About a year ago, we gave the files for one of our songs to our friend Nick Reinhart (from the band Tera Melos) to do a remix. He recently completed it, and it's now up for your listening pleasure. If you'd like to own this piece of music, so you can put it on at parties and impress your friends with your dance routine, it's simple: Sign our mailing list, and in a few weeks we will email you a link to download it.

Head over to myspace.com/teramelos and tell Nick he's a badass.

-By Sunlight

Tour in September, hope to see you at a show!

Pocket For Corduroy have been added as headliner to our Sept 10th show at Harlow's. We couldn't be more excited. They are Sacramento legends in our eyes and it will be an honor to share the stage with them.

Thursday September 10th @ Harlow's

Pocket For Corduroy
By Sunlight
Bright Light Fever
Silian Rail

21+ $7 9pm Doors @ 8

Tickets are available in advance.

-By Sunlight

Go listen and enjoy http://www.myspace.com/pocketforcorduroyrip

Hello loved ones,

We're trying to make ourselves a little easier to find on the interworldnetwebs. The goal is to give our fans more access to updates about tours, albums, haircuts, and so on.

To follow us on Twitter, go here:
http://twitter.com/BySunlight

To be our fan on Facebook, go to this long, weird address:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/By-Sunlight/102482160359

That is all.

-J

Well. Clearly my idea, in which all members of the band would pitch in and write blog entries on this tour, hasn't taken off. We've been on the road for two weeks since our show in Chico (and my most recent blog), and not one sentence has appeared. So if this was a battle of wills, I lost. Here's a quick one to let everyone know we're still alive and having a great time.

Today's my birthday. Yesterday we awoke in the San Diego home of our friends Scott and Rachel, enjoyed a leisurely morning of bright sun and dark coffee, then drove to Scottsdale, Arizona in the afternoon and evening. We played wiffle ball at a windy desert rest stop near Gila Bend, watched the sun set behind us among shadowy mesas and luminous cloud sheets, and savored the smell of wet clay through our open van windows during a rainstorm in Phoenix.

We reached our destination -- the home of some very generous friends-of-friends -- and spent the evening discussing herds of wild blind pigs, drinking beer on a brick patio, and trading road stories with our traveling companions and new Arizona friends. At the stroke of midnight, I was politely instructed to empty my pockets of all valuables, then forcibly tossed into a swimming pool. It was a great day.

Tonight we'll be playing in Tucson. I'm excited, not just because it's my birthday, but also because it should be a fun, all-ages show in a city I've never visited before.

In the coming days, I (and hopefully the other jerks in this band) will be posting retroactive blogs to cover the last couple of weeks. They've been great, really. No joke. You'll see, soon enough.

- Jack

Hello. We're back on tour and trying something a little different this time. Instead of tediously blogging about every day we spend on the road, we're just going to write about the days we play music or whenever there's something worth talking about.

Also, rather than Jack writing all the blog posts (which is what always happened in the past, as you probably know), we're going to try alternating between various members of the band. Maybe this will make for a more interesting read. Or at least it'll keep Jack from always having to update the blog and being vaguely cranky about it. We'll see how it works out. (Jack is writing this entry. Surprise.)

Anyway, last night we played an all-ages show in Chico at an odd-yet-friendly DIY-type bookstore/venue called Under Western Eyes. We're always thrilled with the reception we get in Chico, and we always make new friends every time we come through. So thanks to all our new and old friends for coming. (Casio watches forever!) Thanks also to our bill-mates -- The Shimmies, the always-excellent Worker Bee and Chico's own Secret Stolen -- for putting on great performances.

We'll be playing the Press Club in Sacramento on Monday night, the Stork Club in Oakland on Tuesday, and San Francisco's Rickshaw Stop on Wednesday. Then we'll take a few days off to attend and celebrate the wedding of Ryan Rake, former Bridges bassist and forever best bro.

After that, we'll get back in the van and head to southern California for a few days (get ready, Long Beach and San Diego!). Then we venture into uncharted territory -- Arizona, Colorado, Nebraska, Montana, Idaho. We're very excited to visit some new places and make new friends.

Today we're relaxing in Sacramento, getting ready for tomorrow's show. The weather is beautiful, as are the people, and we're all healthy and optimistic. So we've got that going for us, anyway.

