For Your Ears Only

Is This Art?

2011-11-26T09:24:00.000-08:00

Well, that was 2011....our touring has come to an end for the year and now we're hunkering down for the winter to write and hopefully record a new record. We've recently, and secretly, been moving things into our new top secret classified as-yet-unnamed rehearsal space/studio in order to get started. It's a fantastic little spot, that suits us very well. Preliminary work has already begun on some new material and we're starting to get excited. I can't really say what the new record is going to be like, because it just isn't clear yet, but it's shaping up to be a very different kind of record than any we have made before.

Perhaps this blog will morph for a time into a recording blog, rather than a tour blog? Either way, we'll keep the interested parties well informed about what's going on with us.

For the time being, it's the holiday season, i'm laid up with a mysteriously broken foot, Bryant's Poland-bound and my son is due to arrive in just a few weeks. Things are probably going to be somewhat quiet around here for at least a little while, so I thought i'd share something with you that came up in the van on our recent trip to Michigan...

CONCERNING THE PROUD FLESH ALBUM ARTWORK :

For each of our previous records (Operation:Surgery, and Dark Dark Woods) we felt it very important to do something kind of crafty for the album art. Something that we made with our own hands, that no one else had ever made or put together before. The whole approach to those records was kind of like that on all levels; capturing moments unique to us on tape, on film, whatever, that had never happened before. Proud Flesh was very different than that for us, because we wanted to make a high-energy record, very quickly. In order to do that, we had to borrow a lot of things...equipment, ideas, lyrics, and even artwork.

Believe this or not, but during the day all four of us have to hold down steady jobs in order to pay our bills and stay alive. Not because husband&wife doesn't bring in boat loads of money, it does, but because we live very extravagant lifestyles. It's not easy to keep up with the Joneses on the meager few millions that this rock n roll dream brings in every couple of weeks. So, we each go off to our favorite little day jobs everyday in order to supplement...you know how it goes.

Anyway, my job is at a local television station. Every third Thursday of each month we tape an event at the county history center called, "Third Thursday Event". Typically, a TTE is a powerpoint-style slideshow accompanied by a guest lecturer who happens to be an expert on the subject of the day. One such event happened to be led by a former professor of mine (I dropped his class in order to work in a warehouse...) from Indiana University, Dr. Eric Sandweiss. And, his subject was the Kodachrome slide collection of Charles W. Cushman, recently donated to IU.

Dr. Sandweiss is a great, personable speaker and there's no way I can do his lecture justice here, so I'm just going to give you some of the information from his presentation that stood out to me. If you're interested, or if you want to fact check me (I could use the editing...) Dr. S has a book coming out in March that i'm eager to check out about this very subject.

The main point of the lecture was about color. Through the 1930's and 40's professional photography was apparently limited to black & white. Color was new and novel and reserved for advertisements, cartoons, and cheap hobby photographers. And that's precisely what Charles Cushman was, a hobby photographer. He was also a world traveler. He and his wife loved to travel around the States, and the world, and he loved taking photos of ordinary, everyday things he encountered. He also kept a strict catalog of every photo that he took, where it was taken, and the slides' subject matter. All in all, after his death, over 14,000 color kodachrome slides were donated to his alma mater, IU, along with his detailed catalogs, and his photo equipment. One of the most fascinating things about his collection, aside from the detailed record, is that it gives us a rare, full-color, view of the US in the late 30's and 40's that we're simply not used to experiencing.

The photo on the cover of Proud Flesh was taken in 1938, in Posey County, Indiana.

I was really intrigued and interested in this stuff after that lecture, so I came home and told the other dudes about it and showed them the unbelievable online archive of Cushman's stuff. We agreed that this would make great album art, if we could get permission to use it, so we started combing through the photos, looking for the ones that suited us and went loosely with the themes from Proud Flesh. Like I mentioned before, there are over 14,000 of these images, so we intentionally limited ourselves to only choosing from photos taken in Indiana.

Even with our self-imposed limitations, narrowing down the field was very difficult. There were many runners-up that, for one reason or another, ruled themselves out. As you know, these were the results :

Another interesting thing about Cushman's life that I haven't mentioned yet has to do with his wife, Jean. Jean accompanied Charles on most of his travels and can be seen in many of the photos (including seated in the car, on our album cover).

At some point Jean began suffering from some sort of mental illness, i don't really know what it was, or to what extent. But, the story goes, one evening after Charles heard some commotion downstairs he came out of his office to find Jean waiting for him at the bottom of the staircase. She said something to the effect of, "I'm going to Hell, and you're coming with me". She then fired a shot at Charles, turned the gun on herself and fired one shot into her own head. Remarkably, both Cushmans (Cushmen?) survived!

Subsequently, Jean was hospitalized for a time, treated and medicated. Once her illness was addressed and she was properly taken care of, she continued to travel with Charles. She pops up less frequently in the pictures, and when she does there's a marked difference in her demeanor.

But what a living testament to what it means to be husband&wife! AMIRIGHT!

and in the end...

2011-09-12T11:02:00.000-07:00

i don't remember where we left off before, but at some point while we were driving to grand rapids we passed through this very interesting, dense fog that covered the entire road. it had a weird smell to it, and it was very hard to see where we were going. by the time we came out the other side...wouldn't you know it....we landed smack-dab in the middle of ANOTHER alternate reality. thems the breaks, i guess. here's burke, from the past, trying to comprehend a metavari soundcheck from the future at the Max.

unfortunately, it took me so long to get the framing just right on this picture that i didn't have time to warn bryant before the gigantic monster licking it's chops right behind him bit his head off.....AGAIN...

there were no indian heads around this time, so we just jammed this crummy old box on his shoulders until the show was over and we could figure out something better.

then we suddenly realized that bryant's head wasn't gone at all, but that when he was eaten by the monster his soul got trapped in this elaborate ghost-busters style trap. we tried every 4-digit combination we could think of to set him free, from our bank pin numbers, to our birthdates. wouldn't you know, it was 1-2-3-4...last thing we tried!

once we released him, though, we realized he wasn't alone in there. sad to say, my own body was temporarily possessed by the souls of the giant monsters past victims. they compelled me to build the machine you see here in the picture, which served as a holding cell for the monster and rendered it powerless. no. big. deal.

Charles the Osprey at the Pyramid Scheme, Grand Rapids, Michigan

a meeting of the minds. i'm sure something awfully important is being discussed in this photograph. it was probably hard to tell what it was though, because everyone was probably talking very loudly and all at the same time.

Metavari and husband&wife Tour the universe and back, brought to you by...Hot Dogs.

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mexican brunch with jen and laura.

stranded.....

Weekend at E.J.'s II : Lil Burkey's Day out

2011-09-08T16:07:00.000-07:00

we got the day started by snapping these glamour shots of ty for his lady. he's been missing her on the road since we left, and he wanted to do something nice. of course, by "his lady" i mean "hotornot.com".

here's me telling the other dudes about a sword fight i had gotten into earlier in the day. see, i got up early to go do some pilates and fencing at the gym on the roof of the hotel complex we were staying in, as is my usual routine. after the workout, when i came out of the shower, i got jumped by three dudes. they wanted my wallet, and i was like "are you CRAZY?!? i'm stark naked, and who would ever take their WALLET into the shower!?". luckily though, i never travel anywhere without my fencing sword, so i whipped that sucker out and showed those crooks who was boss.

we thought we had a leak in the tire, but we couldn't see any visible punctures or tears in the tread. nate had heard once that blind people's other senses become like super powers when they lose their sight. so, here he is closing his eyes and listening for the leak, thinking that his hearing would immediately improve. it didn't, but bryant did sneak up on him and fart right in his face and shout "did you hear THAT!". it was way immature.

not only was nate confused about the blind and their senses, but he also had a weird impression of what Canada was like. the first thing he wanted to do was infiltrate the parliament and plant an american flag in the middle of some official proceeding. here he is doing is best "impression of a Canadian" before he scaled the capital building wall. he did forget the flag though, so once he got into the building, he didn't know what to do, so he just ate some poutine at the parliament food court, came back outside, and we left.

Canada has the best malls. here we are killing time in an abandoned one, waiting for the zombies to come out and terrorize us. lucky for us, the same number of zombies came out at the mall as did people to the show that night, so we were totally safe.

also, before the show, time showed us this game he invented where you stand on one leg and slap at each other. very sissy.

the best shawarma we ever had?

casbah green room. casbah freaky scary terrifying weirdo green room.

after we played at the show, the crowd was really restless and screaming for more. so, when metavari came out for the encore we joined them on stage and ran through a set of improvisations and collaborations the likes of which have never been seen or heard. it was incredible. the place was electric and we sold out of all of our t shirts and cds and posters. then we all died and went to heaven.

here's nate's corpse right after he died.

detail of nate's rotten, bloated corpse.

you can't take that stuff to canada

2011-09-06T22:08:00.000-07:00

so far this whole tour has consisted of almost exclusively driving, which doesn't make for much of a tour blog. it does, however, lend itself to a lot of inside-joking and delirious free association. And, a lot of funny made-up names like E.J. Turnbuckle, Chuck E. Jesus, and Dick Nail.

here is some stuff, though...mostly lies

Weird Owl Yankovic

what's there to say about this picture? brook has had this mustache in his bag since we left bloomington, and it was only when we were halfway across vermont in the rain that he decided to unveil it. at first, i did think he was nate, though.

nothing new here. moving right along...

here's tim sweet talking the border patrol. it was a VERY close call, but thanks to tim's unmatched charm and way with words we got trough the border with all of ty's k2 spice and bath salts in tact.

welcome to canada. have a seat.

after the show in montreal, a few of the guys in our crew kept insisting that you could get the best bagel in the world right around the corner from the venue. the next time someone says that to you, especially if you're very tired, just toss a baseball mitt in the microwave and chow down. it's virtually the same experience.

as is usual on any husband&wife tour, someone sat in gum...this time it was bryant.

world's biggest burger king playplace...

Getting our act together

2011-09-05T08:59:00.000-07:00

Believe it or not, coming down off the high of an alternate, parallel dimension is not exactly a walk in the park. Not a single one of us has any recollection of what happened after the show in Boston, but when we woke up the next morning, this is what we found...

Ty and Burke woke up next to each other, neither knowing what unspeakable events had transpired in the night, but sharing an overwhelming sense of shame and crushing guilt.

Fortunately, Burke found a quiet place to reflect and try to make heads or tails of his foggy memories. He seemed better in the end, but for the duration of this quiet time I could hear him repeatedly muttering, "horror of horrors...".

When I came to, I found that my consciousness was being occupied by this cat. I don't know how he found his way into the annals of my mind, but for the truths he revealed to me, I will be forever grateful. Many of them were so vast and incomprehensable that I could never begin to explain them. However, one of the easy ones was that wet catfood looks just as gross to cats as it does to humans. Who knew!?

