We made a visit to the offices of Team Clermont yesterday, and now we have a plague-level of CDs in the van. They're everywhere. We're infested with jewel cases. We are going to try to listen to all of them. We're going semi alphabetically, and yesterday we did Akron/Family, Christina Aguilera, Alterbridge, and a few random indie bands with names like Arks and Airiel. I was expecting a bit more out of Christina, but she dropped the ball. Most of the songs are about how great music is, which is redundant. It's kind of like a whole album of "Sir Duke" by Stevie Wonder, but without the sweet horn break.
Played the Two Art Chicks space in Greensboro, NC last night and stayed with our pal Jeremy. I believe a chinese buffet may be in order today. Last night, we shared the bill with The Bronzed Chorus, who blew our minds. If you click that link, make sure to know that it's a 2 piece band. We've been very lucky on bands we've played with so far.
Today is a house party in Blacksburg, VA. I think our DC show tomorrow will officially be the end of vacation and the start of tour.
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
more Athens, mour Tour, mo' Money, mo' Problems
IS ANYBODY GOING TO CMJ?!? because WE ARE! I'm excited, as it'll be our first time there or at any other super schmoozy music festival (cough SXSW cough).
I slept well last night, despite the many distractions (trains, brutal sunlight, Griffin snoring). We've been in Athens for 4 days now, and I'm going to miss it. Luke from WVTS said it best: "It's like a big episode of Cheers except everybody wears aviators." Also, everybody in Athens is good looking and dresses well. It's absurd. Hanging out in a group sometimes feels like somebody should be videotaping you for a PBR commercial.
Today we will go to Greensboro, NC, a town we have played once and hung out in thrice. We will drive there, we will play, and then we will chill out with Jeremy, former second drummer for Cinemechanica. It will be a good time.
Depending on how soon all the other Dyna-bros get ready, we may stop by the Team Clermont office for some high fives and promo cds. Bob Kay has a cd/cassette combo, so we've been making it a point to listen to every cd that is given to us. Usually we end up with a big stack of unlistened-to cds, but this is not the case (now the highways are just extra littered with bad cds we've gotten [throwing cds out of the window when they suck is especially satisfying {we know that's littering and bad for the environment and all, but the physical act of removing bad music from your life is worth it}])
I slept well last night, despite the many distractions (trains, brutal sunlight, Griffin snoring). We've been in Athens for 4 days now, and I'm going to miss it. Luke from WVTS said it best: "It's like a big episode of Cheers except everybody wears aviators." Also, everybody in Athens is good looking and dresses well. It's absurd. Hanging out in a group sometimes feels like somebody should be videotaping you for a PBR commercial.
Today we will go to Greensboro, NC, a town we have played once and hung out in thrice. We will drive there, we will play, and then we will chill out with Jeremy, former second drummer for Cinemechanica. It will be a good time.
Depending on how soon all the other Dyna-bros get ready, we may stop by the Team Clermont office for some high fives and promo cds. Bob Kay has a cd/cassette combo, so we've been making it a point to listen to every cd that is given to us. Usually we end up with a big stack of unlistened-to cds, but this is not the case (now the highways are just extra littered with bad cds we've gotten [throwing cds out of the window when they suck is especially satisfying {we know that's littering and bad for the environment and all, but the physical act of removing bad music from your life is worth it}])
Monday, October 8, 2007
Atlanta, Flowers, Chicken
The road from Athens to Atlanta is a tricky one. It's all state highways with lots of stop lights, and we always seem to miss the same one and have to pull out the atlas.
The best lineup we've ever been lucky enough to play 3 times is the one with us, Cinemechanica, and We Versus the Shark. Last night we played with both at the Drunken Unicorn in "Hotlanta", another one of those venues we've heard of but never played. I was pleasantly surprised by how literal the club's decorations are; there are lots of murals of unicorns that appear intoxicated. I'm especially fond of one featuring a unicorn and wine-bottle-holding-Moses peering out over a rainbow that bisects a flaming red camaro. That may end up next to !!! on the you-just-have-to-see-it list.
Outside of the Drunken Unicorn, a homeless man kept trying to give people semi-wilted bouquets of flowers, but wasn't asking for anything in return. This actually sketched us out even more, because we didn't understand his motivations. Are we supposed to offer money in exchange? Does he just want to spread some love around? Should we touch the flowers?
Our pre-show meal was at a Southern cooking restaurant called Eatz. The choices were basically pasta or meat. While most of the Shark/Cinemechanica crew went in the pasta line, we ended up in the meat line. I ordered the Jerk Chicken (spicy) with corn on the cob and baked potato and they gave me HALF OF A CHICKEN! Very intimidating.
We are now back in Athens for our 2nd day off here, and then we will officially be on tour and not on vacation.
