Me and Amy got a flat tire at the beach. Surfer mechanics are awesome.
Thanks guys.

It's rainy in Santa Cruz. Time to stay inside and play piano.

Bury my heart beneath a joshua tree.

We did drive across the whole country this week.

Sorry, I was a little drunk for that last post.

Arizona, you
Never cease to amaze!
The dust storm
Shaken and stirred with
Desert typhoon coats the van with red
Paste catastrophic. And yet
This desert home lets you past her
Brambles. Bless these folks. I wish I was sane enough to call this
Home.

West Texas. Grandpa is purported to have left his home here at 12, swept pool halls, joined the navy, the legend broad and dusty as his native landscape. Later in southern California we would love the way he would "warsh" and "reckon," and take us looking for Bighorn Sheep in the Mohave desert. I wish I'd known him a little better. Amen.

Christmas light show house, Fort Worth, TX

All your snow, New Yorkers, piled up around the air planes, fixed us in Fort Worth another night. Young nephew, they have a whole museum about raising beef!

We just passed a sign that said "Hope, 1 Mile." This is reassuring.
It's that time of day when, if you're driving due west, the sun is
pointed at you like a searchlight. The roadside shadows are deep, the
traffic is light, we are crossing what's left of Arkansas on our way
to starry Texas. I am sorry, you folks back home, about the blizzard
that will seal you inside this weekend. May you go west real soon.

We are in Nashville after our 12 hour Blue Mountain odyssey. Our show is back on tonight, so we're playing in a couple hours in a sweet living room.

Highlights: stopping at Hatch Show Prints, which is pretty much the greatest American graphic design pilgrimage. Eating the first barbecue of the trip. Also I got my first tattoo.

Tonight we'll get back in the van and head to Memphis to sleep. Missing everyone like the dickens.

We are 6.5 hours in to an 11.5 hour drive to Nashville. This is our van pet, you can't see but it has an enormous feathery tail glued on. Earlier today we drove through the blue ridge mountains. I don't know why I was so surprised that the rocks there are actually blue, but they are. Very beautiful. Our show in Nashville is cancelled, but we're going to go hang out there anyway. It sounds like a cool place.

Today Timmy and I hit the open road. So far we have seen 2 waffle houses, real nature with actual lakes, Dave, James, and Dave's beard. More soon. m

Joe made this great poster for our next show. I am interested to try out the new Knitting Factory, it looks real nice. In 10 days I'm going to drive the van across the country with Timmy, we'll play a show in Nashville and one in Phoenix and hopefully eat at Waffle House every day (I haven't asked him about that part yet.) Check our myspace page for updated tour stops all over the west coast and even the rest of the country too.

A nice man from Liverpool asked me to do an interview for the website alwaysthinkin.co.uk. I think he had pretty good questions, it was nice to be asked about art and the neighborhood and things people don't usually ask in interviews.

It's my birthday on Friday, and I think I'm also starting the recording of the vocals that day, at Headgear. I talked to a friend of mine who turned 30 a couple years ago, she said that she was by herself and looked at the clock and realized it was past midnight, and whoooosh! she felt an enormous weight lifted, and suddenly felt younger than she'd felt in a long time. Awesome. :) Looking forward to it.

Zebulon show Monday 28 Sep (today, but it's tomorrow where I am), with old Portland buddies THEMES, and also Wild Yaks. Free. Jacy and Kelsey of THEMES are getting married, and this is their Wedding Tour, which is so romantic it freaks me out. How do we all get in line for that?

Hello there,
we just returned from a week upstate at a heavenly studio called Clubhouse, where we recorded the instrumental parts of the new record. We're doing it in a sort of old-fashioned way, where we play it live, all in the room together, and record it to 2-inch tape. No metronomes, no nitpicking, just our band, playing the songs. Hoping every take for the "Nailed It" sign (above) from the control room - on the other side of the sign it says "Hosed It." No pressure.

We did get a few chances to run around with all the studio dogs and cook a great deal of pasta and chili and things. It has been a real whirlwind, getting it all in order, but now we have some very nice-sounding tracks, and start the singing phase in October. Hallelujah for the incredible Scott Norton, engineer and camp counselor on this record, and also for Timmy Mislock, the assistant to our recordings and our hearts. Visit our flickr page to see more pics of our week in recording paradise.


If waiting the five or so odd months that it's going to take for this album to come out is not meeting your need for instant gratification, hop on over to www.daytrotter.com to hear some live recordings we did in the spring at the Daytrotter studios in Rock Island, IL. Free download of four songs, and a lovely accompanying essay.

More soon, love,
mia and band

June means Brooklyn Tour

Thanks to Chris at MusicSnobbery.Com for the Joe's Pub show last weekend. We had a grand time, and Chris even baked us brownies to hold us over during our backstage wait.

This month, we have a residency at Pete's Candy Store every Monday night. 9:30pm, no cover, new songs. We also have two new "space capos" for our guitarists, which means less time spent tuning, more time playing songs. Five Mondays in June, six types of paninis (at Pete's).

We're also playing as part of the Northside Festival in Williamsburg. It's all day on June 13, and we play at Public Assembly, 5:30pm. Our sweet boys, Motel Motel, are playing before us.

Hope to see you!

Postcard from Texas #2 : Austin

Starring Chief, and featuring Heather's house, Barton Springs, and barbecue with Motel Motel.