DAY 12: SANTA ROSA
There’s so much to like about playing shows in the Bay Area. Aside from the rock music and easy friendship of other bands, hanging out with our solids in Oakland is undeniably the biggest pleasure. After a night of weird, Blue Velvet-tainted dreams, we slept late and enjoyed a leisurely morning. Robert and Regan took off to do some classy wine tasting in Sonoma, and although we missed them, and were simultaneously envious of them, we still managed. It helped that By Sunlight BFF Desiree and her boyfriend Alex made the trip from The City to hang out with us. (Note: as a native Easterner, this vegetarian blogger is forever perplexed by the region’s habit of calling San Francisco “The City.” It’s cool; he likes it; he just doesn’t understand it.)

Big breakfasts in Margo’s apartment are fast becoming a tour ritual, and with good reason. Scrambled eggs, potatoes and onions, giant biscuits, fresh strawberries and blackberries, OJ, coffee, and some sort of gross-looking sausage were all part of this morning’s fare. Even the sausage was tasty, at least for the meat-eating element of the group (which, to be fair, was all but one). We sat at the table, listened to music, and enjoyed a lovely breakfast in each others’ beautiful company—a perfect morning.

Except that, due to our late sleeping, it was actually afternoon. This meant that we had to get prepared for the show later, which was at a Santa Rosa recording studio/performance space called Atlas Studios, about 45 minutes north of our location. There was still plenty of time for hanging out (and Jack politely agitated, to no avail, for a trip to the Oakland A’s-Seattle Mariners afternoon ball game), but we wanted to get to Atlas Studios early for a band barbeque. So after everyone had showered and made themselves pretty (and after Alex tactfully reminded Jack why the Somali pirates aren’t referred to as terrorists—it’s because they’re doing it for money rather than ideology, yo), we piled into the van, navigated our way to Santa Rosa, got a little lost, and eventually rolled up to the spot, where we met Robert and Regan.

The barbeque was great (they had Muenster cheese! And veggie burgers!), and it was made greater by the presence of Eric and Robin, collectively known as the band Silian Rail. We love these two kids like our own little babies. We were happy to hear that they’ve been working with Greer, former bass player for Rademacher and totally cool gal, and they may become a trio. We love Silian Rail as a two-piece, for sure, but the possible awesomeness that could arise from adding a bass player is great, indeed.

Anyhow, the duo-for-now Silian Rail kicked all kinds of musical ass, and we followed with a pretty intense set of our own, it must be said. We were followed by Snipers (and another band that slips this blogger’s mind at the moment; someone please remind us), and the night became a full-on party. We made a lot of new friends, spent some fun-if-slightly-confusing time packing lots of people into the van, forcing sunglasses on everyone and watching YouTube clips on John’s iPhone. The evening ended with some crazy, crazy dancing to Beyonce (and John making a valiant effort at ghost riding the whip), some jubilant goodbyes, and a satisfying late-night trip to IN-N-OUT Burger before ending up back in Oakland.

What a fun day. Good thing, too, because the next day we’d stare down the Doom Bird—a 13-hour drive back to Seattle. But that was still in the future, and on this night we all slid into sleep thinking about nothing but good times.

DAY 13: DRIVING
What to say about a day spent driving? Not much, really. We took our time early in the day and finally said our goodbyes to Margo, Desiree, Regan, and the rest of the crew. Then we embarked on the long, perilous journey.

The only two things really worth mentioning about the trip are the van’s continued awesomeness and Jack’s introduction of audio short stories to our travel listening. He’s well known for being a fanatic about The New Yorker magazine, and he’d been listening to their fiction podcasts for some time, but we discovered that the 30-minute stories were excellent ways to break up long hours of driving and blasting music.

Otherwise, we drove and drove. Once we reached Oregon, of course, it got really cold and rained hard and endlessly. We floated a few potential names for solo projects that will probably never come to fruition (top vote-getters include Jack’s riff-heavy avant-garde band Apple Butter and John’s pop-punk group Cocksocket).

Hello! We are Cocksocket!

Wow, that has a nice ring to it.

We rolled into Seattle at about 2:30, Jack made it to his apartment soon after, and everyone slept hard. Tour over; one more show tomorrow. Whew.


DAY 14: SEATTLE
“Welcome back,” Seattle said to us the next morning, “I’ve saved 35-degree temperatures, high winds and sideways rain for you! I hope you like it, you frickin’ cocksockets!”

That’s how it felt, anyway. We were happy to be back in our own homes and beds, but after spending two weeks in the California sun, returning in the middle of another schizophrenic Seattle spring wasn’t as pleasant as we’d imagined.

But we were psyched about the last show, at the Showbox. Now, the Showbox is a huge venue where big-time bands have played since the late 1930s, and we plan to play the big stage soon; but for now we contented ourselves with the smaller Green Room stage. It’s located downstairs, adjacent to the the big auditorium, and it’s oddly charming and intimate.

