July 10,2007
The Underground Railroad has been awarded Best
Avant-Garde/Experimental band by Fort Worth Weekly. A big thank you to everyone who voted! Congratulations also to our good buddies Addnerim for winning Artist of the
Year and Best Hard Rock Band.
May 12, 2006
UR keyboardist (sometimes drummer)
Kurt Rongey has released his third solo album. It’s called With Form It Threatens
Silence and is available by digital download only from Mindawn.
July 12, 2006
We’re happy to announce that we’ll be playing the New Jersey Proghouse on Sept. 23 as
part of our mini-tour. Check back for more dates as they’re confirmed.
Bill will be playing at the Fort Worth Modern Art Museum on July 15th and 16th.
He and several musicians will be improvising with Contemporary Dance Fort Worth.
Also, July
15th Bill will be guesting with Yells at Eels in Fort Worth at the Metronome Collective.
Show starts at 10pm. BYOB
Our latest release, The Origin
of Consciousness is now available through itunes, Rhapsody, and Real.com
May 27, 2006
The Underground Railroad has received some interest from
venues in the northeastern US about performances in mid-to-late
September. We are currently
considering the arrangements to make this happen. It’s a real possibility.
July 18
The Underground Railroad has recently accepted a spot at Progday 2005! This amazing outdoor event happens Labor Day
weekend in the Arcadian splendour of Storybook Farm, near Raleigh, ND. We’ll be the second act on Day 1 of the
festival, Saturday, September 4.
Being in the company of other amazing bands such as Happy the Man and
White Willow is certainly a matter of pride. Due to scheduling conflicts, John Livingston won’t be able to play that show,
but skins-dynamo David Gryder (Covenant, Storm at Sunrise, Mad Jack McMaddd) has
graciously agreed to sit in.
The band wishes to thank the number of people who picked
up the new CD, The Origin of
Consciousness, at NEARfest.
We’ve been pleasantly surprised at the extraordinary enthusiasm of old
fans, particularly after such a long period between albums. So, hey, thanks!
June 28
The Origin of
Consciousness is IN STOCK and available for
purchase. Pre-orders have been shipped, so you people
should see those in the next few days.
If you’re going to be at NEARfest,
you can buy a copy from Bill. He’ll
be wandering out in the lobby and hanging out at Thirteen
of Everything’s table.
March 19
On
short notice, I’ve just received word from esteemed progressive rock radio
host Tom Gagliardi that he will be playing a track from _The Origin of
Consciousness_ tonight on his show The Gagliarchives, 88.9FM/95.1FM in the Philadelphia, PA
& Delaware Valley Region. This will be the first radio exposure for the album. Those
who would like to listen in can do so streaming over the net live from 9pm-1am central time. Visit http://www.gagliarchives.com/ to find
out how. The show will also be repeated Tuesday from 10am to 2pm central time on Aural Moon, a superb internet radio station
accessible at www.auralmoon.com.
A big thank you to Tom, who is a great supporter of
adventurous music on the radio and has been very generous in his air time to
_Through and Through_.
Kurt Rongey
March 15
The new album is done! We're
looking for a label to release it. Hopefully we'll know who will be putting
it out and when in the next few weeks.
March 6
Hi
folks,
Here are a few important announcements from the Railroad:
Kurt Rongey's first two solo albums are available for download at www.mindawn.com. BOOK IN HAND and THAT WAS PROPAGANDA are both
excellent albums that have garnered praise from around the world. These
albums have been out of print for a while, so for those of you who have
written to ask about how to get them, here's your chance. Mindawn offers the
progressive rock fan an audio download quality superior to that of Napster or
Rhapsody. You can sample any track in its entirety three times before
deciding whether or not to purchase it. Pretty cool.
Plus, the artists get paid more than they would through many of the other
download/distribution services. Also, look for KURTRONGEY.com to be up and
running in the near future. You'll be able to get lyrics for the above
mentioned albums, plus there'll no doubt be info on the upcoming release of
his NEW solo album.
THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT
Thanks to all of you who have come to UR gigs over the last year, or who have written to
let us know that you've enjoyed the first album. AND, while I'm thinking
about it: thanks to the young lady who appears during a fan interview segment
on the Nektar live DVD for
wearing an Underground
Railroad t-shirt!
Thanks, John, Matt, Kurt & Bill
February 28
For
those who have wondered what Kurt Rongey’s solo
albums are like, he has made _Book In Hand_
(1991) and _That Was Propaganda_ (1998)
available for digital download at www.mindawn.com.
Both are available in true CD quality "FLAC" format. Full tracks
can be auditioned up to three times free of charge to see if you really like
them or not.
Book in Hand - "...highly recommended to those who want to know what
real progressive music sounds like...one of the best albums of the last six
months..." - Background, 1991
That Was Propaganda - "It's easily one of the best progressive releases
of the year, maybe of all time. No kidding.... If you like complex symphonic
keyboard work, I think you'll agree with me that this is the greatest."
