated website for this release (BraveNewSurf.com) which features samples of the songs, band videos, plus a lot of information about the comp and the bands involved.

We think this is an extremely exciting project which could potentially expose many more people to our favorite music and build up our audience. We hope you will pick up the CD, maybe give a bit of money for promotion – and maybe even pick up a few extra copies to stuff in the stockings of your family and friends!

Also, we will play our final show of the year at the Melody Inn on Friday, December 2nd. We’ll be playing with two non-surf bands, which is always fun – we get to mix it up and play our music to a new audience. The other bands are excellent, and it promises to be a very fun night! We hope some of you can join us – here are the details:

Friday, December 02, 2011
The Melody Inn, 3826 N. Illinois St., Indianapolis, IN
317-923-4707
With: Deadbeat Darling (from NYC) and Dream Thieves (from Iowa City)
Doors at 9 pm, show at 10 pm (the Madeira goes on second, around 11 pm)
$5

This will be our last show until the CD release show on March 2nd. The album is currently being mixed. Stay tuned for more info about all this soon.

Happy holidays, and hope to see you on Friday! And hope you all like Brave New Surf, and our new track on there!

-- The Madeira

We set up our own YouTube channel, with playlists grouping different special shows and events, as well as collecting pretty much all the Madeira videos currently on YouTube (77, if we counted correctly!). Check it out, and if you like it, please subscribe. We hope to be adding some comments and reminisces to each playlist in the upcoming weeks. It’s also a nice way to see us changing through the past seven years (some of the really early videos are a trip to watch now).

http://www.youtube.com/user/TheMadeiraSurf

Thanks!

-- The Madeira

Hello all again:

A quick heads-up to let you know that Thomas Duncan, the producer/director of the upcoming surf music documentary Sound of the Surf has just released another video of the Madeira, this time of Sandstorm.

This comes from the 2008 SoCal studio shoot where we also did Crescent Moon, one of our most viewed videos on YouTube. We shot a total of seven or so songs on that session, and we hope they all eventually see the light of day. But we certainly can’t fault Tom for taking some time to release it when the final results are so great!

We hope you enjoy it.

-- The Madeira

Hello all!

We hope you all made it through the nasty winter mostly unscathed, and are looking forward to the warmer weather ahead! It can’t be here soon enough! Hard to believe it’s been almost eight months since the last official update, so here’s a long-overdue one on the latest developments in the Madeira camp.

The big news is that we will be recording our third full-length album this summer! The studio is booked, and the songs are almost ready. We are very excited about the new songs, and have been playing six of them at our recent shows – see videos on our site’s front page, recorded in February at Mahogany’s in Latonia, KY (Cincinnati suburb), our most recent show, which incidentally was a blast!! Cincinnati has become Surf City Midwest, with monthly all-surf shows at Mahogany’s and the Rockin’ & Surfin’ Show every Saturday from 6-8 pm on WAIF 88.3, hosted by Rockin Rick and The Midwest Surf Guy. They’ve really built a great surf music scene in a somewhat unlikely location, and we thank them for inviting us to play there. We definitely hope to be back this Fall.

In more personal news, Todd will soon be getting married to an absolutely wonderful woman – and also a Madeira fan! (The two inevitably go together, of course. :) ) Todd and Kristin will be tying the knot on June 4th. We couldn’t be happier for them, and we wish them a wonderful life together (which is pretty much guaranteed since it’s rare to see two people better suited for each other)!

Also, Patrick continues to get a great deal of attention with his awesome new Star-Trek-themed band, Five Year Mission and their debut CD “Year One”, and we highly recommend that you check them out live if at all possible. And don’t forget Patrick’s other two bands, the Shake Ups and Destination: Earth!, both of which also continue to gig AND have imminent new releases – we have no idea how he’s able to do it all!! It’s mind-boggling!

Due to these major developments in Todd’s and Patrick’s lives, as well as us getting ready to record the new album, we will not play out very much this summer. We have a gig coming up in eleven days in Cleveland (more on that below), but then nothing for four months, until the end of August, when we’ll be back at The Mel. But what we may lack in quantity, we’ll make up for in quality with the Cleveland gig! This is going to be one for the history books, as we’re playing with our friends, the iconic Volcanos from Detroit! This is our first show with them in five years, they’ve been on a bit of a hiatus for the past few years, but I’m sure we speak for surf music fans around the world when we say that it’s GREAT to have them back! We’ll be returning to the Beachland Ballroom in Cleveland, where we had a fantastic show with the Cocktail Preachers in October.

April 30, 2011
Beachland Ballroom, 15711 Waterloo Road, Cleveland, Ohio
www.beachlandballroom.com
216-383-1124
With: The Volcanos
Tickets: $8 advance, $10 at the door.

Eric Moore, the man behind the “Induct Link Wray Into the Rock’n'Roll Hall of Fame” campaign, has been giving Cincinnati a run for its money by booking regular surf shows in Cleveland. With the support of the Big Surf radio show on WOBC 91.5 on Tuesdays, 6-8 pm, hosted by Tom Hinders, Cleveland has developed a dedicated group of surf music fans which received us very enthusiastically this past October, and we’re thrilled to be returning there for what is sure to be another great surf show! (Between the growing surf scenes in Cleveland and Cincinnati, the Hot Rod Hula Hop festival in Columbus, and the Surf Ohio FesTiki festival in Dayton, Ohio is quickly – and most unexpectedly! – becoming a contender for the title of “California East” for surf music! God bless 'em, and we certainly hope this trend continues and grows!)

Have a great Spring and Summer, and we hope to return with another update in a few months with some good news about the next album!

-- The Madeira

Hello Madeira friends!

After excitedly looking forward to the Surf Explosion weekend for months, it came and went – and left much exhilaration and exhaustion in its wake! We hope you were able to join us for this unforgettable weekend. Friday night was completely crazy, with Ivan pulling triple-duty, and Patrick and Dane pulling double-duty. But all the bands sounded really great, and we had a fantastic turnout, no doubt heavily aided by the nice press in Nuvo. If you stuck around all the way until the crazy-late end just before 3 am, you witnessed an once-in-a-lifetime event of the Madeira AND the Space Cossacks playing the song “Transylvanian Orbit” AKA “Ricochet” TOGETHER on the small Melody Inn stage! We never tried it before, there was no rehearsal, but we somehow pulled it off – see for yourselves!

The FesTiki festival in Dayton, OH the next day was dogged by a lot of rain throughout the day, but it had all gone away by 6 pm and the sun was shining as soon as the four top bands went on, only slightly behind schedule, the only downside being the astounding humidity! But it just made it feel more like a hot and sticky club show, which is familiar territory for us! We had a total blast playing the big stage with professional lighting and sound, and the audience was very into it! We really hope we can play this event again in the future, as it was truly something special. Even with the rain making things damp, it was simply remarkable to see all the vendors and all the decoration amid the beautiful scenery. We’re very grateful to Surf Ohio and the Fraternal Order of Moai for inviting us to play, we were honored to be there. (You can see some videos here and here, as well as some photos here and here)

Ivan’s summer reunion with the Space Cossacks has come to an end, and it was an unqualified success! They had a total of seven shows (Baltimore, Arlington, VA, San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Indianapolis, Dayton, OH), and it was really wonderful to have the two bands play the last two shows together. Hopefully there will be more chances for that in the future. But now it’s time to get back to work on that next Madeira album! We hope to have that one out sometime next year, and we’ll keep you posted on our progress.

