SoundRabbit

I’m not going to be able to do this justice, I can tell you that right now. But I was about to sign off and fold up my laptop, and figured I should cap off the Road Journal with a little description of where we are at the moment, because it’s quite incredible. There are three floors in this tall, narrow cabin, all approximately the same size, all one room, the lowest floor with a fireplace, and a narrow, windy wooden staircase that connects the three. I’m sleeping on the very top floor, with windows open at both ends of the room and a high triangle peaked ceiling that runs down to the floor (no walls). The other guys are sleeping on the floors below. We’re surrounded by woods, and so the only noise I can hear – and it’s loud at times – is the wind whipping down the mountains and pushing the treetops around outside the windows. This cabin was built in 1750 – twenty six years before the Declaration of Independence was signed. The front door has the original hammered-iron hardware, with a skeleton key and hinges that bear the mark of the hammer that formed them. I’m laying here with no light other than the glow of my laptop, and no sound other than the wind through the trees and crickets that are audible when the wind occasionally dies down. Looking out the window, it’s as absolutely pitch black as it gets – no light pollution at all. Two or three times in the last hour, I’ve heard loud ‘cracks’ of branches in the woods, likely deer or other sizable animals making their way up and down the wooded hillsides. The wind is gusting as I type this sentence… and now it is quiet again as I finish it. The history of this cabin, the site, and the unspoiled surroundings are pretty compelling. I can imagine 200+ years of people sleeping in this exact room, hearing this exact combination of silence, wind, and crickets. Really, really cool. And with that, I’m going to turn off the computer and enjoy the breeze moving through the room and the sounds outside. Hasta for now…

Hello from Woodstock, Virginia. Russ here. We’re on I-81 headed southbound to Charlottesville for the night. We finally heard from the promoter in D.C., and she wasn’t able to get their sound guy to work the show tonight (they have one sound engineer, and he’s booked at a show elsewhere in the city tonight). Bummer. Sucks to lose a Saturday night on tour across the country, but we’ll enjoy relaxing at the farm in Charlottesville and having the full day tomorrow to relax and play some music before heading to Richmond for our 6:30pm flight to Denver. I’m going on about 3.5 hours of sleep from last night anyway, so I’m not sure my pipes would have carried too well had we played. This was a short little whirlwind mini-tour for sure, but I’m glad that we were able to pull it together before the winter sets in. We’ll fill y’all in on our plans for the winter soon… we’ve got some good stuff in the works. I can’t wait to get back to Colorado tomorrow and finish up my home studio. Drywall guys got about 2/3 done before I left for this trip, so they’ll finish up this coming week, I’ll get the carpeting in, and then I can set up the recording gear again to get back to work. I’ve got the place wired for surround sound specifically for recording and mixing… should be a fun place to work and get you guys some new sounds to enjoy in 2010.

Hasta for now, we’re about 2 hours from C’ville… catch you back on our blogs and we’ll return to the Road Journal in February for the NACA Conference in Boston.

Greetings from Massachusetts. We just wrapped up our show at Boston College, which was quite fun and relaxing, given that we’ve played here before – we know what to expect for load-in, we know what the room looks and sounds like, we know how to get there in a straight shot, and we know that they have a wide array of chocolate items to consume pre-, during, and post-show. Here’s how the setlist panned out:

SET I
IIOKYN
Story Of… *
Emil
From The World I Have Known
Marula Binge
View From Way Up Here **
Hazel
List ^
Don
Nightlite
Flume %
Park

SET II
Obey # >
Life During Wartime @
Diminished Returns
Years Ago
Lift
ZED $
Heat
Eoghan, Late Saturday
I’ll Race Ya
Turn My Egg !

* “Diamonds On The Soles Of Her Shoes” (Paul Simon) Vocal Outro
** “Star Wars Main Theme” (John Williams) Teases
^ “Englishman In New York” (Sting) Vocal Outro
% Bon Iver Cover
# “Dear Prudence” (Beatles) Teases
@ Talking Heads Cover, Beethoven’s “Fur Elise” Teases
$ “Easy” (Commodores) Vocal Outro
! “Jessica” (Alman Brothers) Teases

Fred took down the setlist, thus all the nice notations above (thanks, Fred!). We’re losing Fred tonight, as he lives in Boston and will stay here as we make our way back down the coast to Washington, D.C. tomorrow. It’s always great having him with us, as company and as a huge help running sound, lights, merch, etc.

Tomorrow’s gig in D.C. is up in the air at the moment, as we’ve been trying to reach and confirm with the promoter. I’ll be calling her in an hour after we’re done loading out, and I’ll try her again in the morning. This is after emailing all week with no reply… and thus is the game of booking. Fun it is not, but necessary it is. Can’t wait to have a booking agent someday…

So we either play in D.C. tomorrow night, or we just head to Charlottesville to the place we’re staying for the night. Either way, we have to head south – so we’re going to skip I-95 this time and head slightly further to the west. It adds about 60 miles to our trip, but believe it or not, it’s still worth it (read my previous post below).