When we finally found Nate, he was in the sorriest state I've ever seen a man. He was stumbling around, wobbling back and forth almost growling, "horror of horrors...". We threw some water in his face, got out the smelling salts, and screamed at him, "WHAT IS THE HORROR OF HORRORS!". He began, hesitantly, to explain it to us. He was talking so fast that it was hard to catch it all, but there was something about a teenage barn party, skinny dipping, and an ocean full of dead, decaying bodies. Freaky stuff.

Thanks, in no small part, to our gracious host and friend Chris and his family we were all quickly snapped back into reality. We knew it was true because when we looked back on this photo, the food was real, and normal colors. No more of that psychedelic hook food crap.

Metavari, The Oak and The Ax, Biddeford, ME.

husband&wife in 4-D! tour blog now featuring aroma-scope. just sniff a fart while you're reading this and you'll know what it smells like where we are

2011-09-04T08:01:00.000-07:00

we knew that getting to New York wasn't going to be easy. after all, bryant had no head. the first thing we tried was nate's idea of building a portal to an alternate dimension using only the stuff at the merch table. it didn't get us to new york any faster, but we did see some weird stuff...

...including this giant that dan asked for directions.

as it turns out, the quickest way back into our own physical reality was by taking the train. kinda boring after such a sweet entrance into another universe, but it was safe and it was practical.

while we were on the train we met the two most beautiful people in the world. here they are being nice to us in spite of our deficiencies.

they decided to take us under their wing on the remainder of our journey back to the one true reality. here we are eating food with them. you can't see it in the picture, but that's because the food in the alternate universe was exactly like the food the lost boys eat in "hook". for that reason, you can't tell right now, but tim's got a face full of blue mashed potatoes in his beard.

once our beautiful tour guides left us, we bumped into our animal spirit guide, Airbud. from here, he showed us the way. his first order of business was to concentrate on our auras and gather the proper psychic info he needed in order for us to find our way to the show. it was hard to gather what he was seeing, but he just kept muttering under his breath, "horror of horrors..." so i don't think it was good.

however, i think captain beefox was probably just thinking of some totally weird stuff on purpose in order to throw our spiritual guide of the trail and punk'd him. he's mischievous that way. oh, also, in the alternate universe, he had his head back.

eventually, we made it back to the show in our normal boring universe where we discovered that no fun was allowed, whatsoever.

metavari at don pedro in NYC

our dear old friends, ohnomoon. don pedro, NYC.
Sleeping Limbs by ohnomoon

metavari at the middle east, cambridge, MA.

night fruit. the middle east, cambridge, MA.

pretty and nice. the middle east, cambridge, MA.

by the way, Boston ruled last night. the middle east was super sweet to us, and all the other bands were out of sight. mondo thanks to ben hoffman, pretty and nice, and night fruit for hosting us!

Way Behind....

2011-09-02T14:27:00.000-07:00

Let me start off by telling you just how sincerely sorry i am that this blog entry has been so long coming. The first few days of this tour have been full of action, and LOTS of driving. Driving, which not only impedes our ability to to update the blog, but also makes for some boring reporting from the road. we'll try to get into the swing and have the updates be as regular as possible, as soon as possible. we know how much you love them.

less go...

our newest besties State Park came down to bloomington for the tour kickoff show. they were real good, the real deal. you can probably already tell though, by the excitement on Tulo's face. If you don't know Tulo, he's the guy in the photo doing nothing.

packing th van on the first day of a tour is always a real challenge and always takes longer than you think its going to. so, this time we planned for it. it still took longer than we had planned, but not by much.

before we headed for cleveland to play at Happy Dog, a gourmet hot dog restaurant/bar, Ty convinced us all to walk across the street and grab some food at Naughty Dog, a bloomington based gourmet hotdog restaurant. So, we headed over there to meet up with our friends Fabio and Popeye the Sailor Man and grab a dog before we drove 7 hours and ate another dog.

bryant ate so many hotdogs at our first stop that this head fell off. here it is just lying in the back of the van on top of some gear. we figured we'd try to reattach it at the show. it was kind of rolling around a lot and making a bunch of racket, so eventually we just jammed it under the seat for the remainder of the van ride.

however, his headless body did keep walking around and bumping into (and breaking) stuff everytime we had to stop, so we bought this indian head to screw on in the meantime. it worked pretty well, but it definitely didn't speak the same language as us, which posed a problem.

the happy dog, while its perfectly delicious, does not make your life easy. here are tim and burke agonizing over the myriad choices they have for hotdog toppings. if you know these two guys at all, then it will not surprise you that this decision took them well over 4 1/2 hours.

...and THIS is what they ended up with. i promise you there is a hotdog under all of that mess.

Metavari at the Happy Dog, Cleveland, OH.

Soporus at Kung Fu Necktie, Philadelphia, PA. Soporus were great, and also very nice fellows. it was fun hanging in Philly, and meeting some friends and strangers we hadn't met before.

VANity.

on to NYC!

...and introducing Mick Shrimpton!!

2011-08-24T15:45:00.001-07:00

It's happening AGAIN!!! We're hitting the road next week with our dear friends Metavari in celebration of their newly purchased van. We fully intended to soil that thing to our highest potential and leave no scent un-smelt.
here are the dates:
8/30 Bloomington, IN
8/31 Cleveland, OH
9/1 Philadelphia, PA
9/2 Brooklyn, NY
9/3 Cambridge, MA
9/4 Biddeford, ME
9/5 Montreal, CANADA
9/6 Ottawa, CANADA
9/7 Toronto, Ontario, CANADA
9/8 Grand Rapids, MI
9/9 Chicago, IL
9/10 Holland, MI
9/11 Fort Fun, IN
...just click 'em for all the important info.

we started rehearsing today, and it went really well. here's the proof:

tim and bryant discussing guitar amp sounds...bryant's all like "i need more BASS!", to which tim replies "there's already too much bass as it is, i'm not going to turn it up just for the HALIBUT!" to which bryant replied "oh, i can't hear it. my hearing used to be pretty good. i must've LOBSTER and never FLOUNDER" to which tim replied "huh?".

and here's burke. staring off into space without a thought in his pea brain.

we're really excited about these shows. so, if you know anyone in or near those towns we're approaching, tell them to come on out. we're intentionally planning to have fun at each and every show on this whole tour.

Two Days Worth

2011-07-08T22:17:00.000-07:00

i'm a little behind....sorry about that. it's been a whirlwind couple of days with lots of traveling. not much internet time.

enough excuses.

after the show and gourmet hotdogs in cleveland, it was time for one of our favorite old haunts, columbus, oh.
we hadn't gotten enough skin-tubes of oozing parts-is-parts "pork" and "beef" at the happy dog, so our first stop was a much anticipated visit to the schmidthaus. it's a german buffet in germantown. tim stayed home to recuperate flu-wise while the rest of us chowed down.

we were all feeling pretty ripe after all that sour kraut and knockwurst, so we went for a long-distance hike through the columbian wilderness to work it off. here's lewis and dave guiding us on our spiritual quest.

i'm getting sleepy....

the show was in a short basement.

sleeping bag in action.

after columbus was luna music in indianapolis. give them your business. here's what that show looked like during the sleeping boys set where lewis dogged us, thinking we were not in the room. we were in the room, and lewis is a chowder head.

on with the show...

after the show, we played taboo. here are two of my oldest friends. well, not that they're old, they're their normal age, we've just been friends for a long time is what i mean.

andy really wanted to make the tour blog, but unfortunately his photo came out blurry...andy, if you're out there, send me your senior pic or something and we'll treat you right. sorry for the poor photo quality.

this is emily, and the reason her hand came out blurry is because she just got done smacking tim. that's why tim looks so scared. she also went to space camp.

tim was really upset about getting smacked, so he went off and pouted with lennon sitting in his lap. lennon's the dog.

lennon likes to smooch.

you may remember ryan from our austin blog entry. here he is, making another appearance. so....that's what that is.

see you tomorrowzzzzzzzzZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

Hot in Cleveland Rocks

2011-07-07T09:08:00.000-07:00

tim's got the flu, and he's laid up...

so we threw him in the van with no a/c and drove to Cleveland for a hot dog. the show was great, and we had some old friends out. we're also on tour at the moment with Sleeping Bag, who are a very good band. If you don't want to take my word for it, just ask Dave Segedy. He'll tell you.

David Woodruff saw what we were doing to Tim, what with the fever and the no a/c, and he DID NOT go for it. So, he jumped in his time machine, flew back to the 1800's real quick and grabbed this bike. Then he pedaled all the way Cleveland, OH. Here's the proof...

I'm still waiting for Zac to text me the picture we got of Aaron sleeping (he's bryant's replacement for the summer), but his verizon connection is no good here. can you hear me NOW?

here's sleeping bag:

EDIT
i finally got that photo of Aaron...welcome to the club, buddy

MORE TOUR DATES!

2011-07-05T19:05:00.000-07:00

We're hitting the road again, starting tomorrow!

7/6 Cleveland, OH - Happy Dog
7/7 Columbus, OH - The Purple Grape
7/8 Indianapolis, IN - Luna Music
7/9 Grand Rapids, MI - Founder's Brewery
7/10 Kalamazoo, MI - The Strutt

all dates are with SLEEPING BAG!
full details at XRArecords.com

Rabid in the Kennel

2011-06-15T08:29:00.000-07:00

We're home for a while, trying to schedule a few shows in July before Bryant's triumphant return and a big fun-time surprise-news tour in September.

in the meantime...

Check out our live session and interview with Jack Rabid over at bigtakeover.com!! As you probably remember from this very tour blog we had a great visit with Jack and his lovely gang of buddies when we stopped by the Kennel in April, and now its all streaming across the internet for you to enjoy as well. Also, be sure and pick up the latest issue of The Big Takeover and read the great review of PROUD FLESH and see us at #27 in the editor's picks! WHAT A COUNTRY!!

New Old Music!

2011-05-19T09:27:00.000-07:00

No, this isn't technically tour-related, BUT, one time, on tour, we recorded four songs for Daytrotter.com. One of them was called "LEM Three".

Starting now, the previously rare and hard-to-find original version of "LEM Three" (as well as One, Two and Four) is available digitaly from XRA and Flannelgraph Records!

Buy it, if you can!!

LEM : Volume 5, March 2010 by Laminar Excursion

Our Return to the Land of Milk and Honey

2011-05-01T10:59:00.000-07:00

Captain's log star-date 5/1/2011.

