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Tomorrow (FRIDAY APRIL 22) is the big day- our "Preludes" album release party!
We'll have the album for sale on CD and LP, admission is still dirt cheap if you buy your tickets online right now ($4 in advance vs $7 at the door!), and Prisms & Antibubbles will be starting the night off right @ 9:30! Please join us at Local 506 in Chapel Hill for this all ages happyfuntime!
We've been away for weeks and we're about to leave again, so we really want to see your lovely faces- let's do this!
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
IWTDI tour blog, Volume 9 (Day 20), 12 April
On the drive to Medford, we encountered our first snow. And hail. And more hail. And sub-freezing temperatures. We rocked a really fun set filled with songs we really needed to work on for the upcoming Vexations album as well as songs we want to bust out from Preludes, in front of maybe three people we didn’t know/were traveling with. Weeknight in a town where no one has heard of us or really goes out at night for that matter. We had a good time and a great opportunity to work on things. We spent the night in town and set our course for Portland Friday morning.
We tried hard to not have many days without shows. Booking is the least fun part of being in a band, and while our luck has been pretty good, we had a Friday with no show, and that’s always hard to swallow. We were lucky though that Greyday helped us out with a chance to play on the radio at KPSU, Portland State University’s radio station. We busted out a fun set of acoustic songs and had the evening free to pursue our respective fancies. We grabbed some incredible food at Slingshot, and then some of us went out partying and some of us stayed at the house to catch up on things or rest.
We were lucky enough to have a great place to stay the two nights we were in Portland. An old friend Christa had some room in her cute house in town, and she let us more or less have the run of it while she set about her task of righting wrongs and making the world a better place. We crashed out Friday night and got ready for a busy day Saturday.
Saturday afternoon, we did a set of five full rocking songs for an upcoming podcast . That took us a little longer than expected, so we ended up being a little late to our load in at Mississippi Studios. We pride ourselves on punctuality and professionalism, so we were eager to get there despite our outdated GPS trying to kill us. John’s GPS is better than mine. We should have brought his!
Mississippi Studios was a blast! It was our last night with The Trophy Fire, and our last night hanging with Todd from Greyday. We rocked an early show that had us getting out of there by 10, and then we partied down and annoyed those around us for a few hours before parting ways . The next day was another day off, so we slept in, hung out with Christa for a hot second, toured the Greyday offices, helped ourselves to a few free cd’s, drove to Voodoo Doughnuts (leaving due to the prohibitive line going partway around the building), and headed as far as we could towards Salt Lake City.
We tried hard to not have many days without shows. Booking is the least fun part of being in a band, and while our luck has been pretty good, we had a Friday with no show, and that’s always hard to swallow. We were lucky though that Greyday helped us out with a chance to play on the radio at KPSU, Portland State University’s radio station. We busted out a fun set of acoustic songs and had the evening free to pursue our respective fancies. We grabbed some incredible food at Slingshot, and then some of us went out partying and some of us stayed at the house to catch up on things or rest.
We were lucky enough to have a great place to stay the two nights we were in Portland. An old friend Christa had some room in her cute house in town, and she let us more or less have the run of it while she set about her task of righting wrongs and making the world a better place. We crashed out Friday night and got ready for a busy day Saturday.
Saturday afternoon, we did a set of five full rocking songs for an upcoming podcast . That took us a little longer than expected, so we ended up being a little late to our load in at Mississippi Studios. We pride ourselves on punctuality and professionalism, so we were eager to get there despite our outdated GPS trying to kill us. John’s GPS is better than mine. We should have brought his!
Mississippi Studios was a blast! It was our last night with The Trophy Fire, and our last night hanging with Todd from Greyday. We rocked an early show that had us getting out of there by 10, and then we partied down and annoyed those around us for a few hours before parting ways . The next day was another day off, so we slept in, hung out with Christa for a hot second, toured the Greyday offices, helped ourselves to a few free cd’s, drove to Voodoo Doughnuts (leaving due to the prohibitive line going partway around the building), and headed as far as we could towards Salt Lake City.
IWTDI tour blog, Volume 8 (Day 18), 10 April
We arrived at El Rio in San Francisco to see a building on fire a few blocks away. We took the chance to both relish the beauty of the conflagration and reflect on the obvious tragedy. We hope that no one was hurt, but at the risk of sounding insensitive, it was a fairly awesome sight. Fire crews were there from right when we arrived until right when we left. SFFD did a great job.
