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LATEST ONION BOY HEADLINES
Onion Boy Records "Shameless Promotion" Winner Shows Off Booty!
Onion Boy Records launches digital street team: Onion Roy's Cool Ranch!
Onion Boy Records Releases View!
OBR Initial Press Release
Visit the official Bryan Beller website at www.bryanbeller.com

January 3, 2004

"SHAMELESS PROMOTION" WINNER
Meet the grand prize winner of the Onion Boy Records "Shameless Promotion" - Jeff Hunnicutt! Click here to see him show off his well-deserved, uh, booty.

ONION ROY'S COOL RANCH
The OBR digital street team is in full effect. Read all about how a typo gave birth to a movement right here.

ONION BOY RECORDS WELCOMES NEW PREFERRED RETAILERS
Bryan Beller's debut solo album View is now available at Guitar Nine Records, home of all titles intricate and instrumental about guitar. (Don't tell 'em it's a bassist's album.) Check out the full list of Onion Boy Preferred Retailers.

October 28, 2003

ONION BOY RECORDS RELEASES VIEW


The wait is over! Bryan Beller's debut solo album View has officially been released, and is now available for purchase at the following online retailers:

Want your View digitally? Click here to go directly to Bryan Beller's View iTunes page!

Domestic Preferred Retailers (** indicates OK for international shipment)


Audiophile Imports
**
Long-time friends of both myself and Keneally, and a great source for music by people who actually know how to play their instruments. (Just use the search function for "beller".)

CD Baby**
The kings of online independent music distribution. Very kind folks as well. I actually played in a college band with the founder, Derek. Nice guy. Nice company.

Guitar Nine Records
Online since 1996, specializing in instrumental guitar recordings of all shapes, sizes, and colors. (Don't tell 'em it's a bassist's solo album.)

The Artist Shop
Long time supporters of independent music for serious music enthusiasts. Look for a listing on the Mike Keneally's Exowax Recordings page.

Abstract Logix
You gotta love an online retailer whose slogan is "The Search For Extraterrestrial Fusion." Who knew that View could qualify for such an exciting new genre? Very interesting site to browse, not just to shop.

Syn-Phonic Music
Utah's progressive rock aficionado Greg Walker has one of the most
comprehensive, internationally oriented music catalogs I've ever seen, and View is a part of it. Click here to go straight to the ordering
instructions page, but don't forget to browse.

Taylor Guitars
Talk about crucial support - if it wasn't for this company's AB-4 Acoustic/Electric Bass, three of the tunes on the album (and perhaps the entire album) would never have seen the light of day. All that, and they're selling the CD from their website, too. Go to Taylorware, click on Videos & CD's, then click on Taylor Clinician CD's.

Pro-Found Music
The online retail storefront of a special division of Favored Nations, Steve Vai's label. Not a bad place to be, methinks.

Amazon
It's their world, we all just shop in it.

International Preferred Retailers

G & S Music
Based in the U.K., and friends of all Zappa and muso-related music fans and artists. Right now, the only place in the U.K. to get View without waiting for Trans-Atlantic shipment - and they're in stock now! Find the listing HERE and find order instructions HERE.

Holland is a special place for lots of loosely connected Zappa-philes, and the Dutch demand has been significant enough to warrant a special deal with one of Holland's most well-known and respected online music stores. If you're in The Netherlands, now get domestic shipment of View just by clicking here.

FretTunes
Australian guitar music enthusiast and Fret Net radio DJ Steve Passiouras took it upon himself to launch a digital music store after his listeners starting asking where they could buy what they were hearing. If you're an Aussie, why not support a local bloke? If you're not, I'm thinking he'll still sell to you.


Having trouble ordering View? Write us and tell us about it. We'll make it all better! (Well, we'll try).

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

August 24, 2003

Bryan Beller, the Los Angeles-based professional bassist known primarily for his work with ex-Frank Zappa guitarist/solo artist Mike Keneally, has created Onion Boy Records, a new label primarily designed as a vehicle to release and promote his debut solo album View.

