...

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2010 coming up soon. wasn't "2010" the sequel to "2001" (speaking of films here)? Kubrick wasn't involved in the sequel. I heard it wasn't too great, but I always had a soft spot in my heart for Roy Scheider. How could it get any better than 2001 though? for the love of zoroaster, why don't people make sequels to terrible movies so that they can avoid the inevitable lame-ass sequel syndrome?

Anyhow, if next year is the sequel to 2001, let me recall what I was doing in 2001? Oh yeah. I was starting my old band Sound Team, living in Portland Oregon, recording on the 4track and scraping by. Didn't see the sun for about 5 months.
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A film crew followed me around for a few months and asked me about being on a major label and starting over as an independent artist. The film is called "Echotone." It's a play off the word "Ecotone," which Wikipedia describes as:

"from a combination of eco(logy) plus -tone, from the Greek tonos or tension – in other words, a place where ecologies are in tension."

The film deals with Austin's transitional phase right now (from mid-size to super-ultra city of the future) and the effect it's having on musicians.

The First Echotone Teaser Trailer 1280x720 HD from echotonefilm on Vimeo.

neon wake show / world cafe

Here are a few photos of our video set, the same one we just performed on tour. Taken by Trey Baker at the Animal Trustees Benefit, at the old Ms Bea's.




Full set here. I will soon post the entire neon wake video.

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check us out on World Cafe on NPR, or listen to hear it on air.

november 23rd

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My small world has been a bombardment of late. Everything came down at once. A beautiful thing... maybe. In the course of three weeks, I toured the east coast, composed and performed a live film score, flew back up to Philly with the band for the end-of-the-year Weathervane bash at Johnny Brenda's, then created the TV organ installation at Baby Blue. Also played host for E.A.S.T. studio tour. Oh yeah, did I mention I ran a marathon? Yeah, that too.

here are a few tour photos I took! :

sunrise over the days inn, in the vacant lot in Kentucky where we slept:


Breezy Point, NYC:


NYC language school:


4track recording at Quentin's house:


Birch Office, Smith Hill Farm:


Giant Colored Balls, Smith Hill Farm:



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You can look at the whole set HERE.
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We've all been busy of late..... John flew to the Czech Republic to re-unite with his Czech family members, Will has been recording his amazing new music as Sleep Good and filming a mini-documentary about analog tape, and Willis has been writing some incredible songs. He and Austin Jones recorded a sweet cover of John Cale's "Paris 1919," our officially "most played song" for the last tour.

So moving on to some big news.... our album, "Gold Dissolves to Gray," just got released on vinyl! Self-released mind you. You can hear the whole thing on bandcamp:

http://sunset.bandcamp.com/

It's a distributed item, so you can request it at your local awesome independent record store. If you have to go to Best Buy, you might have to special order it. But who wants to go to Best Buy. Parking lots that large make me feel like an insect.

I never mentioned it before, but the new album has lots of awesome collaborators, from Mazarin, Danielson, LAKE, Jesse Woods, Bitter Bitter Weeks, Coffee Jamie, Nick Hennies, Joey Koehl, and more. Lots of random names, I know, but look them up... very talented people.

Bandcamp is also streaming "Bright Blue Dream" and "The Glowing City." It's a really great website with a kind-of dumb name. What's in a name, though? Not much. Seems bandcamp has emerged as an alternative to myspace. Thank zoroaster. There is ordering info for most of our releases up on the site, plus high-quality downloads.

Did I mention it makes a fantastic holiday present? No? What? What was I talking about?

Originally I just wanted to release the record on vinyl, but thought better of it. Now all the records have c.d.s enclosed. Plus we did a run of 500 c.d.s with special screen-printed covers from Stumptown printers in Portland. They use all recycled paper and vegetable inks and all that super-cool next-level enviro stuff.

"Gold Dissolves to Gray" is a slight detour into a rough green field where monkeys are playing saxophones (not very successfully) and wearing astronaut suits and dreaming of the distant evolutionary future when they will be able to synthesize perfect french fries from glue paste and food flavoring.

