9/3/09

I. NEW CD NOW AVAILABLE

Girlyman's New CD 'Everything's Easy' Is Now Available Online!

We're thrilled to announce that our new CD, 'Everything's Easy,' is now available for order! Self-recorded and produced, 'Everything's Easy' contains 15 original Girlyman songs. We did it our way, and we put our hearts and souls into it. We can't wait for you to hear it.

Listen to clips and order it at:

http://girlyman.com/store.php


II. TOURDATES WITH PO' GIRL

September & October CD Release Tourdates with Po' Girl!

In just a few short days we'll be hitting the road for our first official CD Release Tours with our new friends, Canadian wunderkind Po' Girl. We played a couple festivals with them earlier this summer and were blown away by their creativity and electric energy onstage. We'll open for them in Canada (mostly Ontario) and then they'll come support us in the U.S. for our east coast CD release tour. We'll be hitting ON, QB, CT, MA, ME, VT, NY, MD, NJ, and VA.

They're even letting us borrow their awesome drummer, JJ Jones, for a bunch of shows. Should be a total blast! Check out tour dates here on MySpace or at:

http://www.girlyman.com/showdates


III. NEW MYSPACE & WEBSITE

New new new! You may have noticed that our MySpace page has recently been spiffed up. We also have a new website! It features new photos, new bios, and our continuously updated tweets. It looks more like we look now, and less like we looked in 2002.  See it here:

http://www.girlyman.com

Much love as always...see you out there,
Girlyman

I. New GirlymanLive.com Website Launched!
II. Girlyman Feels Chill in Air, Heads West
III. The Gift of Girlyman


I. GirlymanLive.com is Up!

We are thrilled to announce the launch of GirlymanLive.com, a website where you can order and download live Girlyman shows!

To see the new site, go to:
http://www.girlymanlive.com

Over the years, we've noticed a lot of fans recording shows from the audience and trading them online. While we support booting, we also thought it would be exciting to make higher quality recordings of live shows available.

Luckily, ever since November, 2007, we've been traveling with the fancy digital recorder that we used to record our live CD, Somewhere Different Now. Even after we finished working on that CD, we kept pressing "record" each night.

This website is our way of giving you access to the high-quality recordings that we've been making, engineering and (lovingly) mixing since then. Over time, we will be adding more shows to our offering, and we are hoping to eventually make as many shows as possible available for download. In almost all cases, we will include the whole show - mistakes, embarrassing patter, and all. After all, that's what makes a Girlyman show, a Girlyman show!

Check it out:
http://www.girlymanlive.com

P.S. On a related note, physical CDs take more time for us to process than downloads. If you ordered a live show you attended recently and haven't received your CDs yet, you should get them soon. All our elves are working round the clock. Thanks for your patience!


II. Girlyman + December = West Coast Tour

So! Are you enjoying the season of dry skin, chilled bones, and 4:30pm darkness so far? Not as much as I am!

It's true. (Avoidance of) winter is (partly) why I moved down to Atlanta in the first place--it exists here, but in moderation. But on the bright side, winter gives me and my bandmates an excellent excuse (as though we needed one) to tour the sunny west coast. Comin' right up!


Saturday Dec 13th, 8 pm
HILLSBORO, OR (Portland area)
Walters Cultural Arts Center
527 E Main St
(503) 615-3485
http://www.ci.hillsboro.or.us/Arts/WCAC/Events.aspx


Sunday Dec 14th, 7 pm
SEATTLE, WA
Tractor Tavern
5213 Ballard Ave NW
(at 20th Avenue NW)
(206) 789-3599
http://www.tractortavern.com
Camille Bloom opens.


Wednesday Dec 17th, 8 pm
SAN FRANCISCO, CA
Dolores Park Cafe
501 Dolores Street
(at 18th Street)
(415) 621-2936
http://www.doloresparkcafe.org


Thursday Dec 18th, 7:30 pm
FELTON, CA
Don Quixote's
6275 Highway 9
(831) 603-2294
http://www.donquixotesmusic.com
Lucy Wainwright Roche opens.


Friday Dec 19th, 8 pm
BERKELEY, CA
Freight & Salvage
1111 Addison Street
(510) 548-1761
http://www.freightandsalvage.com
Lucy Wainwright Roche opens.


Saturday Dec 20th, 8 pm
SEBASTOPOL, CA
Studio E House Concerts
Sebastopol, CA 95472
(707) 542-7143
http://www.northbaylive.com


III. Finish Up Your Holiday Shopping at Girlyman.com!

You have to admit, Girlyman CDs are a relatively recession-proof way to say, "I love you." I mean, what product has responded less to inflation than the good old $15 CD? What other product's MSRP hasn't changed at all since 1986? (Why is this?)

So, let someone on your list in on your Girly secret. Give the gift that keeps on giving in 3-part harmony. Give 'em some Girlyman!