Meanwhile, we do have a couple of shows coming up this Fall: October 2nd in Cleveland, OH, and November 13th in Lafayette, IN (check our gigs page). We hope you’ll be able to join us for those, and who knows, we might break out another brand new song at one or both of these shows (as we did in Indy and Dayton with “Cities of Gold”).

Have a great rest of the Summer, and we hope you enjoy the Fall! Thanks again for coming, if you did, to any of our summer shows, whether in Atlanta, at the IMAX, the Mel or FesTiki!

-- The Madeira

We got some wonderful press in today’s Nuvo (Indianapolis’ free weekly city paper) – they did a full feature story on the Madeira! Check it out!

Just in time for our shows tomorrow night in Indy at the Melody Inn, and Saturday in Dayton, OH (the FesTiki festival)! We very much hope you will be able to join us for these two VERY special shows – see you this weekend!

-- The Madeira

Hello Madeira friends!

Wow, another half a year flew by! The Madeira has been keeping busy playing shows in Chicago and Champaign, IL, as well as our first visit down South for two shows in Atlanta in late May (including the too-much-fun Bubbapalooza event held at the famous Star Bar, with the great Dex Romweber Duo also on the bill!). We also played the Indy premiere of the film “Ultimate Wave Tahiti 3D” at the IMAX in mid-June, and they’ve returned the favor by playing the “Carpe Noctem” CD, as well as a short video clip plugging our band, before each showing of the film, so if you go see the movie there this summer, you’ll get to hear us on their amazing sound system accompanied by three-story-high pics of the band! (Brrrr – frightening!!)

When we found the time, we worked on new songs, two of which (Witch Doctor and Green Hell) we have been playing out already, and the third (Cities of Gold) we expect to premiere at our next show at the Melody Inn on Friday, August 13th. We’ve also been working on four other original songs plus two covers, so the next album is coming along very nicely, hopefully to be recorded and released next year.

Two of us have also been busy with other musical projects, Patrick mostly with the Shake Ups (who just returned from an East Coast tour) and Destination: Earth!, but also a brand new band Five Year Mission (stay tuned for more info about them), whereas Ivan reunited with his old surf band the Space Cossacks for their first shows since the year 2000, in Baltimore and Arlington, VA in May. The Cossacks are playing five more shows this summer, including three in California (one of them being the Third Annual Surf Guitar 101 Convention on Saturday, August 7th in Los Alamitos, CA) and two in Indiana and Ohio.

This leads us to the main point of this announcement: we have two VERY special shows coming up in just over two weeks. First will be “The Madeira All-In-The-Family Surf Explosion” show at our beloved Melody Inn on Friday, August 13th (brrr-frightening!!). This will be an once-in-a-lifetime event: the Madeira hosting an evening of surf music with special guests the Space Cossacks (featuring Ivan on lead guitar), Destination: Earth! (featuring Patrick on lead guitar) and the Troubadours (featuring Ivan on the lead guitar and Dane on the drums)!! This has never happened before, and probably never will again! We also have a few special tidbits planned for this show that will hopefully make it utterly unforgettable. The Indianapolis free weekly city paper Nuvo will be running a feature story on the Madeira the week of the show, and we greatly welcome and are very excited about this bit of publicity! The day after this show (so, Saturday, August 14th) the fun will continue in Dayton, OH at the second annual Surf Ohio FesTiki festival! The FesTiki is an all-day, family-friendly celebration of all things Exotica, held at the gorgeous and historic Old River Park – Dayton’s “vintage playground” – a 33-acre park encircled by a 1.5-mile scenic lagoon. There will be seven bands in total between 2 and 11 pm, playing surf, rockabilly and Polynesian music – the Madeira will be playing at 6:30 pm and the Space Cossacks will be headlining at 9 pm. There will also be hula and fire dancers, tiki carvers, retro vendors, a giant sand sculpture, tropical-themed bounce houses, vintage hot rod displays, and a cruise-in for pre-1970s cars, motorcycles and scooters, plus Polynesian-style cuisine and – of course – many coldm fruity drinks! There will be some serious press promoting this event and the organizers expect several thousand people to attend throughout the day! (Check out their website for any other info you may need.)

These two events are sure to be the best time you will have all summer long, so we really hope you can all join us for them! You will NOT regret it!

Finally, we already have some plans for this Fall, including playing in Cleveland for the first time (in October) and returning to Lafayette, IN (in November), so hopefully we’ll also see some of you at these shows. Who knows, we might unveil some more new songs and you wouldn’t want to miss that, right? ;)

We hope you are all enjoying the summer and to see you soon!
Best regards,

-- The Madeira

On August 3rd, 2008, the day after the first SG101 convention, we played the Huntington Beach pier for the Huntington Beach International Surf Museum, along with Pollo Del Mar, the Aquasonics, Norm Cowell and the Surf Rockers, The Relix, and the Surftones. Tim “HBKahuna” Ferrill was kind enough to digitally record our entire set and give us the tape to do as we wish. We posted two videos from this show on YouTube about a year ago (Burning Mirage and Transatlantic Orbit), and now finally the rest of them are here. You can see the entire show in its original order by going to this playlist.

This was the setlist:
SANDSTORM!
CORDOBA
EL CALIPH
BURNING MIRAGE
UNDERCURRENTS
THE VICTOR
CRESCENT MOON
TRANSATLANTIC ORBIT
THE SARACEN
TANGAROA
SURF FIDELIS
ROGUE WAVE
INTRUDER

(We replaced the older videos for Burning Mirage and Transatlantic Orbit, since Todd was able to upload them in much higher quality now.)

It was a really good show for us, as well as being an amazing day. (It’s especially nice to remember the beautiful weather and the perfect location as the heavy winds are scattering the snow and ice outside…) We hope you’ll enjoy it.

Have a merry Christmas and a happy new year!

-- The Madeira

Hi all!

It’s hard to believe it’s been six months since the last news update! Wow, time flies….

First of all, we had an AMAZING time in Italy, especially playing the phenomenal Surfer Joe festival! So many great memories… (For some photos and reports go here and here) Massive thanks to Lorenzo Valdambrini for inviting us and taking extremely good care of us. We all very much hope we will be able to go back sooner rather than later!

And let’s not forget the Champaign show in May, which definitely ranks in our top five all-time-best shows – if not even at the very top! What a blast that was! Thanks to Jet Sterling and the entire Champaign crew for making this a very, very special show. (For some photos and reports go here)

You can see some great videos from both of these shows on our Videos page.