The next album will be out next year and will be the sound of two different constellations, Andromeda and Orion, having a nervous breakdown and a break-up. Yes, that's the sound. The subject matter is the emergence of a soul from darkness into light and back again, like a little human yo-yo. Which brings me to this:

We are still raising money using Kickstarter... whatever extra money we can bring in will be put towards paying for the next release. Please consider making a donation here:



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No shows coming up yet, but stay tuned. We will no doubt be having some fun times again at the studio, and hopefully hitting the road in early 2010.

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here's a picture of the band in Philly:


stay tuned for more updates!

update o rama

* Our fundraising effort to play in Philadelphia.
* Live film score w/ free admission and whiskey
* How to order our new album, "Gold Dissolves to Gray"
* EAST Studio tour

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Earlier this year, we were asked by Weathervane, a Philly-based non-profit, to record for a few days at the amazing Miner Street studio. Our session, produced by the esteemed Quentin Stolzfus (formerly of Mazarin), resulted in the semi-hummable tune "Fishtown."

We are going back to Philly on November 12th to play Weathervane's end of the year celebratory free-for-all at Johnny Brenda's. It gonna be pretty sweet. Also playing are Danielson, BC Camplight, and East Hundred.

Thing is, it's expensive to get up to Philly. We bought our plane tickets on a credit card, but we need some help to actually pay the bill when it arrives in a month or so.

To this end, we set up an account at Kickstarter, the fundraising website used by everyone from Polyvinyl records to our friends Weathervane. The lowdown: we are trying to raise $500 to help offset our flight costs. Please consider making a donation. Every single bit helps. Literally every dollar gets us closer to our goal.

You can donate
here.

If you donate certain amounts, you get certain things in return. A little tit for tat. $100 will earn you a private living room concert and pizza delivery. $15 earns you a c.d. Etc. And if we do not meet our $500 goal, you will not be charged a thing.

If this fundraising effort is successful, we might try it again to fund all sorts of crazy tours and projects.

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On Friday, November 13th, we will be playing a special original score along to some early experimental films.

It is a free event, with free whiskey! You only need to RSVP, and you do so
here.

And here is the Facebook page with much more relevant info:
facebook invite.

The score has me indulging my long dormant keyboard fantasies alongside bowed bass and a master percussionist, playing along with two films (one 6 mins, the other 23 mins). I am very much looking forward to it. Did I mention it's at a super sweet photography studio?

Also please keep in mind Sam Sanford's art opening the following night. For those unaware, Sam was a guitarist in Sunset for two years. He is a fantastic painter and this is his first solo show. Facebook invite here.


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Also, we have a new album coming out November 24th! "Gold Dissolves to Gray," which was just called a "beauty of an album" (Some Velvet Blog), is available on 180gram lp with c.d. inserted. Also available as a c.d. with special screen-printed cover. Both the c.d. and l.p. are available in a limited edition of 500. Did I mention the c.d. looks really cool under a black light? Yes, it does.

Pre-order information here.

Also available in your local independent record shop soon.

It's somewhat of a departure for me. Less psychedelic, maybe. Bringing forth certain folk and country elements that had previously remained under the surface. Safe to say, this record will be unique in the Sunset catalog. The next release, fairly near completion, takes things in a whole other direction.

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The EAST studio tour is a chance for folks to ride their bikes to all the artist's studios on the East Side and see where the magic happens. Last year, I rode my bike all across town and saw some amazing art and had lots of free beer and chips.

Josh Duke and I have decided to take part in this year's festivities. Josh will be running a portrait studio and selling prints of his photography. He takes very cool, old-timey photographs using large-format cameras and develops the pictures at Baby Blue, using his own darkroom. A really cool operation he's got going.

I will be presenting a special interactive version of the TV Matrix, entitled "TV Organ." Each of the thirty screens will show a loop of an instrument playing in a certain key. The screens will all be based in the same key, but screens will be playing the 5th, others the 3rd, and perhaps a 7th thrown in too. In front of the grid, I will have my large mixing board and participants can change the shape of the drone. Around the mixing board, there will be 8 monitor speakers providing surround sound. It will be trippy and bizarre, but also very graspable and concrete. I think it's going to be awesome. The installation will be fully open during EAST's second weekend, and during the previous week by appointment only.

neon wake 7

We eventually left dunkin donuts and Denver, PA and did our damn best to make that night's show in Louisville, but to no avail. So I drove literally all night, until 4am. Listened to an amazing song called "This Country Boy's Truck," which described how a very attractive woman in a bar wanted to have sex with a certain country boy because the tires on his truck were "the highest she had ever seen."

