MARAH ON TOUR IN THE USA! FEBRUARY 2009

Happy New Year! We are pleased to announce our first US Tour since the release of 2008's critically acclaimed "Angels of Destruction!"  Although we are currently at Sixteen Ton Recording Studio in Nashville with our old friend Ray Kennedy mixing up a fantastic new record, it is our New Year's wish to return to the nightclubs this February to warm up new material and celebrate the old songs.  After a year of touring Europe and the UK, we feel this is long overdue and we are anxious to reunite with our American fans.

Despite the absence of brother Serge Bielanko who is on maternity leave (it's a girl!) Marah will be touring as a folkypunkrock four piece: Dave Bielanko (lead vocals/guitar/banjo), long-time member Christine Smith (piano/bvs/accordian), and introducing stateside... Brooklyn's one and only Johnny "whaddyagot?" Pisano on the stand-up bass, and the great Martin Lynds from Nashville on the drums.  Expect shows to be long, comprehensive sweaty affairs...

Viva la future!

Go-bama!

More banjo!

I don't expect you to reply, I'm sure you're busy but just wanted to let ya know. Keep on keeping on man..... please
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It came under the subject line of YO! and was signed simply with the writers first name. Recently we've received quite a few other similar e-mails too. I'll come back to this later...

Two nights ago me and Christine Smith and Johnny Pisano played a house concert in New Jersey to warm up for a Swedish Festival date we are playing this coming weekend. The music (old songs/new songs) sounded incredible in their hands...truth be told, those songs never sounded better to me (i can say this only because I've been lucky enough to have the best seat in the house for every MARAH gig ever, of all time, ever) My brother Serge was not there and I missed him a lot, but the Surge and I decided that their would be no full band, R&R shows this summer...heres why

We'd been through alot since Christmas 07 when our beautiful band hit a roadside fucking bomb and sent Me, Serge and Christine scattered to the mercy of the wind....depression, desperation, pain killers, therapists, fits of deranged songwriting, Utah, AA meetings, mothers houses, ice cream, gigs, creepy park benches, fishing holes...we landed where we landed.

(in all seriousness I have never/or will ever in my life again be as heartbroken and utterly destroyed as i have been for the last bunch of months since the night that i saw the words CANCELED, CANCELED, CANCELED plastered all over this website...i had gotten sober to make that album, to save that band. "Angels of Destruction" was meant to be the album that took our live show into a place reserved for very few…after that we would have been in position to make a real move)

perhaps god had another plan? I dunno.

i recon if we were Pearl Jam or REM (or any other band badass enough to survive for ten years or more) we probably would have decided to take off the next two/four years.

But Marah was kinda forced to turn immediately around and do a 7 week tour of Europe (I say forced because if we would have canceled that tour as well, THEN YES, it is quite possible that we would have lost EVERYTHING we had ever worked for) The best analogy for this might be like having a beautiful 1973 red Chevy Malibu that gets T-boned by an 18 wheeler in a really bad neighborhood far from your home. You love the car so much that you wait there for 2 months fighting off the vultures until the tow-truck finally comes and takes you back to the garage where you can fix her in private.
In real life we ended up in Spain playing shows to amazing crowds that managed to breath some life back into our broken spirits, it was an amazing, soulful time and I'm so glad we did it (thank you Joe G & Johnny Pie!!)

But when that tour ended we did the collapse for real, for real, have a great summer everyone…Kaboom.

ANYWAY in the week leading up to this "house concert" performance the promoter led me to believe that this gig was turning into a "press conference" of sorts and that had me pretty nervous to be honest...What will you say? "the message boards!?" this guy said this! this guy is FURIOUS with you!! He's an "insider" he knows!!! AAAAAGGGHHH

Insider?...Jesus dude, I have 2 friends and neither of them even has the Internets….

So fuck em', we just played a bunch of songs, I thought they sounded bad ass, i mumbled some shit between em but that was about it...the music was talking again and that felt great.