Second, there is great news to report: Patrick is back in Indy! After two and a half years in SoCal, he’s found his way back to his home state, and we’re absolutely thrilled to have him back! Look for many more shows in the IN/OH/IL/MI area in ’10 – as well as more activity by everyone’s favorite outer space surfers Destination: Earth!

Finally, we have one last show for ’09 – it’s again at our home away from home, the historic Melody Inn in Indy, on Friday, November 27th (the day after Thanksgiving), with the fantastic Leisure Kings and our friend Frankie Camaro. Come jump around, work up a sweat and get rid of some of those calories from the day before!

Hope to see you in just over three weeks – and a lot more in 2010!

-- The Madeira

Hello all!

We are extremely happy to announce the Madeira’s summer Italian tour! Through the unceasing efforts of Lorenzo Valdambrini, head of Surfer Joe Music (his surf music promotion organization), we will be playing seven shows in northern Italy between July 26th and August 1st. Here are the dates (with cities and clubs/events):

26 Jul – Livorno – Surfer Joe Summer Fest
27 Jul – La Spezia – La Skaletta
28 Jul – Trieste – Ausonia
29 Jul – San Marino – American Graffiti
30 Jul – Viareggio – Corsaro Rosso
31 Jul – Livorno – Effetto Venezia
1 Aug – Rosignano – Vespa Meeting

Our first show will be the headlining gig on the third and final night of the amazing Surfer Joe festival, featuring over the course of a weekend some of the very best surf bands in the world today, among them Pollo Del Mar, Los Twang! Marvels, the Kilaueas, Los Coronas, the Bradipos IV, Rev Hank of Urban Surf Kings, Lorenzo’s own band the Wadadli Riders, and at least another dozen others! Wow!

We’re extremely grateful to Lorenzo for working so hard to make this happen and offering us to play this incredible festival. He is probably the hardest working man in surf music today, putting his all into making surf music more visible and more accessible. A truly remarkable guy!

We have one more US show (possibly our final for the year) prior to our Italian trek: Saturday, May 30th in Champaign, IL with our dear friends, the always-fantastic Cocktail Preachers! (Incidentally, we’ll also be celebrating our fifth anniversary at this show, our first show having been on June 5th, 2004. Five years – wow, time flies when you’re having fun!) So, hope to see some US surf fans in Champaign in just over two weeks, and some Italian and Euro surf fans in Italy in July and August!

Enjoy the Spring!

-- The Madeira

Hello all Madeira aficionados!

We mentioned last summer that we will be appearing in a major new documentary on the history of surf music called Sound of the Surf. The film is still in production, and should be out this summer. As a preview, the producer Thomas Duncan has released this promo clip of the Madeira performing our song “Crescent Moon,” shot last August in Orange County, CA:

www.youtube.com/soundofthesurf

(You can also see it on Video page of our official site or at the top of our MySpace site) The HQ version should appear in a short while. (Note that the movie itself will be in HD, but space and time constraints forbid the HD version of the above video from being available at this time.)

Expect similiar videos in the next few months from Slacktone, the Surfaris, Laika & the Cosmonauts, Meshugga Beach Party, the Barbwires, the Bitch Boys, the Eliminators and Eddie Bertrand. If you subscribe to the above YouTube channel you will be notified as Tom releases all those clips. Enjoy!

(See some discussion of the above clip on Surf Guitar 101)

We’d also like to remind everyone about our Indy show on Friday, April 10th (with Destination: Earth! and Frankie Camaro’s Atomic Bombay) as well as announce a show in Champaign, IL on Saturday, May 30th (with the Cocktail Preachers!). Please see our Gigs page for more details. These will be our only local shows until the Fall as we’ll be doing a European tour this Summer! More on that in the next news update….

Enjoy the Spring and hope to see you at one of these two shows!
The Madeira

PS Check out this nice recent article about the band. Or just go the Press page on our website!

Hello all!

After some extended downtime, we return with great news: UK’s Pipeline Instrumental Review #79 (Spring 2009) declared “Carpe Noctem” one of its two Albums of the Year! (We share the honor with Spanish veterans and long-time Pipeline favorites Los Jets.) In addition, both editors still have “Carpe Noctem” at the top of their current playlists in the new issue. Big thanks to Pipeline editors Alan Taylor and Dave Burke for this wonderful gesture – we are completely stoked!

Also, after a more-than-six-month-break the Madeira will be returning to playing live on Friday, April 10th. And it will be a very special night, as this will also be DESTINATION: EARTH’s 10th ANNIVERSARY REUNION SHOW!! That’s right, D:E! are back, and Patrick, errr, I mean Commander 007 will have a busy and exhausting night! Also partaking in all the fun will be Frankie Camaro’s Atomic Bombay. We hope you can join us for what is sure to be an unforgettable evening!

Stay tuned for some more exciting news coming very soon!

-- The Madeira

Hello all!!

We wanted to share some good news with all of you. Most of you probably know that Pipeline magazine (from England) is probably thee premiere zine in the surf/instro world. Alan Taylor, one of the two editors, in the new issue (#78) has “Carpe Noctem” as the NUMBER ONE of his Top Ten favorites of the last six months! He also gives the CD a great review, which you can now read on our website (While there, please check out also the newly translated transcript of The Vault, the Spanish radio show that picked “Carpe Noctem” as their Album of the Week last month.)

What a great way to finish off a truly wonderful year for the Madeira! We thank you very deeply for all your support, and we hope to see as many of you as possible in 2009. We hope to have some good news about that soon – stay tuned.

We wish you very happy holidays, and a great new year!

-- The Madeira

We are on hiatus until the spring, but you can hear us on the internet. First, the Surf Guitar 101 Podcast #4 features the second part of Ivan and Dane’s interview (conducted in Hermosa Beach on the night of the Surf Guitar 101 convention in early August) – in addition to all sorts of killer surf music (mostly from the sixties this time around). You can download the episode here and check out some comments about it here.

We also found out a few days ago that the song “Carpe Noctem” was selected the Record of the Week on “El Sótano” (“The Cellar”), an hour-long weekly surf/garage/frat show on Spanish National Radio! They also played “Wreak Havoc!” and “SOS (Stomp on Stomp)” and talked about the band (in Spanish, of course!), the Double Crown label and our labelmates the Surfites. Check it out! (If the streamed signal doesn’t work very well, you can download the entire episode by clicking on the green Descargar button.)

Enjoy and see you in the spring!

-- The Madeira

Two members of the Madeira have been keeping busy over the past few months with some outside activities that we’d like to tell you about.

