PRESS ROOM

 LEVEL 1 = PEACE OF MIND is American Zen's first album on Shaolin Records.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Tujunga, California – October 11, 2005 – American Zen, America's first Buddhist rock band, is releasing their first album in 2005, Level 1 = Peace Of Mind. The album consists of 11 songs and 11 recited poems by The Coyote.

Richard O'Connor got his first engineering jobs near the Mexican border in a small studio that produced some local television commercials and mariachi albums. Eventually the studio owner started turning over the sessions to Richard who would both engineer and produce entire albums.

With a few western albums under his belt, Richard looked for garage bands to produce. "After what I did for some of those artists I was compelled to work with musicians who played music I could appreciate more. I'm not going to mention names or hurt anybody's reputations, but I made a lot of those artists sound a lot better than they really were. I realized I had a talent and wanted to put it to better use."

Richard started producing local San Diego acts just for the fun of it. Now that he had the keys to a couple studios, he brought bands in after midnight and produced demos for them, often for free. "Now I was producing music I was really proud of. Then, one day, this young man walks into the studio. He was in the army or navy or something. He was going to be shipped off to the middle east. Sorry, I wasn't paying attention to those details. But he wanted to do a musical project before he got shipped off. He wanted to record three songs with him singing, but he didn't have a band."

"This was exciting to me. I told him that for a certain price I'd put a band together for him, record the songs and then he could come in and sing his vocals. That was how I discovered American Zen. I needed a flute for one of those songs and Coyote was my choice. Coyote said that he could put the band together for me and we were off. The songs came out great!"

"I wanted to keep working with Coyote and the musicians he'd brought in. Voila! American Zen was born. We recorded some demos and I tried to shop them to some labels. But according to all the L.A. record companies, they didn't sound like anyone on the radio. It seems that unless you sound like someone, you don't sound like anyone, and that's just too confusing for a record company to deal with."

"This worked out better than I'd planned. I was into Buddhism and decided to utilize Buddhism as a way to temper my ideals so that my label wouldn't put out products that were morally weak or led people to violence. There are plenty of labels willing to cater to violence and immorality. This concept of being a spiritual record company really appealed to me."

So begins the first Buddhist record company producing the first band of Buddhist rockers.

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Copyright 2005 Shaolin Communications.
All rights reserved.

The PR_AmZen is the official PRESS RELEASE of American Zen, "America's First Buddhist Rock Band."
This is intended for magazine, news, radio, and distributors.

The AmZen_eNEWS is published monthly and sent to fans, friends,
and anyone wanting more information on the FOLK ROCK band, American Zen:
     Featuring:
        The Coyote - Flute, Vocals, Acoustic Guitar, Songwriting
        Steve Hixon - Drums
        Rory G - Electric Guitar, Slide Guitar, Ukulele, Synthesizer
        Tom Calder - Bass, Vox Organ

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