By the way, being in and around San Francisco inspired me to irritate the band with constant but varying renditions of the Monk theme song, one of many great Randy Newman jingles. I personally believe that to be annoyed is to feel very much alive, so I try to keep my bandmates as annoyed as possible as often as possible. Because as we all know, it’s a jungle out there…Disorder and confusion everywhere…
The show at El Rio was a lot of fun. We played with Shuteye Unison and Silian Rail, the latter of which features John’s old friend Eric Kuhn. El Rio is divided with a straight up bar on one side, a nice, open patio out back, and a stage in a separate room next door. It’s a really great setting for a show. We had played there the last time we came through, except on that occasion, a July 4th party/festival, we had set up facing the patio instead of the house of the club. It’s a fine place to play regardless of which way you face, and we finished the night ecstatic to have played in front of people again.
We spent our last night in California and headed out of town early enough in the morning to ship out a mail order (yep, even when we’re on the road you can buy our stuff!) and take Joe across the Golden Gate Bridge. Then we stopped at the Marin Headlands, and John showed us some of his old stomping grounds. Being a fan of both ruins/urban decay and old military installations, seeing some of these places was almost spiritual for me, just like the old ruins I saw at Point Lobos on the west side of town. We spent some time there and then head out of California. We had spent a week there, and while we enjoyed it tremendously, actually leaving the state felt like we were making real tour progress. At least for me, it felt like we had been stagnant for a while. Plus, I love Oregon. On to Medford. More soon!
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
STREAM THE NEW ALBUM!
The new album, Preludes, is out TODAY on CD, LP, and digital. Pick it up from your favorite record store or online retailer. Also, you can listen to the whole f-ing album for free here: http://www.undertheradarmag.com/media/premiere_preludes_album_stream
Enjoy! Much love from the road.
IWTDI tour blog, Volume 7 (Day 18), 10 April – NEW TRAILER AND BALANCE IN THE UNIVERSE
Man, it’s really hard to keep this blog up to date! We’re in the van driving from Portland to Boise, and as far as you know, we’re still in California! Oh well, better that we blog chronologically and just try to catch up. There hasn’t been a lot of time for photos or video compiling, but as we take them, we’ll try to post them! The one thing about this tour, even with several days without shows, we’re moving constantly. I think between John and myself, we’d kill for six hours with nowhere to go and nothing to do. That won’t happen anytime soon though, so we’ll just keep doing our best to keep you caught up.
We left the L.A. area to play one more show in San Francisco before finally heading out of California. We had seen a half dozen trailers and called two dozen trailer stores. We knew the exact trailer we wanted but the price was prohibitive. So we decided to head straight for the trailer dealership that had the 2600 dollar trailer, and over the course of the five hour trip, we researched and called every trailer and RV store along our route in Oregon where there’s no sales tax. We even tried to call Wells Cargo’s headquarters to see if they could tell us which dealerships had our trailer model in stock, but they close at 5 eastern and we never really got the hang of the time difference. So in the end we spent all day trying to locate a trailer that doesn’t exist outside of 101 Trailer Sales in Aromas, CA.
We got to our place and got the wheels rolling, so to speak. Our hitch was too low and our ball was too small (wah), but the wiring was righteous, and with a few small modifications we had ourselves a brand new trailer. Brad at 101 Trailer Sales was so nice that he actually arranged with a friend at U-Haul for us to leave our rental trailer at his place to be picked up sometime in the near future.
We want to thank several people for helping us through this ordeal. U-Haul was accommodating and let us hold the trailer for as long as we needed and leave it wherever we had to. Brad the trailer guy was super nice and helpful and never pushed us too hard to buy the trailer. The trailer itself is a hunk of magical awesomeness, each wheel with its own shocks, 15 inch tires, and a load capacity far greater than we will ever need. Most of all though, we have to thank Greyday Records and Todd Berry because HE BOUGHT THE TRAILER FOR US. We’re already way in the hole to Todd for everything he’s done for us, but he didn’t hesitate to get us on the road quickly, and even though we know he didn’t want to throw 2700 dollars (with tax and accessories) at a trailer for us, he did it, and it just goes to show you how great we have it right now. Todd’s the king of the world and we will remain in his debt forever!