Ivan is a guest guitarist on the track “Magyara” by Frankie & the Pool Boys, a new CD masterminded by Ferenc Dobronyi of Pollo Del Mar, now out on Double Crown Records. Ferenc recorded this CD during the recent Pollo Del Mar break with the help of a bunch of friends, including Dusty Watson (Slacktone, Agent Orange, Dick Dale, Jon & the Nightriders), Dave Wronski (Slacktone, Jon & the Nightriders), Shigeo Naka (the Surf Coasters), Danny Snyder (the TomorrowMen, Meshugga Beach Party) and more. It is a simply remarkable album, but don’t take our word for it – check out some of the songs, including “Magyara,” here (And make sure you take a look at the two videos on the site, especially “Ewa on the Beach” which is HIGHLY recommended, both the song AND the video! :) )

Ivan also wrote a lengthy feature for the new Continental zine (issue #15) on Dick Dale. It is an in-depth review of the recent Sundazed reissues of Dale’s sixties’ albums, complete with the historical background on each album. Read a bit more about it and order here.

Patrick has been extremely productive as singer, guitarist and primary songwriter with his other band the Shake Ups, who will be releasing their second CD, “Breathing the Flood”, next week. They’ll be following it up with a bunch of shows in the SoCal area. The Shake Ups play super-catchy power-pop, and you can hear two phenomenal tracks from the new album (and see more about their upcoming live dates) on their myspace site.

We hope you pick up all the above releases and enjoy them – we give them all Eight Thumbs Up (which only requires four hands from the Carpe Noctem cover)!

-- The Madeira

Hello all!

We very much hope you’re enjoying the summer. We wanted to update you on all the recent and upcoming activities in the Madeira camp.

First of all, our short SoCal tour was an unqualified success!! We played San Diego, Hermosa Beach and Huntington Beach between August 1st and 3rd, and each show was better than the previous one – and together they are probably the highlight of our four years together. You can go here to read some comments posted on the Surf Guitar 101 forum by various witnesses (we compiled the comments about the Madeira only, since the original forum thread is currently up to 15 pages!) . You can also see photos from all three shows here. It was great to see so many old friends, make several new ones and play with MANY amazing surf bands (including Pollo del Mar, Slacktone, the Secret Samurai, and many, many others)! In particular we must thank Ryan Ruiz of the Secret Samurai for going way above and beyond the call of duty helping us set up the San Diego show, make available his band’s practice space AND provide his band’s gear to us; also, Ferenc Dobronyi of Pollo del Mar and Frankie & the Pool Boys for helping with all three shows. We should also recognize the amazing work done by Jeff “Big Tiki Dude” for the Surf Guitar 101 Convention on Saturday at Suzie’s in Hermosa Beach, which was an unforgettable, even legendary, event and one that made our whole trip so much more special! Finally, we would like to thank Linda Miller of the Huntington Beach International Surfing Museum for adding us to the Sunday’s lineup and providing an opportunity to play our probably most memorable show to date (and also lining up some incredible amps, owned by Matt Quilter of the Reventlos, and drums for us). Playing right in front of the Huntington Beach Pier, next to the beach, close to where it all began for surf music, on a perfect day – well, it doesn’t really get any better than that. (Please at the very least take a look at the Huntington Beach photos to get some idea of the weekend we had!) We certainly hope we can do all this again next year.

Second, we are THRILLED to announce that we will be in the upcoming surf music documentary called “Sound of the Surf”. This is a fully professional production with highly active involvement by legendary guitarist and surf music historian John Blair (Jon & the Nightriders). We were recorded performing seven songs in hi-def with multiple cameras and multitrack audio in a controlled studio environment the Monday after our SoCal shows. We also did a lengthy on-camera interview with two of the founders of surf music, Eddie Bertrand (Eddie & the Showmen, the Belairs) and Paul Johnson (the Belairs, the Surfaris), as well as John Blair, to be included in the movie. That was quite surreal and pretty incredible. The movie is scheduled to be released in the Spring or Summer of ’09, so we’ll all have to be patient (the plan right now is to market it heavily, including advertising on network TV, and hopefully a theatrical release before the film comes out on DVD, too). We would like to extend our deep thanks to producer/director Tom Duncan, John Blair and Tim Ferrill for including us in this film, which we expect will drastically raise the profile of the entire genre – and may in fact launch it to heights previously unseen! (Incidentally, one of the more remarkable experiences of our SoCal trip was having Eddie “Squad Car” Bertrand singing our praises – even on camera – and taking a keen interest in making us look good during the video shoot! Absolutely remarkable. One could call it a dream-come-true, but who’d ever dare dream of something so completely fantastical! See some photos from the taping here)

Finally, we are not done yet for the year. We will be headlining “Surf Explosion 2” on Friday, September 19th, in Cincinnati, OH, for which we will be joined by our good friends the Surge (Atlanta, GA) as well as Don’t Fear the Reverb (Cincinnati, OH). The most amazing thing about this show is that it will be held in the historical Memorial Hall which seats 610 people, and it will be vigorously marketed far and wide, including bringing big-name sponsors on board. This will be by far the biggest show we have played yet, and we expect it to be very special. We hope many of you that are not in Cincinnati but within driving distance will consider making the trek to be there – we think you’ll find it worthwhile. The promoters of the show are also aiming to increase the public awareness of modern surf music to the point where they can hold larger surf music events several times a year – and we think you will all agree that this is a VERY worthy goal! (We also hope to play a show in Chicago the following day, Saturday, September 20th, with the Cocktail Preachers and Roger & the Wraybands. We already booked a venue but just a few days ago found out out of the blue that it is closing down permanently, so we are now looking for an alternative location. We hope we can find something – please keep an eye out on our Gigs page for any updates on that.)

That’s it – whew! Lots going on. Thanks for reading this far, and we hope you have been enjoying “Carpe Noctem” for the last couple of months (and if not, you clearly haven’t gotten it yet – so, what are you waiting for?? :). We also hope to see some of you in Cincinnati and maybe in Chicago.

Best regards,
Ivan, Patrick, Todd, Dane
The Madeira

Hello all:

The brand new Surfguitar101.com podcast features a 15-minute interview with Ivan, Dane and Todd (conducted just over two weeks ago in SoCal as part of the Surf Guitar 101 Convention), two songs from our new CD “Carpe Noctem,” as well as an additional hour of some amazing surf music from around the world! (The second part of our interview will appear in the next podcast, in about a month.) As you’ll hear, we had a really good day – and show – before the interview and were in a happy and relaxed mood! Huge thanks go to Danny Snyder (the TomorrowMen, Meshugga Beach Party, Pollo del Mar) for doing such a wonderful job with the interview, and to Lady Reverb for hosting a great show and including us in it!

The podcast can be found here. It is also downloadable direct from iTunes for free – just search within iTunes for surfguitar101.com and download episode 3.

We hope you enjoy it.
The Madeira

-- The Madeira

Our new CD Carpe Noctem has been officially out for about three weeks, and the initial feedback and informal reviews are all extremely good! See several of them at Surf Guitar 101.