Meet Kevin:

Kevin is many things to husband&wife. He is our drive, our life blood, our sherpa, and most importantly our guru. Guru Kevin called out to us all the way from his heavenly perch at the Chinese Buffet in Gas City, IN, beckoning us to come quickly and eat at his half-filled/lukewarm chinese buffet. So we packed up all our duds and climbed back in the Ecto-one (our wonderful 2003 Ford Windstar) to followed Guru Kevin's pillar of cloud out of the big apple.

As it turns out that pillar of cloud was actually a gigantic pillar of radioactive material from 3 Mile Island. It lead us right to Harrisburgh, PA. There Guru Kevin called out to us again. This time he took the form of an old dear friend serenading us with surefire pop-country hits:

We had a great time with Mike Johnson (Kevin incarnate), but had to push on to Pittsburgh. Guru Kevin parted the waters of Pittsburgh's three rives allowing us to pass through and make it safely to Howler's Coyote Cafe for our show.

There was a sweet city-wide gallery opening in downtown Pittsburgh. We only got to two of the galleries, but they were both sweet exhibits. One was a show for the girl friend (Katherine Young) of a great new friend we made at our show (Johnathan from the band Delicious Pastries).

Unfortunately the arts counsel decided to hang up all these paper snow flakes, but leave out the ones Zac's been working on all tour in the van. He was pissed.

After a short lunch with my doppleganger . . .

. . . we were ready to push on towards Guru Kevin in Gas City. Unfortunately before we could escape Pittsburgh the Heinz family captured us and held us hostage. They were pissed at us for being from the home state of Red Gold. Guru Kevin took the form of our new friend Bankt and came to Zac in a dream. He gave Zac instructions for freeing us from the Heinz families enslavement. Zac didn't quite follow it all.

Zac did manage to remember that we were to sacrifice a Red Gold tomato and spread its blood on our door post (looking a little orange in this picture, do to the color correction on our camera).

Guru Kevin said he would send the Angel of Expiration Dates in the middle of the night to the kingdom of Heinz, and it would cause all the first born ketchups to go expired. But if we had spread the blood of a Red Gold tomato on our door posts (orange here) the Angel would pass over our dwelling and spare our ketchup. This happened just at Guru Kevin said it would, and in the madness that followed all that expired Heinz being disposed of, we managed to escape Pittsburgh and push on west toward Indiana.

We made a quick stop in Toledo where, after many attempts and two weeks of practice, Bryant finally learned to do the hand-jive:

This made Zac happy.

After a nights stay in a hotel so nice you couldn't operate two [appliances] at once . . .

. . . we finally arrive in Guru Kevin's presence. Kevin talked to us through our entire meal, sharing all sorts of wisdom about the I-phone 5, local elementary schools, the devastating floods he would cause if he could, cool cars, the "Fast and the Furious" series, and his older brother. We wished we could stay for eternity with Kevin in the heaven that is the Gas City China Buffet, but he said he had other plans for us. Guru Kevin had other followers to attend to and so he sent us out. This made Bryant sad:

Kevin, where ever you are . . .

. . . watch over husband&wife.

This is Tim signing off. Good night and good luck.

A Spike Lee Joint

2011-04-28T22:35:00.000-07:00

Captain's Log, star-date 4/28/2011. The last two days have been more of the same for us . . . long days rife with tales of mystery, death, and deceit.

Aunt Cathy woke us up bright and early (or after noon) and took us out for a sweet little breakfast at a new restaurant by the Charles River. The food was good, the company was great, and the service was . . . interesting.

From there Aunt Cathy took us to the farm where she owns a share in their CSA.

Charlie and his wife were wonderful and after showing Zac his first ever chicken and catching a couple wild goats they forced Mike to drink a beer. He hated it.

We then drove back to NYC yet again because we love it so much. Air Bud met us at his front door, but first he answered the age old question . . . "Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego?". He found her on Graham St. in Brooklyn, bought a huge pizza pie from her, and brought it to us to enjoy in his apartment. Bryant misunderstood what it meant to be a "GUMshoe" and tried to sit in some instead. Unfortunately we didn't get a picture of that.

Air Bud told us about his encounter with a girl named Molly. She seemed a little tough to stomach at the first, but nice enough by the end of the night. The story ended with Air Bud teaching Bryant how to do the hand-jive with BOTH hands at the same time. I watched.

We played a real buster show at Spike Hill, but our wonderful friends (Kat and the bandcycle crew) stuck with us through the end of our free 1 a.m. show on a Tuesday night. Zac decided to stay home and sleep instead of playing.

He made the right decision.

Spike Lee from Spike Hill got us all so wasted that we didn't notice the gas leak in Air Bud's place and Mike, Zac, and I died.

. . . we got better.

The next morning we woke up to find this clue:

We determined that it meant that we must seek out and watch Low with Milagres at the Bowery Ballroom. So we set out on our quest.

We checked Low's castle in Central Park . . .

this miniature city . . .

and Bryant's Droid. But alas Low, Milagres, and the Bowery Ballroom were nowhere to be found.

We met up with a dear old friend Jessica and it was immediately like old times . . . her and Zac trying to recreate Devo photo shoots in Times Square:

Eventually we found what we were looking for and the rest of night was pure bliss . . .

Milagres playing to a sold out Bowery Ballroom crowd that was into it.

And Low, blowing the roof off of my live show experience. We all loved the show. Low's set was just about perfect . . . a quiet, moody, seamless set, including nearly all of "the jams". They created a vibe and the whole place was feeling it.

Unfortunately Low's dark side turned Bryno into a zombie, who in turn turned Air Bud into a zombie, and they ate Mike and I.

Zac, the sole surviver, had a nice end to the night which consisted of enjoying some sandwiches and beers with his new best bud Steven at Kyle's wonderful Wiliamsburgh apartment.

This is Tim signing off. Good night and good luck.

feeling the way

2011-04-26T10:09:00.000-07:00

as i sort of mentioned in the Easter post, we've been staying with tim's most gracious and accommodating aunt and uncle this weekend. good conversation, good food, good sleep....the only way we really had to repay them was to have steven play his favorite pop and show tunes on their piano. here he is doing a medley of "come sail away" and "bohemian rhapsody"

kyle really insisted on showing all of us this video. it was horrifying. fraser had to look away.

bryant and fraser WERE playing with this ball, but then that mean old dog took it away and ruined all the fun. eric and i documented the entire thing. we're taking the owners to "people's court" for not keeping such a fearsome beast on a leash

here's zac, once again, doing his best impersonation of steven. he's playing "candle in the wind"

here's chris losing at a game of "words with friends"

here's zac trying to teach steven his concentration/black magick van loading technique. the problem is, unlike zac, steven's heart is pure, so he's unable to harness the evil darkness. let your light shine, steven. . . for the world to see!

Hoppy Easter!

2011-04-25T22:24:00.000-07:00

here's a live video of Milagres we shot on Easter Sunday, 2011.

playing a show on Easter Sunday is a tricky (and very stupid) business. BUT, we'll get to that in a minute.

no joke...this is zac seeing the ocean for the very first time. he got bored real fast and kept complaining that he "thought it would be bigger". what a brat.

two half-italians and a hillbilly walk up to a lighthouse. the first half-italian says "umm..........................." and then there's about 2 minutes of silence. the second half-italian looks into the water and says "hey, look dis! i think i just saw a brown turlet trout!". then the hillbilly looks around and goes, "........uh, is there like a pool we could take a dip in?".

after we took this shot, some runner lady with a mouth full of granola waddled by and goes "i've never seen anybody take THAT picture before...". it's cool to know that even when we leave home and reach a foreign land like the east coast, people still appreciate our cutting-edge style.

tim and cousin sam

bryno in the middle of half a hand-jive.

there is a very, very good chance that this is a picture of the best meal i ever ate. prepared by tim's aunt and uncle and shared with us on the afternoon of Easter. there was salad. there was asparagus. there were 2 loaves of homemade bread. there were potatoes and gravy. there was ham. there was lamb. there was ricotta pie. there was cookie pie. there were seconds....

we ate so much that tim immediately died.

bryant was gonna rat us out for not turning over tim's body to the proper authorities, so we bound him up and tortured him, gitmo style.

then, since it was Easter, tim came back to life and we forgave bryant. then the 4 of us went inside to watch our buddies practice for the next night's rock show.

HoPpY EaStEr!!

Great Friday, cool Saturday

2011-04-24T22:27:00.000-07:00

we woke up (relatively) early the next day so we could do two things....have brunch with Kat, and buy tickets to see Low (with Milagres) on the 27th. I'm not sure if Low realizes that they get to play with the band that just did FIVE shows with husband&wife, but i'm sure they'll be excited when they find out. this was Kat's reaction when Tim said that same sentence to her....

we left NYC and headed for Winooski, VT. First things first....we met up with our Milagres buddies and went for some vietnamese food. it wasn't spicy enough for kyle. he likes them real spicy. he put sriracha and jalepenos in his soup to make it tougher.

after that we played a show, and when Milagres went on it looked like this:

i don't have any photographic evidence of this, but after the show we stayed with the sweetest girl in the world named Katie. She was super kind to us, gave us the scoop on what's good in VT, and made us feel very comfortable. Katie, if you're out there, we love you. please contact us and we'll be friends for life.

on with the show....

after we left Katie's place it freaking snowed and snowed and snowed all day and it was like a blizzard, but it was in April and it made no sense and we hated it, but what could we do because it was just dumb stupid weather. it was pretty though. see?

halfway through the trip to Maine, our van broke down. like i said, it was a blizzard, so conditions got a little hairy with no heat and no transportation. we drew straws and Zac and Bryant had no choice but to kill and butcher and eat me and Tim so they could survive. Donner-Party-style. here they are after their hearty feast. turns out, the van wasn't dead after all, so these two guys continued the tour without us.

i was just kidding about all that cannibalism business...what actually happened is that after the van broke down we were walking to the nearest gas station when we all fell down a rabbit hole and ended up in this magical saloon. i don't know what it was, but whatever cowboys lived in this alternate universe had won a lot of trophies. we weren't looking for trouble, and we certainly couldn't compete with these muchachos, so we had some shots of sarsaparilla, passed out immediately, and woke up back in our van, never to speak of it again. until i just wrote this blog.

we eventually made it to portland, where bryant read the paper while Milagres did a soundcheck. one of the great things about being the opening band is that you don't have to do anything but show up and play. sure, you're set's going to sound bad, BUT while the headliners are busy fussing over their monitor mixes and EQs and ryders, you can sit in the greenroom and eat bananas like this:

it's real fun to much a banana. you can tell, because i'm laughing.

for real though, Milagres rule. their record is coming out this fall on the Kill Rock Stars label and i'm super excited to hear it. until then, i'm going to hear these songs played over and over for the next five nights. you are jealous.

oh, i also got this picture of Chris for my collection of "photos of people who are sleeping or dead". there'll be a nice round-up of these photos at the end of the tour, but here's a taste for now. it'll kind of be like "Hot or Not", but you'll have to decide whether the people are alseep, or dead. get it?

