Posts tagged with "tour"

I’m playing some shows in LA this week; if you’re around come by and say hay! (more…)

I was not a very good blogger this tour. Oh well. Next tour! Gotta say though:

• Lots of pictures over at the flickr; I’ll post some more once I’m home (later tonight).
• Non-stop flights are now a must
• I do have a long recap and a long list of people to thank in the works.. but for now: it was crazy, and everyone who helped is fucking golden

Big things in Bloomington this year, and some more touring is for sure in the cards as well. 2007 is well past half over, gotta make the Indian Summer and all the rest count.

Also, RAD SUMMER (it’s not a threat, it’s a promise!) is going to transform from a tour into a bunch of other awesome things, keep those eyes peeled..

To the start of tour, that is. I spent all of the past two days clearing up my driver’s license so I can rent a vehicle out here in LA to drive up to Seattle, and finally got that done just in time to catch my flight. Got the car, drove it to the place I’m staying at, and promptly got towed the next morning for blocking someone’s driveway. I really don’t think I was blocking it but here’s what the windshield looked like when we I got it back from the impound lot:

Asshole Fuck! Assh ole fuck?

Nothing much is there right now save some tenative tour dates and a bunch of random wacky backgrounds (reload the page a couple times and see for yourself!).. but as it says, me and CV will be hawking remixes on there, and it’s gonna be the spot for updates from the road while we’re on tour.

A flufftronix.com redesign is in the works and nearing completion, too. Just gotta figure out why the damn thing is crashing Firefox now..

7/21 - LA (Sports Arena)
7/27 - Berkeley (Greek Theater)
7/29 - Seattle (Wamu Center)
7/31 - Denver (Red Rocks)
8/3 - Chicago (Lollapalooza)
8/5 - Toronto (Arrow Hall)
8/7 - Montreal (Bell Centre)
8/9 - NYC (Keyspan Park)

The Blow - Parentheses From their new album that’s out in October, Paper Television. The last couple releases from The Blow have been straddling between glitchy indietronica and rap; this time the rap influences in the production seem a lot more pronounced. I really like it, I hope it brings them good things.

Kavinsky - Testarossa Autodrive This was all over the net awhile back, and I went to look for it and it took way too long to find it so here it is again. Project background: circa 1986, dude’s speeding about the French countryside in his sweet sports car, crashes and dies, and returns as a zombie to sequence his tale of woe and caution for rememberance on the dance floor. Shit’s. So. Hot.

Dites Donc! - I’m on the Pill My dear friends from Milwaukee (though they’re spreadin out right now to St. Louis and parts unknown) who do a fun rap throwback kinda thing. They have to be seen.. lotsa sweet dance routines. We’re gonna tour Europe together in the Spring.

Woah. I just found this pretty awesome project, based out of Rock Island, IL (”The name of the city is not ironic,” they say) called Daytrotter. Touring musicians come in and record music, they put it on their website for free. And they have an illustrator who draws pictures of the musicians, just for the site. They have reviews and interviews and such on the site too, but really the awesomest part is this music recording bit.

I went for a Jason Forrest set, I stayed for an Impossible Shapes one. Sweet.

It’s been fun. Some twenty or shows completed, two or three to go before the long drive back to Bloomington and I resume frantic work on the half-dozen projects which need to get finished some time before Summer.

At first I was feeling kind of let down about playing a lot of smaller shows. On one hand, it’s really my first time doing a serious tour in this part of the country and I don’t really have too much music people can get into beforehand. And I’m still learning what makes people dance (I have a much better idea now, and am really really looking forward to writing new stuff once I get back home). On the other hand this whole booking, promotion, and show-picking mess is a huge game of chess, and I’m really in the beginning stages of that, too. It’s been a wonderful learning experience.

I’m starting to feel like that one guy on Transformers who hangs out with all the robots. He’s got this mechanical suit he runs around in, fighting evil alongside the Transformers, sometimes repairing them also maybe? But without his suit he’s just a dude, all the Transformers are what they are, or the other thing they are, I guess. Which is like me, with my laptop: I’m barely a musician without it. I need to work on that.
And hey, it’s May 1st! I should be doing something festive, something exciting. Today is a good day. It’s good to think about all these wacky adventures I’ve been going on, which off the cuff seem somewhat apolitical to me, and remembering why I’m doing them and how they really do tie into my grand schemes empowerment, dismantling oppressive institutions, and nurturing more sustainable and inclusive communities. Lots of people I feel privileged to consider myself a contemporary of (and feel guilty for always comparing myself to), I don’t think they have that drive. It keeps me in check and in focus. And once I’m more confident in my music, I know I’ll be more able to talk about my ideas and expose people to all this wonderful stuff that keeps me feeling vibrant, feeling alive.

I’ve meant to do this much sooner, but of course with things having been so busy, it’s been tough to find a moment to write. I’m sitting in the back of our van, careening down I-94, returning from Minneapolis, our furthest point West on tour.

I played at a thirty lane bowling alley last night, which was pretty fun. The middle four lanes were closed downm and had a stage in the middle of them. This allowed for both satisfying my constant desire to walk onto bowling lanes, and for a really bizarre and unusual show setup. I mean, it was me playing music in the middle of a bowling alley with bowling flanking me on both sides! Crazy.

Milwaukee was really fun; it’s been the only show so far with only dancy bands. Opening the evening, Daniel slinked up to the stage underneath both his cape and the entire audience in two lines, with their hands held up across from each other. Allison and Lindsey of Dites Donc did a sweet sweet set involving 1983 prom dresses, and Show Me the Pink played I think my favorite set from the five shows we played together.

There was definitely a little start of tour hump we just got over recently. A lot of the shows so far haven’t really had a ton of people at them, or have had many slightly interested people (like at Slutfest and at Memory Lanes, the bowling alley). But I’m thinking that’s all right, because some of my favorite places to play are coming up and Daniel and I are totally ready for them.

I’m pretty bummed that we’ve split ways with Show Me the Pink. Their performances are always so much fun and inspired and the little hanging out we got to do was always totally rad.

And the best story from tour so far, I totally wasn’t there for: while I, Daniel, Nickey, and Jess were driving to Minneapolis, Show Me the Pink were headed there as well in their van and had to stop for a tire change. Some guy had a tire shop in his backyard SMTP randomly came across, and were waiting for him to show up forever, and during that time Emmy wandered off and found some horses in a fenced in area on dude’s land. She tried to get a horse to come over for some petting, and after a little while one finally did. Emmy pet that horse, and it was liking it, and felt like she and the horse were having some sort of interspecies transcendental experience. Upon leaving to find somewhere to wash the horse dirt off her hands, she noticed the horse, which she’d assumed was a lady horse, had a total horse boner!

Daniel and I have been getting along really well, and since it’s just the two of us on tour, we’ve been able to bring a bunch of people to and fro and it’s been really great to have new people riding with us every once in awhile. From this point, we’re headed East for the next little bit, until we get to Providence and start headed South and then back again. I’m a little nervous about finances, but still considerably hella psyched about tour.

Oh oh, and here’s a sweet video of Daniel shooting a boba ball into Jes’s mouth:

Yaay, I finished designing tour posters today. I shall print them tomorrow, and mail them out on Saturday. Yay for doin’ stuff!