If our band/music/members make people emotional...I am super proud of that.
Because since laying our guitars down at the end of the song "Wilderness" in Barcelona on April 5th 2008 We have said NOTHING and now I see that was wrong.
I apologize…I was drained….I am sorry. We let this web-site go untouched and gave nobody any information, regular people just worried about a band that has played some role in their lives. I should have said something.
But as a testament to y'all…. these forums have continued to buzz with gossip, hearsay and even straight up "made up shit"!!! Ha, you guys are awesome music fans...seriously, makin shit up! you all deserve music fan Grammys.

Someone said MARAH RIP (good album title BTW) He said he wanted to be the first one to say it...I honestly can't blame him, i didn't give him any reason to think otherwise until now i guess.

( & here is where it might get a little touchy for you over-protective superfans) MARAH RIP is a term reserved for only me to say, not me with my brothers permission, not managers, ex-managers, record labels, horn sections, the IRS (who are after me), the EasyPass Police (after me) I will kill this bad bitch when I am ready and not before (next Tuesday, 8 records from now) It's my call… Cool? Cool.
If you love or have ever loved this band then I assure you you are in good hands with me as captain because I am a junkie for it. I have proven over & over again that I can swing very low to keep it alive. The junkie will get high. It's a fact.

To be completely honest I do sometimes fantasize about making a new band with a new name that could carry all of Marah's music forward while adding new chapters to the songbook , in my fantasy every old ceiling Marah has ever slammed into disappears and all the old locked doors swing open making our music suddenly available to thousands and thousands of different people who maybe could really use a band like ours...would really love it perhaps, why not?
I've seen great bands come from great bands before...BUT
(and this is what makes me ME!)
Lately I've ALSO been thinking very seriously about getting the word MARAH tattooed on both of my inner forearms (Jesus Christ i would look hard as fucking nails if i did that!!)
just tonight walking up Bedford Avenue in Brooklyn going to rehearsal i stopped and stared into the window of a tattoo parlor, a gothy, tattooed girl inside smiled at me…a sign? What's stopping me?? Fear of offending somebodys grandma at some christening I'm not going to anyway. I don't think so. Fuck. Maybe tomorrow.

In August we will be in Nashville recording new music.

Show dates will begin to appear here by then as well.

I hope this helps a little bit.

Have a great 4th of July.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY AMERICA!
David Bielanko

Well, if you're Dave and Serge Bielanko, you know from struggle, being from Philly and all; the city that spawned Rocky does not suffer wimps, and those boys could hold their own with the best of them. So they regrouped and honored their European tour dates. But there was another challenge to come: Serge, who had recently left the east coast with his wife, departed on a long-threatened hiatus from the band not long after their return to the States. Serge--the heart and soul and spirit of Marah--was gone, as was the drummer they'd signed on for the European tour. Now what, you ask? To quote from Springsteen: "How many times can you get up after you been hit?"

But we're not talking about just anyone here--we're talking about Dave Bielanko. The guy who toured with a broken hand; the guy who, after years of alcohol abuse, stopped drinking cold turkey (probably saving his life). Dave, though he's not much over 6 feet tall, is pretty badass. He played J.V. football in Conshohocken, Pa. (still has the jersey to prove it), and he throws a pretty mean punch--just ask his brother Serge. Dave is someone you almost never see without a cigarette in his mouth; he frequently lights several during shows and sticks them in under the strings at the top of his guitar while he's playing. And I'm sorry--I know this is a bad thing to say and very politically incorrect--but he looks incredibly hot with a cigarette dangling from his mouth. So there. And did I mention that he has deep blue eyes that absolutely devastate me to the point where I forget what I'm talking about when he looks at me? When I interview him I always have to stare at my notes or look away or I get all flustered. Can't help it. I know I'm a professional journalist and all, but I'm a girl too, and he's a guy with a guitar who writes some pretty killer songs. What can I say?)

Ok, so where was I? Oh yeah, so Dave B. is badass and all. And he pulled his shit together and--with some help from Jesse Malin, who took him on the road with him in Europe--put together a pretty decent show with just himself on guitar or banjo and Christine Smith on the keyboards. (The two of them, after having met courtesy yours truly some years back, have become virtually inseparable. They are so in tune with each other musically it's almost as if they're thinking each other's thoughts. It's an amazing thing to see, and it warms my heart watching them play and knowing that I brought them together.)