For Carpe Noctem ordering information, please surf on over to Double Crown. The CD is also now available through CD Baby and for download only through Amazon – for only $8.99!! Two tracks from the album, “The Saracen” and “Undercurrents,” are available for your listening pleasure on our Myspace page, and or you can download them at our new official website at themadeira.net on the Songs page.

In order to get more people hip to the greatness of Carpe Noctem :) , we will be playing the CD release show at the Melody Inn this Friday, June 27th. We’ll be featuring a ton of songs off the new album, which we’ll have for sale (as well as the new t-shirts). Come out and have yourself a great time! (The plan is that we’ll go on third, but this is subject to change).

CD RELEASE SHOW
FRIDAY, JUNE 27th @ THE MELODY INN
(3826 N. Illinois Street, Indianapolis, IN)
w/ATOMIC BOMBAY, RECKLESS EDWARD, THE MELISMATICS
21+ 9:30 p.m.

Our East Coast mini-tour was a total blast and a defnite success! We played to many enthusuiastic surf music fans, and bonded with several fantastic East Coast surf bands. See Ivan’s (lengthy!) report here.
You can also find some show reviews (and photos) by other folks here, here, here (this one has a bunch of pics), and here.

There are also a few videos from our East Coast trek on YouTube now:

• The Saracen in Washington, DC
• Undercurrents in Asbury Park
• Planet of the Apes (partial) in NYC (this last one is a sampler of the Ninth Wave, the Atomic Mosquitos, us and the Coffin Daggers)

We hope to see many of you at the Mel on Friday. After that we’ll start getting ready for our trip to SoCal in early August, which should be amazing!

-- The Madeira

Here we go – our second full-length album “Carpe Noctem” will be officially released on Tuesday, May 27th! It will be initially available exclusively through Double Crown Mail Order (dblcrown.com) – and soon after that you’ll be able to find it pretty much everywhere. It’s taken a lot of hard work to get this CD out and we very much hope you will like what you hear – we love it!

We also hope you like our new website: themadeira.net. At the moment it looks very similar to our old one, but it’s got a lot more bells and whistles that we will take advantage of in the future. The best thing is that there is new content: two new downloadable songs from “Carpe Noctem”; great photos from our March Indy show; a new t-shirt now available for purchase; and complete information for all our upcoming summer shows (plus some nifty fliers!).

Speaking of shows, our East Coast trek is in only six days! Washington, DC, Asbury Park, NJ and New York, NY, joined by some of the finest surf bands around today (see Shows for all the details). It’s our first time playing on the East Coast as a band, and we can’t wait. The bonus for those that come to the gigs is that we expect to have advance copies of “Carpe Noctem” available for sale – you can be among the first people in the world to have the new Madeira CD! Looking beyond this short tour, we will have an Indy CD release show in late June, and then we return to SoCal for a whirlwind three-day tour in early August. Lots of activity ahead (by our standards, anyway!), and we sincerely hope to see many of you during all these travels.

Have a great summer, and enjoy our new CD!

-- The Madeira

Hello all!

We’ve been very quiet for quite a few months now, but that doesn’t mean that nothing has been happening! In fact, A LOT has been happening.

First, some good news: the Madeira is featured in the April issue of Guitar Player magazine in a column “MySpace Hordes” where editor-in-chief Michael Molenda picks his favorite eight MySpace artists every month. He gave the song “Cordoba” a very nice (albeit short) review – see the Press page.

Second, our new CD is almost done!!! It will be titled “Carpe Noctem”, and it will be coming out on Double Crown Records in June. We recorded it between Christmas and New Year’s, and we are just waiting for our engineer to mix it (the mixing will begin in about a week or two). We are very excited about it, and think it’s even better than “Sandstorm”! It’s definitely a more diverse album. The few people that have heard the songs (rough mixes) have been very enthusiastic about them (thanks, Mom & Dad! :). We’ll be putting up a couple of new tracks on our websites as soon as they’re mixed and mastered – so probably in mid-to-late-April. For the moment check out the front cover of the album on the front page of the site and take a listen to an album preview, featuring a mix of snippets of the album songs – we hope you like what you see and hear!

Third, after a pretty slow ’07, we have much more live activity planned for ’08. We begin with an Indy show on March 28th, then follow that in late May with a 3-day tour East Coast tour (Washington, DC, New Jersey or Maryland, and New York). Then in early August we hit Southern California again for three shows (San Diego, Hermosa Beach, Huntington Beach). Go to the Shows page on the site for further details. We’ll be joined by many fantastic surf bands for all these shows, including the Cocktail Preachers, the Coffin Daggers, the Atomic Mosquitos, Pollo del Mar, Secret Samurai, the Detonators, the Aquasonics, the Insect Surfers, and many more. It’s gonna be FUN!!! We hope to add a few more local shows throughout the year, so keep an eye on our gig page, and we hope to see you at one of these gigs this year!

That’s it! Thanks for supporting our band, and have a great Spring!

-- Ivan

Great news!! Pipeline Instrumental Magazine Review #73 (Spring ’07) chose “Sandstorm” as one of the three runner-ups for their Album of the Year 2006 award! (The winning CD was “Sonic Traveller” by the veteran instrumental rockers duo Shig & Buzz, and the other two runner-ups were by the long-running Spanish Euro-instro band Los Jets and the younger Spanish surf band The Long Boards.) Given that Pipeline reviewed over 200 surf and instrumental rock CDs in 2006, many of which are excellent, we consider it an honor to be near the very top of that large heap. A BIG thanks, Pipeline!!!

-- Ivan

We hope you're enjoying your summer. Things have been a bit quiet in the Madeira camp lately. Three reasons for that: 1) we're all keeping quite busy this summer, 2) Patrick is not as easily available anymore, and most importantly 3) we're working very hard on the songs for the next album. We have all the songs for the CD at this point (13 in total), and the recording session is booked for December. We're very excited about the new material and feel that the next CD should be a worthy follow-up to "Sandstorm". The best news; you don't have to wait until 2008 to hear the new songs! Read on...

This Saturday, August 11th, we will be returning to Columbus, Ohio for HOT ROD HULA HOP III, held again at Largo's Tavern (see our shows page). There will be vintage cars and, obviously, hot rods aplenty, many 'tiki' vendors, a burlesque show, and most importantly, a LOT of music! We will be joined by six other bands, including two other surf bands (the Coffin Daggers and Daikaiju) and various other exotica, rockabilly and garage acts. We got the prime spot this year, 9:45-10:30 pm, and our setlist will be heavy on the songs from our forthcoming album, many of them getting only their second live airing, and one or two being played live for the first time. It's gonna be a GREAT time, and we very much hope you can join us.

This will probably be our last show of the year, as we'll be concentrating on getting the new material ready for the recording. But we hope to be doing a lot more next year once the next album is out.

We hope to see you this Saturday, and thanks for all your support!