The best lineup we've ever been lucky enough to play 3 times is the one with us, Cinemechanica, and We Versus the Shark. Last night we played with both at the Drunken Unicorn in "Hotlanta", another one of those venues we've heard of but never played. I was pleasantly surprised by how literal the club's decorations are; there are lots of murals of unicorns that appear intoxicated. I'm especially fond of one featuring a unicorn and wine-bottle-holding-Moses peering out over a rainbow that bisects a flaming red camaro. That may end up next to !!! on the you-just-have-to-see-it list.
Outside of the Drunken Unicorn, a homeless man kept trying to give people semi-wilted bouquets of flowers, but wasn't asking for anything in return. This actually sketched us out even more, because we didn't understand his motivations. Are we supposed to offer money in exchange? Does he just want to spread some love around? Should we touch the flowers?
Our pre-show meal was at a Southern cooking restaurant called Eatz. The choices were basically pasta or meat. While most of the Shark/Cinemechanica crew went in the pasta line, we ended up in the meat line. I ordered the Jerk Chicken (spicy) with corn on the cob and baked potato and they gave me HALF OF A CHICKEN! Very intimidating.
We are now back in Athens for our 2nd day off here, and then we will officially be on tour and not on vacation.
Sunday, October 7, 2007
Record Status, Tour, Van, Alabama,
Our lack of updates on this blog are because our record is sort of at a stand-still point. We finished the tracking, and are waiting on the mixing. Our record took longer than we thought to record, which already ate into Chris Walla's available time to mix. On top of that, he had some issues at the Canadian border while working on his solo record AND he just started working on his real band's album. So we've been trying to figure out how to outsource some of the songs to someone else to have them do mixes. It's all a bit weird, but we're just kind of playing the waiting game right now. With that said, we have no no no idea when our record is going to be out.
With that said, we're going to turn this into a touring blog for the time being as to not be negligent. Soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo....
We loaded up Bob Kay and left at 1PM on Thursday. Bob Kay is a gorgeous dark blue Ford E350 15 passenger van that is lovingly named after Griffin's dad. It's the same type of van we had before, and the inside looks almost identical. This kind of gets to me from time to time, since the last time any of us were in a vehicle like this it flipped on the highway. I was driving the first shift, and every time a wind gust hit us or the road was bumpy from construction I got a little queasy. I feel more comfortable now that I've been in it for a few hours, I guess I got too used to being in cars for a few months.
We landed at the Flying Monkey Arts center (one of our favorite venues), and found out that: A. the ironically named local band, The Arrivals, was not going to arrive. B. there was no P.A. to speak of. There were also no people there except the volunteer at the door. Everything fell into place, but it was scary for a bit. It was a nice, informal show, and we played 11 songs. It may have been our longest set ever.
After that, we drove to Athens, GA and we've been there ever since. Friday, we played an AWESOME show in Athens with a band called Powers. It's 4 guitars (including Luke from We Versus the Shark and Bryant from Cinemechanica) and a drummer (Mike from Cinemechanica), and they set up their guitars on opposite corners of the room and play in the center. They're a quadrophonic instrumental band, and it was pretty mindblowing.
Yesterday, we went to Six Flags FRIGHT FEST in Atlanta! Luke from WVTS is a roller coaster connoisseur, and his knowledge of the park is truly FRIGHTFUL. We had such a good time, it was SCARY. The lines were EERILY short for a Saturday.
The best Fright Fest themed decoration around the park was a skeleton fisherman hanging out by one of the ponds with a fishing pole that had a skeleton fish at the end of it. The cobweb-covered skeleton on on of the ladders of the who-wants-to-try-to-climb-this-sketchy-rope-ladder-ninja-warrior-style game was a close second, and the skeleton in the red flyer wagon was a comfortable third. Also, I'm glad to see that Thriller-era Michael Jackson attire is still the standard for dancing zombies.
Last night, we saw !!! at the 40 Watt in Athens. Wow. I HATE HATE HATE when somebody's defense of a band is "you have to see them live" but holy shit, dude, you have to see !!! live. They've moved out of being the indie-rock dance jam band and now they're almost an indie rock r&b band, complete with some sassy female vocals. I always thought their dude singer, with classic lines like "uh, uh, uh, uh, uh" and "shake that butt", was a doofus and now i understand that he is completely 100% a doofus. But now i understand the charm of it. Dude just wants to dance, and he totally doesn't give a shit if it looks cool. He's working the crowd, and his guard is completely down. He also played the agogo bells in the sound booth for the monitors and was dancing all up on their own monitor guy. I dug it.
Tonight: Atlanta, Guitar Center, load-in, food, show, drive back to Athens, sleep late.
With that said, we're going to turn this into a touring blog for the time being as to not be negligent. Soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo....
