New Old Music!

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!!

Our Return to the Land of Milk and Honey

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

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

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!

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

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?