Appendix E-J

This has been coming for a bit now, tho it is not the secret project some of you have asked about. That is coming soon (still fleshing out some philosophy).

The Rocky Mountain Craft Coffee Alliance has been coming and we didn’t really want to say anything about it because we wanted it to be ready for you. It is the idea of our friend Chris Schooley. We all sat at Choice City Butcher this past fall and talked about promoting craft coffee up and down the great rockies. Who were “we all”? Folks from Everyday Joe’s, from Coal Creek, from Coffee Shrub, from Ozo, from Allegro, and more. We formed an alliance, tho not like Voltron because that is played out. More like a sincere handshake.

The charter for the RMCCA is up over at its official web presence, but here is a snapshot:

From our heart:
The Rocky Mountain Craft Coffee Alliance is a group of folks dedicated to promoting…well…craft coffee. Coffee can be a craft – just like beer brewing or knife making or wood working. We want you to taste that.

From the charter:
A group of coffee professionals and amateurs seeking to promote coffee that has been skillfully and carefully sourced, profiled, analyzed, roasted, prepared, and monitored for quality.

And here is a logo that shows how snappy a pink dot can look:

Membership details are coming, but they are horizontal. This is not just for the professional roaster or the retailer. It’s for anyone who loves the craft of fine coffee and can’t wait for the next time you have people over for breakfast because you can’t wait to make them coffee.

But now, it’s time to promote craft coffee and introduce the RMCCA. It was determined via conversation that the best way to do this would be to hold an event. An event with a reception to follow.

On June 25, Everyday Joe’s will be hosting Sensory Science: Testing Coffee Beyond The Cupping Table. The morning will be a lecture and presentation (redundant??) by Paul Songer (Cup Of Excellence). The afternoon will be roasting and brew method workshops. The reception will blow your mind if what we think might happen happens.

More details about the event (i.e. a in-depth descriptions of the lecture & workshops) will come to you soon. For now, you can register for the event here. Cost is $35 in advance or $50 the day of. Still need convincing? Poster form:

We’re very excited for all of this. We’ll see you very soon.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Damien Jurado is coming to Everyday Joe’s on May 28. We’re so excited we just might burst…but then we’d miss the show (zing!).

In case you’ve never heard of the fellow – or in case you just want to listen to some of his fine music – “Cloudy Shoes” has been left here for your listening pleasure. Also, we paid the research department over time to find a video of the man playing his song “Birth Right” in a setting more akin to the Everyday Joe’s stage…because the Everyday Joe’s stage is exactly like playing in the back of a car driving through the green hills of wales. That video had restrictions, tho it is worth watching. We found another one that’s hot an fresh…recorded on the 12th day of this very month.

Opening the night is one of our dear favorites You, Me, & Apollo. He has a new album coming out at the beginning of June. These ears have heard it, and now your ears can hear 1/13 of it. Enjoy “Oh, Brother” below “Cloudy Shoes” and the video. Below “Oh, Brother” you will find a poster containing pertinent infos, tho here is a summary: 7 pm start. Tickets $10 adv / $12 door. Buy them at the shop (144 S. Mason FC, CO) or here.

Now presenting the audio/visual portion of this post:

“Cloudy Shoes” by Damien Jurado

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

“Oh, Brother” by You Me & Apollo

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Popularity: 2% [?]

A lot of places have causes. You might even say all do. At most coffee houses it is coffee. At most music venues it is music. It is often making money thru those things. Sometimes the cause is just getting the bills paid and food on the table.

We love coffee. We love music. We love striving to be a model of an ethical, sustainable business. But, all these things are not our cause. They are conduits to our cause. Thou art our cause: our community, our friends, our family. It sounds nice and sappy, but it is true. It is also something we don’t ever want to forget and something we don’t ever want you to forget.

THEREFORE…

welcome to your new favorite t-shirt:

It is regal. It is valiant. It is yellow w/ royal blue nights on the front, holding the shield of our faithful lightning bolts. But wait, there is something on the back of it for you:

Never forget.

The shirts are available now at Everyday Joe’s. $14 even is what they’ll run you (that, you see, includes tax). It’ll look so good on you.

Thanks for your support and for letting us call you our cause. You are good, fine people.

Popularity: 1% [?]

So…apparently the rapture is supposed to go down this coming Saturday – 5.21.11. We’re going to ring it in by hosting a benefit coffee tasting for one of our favorite things: Ruminate Magazine.

Quite a few coffee shops hold coffee tastings & cuppings. They are important. They teach you about what you are drinking, and that is important to know.

