New Tour, New Line-up, New Record! (Warning... this is a long one)

Well, well, well...

Here we go again. Back on the road. I'm going to warn you right now, this post is going to be a long one. There's a lot to cover. Get your note cards out.

So, here's the skinny: over the past three months my companion Bearkat and I have been booking a nation wide tour for us to embark on. We've sent out millions of e-mails, made phone calls and sent letters to dead end bars, cafes, 10,000 seat arenas and suburban bungalows to try and get gigs to satisfy our wander-lust and love for music. After all of our tears and toil we've come up with around 30 gigs around the country. Check out our myspaces (Bearkat, the Loblolly Boy) for dates, towns and venues! Come out.

While booking this tour I've been working on a project of my own. In October I decided that I was going to record a full length record... on my Tascasm 4-track record... live (no overdubs).... and in random places around Austin (or, wherever I can find space). So, it turns out that I have a bunch of talented friends who can play multiple instruments and do it well and had spaces in which we could record said songs. So, from the beginning of November to the middle of December I set out to record the new 12 track record called, "the Selfish Years". It was so much fun recording in a shed in my friends' backyard (which I was living in a tent in for these 3 months, also), their living room and a ranchhouse somewhere in Wimberly, TX. There were many laughs, wall punchings (for percussion, of course), frustrations, coughs and triumphs in the attempt to make this record and eventually... it was finished. You can check out some of the tracks on myspace... if you'd like.

So after finishing the record, Katy (I will call Bearkat "Katy" from now on... because that's her name, damn it) came down to Texas from Maryland, where she had been staying for the holidays and we started our grueling rehearsal schedule (which consisted of me quitting my job. On this tour Katy and I will be playing on each others sets as side-men/women/people. The first few days were spent figuring out what exactly-the-fuck we were going to do. We picked up boxes... melodicas... banjoleles... ukes... manolins... pedals steels.... toy pianos.... shakers... and other odds and ends and came out with this:

Sometimes we like to hit the box (which is what she said).

Not really the greatest picture of how massive this setup is for two people and how much running around we have to do during our sets... but it'll have to do. This setup will hopefully make it through the entire tour (probably fixing a box and dropping off some stuff on the way). Anywho... we re-arranged each other's songs and came out with some pretty amazing results!

Remember those talented friends I was telling you about? Well, they also happen to be very good looking and probably the most amazing people that you could possibly ever meet and it made it extremely hard to leave them all behind.... especially after such a heartfelt fair-well/CD release/tour kick-off show at Flipnotics (I like to put together multi-faceted shows [more bang for your buck, I guess {which is what she said}]). And yes, I did cry... but nobody saw it. Here are some of their handsome/beautiful faces:

Ok... so no real faces at all... but I guarantee that they're amazing in every aspect.

Enough of this mushy stuff. Lets get to the action.

Our first stop of is good ol' NOLA, which is a good 8 hour drive from Austin. Nothing really interesting happened on the way over there... I said some stupid things (what's new?) and we went over a 20 mile bridge... big whoop. Well, one interesting thing happened. Apparently, we came up on an accident that had happened moments before we passed it. Traffic started to sputter to a halt and we started to see random bits of plastic and metal scattered around the highway. So, while other cars were weaving in and out of the debris I was (like many other motorists) enthralled by the excitement/tragedy of a car wreck. And in my lack of attention to the road I failed to notice a very large piece of bumper in the middle of the road and I failed to swerve around it. This resulted in me dragging said bumper (scratching and scraping) underneath the car for about 1 mile. It was a horrific noise and as we passed by the actual wreck people seemed to stop what they were doing to save lives and take the time to stare me down as they listened to the racket coming from the undercarriage of the car. Great job guys. Great job.

As for NOLA... it was pretty great. The venue we played at was called, "The Neutral Grounds Coffeehouse" which I had played before about a year earlier.


And to my delight both my sister and a bunch of fellow Mainiacs (who have been volunteering) showed up to the show to take a listen and to pick up the new record! YEAH!

After the show we went back to my sister's place in Pascagoula, Mississippi where we took the next day to hang out and take a tour of the pretty (?) little town before we went up to the big city of Mobile, AL to play the Alabama Music Box.