We loaded up Bob Kay and left at 1PM on Thursday. Bob Kay is a gorgeous dark blue Ford E350 15 passenger van that is lovingly named after Griffin's dad. It's the same type of van we had before, and the inside looks almost identical. This kind of gets to me from time to time, since the last time any of us were in a vehicle like this it flipped on the highway. I was driving the first shift, and every time a wind gust hit us or the road was bumpy from construction I got a little queasy. I feel more comfortable now that I've been in it for a few hours, I guess I got too used to being in cars for a few months.
We landed at the Flying Monkey Arts center (one of our favorite venues), and found out that: A. the ironically named local band, The Arrivals, was not going to arrive. B. there was no P.A. to speak of. There were also no people there except the volunteer at the door. Everything fell into place, but it was scary for a bit. It was a nice, informal show, and we played 11 songs. It may have been our longest set ever.
After that, we drove to Athens, GA and we've been there ever since. Friday, we played an AWESOME show in Athens with a band called Powers. It's 4 guitars (including Luke from We Versus the Shark and Bryant from Cinemechanica) and a drummer (Mike from Cinemechanica), and they set up their guitars on opposite corners of the room and play in the center. They're a quadrophonic instrumental band, and it was pretty mindblowing.
Yesterday, we went to Six Flags FRIGHT FEST in Atlanta! Luke from WVTS is a roller coaster connoisseur, and his knowledge of the park is truly FRIGHTFUL. We had such a good time, it was SCARY. The lines were EERILY short for a Saturday.
The best Fright Fest themed decoration around the park was a skeleton fisherman hanging out by one of the ponds with a fishing pole that had a skeleton fish at the end of it. The cobweb-covered skeleton on on of the ladders of the who-wants-to-try-to-climb-this-sketchy-rope-ladder-ninja-warrior-style game was a close second, and the skeleton in the red flyer wagon was a comfortable third. Also, I'm glad to see that Thriller-era Michael Jackson attire is still the standard for dancing zombies.
Last night, we saw !!! at the 40 Watt in Athens. Wow. I HATE HATE HATE when somebody's defense of a band is "you have to see them live" but holy shit, dude, you have to see !!! live. They've moved out of being the indie-rock dance jam band and now they're almost an indie rock r&b band, complete with some sassy female vocals. I always thought their dude singer, with classic lines like "uh, uh, uh, uh, uh" and "shake that butt", was a doofus and now i understand that he is completely 100% a doofus. But now i understand the charm of it. Dude just wants to dance, and he totally doesn't give a shit if it looks cool. He's working the crowd, and his guard is completely down. He also played the agogo bells in the sound booth for the monitors and was dancing all up on their own monitor guy. I dug it.
Tonight: Atlanta, Guitar Center, load-in, food, show, drive back to Athens, sleep late.
Sunday, September 30, 2007
Dude...
WE HAVE A VAN!
The whole van buying process was long, stressful, painfully uninteresting, and technically isn't over yet but the fact of the matter is WE HAVE A VAN!
Pictures will follow soon/eventually.
Now on to the trillion other things to worry about before leaving for tour.
The whole van buying process was long, stressful, painfully uninteresting, and technically isn't over yet but the fact of the matter is WE HAVE A VAN!
Pictures will follow soon/eventually.
Now on to the trillion other things to worry about before leaving for tour.
Thursday, September 27, 2007
..........
A. we all love At the Drive-In, and they are a constant reference point when we make records (this second sentence is just to form some sort of legitimacy of putting this on our blog).
B. the internet is completely completely insane:
B. the internet is completely completely insane:
Saturday, September 8, 2007
We are collectively the worst bloggers in the universe
We need to invent a new word for "blogger", for serious.
There is no news on our record for the moment. This doesn't bother us so much as we appreciate the time off mentally, but it doesn't make for a highly interesting recording blog. I figured, since we can't actually put any new music up yet, why not talk about the things that most inspired us while we were writing/recording this album.
Alphabetically:
Battles - Mirrored. Having something like this come out when you're halfway through writing your record is scary. It's inspiring, but it also makes you want to start completely over and/or bash your skull in for not thinking of it first. We haven't gone this apeshit over a record in a long time. I felt like i had to play it for everybody I saw for a week afterwards. I think i even walked around Edwardsville with a CD-R of this in my pocket at one point in case i ran into somebody. We've been getting a little more nerdy/techy lately (my live guitar pedal count has doubled from 3 to 6), and Mirrored kind of showed us a new angle on how to approach songwriting. I believe there are 2 songs that are pretty directly influenced by this one.
Cinemechanica. We accidentally made a guitar record. There aren't solos or wah pedals or anything, but lots of dual lead line guitarmonies (editor's note: rhymes with "harmonies") and things of that nature. We have Cinemechanica to blame for this. They are our guitar heroes. In fact, if any of their songs were on Guitar Hero, i would actually enjoy playing Guitar Hero.
