February begins with a momentary return to the road. We’ve been recording drums this month, but will give Peter a break after this mini-tour with Boy Without God:
2/2 :: Portland Museum of Art :: Portland, ME :: w/ DJ Ponyfarm :: 8pm
2/3 :: Firehouse :: Worcester, MA :: w/ Guerilla Toss, Friendship & Happy Jawbone Family Band :: 9pm
2/4 :: The Montague Bookmill :: Montague, MA :: w/ Sorry, Nay
2/6 :: The Red Door :: Portsmouth, NH :: 8:30pm
Then we’ll move onto guitars/bass/keyboards on this first batch of songs and get them into a pre-mix/master state, before we tackle the heavier, singly-er next group of songs (including “The Golden Room”). And thennnn another mini-tour which brings us back to our alma mater, Bowdoin College, on 2/9. WHO KNOWS WHAT WE’LL DO? NO ONE. Then Cafe 939 in Boston on the 10th with our boys Chamberlin and thennn St. Michael’s College on the 11th, where my mom teaches and thennnnn we go to NYC to work at The Tibet House Annual Benefit Concert, which is SO baller. Philip Glass, Laurie Anderson, Lou Reed, ANTONY and then that bro James Blake, who really isn’t that cool and some other people I don’t know. Well, I know Das Racist and they’re aiight, but Laurie Anderson and Antony will be there, so…eh. But we get to go to the after-party and breathe the same air as these people which, as Jeff Beam would say, is UNREAL. And we have Beam to thank for this opportunity, so…thanks Beam FOR HAVING AN AMAZING GIRLFRIEND WHO IS ACTUALLY RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS MIRACULOUS EVENT.
H.
It’s a new year and we’re taking this perhaps arbitrary designation very seriously. The past few months have been a ridiculous flurry of activity: touring most of November, recording with Lady Lamb the Beekeeper, touring with Lady Lamb the Beekeeper and now, finally settling down in Portland again, before we embark on the next great venture, which is…recording. By late Spring, we will have a record of some sort, glossy, shrink-wrapped and in your hands. Bryan Bruchman of HillyTown.com taped this video of me, Henry, performing a new song during a break in sessions with Lady Lamb. We also have a tour documentary in the works, featuring our tour mates Cuddle Magic and many other bands we met and enjoyed along the way. We play at Frontier in Brunswick on January 7th, but we won’t have a Portland show till February 24th, when we open The Toughcats CD Release show at SPACE Gallery. Though we’ll be holed-up in the studio, expect our online presence to be just this side of cloying…
H.
We’re back in Portland for a bit, which is sweet. You’ll notice the details of our next tour displayed above, over a calm cosmic scene of lesbian romance. One might call the whole tour a sort of elopement, except that there will be no sex and no sense of being chased by a mustachioed father with a shotgun. But we will stop at a Sonic if we see one, which could also conceivably happen in an elopement scenario.
Christmas is coming and I sure hope my grandmother loves me. Gonna set up my toy train and build a tiny village out of blocks and put little flashlights in the houses so it looks like a twinkly aerial view of a beautiful little town, where nothing bad happens ever. And the next day I hope to receive two nips of Jameson in my stocking, just like I did last year. And I hope I get a nice brown sweater.
H.
The Best Tour Ever ends tonight at Zuzu in Cambridge, with Boy Without God. Then a short break for Thanksgiving etc. and back in the saddle. Peter and I will be playing tonight as a duo and then bussing around between MA and NYC for the following week or so, for undisclosed reasons. We miss Portland a lot, but we’ll spend a good chunk of December here (kinda), so that’s good. Expect a number of unveilings in the coming months, as we keep rolling from here to wherever we’re going.
November will be an onslaught of everything. Band-related tasks have crowded every moment of our time, so it’s nice to leave the nebulous world of online-promoting and get on the road. Check this for the details. And the vague synopsis is: shows of every kind with friends of all walks of music-making, from Higher Ground with Chamberlin, to a house show with Cuddle Magic, to art galleries in New York, to a frat house at Wesleyan. We’re couch-surfing, driving my parents’ Prius and taking names (on our email list). Does this post belie the somber nature of the picture above? Yes. But death will come to each of us. We are all dust in the wind. GONGGGGGG.
Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
The night above the dingle starry,
Time let me hail and climb
Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
Trail with daisies and barley
Down the rivers of the windfall light.
And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns
About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,
In the sun that is young once only,
Time let me play and be
Golden in the mercy of his means,
And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves
Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and
cold,
And the sabbath rang slowly
In the pebbles of the holy streams.
All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay
Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was
air
And playing, lovely and watery
And fire green as grass.
And nightly under the simple stars
As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,
All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the
nightjars
Flying with the ricks, and the horses
Flashing into the dark.
And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white
With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all
Shining, it was Adam and maiden,
The sky gathered again
And the sun grew round that very day.
So it must have been after the birth of the simple light
In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking
warm
Out of the whinnying green stable
On to the fields of praise.
And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house
Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,
In the sun born over and over,
I ran my heedless ways,
My wishes raced through the house high hay
And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows
In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs
Before the children green and golden
Follow him out of grace.
Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would
take me
Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,
In the moon that is always rising,
Nor that riding to sleep
I should hear him fly with the high fields
And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.
-Dylan Thomas
The “Texas Hold Me” release party last night was one of the best shows we’ve ever played, for a hundred reasons. Thanks to Will Ethridge of Eternal Otter Records for helping us make this happen, to South China for opening and joining our mini-orchestra, to everyone else who shared the stage (and floor) with us, to Blainor at Mayo St. Arts, and of course to the incredible audience.
Our lives have become a constant flurry of activity. Meaning that we had a few drinks after the show, went to bed and will begin packing out for two (2) shows in Bangor tonight. Next week we head to NYC for Portland Music Foundation’s CMJ showcase at Sullivan Hall on Thursday with some of our favorite Portlanders. The poster is above. The night before, we’ll make an appearance at the What Blog?! Free CMJ Party, with our sister band Mango Floss.
:D
This is the last time I’ll announce this, because it’s finally the appropriate time to announce it. On Thursday, October 13th, we will be releasing “Texas Hold Me” (b/w “Little Bird”) on vinyl via Eternal Otter Records. The show is at Mayo Street Arts on Mayo St. (!) in Portland, ME. Here’s the “Event”. It starts at 8 and South China will be opening, setting the tone for what will be a more refined set than we often play. Members of South China, Butcher Boy, Patter Cubs and Jaw Jems (as well as many others) will be joining us in fuller orchestrations of our songs. The set will consist of the usual suspects, plus one or two old ones and one or two new ones (including one never once played in Portland, designed to make you WEEP).
Once this is over, we’ll breathe for a second and then dive right back in. Touring begins in earnest again in late October and gets thick and heavy in November. I’ll write another post soon about that whole thing, even though I said the same thing last month and never did. Okay bye!
It’s been one year since Peter and I moved to Portland. We’ve met so many incredible musicians that it’s really just baffling. In fact, I think that more or less every one of the friends I’ve made is a musician, or at least very involved in the scene (i.e. sleeping with musicians). So now’s the time for a brief looking-back, a frank self-appraisal and then a willful push into the enormous cluster of shows/recording sessions and video shoots that are already inked- (or penciled-) in on our calendar.
Alex “Nando” Hernandez has moved to Brooklyn and will not be playing shows with us anymore. We’re very grateful to him for his time (working around a full-time job), the selflessness with which he allowed me to use his equipment, despite my propensity for breaking it, and his general willingness to deal with our considerable foibles.
Last night was our first show with our new bass player, Jeff Beam (pictured). We’re very very excited to have him on board. In my mind, he makes the best pop music in Portland, so I feel genuinely guilty about taking him from his solo career to the degree that we will. But he seems as excited as we are, so we’ll just encourage him to play whenever we’re not and we’ll have him open shows. Listen to him yo:
I’m gonna do another post in a few days about our upcoming shows. A pretty extensive tour with Brooklyn’s Cuddle Magic is in the works as well as at least one showcase at CMJ (hopefully more) and, of course, the now perhaps overly announced October release of the “Texas Hold Me/Little Bird” 7” through Eternal Otter Records.
H.