Note please note: Katy's Terrified Face

It was at this point that we came to figure out (really, what we had feared the whole time) that all sound guys are going to hate us. We don't have pick-ups for half of our instruments so we have to use microphones for our instruments... which is kind of a sound guys worst nightmare. This increases the chances of extreme feedback to happen (depending on the room). Not only do we have this non-electrified instruments, we also have a box that we pound on and a toy piano that is very quiet. So, if you're going to be running sound for us in the near future... I'm very very sorry.

We continued after the show to my dad's house, which is about 45 minutes north of Mobile in the middle-of-ass-nowhere Alabama (think of your stereotypical movies about southern life... it's like that). The only difference is that my dad's house is totally run on solar energy... it produces enough energy during the day to shoot it back out into the Alabama power grid. The first time I was there when he had it all set up one of the power trucks came to check the meter and we had a good laugh when they looked at it and saw that the meter was spinning backwards... they still have yet to figure out what to do about that. But most amazing about this place (Middle Earth Healing Center [maybe I can get my dad to write you something about it]) is probably this:

HUGE PINE CONES!

I mean... I don't know if its all of the universal energies hanging around... or the cd's hanging on strings to keep the deer away from the gardens, the terrifying geese, or the sweet cats and dogs or the humanure (that people poop) compost piles hanging around... but I'm pretty sure pine cones aren't supposed to be as big as a size 11 1/2 shoe (you know that they say about the size of your pine cone....).

We left our Alabama residence and headed up north to Nashville (or, as the locals call it, Nashvegas) for our show at the Bongo Java After Hours Theater. On our way up there I decided that Alabama is probably the most sexual innuendo filled state there is (even more than Texas). Examples:














We found this gem while headin' down the highway in northern Alabama. You can't tell me they didn't 'think about this before they actually made the name of the company, "Bimbo" (bimbo n. , pl. -bos . Slang. A woman regarded as vacuous or as having an exaggerated interest in her sexual appeal.). The thing that confuses me the most is that I can't figure out if the animal on the back is a dog or a bear wearing a chef's hat. Either way, I wouldn't want either animals in the kitchen (and definitely does not go by the definition of the word)... and apparently when they do get in there they make terrifying faces with the food (although, I'm pretty sure the subject of the word's definition would probably do that too)(see picture to the left).

Immediately after seeing this we ran across this:
Oh... COME ON! Don't tell me you don't see a phallic symbol in there! I didn't even get the rocket engines in the bottom... Either way, I think Alabama is good for a cheap laugh.

Speaking of balls... we arrived in Nashville to find out that it was FREEZING. Well, compared to the Gulf Coast. It was a balmy 24 degrees out when we got to the venue, Bongo Java. It was there that we were met by another fellow Maine, Jeff Elwell (see blogs before for our Magic Card playing madness!) and Katy's friend James Ferrell (who is probably one of my new favorite people... and an amazing musician). And to our surprise there were a couple of other people at the show who we DIDN'T know. They had already bought Katy's (Katy is a super-star, I'm not sure if you know this yet) CD... so they picked up mine. I hope their not sourly disappointed.

After the show Katy's friend Marlie met up with us and we went out for a bit to eat and some beers. It was at this point that Marlie and James started to have a very dry/sarcastic conversation that freaked Katy out because she thought they were actually being serious in their bickering... then I got really nervous because I was also in on the sarcastic conversation so I though I was egging them on. All of this was not the case... but instead we decided that we all had a love for the song "The Milkshake Song"... or did we? I don't know, I'm still confused about that song... I had already been inundated with too many sexual innuendos that day.
This is James. How could you not love him? This is him giving the most sincere hug of his entire life... I hope I get to see him again. Maybe, I'll get one of them too.

Then it was to the Carolina's with us! The drive was beautiful/terrifying through the Blue-Ridge mountains (there is something about wet roads, tunnels and below freezing temperatures that really get my goat). Up until this point our GPS system had been doing us well... but as soon as we got into Greensboro the graphic of our car on the screen went from a major highway to the middle of a lake. The disgruntled british lady who lives inside of it Garmin started to scream, "Re-calculating" as we drove off into oblivion and I frantically got out the ol' analog map and put on my map reader's face.

