Hey everyone, we arrived home on the 20th of November safe and sound. Thanks to Pinback, Ted Leo and The Pharmacists, The Velvet Teen, and Say Hi for an amazing experience over the last 2 months. Everyone of your bands are comprised of amazing people and musicians and we couldn’t have asked for a better experience, we will miss you all very much.
Imagine this…
You just played a show in a foreign country in a city where they speak mostly French. You load out your gear and you and your band are looking forward to a night of sleep. You drive a few hours outside of town and find a cheap hotel to crash in. It’s probably about 3:00 am at this point and you just want to go to sleep. You go inside to get the lobby, only to be greeted by an annoyingly smug older gentleman who doesn’t really care about his job and may or may not be drunk.
After paying, he tells you that your room is Room 123 and hands you a key. You get back into the van and drive to where the room is, everyone gets files out of the vehicle leisurely while you go to the room to unlock it. You slip the key card into the slot and the green light blinks so you turn the door handle, swing the door open about 3 inches, but something is preventing the door from opening. You hear a woman scream like she is about to get murdered. It is terrifying. A few seconds later your realize that the chain slider lock is preventing the door from opening so you immediately shut it and run back into the van expecting to be shot.
It turns out the older gentleman who works the graveyard shift in the lobby of the EconoLodge in Cornwall, Ontario has problems remembering which rooms have guests staying in them. He also didn’t seemed phased at all when I told him about what happened. Responding with, “Well that doesn’t happen a lot. Let me get you another room.”
I am just glad that who ever was in that room put the chain lock on, or else she would have been very rudely awoken by 6 dazed young men and might have shot us in self defense. Anyway, lady, who ever you are and if you are reading this, I appogize for the neglect of the EconoLodge and am sorry for startling you in your sleep. From this experience, I have learned to knock on my hotel room door before opening it no matter what from now on. Thanks for understanding.
-Patrick
Here’s a photo of us visiting the Vagrant Records offices
We finished up our leg with Ted Leo and The Pharmacists a few days ago and are currently about a half hour outside of San Francisco. It was sad to say goodbye after a string of amazing shows and getting to know them as people a little better. Fargo, ND will not be a night that I soon forget.
We had an amazing time this weekend in Scranton. Test Pattern is an incredible venue and rad artspace. We were fortunate enough to be playing with two bands that are close friends of ours- Brown Recluse Sings (trumpet player Jessie Todd plays on our new album) and former label mates The Sw!ms.
The show had a palpable, incredible energy that might have come from a certain consciousness that we were marking the end of our 2007 summer. In true summer spirit, we later went swimming (and created an intense whirlpool) in Brian’s aboveground swimming pool, even though it was cold as hell up there. Thanks, Scranton-folks, for an amazing time!
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Hey everyone! Just a real quick post with some photos from the show (live photos courtesy of Zia, all “behind the scenes” shots by yours truly). Thanks again for all the people involved in making it the amazing experience that it was! And for all our friends for coming together and participating in the celebration of this record finally seeing the light of day! We have some great video that should be posted real soon, but in the meantime, check out this link for some camcorder action of “We’re The Trees.”
balloons!
not a balloon net, a balloon worm
jon cuts flowers in the green room
andy brings us his giant “A”!
pre-show preparations
here we go
this is nuts!
this is amazing!
this is intense!
patrick’s father, michael, joins us on keys for our cover of Bruce Springteen’s “Backstreets”
the next morning…well, afternoon
Thanks to everyone that came out to see us at the XPonential Music Festival on Friday. The weather couldn’t have been better and we had an excellent time despite some hefty technical difficulties.
All photos by Zia!
Also, last minute reminder we’re playing the Mercury Lounge in NYC tonight with Blitzen Trapper, David Vandevelde, and the end of the world. We’re on at 9. Hope to see you there.
Bonus top secret: If you live anywhere in the US you will probably have a chance to see us in october. Gonna put a lot of miles on Van Morrison. More on that later.
Hey we played an awesome little live performance on WOXY in Cincinnati…
Here is the link:
http://woxy.lala.com/music/loungeacts/index.php?id=215
So far our trip has been super awesome! We play one more show today then head back to Philly. Hope to see you in July.
Patrick
Thanks to everyone that made Friday nights show at the Fillmore (TLA) such an awesome time. Though the crowd in general was a little *cough* older than usual, everyone had a good time and we didn’t get anything thrown at us. Extra special thanks are in order to John Petit and Jessie Todd for lending trumpet skills, Ross Bellenoit for his lap steel goodness, and the Mallon Sisters (aka Extreme Girl Choir) for their sweet angel voices and matching outfits.
Sitting in a submarine before the show.
Welcome to the cuddle factory.
That’s a lot of people up there.
Todd de la Rundgren.
Photos by Zia and Flem.
I just found these scrawled in my notebook….for those of you not in the know, patrick is a poetic genius- unprecedented and unusual word combinations consistently fly out of his mouth….
“Charlie, your hair smells like Veterans Stadium.”
“That restuarant is called Shenanigans…and it’s closed [giggles]”
“We’re stuck in a coincidence-loop.”
