Tour is over (for a few days)

You missed a real good time. We last mentioned our whereabouts in St. Louis; since then, we've seen Lawrence, Denver, Aspen, and Las Vegas. We made some money, we lost some. We've eaten at Waffle House, Taco John's, Taco Time, Chipotle, Breakfast King, Chomp's, Arby's, the Golden Nugget, and Aspen's finest pan-Asian food. We're pretty sure we met the mythical Dr. Gonzo in Aspen, and we swam with sharks in Vegas. Also, incidentally, saw a hugely disproportionate number of challenged folk in Vegas. And now we're back in sweltering Los Angeles. Tonight we play at Amoeba. 7 pm. Tomorrow we have our 5-day class reunion with the Dandys at the Wiltern; this time, as fans. 96 or so tears in our eyes. We miss em, and will continue to for a long time. Believe us when we tell you they're amazing people; our time together was far too short. Most of all, of course, many thanks to everybody that came to see us. We met a lotta 'mazin people.

The big news is that you may or may not have noticed that next week - Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday - we'll be in London. We're, in fact, playing exclusively in London, every night at a different club. Londoners be advised that every night'll be worth seeing, with a possible surprise or two mixed in. We're real psyched. It's our first time overseas... hopefully, the first of many.

love,
the dudes

Tew

Oh, shit. We never posted, like, any information whatsoever about our album. Since there's still ONE WEEK until this piece "drops," here tis:


2
Dangerbird Records
Release Date: 5 August 2008

1 Northern Soul
2 Blue Day
3 Two Ways Out
4 Pale Sun
5 White Composition
6 Add One To the Other One
7 Even In Your Lightest Day
8 All the Hurry & Wait
9 Waves
10 Talking Words
11 Immediate Undertaking

If you wanna know more, then maybe you should suck it up and buy it. There's lotsa text in there, including essays by Jon Landau, David Leaf, and Peter Buck*. But that's just the CD version. Pre-order that one here.

On the other hand, the vinyl release is totally different. Different sequence, different feel (it's like 180 grams and a double gatefold heavier), and a bonus track called "Pharoah Sanders' Tomb." Get it here. And with both the CD and LP, you get a free 7". Of course.

ALSO.
How bored are your ears? Like, what do you do once you've memorized Tha Carter III? Well. Thru this Thursday, you can listen to our whole-ass album on MySpace. So go, listen to it, think about it, try to decipher the lyrics, smoke weed, party, eat, cry, think, work, or even party. Send it airmail or something.

* factually incorrect. but you get the point. or do you?

vote for us, etc.

So! We’re up for this Yahoo Music thing. It’s either called Users’ Choice or Who’s Next? or both or something like that. We normally don't endorse competition between bands and contests and Contest Bands and all that, but hey, if we beat Dr. Dog and The Duke Spirit and The Airborne Toxic Event, it makes us look really good, which means there is a better chance we will come to your town and rip the jams and hang out with y'all. So please kindly click this huge Yahoo link below and vote vote vote for Das Dudes!


Also! Our friend and mentor John Webster Johns has really really really sadly had to bail on the Troubadour show on August 7. It was sure gonna be something else, but now you'll never get to see it. BUT, the silver lining is that we done got our also-friends Tweak Bird to fill the void. And remember, for $9.99 you get to see not only us dudes and Eulogies and Amnion and Tweak Bird, but you also get a copy of our new CD 2!!!

Finally, Nylon Magazine has one of the more interesting blurbs on us thus far. This comes on the heels of the fashion spread we did for them last year.

Eyes feel so comfortable

Well. Everything’s kinda kicking into high gear now - or at least the non-musical part of releasing an album is. You’ll be thrilled to know that yes, Virginia, we will have stickers, we will have buttons, we will have window clings for your local record-store-that-you’re-not-gonna-go-to-anyway, and yes, we will have assorted DML-themed tchotchkes, all for your stockings. More practically, the album itself will be a wonder to behold. There will be a compact disc pressing, complete with artwork and songs, that you can buy, and/or if you’re so inclined, there will also be a really really nice 18,546-gram vinyl pressing, double-LP-style, with a sick-ass bonus track. And then there are also some 7”’s in the works. So there.

We know we should really write on here more often, and put up the occasional non-business post, y’know, like where we make political endorsements and publish a weekend what’s-up-in-LA-and/or-SF calendar and talk about baseball and girls and recount tales of promoters fucking us over. We know. But that’s gonna have to wait:

Our “official” website is now darkermylovemusic.com. You can look at it if you want, but for now, it’ll only take you our glorious MySpace page. I guess the assclown that’s parked at darkermylove.com wants an actual treasure chest in exchange for his booty, and don’t even ask about our old official website, which evidently was snatched up after we stopped paying for it (and whose URL we will not provide here, but which you’re welcome to seek out at your own peril. totally NSFW).

Let’s see, what else. We burrowed ourselves in a studio for a whole week and got better at playing our own songs, and threw a Charlie O’s gig in the middle. You should check out videothing.com for a recap of said gig (just ignore the part where we’re actually playing, thanks). This guy’s managed somehow to document pretty much our entire year so far. I don’t think we’ve played a single show without Crystal Antlers this year. But hey, the odds are pretty good that’ll happen when they play 5 shows a night. And here’s to many more with those sweethearts.

So then we made a music video. Like, a real one. It's for our first single "Two Ways Out." This boy wonder Toben Seymour did it. As you can see, the video will be a 3-1/2-minute paraphrasing of Eraserhead.

Which leaves only shows and such:

Thursday June 5. Troubadour. West Hollywood. with the Black Angels.
Saturday July 26. Capitol Hill Block Party, at Neumo’s. Seattle.
and then...
Saturday September 13. Monolith Festival. Red Rocks. That’s in Colorado.

Look out for a flurry of shows preceding and surrounding the release. In other words, keep your Julys and Augusts open.

don't be afraid, the clown's afraid too

Much excitement afoot here. To recap:

As promised, A-lister Tony Hoffer adroitly mixed our record over a couple of weeks last month. We were fortunate enough to conclude our year-long tour of LA's most historically significant studios at Ocean Way (formerly United), where Mr. Hoffer did his thing. The results of said thing were/are, y'know, transformational. Which is what tends to happen when a record gets mixed. Look for our picture in an upcoming issue of Mix magazine.

Then the golden platter was tossed down the hall to Ocean Way's in-house mastering guru Dr. Alan Yoshida, who masterfully (ahem) did his thing last week. Loose ends get tied up this week.

And of course, the record will be out this summer, more or less.


Then there's upcoming shows, promotional appearances, etc.:

(this) Saturday, Feb. 16 : 6th Street Warehouse, Downtown LA
w/ Crystal Antlers and some kinda "SPECJIAL GUEST"

Thursday, Feb. 21 : The Echo
A benefit for Manny Neito’s studio and Matt Crunk
w/ Helmet, Burning Brides, The Icarus Line, and Crystal Antlers !!!!!!!!!

Friday, Feb. 29 : Great American Music Hall, SF
as part of Noise Pop
w/ Cursive

Saturday, March 1 : Ghost Town Gallery, Oakland
w/ Fauna Valetta

March 13-16 : SXSW
details forthcoming!


Tumescently Yours,
Das Dudes

hey, whaddaya gonna do?

snapped by my cool Helio!