Turnns out, its easier to read the map when its right side up and the blue is water and the green is land... not the other way around.

We got our bearings and made it to the show where we were greeted by many nice people and our pal Philip Pledger. Check him out. And in case you were wondering what we looked like while we're playing... here it is.






It truly is Beauty and the Beast.










Philip was kind enough to let us sleep on the floor until the next morning when we were again kicked to the curb to barrel down the highway in our packed to the gills Volvo V70 wagon.














We were then on our way to play a couple of shows in Maryland and hang out in Katy's hometown. We arrived at Katy's parents house with greetings from her mother (who is absolutely glorious, by the way) and a very overly tired nephew named Pearson. I'm pretty sure it was my face that was making hime cry for the majority of the time because everytime I would enter the room he would just start screaming (he probably though I was a sort of monster with the big glasses and the nose-ring and the tallness and feather in the hat... among many other things). Though, we wouldn't give Katy the time of day either... and they are BFFs! Either way, he started to warm up to me and he decided that I was privileged enough to get this face.

Oh, 2 year olds... how I don't know how to talk to you. P.S.: He has a surprising amount of dexterity!

The day after our show at Coffee Cat (which, by the by, was amazing! We got to play with this band called The Brakes [who are a group of amazing musicians from Philly] with a crowd of awesome listeners {even though we had short sets... it was totally worth it!}]) in Easton, MD we decided it was a beautiful day to go for a bikeride! And it was. The way there was windy as hell and was filled with such expressions as, "Fuck this wind," and "Wind, you are such a whore". The headwind made our 20 mile ride there about 1 hour and 30 mins... the way back, on the other hand, was much more enjoyable and only took us an hour!





Katy dodging my picture taking madness on the bike (Left).

Katy trying to dodge. FAIL (Right).







After a good 40 mile ride we decided to settle back down for a good nap... but not without a good Bearkat cuddle.

The next night we had a show at a place in Baltimore called the Baltimore Chop. It was a nice intimate show inside of a small bookstore. No PA. No amplifiers. The way it should be. The crowd was awesome and the owner Andy is one of the nicest guys you'll ever meet in your entire life. Unfortunately, one of the banjolele's pegs started to slip so we had to drop that from the show (even after we went to the local bar on the corner to try and get a screwdriver [he showed up in the middle of the set... but it was a great effort!]).

The next day (after fixing the banjolele and steeling some 1/4 inch cables from Katy's dad [killer guitar player]) we made our way up to New Jersey. But not without getting some cassette tape reels mysteriously stuck on our side mirror while in the middle of Maryland.
Now, Katy refused to drive anywhere in New York or New Jersey (which, we both assure is, is for the best) and I warned her that it would be the most stressed she will ever see me. Its not so much the driving the stresses me out... it's just the parking and not getting towed and not getting all of our gear stolen out of the car. Unfortunately, we didn't have enough forethought on the whole thing so we showed up 4 hours early to the gig at a place in Hoboken, New Jersey called the Goldhawk.
In this show we were the feature at an open mic... which turned out to be pretty cool. Everyone was really really really nice. There was a guy named Roland who would sit in the front row with a djembe and play along with everyone's songs! It was pretty awesome! There were also a couple of comedians one of which based his whole act around reading out of the New York Post (which was rather awkward... nobody really laughed and the played most of his act say the word "whore" in a New Jersey accent over and over again when people wouldn't laugh... tough room tough room).

So, now we're here in a cafe in Metuchen, New Jersey... staying with my Aunt Hannah and waiting to head to the big NYC gig at the Living Room. We're pretty excited about this gig and hopefully we will make it out of the city unscathed. The closest thing we've had to a run-in with any thugs was just a couple of minutes ago while we were writing our blogs. Katy took the most damage out of the two of us.

There was a third one... but his ninja skills kept him from appearing on camera (or was he a vampire?)

Alright, I'm sorry this blog seems a little hap-hazard... but there was a lot to fit in here (which is what she said). I promise they will be more frequent in the near future! Until the next one... but "the Selfish Years" online from my myspace or Cd Baby (or just pick it up at a show!).
Oh, also... look out for carpet cleaning robots (they're called Roombas)... TERRIFYING!
Cheers,
Luke