indie rock motherland (omaha nebraska)

so we spent the day today in Omaha Nebraska which is what i would say is the current 'motherland' of the indie rock scene. home to artists like bright eyes, home to saddle creek records, home to indie rock super producer mike mogis... we are all huge indie rock fans so its quite cool for us to be hanging out in omaha... unforunatetly though mostly holed up in our hotel room as the outside temperature plummeted below zero. Honestly... i cant tell much of a difference between anything below say 20 degrees... its all just really damn cold to me. but the wind... ohhh the wind... when that starts kicking its all over... that'll do some damage. I dont know how you folks in the midwest hang with this... although im sure ya'll (and yes i did just use the texas colloquial term ya'll) think its crazy that we texas folk go out and do functional activity in the 100+ weather. honestly, i think thats crazy too.

anway, the show in lincoln was great last night... wonderful room... i saw some posters on the wall for a show that had happened a few nights before with one of my favorite singer songwriters Martin Sexton... man i bet that was a good show. He's amazing. If you've never heard him... pick up his record called, "the american" its a great driving and traveling record. ok so the show.. we debuted a new song last night called "The Arsonist." We've played it at a few soundchecks recently and then for the first time last night in front of a live audience... it went over smashingly so i think we're going to start integrating it in to the live show when we can. very excited about it... hopefully any and all of you out there will hear it at a show in the near future.

so, big news... next week on Feb 5th we will be releasing an Itunes exclusive 'Cinematica Preview EP'. It's just a little taste from the forthcoming record... it'll feature our first single 'Sell Out' (which the video for said song will be appearing all over the place very soon... be on the lookout) as well as a select other cuts from the 'Cinematica' full length. We couldnt be more excited to start getting that stuff out to folks... its a long time coming!

So the rest of the boys are out having dinner with some friends in Omaha... i again am resting in the hotel trying to get to feeling better... the sickness is subsiding, but slowly... still trying to take it easy when i have the chance. We all did a phone interview earlier with a new and upcoming publication called Soundcheck Magazine... should be a piece on us around sxsw (mid march), very nice folks at Soundcheck. Ok... tomorrow we have a show in Omaha at the Waiting Room with the wonderful band 'Ludo.' Our merch manager Kelly was tour managing a band a few years ago and they were on the road with Ludo... said that they're amazingly nice guys. Can't wait to meet em and see their show... I hear they are quite entertaining. Alright... i'll report more later.

LAng

blizzards in the midwest....

We had to drive through a blizzard or sorts today as we were leaving Kansas City heading toward Lincoln Nebraska... it was intense. 30-40 mile and hour winds, snow, slick roads, etc etc... Bradley did the majority of the driving he was a soldier.

Currently sitting in a Scooters Coffee shop in Lincoln Nebraska looking at a bank time/temp meter across the street... its 8 degrees... and thats without wind chill. its cold. its cold. its cold. we stopped at a gas station earlier to fill up and there was a guy rolling out of his truck in jeans and a short sleeve shirt... rediculous.

anyway... spent 2 hours in a doctors office yesterday (yes... definitely the way i had hoped to spend our day off in KC), got some meds... its official.. sinus infection. the other guys went and saw Cloverfield last night with mixed reviews... i slept, i needed the rest.

anyway... we're playing Knickerbockers in Lincoln tonight... looks like a great venue, we're excited about the show. We once again stopped at a Guitar Center when we rolled in to town to replace broken things... I wonder if Guitar Center proper would offer a proper artist deal? I doubt it. Anyway... off to brave the cold. more soon

LAng

sinus infections will be the death of me...

so luckily our show last night was in lenexa kansas (a suburb of kansas city), and was only a not so hefty 6 miles away from our hotel. i think i have a pretty nasty sinus infection right now... that was a tough show for me to get through. small small small venue... but very cool and intimate. like austin there is a smoking ban in the bars in lenexa... now i know some people really have a problem with this, but from the vantage point of a singer... this is an absolute life saver. so much more difficult to sing in smokey bars than in 'fresh aired' ones.

we actually called an audible on the show and did some material from the vault that we thought would be more fitting for the room and the audience... our assesment was spot on and the set went over very well. sonny stripped down his kit, doug played his small pedal board, bradley busted out the glockenspeil and i dawned an acoustic guitar the entire evening. it was a great show... we had a lot of fun and still managed to bring the energy that we pride our live show on.

got to the hotel relatively early and watched 'the assasination of jesse james' ... thats a great film. casey aflec is a brilliant actor... as is brad pitt. his acting skills are often overlooked because of how the media has publicized his private life... but really at the end of the day, hes a damn good actor.

alright... day off in Kansas City today... im going to get some rest, work on a new piece of gear that we're trying to integrate in to our live shows, we're thinking about going to see 'cloverfield' at some point too... looks like a pretty stellar movie.

sick city

so sonny was sick 2 days ago... and now im sick. i'll be ok though, took some theraflu last night at about 5am and slept like a rock... still a little groggy today, but i should be ok by show time. we were in columbus missouri last night... our show was after a guitar hero competition... doug and i picked out our contestant early in the evening... he just seemed to have this look of a champion in his eyes. and yes... he beat out 250 other kids... he was brilliant. an absolute phenom.

tonight we play in lenexa (or kansas city) kansas.

