Everybody Outside

Just because I'm going to upload tour photos later

2009-12-06T09:43:00.000-08:00

Finally home

2009-11-22T21:53:00.001-08:00

this is for our friends
pictures soon

love

2009-11-13T03:31:00.000-08:00

Jookabox-Dead Zone Boys

2009-11-03T10:00:00.000-08:00

Picked this up Sunday night at friendly Shake-It. It is so so so good. I have 3 downloads left on my code so the first three people that enter this code...

go to: asthmatickitty.com/digital

and enter "akr062-flac-099er7q6"

its only good for 24 hours so hurry and. David and the gang are nice people so see them on tour too and we'll be on the road here again starting today so hopefully see you all around.

we livin in war times

2009-10-29T20:39:00.000-07:00

16 wash and make yourselves clean.
Take your evil deeds
out of my sight!
Stop doing wrong,

17 learn to do right!
Seek justice,
encourage the oppressed. [a]
Defend the cause of the fatherless,
plead the case of the widow.

18 "Come now, let us reason together,"
says the LORD.
"Though your sins are like scarlet,
they shall be as white as snow;
though they are red as crimson,
they shall be like wool.

Isaiah 1:16-18

I forgot that "Paranoid" by Black Sabbath was the inaugural album that we listened to on this tour.

Lighting our heads and ways with shaky hands.

2009-10-25T09:27:00.000-07:00

So we have been having a swell time thus far on tour with new besties Shaky Hands and old besties Headlights. Whilst in Michigan we (well everyone else but me) had some delicious burgers from a hodge podge cafe that looked like quite the feat to fit in the mouth. We also had a lovely visit to Rochester, New York which I think is a rather punk/goth type of town but the houses were lovely and old looking and our friend Josh shared his nice house with us. On our drive to Rochester we listened to the modern classic "Mwem" by our friends Math Blaster. If you haven't heard them please do so because it is worth it. We then played on the wonkiest of wonky but we had a good time and it was Joey's birthday so we all hugged him. I also read "The Gunslinger", by Stephen King, in its entirety that day which is the first time I've ever done that and I know now why he is one of the greatest modern storytellers. We celebrated Joey's birthday the next day in Boston by getting extreme ice-cream at a place called J.P. Licks and it was very good. The next day our CMJ show was fun and we got to meet up with our new friends and UK labelmates The Answering Machine. They were great "mates." We enjoyed their British acccents so much that the next day in the van we tried to emulate them to the enormous amusement of ourselves, but might have offended anyone else had they been there. Goucher College with Jukebox the Ghost and Philly at Kung Fu Necktie were both fun. I guess the Phillys are going to the World Series. Congratulations. I hope that the Fresh Prince sings the national anthem for that. I would watch that.

Things we've listened to in the van so far:

Liars-"S/T" & "Drums Not Dead"
Dead Man's Bones-"S/T"
Headlights-"Wildlife"
Deerhunter-"Flourescent Grey EP"
Mount Eerie-"Winds Poem" & "Lost Wisdom"
The Knife-"Silent Shout"
M. Ward-"Transfiguration of Vincent"
Various LCD Soundsystem, Os Mutantes, "Brazil 70" and Bruce Springsteen songs.
As well as the Nathaniel Mayer song "Dreams Come True" quite a few times.

love love love

Funeral pts 1-2

2009-10-16T10:49:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone.
I just finished this as a present for Emily and don't have time to do art for it, but it will probably come eventually.

Funeral pts 1 & 2

I don't know yet if it's a project I'll continue to work on. There are so many other things to consider. But I hope you enjoy this at least.

Still waiting for it

2009-10-15T12:56:00.000-07:00

Excited to hear the rest of the album

Ambient One - FIRS

2009-10-13T21:09:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone.
I'm too excited to post something to finish something new. So here is something old.
It's a pretty early attempt but I want to try to get back to doing stuff like this more often.

Ambient One

More to come soon, hopefully!

Joey

"Future Trends/Hummingbird Choir" split single

2009-10-11T17:52:00.000-07:00

This is a split single that my friend Andrew and I did. Hopefully more things like this will happen soon.

