Adventures in Touring, and Awkwardly Named Roads...

It's been a while...and for that we (collectively) apologize...

Let's see, here's what we've been up to:

Independently releasing a record ('Cinematica' was released October 14th - do you have it yet???!?)
Booking a national tour
Rehearsing like mad men

Currently, we're on tour (in the middle of Iowa at the moment); here's a quick re-cap of some of our adventures:

Our van was broken into in Newark NJ...it was a clean break-in; the criminal (still at large) popped the lock off of our back door Javier Bardem in "No Country for Old Men" style. After going through every piece of luggage, pillow, blanket, etc... in our van and finding no cash, he decided to take nothing. Nothing. No-thing...how fortunate are we? Aside from having no way to lock our back door (aside from literally chaining it on the inside every night), we made it out incredibly lucky. The dude didn't even take our Sirius Radio (thank you, cb).

We had our massive coffin-like road case fall out of our trailer while driving in downtown Baltimore.

(read that sentence again)

So, I'm driving (this is Bradley), and Sonny and Doug are in the van with me; we're leaving our hotel in downtown Baltimore, middle of lunch rush traffic. Lang is in NYC doing a CMJ panel at the time...we hear a massive "thud", and think nothing of it. 3 city blocks later, we're alerted to the fact that our trailer door has swung open by the screeching scream of a female Baltimore City Traffic Cop. Simultaneously, I glance in my sideview mirror to change lanes only to see what? The "SUR" stencil on the side of our coffin-like merch case careening down Lombard Ave in Baltimore MD. Hydrenaline pumping, I quickly slam the car into the sidewalk, scream at everyone to "get out of the car" without clarifying that, indeed, our merch case was bounding down the street (Sonny thought that we'd hit a pedestrian or something). After a couple of insightful questions from Sonny/Doug, the crew mobilizes, we get the merch case, which, by the grace of God, hit nobody/no cars/no mailboxes...while rolling a massive merch case down Lombard, a truck driver asks (in his best Baltimore accent) - "yous guysss got a gig t'night??!?".

"No sir, we played last night...we're just dumping gear on busy city streets today".

For the sake of full disclosure, it was me (Bradley) that inproperly closed the trailer door the night before. I'm sure I'll live that down in 2011 or so.

So, two potentially awful incidents, and we come out unscathed. We're lucky dudes.

Good news:
'Cinematica' debuts #2 at Waterloo Records, Austin TX
CMJ (College Music Jamboree) festival in NYC was a massive and smashing success. Tour dates on the East Coast and Midwest have been equally successful/fun.
Our single "Portrait of a Summer Thief" was added to XMU's rotation. If you have XM, make sure to request it through the proper channels.


My last rant will cover the subject of the name of a road in Iowa City IA...we passed it on the way to load-in @ The Picador (great club - thanks for having us, Doug!), and I almost stopped the van...the name of the road is:
"B'JAYSVILLE RD"

No lie.

Our local Iowan friends in the band (the fantastic band) Ely Falls noted that it is actually pronounced "Buh-Jays-ville", as opposed to "Bee-jays...". You could see how hilarious something like this might be to a few road-weary out of towners.

Omaha, NE tonight with A MOMENT LOST, then KC on Saturday, Lawrence on Monday, and home for a few days of well deserved rest. Will post again soon.

Happy Haloween!
Bradley
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