Everyday Joe’s wants to continue this idea, but put our twist on it. Enter: Coffee & Goodness. Each Coffee & Goodness event serves two purposes:

1. Educate you about coffee & its intricacies

2. Benefit an organization doing Good.

We’ll be serving one coffee bean four ways so you can taste it in all its glory. Admission ($8) will include a sample of each preperation: Hario V60 Pourover, Clever Coffee Dripper, French Press, and Espresso. At each brew station, there will be folks to help your palate along and tell you what tastes to be looking for.

Back a few years ago, we hosted the Ruminate Magazine launch party…& we’re so glad that our relationship with them continues. They produce good and great art and the future for them is exciting. Come down and drink coffee and learn about these good folks.

The bean this time around in the PNG Kunjin from the fellas at Novo Coffee. It’s become one of our favs as of late, and we think you’ll agree it’s definitely worth taking the time to imbibe it.

Your $8 will get you a 4 oz. sample of each of the three brew methods, plus a single espresso. The good people of Novo were kind enough to donate all the coffee for the event, so Ruminate will walk away with $7 for every person that comes through the doors. The event starts at 1 pm, and is run open house style until we’re done at 4 pm.

Come and get it.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Did you know Everyday Joe’s has been on the Twitter for 2 years now? It’s a good place to get infos. Same with the Facebook. We pay an awful lot of attention to Twitter, and find interesting things on it, and report them to you, here.

Now, a progression of tweets – beginning yesterday afternoon and wrapping up in the wee hours of this morning – from our friend Tim Thornton:

Tim is a man who is always thinking. He has the mind of a person who starts things.

A value at the core of Everyday Joe’s is relationship and collaboration. Doing things together is how this place runs. It is how coffee gets made. It is how sound gets put through speakers at shows. People throwing their talents into a pool and seeing what grows.

The Recording Bazaar is like this, tho you pay folks money. But it is a pool of musical talent that is deep and wonderful. They will help you write songs…or come up with that string part you know would put your song on an iTunes commercial…or produce that album that will make you friends with Tom Hanks.

Or in their words:

“Why, hello there. I’m Tim. My wife and I play instruments that not everyone plays, and we play them in a unique way. People frequently ask us to play on their records when they’re looking for an indie sound and an interesting approach.

We will always love working together in recording studios with producers, engineers, and other artists, but we’ve figured out that we can do more work and bring more value to our clients if we work remotely. A good home studio and a fast internet connection go a long way.

One day we said to each other, “hey, we could do this for anyone. Let’s make a website.” Then we said “OK.”

After doing quite a few projects and creating several happy and repeat clients through our fist website, StringOverdubs.com, we started thinking about our workload. We started thinking about our many musician and engineer friends who would be a great fit for our clients.

While a lot of musicians are doing remote recording (or virtual recording, if you want to be more sci-fi), we felt a need for a strong connection point online.

We’ve carefully selected a group of people who not only capable musicians/engineers, but also remarkable people who are fun to work with in creative things.”

Or in sci-fi talk:

“It’s the year 2011. Robots are quietly honing their cultural war on planet earth.

The people haven’t yet realized the danger, even though as an online minority they have to type near-indecipherable letters into websites to verify their humanity every time they post a classifieds ad or reset their email password. The Mechanization is nearly complete.

Only one hope remains: the most human of all endeavors, the arts. But The Mechanization has been busy coding software to capture and approximate the sounds of violins, acoustic guitars, and yes, even voices.

One rag-tag, fugitive crew of human artists has cordoned of a robot-free zone in a corner of the world wide web: the rebels known as Recording Bazaar.

As a protest against the robot conquest of art, Recording Bazaar artists use the internet against The Mechanization to run an open market of collaboration with other humans in the creation of actual art. Joined by their zany robot-rebel friends (the ever-rebellious Electric Guitar and the brilliant but conflicted Logic Pro) they struggle against a digitized and passionless future.

Will you support the rebellion and hire a Recording Bazaar collaborator to keep your art human?”

We suggest supporting the rebellion. We doubt thou will regret it.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Man oh man oh man. We’ve had audio things coming out the wazoo on this bit of blog-o-sphere real estate lately. Plenty of coffee things are waiting to be posted. It’s just been bananas.

So bananas, in fact, we can’t believe the show on this Saturday is already here. We’re happy it is, tho. It feels that an evening with Josh Garrels will be good for these hurried & harried souls.

We’re glad Mr. Garrels was willing to post a song here fore you, as his music is some we’ve been trying to share with folks for near five years now. Problem is, he left the song choice up to us. It was a tough one. The man’s catalogue is solid and we celebrate it in it’s entirety.

