Been such a long time...

It's been over a month, so i decided I'd throw up some videos that you can easily get by searching on Youtube, but hopefully you'll com here and pad my site hit count.

Here's me singing The Vagabond at the Joe Iconis Rock and Roll Jamboree at Joe's Pub on July 17th. Enjoy.



A week after the Jamboree I sang for my friend Eric March (who I've been performing with since we were both 11) at the Laurie Beechman Theatre at his show entitled "Eric March presents: Eric and Friends present: 9 New Songs 3 Old Songs and One Cover." It was hilarious. Here are a couple of clips.





See ya'll soon - Oh! I'm in a show on September 6th as part of "Effable Arts" 20-Something 20-Somethings - original songs - lots of attractive damaged people - it's in Manhattan so save the date!!! More info to follow -

keep on keepin' on

Chasing Aces The Musical! Wins 3rd Prize overall at 2009 NYC 24-Hr Film Race!

We Won!

Chasing Aces, the mini-movie musical I had a part in creating, won prizes for 2nd runner up (3rd overall), Best Original Score (Thanks to my buddy and sometime collaborator Mr. Eric March) and Best Costume Design! Cause, duh, Cowboy Hat + Magician wear + Waldo Shirt + French Beret = Best Costumes! Thanks again to everyone involved in the project. You can go to the official results from this link http://www.filmracing.com/Films/competitions/nyc2009.htm

Here it is for your viewing pleasure again: Chasing Aces

Chasing Aces

Chasing Aces: The Musical from Josh Miller on Vimeo.

Chasing Aces The Musical

Aaaand we're back and better than ever with lots to talk about. We've been relatively busy here at Desperate Times, and we relish the opportunity to share some of the fruits of our labor with you; our loyal followers.

Jared was in a movie, a movie musical to be exact. It is very short. It was produced by a great group of people, collectively known as Four Square Productions We wrote, rehearsed, shot, edited and scored this baby in 24 hours. Brainstorming began at ten p.m. Friday night. By 12:30, Eric had written the music and lyrics. We started Recording the scratch track around 1:30 at CBS studios, in the 'Guiding Light' editing room. By about 4 a.m. we had finished recording and headed out to Queens to shoot the outside chase scenes. Around Five a.m. Ben, Damian and I begin running around Queens in the freezing cold rain... Observers would have witnessed a magician running down Woodside blvd, being chased by a frenchman and a cowboy (I play the frenchman) It was freezing, we were exhausted and we had no water... it was a glorious experience, some of the most fun I've ever had. By 8:30 we were fed and setting up for the first interior shot. Shooting went smoothly and by 1 p.m. we had wrapped. We returned to CBS studios by 3:30 to edit and score the film. Aside from an hour of laying down guitar tracks, I was asleep for this period of time on a fake hotel room bed from the set of Guiding Light. By 10 p.m. Saturday we had submitted our film to the 24-hour NYC film race! The screening will be next Saturday at the NYU Cantor Film Center on Washington and University place. The cast and crew were all amazing to work with - we all had a blast churning this baby out. So here she is, without any further ado...

Chasing Aces

Chasing Aces: The Musical from Josh Miller on Vimeo.

Next up... Jared croons at the Wyndham Garden Hotel 4/1,4/2

Weekend Update with USA & Puerto Rico

This is the first straight up "Blog Entry" in a looooong whhile. First thing's first... a show is a coming folks - I promise that all you Desperate Timer folk, rock, acoustic, electri-pop, alterna-funk, prosaic-rock fans that there will be a Desperate Times live performance soon enough. We'll hopefully be playing with Kara Thrace's Secret Death Wish and The Secret Cyclon Club... somewhere in Brooklyn or the village... so please, look for that entry very soon. Leave comments like "Jared, get on this, we want to hear you again since Songs About Real LIfe (co-written with the hilariously talented Eric March) blew the roof off of Ars Nova last November!"

I hear you my children, I hear you. Give it a week and I'll have somethin' cooking that all y'all alterna-freaks and musical theatre punks will want to come see. It'll be one part prose, one part poetry, one part spontaneous rant, a whole lot of conga banging, Piano pounding and Guitar Thrashing... give or take a jews-harp plucking here or there.

I'm currently watching USA take on Puerto Rico in the World Baseball Classic, which not a lot of Americans seem to give a shit about. Well, this American gives a lot of shits about it. Unfortunately we are down 6-1 at the moment in the top of the 5th. Go Jeter!!! More could happen, if we score - there will be a subsequent post... but we must continue.

Baseball Season is around the mother frakking corner and I'm groin-grabbingly excited to walk in to the new Yankee Stadium on opening day and re-proclaim my love for this beautiful ballpark & my loyalty to this awe inspiring team. This is it folks, this is the year we bring a championship home to NEW YORK FRakkin City! She deserves it, I deserve it, and even if A-Rod Doesn't deserve it, we'll let him ride along the victory parade float anyway just so he doesn't feel left out.

Times are tough and tight my friends. I couldn't find two quarters to rub together to get me out of borough today to save my frakking life. Oy - it makes me think there must be some kind of way out of here.

A word on the use of Frak - It's from Battlestar Galactica, the greatest show on television. Haters, give it a try - I guarantee if you watch the 3-hour miniseries and don't like it, it means you're not human and have no business on this planet.

We finally got an update from the good folks at T2R, by way of webmaster Mr. Jason "Sweettooth" Williams that Things 2 Ruin, the incendiary cyclone of Songs by Mr. Joe Iconis should be rearing it's ugly head sooner than you think. This is very exciting news for us here at Desperate Times. Mr. Iconis knows how to write a godsdamn good song... songs about hate and hope, jailbait and whiskey and Desperate fucking times. We eagerly await T2R's New home - so from us here at Desperate Times to ya'll over there at T2R blog - Godspeed and Good hunting.

Everyone else: Let's make some fucking art. If you have a poem or song or scene or picture that you'd like to see on the blog - let me know and i'll throw it up there asap! coming soon: The Fabulously Talented and ultimately adorable helen Parson and her cavalcade of comics.

Till then

Om Mani Pad Me Hum

Agnostic Christmas Shoes

Desperate Times Song Book Series: Part 3 (In Our Ongoing Series)

Agnostic Christmas Shoes: Music & Lyrics by Eric March

Performed by Jared Weiss, Eric March, Featuring Lauren Marcus and the Secret Cylon Club (Dave Campbell, Arvi Sreenivasan and Bowen Salkin) at Ars Nova's A.N.T. FEST 11/17/08

Genius Talent Soul Men

Jared Weiss Songbook Series: Part 1 (in our ongoing series)

Genius Talent Soul Men: Music & Lyrics by Eric March

Performed by Jared Weiss, Eric March and The Secret Cylon Club @ Ars Nova's A.N.T. FEST 11/17/08