Going to sign off for now and head to the farm for the night. More later… here are some photos from the trip today (NJ to MA):

shooting some hoop in NJ before the drive

jay, anton, the rig, and some damn nice trees

foliage

uhaul + foliage = fall tour in new england

old church in NJ

crossing the hudson river (can’t see it in the photo, but we could see NYC skyscrapers on the horizon)

diner on the connecticut line

classic diner

diner windows

diner menu (these photos are by fred, who loves diners and would marry one if legal.)

diner menu 2

diner menu 3

russ’ vice: hot chocolate

fred’s vice: monte cristo sandwich

massachusetts turnpike foliage

new england home and foliage

This will be a short note, as we’re about to it the rack here in New Jersey. Had a fun show in Philly at the Raven Lounge, much thanks to some dedicated folks who drove all the way from New York City and the other side of Philly, and a fine gentleman named “Junior” who helped us get the funky sound system working at the club, and then proceeded to help us load out our gear at the end of the night. Mind you, we don’t know Junior. And mind you, he doesn’t work at the club. He’s a musician and audio engineer who just happened to be enjoying a beer at the club and saw that we could use some help. Gotta love meeting people like that.

The show was tricky, because the venue didn’t allow our usual “full band with drums” setup. Beers ended up playing a snare, one cymbal, and a bunch of percussion items. No kick drum, which is the ‘heartbeat’ of most of the tunes. He made do, and we basically played it as an “acoustic” set. The feedback from the audience was positive, and the venue owner asked us to come back to play “any time we’re in the city.” Nice to hear, given our uncertainty with the arrangements.

And so now we’re staying in New Jersey for the night with Beers’ sister-in-law, who has put us up in a beautiful house about 2 hours from Philly, and conveniently on our way to Boston. She made scones and brownies, and put out bagels, coffee, etc. for the morning for us. Kind and generous people are everywhere, from Junior to Kelly and her family. Thanks, Kelly!

In the morning we’ll drive up to Massachusetts, where we’ll stop at the farm first to unload our gear and relax for an hour or so before heading to Boston College.

Hasta for now, nice to have you along with us for the ride…

Hello from the road. We’re plodding our way through I-95 traffic, northbound going through D.C. en route to Philly. This is by far the worst freeway in the country to travel on tour, from our experience. Maybe the roads around L.A. would give it a run for its money, but of the places we tour regularly (Colorado, the Southwest, and eastward)… this is the worst. Anyway… time to ignore the East Coast city hassles and focus on the tour…

Anton, Beers, and I (Russ) flew in from Denver to Richmond, Virginia, to meet Jason and Fred who were waiting for us at the airport. Fred flew in from Boston earlier in the afternoon. Anton and Beers and I nearly missed our connecting flight in Chicago when the flight attendant told us that our connecting flight was in the “C” concourse, about a 1/4 mile away from where our first leg came in. We had a 20 minute layover (due to our Denver flight being late with snow), so we ran our asses off, carrying gear and guitars and bags, to the “C” concourse only to find out that the connecting flight was actually leaving from B18, the gate next to the gate we arrived at. Woo-hoo. We ran all the way back to the B concourse and were the last people to board the airplane for Richmond. Aside from that little hiccup, the trip was great. We always have funny conversations with the TSA security people at the airports, as they “oooh” and “awww” at our “rock band” lifestyle. Given how much gear we have that they need to check (imagine going through airport security with bags of wires, metal boxes with buttons and switches, etc.)… they’re generally really nice to us. They asked where we were playing this week, what we “do after shows,” what it’s like playing for people in different cities, etc. They even asked if we’d take our guitars out and play them something, but we didn’t have time. There’s a new gig idea – booking airport security lines. Captive [shoeless] audiences.

plane

that’s not nice, chris beers.

flying over virginia

anton and fred at richmond

jay is thrilled to see us. beers is sleepy.

our gear made it!

Last night in Charlottesville was great. Full room, really cool people, club owner telling us that if we’re ever back in town (which we will be), to call him because he’ll have us any time we want to play. We played an hour long set, and we provided our P.A. for the other bands to use, so we ended up hanging out until 2:30am downtown. We had some lobster bisque at Miller’s, the bar that Dave Matthews once bartended at, and where he met his future bandmates… damn good lobster bisque. We walked the downtown mall, visited the Twisted Branch Tea Bazaar [the first place we played last year in C’ville] for some dessert and hookah, and stopped back in at The Box to listen to the other bands using our P.A. There was a honky tonk band from Vermont that was damn good (and honky), a female singer songwriter, and a punk band at the end. All nice folks and good shows.

