FAQ

When is your next show?
There isn't one.

Hey guys whats up??? You guys down to play ____ on ____??
Probably not. But can't hurt to ask.

Will you dudes ever play again?
Time will tell.

Are you guys still together?
No, but we're not not together either.

Come to ____!
If the price is right, okay.

Will you ever do a European Tour?
We did two, plus a couple UK ones. So, already did.

How come I can't find tour dates anywhere?!
Because there aren't any.

Give me new music!
It doesn't work like that.

Where can i find the lyrics of your songs?
They're out there. There used to be a downloadable Word doc of the 2 lyrics on our old label's website, which must be floating around somewhere. If you want the Alive As You Are lyrics, buy a physical copy.

Jared please call me.
No.

Where's the best place to buy 2 on vinyl?
The 2 LP sounds like shit. Buy the CD, and just get the vinyl for the bonus track.

Where are you guys??
California. We all do stuff. You might particularly like White Fence.

Please don't say you've broken up.
Okay.

All questions derived from real questions asked by real people, over the last few years. Sorry we didn't answer sooner.

This is a great article

Inspiration and Derivation: Music Critics and Their Times (Foxy Digitalis)

An excerpt:

A close friend of mine once argued that the logical endpoint of psychedelic music is country rock. Drawing on the great tradition of 1960s urban, acid bands that followed short-lived rocking careers with moves to country sensibilities (foreshadowing 1970s introversion), the argument is compelling in pointing out the limits of psychedelic rock’s gimmicks. One can only dress folk or rhythm and blues song structures in so many shades of reverb or layers of studio trickery before they feel drawn to the internal logic of their songs or songwriting approaches.

we gotta move these refrigerators

What with the economy what it is and what not and what have you, combined with the imperativeness of you owning our music, our bros at Dangerbird are having a whaleuva sale over on iTunes, now thru September 21. So, lookit:
• Alive As You Are for $8.99!
• 2 (the album) for $5.99!
• The "Two Ways Out"video for 99¢!

And you can (still) even download our first record for free.

God bless us, every one.

OUR NEW RECORD IS OUT TODAY

It's called Alive As You Are, and it can now be bought. Buy the vinyl if you can. Better yet, if you're in L.A., just come to the Bootleg Theatre tonight and get it there.

This record means a lot to us, and we hope it will to you too.

Alive As You Are is out in the UK

And that calls for a few words on the record, how we made it, and on the product we're flooding the marketplace with, o informed consumer.

The LP bears a AAA code on the back (and when I say LP, I'm talking vinyl). You used to see these codes on CD's back in the 80's and 90's. It was designed to tell you how the CD was recorded (first letter), mixed (second letter) and mastered (third letter). For instance, AAD would mean a record was recorded analog, mixed analog, and mastered digitally (of course if it's on CD, it's digital and therefore the third letter would always be D). But those codes more or less vanished by the turn of the century. Fast forward to present times, when every band and their grandmother presses vinyl and touts it as the ultimate listening experience. In our neighborhood alone, two record stores have opened in the last year or two that only sell new vinyl. It's poppin' off. Except there's one caveat. If you recorded your album digitally, then it's meant to be listened to digitally (although someone on some message board somewhere might argue that this point is arguable). Once you go digital, it's always digital, and regardless of if it's on vinyl or not, your brain will be fed discrete little bits of data that sounds a lot like music instead of the continuous sound that is music. This vinyl revival hasn't been accompanied by renewed use of SPARS codes (as it's called; although it was never intended for LP's in the first place), so we usually don't know how these records were actually recorded, mixed and mastered; but I reckon that at least 95% of that new, shrink-wrapped $18 vinyl was recorded on a computer. Which means, at least in these eyes, your money might be better spent on the CD. But maybe you have a DJ night, and it's important to you to spin vinyl, who knows.


Anyway. Back to the AAA on the Alive As You Are LP. What this means is that we recorded the whole thing onto tape, mixed it onto another tape, and took that to Pete Lyman at Infrasonic Sound, whose very special needle etched grooves into what is now the vinyl platter you can hold in your hand (or, simply, he mastered it). Without any digitalia in the way, what comes out of your speakers is essentially a direct transfer of energy from us to you. All vibration and impulses. A more human listening experience. When we thought about our favorite records and what kind of record we wanted to make, we realized the common thread is they were pretty much all made this way. And here we are.

Why doesn't everybody do it like this? Well, it's easier to do every step of the process digitally, it's cheaper, it's more forgiving, you can "fix" mistakes and poor performances, studios are set up that way, people can't really tell the difference... and the list goes on and on. Digital production is insanely compelling, and it takes a lot of practice and discipline to lay it down, warts and voice cracks and all, on tape.

