Category Archives: News

News (and some olds) about Big Green

News

In Retrograde album drop: T-minus 56 & counting

This just in: the release date for Big Green’s new album, In Retrograde, is May 1, 2025. Man goddamn, it’s about freaking time! This is Big Green’s fourth album and its first in more than ten years. (Mama told us to take it slow, and that’s what we’re doing.)

LEARN MORE ABOUT IN RETROGRADE

Just a few facts to share about In Retrograde:

  1. It’s Big Green’s longest album yet – In Retrograde weighs in at 24 tracks, all original, all written for this album. In fact, it would be a double album if that were still a thing (which it ain’t).
  2. It’s digital only – That’s right, we’re not pressing a CD this time unless people really, really, REALLY want one.
  3. It’s being distributed by CDBaby – We decided to roll with CDBaby as they handled our last release, Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick, back in 2013.
  4. No songs about presidents or dressage horses – Unlike our last two albums, this one doesn’t have overt political or T.V. show references, though there are some mentions of veganism here and there if you listen with a stethoscope.
  5. It has retro album art – Kind of old fashioned, an oblique nod to the overall style of the recordings (60s – 70s rock). And yes, there’s a robot. (See below.)
In Retrograde, by Big Green.

Q. But Big Green … where do I find said album?

We were hoping you would ask that question. The album will be available for streaming on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music. Pre-order date on streaming services is April 1. Links are available on this HearNow.com page:

PRE-ORDER / PRE-Add: IN RETROGRADE

Q. But damn it, Big Green – I don’t use the internets! Where do I get a CD, huh?

Gotcha. Tell you what we’re gonna do. Just contact us and we will burn you CDRs of the entire album (spoiler alert: it will be two discs) for a nominal fee, to be determined. Don’t got no money? No problem – we’ll send it to you gratis, as long as we can afford to do so. (Spoiler alert #2: if we get more than a dozen or two requests, we’ll look into pressing a limited run.)

Add us to your playlists!

Hey, man … do a brother a favor. If you’ve got accounts on Apple Music, Spotify, or one of the others, give us a follow, leave us a review, add us to a playlist or two.

News

Warning: This content generated by AI (An Idiot)

I don’t suppose anyone has said this to you yet, but happy new year! My guess is that you are as ecstatic as we are to unlock the wonders of 2025. So much to look forward to, it says here.

We’ve been busy with the process of acclimating ourselves to an actual winter. Brother Matt has been slogging through the snow up at the farm, feeding creatures furry and feathered while steeling himself against sub-zero temperatures like we haven’t seen in probably five years. Me? I’m flying in my taxi, taking tips and getting stoned. (Did I say that?)

Content questions abound

We don’t get a lot of inquiries here at Big Green, but if we did, I’m sure they would center on our promised new album. What kinds of songs will it feature, and how many? What will the cover look like? Will it be available in stores? Will it include discount coupons for romaine lettuce? That kind of stuff, I imagine.

The most challenging questions, however, are those that cut to the core of the creative process. For instance, why do we, in this day and age, bother to write, arrange, record, mix, and master an album when we can just drop the right prompts into an AI engine and have it spit out the finished product in minutes if not seconds?

Good question. Our answer might be something like … how do you know we DIDN’T do that? How, indeed.

A picture is worth a thousand prompts

Take the header image on this very post (please!). I can tell you right now, that photo was generated by AI. Given the input criteria we provided, only an idiot could come up with something that random and asinine. Hey … that’s the same process we follow when we produce an album. We generate ideas in our tiny minds, and after about two years, out pops an album, for better or worse.

Is that as fast as the other, more well-known A.I. (artificial intelligence)? God, no. But (and this is important) it takes a lot less energy to produce, and it doesn’t sound anything like what this looks like:

Craziness

Good thing? Bad thing? You decide.

Anticipated dimensions of said object

To return to the more pedestrian questions I imagine an interested party might pose to us, here’s what we got. Yes, the new album is nearing completion (currently in the mastering phase). We have a title. There will be 24 tracks, so it’s more like a double-album, if you will (not that the term means anything anymore). I think we have a running order, but not totally sure.

We don’t have a release date, but I’m sticking to my prediction of a Spring drop for this one. Don’t expect a splash – we may buy a couple of ads, but that’s about it. Word of mouth. (What other kinds of words are there?)

Sadly, there will be no discount coupons for lettuce, romaine or otherwise. Budget is tight, people – such are the times we live in.

News

A quarter century of making pagans dance.

Is it that time of year yet again? Christ on a bike, people! The pace of passing Christmases brings to mind that Mitt Romney song – “Christmas Green” – from an early episode of Ned Trek, featured on our podcast THIS IS BIG GREEN:

Each second day is Christmas
preceded by its eve
Consumers take your places
We want every shop left clean

Investors won’t be waiting
All registers will ring
Flood their chests with riches
It runs like a machine
And Christmas is so green

As it happens, this is a milestone holiday season for your friends at Big Green. Our first album, 2000 Years To Christmas, was released 25 years ago this year. That’s right, it is now officially 1,975 years to Christmas, depending on which way you’re counting. Tempus fugit, am I right?

With a rocket (albeit a slow one)

Did “2000 Years” become a holiday classic over the last quarter century, working its jolly way into Christmas playlists far and wide? Well … no, not really. Like pretty much all of our music, it’s been a drug on the market. (That’s an archaic expression that once was synonymous with “a flop”.) We’re niche players over here at Big Green; an acquired taste, if you will.

That said, there is one song from that album that goes off like a minor rocket every year around this time. It’s called Pagan Christmas, and it briefly became a favorite among wiccan and wiccan-adjacent communities in the northeast. Starting late November, early December, Pagan Christmas starts racking up a fair number of streaming plays on the various platforms. (It’s even done okay-ish on our YouTube channel.)

Of course, if you want to help pump the numbers a little bit, you can find us on Spotify or Apple Music or whatever the hell. It’s Christmas, man …. throw us a bone!

More where that came from

Now, I’ve said plenty of times that the songs on 2000 Years To Christmas represent only a small portion of the Christmas-themed songs we’ve written (and when I say “we”, I mean mostly my brother Matt). Over the years we’ve recorded a number of them, some of which we’ve played on THIS IS BIG GREEN. Those include Ned Trek tracks, but we also have scads of songs from back in the nineties when most of 2000 Years was written and demo-ed.

Of course, before we release THAT stuff, we need to finish our current album. That project is now in the mastering stage. We’re also working on the cover art, the hand-tooled vinyl binding, and the carved oak box that it all comes in. Hey … it takes time to whittle all them things. BE PATIENT. We’ve got something like 24 new songs coming your way this Spring, so lookout. Don’t know if there’s anything in there to make the pagans happy, but we’ll see.

Moment of shizzle

Ahem …. On behalf of all of us here at Big Green, have a happy holiday season, a merry Christmas if you celebrate, and try to make it to the new year, for crying out loud. If you’re a musician and you’re playing somewhere New Year’s eve, drive carefully (or not at all) and remember, that money has to last until March.