Here’s our set panned out:

Emil
Diminished Returns
View From way Up Here
From The World I Have Known
Flume*
Story Of…
Obey –>
Life During Wartime**

* Bon Iver cover
** Talking Heads cover

walking the mall, downtown charlottesville, va

packing the trailer

honky tonk from vermont

wall.

beers at tea bazaar

hookah at tea bazaar

hookah at tea bazaar

anton at tea bazaar

We spent the night listening to crickets in the woods surrounding the farmhouse that we stayed at, which made for a really good night’s sleep. The weather has been gorgeous, so we had the windows open with a nice cool (slightly humid) 50’s temperature breeze. This morning we woke up and walked outside to enjoy the fresh country air and woods. Anton practiced his electric guitar (unplugged) outside, we packed up the trailer, and hit the road.

i found anton outside practicing this morning

he saw my camera. poser.

beers sees my camera. poser.

And now here we are on I-95 heading to our show at the Raven Lounge in Philly. We just crossed the Potomac River, where we could see the D.C. National Monument and downtown off to our left. We’re heading through Baltimore here shortly, and then it’s on to the Philly metro area. We’re still working on confirming Saturday night’s show in D.C. Classic case of impossible promoters to reach… but hopefully it comes through. It would be cool to play D.C. for the first time.

Hasta for now, more later from Philly (or from the house in New Jersey where we’re staying tonight).

Howdy from the middle of NH. I spent the morning in Portland, Maine and then stopped in Newburyport, Massachusetts on the way south to the farm. Got to relax at the beach for a bit, watching some great surf pound the sand. Not a bad way to spend a Tuesday.

I’m meeting up with the guys at the farm and we’re headed north to Burlington, Vermont. It’s about a 4 hour drive, stopping just short of the Canadian border. Burlington is supposed to be nearly identical to Boulder in ‘feel’ and layout (the same architect designed the downtown pedestrian malls in both cities). The weather’s a bit funky today, so hopefully we’ll make good time. We’re all psyched to play Nectar’s tonight, as it’s one of the more well-known rooms in the Northeast, and we’re going to try their gravy fries, which are proported to be the tastiest in the US of A. Full review on that later…

Greetings again from I-70. We’re calling this interstate our “long driveway” to our homes… we’ve been on it since Ohio, and we’ll be on it until we exit for our neighborhoods at home in Colorado. We’re about 4.5 hours from home as I write this… and about 50 miles from Prairie Dog Town!  (see 2008 Road Journal for reference)

We had a fun show last night at the Canoe Club, with a nice attentive room for most of the show, and plenty of copies of the album distributed. Good dinner, too. We love the gigs where dinner is included on top of our compensation (and not taken out of it).

All in the all the tour was really good for us – great camaraderie for the band, more hours logged playing live and tightening our sets, lots of exposure to new ears, great networking and friendship with Keller Williams and crew, and a chance to see a good chunk of the country. We’re looking at a Pacific Northwest tour for August, a West Coast tour (San Diego and north) in September, and a return to the East Coast in October, along with shows in Colorado in between. We’ll rekindle the Road Journal for those… in the meantime, check back over the next week or so as we retroactively add the rest of our photos into the posts below.

Anton leaves for Ireland tomorrow (back to back trips!), so I’ll be working on Backstage content for much of this week, and starting vocal recordings for the new album we’re planning to release this summer.

Thanks for traveling with us!

Greetings from I-70. We’re en route from Ohio to Lake Latawana, Missouri. The weather is actually quite nice right now, blue skies with some clouds and sun, and dry roads. Woo hoo. We woke up at 8am on the nose this morning and we were pulling out of town by 8:30am, so we’re making good time to hopefully be able to relax a little bit before the show tonight.

It’s incredible how many windfarm machinery delivery trucks we’ve seen on the interstates on this trip – giant trucks moving giant pieces of machinery (usually blades from the wind turbines). We drove through a huge wind farm up near the Canadian border in Vermont, probably 100 turbines covering 300-400 acres of farmland. Just drove past three more trucks with blades as I was writing this sentence. Pretty neat. Hopefully the technological challenges of transporting the energy from the windmills will be figured out in this decade.

We just read the “Best of Boulder” list of winners from the Boulder Weekly magazine online, and the winner is an acapella group called “Face.” It was nice to see a talented group win it… the guys can definitely sing (and beat box). The down side is that they do 100% cover songs… so we’re back to the same issue again – making a successful career doing original music is damn tough. Form a cover band or play other people’s music from a laptop and you’ll fill venues. At one of the clubs we played this week, I was talking to the owner and he was saying that they’ve been forced to do live music only 3 days a week due to lack of people wanting to see live music, and that two of the nights are cover bands, and the other is a DJ (playing top 40 stuff)… and that he hates it. “It’s all the same shite,” he said. Amen, brother.