(It has an interesting history of its own, as well. According to the venue’s web site, “[t]he space was once occupied by a Kerns Music Shop, which hosted intimate personal appearances and performances by the likes of Frank Sinatra, Sarah Vaughan and Nat King Cole.” Sweet.)

We shared the bill with two awesome bands and wonderful people—Northern California’s Them Hills and Seattle’s Austenitic. Austenitic is a frenetic twosome made up of bassmaster Ross and drum king Kelly—they’re mind-bogglingly dextrous and fun to watch. Them Hills (with whom we played in Sacramento, you may remember) are some of our all-time favorite people, and their unique two-piece incarnation, which incorporates a drum machine and puts focus on their compelling textural dynamics, came across very well in the confines of the Green Room.

We played last, and got it done, and felt pretty good about it. Then we said some prolonged goodbyes to our friends, got back in the van (thanks, Veronica, for a great first tour with you), and went home.

Tour is over. Sigh. See you in June, duders.

DAY 10: SACRAMENTO

We woke this morning in our respective places of rest—John at his mom’s, Mike at Ryan Ward’s, Robert and Jack at Regan’s place (which boasts the world’s most comfortable couch)—more or less ready to face the day. Regan was returning home around noon, so Jack hitched a ride back to Temple Coffee, where he contentedly spent the next six hours or so drinking way too much coffee, reading John Fowles, and typing on his laptop. John golfed again (we assume that he’s going to be rolling GC deals on the golf course soon) and Mike did his thing around the fair city of Sacramento.

Eventually the time came to meet up and head to Old Ironsides. Aside from a brief problem with the bus system (Jack was not impressed with the 142 driver’s refusal to recognize his presence at a bus stop, forcing him to walk a mile in the rain), everyone made it there fine. Jack and Mike met a few minutes early and hung out at Beer’s Books, a bookstore a block away from the venue. Jack nearly bought, but did not buy, several weird old books of ghost stories. He now regrets this decision.

Our show that night was to be a fun one—we shared the bill with Family Room (a two-piece consisting of Evan of the amazing band Worker Bee and bassist/keyboardist Ryan), Them Hills (also a two-piece this time, a very interesting conjuring of the Them Hills franchise), and Bright Light Fever (who always bring the rock). All played super-well, and we enjoyed listening to them as well as hanging with many Sac friends whom we miss and love.

Then we played; it was a fun, very sweaty, and overall great show, we think. Thanks to everyone (including Larry, Old I’s inimitable sound man) for making this and every Sacramento show a great experience. We hope to see you again—more of you, even—next time we’re here.

With the show over, we again found our way to various awesome places. Robert and Regan absconded to her apartment, Mike buddied up with Kris Anaya for a confusing evening, and our always-wonderful friend Margo shuttled John and Jack to her family’s ranch for an evening of sleepy, Deadwood-watching bliss.


DAY 11:  SAN FRANCISCO/OAKLAND
At Margo’s place, the morning began with her discovering a coyote in the driveway, calmly staring her down before wandering lazily off. Luckily, this was not the harbinger of doom that it could have been—in fact, the day turned out to be almost unremittingly wonderful.

Margo and her cargo trucked back to Sacramento, picking up the painfully hung-over Mike then heading westward to her apartment in Oakland. Driving toward San Francisco on a Friday afternoon sucks, especially on a holiday weekend. Still, we made it through the traffic with enough time to do some shopping at a creepily upscale mall, then grabbed some Thai food before meeting the others (now including Robert and Regan) back at Margo’s place. Next stop: the Retox in San Francisco, where we’d play the evening’s show.

The bill consisted of two other bands, The Trophy Fire and Built For The Sea, both of whom are from the Bay Area. Built For The Sea is a great band (and just one of several sweet projects that our good friend Eric, the drummer, is involved with). They’re very cool people as well. Lia, the singer and keyboardist, realized that she and Jack had met and exchanged kind words the last time By Sunlight had played here, and this time she generously gave us their entire CD discography. Thanks, yo.

So the bands were great, the performances were super fun, and so on. The best moment of the night, however, occurred after the bands were finished. The members of The Trophy Fire suggested a friendly game of dice between the three bands—with the losers packing up and carrying all three bands’ gear up the stairs and outside. Any chance to avoid lugging our crap up the steep staircase of the Retox is worth taking, so of course we accepted. And, after a few suspenseful moments of rolled dice, screamed epithets and indiscriminate hugs, the loser was revealed: The Trophy Fire. Poor dudes, suggesting a game and then losing it. But we definitely held them to their word, and they very graciously (these are really funny, friendly guys) carried everybody’s junk up and outside to the waiting vans. Thanks, fellas, for giving us one night off from the unending grind of gear-transport. And thanks for losing. We really didn’t want to carry all that stuff up those stairs.