Which brings me to tonight. So Dave and Christine--with bassist extraordinaire Johnny Pisano in tow--are headed to Spain in about a week to play some festival or another and needed to warm up a bit, so they played a house part in North Jersey in front of a few good friends. They'd played there before and always done well, but this was different. There was a lot riding on this show; the departed band members had a gig tonight in Philadelphia with their band, and a lot of the Marah Faithful were likely to attend. Gas is expensive, it's a Sunday night in the summertime, etc. etc. And worst of all, months of carping and speculation on the Marah message board about just what was going on with their favorite band had demonstrated that their fans' patience was wearing thin. In short, Dave, Christine and Johnny didn't know who--if anyone--was going to show up.

As it turns out, they needn't have worried. There was a respectable number of fans in attendance, and they were attentive and boisterous. And Dave & Co.--with only two days' rehearsal time--well, they came out and they kicked ass. Christine--the lovely and multi-talented--played keys and accordion, while Johnny Pie wailed on his upright bass (which is totally cool and tougher than it looks to play--go ahead and try if you don't believe me). Dave was on fire vocally and his guitar work was razor sharp. I don't know if it's because he's stopped drinking or what, but he is focused like I've never seen him. They played both old stuff--Marah songs written by Dave--and new material co-written by him and Christine. (The two of them apparently have over an album's worth of material--they have been writing songs together for a year or so now. After what I heard tonight, all I can say is someone needs to record this shit now.) And I think even they were surprised by how well things went--I caught them shooting looks of relief at each other several times throughout the night.

It was 90 minutes of pure musical joy. I can't remember when I've smiled so hard, but it had to have been at a Marah show. Here they were, once again playing these songs that I love so dearly and have missed so much. And even better, I was reunited with my favorite people in the world--Marah fans. It's the kind of thing that gets you through the week, that you reflect back upon when life has dumped another load of crap on you. And you smile all over again. It's hard to describe how happy this band makes me, how happy I was tonight. (And just when I thought it couldn't get any better, Dave handed me the set list before walking off--he never does that. Wow.)

(Oh yeah, I should mention that at some point early in the show, Dave realized he had smoked his last available cigarette and began fishing in his pockets for a new pack. He pulled them out finally and then realized he had nothing to light them with. Turning to Christine, he asked, "Got a light?" She shrugged. But yours truly saved the day. I happen to always carry a lighter in my purse, and thinking fast, I pulled it out and, striking a flame, held it up for Dave , who leaned down and lit his Marlboro Light. I gotta tell you, it was pretty hot. Good thing I was on my third beer by then...)

It was pretty amazing. And the new stuff, while not necessarily Marah material, is every bit as powerful and vibrant and beautiful as anything Dave's ever written. One the new songs is--ironically enough, given the events of this year--called "Road to Ruin," and quotes another Ramones album title in the lyrics. (Did I mention both Dave and I were wearing Ramones t-shirts?)

There are times when your life turns to shit and you don't know how you're going to get through the day. When everything seems pointless and empty. At times like that, it's very easy to give up on all of it. But nights like tonight help me remember why I'm still here.

Thanks Christine, thanks Johnny. And thank you Dave--for everything.

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Oh yeah, here's the set list:

Can't Take it With You
Coughing Up Blood
Barstool Boys
Angels of Destruction
Within the Spirit Sagging (new)
This Town/Mighty Good Leader (Skip James?)
So What if We're Outta Tune (With the Rest of the World)
Wild West Love Song
Angels on a Passing Train
For Nothing (new--introduced by Dave as their attempt at Bossa Nova)
Body
Road to Ruin (new)
Waitin' for the Devil (new, kind of folky)
City of Dreams
Fever
Point Breeze
Formula, Cola, Dollar Draft

Encore:

Hey Rock & Roll (new)
Faraway You

(No, I'm not one of those total geeks who tells people what was on the set list but not played because frankly, I don't have the time or inclination.

Get a life. Seriously.)