"Future Trends/Hummingbird Choir"

Follow lights in darkness

2009-10-04T14:01:00.000-07:00

9 So the LORD said to him, "Bring me a heifer, a goat and a ram, each three years old, along with a dove and a young pigeon."

10 Abram brought all these to him, cut them in two and arranged the halves opposite each other; the birds, however, he did not cut in half. 11 Then birds of prey came down on the carcasses, but Abram drove them away.

12 As the sun was setting, Abram fell into a deep sleep, and a thick and dreadful darkness came over him. 13 Then the LORD said to him, "Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, and they will be enslaved and mistreated four hundred years. 14 But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterward they will come out with great possessions. 15 You, however, will go to your fathers in peace and be buried at a good old age. 16 In the fourth generation your descendants will come back here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure."

17 When the sun had set and darkness had fallen, a smoking firepot with a blazing torch appeared and passed between the pieces. 18 On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram and said, "To your descendants I give this land, from the river [d] of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates- 19 the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, 20 Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, 21 Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites and Jebusites."

-Genesis 15

Colossus

2009-10-02T17:51:00.000-07:00

Me seeing Lightning Bolt back in the day.

Excited about their new album.

We are also playing on Fountain Square with a bunch of other great bands like Wussy, The Seedy Seeds and Bad Veins tomorrow night. Starts at like seven or so....

The other day a metal scrapper was walking down the street with his shopping cart and dog and we started talking then Josh came outside and we found out his name was Steve and he had a harmonica and played "Piano Man" and "Hoochie Koochie Man" and "Amazing Grace" for us then Josh brought his guitar out and he played us some blues but he kept saying he was better when he wasn't drunk. We gave him our cans and enjoyed him playing music for us for a bit and we talked for a while. We might start a band. His dogs name was Serena. She was nice and friendly.

Unchained Melody

2009-09-27T20:07:00.000-07:00

"Lonely rivers flow to the sea,
to the sea
to the open arms of the sea
lonely rivers sigh 'wait for me, wait for me'
I'll be coming home wait for me"

-The Righteous Brothers

Last night today

2009-09-26T12:07:00.001-07:00

Thanks to everyone who came to MidPoint last night and everyone who helped put it on or play. Twas' beautiful.

Something completely different.

" Think of the forces at work in the larger culture that work overtime to situate us with a privatized world of fantasy, spectacle and resentment that is entirely removed from larger social problems and public concerns. For instance, corporate culture within its unrelenting commercials and ads carpet bomb our audio and visual fields with the message that the only viable way to define ourselves is to shop and consume in an orgy of private pursuits. Popular culture traps us in the privatized universe of celebrity culture, urging us to define ourselves through the often empty and trivialized and highly individualized interests of celebrities."

-Henry A. Giroux

an excerpt from an article on illiteracy in America that can be read here. Thanks Lakes.

Return

2009-09-25T11:02:00.000-07:00

The direction I was hoping he would go with the new stuff.

Reduce Reuse Recycle

2009-09-23T23:48:00.000-07:00

Rhythm is Rhythm

2009-09-22T17:38:00.000-07:00

It has been a bit and for that I'm sorry.

The week before we left for tour was quite a wonderful time and a near perfect icing on a beautiful summer cake. I had a strange opportunity to play with two different street musicians within days of each other. I was leaving work and about to head home when I see some friends walking on Main St. they tell me they are "walking the beat" and I join them and we head down to the river and have an adventure and are heading back when we see a man setting up all sorts of crazy percussion gear. Conversational Ben asks him when he is going to play and he says he'll start in a bit after people start leaving the Reds game. We end up talking with him for close to an hour about music, performing on the street vs. in clubs, touring, practicing, family and a whole host of other things. He said he felt obligated to play for us since we were musicians so he calls his son over from the van and they soon get into absolutely shredding every piece of percussion they have and then do the same to all our minds. His name was Woody and he had dreads all the way down his back and wore sunglasses and his son looked pretty similar. He gave us some simple lessons and then asked me to play with him and we had a good time jammin on the street. He was playing in three different time signatures at once so I was not certain I was with him the entire time but he seemed pleased and smiled and we all hugged and said we could play with him anytime. A few days later I was at Findlay with some friends and started talking with Darren who plays there regularly on the weekend. He hawks blues and the current deals at the produce stand and exhorts shoppers to buy fruit there instead of Kroger telling them that they will be "unhappy". But of course all that is set to a blues vamp and he has the voice of a true soul troubador so me typing it out doesn't do it justice. But we got the talking and before I knew it he was telling me why I better be up to practice before sitting in with some real "jazz cats" and then he was handing me his guitar and I was totally rocking out at the market and he was shredding harmonica with me. Both experiences made me think about what it means to be a musician and play for other people.