Finally, everyone said their goodbyes, and we left for Margo’s place again. Once there, we hung out, drank beers, watched Blue Velvet while falling asleep (which is not recommended), and enjoyed our second-to-last night on the road. Tomorrow: more hanging out in Oakland, a show in Santa Rosa, and prepping for the journey home.

Congratulations to Chelsea Conboy, who has won another Poster of the Week award from the Seattle newsweekly The Stranger. Her design of our tour poster is totally awesome (lke all the other artwork she's done for us), and Chelsea deserves the recognition. See the Stranger's article here:

http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/poster-of-the-week/Content?oid=1220762

DAY 8: MERCED
As confusing as Jack’s love for baseball and basketball may be for his bandmates, they all agreed that the drive north from L.A. over the Grapevine was far more so. Why, why, why does the traffic have to be so terrible? Someone please tell us. It took more than three hours to go about 70 miles, and since we left a little later than planned, we soon realized that we would very likely be late for our show in Merced, which was still more than 4 hours away.

We drove as fast as legally possible, and made very good time once we’d escaped the clutches of SoCal. Then a huge storm rolled in from the north. Rain fell in vast sheets, spray flew up from all sides, and every few minutes the massive clouds were illuminated by bright crackles of lightning. It was a little scary to drive in, and it slowed us down considerably, but visually it was magnificent. We don’t see storms like this in Seattle.

Luckily, the organizers at The Partisan, our venue in Merced, were amenable to our situation, and we raced into town just in time to play our set. Our last experience at The Partisan had been a mixed bag—we’d played with a great band from Kansas called Paper Airplanes, but there was almost no audience present. This time, there was a larger crowd, and we had a lot of fun and played well. A few intoxicated young people danced crazily through much of the set, which was entertaining for everyone. We made friends with a few people afterwards, including the super-nice David and Sandra, who took lots of pictures and showered us with compliments (and money for a T-shirt and album). It was a really gratifying end to a long and stressful day.

The only downer was the fact that we still had to drive another couple of hours to Sacramento, where we’d bed down for the night and hunker down for a day off before rocking Old Ironsides on Thursday. So we fortified our bodies with IN-N-OUT Burger, climbed back into the van, and John drove us to our sleepy destination. We arrived very late at Robert’s girlfriend’s place, and although we were sad that Regan was out of town, her apartment couldn’t have been more comfortable. So we slept, long and happily.

DAY 9: SACRAMENTO
We usually schedule a day off in Sac when we're on tour, and we managed one even in this busy season. Not much went on today other than grateful relaxation. We all slept super late, then John joined our friend Billy for a round of golf and later visited his mom. Mike, Robert and Jack ventured to the Rubicon and ate a delicious lunch with Ryan Ward, Ryan Rake, and Mike’s mom.

Then Jack took off to partake in his Sacramento ritual of sitting at a table in Temple Coffee, typing on his laptop and reading a John Fowles novel. (Jack believes that there are few greater pleasures in life than sitting in a coffee shop, drinking a superior Americano, and reading John Fowles. You should try it sometime, suggests Jack.) Mike spent the evening with Ryan Rake, his fiancée Stephanie, and numerous other friends.

Later that evening, Jack and Robert scarfed down a frozen pizza and watched the first four episodes of Deadwood at Regan’s apartment. Man, that show is badass. And it was a perfect way to spend the evening—the Doctor and Jack, chilling. Sexually. (Pause)

And hey, tomorrow we’d play Old Ironsides, our favorite Sacramento venue. Good times.

DAY 5: MANHATTAN BEACH/KXLU FM
Our love affair with San Diego continued for the early part of this day, as Bill took us to a park, and we ate a picnic lunch and played some seriously amateur Frisbee. Eventually, though, we had to accept the fact that the tour must go on, so we journeyed north to Manhattan Beach for the next show. The venue was called The Comic Bug, an awesome comic book store that holds all-ages shows in the evenings. The guys in The Voyeurs joined us on this bill, and they were cool and helpful as always. The show was great, with lots of kids standing among the aisles of comic books and sitting on the floor in front of us. The Comic Bug is a great place, and we’d enjoy doing another show there.

