Less said the better. Very nice to meet/hear Leah Lue, the opener; the rest of it was one of those shows that kind of hurt all over. Except for the nice fan who drove from Pittsburgh and the other gent named Dan and his friend, and Mike the owner who was very nice. Instead of long existential ruminations on the last show of the tour here are some pictures of Cleveland.
Another show where we played to a small crowd and where there was a sense of impending doom but somehow ended up being exhilarating. A weird mismatched bill, a loud rock room, but once onstage we were loose and soaring. Afterwards a gent named Rick washed our van windows and spoke of his dead mother.
Then we went to our hotwired 4 star hotel called Aloft that was crazy and amazing — rather like an Ikea hotel. Super modern, sleek and minimal and $20 cheaper than the crappy hotel we stayed in the night before. Go hotwire!!
Here’s some images.
What does a band do with two days off on a tour?
A) get ansty and anxious
B) spend too much money in the wrong places
C) take a lot of photographs of the super weirdness of the Midwest
D) visit a friend on Oklahoma city, play music and drink beer, pet a doggie named Bear.
C) get sick
D) get well
E) catch up on one’s reading/sleep/writing
F) fail at that endeavor
G) all of the above
We ate at Jimmie’s Egg in Midwest City. The egg itself is kept in a huge nuclear reactor shaped room and is consulted like an oracle by the chef and waitstaff. Jimmie’s egg is a river to it’s people. It’s glass-domed top protects a pulsating brain.
Here are some day-off pictures.
Ah sxsw where does one begin? How do you tell the tale of a love that fills and depletes, fills and depletes with such rapidity and tragedy?
We played 4 showcases. The four of them were all good, some better than others. We peaked early with the Septembergurl/Organic Entertainment party at Threadgills on weds. Ended up doing two shows with buddies KaiserCartel and doing a good bit of singing on ‘okay’. Weds night brought to the Velveeta Room at 1 am and a modest but vibrant crowd. The other two shows were Friday; at the first one at Mother Egans (sig sounds/red house part). I came out from a dizzy low-blood sugar moment to witness both our keyboards collapse and hit the ground hard onstage from the high energy foot stomping of the first performer (name withheld for tactful reasons — more the fault of the wobbly stage setup). We carried on with broken keyboards as we shall for the rest of the tour.
Last show was the GreenRoom Booking Cashmoneyapolis show, which was good in a unique way, though sparse. Then we were free to wander.
Third time here and so many bands and I’m always amazed how little music I end up seeing. 4 solid days and here is the meager list: Devo, Tricky, Bus Driver, Blitzen Trapper, The Silos, Japan Nite (two bands), and then some very good comedians. And of course KaiserCartel and bands we shared bills with but couldn’t focus on their sets because of pre-show preparation mode. Sprinkled in are a few ‘glimpses’ of unknown bands; heads stuck in club doors, heard over outdoor venue walls, etc.
Fold in: tons of free beer, drinks and food, miles of walking, amazing Mexican, amazing BBQ. No sleep.
Here are some pictures.
The least said about this show the best. We love NOLA. Holy Liars were righteous fellows. Here are pictures.
this is the ceiling of the Pier 6 Pavilion in Baltimore, during CAKE’s set. they had a single mirrorball they used in every show — that was the entire light show. we liked that. our show here was, as all of them were, varied and, as rated by us, really good. we had a long set here (an hour) and got to really stretch out, and the crowd seemed very into what we were doing (i think at most of the shows there was a sense at the beginning of each show of… what is this wispy sweet-sounding band? why are they opening for the joyously ironic and funked-up CAKE? but by the end we had won some hearts.). there was a melancholy to the evening that we couldn’t place until we realized it was coming off the staff — this was the last night of the season and people were saying goodbye right and left. anyway, as usual, we were treated like princes and princesses by CAKE and everyone else, and the water sparkled right next to the stage and the big Domino Sugar sign reflected in the water and the brisk autumn air came in as we played and then we had to drive 12 hours to Maine.
well, we went the whole tour without posting anything. this seems to be the norm. it was partly due to the lack of reliable internet connections around the country, but more than that due to being so busy and lazy. or busy and tired.
internet access around america kind of feels like, we imagine, phone service was say, during the depression. big cities, you were pretty well covered. out in nowheresville, it was sketchy.
flora and i whizzed back across america in the silver streak, which is full of all our gear. middle america is a bleak and foreboding landscape, but no more so than texas. or Arizona or new mexico. or parts of California. its very very beautiful. the rest of the band flew home a few days ago.
i’ll start with the last show first, because its freshest in my memory.