- Fred Trafton, Gibraltar Encyclopedia of
Progressive Rock
www.mindawn.com/artists/KurtRongey
January 21
Happy
New Year! We're really, truly almost finished mixing the new album, The
Origin of Consciousness. No UR gigs are scheduled at the moment.
Bill Pohl will be playing with Mark Cook, Kris Swenson,
Eddie Dunlap and others at the Museum of
Modern Art in Fort Worth on Feb.
11 at 7pm. This will be another improvised collaboration
with Contemporary Dance/Fort Worth. Bill has done several performances with
these people over the last few years at "The Modern".
October 28,
2004
Thanks
to everyone who came to see us at the Ridglea
Theater Sunday night. We had a great gig and enjoyed seeing you guys. We
hope those of you who won the doorprize Laser's Edge cds are enjoying them.
Mark Cook's improv group was great. That guy, Bob Fisher, sure did some
awesome alto sax and flute work.
See you Friday night in Denton
at Cool Beans.
September 7,
2004
The
album is almost done. Really. Rough mixes now sport
the vocal parts, which have been left until the end. Just a few background
vox to add, some mixing, some mastering, some cover decision, and we're done.
Check out the gigs page for some upcoming shows.
July 17, 2004
Ken
Golden of The Laser's Edge,
our label boss, has kindly donated a bunch of Laser's Edge releases to be
given away as door prizes at Ridglea Theater's Sunday night UR gigs! We'll hold drawings throughout the evening
for recent releases by Island, McGill Manring & Stevens and other L.E.
recording artists.
See ya Sunday!
Bill
June 6, 2004
Hi there....
The Underground
Railroad will be
playing the Ridglea on Sunday
June 13. The show will start at 7pm.
We're going to start doing Prog Night just once a month instead of trying to
do it every week, so this will be it for June.
We'd love to see you there.
Bill
May 19, 2004
Until
further notice, Prog Night at the Ridglea will be held only on the first Sunday
of each month. The next one will be June 6.
UR played a gig with Shaolin Death Squad the other
night. They are great. Go see them. Thick, rich, mind-bathing chords and
harmonies with shifting meters... cool guys, too.
May 14, 2004
Election
time!
No, not that statist farse scheduled for November! I'm referring to the very
important Fort Worth Weekly Music
Awards. That's right. This Sunday, May 16, will be The Underground Railroad's last gig before voting ends for this year's
big primary. As some of you know, we're in the running for best Hard Rock
band. Not sure why. I've ASSUMED it's us. People seem to think it's us. No
progressive rock category apparently. For all I know there's an actual hard
rock band running around town calling themselves The Underground Railroad, and it's they who are in the polls. Wouldn't we
look like fools at an awards ceremony? "...and the winner for best hard
rock group... The Underground
Railroad!"
and we stand up and start high-fiving each other and crying and making our
way to the podium only to see the real Underground Railroad is being handed a nice trophy or Subway coupon
book. So, we're playing at The Ridglea
Theater Sunday, May 16. The FWWeekly will provide an official ballot box
and a bunch of ballots for our friends to fill out. If you can't make the
gig, maybe you could fill out one of those ballots (they're in each issue for
the next couple weeks) and mail it in. The music starts around 7pm. Also playing that night will be Shaolin Death
Squad. After hearing a two-song demo of these guys I'm eager to check out a
whole set.
I hope to see you at the polls.
Take care,
Bill
May 5, 2004
I
noticed today that The Underground
Railroad has been
nominated for the Fort Worth Weekly
Music Awards. Pick up the issue that came out today and you'll see us listed
in the Hard Rock(!) category. The voting ends May
31, so if you'd like to see us win Best Hard Rock Band for 2004, then mail in
the ballot contained in the May 5 issue on page 46. Maybe you can vote
online. I don't know.
We'll be playing Friday night at the Ridglea
if you can't remember what we sound like and would like to double check
before voting.
May 4, 2004
I heard that The Underground Railroad is being looked at for Fort Worth Weekly's
best bands of poll. I don't have all the details, but it looks like someone
from the Weekly will be at one of these next couple gigs. As always, we'd
love to see you at these shows. We're playing with Minefield this Friday, the 7th at 9pm in the Ridglea
Theater lounge. Spoonfed Tribe will be headlining downstairs in the big
auditorium.
The following Sunday, the 9th, will be Prog Night with Outside In and Mad Jack McMaddd. That show will run from 7-10pm.
Take it easy,
Bill
May 3, 2004
April 29, 2004
Prog
Night at the Ridglea is back, and
back with a vengeance. May 2nd it's Outside In and The
Underground Railroad. The music starts at 7pm and finishes up around 10pm. There's a full bar, comfy sofa seating, and a
healthy dose of progressive rock with captivating video projection by Larry
Cross.