-- Ivan

We have some good news and some not so good. First of all, the good news: the Madeira will be playing in Indy again this SATURDAY, MARCH 10th at MO'S LOADING DOCK. And it will be a special show due to two factors, one of them being the unveiling of SIX new songs (two of which are covers) destined for our second full-length album. (That's in addition to "Surf Fidelis" and "The Saracen," two post-Sandstorm original songs we have been performing for some time now, and which you will again hear this Saturday if you're there.)

The not so good news, and the second factor making this show a bit special, is that this will be our last local Indy appearance for some time. The reason being that our rhythm guitarist Patrick and his wife Kathie will be moving to San Diego, CA the day after this show. They have been hoping to move to California for a while, and the time was finally right. We are truly happy for them, as it's an amazingly beautiful place. But we are also a bit sad for us, as Patrick has been an integral part of the Madeira family for three years now, and what a three years it's been! HOWEVER! All is not lost, as Patrick will continue to provide his signature lightning-fast strum and that big wet reverb chunk for our band. He will fly back to Indy every so often so we can continue - cause it just wouldn't be the same without our Patrick! We will still play the scheduled Lafayette, IN show in April, and we have a couple of summer engagements that are currently in the planning. And we still hope to record the follow-up to Sandstorm at some point this year, hopefully in the Fall. Still, his physical distance will necessitate some adjustments and we will be forced to cut back on our live engagements. All the more reason to make sure that you come see us this Saturday!

Have a great Spring (may it get here SOON), and we hope to see many of you this Saturday!

Thanks to those of you that came to the Melody Inn show on January 26th. It was a big success, and we DEFINITELY won over the mostly-surf-uneducated crowd, who, it’s safe to say, were simply blown away. Expect more of these mixed bills in the future given how well this one went.

Our “Live Track of the Week” giveaway is now finished. It’s been a lot of fun to do, and has gotten more people to check out our websites and introduce them to our music. The winners were:

• Alexander Hoffman (Valley Village, CA)
• Joel Edwards (Redlands, CA)
• Douglas Paulin (Ventura, CA)
• Adam Smith (Wallsand, Australia)
• Steven Van Brussel (Destelbergen, Belgium)
• Patrick LeJenue (Port Saint Lucie, FL)
• Gil Romero (Denver, CO)

We have put up all six live tracks (plus a bonus!) on our website now, so you can listen to them to your heart’s content!

The next show will be at Mo’s Loading Dock in Indianapolis on Saturday, March 10th. We are hoping to have a couple of special surprises that show. One thing which we will not keep as a surprise is that we will very likely unveil several new songs that night, maybe as many as six, all destined to make our next album! We hope to see you there! Meanwhile, enjoy the rest of your winter – may it be mild!

Hello all;

Things have been a bit quiet on the Madeira front lately, so we thought we'd fill you in on what's going on. First of all, we have a show coming up on Friday, January 26th at the Melody Inn in Indy. We'll be playing with three other non-surf (though, we're told, very good) bands. Stay tuned for more info on that.

Second, we have been hard at work on new songs for our second full-length CD. So far we have six new originals that are either more-or-less finished or close, and a few others that are still gestating. Also, we selected two rare covers for the next CD, as well. We're very excited about the new material, and fully expect the next CD to be a worthy follow-up to Sandstorm.

Third, we've revamped our web sites a little bit. Our MySpace site now has two different songs from Sandstorm (Burning Mirage and El Caliph), so for those of you that still haven't purchased the CD you can now hear a bit more of it for free. Also, we added two live videos: Ricochet, from Sandstorm, and Surf Fidelis, one of our new originals. As far as our main website, we just added a live track from our July show at the Huntington Beach International Surfing Museaum - Dick Dale's Night Rider. Check them out - we hope you like them.

Finally, we would like to take this opportunity to announce a giveaway. Here is how it works. Every week for the next six weeks we will put a different live track on this website. Take a listen to the live track of the week and then go to our MySpace site and leave a comment, mentioning the song by name. Each monday one person who left a comment about the live track of the week will be selected at random to receive a copy of our 'Ruins' CD-EP. The giveaway is now open, so check out the current live track of the week and leave us a comment to become eligible for the giveaway. The first winner will be selected Monday, December 18th, and then every Monday after that for five weeks. Good luck!

That's all. We wish you a very Merry Christmas and hope to see many of you in 2007!

-- The Madeira

Hello all. We hope you are all having a great summer. Ours has been amazing so far! First of all, our California tour was a huge success! We played to a lot of people, sold a lot of CDs, and had a great, great time. A lot more people know about the Madeira than before – mission accomplished! Check out four pages (!) of reviews (many of them positively raving) on Surf Guitar 101. We hope to post our own tour report soon, as well. Keep an eye on our website for that.

Second, Ruins, our new CD-EP is now available from Double Crown, and will soon be available through most internet retailers.

Third, Pipeline Rock Instrumental Magazine from the UK, the oldest and most respected surf/instro music zine, has a lengthy interview with Ivan in their newest issue (#71, Summer 2006), talking about both the Madeira and the Space Cossacks. In addition, they gave “Sandstorm” a raving review AND both editors, Dave Burke and Alan Taylor, ranked “Sandstorm” second on their current favorites playlists! If you wish to purchase the issue in the USA, Double Crown has it for sale for only $6.75.

Fourth, we want to thank the organizers of the Atomic Frolic in Champaign, IL and Hot Rod Hula Hop II in Columbus, OH for including us. We had a great time, and we very much hope that both festivals will continue running for many years to come. We definitely appreciated both the professionalism as well as sheer heaploads of fun at both fantastic events. Anytime you want us to come again, just holler!

Finally, we revamped the Videos page of our website. All the videos are now available on YouTube, and are linked to there from our site. We also added a few new videos. We hope you like what you see.

Enjoy the rest of your summer.

-- Ivan

Our “All That’s Left Are Ruins” California Tour begins in just a few weeks! We will be playing eight shows between July 21st and July 30th, starting in San Diego, finishing in San Francisco, and hitting many stops along the way (for a complete listing of the gigs, click on the Shows button on the left). Joining us will be nearly a 'who’s who’ of modern surf music, including Slacktone (for three shows), Pollo Del Mar, Insect Surfers, The Pyronauts, The Neptunes, The Glasgow Tiki Shakers, and The Sand Devils.

Double Crown Records will be releasing our brand-new, 5-track CD-EP “Ruins” just in time for the tour. The official release will be in August, but you will be able to buy the CD from us at our California shows. This is an all-covers release, with the following tracks:

• The Victor (Dick Dale – USA)
• Dilmohammed (The Treble Spankers – Holland)
• Almoraima (Paco de Lucia – Spain)
• Intruder #1 (The Surf Coasters – Japan)
• Intruder (The Surf Coasters – Japan)

The total length is close to 15 minutes. These tracks were recorded last summer during the “Sandstorm” sessions, and they reflect some of our influences and our appreciation of fellow purveyors of exotic and hard-hitting surf music.

We very much hope we will get to see many of you this month. Have a great summer!