At 4am, pulled off the road just north of Nashville. Willis and I slept in a vacant lot next to the freeway, sort of sandwiched between a Days Inn and Comfort Inn. It was fairly sketchy, as you might imagine. We just rolled out our bags and laid down for awhile, probably got at least a few hours sleep. I watched the sunrise over the back of the Days Inn. It was really really beautiful. Then this lady walking her dog stumbled upon us and made eye contact with me and it was awkward. So my sunrise viewing session was cut short as we jumped back in the car, so as to avoid the police and a potential vagrancy fine.

Willis and I look like we slept in a vacant lot. But we feel great.

Now at Fido's in Nashville, about to hit the final home stretch home. 13 hours or something similar. Playing tonight at BainStock 2009. Then finally back home.

The tour was incredible. Thanksss: LAURA!, bandmates John and Will who could not be there, Paul Sisler, Dash in Chapel Hill, Quentin and Dana and Brian in Philly, Elizabeth and Joel in NYC, Leon and Elaine Smith and Willis' Aunt Mimi in Akrondale NY, Fred and Ryan from City Center, all the nice toll booth workers, Dwight Eisenhauer (for starting the federal interstate system), Tommy back at home, Sam and Jack for helping me make screens, Josh holding it down at Baby Blue, and Thor god of thunder.

A few details overlooked in past posts: our 2nd day in NYC, Willis Joel and I went out to Breezy Point, ostensibly to surf. It was pouring rain, pouring pouring down. We got soaked but saw a side of NYC I had not seen before. Amazing. Later that day, Willis and I went back to the Russian Baths and had a long discussion with an old semi-mystic. He had a beard about a foot long and this weird type of skull cap, not a yarmulke. He said the future is now, that tai chi allows your body to move in every direction simultaneously, and that the baths were better than "16 grams of psylocybin." I am pretty sure, in his case, given his yelling and jumping and wild gesticulations, he was experiencing both the baths AND the 16 grams of pscylocibin (sp?).

Later that night, after Death by Audio, Willis and I made a mockery of some uber-hipster Williamsburg karaoke bar. It was legendary and the details are best left undocumented.

Also, while I was in Philly, Quentin, Dana and I hung out with Pete Bauer from the Walkmen and his pregnant wife. Congrats guys. Turns out Pete makes his living doing astrological readings, which I found bizarre and completely unexpected and quite interesting. So interesting, in fact, that I had to include it in this post.

Til next time, America. It was an amazing tour. Next time perhaps the West coast.
==============
and now some last thoughts from Willis:
I was sleeping in the car, then I was sleeping on the ground. West Virginia public radio had some interesting programming. Insights into the textbook wars during the early 70's. Russian baths at 10th and ave. A are unforgettable. Leon, Elaine, Elizabeth and Joel are very special folks.

neon wake 6

Sitting right now in a Dunkin Donuts in Lancaster County, western Pennsylvania. We were driving our of Philly this morning, dreaming dreams of massive crowds and adulation in Louisville. But these dreams got splashed by a large bucket of sludgy lardy donut grease. MMmmm.

All the power in the vehicle turned off. Couldn't roll up or down the windows, no car stereo, and all the gauges froze in place. Engine started making funny sounds.

Pulled over in Denver, PA. Stopped at Al's Exxon. While we waited in the mechanic's waiting room, Willis flossed his teeth while reading ads for motor oil. Yep.

Turns out we have a bad alternator. So we wandered along the side of the highway. Seems we've landed in the antique warehouse capital of the freaking world. Never much been a fan of "bric-a-brac" myself. I swear, most of this stuff is old tins of baby powder.