The street date for View is October 28, 2003.

Onion Boy Records will coordinate distribution of View both domestically and internationally, through established online music retailers such as Audiophile Imports, CD Baby, Pro-Found Music, Amazon, The Artist Shop, and more to be determined at a later date.

Beller will travel to the Northeastern United States to help promote View during the first two weeks of November, in conjunction with his role as a co-clinician (along with Mike Keneally) for Taylor Guitars.

Beller is most widely known as an expert hired gun bassist for the more adventurous rock guitarists of recent times. Sideman credits include Mike Keneally, Steve Vai, Dweezil Zappa, ex-MC5 guitarist Wayne Kramer, and Dream Theater lead singer James LaBrie's project, Mullmuzzler. He also freelances as a writer, and wrote a free-form column for Bass Player Magazine for three years.

Most relevant to his desire to start Onion Boy Records, Beller worked his way up (from 1997-2002) through the corporate structure of SWR Sound Corporation, a leading manufacturer of bass amplifiers and speaker cabinets. By 2002, he was the company's Vice President, at which point SWR was the largest independent manufacturer of bass amplification products in the world. Onion Boy Records is the next logical extension of his experience in the business world.

Helping launch Onion Boy Records is graphic artist and web designer Katy Towell, an experienced M.I. industry website architect and online marketing consultant.

* * * * *

View, Beller's first solo album, features plenty of high-level bass playing. But far from aspiring to bass heroism, Beller instead builds a carefully crafted, highly emotional tapestry of interweaving themes and styles—a true album in the old-fashioned sense. Drawing on influences as disparate as John Scofield and Rage Against The Machine, Michael Landau and Pink Floyd, Nine Inch Nails and his mentor, Mike Keneally, the resulting body of work runs the gamut from hardcore jazz/rock to vocal pop to thrash to acoustic solo to world beat while somehow staying thematically intact, all the while displaying equal parts density ("Seven Percent Grade") and sensitivity ("View"), melody ("Eighteen Weeks") and dissonance ("Projectile"), tranquility ("Elate") and furious release ("See You Next Tuesday").

Beller brought together a tight group of friends and highly-respected musicians to make View. Keneally himself plays everything from baritone guitar to Hammond organ. Drummer Joe Travers—Beller's former rhythm section partner in Dweezil and Ahmet Zappa's band Z—is one of several Berklee veterans on the record that go back with Beller over ten years. Drummer Toss Panos (Toy Matinee, Steve Vai) completes a reunion of the '96 version of Mike Keneally and Beer For Dolphins; the power trio of Mike Keneally, Beller and Panos executes the incredibly difficult "See You Next Tuesday." First-call L.A. keyboardist Jeff Babko (Michael Landau, Jimmy Kimmel Live house band) lays down Hammond organ on the Meters' inspired "Supermarket People." Guitarist and fellow current Keneally band member Rick Musallam steps out as the lead instrument on one of the album's feature tracks, "Seven Percent Grade."

The album was engineered by Nick D'Virgilio—drummer and lead singer for progressive powerhouse Spock's Beard, the Mike Keneally Band, and formerly Tears for Fears. The recording studio was Lawnmower and Garden Supplies Studio in Pasadena, CA, the main working environment of the late great Kevin Gilbert (Toy Matinee, Sheryl Crow), a singer/songwriter with a cult following that continues well beyond his untimely death. "Lawnmower is a professional-grade studio built by a musician for his own personal use, rather than a 'professional facility' built to solicit business," says Beller, "and the vibe shows it. It's an incredible place to make music."

For more information, including press inquiries, hi-res graphics, and additional information regarding either Onion Boy Records or Bryan Beller's debut solo album View, contact info is listed below:

Onion Boy Records
19425-B Soledad Canyon Rd. #330
Canyon Country, CA 91351

Tel/Fax: (800) 878-5728

e-mail: info@onionboyrecords.com
web: www.onionboyrecords.com

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