This show, however, wasn’t the only one of the day for us. We’d also arranged to appear on a radio show later that night on KXLU FM, an indie rock station based out of Loyola Marymount University. So we packed our stuff back up and raced to the campus, unloaded and managed to get set up just in time to do an almost-full-length set from 11:30 to 12:00. Jack’s friend Christina and John’s friends Alex and Danny came along and made the show even more fun. And the show was already lots of fun—we played great, and the folks at KXLU were extremely kind and helpful. Two shows in one night is tiring but very fun. Good thing, too, because we had the same thing planned for the next day….

But before that day began, we still had time left to head to Christina’s neighborhood in L.A., eat some awesome 24-hour diner food, and hang out. John and Alex joined Danny at his place (turns out he lives near Christina now), and Jack, Mike and Robert crashed at Christina’s. It was a terrific, relaxing end to a fun if slightly frantic day. Up next: more fun, more frantic.

DAY 6: LONG BEACH, CULVER CITY
The next morning and afternoon were spent relaxing at Christina's. She served us the best Armenian espresso we'd ever had, and Robert cooked up another scrumptious breakfast. Jack and Christina, who've been friends since the long-ago days of Cincinnati, took a long walk through the beautiful neighborhood of Los Feliz (and briefly through a confusing Thai festival going on nearby) while Mike and Robert chilled out at her apartment. John showed up not long after, having said a temporary goodbye to Danny, and soon it was time to head down to Long Beach, where we would hang with Robert’s dad (a.k.a. Senior Doctor Cheek), eat some pizza, and perform at Alex’s Bar.

We’d played Alex’s Bar in Long Beach once before and had been impressed with it. It was the same experience this time around, and we enjoyed the company of Terrapin and Wet Cassette on the bill. For our part, we played well and had fun, but had to race out the door soon after finishing our set in order to make our second gig of the night.

Show number two was in Culver City, and it was an odd affair. Apparently there had been a battle-of-the-bands thing going on for a few weeks, and this evening was the final event. We were slated as the sort-of-professional band that would play after all the bands in the competition were finished, perhaps to provide all the youngsters with a glimpse of what an older, more professional, haggard and humbled-by-life band looks and sounds like. Well, we delivered. At 1:30 in the morning, after a few fetching youngsters dressed in caveman outfits and ladies’ swimsuit/bathrobe combinations had exhibited their drunken art, we played two songs. No disrespect to anyone, since this was a big deal for all the bands involved, and we sincerely appreciated Danny’s help with getting us involved (and it was an awesome surprise to get to hang out with Chris Herb, Danny’s brother, who is a bona-fide rock star and was a judge at the competition). But if ever there was a more ridiculous fish-out-of-water scenario in L.A., we challenge you to find it. It was a weird night.

And it didn’t help that we got lost on the way out of L.A., received some not-so-friendly scrutiny from the L.A. police (who pulled alongside us, shined a spotlight at each of us in the van, and—perhaps once they were convinced that there were no scary negroes in our vehicle—drove on), and finally limped our way to Fullerton, the home of Robert’s longtime best-friend-a-la-muerte Derek. It was a tough night, and maybe the decision to stop at Denny’s at 3 a.m. wasn’t totally wise, but the food was delicious. Then, physically fattened and spiritually flattened, we crashed at Derek’s. Phew.  We were glad to have the next day off.

And even though the final show of our 4-shows-in-2-days run wasn’t ideal, the overall experience of so many shows in so little time was fun. We’d be happy to do it again, especially more radio shows. Perhaps our friends, who like our music so very much, should call their local indie rock stations and request that they invite us to perform. (KEXP in Seattle would be a great start. Hint, hint. www.kexp.org, yo.)

DAY 7: DISNEYLAND? NOPE, FULLERTON
On this, our first day off of the tour, there was a slight possibility that we were going to get into Disneyland for free, which Jack and John were ridiculously excited about (but Mike and Robert not so much). But it didn’t pan out, so we had the day to relax at Derek’s and recover a bit. That worked out just fine.

There’s a great little café near Derek’s place that Jack, Robert and Mike like to spend time at whenever we’re in the neighborhood, so they enjoyed a long afternoon on its patio sipping espresso, catching up on e-mails, and listening to classic rock radio. John went back to hang with his pal Danny, with whom he spent the night in L.A.

After blissing out for a while, Jack and Mike went off to find a sports bar where they could watch the NCAA basketball tournament championship game (which UNC won, resulting in Jack’s second-straight year of winning his tournament pool, although he never bets any money and feels silly afterward). It wasn’t very easy to find a place playing the game, since this day also happened to be Major League Baseball’s opening day, and every bar was full of Angels fans. Although it was an inconvenience, this reminded Jack that it was time to catch baseball fever. And, yep, now he’s got it. And his bandmates find this very confusing.