WE'RE ON TOUR

Come eat us alive!

On Tour With Connie Chung

NRBQ, The Best Bar Band in the World, tells it like it is: Tour bus and on-board jamming notwithstanding - the card games, the frequent quitting, the dietary habits, the music video your label makes you shoot with puppy dogs... everything's the same. It's just one big Taco Bell.

Marooned in Munich

4 songs into their set in Munich Monday night, Harry from White Lies announced that that's it folks, show's over, tour's cancelled, very sorry, see you next year. Then they pulled us into their dressing room and said the same thing, except they gave us all their booze too. Seems Harry (aka Ol' Goldenpipes, for good reason) came down with something or other and was on the verge of blowing out his voice. And when that happens, you stop singing, and that's what they had to do. It was great while it lasted and we wish we coulda seen it thru to the end. But it meant for us no Vienna, no Rome, no Milan, no Zurich, no clue what to do, no fun.

The next 36 hours were dark ones. Checked out of Munich hotel no. 1 and, homeless and directionless, went straight to the only thing resembling home: the Hard Rock Cafe. Just as Rob was recounting his night-before dream of watching Dan play "Fortunate Son," (our dreams don't stray very far from reality at this point) we walked in to the sound of, yeah, "Fortunate Son," and knew it was meant to be. Except that the grill was broken and we'd have to wait, which we did, until they fixed it, which they never did, so we ate the one thing on the menu they didn't need the grill for, which sucked, and sucked up all our money. Then after 3 hours of sitting at the Hard Rock watching music videos under Tom Petty's glass-encased flannel, we decided to stay in Munich until we had a plan.

So we went to hotel no. 2, sat in the lobby, emailed, pondered going home, ordered pizza, pondered going back to Berlin, played gin rummy, pondered our existence, ate pizza, sulked, figured out it would cost us a fortune to change our flights and leave, realized we were stuck in Europe for another week, emailed some more, waited anxiously for answers, played gin rummy, bitched, sulked, drank beer, continued playing gin rummy until 3 am.


Hotel No. 2


waiting

Woke up, no answers, then more checking out, eating German food, sulking some more, yelling at each other, immediately apologizing, sitting in the lobby of the hotel we just checked out of, waiting, playing gin rummy, emailing, waiting, horribly depressed, and then all of a sudden we had a show lined up in Berlin for Friday. Things started looking up. Decided to stay in Munich again since it was too late to drive to Berlin. Continued playing gin rummy. Booked another hotel and went to it.

And then we walked into the hotel of the tiny 2-star Hotel Max and saw this:



Jimi Hendrix stayed here. May 1967. Room 43. Double room with no bathoom. And that's when we knew it was gonna be alright. Then right before bed, we had a Zurich show lined up for the next night at Bosch Bar. Which was last night, and was totally packed. It was nice to play for people that were there to see us. Then we drove straight to Berlin, because the hotel we booked atop a foggy Black Forest mountain was closed when we got there at 4 am. Tired. Show tonight.

So the details:
Tonight. Berlin. White Trash. 10 pm.
Monday. London. Borderline.
Tuesday. London. KoKo (w/ The Fall).
Wednesday. We go home.

let's go away for awhile

Leaving this town for another one and then another one and then another one and then another one. In advance of that, we're putting you, Kansas City St. Louis Philadelphia DC Chapel Hill Atlanta Tallahassee New Orleans Austin Tucson Riverside San Diego, on notice that we're now accepting gastronomic suggestions. Although we've already decided on where we're finally gonna have some KC BBQ, so unless you're gonna say "go to Arthur Bryant's!," keep it to yourself.

Food aside, we're psyched. Touring's fun, or at least it is when you haven't done it in a while. So we bid adieu to our way-downtown-in-trucker-town home, where we spent the summer writing all the songs we're gonna be taking you aback with on the road, which reminds me we gotta drop off that rent check like now or we're gonna be homeless when we get back. This is what it looks like. This is the inspiration:



p.s. click here and buy tickets.

Having a blast!

See?



file under: Hotelevision, 4 a.m.

this is what you missed

It's that time again. Remember that 5-week tour we did, ah, last year? What a year. Too bad it's over. It was a big year for us. Our record came out, we did a coupla national tours, went to London, yada yada yada. Who knows what 2009 holds. We sure don't.
Anyway, the tour. I, Will, once again kept myself engaged in the only thing that keeps me sane on the road: pointing my camera at barren walls, the ground, and/or people pissing on the side of the road. Like so:


We try to keep it secret, FDR-style, but yeah... Tim's still wheelchair-bound.




Katz's Delicatessen, NYC




Asbury Park never looked so good.




(you like sunsets, right?)










Natchez Trace, Mississippi

Tour is over, if you want it.

And thank you, Lower 48. It ruled, and the worst part of the whole thing was the part where it ended. The funny part was the part where we didn't update the blog regularly throughout as planned. Part of this was slothfulness, part of it was the unexpected absence of a cloud of free WiFi covering the entire nation, and part of it was leaving Rob's MacBook at the Red Roof Inn in Toledo (picture below) and not realizing it until we were 2 hours away. This MacBook contained about 47,000 words of titillating, unposted blogalia - words you'll never see.

To recap, however, the gist of the great lost blog entry/entries were shout-outs to: Nan P and DJ Bilto; Sean P.P. and Dana for driving our van to Denver; The Bronx for trusting us with their van; Aaron in Denver of Hi-Dive fame, who is either totally awake or totally asleep right now; everyone else in Denver who likes to stay up late; Chuckie of San Antonio (aka Chaos Town), who, via MySpace, got us that BIG JIGGERS SHOW, which was absolutely the best show of the tour, as part of, in spite of technically not qualifying, Local Gorefest '07; Jered (correct spelling) of C-Town's All Your Fault (see below); and yet another Aaron, this one in Austin, and this one of Lot 6 fame, who also quartered us.

And that was where all the typing ended and where the slothfulness began. The next 7 days went undocumented, and then the laptop disappeared. Coincidentally, that's where Miz Malia James joined us, and it was not long after her misty-eyed departure in NYC that everything, hyperbolically speaking, fell apart. Fortunately, Sweet Becky at said Red Roof Inn FedEx'ed said laptop to Seattle, for a (ahem) nominal fee. And, turns out, she did not erase the contents of the hard drive. Not that it mattered. But anyway.

Maybe there'll be another blog entry (although it won't be this week or next or the week after that or anything resembling any of those weeks) chronicling the rest of the tour, but for now, the important thing is to thank The Warlocks for taking us with them. They turned out to kinda rule, both musically and personally, and now they're in Europe, melting even more zombified faces. Thanks dudes (and Jenny).

And now, presented in chronological order, the pictures:

[click to enlarge]

The Jesus and Mary Chain, The Fillmore, SF.




This is what happens when you've graduated from Clown College.




Big Jiggers Show Confirmed!!!


Chaostown's own All Your Fault, in their debut at Local Gorefest '07, Jiggers, San Antonio




Chuckie. He's the man.












this here photo by Will's dad


Brand New Rob gets caricaturized, Atlanta.










NYC






Red Roof Inn, Toledo (referenced above). Not thinking about his Macbook.


400 Bar, Minneapolis. With 2/5 of The Warlocks.


We went out of our way to dine at Bismarck's own Space Aliens Grill & Bar. Terrible food, but totally worth it.


Nowhere, Montana


Not the LA River. Also Nowhere, Montana (aka Custer, Montana)
photo by Miss Jenny P. Fraser




Jared escaped.

Photos courtesy W.P. Canzoneri, except where noted.