I actually found a short documentary about Woody on youtube. I highly encourage everyone to watch it.

They do not spin

2009-09-01T15:58:00.000-07:00

"And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin."

We are going on tour soon visiting parts of the Northeast of the United States and later this month we are playing the Midpoint Music Festival right here in downtown Cincinnati, Ohio. I think we'll have some exciting things in store. It has been rather cool and Autumnal here in town the past week and it's been nice. The kind of weather where you don't have to put a fan or a heater on and you can just sleep with the window open and get in some nice sweatpants and get under the covers. I love it.

Things in my head/how i feel today

2009-08-29T13:05:00.000-07:00

What are we doing

2009-07-29T10:34:00.000-07:00

Sorry for no updates in a long while. We have been busy doing that thing that you do when not on tour called "life"...electric word life.

I have enjoyed riding bicycles with good friends and having pot lucks and trying to work on my house and we've all been working and saving money to do the things that you need money to do. We have a string of shows in the Midwest coming up this week and I spent the night at Josh's last night after practice. We've been writing a lot and are steadily working our way towards our next album. Some songs we've been popping into our sets like single kernels of carmel popcorn that find their way into the cheese portion of those big tins that you get at Christmas. But this week we will be testing out some jams even newer than that and we're not sure what flavor they are yet. Josh and I had dinner yesterday too and had a wonderful idea for a new sports broadcasting station called Lucas Sports instead of Lucas Arts and all the broadcasters and players would all go by "Mark Hammill" and the only person that would go by their "real" name would be our old friend John Madden. So a million Mark Hammills and still only one John Madden. While at Josh's that night I was watching one of the many public broadcast stations that DTV affords most modern homes and found some sort of live performance of a group called the Carolina Chocolate Drops. They were incredible on so many levels. Here is a video of them:

We also had the great pleasure of sharing the stage last week with The Walkmen and Cass McCombs and they were both fantastic. I was familiar with Walkmen but had never heard Cass and his band but they are my new favorite and their drummer Andy was very nice and plays in another awesome band called Lights that are very awesome. We've also been working on a music video accompaniment to one of our songs but until then here is a beautiful one from Mr. McCombs.

peace to you all wherever

Beautiful Woman

2009-07-16T10:09:00.000-07:00

Mixed Media,2009

New hero

2009-07-14T13:46:00.001-07:00

Solve Sundsbo

"let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the sky"

One more off my list

2009-07-06T16:31:00.000-07:00

I just purchased two tickets to see M83 at the Wexner Center in Columbus on July 18th. After that I will officially be able to cross one more off my list. Needless to say I am very, very excited.

The only others that I can think of at the moment would be Boredoms, MBV, Flaming Lips and I think Radiohead is probably on there too.

This weekend we also get the supreme pleasure of playing not one, but two, outdoor shows in a row at Fountain Square on Friday night and at the Bubblegum Masquerade Saturday night. I am very very excited to share the evening with many of our friends that make music because it has been a long time.

Let's talk about childhood

2009-06-30T15:47:00.001-07:00

a picture of mine

Not to beat a dead horse...

2009-06-25T15:26:00.000-07:00

Courtesy of the Cleveland Leader

Also, saw The Harlequins play last night and they are awesome. My new favorite locals, I'm proud to live in Cincinnati. I heard Enlou's EP the other night too, all mastered and done and it's incredible so there are many many flavors of soft serve at the local music ice cream shop right now. Love love love.