But I can't f$&#ing close mine s#*%

2011-04-23T12:22:00.000-07:00

New York City. We've got a serious love/hate thing going on with this city. Over the years, it's been home to some of our highest highs and our lowest lows. This time though, the stars aligned. We played the Rock Shop in Brooklyn, not only to a room full of people, but a room full our rowdy friends. It was the kind of welcoming show we're only used to experiencing in Bloomington, or Muncie, but here we were living it up in the big city having the thrill of a lifetime. Thanks to all of our friends that came out and joined in the fun. We appreciate that.

This is our good old pal Airbud. He provided us with a most comfortable crashpad during our visit. He's one of the kindest, funniest, friendliest jokers you'll ever meet. You can tell he's cool in this photo by the way he's lounging. Airbud strolls, that's it and that's all. Here he is telling us some story about sex-trade-mad-cow-disease or something like that. I wasn't paying attention. We were way too busy scarfing his leftover Passover foodover allover nightover.

Our first order of business in NYC was to stop by the Kennel to record a session with Jim Santo, Billy the engineer who's last name I never got, and Jack Rabid - editor of The Big Takeover. Those dudes were totally sweet and the recording session was fun and went smoothly. We'll have more on this (and you'll be able to hear it) in about a month or so.

We probably haven't gotten a chance to mention it yet, but we totally sold-out of the Proud Flesh LPs that we brought with us about halfway through this tour, which was definitely unexpected. For as talented and incredible as we are, we're very humble, so the selling out came as a nice surprise. Here's a photo of the package of MORE records, sent to us by the lovely and beautiful Jared P Cheek of Flannelgraph Records. Hopefully, if we can sell the rest of these, we can afford to get Jared some drawing lessons and he'll stop drawing Bullwinkle on everything. Until then we'll be spending our time at the moose, goose, and got-loose.

Kat Lee is one of our oldest and dearest New York friends. This is her (and husband Corey's) band ohnomoon, and they are great. They should be dropping some recordings on us soon, so prepare yourself accordingly.

Right before we played, Tim dropped his cell phone behind/under the stage. Here's Kat laughing at him during his first (of several) attempt at crawling under there to retrieve it. It was gross down there, and probably full of spiders (like mayberry's old bandstand), but he eventually got his phone back and even scored a few new cables while he was down there.

In 2009 Glass Ghost released one of my favorite records, Idol Omen, on one of my favorite record labels, Western Vinyl. Here's me seeing them live for the first time and loving every single note of it. For those of you in the know, its kind of like if Ben Lumsdaine and Dave Segedy were fused together and joined Kill & Eat but had Aaron Neville singing. Not to mention, they were incredibly friendly and charming. I hope we get to cross paths again soon.

And finally, here's our old buddy Taylor getting into a shouting match with Bryant. Neither of them were upset, and they weren't saying anything, just shouting. For like a half hour. It was super annoying, so we ditched Taylor and murdered Bryant. Here's a picture of his corpse.

a day off, not a day on aka Martin Luther King Jr. Bacon Cheeseburger

2011-04-21T23:03:00.000-07:00

we're gonna kick off this blog entry with a game of "What is it?". here's how you play.....
guess what this is:

if you guessed "Tim's gross slobber", you're right. congratulations!

on with the show.

April 19th, 2011 found us with a day off. we drove our van halfway across new york, from jamestown to ithaca to cut the driving in half for the next show. ithaca is a magic place, full of adventure. let me tell you about it....

the first thing we did upon entering ithaca was find the nearest record shop so zac could get his fix from the old five-finger-discount-bin (he's a kleptominerac) and lay off our stuff for a change. we have to stop by a place of business every couple of days so he can get it out of his system, otherwise we just end up with a bunch of pairs of bryant's underpants missing, or Tim's mustache trimmer, which you can tell zac stole a long time ago.

this is what it looks like when zac's trying to decide whether or not to steal. devils on one side, angels on the other. zac always chooses devils.

after chowing down on some phoney baloney mexican food we settled into this sweet hotel room and watched that new Sherlock Holmes movie until we fell asleep. it was decent, but he should have said "elementary my dear watson" more.

the next day we woke up early and headed for our 4:20 show in CT. BUT, the stoners dropped the ball and we found out halfway there that the show was canceled. luckily we found out about another show we could jump and headed for danbury, CT. the first thing we did there was get in a staring contest with this dude. he lost.

oh geez, i just realized it's 2:30am and we need to get up early, so here's a bunch of pictures. make up your own captions. the best entry gets a free husband&wife tour poster. submissions can be mailed to hell@xrarecords.com, subject "caption contest":

A, B, C ya!

i need attention, 24 hours a day

2011-04-19T19:04:00.000-07:00

first off, check this out!

this is husband&wife doin' it's thing. thanks to travis for the sweet photo.

on with the show...

we woke up yesterday in Indiana, PA, which was Jimmy Stewart's hometown. We stayed with the sweetest imaginable babes, who were very kind to us and made us breakfast and everything. it was a great sendoff, and we can't wait to get back there.

after we left their place, we had a little time to kill, so we got started right away on building this quick barn. Zac drew up the blueprints on this Apple Macbook computer, i documented the whole process with photos, and bryant got cracking on the actual construction work. Tim was going to help, but it took him like 5 hours just to write one email.

after the barn was done, we headed for Jamestown, NY, Lucille Ball's hometown. We got there just in time to check out Townhouse Records and grab some Vitameatavegamin at the Labyrinth before the show started. here's what that show looked like:

that's us loading equipment in.

bryant was getting really jealous of zac and his concentraton-blackmagick loading technique, so he decided to give it a try. he concentrated really hard, and groaned and strained and held his eyes shut as tight as he could, but none of his gear budged. however, this DID happen..............

The Hoosiers of Pennsylvania

2011-04-18T21:07:00.000-07:00

Day 3, fool. We left Indiana and 7 hours later, we were in.....Indiana. Indiana, PA, that is. Being the long drive that is was, one has ample time to get done what one needed to do, such as this:

.....and this:

.....and this:

All that doin' works up an appetite. So we went to Cici's for lunch. You should have Cici'n the crap I took that night.

We also found the time to film our scene for Heavy Metal Parking Lot 2011. Here are Bryant and Zac talking about why Rust in Peace is the most supreme thrash album of all time- a "Thrashterpiece", if you will:

We finally arrive to Indiana, PA. Shortly after the second band started, the neighbors threatened to call the cops if the noise didn't cease immediately. These kids brought the ruckus. Not what I expected for a Body Count cover band:

They were only able to make it through Evil Dick, Smoked Pork and Bowels of the Devil before the show was shut down. Luckily, a few Good Samaritans offered their basement and we were able to get the show moved at the last minute.

Basement shows rule. Through the kindness of strangers a potentially disappointing night turned out to be a success and a total blast!

Space Race

2011-04-18T20:41:00.000-07:00

i know you think this looks like fun, but it's not. it's dangerous. and it's serious.

back in the saddle....

2011-04-16T22:04:00.000-07:00

here we go again!
i am super exhausted...the main reason is because we're having fun, and we'll sleep when we're dead, but you know how it goes.
we're two days into the tour, and it's been a total blast so far with lots of belly-pressing with buddies, and no time to rest. i'm hanging here at T-Rex with some of our boys from Support The Troopz (be warned...NSFW, unless you work in a strip club, or a tattoo parlor) and i'm going to fall asleep here real soon...let's make this quick!

Team Ethic, our friends in Ypsilanti (or if you're Zae, "Ipzillanties"), who put on a great show for us at Woodruff's. We met some way-cool people at this show!

Zae got tired of packing his stuff up in the van night after night, so he came up with a new system where he uses magic, rather than brute force, to load and unload his stuff. basically, what he does is concentrate real hard, invoking the powers of baphomet - the goat of mendes - making his drums disappear into thin air, one-by-one. then, at the next show he just does the same in reverse to conjure the drums back up, no big whoop. after this scene you're seeing here, he also did these dishes using concentration magic, just to be nice.

after the show we went back to aaron's place (our favorite haunt) after a brief detour to jimmy john's. we were all pretty tired, except for Zae, because he didn't use any energy to load equipment, so we all sat there while he played every eagle eye cherry song he knew on this acoustic guitar.

bryant couldn't stand it, so he got out his PJs, slammed his suitcase closed and said "tomorrow I'LL be gone!" before he stormed out and slept in the van. we never saw him again...

we got approximately 4 hours of sleep before we had to get up and drive to marion for the Spotted Cow Festival. we played at 1pm, but it was great nonetheless.

here's a ticked-off bryant trying to steal our merch after he stormed off the night before. we talked him down, and he agreed to finish the tour, but i think we're on thin ice...

this is what the festival looked like. KeRaAaZy!! these are our buddies from Years tearing it up.

we saw this. it's a space-rocket-racecar-time-machine, duh. we passed this dude on our way from marion to muncie for show #2 of the day. here's john glenn giving us a wave right before he lifted off and flew off into the sunset.

Zae is colorblind, so he thought Dan was pulling his leg when he told him the truth about the wall behind him here. things got real confusing...

Chad Serhal w/ She Does Is Magic live at VGR. they slayed, for real.

Derek "No Shirt" Miller, being irresponsible.

after that, my camera died, but ITFOW played after the Troopz and it was great. Long Live VILLAGE GREEN RECORDS!!! We'll see you tomorrow...........................................

Bitter butter will make your batter bitter

2011-02-05T13:48:00.000-08:00

Lansing, as usual, was a total bro-down. We rolled into town early and got to hang with John K for a little bit while we got some internet work done and grabbed some grub. I had a glass of chocolate milk and a no-bake. The show, which i have an unfortunate lack of photos from, was really off the chain. It's always nice to play in Lansing, and this time was exceptionally fun. It felt like we were really on, and the response was phenomenal. Great folks out there in Lansing, we'll be back soon, f'sho!

Part of the reason i don't have many photos from the show is because i spent most of the evening hanging with these babes. They were pretty cool, i guess, though they were lacking in the personality department. They let me kiss all over them without saying a word or screaming though, which is always a nice change of pace out here on the road.

Tim and I woke up this morning to Zac and Bryant snore-fighting. It was awful. Zac was louder and more consistent, but Bryant was a little nastier and more aggressive. We listened to them go at it for about 30 minutes before we each straddled one of them and choked them out until they were dead. Now we don't have to listen to that god-awful snoring anymore.....