Therefor, the decision was left up to one Ms. Jennifer Godleski. She debated for nearly 3 minutes, before deciding to reach back in time to 2006 and grab a track off Over Oceans. “Decision” is a jam. Listen to it below, and then come listen to more on Saturday night at 7 pm. Tickets are $5 at the door. Our friends Seth Braverman and Shadows On A River will start the evening off the right way.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Popularity: 4% [?]

So many people pass through Everyday Joe’s that our community/family stretches far and wide and across oceans. It seems most end up coming back to say hello, if even for just a moment.

Several of these friends will return this weekend to celebrate the release of their new albums. Josh Dillard is a man we’ve loved sometime, and to be able to celebrate the release of his second album with him is a joy. The Riflemen are people who have stayed and gone, but will all be at Everyday Joe’s on Saturday, April 9.

Mr. Dillard is releasing his new effort The Whale & The Sea. It’s been in the works for some time now, and it’s streaming into my earholes as I write this, and you should anticipate it hotly. Below, you can listen to a composition from the album handpicked just for you by Josh Dillard himself. Enjoy “Kingdom Built On Sand.”

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Next things next – our friends in The Riflemen. A couple three of these gentlemen have gone on to make up The Sunshine House, while another has moved to Denver and joined A Mouthful Of Thunder, and yet another moved to Houston to work for a small startup business called Shell.

All those things aside, the band is coming back together to play one last time and release it’s first album…all on one night. Circle of life, like this morning when I saw a hawk swoop down and make a pigeon on the sidewalk it’s breakfast.

The Riflemen have also handpicked a tune for you…please enjoy “Rocky Mountain Teeth” below. We’ll see you at the show on Saturday (April 9). Cover is $10 at the door, but you can get in with a FoCoMX wristband as well. Start time? 7 pm. You, Me, and Apollo will warm the night up.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Popularity: 2% [?]

If you come into Everyday Joe’s during the early morning hours, chances are you will hear the album Seven Swans by Sufjan Stevens playing. I don’t know why, but something about being groggy and making coffee to that particular collection of songs is nice. Then, by the end of it, you’re ready for something to shake your rump to…like Huey Lewis & The News.

Today, a tribute/cover/benefit/reimagining of Seven Swans was released. It’s exciting enough that my head started buzzing a little little bit. The reimagining is titled On Joyful Wings. It is missing “Abraham” due to some things out of the curator’s control, but apparently that cut is coming down the pipes. It does have the other 14 songs, performed by:

 Bonnie “Prince” Billy (wow wow), The Gregory Brothers, Derek Webb, Joshua James, Unwed Sailor, Wakey! Wakey!, Elin K Smith, DM Stith, Half-Handed Cloud, Carl Hauck, David Crowder* Band, Jason Harrad, Shannon Stephens w. Gregory Paul, and Inlets

On Joyful Wings will only run you $10, and all profits will go to benefit Komen For The Cure.

Download the album at Bandcamp, or go ahead and listen to it below. Then buy it. It’s only $10. If you don’t like it, someone else will and you can give it to them. Help defeat breast cancer.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Sorry things on this digital space have been dark for a few days now. We’ve been getting things ready for you to come visit.

In a long-term plan to revamp the place a bit, the time has come for the sunday classroom/community meeting room to receive some juice. Floors, paint, decor (on the way). We think you’ll dig.

How many baristas does it take to lay new flooring and paint the walls? Well…

5 volunteer baristas, 1 assistant director, 1 executive director, 1 pastor

It’s nice to make things new again. Especially when we see the look on your smiling face. Observe the work, come in and see the end result:

here is where the carpet is so gone. so gone.

here is where it goes down.

here is where coffee powers us through to completion.

here is where we shake hands to celebrate the floor.

here is ~65 hrs. later. the walls have been painted. there is bluegrass jamming.

Popularity: 3% [?]

While out in Hollywood for the Southwest Regional Barista Competition, our fine Diana Sitzman spent a day at the SCAA headquarters for judges training. What did Everyday Joe’s board member David Runkles do? Asked for a tour of the place. And filmed it.

Everyday Joe’s is a member of the SCAA, and it is one of the communities we sincerely love being a part of. It is also a bit of a nerve center for coffee things, as you may gather from the video tour. We’ll be attending the annual SCAA Event again this year…and we hope this trip is free of stomach sickness. We’ll blog it again…from the wonders/heat/humidity of Houston, TX. Until then, enjoy the tour.

Popularity: 9% [?]