Our first big tour is complete. Something like 32 shows in six weeks, jumping around the U.S. (and one sweet Canada show) scoffing at geography and personal space alike. I speak for both Ryan and myself when I say it was a totally amazing experience and we owe massive thanks to all the people who set up shows, housed us, took us around, partied and/or chilled with us, came to any of the shows, picked up a t-shirt or some music, etc, etc on forever. We couldn't list all the amazing friends, new and old here, and it goes beyond lists. Thank you for supporting our art and our mission, everyone.
I walked around Ypsilanti for about four hours today. Just walking in the Midwestern autumn, freaking out, decompressing, refreaking and eventually just thoughtlessly taking it all in. Went by several houses I used to live in, and the semi-ghetto apartment complex my family lived in when I was in 2nd grade. I thought it would look smaller in scale than when I used to pray someone would throw away a refrigerator box so I could garbage-pick it and breakdance on it with the 6th graders down the block. It didn't look smaller though, it looked way more beautiful than I remembered it. A lot more like a nice place to live and be than my memory had ever made space for. I still don't know exactly what it means.
We're probably gonna start working on our 2nd record in the coming weeks. More on that as it becomes even remotely more clear, but now here's some more documentation of the last month and a half...
We stopped to see my friend Zach in the wilderness of Montana. It's some Brokeback Mountain shit up there!! Here is Ryan in one of the last photographs ever taken with his trusty blue hoodie (aka "Blue Guy"), which was lost forever after our Austin tx show. See you at the crossroads, blue hoodie...
Madison Wisconsin. I saw Burrell st. that morning in Milwaukee and thought I should take a photo, but did not. Stupid stupid stupid!!!
Robbie B set up a show for us at Family in L.A. (I posted the set in a previous entry) and did a solo set of awesome, loud pulsing shit as The Urxed. Rob, you rule so much!!
Our new friends Nudge (minus some PDX friends from before) also played the Family jam and were equally ruling. This was actually the 100th City Center show.
After the somewhat early show in L.A. on the Eastside, we scurried over to the Echo where VC was drumming for The Raincoats and got us in on his list. We made it just in time for the start of the show, which threw me into a highschool nostalgia fugue. I started sending text messages to anyone I still knew from when I was 17 and listened to Odyshape on repeat all day long. The Raincoats show, when combined with seeing all the sweet people at our show and an amaziiiiinnngggg Ethiopian meal before we played all equated to L.A. being one of the stronger strong points.
Maybe a little
too strong, because I stopped taking pictures for some reason after we got to Arizona. Not sure why, maybe because it turned more into a tour where we drove long hours and played shows every night at that point, rather than one where we kinda hung out all day eating food and buying books with friends. I did start recording our shows more at that point though, so here are a couple very different sets from the end of tour. This one is from Chapel Hill, where we drove all day from Lexington to play a really cracked-out but somehow deeply focused show. This was, by the end, pretty much our standard set of songs every night.
City Center at Nightlight, Chapel Hill, North Carolina. October 20, 20091.Killer Whale
2.Puppers
3.Thaw
4.Teardrop Children
5.Cookies
Total time: 30min 53secAnd this was the last show of the tour, in Cleveland Ohio. We played through a single input guitar amp, just our electronics and vocals. We'd been dazedly hanging around the gallery for about five hours before the show began, listening to an amazing reggae radio show called "Night Of The Living Dread" and talking about hardcore bands that have animals in them as the lead vocalists. There are more than you would expect!! The man screaming at the start of the tape is my friend Matt G. who I toured around the country with almost ten years ago.
City Center at Doubting Thomas Gallery, Cleveland, Ohio. October 23, 20091.Intro
2.If I Lose You
3.Poolside
4.Water Message
5.Teardrop Children
6.Dissolve
Total time: 16min 25sec
Happy haunted internet, wild buddies. Today here is a semi-spooky Micromix, for your pre-Devul's Night partynap (arsonap?) or just to zone out to while you watch the leaves fall like a strange rain.
Micro #2/Friday October 30, 2009/3:16PM/Chilly walk, Ypsilanti Michigan