We all sort of forgot that today was bryant's birthday....So, we woke up to this sad/adorable scene and caught him putting a party together for himself. We agreed to go outside and wait for him to finish so it still seemed like a surprise. we humored him and lit a rolled up newspaper on fire and stuck it in a hostess cupcake and sang happy birthday. he pretty much just bawled his eyes out the whole time, but we tried....

this was the next thing we found after the "party".....we felt bad, but what can you do, you know?

Cold in the D

2011-02-04T13:05:00.001-08:00

After lunch, Zac and Bryant showed up and we packed the van and headed for Ferndale. That's near Detroit. We played in an old Massage Parlour turned Pool Hall called "The Loving Touch". here's a recap:

There was a lot of driving yesterday, so i'm afraid the report is a little bare-bones this time around. here's Bryant, looking cute, and taking a nap in the van.

...and here's Zac doing the same. only, he's looking less cute, and more like a corpse.

Secret Twins were great. They helped us out with this show and showed us a good time.

and here's carjack....imagine dylan ettinger, plus dan deacon, plus jimi mann and you've kind of got a taste for what carjack was like. part crazy, part art, part party, part angry. definitely interesting. and as a side note, there were a lot of people making-out at this show.

on to lansing to hang with some buddies!

The Road : The Movie

2011-02-03T12:02:00.000-08:00

We're at it again! Actually, we were at it last weekend, too, but didn't get the blog up-to-date. So, here we are! I got a fresh haircut, new computer for blog-updating, new wiper blades, and a new lease on life!
Photographic Evidence :

The first stop this weekend found us playing with the lovely and talented Josh LeMasters. We've been in the same town as Josh about 4 times in the last couple months, but managed to avoid seeing/hearing his show. This time was an exception to that, and you know...it wasn't half bad! We even got him (impromtu-style) to join us on stage for a barn-burning rendition of "I Got Fat". It was great.

After the show was over, I gave Burke a ride on this cart. We felt like kids again. Only this time, no one could yell at us or tell us to quit horsing around because we LOOKED like adults.

Here we are hanging with the Sullivan's at their pad after the show. They're some of our dearest, best old friends and it's always great to catch up with them and invade their space for a few hours. Rumor has it that they may be headed for Bloomington later this year, which i think would be a real dream-come-true. I really like these two.

After an hour or so of shooting the bull, Burke put his new favorite movie on. It was called "Watcher in the Woods" and it sucked royally. Here's a still from the movie. Tim and I agreed that this babe is a total babe, while Burke did not agree.

Here's another shot from the flick. After Burke went to bed we turned that crap off and watched "the Johnny Cash Show". I agreed that Linda Ronstadt was a complete and total babe. I was alone.

After we got some sleep we met up At J&L Breakfast for some lunch with Burke and Josh. It's the kind of smoky place where the mashed potatoes are not quite as thick as the gravy, if you know what I mean. Josh especially disagreed about Linda Ronstadt.

Day Fin : pulling it up into a huey

2010-11-23T09:31:00.000-08:00

There was a lot of driving at the end of this tour, so it's hard to recap everything that happened without the photos. luckily, we got plenty!

Before we left Texas, Tim insisted on tackling the zipline one last time. Luckily, he agreed to do it while the sun was up so we could at least have the pleasure of SEEING him crack his skull against a tree. For better or worse, though, his trip went off without a hitch and was relarively boring for those of us watching. After that, we hung around with Doug and his family for a minute thanking them for the unbelievable hospitality before we headed out for Tulsa.

The only reason we were really able to head back Tulsa way was because of the generosity and kindness of our friends in Native Lights. Here they are being a really good band. I think it's pretty safe to say that, of all the towns we ended up in for the first time, Tulsa was the biggest surprise of this whole tour. Everyone we met there was energized and excited to meet people and do things and tell stories. The whole town was alive and you could feel that. We'll be heading back as soon as we can.

This is Vanessa who, along with her roomate Erin, hosted us both nights we spent in Tulsa. They were immediately kind to us and made us feel at home. They were as interested in where we were coming from as we were them and it's great to have them as friends. Vanessa also cooked up some killer spaghetti for us before the show and it was incredible.

THEN, the next day she and Brittany took us to the Blue Jackolope - a kind of church/grocery store/BBQ joint that was just about the coolest place ever. Once again, everyone there was remarkably friendly and wanted us to try their food and experience their lives. I can't tell you how cool this place was. Also, from what i understand, the coffee here is really, really good.

We also happened to run into Vanessa's friends Cary and Robbie from the band 2+2 on the Moon. They were funny guys and let us eat with them and tell jokes. I really liked these guys.

Here I am trying the "BBQ Bologna". The cook behind the counter asked us if we'd ever had it (No) so he threw some on the rib plates for us. I guess it's kind of an Oklahoma thing, and it was super tasty. Really thick and smokey with a touch of sourness. I ate two and a half slices of it...

We left the Blue Jackolope and headed for Greenville. I guess all that BBQ put Zac to sleep, so here he is snoozing.

Here's Scarlet Tanager who we played with in Greenville. As always, it was fun to see the Eagle Scout dudes at this show and get to hang out a little bit before we headed home. Unfortunately, we didn't get to hang as much as we wanted, which got them to accuse us of being "like Rodeo Ruby Love", which couldn't be further from the truth.

That's it for now. We'll see you in December...this time we're headed out East! Blue Flying Angels, signing off.

Day ? : someone gets his eye poked out

2010-11-20T20:46:00.000-08:00

Ok, so, it's been a minute since we've had a blog update...here's why.
After the Ft Worth show we had a day off in Denton, TX. starting then, and up until right now the whole next couple of days were a blur of extreme peaks and valleys, highs and lows, a roller coaster of fun and fear that finally appears to be drawing to a close. I'm gonna go ahead and jump in here....

Here's tim on stage in Ft Worth before soundcheck. Cowboys hate Tim, but that's because they secretly love him. It's the age old tale...

After the show we drove to Denton and met up with Doug Burr at his folks' place. This would be our homebase for the next three nights. It was totally comfortable and Doug's parents were very nice to us. For you super fans out there, this space we're in is also where Doug does his rehearsing.

After we woke up around noon or so we set out on our mission for the day. The goals were, find a Chinese buffet and eat there, go to a post office, go to a bank, go to a music shop, and check out Denton. Here we are demolishing goal #1. We stayed long enough for each of us to visit the facilities and clear out a little room so we could attack the buffet one more time before we left.

After we ate we went to the Denton junk shop and Zac played with this battle axe while bryant got his american brain sucked out by the turbanator.

Then, we hung out reading in this coffee shop literally for hours before the action started. It was very relaxing.

Once our friends realized we were in Denton it didn't take long for word to reach us about Greg Dixon. Greg is the brother of our good buddy Mike, who Zac and I each play in bands with back home. Greg is also a very cool dude. One of these guys that you meet and instantly feel like you've known him forever. We grabbed dinner with Greg and he got to know all of us a little bit before we headed back to his place to chill out and listen to records and tell jokes. Another thing about GD is that he, like his brother, is a real world genius. Alot of our time in his living room was spent with us grinning and giggling while he happily unloaded knowlege of Zeuhl, Brian Eno, and Captain Beefheart on us all while we fired endless questions at him. It was a great night, and it's super cool now to count Greg as a friend.

The next morning, this is what we woke up to. It seems normal enough, but this was no ordinary sleep. Zac was actually entranced in a magical coma that could only be undone with a kiss on the lips. Tim tried, but it didn't work. So, I knealt down beside him and gently pressed my pursed lips against his, to no avail. Finally, Bryant took a crack at it and after a long slow smooch Zac finally woke up. We were worried for a minute, but everything was pretty much back to normal after that.

Once we got cleaned up for the day we went outside and tim grabbed Doug's unicycle to take a crack at it. Turns out, they are hard to ride! Bryant was sorta starting to get the hang of it but we had to go to the show before he really had it mastered.

Greg came out to the show, and his wife Rachel came with him. She was equally as friendly and enthusiastic as Greg, and also a Hoosier. Im glad we got to meet her. Greg recorded the show, too! If we did any good, maybe we'll post it here sometime so you can hear it.

After the show we hung out just shooting the breeze with Doug for a while before we headed back to his parents' place. That's where things were going to get interesting. Unfortunately, this was the only picture I got of Doug. What's happening here is that he is wearing a headlamp and climbing into a tree that has a zipline attached to it. It's about 2am. He took a trip down the line and gave us some advice and a little warning about the end. Bryant was feeling brave, so he climbed up the ladder, settled in and launched himself off the platform. Doug's headlamp only reached so far, so just before Bryant faded off into the darkness, we noticed that he started to spin around and get a little off-kilter. That's bad. Once he went sliding into the darkness we lost sight of him, then heard a crash, a smack that sounded like Frank Thomas smashing an out-of-the-park homer, and a thud. No laughing, no expletives, no grunting...just silence. We ran up to find him and just saw him laying on the ground like a pile of laundry. We picked him up and he couldn't stand or walk at first, he just stumbled around. He was also speaking in tongues and chattering away in complete jibberish. Eventually he started to come to, but was kind of forgetting stuff and not making sense. Over the next half hour or so he got a little better, but was still forgetting things and asking weird questions. We decided to take him to the emergency room. We were in the ER until about 415am, and found out that he was concussed, but that he was going to be ok. By the time we left the hospital he was more or less in his right mind and we were all feeling a lot better. We did have to wake him up every two hours and check him out. Ultimately though, there was really only one way to fix him...

Day 5 : thou shalt not

2010-11-17T16:34:00.000-08:00

We woke up early and hit the road for Austin as quick as we could. We had a long drive ahead of us and some good old friends to look forward to. Our evening meal was actually supplied to us by Stubbs BBQ, where we were playing, so we basically hung around there for a few hours before the show started. Although, once all of our buddies arrived we did make a quick trip to End of an Ear to browse through the record selection. It was a great night all around and we spent most of it chatting and relaxing with a quick show to play in between.

We got to Stubb's early to eat and load in. Zac has never gotten to anyplace early in his entire life, so it caught him off guard a little bit. Here he is, frozen in thought, trying to come to grips with the concept. Unfortunately, it took him so long to make sense of what was happening and snap out of it that he was actually late for dinner. Luckily, that set him straight and everything was back to normal.

These are my Friends.
Bryant = Joey
Ryan = Chinandler Bong
Adam = Ross
Stephanie = Rachel
Tim = Monica
Zac = Phubu
I guess that makes me Gunther.