So yeah. After we were done tracking at Hyde Street in SF, we packed up and went an hour north to Prairie Sun, in Sonoma County and mixed for the next 10 days. It was our engineer Drew, our producer Nick, and us all crammed in this fishbowl of a control room around a mixing board turning knobs and moving sliders. Which is not textbook mixing, by the way, and was tense and not fun more often than not. But it worked - we mixed it on our own the way we wanted to do it, onto tape, and that is what's on the record.

The CD's different. When we turned the record in to our label, they said "hey, some of these mixes sound wack, let's have a professional remix em." So we transferred all the tapes onto a hard drive and got a guy named Jason Lader to mix it over a couple weekends at Rick Rubin's house in the hills on the days Kid Rock wasn't there, and I'm pretty sure he broke into it, because he made it out like we weren't supposed to be there and swore us to secrecy (oops). Since these mixes were bound for the CD (and iTunes/etc), to hell with all that analog self-righteousness; song by song, we picked the better mix, and five of his mixes are on the digital version.

All that said, what's so very nice is that when you buy the vinyl, you get a download code. Which gets you the digital version too. Best of both worlds. So there. If your neighborhood general store doesn't have it, you can order it here or here, or if you want to drop some Sterling on the CD here.

*** note: if you can't find the vinyl in the UK, order it from Dangerbird and they'll ship it straightaway ***

Alive Comes Alive!

After our old Roswell Record Release Party-With-An-Alien failed to catch on with the financiers, and months and months of subsequent careful consideration of highly competitive bids from several world-class venues, we have decided to celebrate the release of Alive As You Are with a LIVE performance at the following:

Tuesday, August 17. L.A. Bootleg Theater (with Wounded Lion)
Thursday, August 19. S.F. The Independent (with Sonny & The Sunsets)

These should be pretty enjoyable. The Bootleg is on Beverly Blvd, across from Brooklyn Bagel, which is the only place to get a fresh bagel in this godforsaken town, and there's free parking behind Praise Christian Church, which proves that this town is not godforsaken after all. The Independent is on Divis, in local parlance, and is where we had our last record release show, which was capped off by Jared taking a pie in the face, what fun. Both of these shows will be 21+, on account of adult content.

There will also be an in-store performance at a record store in each locale, if you're on a budget and/or 14 years old. Details forthcoming.


a lame metaphor? where? is it over here?

split minute

we put another new song on our myspace. it's called "Split Minute" and it's on our new record and now you can hear it.

ALIVE AS YOU ARE

The new one. The one we've been promising for the last year. It's almost here. July 26 in the UK and Europe and August 17 in the U.S. It's called Alive As You Are and it looks like this:



1 Backseat
2 Split Minute
3 18th Street Shuffle
4 New America
5 Rain Party
6 Maple Day Getaway
7 Trail the Line
8 June Bloom
9 Dear Author
10 A Lovely Game
11 Cry on Me Woman

For something more immediately gratifying, go HERE (or click on the album cover) to download "Dear Author" for free! You'll be so happy. We are.

Our Dirty Laundry

Our longtime official band mother Malia James accompanied us to Texas last month, and this is what it looked like, apparently. Tim cussed a lot. And if you'll blink, you'll miss hearing a couple of never-before-heard snippets from our new record. Check it out on Dirty Laundry and win a copy of 2 on vinyl!

Dirty Laundry Presents: SXSW With Darker My Love from Dirty Laundry on Vimeo.

where the water tastes like wine

In which we commuted to Prairie Sun, up in Cotati, about 45 minutes north of San Francisco in Sonoma County, to finish our record. We were still staying in the city (except for our last 3 days) and driving up and back down every day. Our van's accelerator requires an inordinate amount of quadricep strength to operate, and after a few round trips, we got tired and caved in and rented a Chevy Cobalt, whose factory stereo proved invaluable in listening to mixes. Will's aunt came up to play oboe and English horn and brought a bassoonist friend, and thus, some class to the whole thing. Tom Waits sang about Red's Recovery Room down the street, but they lost their lease last summer and now there's nowhere to drink. So we stuck to playing cards and watching every episode of Celebrity Rehab.




we got to drive thru this twice a day, which means we got to cross the Golden Gate Bridge twice a day, and did you ever realize what a badass bridge that thing is?


there was an In N Out, and it was time to eat.








told you




actual musicians!









these Minimoogs once were the property of Michael Jackson, whose keyboard player ran it through a keytar on stage. until the keytar was stolen from his car.






photos by will

Hyde Street Heyday

look, ma, no computer




Dan, after the drum machine showed up


big rods












Maria Taylor spent a day with us. they decided to sing, standing, by the corner of the piano. protocol, I guess.




there has to be a morning after


photos by will, except for the out-of-focus one of him.
all rights reserved, et cetera et cetera.