See you there.
Bill
April 22, 2004
As
Elton John says, Saturday Night's alright for fightin'. It's also alright for
coming to the Ridglea Theater and
seeing The Underground
Railroad. The
music starts around 9pm. We'll be playing upstairs as usual.
See you there!
Bill
March 29, 2004
Our
good friend and brilliant clarinetist, Chris Forrest, died this morning. He'd
been fighting a brain tumor for the last couple years. There are some
recordings of improvisations he, Dave Haley, Eddie Dunlap and I back in '99 here. Great guy, great musician.
We'll miss him.
March 8, 2004
The
weekly prog night ritual will resume this Sunday, March 14 at the Ridglea Theater. Also, we'll be
playing at Division One in Arlington on March 25th as part of a progressive rock
showcase which they'll hopefully decide to book on a regular basis.
Attendance, of course, will be their deciding factor, so please come down
there and help make the club seem full.
March 5, 2004
Thanks
to all who came to the Ridglea
Theater last Friday night and helped make it a great gig for us. Here are some photos from
the show. Once again, Larry Cross was spot on with this digital video projection.
February 20,
2004
Underground Railroad sighting in mainstream press!
On
page 16 of the Jan.'04 issue of Classic
Rock magazine (the one with Robert Plant on the cover) there's a small
feature called Websites that Rock. One of the two sites mentioned is Fred
Trafton's Gibralter Encyclopedia of Progressive
Rock. They show a picture of the home page which at the time was
displaying a nice big advertisement for Prog Night at the Ridglea Theater. It's got our photo
and logo on there. Kinda cool.
The thumbnail links to the picture in it's entirety,
but you've probably already figured that out.
January 12, 2004
Happy
New Year! Recording for The Origin of Consciousness
is now moving foward quickly. The completed piano and drum parts have been on
tape for some time with a scratch track containing everything else. As we're
piling on the new guitar, bass and synth tracks it's exciting to be able to
eliminate the scratch track and begin to really HEAR the finished piece.
Playing this stuff live on a regular basis helps us sharpen and develop the
parts, too. That's something we didn't really get to do the first time around
with T&T.
Speaking of gigs, thanks to everyone who has supported the Ridglea Theater Prog Nights.
Last night's was a success. Nice turnout and everyone played great. Next
week, the 18th, is Nervewerks and Mad Jack McMaddd(d). The week
after will be UR and Minefield, a
trio featuring Warr
Guitar virtuoso Mark
Cook from 99 Names of God.
December 18,
2003
From
the D/FW Prog Yahoo! Group,
Fred Trafton writes:
Regarding December 21st - you may see some ads around mentioning Mad Jack
McMaddd and Script playing that evening. Unfortunately, we just found out
last night that Script has (once again) broken up, and will be unable to
attend. However, we will instead be presenting Jazz/Prog/Retro band de Sonata
in their place. I haven't heard them yet myself, so I can't say much about
them. But come join us for a night of Jazzy Prog with Mad Jack McMaddd and de
Sonata.
Regards, Fred Trafton
December 8,
2003
Recording
for The Origin of Consciousness continues. Kurt has finished all the piano parts. Next to be
recorded will be guitar and synth. We'll start that this week.
Sunday Prog Nights at the Ridglea
continue. Next week we'll be playing with Minefield. This band features Mark Cook from 99 Names of God.
November 18,
2003
Despite
the 16th starting off at 5:45 a.m. in my underwear chasing our dog Barney around
the backyard in order to get a dead OWL out of his powerful maw, the UR gig at The
Ridglea went really well. Nice turnout; thanks for coming! Again, we
played with 99 Names of God, who
did a fine set. They've become a quartet now, having added a percussionist.
Our set consisted of most of the new album. We've got a couple more tunes to
add to the set before we'll be playing the whole thing. We'll be there again
next Sunday, the 23rd. We hope to see you there. The shows start just a
little after 6pm.
Thanks, Bill
November 13,
2003
The
shows at the Modern Art Museum last Sunday
went really well. Some cable channel was out there taping it. We'll be doing
it again on the 23rd.
Great UR rehearsal last night.
October 28,
2003
Kurt's run into a couple gear problems while recording
his keyboard tracks for the new album. Meanwhile, rehearsal for live shows
continues with Larry Cross coming up with more video material for the
projecting.
Check the gigs listing in the near future for Mad
Jack McMadddd gigs at The Black Dog tavern in downtown Fort Worth. There should be some shows in November and
December.
I, Bill, will be playing a few shows with drummer
Eddie Dunlap and some other guys at the Fort
Worth Museum of Modern Art. Musician/composer Eric Martin has put
together a short show consisting of musicians and dancers that will run twice
on November 9 and twice on November 23. The shows are at 1:30pm. and 3:30pm each day.