I woke up this morning to this beautiful scene. Naked Bryno just strumming away and crooning out some Donovan tunes peacefully in my direction. About ten seconds after I snapped this photo though, Ryan blasted Bryant square in the face with his pillow and screamed at him to shut-up. Naturally, this sent Bryant into a whirl and he started bawling and we couldn't really get him to stop for an hour or so. Eventually he cried himself back to sleep and everything was cool...for now

After Bryant and Ryan's little tiff we were all pretty upset, so, we decided to take a trip to the Harry Ransom museum and make them read passages together from this old bible we found until they could forgive each other and make nice. At first it was taking forever, but when they realized it was a pressing matter things started to move much more quickly.

Before you fall asleep looking at this, let me just tell you that this is the very first picture I ever took of the very first picture that was ever taken.

I guess the effects of the bible study didn't last long because after Ryan left I went back into Adam's house to relieve myself and when I returned I found this grisly scene. From what I understand, Tim must have smarted off to Bryant or something, triggering his aggro stored up from earlier, and Bryant kicked him in the stomach and killed him. He threatened to break my phone right after I took this, but I begged him not to, asking how else he thought we should replace Tim if my iPod was laying in a parking lot shattered into a million pieces. He agreed and we jumped into the van and split for Dallas before Walker could show up and arrest us for murder.

Day 4 : bullocks, Pevley!

2010-11-16T11:34:00.000-08:00

It didn't really matter where we were headed next, Tulsa was going to be a hard act to follow. It so happened that the next town were were landing in was Little Rock, Arkansas. We played at Sticky Fingerz. It was a really fancy place, and everyone there was way nice. The dudes from Free Micah met us at the door and took real good care of us. Maestro was the sound guy, and he was crazy. At one point during the soundcheck he said into the monitors, "how loud do you wanna go? I'm not afraid of you mutherf•ckers". That was pretty much par for the course from ole Maestro. After the show I started getting real sick. Coughing all over the place, eyes watering, sinus pressure, the whole deal. I spent the rest of the evening in the van listening to the rain. Oh yeah, Indiana, it rains in Arkansas. Get your act together.

We stopped at mcdonald's to grab a cheeseburger and so Bryant could use the facilities. A tour bus full of senior citizens had that same idea at the same time. Here's tim right before he unleashed a furious string of obscenetied on these old farts for "crowding him". The two people in the foreground here ordered right before me. They ordered "one medium dr pepper".

Here we are hanging out at Stink Fingerz. They fed us some dank victuals for free and treated us like real gentlemen. They also had a dry erase board where you could guess the score of the Monday night football game for a chance to win $500. None of us won...

This is what Zac looks like while he's doing a soundcheck. It's very similar to how he looks while he's doing a "number two"

husband&wife's trip to Austin is brought to you by the number two and the color gray. And also by Dayquil. Zzzzzzz...

Day 3 : near extinction

2010-11-15T14:52:00.000-08:00

Theres going to be a severe lack of photos for this day 3 post. There are two reasons, one: I started the day off with a dead phone/camera and two: it was really dark in the venue and none of the pictures came out. Also i guess most of the day was spent driving. So, here comes 1000 words for every picture we're missing...

Before we left St Louis we had to make an emergency trip to the shopping mall. Our fall fashions were dreadfully out of style, so ben took us to a place called urban outfitters where he works. We tried on trucker-style caps, white belts, doc martens, and v-neck Ts. We even tried on some big sunglasses and nut hugging denim jeans before we decided on one hoodie and made our way to the food court.

After all that we hit the road. Tulsa, OK is a really great town. We played at the soundpony, which was very dark, but reminded us a little bit of the bishop back home. We got free hotdogs all night and the show was a lot of fun. The best part was that there were so many excellent people hanging out there. There was no shortage of fun people to talk to who genuinely loved Tulsa. The pride was contagious and we definitely left that town convinced of it's greatness.

We did hit one hitch, however, at the end of the night. We met a super cool dude named Mitch who offered us a place to sleep after the show. We got his address and he headed home while we hung around til the end of the night. When all was said and done we put mitch's address into the old gar baby gps system and proceeded to get very, very lost. We called him, but he was already asleep so we were sunk. Luckily, just before we left the soundpony we met a fine young lady named Vannessa who had offered to show is around the next day. After asking her advice, she offered us a place to lay our heads at her apartment. So, at 3am, we headed back across Tulsa to vannessa's place. It was super comfortable and she was so nice to us it almost made us glad to have gotten lost.

The next morning, Vannessa's roomate Erin showed up and was equally as nice and intersting to talk to. We didn't have a ton of time, but they took us downtown to get some coffee and we all got to sit and have some great conversation before we had to split again. A million thanks to Vannessa and Erin, who we can't wait to see again.

Just to illustrate the darkness of the evening, here's a picture of a great Tulsa band called No Water. Their aggro was impressive and they were some tight rockers. La Panther Happens also played last night. They were great too, and both bands were made up of super nice dudes.

Another thing that happened after the show last night was this. The unfortunate thing about this is that it happens every night.

Day 2 : the overheads are finally off...

2010-11-14T17:15:00.000-08:00

Day two found us in St Louis with, believe it or not, a day off. That part was a bummer, but the good thing was that it meant we got to hang and bang with a few of our old buddies from Eagle Scout. Let me tell you, Kyle ben and Jeremiah KNOW how to party. First, Kyle prepared a bunch of Mexican tacos for everyone to scarf on. Muy mas deliciouso! Then we quickly made our way into the chill zone where we watched good will hunting (my first time) and the sandlot. After that we sat up giggling and talking til we fell asleep. It was a good night.

After we nom'd on all those Mexican tacos and taco salads, ben was suffering from some digestive difficulties. Here's a picture I accidentally snapped of Jeremiah administering his suppository treatment. I wish they had taken care of this in a more private place, but this is life and sometimes life can be pretty raw.

Ben is a pretty gross dude. BUT, we were having a hard time getting his nintendo xbox to play DVDs, so he poked and prodded at it, blew into it and licked on it until it finally started cooperating. All that to say, even though he's gross, I guess he's pretty smart, too.

Here's me taking a virtual crack at winning the old oaken bucket. It was very frustrating. Turns out, IU not only sucks at football in real life, but also in the nintendo universe. On a related note, I saw Coach Cream talking on a cell phone outside of laughing planet. I think I heard him offering money to Cody Zeller, though I couldn't be sure.

Here's Jeremiah posing with one of his wire sculptures that he wouldn't shut up about. He made these two jazz guys, plus a saxophone, a moon, a fish, and a bunch of other crap. We bought a couple of them from him before we left, as a gesture of thanks for letting us stay there, but we tossed them in the dumpster right outside his apartment as we were leaving. That's $350 we'll never see again...

Kyle got choked up during GWH. I think he missed his mom or something. Here he is clutching a pillow and laughing on the outside, but crying on the inside. Little known fact about Kyle, he's half Mexican. At least, that's about how his tacos tasted! Zing!!

Since we had the night off, "the Amazing" Zac Canale decided to put a little work into his magic act. Its a little known fact, but Zac's been an illusionists apprentice for years now. In fact, he's been known to, right in the middle of a song, make a drumstick completely disappear.

Day 1 : swearing off the hard stuff, forever

2010-11-13T22:40:00.000-08:00

Round 2! We split from Bloomington pretty late so we could work all day and since we only had a 45 minute drive ahead of us to get to terre haute. Everything was pretty smooth sailing and we arrived to ole simrell's just in time to fall into the open arms of our buddies in black cat. The show was a hat trick of celebratory energy; husband&wife's triumphant return to the haute, some war vet's triumphant return from Iraq, and the unexpected attendance of the coors babes in footlocker-employee costumes. Here's the photographic recap...

The gang's all here! Here's a quick one of all the conspirators devising a plan to defeat ole simrell for the very last time. Our reward...two coors babes for every boy!! Huzzah!!!!!


Ole simrell is a formidable opponent and it takes a certain amount of psychological preparation to face such an intimidating force. Here's a dramatic shot of tim getting psyched out before the big dance.


Black Cat is a great band. The only thing is that they insist on hanging that stupid budweiser neon light up everywhere they go. They aren't sponsored by them or anything, I think they just like the glow. Do yourself a favor and try to ignore the sign and get into the music. Close your eyes if you have to...

In celebration of our victory over ole simrell, tim and sam (of Sam and Levi, our old friends and gracious hosts) invented a very special libation...the Jack Dittle. What's a Jack Dittle, you ask? It's a shot of Jack Daniels sour mash whiskey marinated over a bed of obliterated skittles brand candy. If you're over 21, try it. If you're under 21, try replacing the JD with Mountain Dew.


Right before I snapped this picture, tim was sitting there in the floor filling his mouth with cheese puffs and jabbering away about god-knows-what. Bryant, being the refined gentleman that he is, got pretty fed up with tim yaking with his mouthful like he was. So, he jerked that bucket of cheese poofs out of tim's hands and started cramming them in his mouth going "doi doi doi, ibelieveibelieveibelieveibelieve in rude manners...". It was a pretty tense scene for a minute, but blood is thicker than water, so everything was cool by the time we went to bed.

November t00r!!

2010-11-12T17:24:00.000-08:00

hi November, we're husband&wife. Come over Saturday and we'll have a Sundae.

On tour again! Xrarecords.com for da dates. See you soon.

Day 14 : and in the end, the farts you make are equal to the food you ate

2010-10-30T09:33:00.000-07:00

Fort Wayne came calling for the end of this tour. It was a blast. Loads of friends and plenty of Halloween hijinx. I've got a cold/tb or something, and we're in the van headed home, so I'm gonna jump right into the photos.

Bryant felt right at home among the table cloths at the pint and slice. Let me tell you something...don't try to order a pint of pizza there. They get really upset and don't know what to do. #falseadvertising

The Dash-in was a small space for Milagres to set up all their gear. Here's a picture of Chris really fretting over it. It didn't matter though, they sounded good. Actually, I think that room has a way of making drums sound great, even though it seems like it wouldn't!

Milagres went as Bert, Ernie, Bert, Bert, and Ernie for Halloween.

Husband&wife went as three flashers and a gay cop.

One of the best surprises from the Fort Fun show was that Nate (mtvri's tech wizard) piped in Bro. Stephen live via satellite from Savannah, GA for a few songs. Welcome to the year 2000!

Castles held it down and represented Fort Wayne. They were great. Loud, aggressive, sloppy, funny. Good combos!

And so our story ends, for now, with our heroes, a little worse for the wear, climbing back aboard the Exo-1 and headed home to rest their weary heads knowing that, for the time being, the Midwest is a safer place. We'll see you in November...brace yourself for a lickin', Texas!

