http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtzfrz-guOo

It's finally official! Mike Byrne, who drummed on many "classic" Mercury Tree songs, has moved onto the big leagues as the new drummer for The Smashing Pumpkins. An amazing turn of events and one that will send shockwaves through the rock world, surely.

We, The Mercury Tree, have released a new EP entitled EERIE. And we have a new fourth member, Alec Moir on guitar. At the end of August we will be playing at Space Rock Mountain Melt and the Hawthorne Theater, debuting a half hour of all new material. It's truly crazy grand times in music land and we hope you come along for the ride with us.

Get your tickets for Space Rock here!
ORDER TICKETS

-Ben

On Friday night we had a show at the Red Room with famed celebrity theme band The Slants. The Slants lived up to their billing with an anime-riffic set of electronic bloopy synth rockers. Sadly, they did not perform their fire breathing act at this show, but breathed musical fire nonetheless.

As it turned it out, it was only them and us at the show. There were supposed to be two other bands, Arden and the Livin' Easys, a Sublime tribute band. These guys showed up in their tour bus, belched exhaust into the venue for awhile, then left in a hissy fit because the Red Room guys wouldn't guarantee them a $100 payout. After all, they're national touring bands, man, they play to 10 or 15 thousand people. So off they went down 82nd Street in search of a better paying gig. Due to this, we were all deprived of hearing a simulated facsimile of Sublime. However, it was judged that we, The Mercury Tree, as well as our friends The Slants, provided more than sufficient rock power to suffuse the evening with rock.

Soundmaster Joe provided a far better live sound mix than we are accustomed to, and we were very grateful to the friendly Red Room staff. We're really looking forward to playing there again soon. Remember everyone, the Red Room is great, cheap drinks, good people and good music. Pay them a visit today, or better yet, every day.

We had an amazing show at The Know on Friday night! We played with Strawberry Sunshine and Black Eye Blue, and... wow. Just wow.

This little hole-in-the-wall bar had a pretty decent little stage that was a lot of fun to play on. We forwent the fog machine, since there was a good haze floating about already, but we had a great little light set-up with a wave machine floating pretty blues and greens around the room. Strawberry Sunshine took the stage, and wowed people with their psychedelic sounds. Towards the end of their set, Ben got up and jammed with them on stage - The Strawberry Mercury Sunshine Tree was amazing! It didn't take long for the song to work its way out, and the spacey strains of guitar and bass, backed by kick-ass drumming kept us all enraptured.

We've got quite the trooper in Aubrey - she suffered an injury at work, but still made it out to sing! We previewed our new acoustic set, with a cover of "Rain", by The Beatles. The Bouzouki was amazing - you should totally check it out:



After "Rain", we kicked it into rockin' gear, and had a great time with some of our favorites. We're really enjoying the acoustic sound, and we're going to be doing a lot more with it for our next show at The Chaos Cafe tomorrow night - I can't wait to see you there!

Black Eye Blue took the stage and was amazed us all with their instrumental tunes, and even sang a bit for us. They put a great end to an awesome evening.

Truly a Spinal-Tap-worthy moment, when we arrived for our show at the Columbia County Fairgrounds, we found we were indeed sharing the bill with a goat festival.

This was a very interesting show and quite different from our usual ones. For one thing, the venue was essentially a barn with no acoustic treatment, a giant echoing pavilion, with a small improvised stage. Open-air on a lovely, HOT, sweaty day. The stage was made of multiple segments that kept spltting apart into yawning chasms while we were playing, and the entire platform was bouncing up and down crazily along with the microphones. At one point, the sound guy had to run onstage to keep the keyboard from falling off the keyboard stand. Disaster successfully averted!

Despite these somewhat challenging conditions we managed to pull off a performance that was at least as good as the Aladdin, and with fewer mistakes. Also, this was a benefit for the Taija Belwood foundation, and the people organizing and running the event couldn't have been nicer. At the end of the day they had 800 attendees and raised over $10,000. Hooray for success and good causes!

Next month we'll be playing shows at Rock & Roll Pizza and the Satyricon. New songs, new CD, check it all totally out, and as always, thanks for listening.

-Ben

I would just like to say that I love what I do, and I love the people who help me do it.

My show at the Aladdin on the 5th went better than I could have hoped for. Especially considering that right before I went on, I thought I was missing a crucial power adapter, and would be unable to trigger my samples from my foot pedals... which would have pretty much meant no show. I was freaking out, hugging Aubrey, repeating "this can’t be happening... my life is over... etc." Only when I walked back onstage to check one last time, did I discover that it was already set up and plugged in. YES! Life is back! I don’t have to die!

It’s a very strange thing to go from playing with a drummer and bass player to playing everything pretty much by myself. I’m so glad I had Aubrey to contribute backing vocals, it meant I didn’t have to bear 100% of the pressure all alone. But I just had no idea how the new setup would go over in front of a live audience. This was my biggest audience ever too, at least 150 people.

It’s a completely different sort of energy playing a set this way. I never INTENDED to have to do a show this way. I don’t think I ever would have TRIED it before having the full band. But there are some definite advantages. For one thing, with fewer people playing, the sound is much clearer, and my voice doesn’t get drowned out anymore. It’s actually possible to hear the lyrics, finally! Even on the low-budget video recordings you can understand them. Con: the insecurity of people thinking it’s not a "real" band. Pro: many people in the audience came up to tell me they were really impressed by how much I was doing by myself. More people told me "you ROCK!" after this show than EVER did at any of the old shows. All I ever heard about before was how amazing my drummer was, which was true, but gets sort of old when it’s all you ever hear.

I watched the old videos with the full band and compared them to the new ones. I did think that having live drums and bass was great. With that gone, I have to make sure I work really hard to create different sorts of energy to replace what’s missing. But it IS possible to create something worthwhile this way. There are MANY things I can do with samples that I could never do before. Different vibe... different energy... but you know what, I’m having a blast. I want to find more people to join me... but I’m happy with the way things are right now.

And though Aubrey’s the only other official band member, I have some great people supporting the band too. Samantha helping with merch and promotion. Cris who shot some amazing video, and who plans to get more in the future. My friend Geoff the photographer from work who came and took some terrific photos. And Katherine and Kira who showed up to support me and shouted things between songs that made me grin. And can’t forget my old friend Brandon who co-wrote Tide Tables with me!

Thanks so much to everyone. We couldn’t do it without you. Things can only get better from here!



Check out the Mercury Tree channel on YouTube for more videos!

-Ben

Mike's message from Jan. 28
"We have reached our breaking point. Everything exploded at once and it is too much to handle for the band, we've decided to end the project. Something else may be born from the ashes of this, I'm almost sure of it, and the E.P. will still release to those wanting it, but the Mercury Tree is no more. Keep your eyes peeled though. This isn't necessarily the end.......

The Mercury Tree
(Mike, James and Avery)"