To visit the Girlyman store, go to:

http://www.girlyman.com/store.php


See you somewhere out there!

Love,
Ty, Doris, and Nate
Girlyman

http://www.girlyman.com

This morning on my way out of the hotel, i glanced at the requisite stack of USA Todays on the front desk and read a quick survey: Since Obama's victory, 67% of Americans feel "optimistic," "proud," or "excited." Only something like 23% feel pessimistic and about 17% feel "scared." For the umpteenth time in under a week, I teared up.

From the ecstasy of Tuesday night to the giddiness of Wednesday's morning-after astonishment to the apparent continuing reality of President-elect Obama, I, like everyone else, have been fascinated by what it all means. I went for a run in Prospect Park Wednesday morning and looked at every passerby for signs of some new shared reality - who are we now? Riding the subway, I was dying to know what everyone was thinking.

As the initial euphoria of the election begins to wear off, I've noticed that some people are beginning to add just a little edge of self-protective cynicism back into their voices. Not wanting to be disappointed by what will doubtlessly be an imperfect presidency, people are checking their excitement. "Well, we'll see what he actually does." "Well, this won't cure racism." Or as my mom's partner, who is African-American, said to me last night, "Yeah, but I still can't get a cab in D.C."

Obviously Obama's election is not going to change everything overnight. It remains to be seen what kind of an administration his will be, and how it will or won't change the way that we as Americans relate to each other and to the world. Still, I want to make the case for why our celebration and optimism are founded, regardless of what Obama ends up doing with his power; why we don't need to temper our joy with pessimism (more commonly called "realism" these days); and why this election truly is about us.

We create our leaders. They are us, in condensed form. Just as George W. Bush was the perfect reflection of our national apathy and appealed to our worst selves at exactly the time we as a nation embodied that spirit, Obama came forth out of our collective sense of what we could be, perhaps in direct contrast to what came before. En masse, we wore out the model of cynicism; we took it as far as we wanted it to go. McCain/Palin tried to take it further, using all the same techniques of the past eight years, and we finally said no.

Seizing the moment, Obama bet everything on the idea that our sense of optimism and hope, no matter how sublimated, was actually deep down who we are, our deepest instinct - deeper even than fear. Maybe the reason we are feeling so astonished right now is because he dared us to take that chance on ourselves, against the backdrop of perhaps the most cynical time in American history, in an atmosphere of such utter doom and gloom that we either had to agree to give up on ourselves and our world, probably for once and for all - or, simply argue for our own worth. That we chose the latter is nothing short of a triumph of the human spirit.

To me, the fact that 67% of Americans feel optimistic, proud, or excited right now means that change has *already* happened, on a national (and probably a global), internal, scale. And what we create in the world always starts internally, with ideas, and ideas come out of a sense of what is possible.

So - what is possible? Obama is willing to even go beyond "hope" to a true understanding of the nature of reality: as he said in his acceptance speech, "Anything is possible." Those of us who are in the business of uplifting others feel a great sense of relief that he is willing to go out on a limb and say the thing that we've staked our entire existence on. It feels like finally having external backup from a world that we've seen mostly laugh at us, or at best call us dreamers.

But don't take my word for it; take it from Malcolm Mitchell, a fifth grader at the Sojourner Truth School in Harlem, who I just read about on CNN.com. He said "[Obama] kinda motivated me because looking at the past, people say 'black men can't do this, black men can't do that'...you know, he's changing time, little by little. Women can vote now, and he's the first black president."

Because we argued against our own limitations, worlds have opened up for Malcolm Mitchell, and for all of us, on whatever level. That is already change. It will manifest in ways we can't predict. And *that* is exciting.

Ty shows off her new guitar and Doris displays impressive lip syncing abilities.

OK, so ever since Girlyman moved down here, we have been asked just about daily, "So...why Atlanta??" (in a puzzled, slightly concerned tone of voice). People want to know! Why on earth...Atlanta??

So, I will now offer a story to illustrate Why Atlanta.

The other day, I had to go get new photos taken to renew my passport. I put it off as long as I could, recalling with a shudder the horrors I encountered the last time I tried to do such a thing, in New York City. Never again, I swore! This time, I drove for five minutes, pulled into a parking lot, parked, went into the local Kinko's, the woman took the pictures immediately and rang me up as they developed, handed me my photos in a little folder, and I left! The place was immaculate and I was the only customer. I drove away and was back home, parked, and inside my house within another five minutes. The ENTIRE operation, door-to-door, took UNDER 15 minutes.

I was almost angry about this. I wanted to shout at the nice Kinko's lady, "Can't you make it a little harder! Don't you want to ask me for something I don't have, like a utility bill or a copy of my lease? Shouldn't I get a parking ticket? Shouldn't I have encountered urine or a rat at some point in this process? Can't you make some loud noise, can't something be broken or cost me 200 extra dollars??"

Stay tuned. I'll post more Why Atlanta stories as they come to me.

xo ty