We’re cruising towards Indianapolis… just coming into the East side of the city. I’ll post another update later… hope you’re all enjoying your Saturday.

Hello from Ohio. The guys are all asleep and I’m about to hit the rack myself, just thought I should get an update up here on the Road Journal before the day is done. We’re staying in the little cottage that the owners of Peach’s venue provide to touring artists. We stayed here last fall when playing Peach’s, and this has to be one of our favorite stops on tours. The venue has incredible sound, an incredible sound guy (Tom), and some of the nicest staff in the world. Everyone is so accommodating and grooving during the sets, etc… and then to cap it off with a stay here in the little house is awesome.

We had a good drive from Virginia to Yellow Springs, decent weather the entire way until the last 30-40 minutes. We hit a thunderstorm “soaker” that dumped several inches of rain on I-70, leaving us struggling to see the hood of the van while driving well under the speed limit. Not ideal travel conditions, and evidently we’re in for more of the same on the way to the last show of the tour in Kansas. We’ve lucked out with weather the entire trip, so I guess we can’t be greedy. We’ve got a long drive in the morning (9.5 hours), so hopefully the storms don’t slow us down too much. We’re hoping to get to Lake Lotawana by 6pm or so for our 9pm show.

We played a killer version of Wartime tonight, a bit more up tempo than usual, but it really grooved. The bartender at the venue told us that “Diggin’ in the Dirt” is one of her favorite songs and that we ‘nailed it.’ So I guess that’s good… and we put our Sharpies to use, with people asking us to sign CD’s at our set break. we all felt good about tonight, and we’re looking forward to playing one more show and then sleeping in our own beds at the end of the weekend.

I didn’t get the photos from Anton’s camera yet (sorry!), but I’ll post them in the “charlottesville” post below as soon as I have them.

Dave Chapelle didn’t show up at the show tonight, if you were wondering.

Hasta for now, time to get some sleep… we’re up and out of here at 9am.

We’re making our way West… we’ve “turned the corner,” as the saying goes…

Cruising through Appalachia right now, with beautiful views of the Blue Ridge Mountains off to our left. We spent the night relaxing on the farm outside of Charlottesville last night, after having spent the day walking around Charlottesville, seeing the sights. What a gorgeous town. We walked the University of Virginia campus, which is where our esteemed bass player went to college, so he was able to give us a great tour. We saw Edgar Allen Poe’s dorm room (which they have set up with 1800’s style furniture as he would have had it), the “Rotunda” designed by Thomas Jefferson, the serpentine brick walls designed by Jefferson (brick walls that are only one brick thick, but curved to stay upright and strong), the pavilion gardens designed by Jefferson, the music hall, the big lawn behind the rotunda, and “the corner,” which is the “college-y” neighborhood next to the campus. We ate some delicious bagel sandwiches at Bodo’s, and then cruised down to downtown Charlottesville to check out some local venues. We saw Rapture, the former Gravity Lounge, the big Charlottesville Pavilion outdoor venue, and Miller’s, the tiny jazz bar that Dave Matthews worked and played at when DMB was first forming. DMB’s manager, Coran Capshaw, is featured on the cover of the local newspaper with the title “Coran Capshaw is #1.” Evidently this week’s edition of the paper profiles the top ‘power brokers’ in Charlottesville’s entertainment industry, and Coran tops the list. He owns half the commercial real estate in town, books virtually all of the live shows in town via his “Starr Hill Presents” promotion company, and he owns MusicToday.com, which powers online merch sales and distribution for the biggest names in music (Coldplay, DMB, Metallica, U2, and on and on). Ya, I’d say he’s doing alright for himself.

And so now we leave all of that behind us as we ride up and down the mountain passes of Appalachia. We’re going ‘up’ right now, with some semi trucks around us, but in general the interstate is pretty wide open, which is nice. We had seen on the weather channel that the forecast was looking rough for our drive… severe storms, t-storms, tornadoes, and the like… but so far it’s just been drizzling on us.

Man, the view off to the left right now is incredible – a huge valley full of trees and the occasional open green pasture, with the 4,000 foot mountain peaks on the horizon, with some misty fog from the rain sitting down in the valleys. Looks like a postcard.

Tonight we play in Yellow Springs, Ohio… about 6 hours from where we are now. This is our second time playing there, so we know what to expect, which is nice. The last time we played there, Dave Chapelle came in and danced for a few songs. The owners of the club are fantastic, and they own a little house that they give to touring artists for the night. We’ll be staying there for the night before driving on to Kansas City tomorrow.

I’ll post Charlottesville and UVA photos from Anton’s camera later today (he’s driving right now, but he’ll get me the pics when we change up drivers).

Hasta for now…