Ate breakfast at a diner next door to the garage. Heard muzak versions of Neil Young, Beatles, and more. I ordered my omellete without sausage. They brought out my omellete and it was stuffed with ham. Turns out their omellete was stuffed with sausage AND ham. My mistake, perhaps, but I swear I've never heard of such an omellete. Didn't occur to me that 2 types of swine would spice up the "Down Home Omellette."

So now in Dunkin' Donuts, sipping an iced tea and eating some munchkins. These things are pretty great, I gotta admit. I only wish they sold them individually. You gotta buy in increments of 5. What a crock of shit.

Last night, we played in Philly at the Khyber and our gig was in direct conflict with the Phillies' first game of the world series. The Phillies had a great night, us maybe not so much. Although I really did have a great time. Played to 2 very enthusiastic people, both members of the Philly band BC Camplight. They were really great singers.

When we arrived at the Khyber, I asked the sound guy if we could push the gig back at all to perhaps not conflict directly with the game. He advised, "You should play soon to get the pain over with." Heartening words, truly.

So we sat in the bar and fended off crackheads and frat boyz outside. The bartender brought us a massive plate of fruit. I mean, this thing was ridiculously huge. Not sure if they treat all their bands this way. It was quite the spread. I offered some fruit to the other band, but the sound guy thought I was talking to him and grabbed all the watermelon. Not that I care, I hate watermelon. But it was funny. First he tells me to end the show quickly to "get the pain over with" then he grabs all the watermelon and starts chewing it with his mouth open. I was laughing, though. I thought the dude was pretty awesome in his own way.

Now I am passing the keyboard to Willis for some more commentary:


Ummm, Errr... Let's see? uhhh well, we're stopped in Denver, PA having the car repaired. It's quaint little town rich with antique malls housing all types of wonders and bric-a-brac. We purchased Ricky Martins smash effort simply titled "Ricky Martin" for one dollar which bill donated 30 cents toward. With hits including "She's all I ever had" and "Livi'n la vida loca", perhaps you've heard it. After tasting the local color we moseyed on over to the Dunkin' Donuts for use of their free Wi-Fi...And here we be. So ,in conclusion, If your ever headed west from Philly on the Penn turnpike be sure to stop off in Denver, PA but fasten your seat belts folks cause it's a wild ride.

here are some lyrics to:
"Shake your Bon-Bon"

By R. Martin featuring Hernan "Teddy" Mullet on brass
Make-up by Maital Sabban

I'm a desperado
underneath your window
I see your silhouette
Are you my Julliet?

I feel a mad connection with your body
Shake your Bon-Bon
shake your Bon-Bon
shake your Bon-Bon

I wanna be your lover
will go around the world in a day

Don't say no, NO
Shake it my way, OH

Shake your bon-bon
Shake your bon-bon
Shake your bon-bon
Shake your bon-bon
Shake your bon-bon
Shake your bon-bon
Shake your bon-bon
Shake your bon-bon

neon wake 5

After spending a couple of days upstate, we headed down state road 22 into NYC proper. Headed straight over to Goodbye Blue Mondays, a cool thrift store/venue. There were a good number of people there and we played an enjoyable set.

Next day was an epic day of awesome pleasure. Ate 5 meals, all from different ethnic backgrounds: Cuban sandwich, tacos, Vietnamese sandwich, borscht, and bagels. Also went back to David and Boris' Russian and Turkish bath on East 10th street. This time, I got the oak platza treatment. A big Russian guy whips you with a swatch of oak branches. Rubs you down. It was intense and strange. And of course we sat in the oven room, probably the hottest room in the world. Willis enjoyed his first trip there.

Back at my cousin Elizabeth's apartment she shares with her boyfriend Joel, we bobbed for apples (Elizabeth and Willis said they'd never done it.) the proof:

Later that evening, we played at Death by Audio, a super sweet space 2 blocks from Elizabeth's apartment. played with sam buck rosen and green grocer who were both awesome. Spent a long time talking with the bartender and she bought a tshirt. as at most of the shows thus far, the crowd was not huge but people who were there seemed really into it and I heard lots of kind words afterwards. awesome.

at death by audio (earlier in the day I bought some sweet purple pants and you can see em here. they actually blended in perfectly with the walls!):