Day 13 : Oreo bubbies

2010-10-29T17:27:00.000-07:00

It's a little bit wierd to update the tour blog about a day mostly spent in Bloomington. For the most part we slept in again and went to work for a few hours before we hit the road for Cincinnati/Newport. We were hoping to leave early enough to make it to Shake It records before the show, but unfortunately time didn't allow. We got to the southgate house (which is an awesome spot, and birthplace of the inventor of the Thompson sub-machine gun) a little bit before the show, so we loaded in (which was a real feat) and drove to Skyline for some chilidogs. The show was fairly subdued and moved pretty quick, but we got to hang for a little bit with some old friends before we, once again, pushed it through the night to get back in time for work. We really need to start making money at this job...

Unlike most decent, normal, human beings, Zac and Tim REALLY love Skyline Chili. It's ok, I guess, but the best part about it to me is the passion that these two display while they're eating it. Unbridled passion.

This is Justin White (formerly of The Atriums). It was nice to see a few of the Atriums guys again and catch up a bit. Justin survived the technical difficulties to get through his set, and he had some great tunes. His demo is great too, look him up.

And while I don't have a photo, it was nice to see and play with Alone At 3am again. Solid band with some nice hooks. Check them out if you can.

Day 12 : this blogpost is brought to you by Jansport

2010-10-28T20:32:00.000-07:00

We got back home really late/early depending on which side of the day you're used to seeing. It was all ok though, because our show the next night was actually in Bloomington. We all slept late, Bryant had band practice all day with ATG and Substitute Teacher, and Zac and I went to work for a few hours. After that we reconvened at the Bishop with the Milagres, the Broderick, and the Calumet Reel dudes. It was the show of the century! Free show at the Bish, sponsored by Jansport (our favorite backpack company), with all these sweet bands...AND free pizza...couldn't go wrong. It was a great pick-me-up to play in Bloomington again and to be surrounded by 200+ of our closest friends. What a great night!

This picture of tim I got during the Milagres soundcheck was the only picture I snapped before my camera died that night. But, as you can see from the photo, this was just about to be the funnest night of our lives!

Oh! And one more thing...

The only way I was able to stay awake for (over half of) the drive home from Columbus was by chugging bottle after bottle of delicious, ice cold, old red cap #5 Blenheim Ginger ale. The immediate sweetness gave me the boost I needed, and the prolonged burn in my throat kept me from crashing too soon or falling asleep. Blenheim Ginger ale, the best thing to drink. Period.

Day 11 : crab rangoons in a burger king bathroom

2010-10-28T20:02:00.000-07:00

The house show in Marion was a really nice refresher, especially since we got to hang around the next day and see a few friends. We woke up a little late after all that partying with frank and luke (me with a slight fever) and headed for lunch at Penguin Point with Burke. After that we hung out at Ashley's new knitting/yarn shop for a few hours using the Internet and sitting real big on her leather couches. Ty actually showed up to hang for a little bit and played some new Metavari jams for us. After all that chinchillin' we hopped in the car and made our way to columboose.

I really wanted to go to Penguin Point (the people pleasing place) to get myself pleased by a Big Wally for lunch. But then I saw this sign and it threw a wrench into my plans. I hemmed and hawed for a few minutes before I decided to stick to my original plan, but believe me, it was not an easy choice to make. If you haven't had a breaded cheeseburger, you haven't lived. You also probably haven't gone to Warsaw high school.

Here we are hanging out at Gallerie. That's Ashley's great little knitting shop. It's in a gynecologist's office, so it's a little unusual for four rough-necks like us to be hanging around in there, but I don't think anyone felt threatened.

In Columbus, we played at Carabar, which is a great little place we'd been to before so we kind of knew what to expect. All that to say, we were excited about this show. This is Bicentennial Bear, who as it turns out, were friends of friends of ours. They were great, and super nice folks. We're definitely glad to know them now!

Another great thing about this show was that this is where we were meeting up with our old pals Milagres! It's been s few years since we'd seen these guys, and we were really looking forward to the reunion. As always, they sounded great and were fun to hang with. This was the first of three dates we're doing with these bros on this tour.

And last but not least were our hosts and old buddies the Kyle Sowashes. I couldn't tell you how many shows we've played with these guys, both in Columbus and Bloomington, and they're always a good time. We have a real soft spot for kyle's down to earth personality and approach to independent music making. He's a one-of-a-kind, and just a super nice dood. Same goes for all the fellas in this band, it's just that they aren't named Kyle Sowash.

After the show we immediately jumped in the Exo-1 and pointed her toward Bloomington...

Day 10 : party in the USA (the song by Miley Cyrus)

2010-10-26T18:04:00.001-07:00

After the Evansville show we were headed for Marion, so we decided to drive through the night and sleep in our own beds in Bloomington. We slept most of the day away at home before we met up again for the 2 hour trek. We were excited to reach Marion because we have so many friends there and this was going to be an intimate living room show situation, which was a fun change of pace.

Stephen's old house was just about the perfect spot for a show like this. It was roomy and comfortable. There were people in the living room for the show, people smoking on the porch, people sipping wine in the kitchen and everyone was just there to have a laid-back, good time. Couldn't have been better.

Now that Burke is no longer drumming for us he's been making a real push and trying to inch his way in as our keyboard player. Problem is, he pretty much only knows Chromeo songs, and that won't do.

This is Ellie, and she's probably just about the cutest little girl there ever was. Her dad is Bob Paul, a good old friend of ours. She kept trying to incite a "circle pit" during the show, but I'm afraid this just wasn't the venue for it. She and Bryant did have a nice dance together during the husband&wife set, though.

I don't think we've ever had a better friend or bigger supporter than Frank Schweikhardt. We had the rare treat of seeing him perform with Tim last night and it was great. His music is really unique and can get me to think about and feel things that no one else's can. It's also nice and encouraging to see frank doing something other than filling his car with farts once in a while.

Here is a rare husband&wife performance photo for the tour blog. Since Bryant didn't get to play this show, we put him on camera duty. He's got to earn his per diem somehow. Tim and I kissed right after this photo was taken.

There ain't no doubt, I love this land!

After the show we headed back to Burke and ashley's house to watch frank eat. It was totally gross.

Day 9 : yesterday (the song by the beatles)

2010-10-25T22:58:00.000-07:00

We didn't really have a place to stay after the Champaign show, so we decided to drive through the night to Evansville and crash at Tim's folks' place. Driving through the night can be a real bummer, but it's always nice to get there knowing you can just sleep all day in a comfortable place. And that's just what we did. We slept in til we felt right, then we got up and had some pancakes before we watched the Steelers game with Tim's dad. After that we took a drive down to the mighty Ohio river to skip stones and watch the sunset.

husband&wife endorses the following excellent American products: Blenheim Ginger Ale, Grippo's BBQ flavored potato chips, and Jansport backpacks. There's nothing better for what ailes you than a Jansport backpack stuffed full of Grippo's and a couple of ice cold Blenheims in the front pouch.

There's no better time for the Blenheim/Grippo's/Jansport hat trick than on a trip to the river. Unfortunately, as you can see by Bryno's dejected presence, he did not have any of the three on this trip...

Zac has never seen the ocean. So...we told him this was the ocean to keep his spirits up. He was shocked, and loved it. Please don't spoil the party.

In order to keep up the ruse we had to pretend to teach Zac to hunt for sand dollars. Obviously we didn't find any, but we just told him they were Snipes' favorite food and had probably all been eaten. he didn't ask any more questions.

Tim's folks prepared some dank vittles to nourish us before the show. It was all delicious and exactly what we needed. Bryant let out a huge burp in the middle of dinner and said "my compliments to the chef!" real loud, it was super embarassing, but we just changed the subject and started talking about home birth so no one noticed.

This is our best impression of the kids in the hall. That is, bryant, Zac and I. Tim's not in this picture, but he's got a fantastic cabbage head impersonation. You should really ask him to do it next time you see him.

This is L'Shem, and they were great. It was a real pleasure seeing them and playing this show with them. White Knight from owensboro also played, and they were great, too. Check out both those bands when you get a chance.

Day 8 : ...day ate!

2010-10-24T13:15:00.000-07:00

After our recoup in Peoria, and some delicious breakfast thanks to our hosts Kim and Jared, it was back to work on the streets and roads that God built. we headed for Champaign. The drive wasn't far, so we had a little time to relax and check out what Champaign had to offer. Two facts to note: yesterday was homecoming for the Illini, and they had just thouroughly defeated the IU Hoosiers (our Alma mater) at the big game before we arrived. No big deal though, because we were about to unleash a pandora's box of rock n roll energy on this place the likes of which they'd never seen, courtesy of Bloomington, Indiana. The only thing standing in our way was that I had loaned my guitar to one of the bands the night before, who had tuned the thing up half a step. When we launched into "They should give you medicine" at the start of the show you'd have thought the angry earth had just busted it's gut and a million angry demons were coming to drag our souls to hell...once we realized what was happening we put the brakes on and got our act together. All systems go after that, and it was a fine night. Oh! And one thing I forgot to mention ...the show was actually opened by a stand-up comic named Andrew. It was a nice change of pace.

Thank God for old friends, and new ones. We took our time waking up at Kim's house, listening to "life but no more" and the self-titled velvet underground record. Then we ate this homemade breakfast and watched movies until it was time to go. Thanks again to Kim and Jared, big time.

Chipotle and Qdoba killed La Bamba in Bloomington, so we always try to grab a burrito whenever we come to Champaign. Pretty much all we do on tour is drive, rock n roll, and eat.

...I guess that's not entirely true. We also have LOADS of fun! Here's Bryant and Zac chasing each other in circles next to the Exo-1. Tim is officiating.

New Ruins are a great band from Champaign on Parasol Records. We've had the pleasure of getting to know these guys over the last couple years and doing shows with them in Champaign and Bloomington. They're new stuff is great! Check them out when you get a chance.

Day 7 : traffic jam

2010-10-23T19:11:00.000-07:00

Well...we got caught in a major traffic jam on our way from Chicago to Peoria. We were about 2 hours late for load in, which ended up being no big deal, but is bad form regardless. It's also stressful to be that far behind schedule. Anyhow, we rolled up to the Peoria theater to find a few old friends there to meet us. It was a good looking scene, art house movie theater, and a few kids hanging around. Unfortunately though, the PA had blown and the show ended up being kind of a disaster for us. We had a hard time keeping our energy up with the lopsided room and the aweful sound, so we tried to rework the set, but it just wasn't working. We cut our losses and tried to make nice with the crowd by not belaboring the show. After that we went back home with our hosts and watched "That Thing You Do" til we fell asleep. Onward and upward...

We had a magical breakfast in the afternoon before we left Chicago. We probably shoulda just had a mcdouble on the way, though because that traffic jam was the pits. Live and learn...

We keep pressing on in spite of the countless bad omens we've recieved on this tour. This ulcer in the sky presented itself to us while we were at a gas station in Nowheresville, IL.

Jeff and Jared are both in bands we've played with in the past, and it was great to see them. Here's tim catching up with the both of then outside the theater.