-- Ivan

On Sunday, February 19th DJ Tom Stanger will be devoting much of his one-hour show Beyondo Mondo Record Party to the music of the Madeira and the Space Cossacks. You can hear his show at 11 pm EST on 91.3 from Akron, OH, or you can listen online at www.913thesummit.com. Tune in and check it out, it's gonna be rockin'!

Also, for those of you still in the Valentine's Day mood, we can recommend the world's only 'zombie romance' movie Zombie Honeymoon! This is an highly-acclaimed indie movie (five stars on Amazon) that was released on DVD on Valentine's Day, and has a soundtrack chock-full of surf-music, including the Space Cossacks' "Black Sand"! Other surf bands featured are the Fathoms, Los Mel-Tones, the Brimstones, and a few others.

Zombie Honeymoon at Amazon.com

(For more multimedia with good music, pick up "Kelly Slater's Pro Surfer" video game, with a soundtrack featuring the Space Cossacks' "Solaris Stomp", in addition to songs by other well-known surf musicians such as Pearl Jam, Ben Harper, Jack Johnson and Perry Farrell...?)

We got a couple of nice write-ups in Indianapolis press recently. IndianapolisMusic.net chose the Madeira as their Artist Of The Week, and ran a lengthy story on us. It was supposed to tie in to our CD release show on 1/27, but alas, as you know, no show for us. However, we'll still happily take the publicity! IndyMusic.net is also running an Artist Of The Week ad in Nuvo, one of two Indianapolis free weeklies. Check out the article here. As they say, when it rains, it pours! Here's the other feature, in the InTake Weekly, the other Indianapolis free weekly magazine.

-- Ivan

We have some interesting links for you. First of all, the actual island of Madeira has discovered, well, The Madeira! Check out this very interesting blog entry at Blog.Thoughts.Madeira. Hmmm…maybe a tour is not too far off! The 3rd Eye Surfer blog has picked up the review of our new CD from surf fan/musician Danny Snyder. You can read it here.

And here are two more places you can purchase our new CD 'Sandstorm’:

• ZptdudaMusic.com
• CD Baby

-- Ivan

Yesterday Dane, our drummer, did something very drummer-like - he fell of a bike and broke his arm. The doctor put him in a sling and a splint for two weeks, and told him no drumming for 4-6 weeks. He should be fine after that, but the upshot is that the Madeira will not be playing our Indianapolis CD release show on the 27th.

We don't know yet if the club will want to cancel the show or proceed with it anyway, with Destination: Earth! and the Reluctant Aquanauts, and maybe add one more band. Stay tuned, and we will let you know as soon as we find out.

We're all very disappointed, as you can imagine, especially since this was our CD release show. But we very much hope we can reschedule it once Dane is fully healed. We will keep you posted.

You can send get-well greetings to Dane (if any of you are inclined to do so) at dane.carter@gmail.com

-- Ivan

I’m very happy to announce that the official release show for our new CD 'Sandstorm’ (Double Crown) will take place on FRIDAY, JANUARY 27th at The Melody Inn, in Indianapolis. Also performing will be Chicago’s trad-meisters THE RELUCTANT AQUANAUTS (their first appearance in Indianapolis) and Vector Sigma’s DESTINATION: EARTH! (their first public performance for the citizens of the third planet in over a year!!) This is gonna be a fun, fun, FUN show, and you should not miss it! Book those flights now, get on the train, start hitch-hiking, whatever it takes! :) Of course, I’m kidding, but we do hope to see at least some of you at this show. For show details, head over to the shows page.

-- Ivan

Our new CD Sandstorm is now available from Double Crown Records! Please check the Merchandise page for ordering information.

Ivan’s old band The Space Cossacks launch into orbit AGAIN! November 15th unveiled “Never Mind The Bolsheviks – The Best of the Space Cossacks” on MuSick Recordings. It features 24 songs, culled from their two now-out-of-print albums as well as some previously unreleased and live tracks. Check out more info about it at the Space Cossacks’ new website (soon to be fully updated).

-- Ivan

We’re rapidly approaching the official release of our debut CD, titled "Sandstorm"! It will be available December 13th from the Double Crown website and soon after from iTunes, Amazon.com and other internet retailers.

Sandstorm Track Listing:

1. Sun & Sand
2. Sandstorm!
3. Cordoba
4. El Caliph
5. Burning Mirage
6. Rogue Wave
7. The Secret Route
8. Desert Drums
9. Ricochet
10. Crescent Moon
11. Across the Dunes
12. Express To Baghdad
13. The Oasis

We will have a CD release show at the The Melody Inn on Friday, January 27th. More details are to come. In the meantime, you can check out the sister magazine of Double Crown Records, The Continental, issue #12, which features our studio recording of The Treble Spankers’ "Dilmohammed" on its sampler CD as well as my interview with the remarkable Norwegian surf band The Beat Tornados, The issue also has a great interview with Satan’s Pilgrims as well as an amazing collection of songs on the sampler CD, including cuts by Phantom Frank (The Phantom Four, ex-Treble Spankers), The Nebulas, The Beat Tornados, The Bitch Boys, Pollo Del Mar, The Cocktail Preachers, The Space Cossacks, The Sellcancers, and many, many more. The issue is available from the Double Crown website. Enjoy the Fall, and check back often for more news.

-- Ivan

Just posted some pics of the Halloween show at the Melody Indy. Head over to the photos section to check them out!

-- Brian

We agreed to let an Indy indie webzine Jake Magazine use two of our tracks (Cordoba and Burning Mirage) for their October issue. So, if you want to hear an album preview, go here: http://geocities.com/jake_magazine/

-- Ivan

Hello everyone! Sorry for the long delay in news updates. We’ve had a very busy and productive couple of months. The July shows in Indy and Chicago were a big success, and we got a fantastic reception – big thanks to all of you that came out for those. If you weren’t there check out the Videos and Photos to see what things were like. Quite a surf party!

Following these two shows we were completely focused on one task: recording our debut CD. We recorded all the tracks (17 altogether!) on July 29th and 30th, with only a few overdubs added later. Since then we have been busy trying to get the mixes right. We ended up abandoning all the mixes we did on July 31st, and starting from scratch on August 20th and 21st. These were MUCH better. We returned to the studio for some tweaks on September 21st, and the mixes are almost completely done at this point. One more hour in the studio will do it, and we hope to do that very soon. The recordings turned out extremely well, powerful and energetic, and we can’t wait for the CD to be out. Ferenc (Dobronyi, of Pollo Del Mar ) is currently working on the artwork, and we hope to have everything completed in the next three weeks. Double Crown Records is shooting for a mid-December release date, which seems an eternity away! But it’ll be here before we know it. (Incidentally, we decided to take four of the recorded tracks for a future EP release rather than including them on the CD – otherwise, it would have been almost an hour long. Stay tuned for more info about that.) Finally, we have another Indy show coming up. On Friday, October 28th we’ll be returning to the coolest live-music venue in Indy, the historic The Melody Inn. We’ll be playing with three non-surf bands, so it’ll be chance to spread the 'gospel’ to the infidels! We hope you can join us for that. Our next show after that will hopefully be the CD-release show, sometime in December or January. That’s it for the moment. Enjoy your Fall, and check back frequently for the updates on the progress of the CD. PS Please check out our new Buy section where you’ll find some brand new Madeira t-shirts and stickers for sale. Hope you like 'em!