Cabin Fever

The last song is being mixed right now. We're in exile out here, and we spend our quote-unquote downtime playing gin rummy (what else) in this unpleasantly-lit waiting room. There was another band here from the area last week, but I'm not sure they actually recorded anything, onaccounta all the beer-shotgunning and and dry-humping in the parking lot and all. They did bring in a sax player one day though to lay down some cool SNL party sax. So that happened. There are white horses in the pasture beyond the the window, and a maroon McMansion on the gleaming green hill beyond that. A lot of this part of California can look like another planet, or at least like Scotland, and I keep half-expecting to see Teletubbies bouncing over the hill.




Today we get the brakes checked on the van and put air in the tires, and tomorrow we drive home. Friday, we start looking for jobs. Peace be with you, and also with you.

New Morning

So last night I stayed up in the cabin at Prairie Sun Recording Studios. I went to sleep to the sounds of the boggy creek and awoke with the rooster's morning call to arms. The sun is shining and the air is crisp. It's almost as if the city doesn't exist.


....deep thoughts with Robert Wallace Barbato

while you were sleeping

You probably deserve an update, so here. We're 98.7% done cutting mic to tape and have started mixing what's done. Bid our home sweet Tenderloin home adieu yesterday and relocated up the 101 in Sonoma County to Prairie Sun to finish this up. Which is a handsome reward after 2 weeks of not being able to, y'know, go outside for fresh air, out of concern for zombie attack, not to mention a lack of fresh air. This place has chickens running around and tractors in the driveway and and all the vibe that makes Tom Waits records as vibey as they are. Down on the drag is Red's Recovery Room, immortalized in song.

Still, all the $3 Vietnamese sandwiches $3 can buy will be missed. It's been bed-to-studio-to-bed-to-studio-to-studio-to-bed ad nauseum, with a jacuzzi here and a repeated bootlegged-Fleetwood-Mac-Tusk-documentary viewing there, betwixt, like this:



Got 13 songs recorded and can't fathom any of em not making the cut. Convinced our friend Maria Taylor to come up on Friday to sing with us and wound up teaching us how to open a bottle of wine with nothing more than your shoe and a wall (lesson: it doesn't work). Saturday, got a pro's pro to come play all those pedal steel licks you hear in your dreams. Sunday, up to Sonoma. Maybe you noticed this is gonna sound different. Point is, shit's good.

Progress

Greetings from the Tenderloin

Wildlife abounds in the Tenderloin National Forest. Literally, wild, wild life. Go outside - although rule no. 1 is don't go outside - and you're guaranteed an encounter. The native fauna is so approachable, it'll approach you:

"Which way ya headed?"
"Hey, I remember you. C'mere!"
"That your shoe?"
"Excuse me sir, can I use your phone?"

The answer is always no.

Maple Day Getaway

It’s time to make a record again. Tomorrow we’re driving* to our once-and-future home of San Francisco and recording at Hyde Street Studios thru the end of the month. We're throwing longtime Friend of the Band Nick Huntington in the van to produce, who has a colorful enough track record** to con the proverbial suits into trusting him with their investment, and engineer of yore Drew Fischer will turn the knobs. Drew did “Hair Decisions,” which might be the most special thing this band’s ever done (a re-listening to which, in the van, on a dreary day in Germany, cosmically revealed that he was The One), and 4 tracks on the first record, all at Hyde Street. “One Toke Over the Line” was recorded here (the least among many, at the former Wally Heider Recording). There’s a burrito place around the corner. We spent the better part of 2009 writing and rinsing and spin-cycling and line-drying 20+ songs, and we’ve democratically whittled it down to 13. Strangest thing is, we feel this creative empowerment this time around that previous recording experiences rendered foreign to us, so much so that we still feel like we’re scammin' the record label, who somehow someway are actually letting us do it our way. It's like they like us or something. Anyway, we're all abuzz about making something we love so much that you'll love it too. Oh, and happy 2010.


look, ma! it's just like when you wuz a kid!

* Tim, who refuses to ride in our van after years of comically negative experiences, will, in the style of Seal, follow the van in a sports car, accompanied by his manager (or, in this case, Rob).
** cough cough Britney Spears
† We were Blog o' th' Day, or something like that, the other day. Thanks Blogger! And greetings, people of the world.