So trailer woes solved, we rocked it to San Francisco and onward. And onward. And onward…
We left the L.A. area to play one more show in San Francisco before finally heading out of California. We had seen a half dozen trailers and called two dozen trailer stores. We knew the exact trailer we wanted but the price was prohibitive. So we decided to head straight for the trailer dealership that had the 2600 dollar trailer, and over the course of the five hour trip, we researched and called every trailer and RV store along our route in Oregon where there’s no sales tax. We even tried to call Wells Cargo’s headquarters to see if they could tell us which dealerships had our trailer model in stock, but they close at 5 eastern and we never really got the hang of the time difference. So in the end we spent all day trying to locate a trailer that doesn’t exist outside of 101 Trailer Sales in Aromas, CA.
We got to our place and got the wheels rolling, so to speak. Our hitch was too low and our ball was too small (wah), but the wiring was righteous, and with a few small modifications we had ourselves a brand new trailer. Brad at 101 Trailer Sales was so nice that he actually arranged with a friend at U-Haul for us to leave our rental trailer at his place to be picked up sometime in the near future.
We want to thank several people for helping us through this ordeal. U-Haul was accommodating and let us hold the trailer for as long as we needed and leave it wherever we had to. Brad the trailer guy was super nice and helpful and never pushed us too hard to buy the trailer. The trailer itself is a hunk of magical awesomeness, each wheel with its own shocks, 15 inch tires, and a load capacity far greater than we will ever need. Most of all though, we have to thank Greyday Records and Todd Berry because HE BOUGHT THE TRAILER FOR US. We’re already way in the hole to Todd for everything he’s done for us, but he didn’t hesitate to get us on the road quickly, and even though we know he didn’t want to throw 2700 dollars (with tax and accessories) at a trailer for us, he did it, and it just goes to show you how great we have it right now. Todd’s the king of the world and we will remain in his debt forever!
So trailer woes solved, we rocked it to San Francisco and onward. And onward. And onward…
IWTDI tour blog, Volume 6 (Day 18), 10 April
The Ventura show was pretty decent. We had a good time and played in front of some friends. Long Beach was the next day and it was fairly meh. We played with good bands, and we had a lot of fun, but the turnout was paltry and it was the first night of the whole tour that we didn’t get paid anything or sell any merch. At the time, it was a little frustrating, but looking back on it, for that to be the ONLY show of the tour so far that we didn’t recoup anything speaks well for the overall good fortune and supernatural booking abilities this band has! Silver linings are the bomb!
Between the Ventura show and the Long Beach shows, we managed to get ourselves into Los Angeles proper. We really wanted to show Joe the L.A. Guitar Center, we had a few hours to kill, and we needed to get the van’s oil changed and such. I waited near the van while we got the work done, and the rest of the band went over and tried to experience the vintage guitar room. Unfortunately the vintage guitar room was closed for some kind of film shoot (whaaaaaaaaaat? In Hollywooooooood?) and thus began poor Joey’s 24 hours of misery.
We met up with Todd Berry, owner of Greyday Records, in Ventura and Long Beach, and he joined us for part of our travels. He got his own hotel room in Camarillo, CA where we were staying and Joe opted to take the second bed. Little did he know, the bed had already been claimed by a very large family of bedbugs. But that’s his story to tell, and hopefully he will publish a blog post about it. Someday he will look back and laugh about the whole thing. For now, we can all revel in his personal tragedy!
On Wednesday, we hit the road for San Francisco again, and set about one more time to procure a trailer. Stay tuned!
Between the Ventura show and the Long Beach shows, we managed to get ourselves into Los Angeles proper. We really wanted to show Joe the L.A. Guitar Center, we had a few hours to kill, and we needed to get the van’s oil changed and such. I waited near the van while we got the work done, and the rest of the band went over and tried to experience the vintage guitar room. Unfortunately the vintage guitar room was closed for some kind of film shoot (whaaaaaaaaaat? In Hollywooooooood?) and thus began poor Joey’s 24 hours of misery.
We met up with Todd Berry, owner of Greyday Records, in Ventura and Long Beach, and he joined us for part of our travels. He got his own hotel room in Camarillo, CA where we were staying and Joe opted to take the second bed. Little did he know, the bed had already been claimed by a very large family of bedbugs. But that’s his story to tell, and hopefully he will publish a blog post about it. Someday he will look back and laugh about the whole thing. For now, we can all revel in his personal tragedy!
On Wednesday, we hit the road for San Francisco again, and set about one more time to procure a trailer. Stay tuned!
Sunday, April 10, 2011
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