Yesterday we played a show in the evening for SXSW, so we took the day to go around and see the bands we've been trying to check out.

The Weakerthans - 1 PM
I had been so concerned with catching this band that I kind of forgot why it was so important to me to see them. As soon as they started playing, it clicked that they've been one of my favorite bands since I was 17 and this was my first time seeing them. They played mostly songs off of their new record (which, luckily, i love), and I had to stop singing along with "Virtute the Cat Explains Her Departure" in order to not get choked up. There were free nachos and Southern Comfort at this show.

Ra Ra Riot - 2:30 PM
This might be the best band in the universe right now. We played with them a year and a half ago in New York, and I've been obsessed with them since. They're like Chin Up Chin Up if Chin Up Chin Up totally ruled instead of being just okay, or they're like Broken Social Scene if BSS were "dudes" and not "kind of hippies". And by "dudes" i mean people that you see and immediately want to hang out with (I must clarify because two of the members are female, but girls can definitely be "dudes"). I have rarely felt so overwhelmed seeing a band, and I could gush for hours about them.

Meneguar - 3:00 PM
Meneguar is great and generally perceived as hip becuase they are from Brooklyn and are overtly DIY. The great thing is that, to me, they sound like late 90's emo bands, the kind of bands that were getting ripped on by the hip contingency when I was getting into indie rock. It's a surpreme irony that makes me love the band even more. They played on a po-dunk stage with a makeshift PA system, and they sounded great BUT they were so quiet, it kind of made me uncomfortable.

Village Voice Media Party - 4:00
I walked so so so so long to get to this show under the promise of free food, free drinks, and ..Trail of Dead. The walk from Ms. Bea's (where Meneguar was) to La Zona Rosa was hellishly long on the hottest day of SXSW thus far. By the time I arrived, Trail of Dead had just begun playing. I got a taco and was waiting in line for fixins when they played "Another Morning Stoner," their best song and 90% of why I care about them as a band. When I was tacoed and beered up and ready to watch the show, my friend I met up with left. I was sitting by myself watching a band I sort of like play songs I couldn't force myself to care about. I gave my VIP free-shit passes to some randoms on the way out so they could drink free. I felt like a better person.

Our show
We played a house show across town, which means that the cops came and broke it up. Bands had played this house all day, and there were 3 more yet to play: Sharks and Sailors, us, and Woozyhelmet. We moved things over to another house, but were fully aware that as soon as music started, the cops would come and the other 2 bands that hadn't played there yet would be unable to play. Our solution: we set up a bunch of gear in the living room and had all 3 bands play round robin style, one song at a time. It was a blast, and everybody there knew how ridiculous it was, chanting things like "Fuck the police!" and "Yes We Can!" inbetween bands' songs. As Toto from Woozyhelmet (and Octopus Project) put it: "that is the only thing that could have happened to make the show right."

Today's plan is: get an oil change, watch Pattern is Movement, play our show, watch Maps and Atlases/Tera Melos/Russian Circles, high five each other, sleep.

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The title of this post, that's what South By Southwest is like. Complete and udder clusterfuck. We got to Austin yesterday, played a house party, then I caught The Photo Atlas, Hearts of Palm, and a crazy 3 AM Octopus Project set. Insane.

We've neglected this blog pretty hard, so I wrote a really long tour diary-ish thing that talks about our experiences and focuses on the perception of "coolness" within the areas we've been playing. It's being posted in installments at Annie Zaleski'sRiverfront Times A to Z blog.

Today we play at a mexican restaurant with Pattern is Movement, who may be one of the best bands in the universe. If I don't get to see these bands at SXSW, I may murder somebody: The Weakerthans, Ra Ra Riot, Tera Melos.

So its been just over one week since we left our shit-ass jobs for a better life on the road. So far so good. We've only had 3 run-ins with the law for noise complaints while playing, only 1 major piece of equipment fail, and enough cute tour dogs to make our respective home pets totally jealous. The drives have even been pretty pleasant.

The other day while driving, I came to the realization that listening to music in the van may just be my favorite place to listen to music. Everyday, we here at So Many Dynamos LLC fire up the flux capacitor and experience time and space travel to the next city for anywhere from 3 to 10 hours, all of which while listening to records. We listen to our all time favorite records, new favorites, righteous jam records, records that kind of suck, comedy albums, ect... Most of the time, the record we're listening to only has significance to the particular mood we are collectively or personally experiencing at the moment, and does not have anything to do with what is happening outside of the van. BUT sometimes, the music that is happening inside the van is so appropriate for the drive/scenery that it is as if planet earth itself is broadcasting music into our Van. Examples:

Sometime in the year 2005 while driving like hell to get our asses out of the State of California we happened to come across a massive field of Windmill Power Generators while listening to Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians.



