Making Up Time $3.42

About Making Up Time

From successfully launching his own record label with 2005’s “Just Before Dark” to performing a string of sold-out solo shows on both American coasts, life post-Sony is treating the Candy Butchers founder just fine.

And now, newly independent and creatively energized, Viola has returned to what he refers to as some “unfinished business”: the release of the Candy Butchers’ earliest recordings, “MAKING UP TIME”.

Flash back to the mid-nineties: Mike Viola and Todd Foulsham, the original Candy Butchers, have graduated from subway platforms and burlesque houses to Fez, one of New York City’s premiere cabarets. The lines around the corner have attracted major label attention. Mike and Todd hit the studio to record.

“Our vision was to capture exactly what we were doing live,” says Viola. “No frills, no overdubs, just let the songs speak for themselves.”

The result was a recording that stands out today as a vibrant showcase of the young Viola’s songwriting prowess, each track laced with the magical enthusiasm that can only come from lifelong friends making the music they love.

But like so many who try their luck with the majors, the fruits of their labor were left on the vine. Viola went on to expand the Candy Butchers line-up, eventually garnering a contract with Sony’s RPM Records, Foulsham left the band to start a family and the recordings were shelved.

Until now.

“MAKING UP TIME is really the album Todd and I wanted to make in the first place before we got lost in the system,” says Viola. “A missing piece in the Candy Butchers puzzle.”

“Part of the reason I started Good Morning Monkey Records was to put out records like “MAKING UP TIME”, music that Candy Butchers fans have been requesting for years that I never could have released within the confines of a major label,” Viola says.

In addition to MAKING UP TIME, Viola says plans are under way for GMMR to release next year what fans refer to as the Blue Thumb record – also shelved, when the label they were on went under in 1996.