The theater was definitely a cool spot for a show, it was just unfortunate to experience the equipment malfunction. I think another try there could be a little more fruitful for everyone in the future. Here's hoping!!

Day 6 : Milwaukee, I hardly know he

2010-10-22T18:13:00.000-07:00

Milwaukee...by some accounts a buster. Though we definitely met some nice folks. We had kind of a hard time booking Milwaukee (our first time there) and we don't really know anybody there yet, so we were shooting in the dark a little bit. Things got thrown together at the last minute, but sincere and huge thanks to Wendy and the folks at the Powerplant, 1956, and Kings Horses for hosting us and being kind to us on our first trip.

Bryant and I had to hit a bank and an AT&T store before we could get going for the day. Things were relaxed, so we did some window shopping along the way. Here's Bryant checking out some expensive artworks.

We also made a quick stop for some curry and crab Rangoon. We both agreed that these were probably the best rangoons we'd ever had. We also agreed that they made us long for some of that Rangoon pizza we had in Des Moines with Metavari.

A quick aside here...there's a chunk of our day missing because for whatver reason I didn't get any photos at Logan Hardware. Probably because we were caught up in the excitement of the place! What a fantastic little record/video/stereo/game/novelty shop! Our buddy Jim Zespy showed us around and we spent about an hour in there with him checking out his new arcade, buying records, and talking shop. Great dude, great shop. Check it out if you can. Logan Hardware on Fullerton.

One unexpected consequence of this fall tour is that I have really grown to HATE fake cobweb Halloween decorations. They look stupid and they stick to everything, especially my head. Here's Zac enjoying some, though.

Most of the money we got from the door tonight went to Bryant's Galaga addiction. If it's not that, it's Tim's horse race gambling, or Zac trying to get his Nerds fix. We really can't win for losing.

Bryant felt the colors of his beer at Honeypie needed to be documented. Good dinner! After this we got in the van and munched on a few handfuls of fish jerky. I'll try to have a picture of that tomorrow. It's just cat scraps.

Day 5 : drive drive drive and the princess bride

2010-10-21T17:32:00.000-07:00

There isn't too much to say about yesterday because we literally spent most of it in the car. We had to pull some tricky maneuvers in order to make the switch from Burke to Zac, and we also had to swing by the Strutt one more time because we forgot some important gear there two nights ago. In all, we spent about 7 hours of solid driving time in the van. Not fun.

Burke's drums, like Burke, are tight and cute. Zac's drums are HUGE. We're talking floor Tom in a kick drum bag huge. Tagging Zac in for Burke was a real brain buster. We pulled everything out of the van and into a parking lot in Ft Fun before Tim finally figured out a system that worked. Everything fits now, though, so we're on our way.

Van-cram detail.

One of the simple pleasures for me on the road is trying out food from all variety of interesting and unusual places. Here's a picture of Zac trying a veggie burger at the Muskie Tusk Diner in Chicago.

Thankfully, Corey made it to the show. Corey has been in a lot of the towns we've played in over the years and it's always a real nice time to see and hang out with him. He is presently in the midst of a sleep study which requires him to wear two spy cams at all times and watch 12 hours of movies in a row. It's a living...

Jen is another dear old friend and welcome presence on tour. She graciously offered us some comfortable space to lay our heads and a VCR to watch the Princess Bride with (my first time). That movie is good!

Day 4: hands are busy working overtime

2010-10-21T00:18:00.000-07:00

After our recharge in Kalamazoo we headed for Ypsilanti to meet up with some more dear old friends. Namely, Quillen and Joel from Lone Wolf and Cub and Julien from Javelins. As usual, we had a great time seeing them, telling jokes, eating food and listening to records.

The Crow's Nest is your best bet for unique delicious breakfast in Kzoo. We've sorta made a tradition of it.

We finally made it to Jackass 3D! It was pretty funny, but also a little depressing. Why go late? The movies are cheaper during the day.

The show in Ypsi was at this strange/great little puppet theater downtown full of old church pews. Backstage was also full of mysterious little living marionette creatures. We were threatened at first, but Bryant wasted no time befriending their leader and getting on his good side.

I had a knack for making these little creeps laugh, so I was dubbed hilarious human comedy ambassador to the puppets. Believe it or not, they were mostly into bathroom humor so my job was easy.

We played with the super nice and talented Ghost Lady. Check them out, especially if you're into Tammar, YLT, or Low.

The night of Burke's last stand also happened to be the night that Tim heard "Happiness is a warm gun" for the first time. I'm glad we all got to be a part of it.

Day 3: Johnson Blower Ball Hat

2010-10-19T19:01:00.000-07:00

Kalamazoo, Michigan is a great place for us. We've had the lucky fortune of making some lasting friendships there from a few different circles, so there is always a lot to talk about and plenty of catching up to do. Check out the Glowfriends if you get a chance.

Before we left Lansing, Burke wanted to stop and grab some nuts. What else is new?

We tried to see Jackass 3D, but they were charging too dang much, so instead we played some airhockey and chilled out on these couches watching movie trailers.

Bryant's favorite movie is Crossroads.

We found this crazy flier at the grocery store. It was made from several pieces of notebook paper painstakingly taped together and drawn in pencil, colored and otherwise. Someone was really trying to get rid of some stuff.

Detail of crazy flier

The Strutt is one of our favorite places to play on tour. The staff is great, the the venue and sound are great, and people like hanging out there. This go round we had a very comfortable green room/loft to relax in and they fed us some delicious pizza. You can't go wrong with pineapple on pizza.

Michele Browneye is absolutely one of our favorite things about Kalamazoo. She and Tina have played host to us on a few occasions now and we really look forward to seeing them and killing some time hanging and giggling in their living room. MB is a bigwig at WIDR.org and she's very enthusiastic and in love with her town and her radio station and art and music. One of a kind. She's also got a copy of 12 monkeys on VHS.

Bryno and Tina have a special circumstance.

Day 2: Bad Omens

2010-10-18T18:17:00.000-07:00

After catching some Zs at Burke's place we grabbed some coffee at Payne's and headed for Detroit by way of Lansing to rendesvous with our boy John. John runs Lower Peninsula Records and he's co-releasing the vinyl version of Proud Flesh with XRA.

Killing time in Lansing waiting for our apple cider to arrive. Burke is dancing.

John's studio, listening to the Proud Flesh reference laquer. This LP is going to sound great! (especially on the bottom)

Sunday nights on tour can be a hard row to hoe. This show was fun, but sparsely attended. Had a good looking floor, though.

Things took a turn for the worse after we got back to Lansing. After a brief altercation with an officer of the law our host was carted off to jail. A few hours in the clink, and a few hundred bucks later, we got our buddy back home and got life back to normal. Everything's cool now, but it was a strange couple of hours, for real! Did you know that when someone calls you from jail it costs you ten clams to answer it!?! Who's the real victim, can you answer that?

Day 1

2010-10-17T14:41:00.000-07:00

Our first ever Autumn tour has gotten off to an incredible start. The record release show in Bloomington was probably the most thrilling concert experience husband&wife has had. Even considering the bittersweet nature of the evening, what with Will leaving and all, the night was a gigantic celebration. Memory Map was on point as usual. Doug Burr was great, and Monahans made a great impression in their first Bloomington showing.

Last night was spent with our friends at the Village Green record shop in Muncie. Travis and Co. Really know how to bring the party, not to mention all the old time heroes and friends that were along for the ride. I'll shut up here and let you see for yourself...

Monahans. Easily one of my new favorite bands.

Doug Burr. Just right.

Laura K Balke. Dear old friend.

Living the dream.

Muncie, Indiana 2010 reminded me of 1998, only better.

Oh Hai!

2010-10-17T08:26:00.000-07:00

we're back. Regular updates to follow!

ketchup and rubber buns

2010-05-30T08:53:00.000-07:00

we've got a lot of catching up to do...

corey helms, a true friend

tim lowly ensemble

this was my first tamale. (i've had several since...)

here's what bryant looks like when he's trying out amps

saint tim chilling in the Daytrotter control room

mike is the daytrotter engineer. he knows what's up

will and mike in yellow shirts

too cool

RIP la bamba in bloomington....

mike and char czar

bryant and char czar

nick, samantha, and char czar

osteoferocious, Flannelgraph Records

there's even more coming soon, but my battery is dying!

Spirit in the Sky

2010-05-22T11:23:00.000-07:00

will and bryant ordering some beer at the Bell's brew pub. "Eccentric Cafe". we all agreed that the name was stupid. The food and beer, however, was very good.

this is michelle. a true friend.

will met the author of this poem outside The Strutt when he asked us to watch his bike. I didn't catch much of the conversation, but i'm pretty sure there was some LSD talk in there...

bryant and tina no. 1

bryant and tina no. 2. they have a special bond

live session at WIDR.org. should be available on monday

joe was the engineer at WIDR. super nice bro. you know how there're different colored yoshis? if tater martin is the red yoshi, joe is the brown yoshi.

we had some dank vittles at "the Crow's Nest". husband&wife officially endorses eating there whenever you're in Kalamazoo.

we got to spend a lot of time with quillen and julian and kevin (unfortunately, not pictured) who let us sleep on their couches, read their dirty magazines and comic books, listen to their records, and take "shou-shou's" (that's julian for "showers") in their bathroom. dear old friends.

I'm in a band with a bunch of children...

2010-05-21T17:31:00.000-07:00

Bryant Get's Punk'D (real time) from Bryant Fox on Vimeo.

Bryant gets Punk'D in the van (slow motion) from Bryant Fox on Vimeo.

Btw, ruled by brule!

2010-05-20T18:56:00.000-07:00

Day II

2010-05-20T14:19:00.000-07:00

I'm serious...Blenheim, if you read this, this is one of the few products that every member of this organization could get behind. Give us a call, let's talk endorsements!

This stuff is so good (and hard to come by in the Midwest) that we've even been known to travel into the bowels of a yuppie grocery store and pay too much for it just to get it across our lips. As evidenced here by this photograph.

Oh yeah, Tim also had two dinners last night. One was the 6" leavins of this meatball sub he found under the van seat. The other was a wierd bowl of General Tso's rib tip soup from this dank barbeque place we visited. Since that visit we've each been plagued by different digestion related ailments.

You can't teach a new blog old tricks...

2010-05-19T08:41:00.000-07:00

waiting outside the treehouse for the action to start. soon after this photo was taken we watched a few youtubes and played some hacky sack to get our heads right for the show. this rainy gloom does not bode well for michigan.

here's our gear waiting for us in front of andyman's new light sculpture. there are almost as many people in this picture as there were in the room while we were playing.

seth and tim on seth's new laminate flooring. so clean you can eat brownies off of it. (take it from bryant)