Home stretch

We are about an hour away from Brooklyn. Our last show in Athens, OH
was high-energy and fun; we played with the amazing via audio, our
bros motel motel, and locals grade school. Casa cantina is a cool
co-op style mexi joint near the university. Standout of the night was
the sweet hippie-ish woman in the front row who never stopped dancing.
She was adorable and kept it up through the whole set. We ended
with 'I shall be released,' sung in chorus with the motel boys. This
came off better than expected, considering we learned it in the car on
the way to Athens. After the love-in ended, we headed to the hotel.
Today has been spent in the van. We have been passing the time with
arrested development episodes on laptop, making tour videos on imovie,
texting the motel crew to get traffic reports, and studying the good
old-fashioned paper atlas.
Although I am sad to see the tour end, two days of 10-hour drives can
really make a girl miss her own place. And the homecoming show at
Rockwood this Sunday will make us feel like the tour never stopped!
See you soon.

Cheers,
Amy

Wildflowers

Shrimp Cone

Two things we like in this band are words and facts. When we come
across good word combinations, like say, the "shrimp cone" for sale at
the funky food stand off south congress, we roll it around on the
tongue and toss it into conversational pauses until it loses all
meaning and becomes an artifact on its own. Band names are another
good word game; yesterday's was "hunkleberry funk," a side project
funk band. Auditions to be held soon. We also like facts. The iPhone comes out anytime a debate needs
resoluton or when we are approaching a new city and need some context.
Right now we are approaching Wichita, ks. We've already learned that
Wichita is the largest city in Kansas, and are considering a stop at
the native American history museum to beef up on our Midwest history.
Hopefully we will pick up some new facts about our great nation, and
some new great words to boot.
hasta,
amy

Postcard from Texas #1

friday's exploits

I'm a little too hungover to write in full sentences, so here's a list:

1) breakfast tacos at home
2) photo shoot with jezebel jen at home, mostly up a tree (that's not a
euphemism... yet)
3) motel motel acoustic at progress coffee (the drinking starts here)
4) sierra mist tent (free vodka)
5) artist lounge at the convention center (free beer)
6) the orchard happy hour (schmoozing, free beer, the ubiquitous skippy
mcfadden)
7) rendezvous with noodles senior, hank neuberger, for hella bbq--thanks
hank!!! (run into secret life of sofia, skippy again)
8) motel motel rocking at maggie mae's (drinking continues)
9) on to the rusty spur for alberta cross (pushy, trashy shot
girls--something to which we finally say no)
10) eastward to meet the botticellis at the art project (kegs)
11) then takka takka at the independent (yup, more beer)
12) finally tinted windows at pangaea (taylor hanson, bunny carlos and
james iha?? together at last??)
13) back home (bulleit nightcap, snoozes)

XXX
dan

sxsw continued...

before our show on wednesday, dave wyss was determined to earn himself some mardi gras beads from the top of maggie mae's:


we spent thursday roaming the hot, dusty streets and finding friends and music. our sweet little farmhouse is within walking distance of sixth street, so we crossed the congress bridge by foot. after a quick stop in the artists' lounge for a complimentary beer and a massage (ahh...vacation) we arrived at radio room, where our sisters-in-management, au revior simone, were about to take the stage. we cringed when we saw that the line stretched off the sidewalk and into the middle of the street, winding halfway down the block. luckily, dave was already inside and had told security that we were "load-out crew"; we walked right in the exit door. au revior was well-received and put on a great show.

we stayed in the radio room through two more shows (including the wrens) to see the avett brothers, who were fantastic. unfortunately, they played in an outdoor tent and the sound was terrible--the upright bass was causing massive feedback and the sound guy couldn't find the problem. we left halfway through to walk over to the daytrotter studio, and back to south congress for the night. jeff, however, "took the badge" both literally and figuratively (our fave new catchphrase for partying hard) and went back out another round of shows at night.

Noodles Weighs In

Hey kids

Noodles here.  A quick note from SXSW.  We played our showcase last night, and despite hectic conditions, I think it went pretty well.  Nice crowd, made up mostly of bro bands (Motel Motel, Miniature Tigers, The Botticellis...thanks dudes!) and also my aunt and uncle :-)  My dad was supposed to be there, but his flight was late and he walked in 10 minutes after our set ended :-(  He'll get to see us in Chicago next week though, so it's all good.  I'm excited to see Grizzly Bear and the Avett Bros, as well as my homies Akron/Family and Alberta Cross.  Ok, that's about it for now.

Hi Mom!

Toodles from Noodles

southern cookin'

it's day six, we've passed through 14 states so far and today we're deep in the heart of san marcos, texas. it's become clear that we'll be eating very differently on this tour than on our last one (which took us along the avocado- and orange-laden california coastline).

two days ago, we inhaled po' boys at Johnnys on Esplanade...


then on to beignets and coffee at du mond...


...and then a quick pre-drive snack of gator-on-a-stick:


I'm praying we don't get scurvy before we get back to NYC.

Postcard from New Orleans....

howdy....

Hello There,
we are going to try having a band blog, because it seems like we are accumulating stories faster than we can tell them. Right now we're in Beaumont, Texas, in a hotel room with what look like bloody fingerprints on the door frame. See? Stories for days. Talk to you soon.

love,
mia