DAYTROTTER

Holy cow, it's up. Our long-lost Daytrotter session. It was back on our last tour, last November, when we devoted a day to driving the 266 miles from Columbia, Missouri, to Davenport, Iowa, to record 4 songs for Daytrotter. Which we'd always wanted to do, because not only do you get that sharp illustration, but they record it all live to 1/4" tape. A few memories remain - it was frigid. We ate at a Chevron Subway for lunch. Speaking of gas stations, we witnessed, from the comfort of our hotel room, what we were pretty sure was a tweak'd-out armed robbery at the convenience store across the street the night before. Rob was targeted and embarrassed by a local with a loud vehicular public address system in the drive-thru line at Starbucks that morning ("You with the beard. That is a kickass beard."). They had a ton of great gear at the studio, a stone's throw from the Mississippi River. And we were in and out of there in 2 hours so we could make way for Delta Spirit's all-night session - subsequently, 9+ months elapsed during which the promotional value of the session evaporated. But if you were wondering what we sounded like on November 17, 2010 (not yesterday, despite what their page says), Hear It Is.

In particular, check out our pretty-hot reworking of "Immediate Undertaking" and our cover of the Scott Walker original "Rhymes of Goodbye".

Backseat

So a little while back we set up shop in a house down the street and had our pal Mike Mohan film us playing a buncha songs and recorded the whole thing. "Backseat" is up first, and you can watch it on Filter today.



More to come!

DML on Morning Becomes Eclectic tomorrow!

Turn on, tune in, drop out, roll over, etc. Wednesday Sept. 15, 11:15 a.m. PDT. KCRW 89.9 FM in L.A.; watch and listen at kcrw.com worldwide.

We'll play some songs, get smoothly interrogated by the velvet-throated Jason Bentley, and then we'll play some more songs, kinda like last time. We have to wake up really early.

relaxed fit

Last Friday, we cruised over to the (ahem) Dickies Lounge, and, in exchange for some gratis coveralls, played some songs, and lo and behold it turned out pretty alright. See?



And there's a little more over on their site. Thanks, Dickie.

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.

Down in Monterey

Everyone deserves a break and since William "Wilibald" Canzoneri does most of the heavy lifting around here, it seems about time for one of my bi-annual posts.

So the week before last we got a chance to spend some quality time with some very special people. At the time most of us were too disgruntled or agitated to realize how lucky we were.

We set out Thursday morning up the 101 freeway (good call Will) headed for Santa Cruz. There we were to meet and rehearse with Andrew Granelli. That's right. It was just like old times. The jokes flowed, the cymbals crashed, laughs ensued. After two practices, one interaction with the local cops, three boardwalk fastballs at 49 mph and three trips to Taco Bell, we headed down to Monterey for the fabled Sea Otter Classic.

We couldn't help but dream of John Phillips cruising up the coast in his Rolls-Royce getting ready for the Monterey Pop festival. Maybe tomorrow our show will be like that? Maybe Jared will light his guitar on fire? The future was wide open.

Down in Monterey
Down in Monterey:

We got to the Best Western, knocked off for a few hours and then our day started.
Sean Paul and Jessica showed up, and Jessica took these awsome photos.


Having a blast in the Sierra Nevada beer garden..


Jared looked sharp per usual...


Got time for a little game of catch?


Sean gives the signs to the pitcher...


The pitcher nodzzz yes...


Here's the pitch!


>


Emily was having fun (or, “what your mom looked like in 1972”)


Thanks Jessica!!!


Let's go home.

Stay tuned for info on the new record.

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.

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

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.

Studio Tan

Hellz yeah, no kiddin’, that’s right, as promised, we hit the studio and cut some track last week. 3 songs in 3 days. Just like they used to do in the old days! Also just like they used to do when they were on a real tight budget. Apparently they still do it that way. Anyway.



We got some real exciting seven-inch plans for these, all of the split variety. Which means, go ‘head and notch out some space in your collection for three more pieces of vinyl.

One of these is a cover of a 13th Floor Elevators song called “She Lives (In a Time of Her Own),” from the Easter Everywhere record. We’re hoping it’ll come out on a split with another pretty first-rate band (ahem) doing a different Roky cover. Turned out pretty smokin’.