Black Mountain's In the Future not only has been blowing our minds lately but was also perfectly appropriate 2 days ago while making the drive through the awesome snow capped mountains of Montana at Sunset.

Somewhere there is video footage from the second night of our very first tour way back in June 2003. The drive was again through mountainous terrain weaving dangerously through winding rock roads with large drop offs in attempt to get higher and higher up a mountain towards a full moon all during which while we were having our nervous yet perfect experience with our newly dubbed tape of Dark Side of the Moon.

"You made me ink!"

We're in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. We are staying with a fellow named Ryan Gage. He set up our show, which was awesome. I am using Ryan's computer while the rest of SMD watches Finding Nemo. I'm partially jealous.

We are only 2 shows into the tour but everything is already going remarkably better than we anticipated. We played last night in Omaha with The Show Is the Rainbow (who is one of our best friends/favorite bands/dude who saved our asses after we flipped our van) and a band called UUVVWWZ, which is apparently pronounced "double u, double v, double double u, z. They were pretty incredible.

Tonight we played an early show with Welcome To The Cinema and We All Have Hooks for Hands. Hooks for Hands is kind of the Sioux Falls version of Say Panther, who is the St. Louis version of Broken Social Scene. Aka, they're the band with 35 members and horns and really sweet songs that involve a maximum of 3 chords. They rule.

We go to Denver tomorrow, which hasn't totally hit me yet. Leaving the Midwest is kind of a big deal.

We're going to TRY to listen to the entire Radiohead discography in chronological order tomorrow. Wish us luck.

Yawn, stretch, yawn.

When we pulled into our driveway at 5:42 AM yesterday, it had just hit me how intense the previous two days were. We tracked an entire song, did the basics, overdubs, and vocals, all in one caffeine and adrenaline fueled day, and then drove the 2.5 hours straight back to Edwardsville. Wow. We have to do a few group vocal parts in our kitchen, and then it's all out of our hands.

Nerd note: this was the first time since When I Explode that we recorded exclusively to 2" tape. My biggest regret about When I Explode: i wish we would have done it digitally.

We leave for a six week tour in 6 days. I'm not in the least bit prepared. Maybe I should bring a sleeping bag this time around.

Things we have to do before we leave:
-get shirts made
-work up more new songs for the record to be playable live
-obtain a synthesizer

Things i personally have to do before we leave:
-have a birthday/go out for my lady's birthday
-figure out how to run a guitar and a keyboard into the same amplifier without using an A/B switch or mixer
-mix the Say Panther record i've been working on for 4 months
-get a haircut (additional option: get a real job)

Menomena got robbed at the Grammys, for real.

I'm sitting at a computer caddy-corner to the console at Great Western Record Recorders in Tolono, IL (15 minutes south of Champaign). Aaron is performing vocals for the 10th song on our record and Chris Walla is recording said vocals. Matt Talbot, studio owner and former member of Hum, is in the corner soldering some shit or something. Norm and Griffin are in the apartment that lives above the studio, probably drinking coffee and watching Barack Obama tear it up in the primaries.

It's the end of day two, which is the last day we have here. We spent all of yesterday working on sounds and rehearsing. The live tracking was done early this afternoon, keyboard and bass overdubs a bit later, vocals being done as I type and guitar fixes/overdubs in the late night/early morning hours I assume. Then we drive back to Edwardsville tonight, for Norm has a 6 AM blood draw at Gateway Medical Research.

Matt and Chris keep talking about gear, and while I'm a budding recording engineer, I haven't known what the hell they're talking about for about 3 hours.

I'm pretty proud of this song, very very glad we threw out the bastard track that ruined our lives 3 months ago. This is the longest song we've ever done, clocking in at 6 and a half minutes long (our longest to date was "let's move mountains", the last track on Flashlights, which was really just 2 songs put together into one track). I guess it's inspired by Beck, Yes, and Weezer. Nerd stuff: mic under snare drum near kick drum beater running through Whammy pedal set to an octave down. Floor tom mic running into an amp with a ton of reverb facing the kick drum mic. Casio sampling keyboard using a string glissando patch that's turned backwards.

Selective words from this song:

The fault line slipped
The fault line slipped
The fault line slipped
And my knees keep shaking

The seismic waves
The seismic waves
Are crashing into
The surface breaking

The plates collide
The plates collide
And we're all just
Fossils in the making

The Arch collapsed
The Arch collapsed
But I still see its shadow
Cast over the river

6 songs that remind me of "Low Rider"

Alphabetically:

Battles - Tonto
Beck - Devil's Haircut
Broken Social Scene: Cause = Time
Modest Mouse - Tiny Cities Made of Ashes
Of Montreal - Heimdalsgate Like a Promethean Curse
Radiohead - Bodysnatchers

Anyway, in less than a week we're meeting Chris Walla at Great Western Record Recorders in Champaign, IL to record that pesky 10th track for our record. It's 6 and a half minutes long.