-- Ivan

We recently had a major shake-up in the band line-up. Due to increasing family obligations, Scott Waddell has departed the Madeira. We wish him all the best in the future, and will miss playing with him. We were fortunate enough to find another talented bass player with a love of the reverbed sounds in the person of Todd Fortier. Todd is from Indianapolis, and has been playing bass for over twenty years. He loves his bass gear, and has played many different styles of music over the years. This is his first surf music band and we are greatly looking forward to reaching new milestones with him in our ranks, including recording our debut CD, slated for July. Todd’s premiere performance with us will be on lucky Friday the 13th (of May) in Hillsdale, Michigan. Stay tuned for more news about both Todd as well as our upcoming recording session. New gigs! Head over to the shows page and check them out!

-- Ivan

Several reviews were added to the press section.

-- Brian

Go to the press section and check out an interview with Ivan Pongracic that was featured in the Hillsdale Collegian.

-- Brian

Another mp3 has been posted! The song is called Burning Mirage and it kills! Go to the songs section and check it out!

-- Brian

I’ve just received updated recordings of the mp3’s from Ivan. These were taken from a recent rehearsal session. Go to the songs section and check them out!

-- Brian

We've had a very good Fall, with several shows and a bunch of new songs added to the setlist. Our next show is on Saturday, 22nd of January, in Ivan and Scott's place of residence, the glorious Hillsdale, Michigan! We hope some of you will be there. After this show the band will take some time off to allow Dane AND Scott to help their wives deliver their new babies! This will the second for both of them. Big congratulations! Look for us again in May or June, once our rhythm section has caught up a bit on sleep. Meanwhile, we have some exciting additions and changes planned for the site, including some new songs plus a few surprises. Stay put and please check back often. Thanks, and we hope you have a great winter and Spring!

-- Ivan

Hello all; After a brief down-time, The Madeira will be playing a couple of shows over the next month or so. We’ll be playing our first all-ages show on SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 13th, with longtime local faves RED LEADER (not a surf band), among others. This is a somewhat last-minute addition to our schedule. The show will take place at BUBBA’S BOWLING CLUB (what a name!!) in downtown Indy, and we’ll be going on very early, between 7 and 8pm.

The band has been hard at work on some new original material, and we will probably unveil some of it at this event! A bit down the road, we have the return of the 'SURF ROCK NIGHT’! The MELODY INN will be hosting a special encore presentation of 'SURF ROCK NIGHT,’ which will be held on FRIDAY, DECEMBER 10th. Joining the Madeira will be the premier American SHADOWS tribute band THE TROUBADOURS, as well as the not-so-surfy-but-still-really-fun-and-rockin’-in-a-sorta-surfy-way DESTINATION: EARTH! Check out some video footage of the Madeira and Destination: Earth! from the last 'SURF ROCK NIGHT’ here. Hope to see some of you at the shows, and please invite as many others as possible!

-- Ivan

I've updated the page with photos and videos from the second gig on August 6th. Scroll down and check them out!

-- Brian

I’ve just received 5 new MP3’s from the band. Cordoba and El Caliph are brand new to the site. The rest (Express to Bagdad, Intruder, and The Victor) are updated recordings of the songs previously found here. Don’t forget the second show this Friday!

-- Brian

Here are two more tracks to check out, both from the same (first) practice session. The first is Dick Dale's rarely heard The Victor. The second is Dilmohammed by The Treble Spankers from Holland. The Treble Spankers were one of the best surf bands of the nineties, and they are sorely missed. We hope we did both DD and them justice with our versions of these great songs.

-- Ivan

Hi, this is Ivan Pongracic, formerly of The Space Cossacks and currently of the Troubadours. I'm extremely happy to introduce my new surf band, The Madeira. The Madeira has Dane Carter on drums, Scott Waddell on bass, Patrick O'Connor on rhythm guitar, and myself on lead guitar. Dane and Scott are also in the Troubadours with me, and Patrick is also the lead guitar player in Destination: Earth! from Indianapolis (D:E! is still together and they'll continue to subjugate the Earthlings throughout the Midwest).

We spent a weekend in mid-April practicing for the first time, and sparks were flying! I can honestly say that I have never played with a finer group of musicians than this, and I'm just giddy with excitement over the possibilities. I'm also really happy to be getting back to surf music proper after playing only Shadows covers for the last four years (the Troubadours, BTW, will also continue). We fully intend to make this an original band and we're already working on three new originals with more to come soon. But for now it's mostly covers, though not your usual covers. We'll be doing some Space Cossacks stuff, some New World Relampagos, some rarer first wave things and even some third wave songs by The Treble Spankers and the Surf Coasters. Oh, and then there's that Paco de Lucia cover! We're aiming to develop the whole North African (Morocco, etc.) and Southern Spain (Andalucia, flamenco stuff) connection to the surf sound - that's the MO. Still keeping the feet firmly planted in the trad sounds, but with the eyes aimed at the horizons, trying to peer a bit beyond. It promises to be interesting, if nothing else!

This site is very bare at the moment, but there are two mp3s available for download. Both songs are covers: "Express to Bagdad" originally by The Atlantics (from '64) and "Intruder" originally by the Surf Coasters. The first seemed quite topical as well as effectively showcasing the band chops, and the second is just a mind-blowing tune that seemed like a really nice challenge - hopefully we lived up to it! The recording is from our first practice session in a very hi-fi-hostile environment. It was recorded in Dane's basement with bare hard walls and the sound bouncing all over the place. In addition, we could only record on two tracks so we had two mics for four instruments. (Yes, that's what they call an ambient recording.) And to top it off, we didn't really have the time to ensure the best mic instrument balance, and as a result the rhythm guitar got buried (fortunately Patrick set up the recording so he can't claim a conspiracy to keep him quiet! :). But we're quite pleased by the results, and it'll give you some idea of what this band is all about. We hope to have a few more mp3s from the same practice session to put up in the next few days.

Finally, we would like to announce our first gig. It'll be on Saturday, June 5th, at Zanies Too in Indianapolis, with The Volcanos and the Troubadours (the same venue where the Troubadours played with Destination: Earth! and the Nebulas last year). So, you'll get the hard-driving exotic-tinged surf of the Madeira, groovy trad surf of the near-legendary Volcanos AND the finest (well, the only) American Shadows cover band! Consider this an invitation for people from all over the country - we'll try to make it a memorable show and worth your airfare or long hours on the road! I hope at least a few of you can make it.

Thanks for reading and listening, and hope to see all of you over the next few years.

-- Ivan