Cold in Kansas

so we were delayed in getting in to Lawerence KS yesterday as we spent an hour and a half in a panera bread in Tulsa waiting on a tire on our trailer that had gone flat to be repaired (we somehow drove over a big nasty nail that decided to flatten the only 2 week old tire).

that combined with our GPS device (which we have named Karen... as the Brittish accented voice that gives us directions is well... just named Karen) kept giving us fowl directions... which was aggrivating. I think Karen is mad at us for some reason... it'll be ok, we'll apologize and buy her some flowers or something tomorrow.

we made it though in time for load in and in time for the show... really wish we had gotten in early though as Lawerence is a really killer town. I had some friends that lived in Lawerence for a time and they always told me how amazing the city was... well Simon and Melinda... you were right.

Great show in Lawerence... the folks at the Jackpot Saloon were amazingly nice. Cant wait to come back. Nice intimate venue... very cool place. There is a venue in Austin called Trophys... and if one was to invert the sides of the bar (ie flip the walls and flip the bar) the Jackpot would be an exact replica of Tropyhs... in think they are Dopplegangers of one another... i havent yet decided which one is is the evil one!

alright... we're at our hotel in Kansas City right now... heading to Columbia Missouri tonight for a show... i think the opening act is a guitar hero tourneyment.... this should be fun interesting...

Livin' on Tulsa Time...

So we're currently driving E on I 44 heading in to Tulsa Oklahoma for a show tonight… Bradley's driving… Sonny and Doug are napping in the back and I'm in the front row of the van typing away on our new laptop. I have to tell you folks too… its absolutely frigid outside… this is something I know that we're going to have to get used to though as our current winter tour is routed through the midwest and north east United States… and we are heading in to some VERY chilly places… Minneapolis, Chicago, NYC (which we have not yet hit in the winter)… BUT regardless, we couldn't be more excited about hitting these cities and seeing this part of the county this time of year… admittedly though it's a tough change for 4 south Texas boys who have rarely even dreamed of snow in our lives let alone spent great amounts of time in it.

So anyway… we just had 2 days off at home after an amazing run with the band RED through Colorado and New Mexico. We froze our asses off (again)… but had an amazing string of dates. The guys in RED along with their crew could not be any nicer or any more humble of folks. And what an amazing band on top of that all too… if you don't yet own their new record PLEASE go pick it up… it will melt your face.

Check out www.myspace.com/dropofred

All of the shows were absolutely fantastic, we met some amazing people… and if you are reading this and we had the good fortune to meet you… thanks for making those shows such a blast for us. The crowds were wonderfully enthusiastic and just made the whole tour so unbelievably pleasant for us.

The most interesting and eventful show of the run had to have been Las Cruces NM where we rolled up to the venue to find that it was an OUTDOOR show and lucky for us… a cold front had moved in that afternoon, taking the already frigid temp down even further to a bone chilling 19 degrees (and even colder in the wind). It was the kind of cold where you cant even feel your hands if they're in the open air for a few minutes. Actually by the end our set I looked down at my right hand to find it cut and bloody. I had done some serious damage at some point during the set and had not felt it… ahhhh… thus are the wounds of a good rock show though. We fought through the cold and had an amazing show. Thanks to all you folks who braved the winter weather with us as well, it was much appreciated!

The most highlighted moment of the tour that was not at a show… after our show in Denver we drove through the night to Colorado Springs where our next show the next night was. We stayed with a friend on a 30 acre ranch on the side of a mountain a good 30 miles outside of the city… it was 3am and we were driving our van and trailer up the side of this dark, and icy mountain. We got to a point where we could no longer safely travel… so on the side of a cliff on this mountain side we SLOWLY turned our van and trailer around (a 30 minute process in which I played cliff guard in the 15 degree weather). Anyway… we safely turned the spider van and our nice new trailer around (which is way more difficult to do that one would imagine)… parked it at a police station about midway down the mountain… had our friend pick us up in his 4 wheel drive jeep and then had him drive us out to his ranch. Completely secluded… snow covered mountainside. When I woke up the next morning I just stared out the back window for a half our because of how amazing it was… hopefully we'll be able to post some pics sooner than later. And again… we don't see landscape like that in Texas very often.

Alright… we're nearing the venue in Tulsa… more blogging soon. Hope to see some of you at shows soon…. and Colorado/New Mexico… we will return soon! thanks for making our first time through such a wonderful one!

Lang

ps: we're currently listenidng to the new Sean Lennon record 'friendly fire' as well as an older record by a band called Devics... the record is called 'push the heart' non stop in the van. both of them are totally worth listening to... Sean Lennon's record sounds like a cross between elliot smith and his late father john. devics reminds me of eisley, midlake, stars, etc... all great stuff.