SEATTLE
Tractor in Seattle was definitely when all the wheels were turning the best for both the bands: winterpills and for the as yet unnamed kris delmhorst experience. (kris and the band of delmhorsts, the delmhorst whisperers. leading a delmhorst to water.)
full house and the room sounded great think i lost my favorite t-shirt at the show: if anyone finds a black “Janus Films” t-shirt in seattle, please send it back to me. this pic is the empty stage after the last show. sadness and pain, mixed with joy.
before the show we snacked on a cheese plate and some fine wines at a wine bar right next door. seattle was left largely un-explored, but we loved the small taste of it we got, which was all in the Ballard district. i was happy to see my old college pal Lori Goldston, who does her own project with the Black Cat Orchestra and plays often with Mirah. also sweetly spotted was Max’s sister Lucinda.
as Kris’s ‘keyboardist’, i have to say i felt like this was the first night of the whole tour where the parts were coming together, i wasn’t overplaying, and my ghastly mistakes were kept to a minimum.
the last evening was bittersweetly topped off by all of us drinking a bottle of lovely small-batch brandy that Kris gave to us as a gift. though great with child, Kris took a sip. her doctor said it was ok.
PORTLAND
a double-header in a tiny sold-out venue, Mississippi Studios. very intimate and both shows wet over well. of course for us it was 4 shows, so by the end of the night we absolutely exhausted. promoter Jess Beyer left us with a nice bottle of spanish wine. the green room, which doubled a recording studio, has an impressive collection of paint-by-numbers artwork. this one was my favorite.
hmm, maybe i lost my t-shirt at this venue. please call.
EUGENE
WOW Hall is a big place. we did not fill it at all. but the crowd was very attentive and the sound was great, and the monitor engineer was very sweet and gave Flora a sprig of lavender.
this was our first sampling of the famous northwest beer phenom. it was very strong. i played our set rather tipsy from one beer.
Kris noted during the set that we seemed to have entered a certain technical malfunction vortex once getting into oregon. things were just not quite working right. cables were lost, little boxes did not function, strings were un-tunable. we adjusted. also, kris finally made a special announcement (see photo). bold girl.
SAN FRANCISCO
Cafe du Nord. packed and boisterous, this place has a great old-fashioned salon-type feel. saw many old friends. time in SF was way too short.
part 3 to come. we head south, backwards in time.
dave’s post made me feel like i needed to weigh in out of literary insecurity. but so far all i’m reading is the latest Harper’s and “The History of Love” by Nicole Kraus, which is amazing so far. also, i’m reading “Magic For Beginners” by Kelly Link. i also find time to read a lot of bullshit on the internet. and i mean, a lot.
the web has changed reading and writing for me, and maybe for us all.
i used to write a lot — journals, short stories, screenplays, poems. its all different, now that we all live in this collective hive mind on the internet. its strange how it all crept up so slowly on us all. 10 years ago, i was making my first babysteps on the web, utterly entranced by Netscape, email, etc. now its like these things have always existed. and now my attempts at journaling are fallow — blogging in a really personal way, like many do, never took for me — and my paper notebooks have half-hearted entries in them that trail off. so much time is eaten being on the web. yet, i can’t shake it. my career in music means i have to spend a good deal of time here maintaining a presence, being a fast responder, keeping up to date. i belabor the obvious. the web makes things very obvious, and very available, and nothing is very exciting or interesting.
we all bring much to this place, and leave with very little.
used to be, if you wanted an album, you went to a record store. that was the only place you could find it. there, and on the radio. and it was fucking exciting.
now if you want something, you don’t even have to think about it. the distance between the thought, the vague impulse, and the action, of acquiring it, is so short that there is no investment made, no sacrifice, no anticipation. and the art suffers greatly.
but i don’t know how to go back. this is what everyone seems to want.
its nice to hear about a band you like making new music.
I don’t want toast for breakfast. Hmm. I want to hear the rough mix of tentatively titled “The Sleeping Rapist” for breakfast. It’s the last song we tracked, and its a good five beats a minute faster than the demonstration version. I don’t know why anyone is really complaining. The producer played the demonstration version and then said, “OK, now faster! Presto, un deux trois quatre.” There was nothing we could do. He was holding all of our pets hostage in the control booth. I want to hear the song again to see if it feels exciting or like everyone can’t quite find the beat. I had originally thought the song was improved by picking up the tempo.
Do I need to pack up my drums (they are set up in the basement for Levelette, Abeja, Spanish for Hitchhiking recording this week) and travel back to the studio? The producer may call me and say, “if we wanted the continental breakfast we would have ordered the continental breakfast, but you get that for free! We don’t want toast!”
Today, we wrapped up the basic tracking for this EP. It went very well I think. During the fleeting moments of down time we discussed the Jew harp, and discovered we share a mutual curiosity concerning the misuses of breast milk.
philip: pianoing
brian: waitin’ and wonderin’
dave: responding to a request to search his luggage
flora: girl in a booth
dennis: preparing to concoct another sonic fable