Then there’s a song of ours called “A Lovely Game” (once a tentative title, and perhaps still so, but probably the eventual title by default), which we’ve been kicking around for about a year now. Played it live a lot last year, so if you saw us round then, you’ve probably heard it, albeit way too fast. Planning on putting that out as a split with our buds All the Saints. I wonder if they’ve recorded anything yet. Shit.

Song number 3 is for the I Hate Rock N Roll corporate empire, the braintrust behind the release of 2007’s “Hair Decisions” 12” split with Moccasin. We’re doing this split with Audacity, who might be the best band going in L.A. now, even though they’re from Fullterton or something. So we’re covering one of their songs, and we’re covering one of theirs. Neat, huh? Buy it, because we still haven’t recouped on that other split, and the man’s really breathing down our neck. Kind of an indentured servitude situation. Proceeds go to a fucking great cause.

And oh yeah, we got Bob Mustachio from The Warlocks to play drums on these too. We were all kinda starstruck most the time. Pretty amazing.

So who knows when this stuff’s gonna come out. Later this summer, I guess, if we can all keep it together until then. We being makind. Yeah, I’m talkin’ to you. In the meantime, look, it’s us:


We'd just gotten the bad news. Rob was particularly distraught.

 
Our old (I mean, young!) photographress/band mother Malia came back from this band she went and joined and took these! She's good to have around.

June Bloom

Maybe you are or were or were thinking about wondering what we’ve been up to. Well...

We got back from Europe and were summarily (and mercifully) booted from our dungeonesque practice space on Walk-of-Fame Hollywood Blvd. Practicing there always inevitably meant that any band practice involved either 30-minutes-to-an-hour of circling the streets surrounding the rapidly-overgrowing Hollywood & Vine, or giving up after a few laps and paying 10 bucks to park in a garage 3 blocks away. Never a good way to start the creative process. And it always meant encountering bona fide freakshit out front on the boulevard, over the stars of Jayne Mansfield and Elizabeth Taylor. Like the time a roving panhandler approached us, and after being spurned, none other than an off-duty Superman - that’s right, Superman - walking the other way half a block down, turned around, walked back to said panhandler and made a strikingly firm coin deposit in his hand. And in that exchange, Superman seemed to telepathically impart something powerful, via a solid two seconds of searing eye contact. Then he walked down to Combo’s Pizzeria, sat down outside, and smoked a cigarette. I guess Superman’s never really off duty.

So we left that place and are now shacked up downtown in trucker town, in the same building we conceived the last record. It’s a place with good energy, and this time we have a big window and a sweet view of the downtown skyline, over the LA River and its railroad tracks. We’re in there right now writing, and the juices are really, for lack of a better word, flowing. So far we’ve got a solid handful-plus of songs down, with plenty more half-songs, and if there’s one thing to report, it’s that distortion has yet to make an appearance. With, of course, the exception of Tim’s blistering buzzsaw chainsaw sawmill buzzcut solos.

And that’s that. We’re going into the studio tomorrow to record a few other songs for various split 7”s, and then hopefully we’ll be recording the next record by the end of the summer. Keep in touch.

The MP3 Challenge

So It's killing me waiting for this record to come out, so I've decided to challenge myself to writing and recording a song each day. The rules are I must write and record said song in one hour. I've been thinking too much when writing songs lately so this is a way to shut down the brain and work. The songs might not be that good or catchy, but that's not the point. So check back to see what's new.

kind regards,
Rob Barbato


P.S. this has nothing to do with the new record

Song: Hey Paul

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.

here is the information you requested, round two

We went back to Sunset Sound last week to re-record all our parts (just kidding! hahahaha!!!).
Actually, we recorded a second batch of songs, which gives us puhhh-lenty, which means get ready for some killer B-sides. Whatever comes out of this, you'll be surprised.







I love you, Mr. Jones.




Andy had no idea.






Next time you book time at Sunset, make sure it coincides with one of the staff's birthdays.








Another Joe Cocker re-enactment.





Photos courtesy of W.P. Canzoneri, whom nobody took any photos of, and may not be reproduced without the express written consent of Major League Baseball. That's right - Will may not be reproduced (the photos are like, whatever).