Eno, Brian. I think Chris Walla was trying to channel the spirit of Brian Eno during our sessions. The Oblique Strategies cards alone were enough reason to put him on this list (see link on the right).
Menomena. Read the description i wrote for the Battles record, replace the word "Battles" with the word "Menomena" and the word "Mirrored" with the words "Friend and Foe".
Talking Heads. This goes hand in hand with Eno. It's becoming cliche to list the Talking Heads as a major influence, but I feel strongly about it. In a few spots, i think we really nailed the Remain in Light-esque percussive multi-layered thing and I'm really proud of it.
Weezer. Pinkerton was probably second only to Remain in Light on the list of records that directly influenced this album. We would listen to "Tired of Sex" in the control room at Tiny Telephone and just wonder how they made drums sound like that. I hope that when this record is released, people will be able to hear it and go "man, those dudes really like Weezer." Because we do. A lot.
Yes. This one may go more for me than the rest of the band. Griffin grew up on Yes, and I had never taken them seriously until he let me borrow his LP of Close to the Edge. I made a cassette of it and i think Aaron probably wanted to punch me over how many times I put it on in the van. I can't vouch for everything this band has done, but when they're on they're pretty unstoppable. When I played the instrumental demo we made of the first track on the album, the one that I think sounds like Talking Heads' "Crosseyed and Painless" meets Deerhoof's "Perfect Me" meets our "Search Party", more than one person said it reminded them of Yes.
Which leads me to my next thought: are we a prog rock band? I don't think so, but i'm not sure if it'd be such a bad thing to be considered. I mean, math rock and prog rock are only a few degrees of separation apart. The Mars Volta went from one to the other in like 6 months. And we write "fantasy" songs about apocalypse and earthquakes and things like that anyway. I think we're safe for now, since our longest song is 5 minutes and we don't have any guitar solos (yet).
There is no news on our record for the moment. This doesn't bother us so much as we appreciate the time off mentally, but it doesn't make for a highly interesting recording blog. I figured, since we can't actually put any new music up yet, why not talk about the things that most inspired us while we were writing/recording this album.
Alphabetically:
Battles - Mirrored. Having something like this come out when you're halfway through writing your record is scary. It's inspiring, but it also makes you want to start completely over and/or bash your skull in for not thinking of it first. We haven't gone this apeshit over a record in a long time. I felt like i had to play it for everybody I saw for a week afterwards. I think i even walked around Edwardsville with a CD-R of this in my pocket at one point in case i ran into somebody. We've been getting a little more nerdy/techy lately (my live guitar pedal count has doubled from 3 to 6), and Mirrored kind of showed us a new angle on how to approach songwriting. I believe there are 2 songs that are pretty directly influenced by this one.
Cinemechanica. We accidentally made a guitar record. There aren't solos or wah pedals or anything, but lots of dual lead line guitarmonies (editor's note: rhymes with "harmonies") and things of that nature. We have Cinemechanica to blame for this. They are our guitar heroes. In fact, if any of their songs were on Guitar Hero, i would actually enjoy playing Guitar Hero.
Eno, Brian. I think Chris Walla was trying to channel the spirit of Brian Eno during our sessions. The Oblique Strategies cards alone were enough reason to put him on this list (see link on the right).
Menomena. Read the description i wrote for the Battles record, replace the word "Battles" with the word "Menomena" and the word "Mirrored" with the words "Friend and Foe".
Talking Heads. This goes hand in hand with Eno. It's becoming cliche to list the Talking Heads as a major influence, but I feel strongly about it. In a few spots, i think we really nailed the Remain in Light-esque percussive multi-layered thing and I'm really proud of it.
Weezer. Pinkerton was probably second only to Remain in Light on the list of records that directly influenced this album. We would listen to "Tired of Sex" in the control room at Tiny Telephone and just wonder how they made drums sound like that. I hope that when this record is released, people will be able to hear it and go "man, those dudes really like Weezer." Because we do. A lot.
Yes. This one may go more for me than the rest of the band. Griffin grew up on Yes, and I had never taken them seriously until he let me borrow his LP of Close to the Edge. I made a cassette of it and i think Aaron probably wanted to punch me over how many times I put it on in the van. I can't vouch for everything this band has done, but when they're on they're pretty unstoppable. When I played the instrumental demo we made of the first track on the album, the one that I think sounds like Talking Heads' "Crosseyed and Painless" meets Deerhoof's "Perfect Me" meets our "Search Party", more than one person said it reminded them of Yes.
Which leads me to my next thought: are we a prog rock band? I don't think so, but i'm not sure if it'd be such a bad thing to be considered. I mean, math rock and prog rock are only a few degrees of separation apart. The Mars Volta went from one to the other in like 6 months. And we write "fantasy" songs about apocalypse and earthquakes and things like that anyway. I think we're safe for now, since our longest song is 5 minutes and we don't have any guitar solos (yet).
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