October 11,
2003
Here
we go.
Ok. There have been some changes to the gig dates. Big changes,
and I mean BIG changes.
Here's the deal:
October 19 has been postponed until Nov.16. Heroic Verse and Nervewerks will be there on Oct. 19.
We will NOT be playing on Nov.2 due to the Stryper show there that night. We
will NOT be playing on Nov.9 because Hands and Thirteen of Everything will be
playing there. SOOOO, here's the list of UR gigs that I know about:
How's
that?
--Bill
October 9, 2003
Thanks
to everyone who came out
to the Ridglea Theater on the 5th
for the first of the Sunday Prog shows. 99
Names of God was great, and played lots of stuff from their new album,
Interwoven. Michael
Richardson not
only played bass for Mad Jack McMaddd, but helped out
with sound for the rest of the night. Thanks, Mike.
We played several things from the upcoming album as well as two or three
pieces of Through and Through. We met some nice
folks (stalwart progheads Jeff and Fred to name two) and got to hang out a
bit with some people we hadn't seen for a while. This was Larry Cross' first
gig as UR's projectionist. We're quite keen to keep
working with him. Check Fred Trafton's
Gibralter site for the latest word on who's playing up there at the
Ridglea. UR will be back there again with 99 Names of God on
November 16.
September 27,
2003
Several
new shirt designs have been added to the merchandise
page.
September 24,
2003
News
for September 24 Be sure to check out the 9-24 issue
of Fort Worth Weekly for the feature on Underground Railroad on page 115. Thanks to Ken Shimamoto for his
interest in the band.
September 22,
2003
Hear
ye! Drum tracks for our new album are finished! John
knocked the whole thing out in one ten hour session over the weekend. The engineer accidentally erased
part of "Julian" which we had to redo the next day, but it was a
short bit in between two sections of the song that don't have drums, so it
wasn't really a problem.
September 20,
2003
Cattle
Prog II has been cancelled. Click here to read the
message from Fred Trafton.
September 19,
2003
Kurt
and Jenni Rongey now have three children. Their three year old twins, Emma
and Ellis now have a baby brother, Benjamin. Congratulations!
September 15,
2003
The
Ridglea Theater will be hosting
prog shows on Sunday evenings. Check the gigs page
for more details.
September 4,
2003
Look
for a feature on The Underground
Railroad in an
upcoming issue of Fort Worth Weekly.
The article was written by Ken Shimamoto and should be out in the next couple
weeks. Ken is on the road playing guitar with and writing about
multi-talented bandwrecker Nathan Brown. Check out Nathan's sticksmanship on
the "Telperion" demo by Mad
Jack McMadd (sp?).
September 2,
2003
Starting
in October, UR will be hosting a weekly prog show in one of the
upstairs rooms of the Ridglea Theater.
The idea is to have a couple bands playing every Sunday with an earlier start
time than clubs usually allow; something like 6pm-10. More info coming soon.
August 14, 2003
Great UR rehearsal last night. Played "The Canal at Sunset",
"Love is a Vagabond King", "The Creeper" and the as yet
un-retitled piece "The Milk of Human Kindness".
It's been raining, so it hasn't been as hot during the last few days. Climate
in the practice room is only stifling.
August 8, 2003
Hi.
Bill here. Oh boy, It's hot
in our practice room!!!! It's been close to 108 degrees here in Fort Worth over the last few days, and somehow we practice
in a room with no A.C. I'm going to say that it must've been 135 degrees in
that stupid room tonight. Man! It's like a walk-in kiln. If we were smart
we'd be subsidizing our music with pottery and cobbler baking while we
practice.
Inspired improv tonight with MJM.
July 29, 2003
Underground Railroad will be playing at the second annual CattleProg
fest on November 15, 03. Click here
to go to the new CattleProg site.
July 28, 2003
19
year old bass virtuoso Sam Damask joins Bill Pohl and Dave Gryder in Mad Jack McMaddd, (now
spelled Mmad Jack McMaddd). Check here for some area gigs in the next few months.
They're also on the bill to kick off CattleProg II, November 15.
July 7, 2003
Happy
Birthday, Kurt!
July 4, 2003
Big
rhythm-section news: Mike's out; Matt's in.
The
ultra-talented, heat-hating rock machine that is Michael Richardson has decided to vacate UR's bass chair. Mike's been with the band for over
3 years now, and has contributed a lot of material to the new album. We'll
certainly miss playing with him. Thanks for everything, Mike.
Matt Hembree was the original UR bassist. He's learning the new material right
now, and will play on our second album, The Origin of Consciousness. So, if
you bought Through and Through and didn't know that
we've had a different bassist for the last three years, then it's business as
usual. Matt's a wonderful bassist,
and we can't wait to hear this stuff develop with him holding down the low
end.
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