RAINER MARIA interview on "Just Another Menace Sunday on 90.3 KUSF San
Francisco"
(and their "Musical Sandwich" - two of their songs as the bread and lots
of their songs in-between!)

TIME: 4-5 pm Pacific Standard Time

HOW TO LISTEN:
ITUNES RADIO TUNER
CLICK ON PUBLIC
THEN CLICK ON KUSF

Or:

http://www.live365.com/stations/kusf

Seriously, this tour really is unique. The total cast and crew (as it were) number around 30. That's a lot of names to remember: Seth, Matt, Erica, Jeremiah, Andrew, Brett, Caithlin, William, Phillip, Ian, Nate, Sam, Toko, Aaron, Dave, Box, Joey, Will, . . . OK, that's only 18 names. Even if you learn them all, there's no remembering them all at once. I had to ask five other people on the tour just to even get the list close, and rest assured a couple of our team members are feeling left out, reading this through tear-filled eyes. So getting to know even half the family members is not even going to happen.
I wanted to start doing little vignettes of everyone on the tour, but as it stands I've gotten to know only a few people out here very well, mainly my bandmates. We're lucky then that rumor and innuendo go a long way toward filling the gaps left us by the truth. So I've elected to give you little one-act plays instead, and let the characters introduce themselves as they see fit.
Today's scene opens with Dave, the dark and sulky Street to Nowhere bandleader with a penchant for constantly playing Leonard Cohen songs. All the straight boys love "Chelsea Hotel," wonder why.
Dave was born to front a band, he has unconscious aplomb, he fills out his personality like a classy suit he slept in. Pleasantly rumpled. If I slept in my clothes like that, you'd have to cut them off me in the morning like an accident victim in the ER.
I'm not sure why Dave opens our story. It may be because I want to write about tour stress, and he and I had a food fight in Denver, one on one--"¡mono y mono!" It started because Caithlin stayed at the club when we went for dinner that night. Bill and I neglected to call and ask her what she wanted, selecting for her instead what our waitress called "the best dish in the house," which also happened to be their most popular dish, penne with garlic and vegetables in a lovely vegan cream sauce. Seriously--really, really good.
But a pox on me nonetheless. At the start of the set, Caithlin made one of those impossibly sneaky stinging little asides one can only make to a bandmate, with onlookers all oblivious. Believe me, everybody takes turns. Tonight was Cait's, and in midst of her opening remarks, she said dreamily: "I hate waiting for a phone call that never comes." The entire club heard merely a singer's whimsical complaint about an inattentive lover--the kind of trifle that seems very, very heavy at a rock concert. But I knew better. The canary was taunting me, in front of the whole sold out audience, right to my face.
I winced, sniffled, died a little on the inside. I did my best Kevin Shields, spent most of the set staring at my Asics. Very, very little rockin to be done. And a shame too. The crowd was eager and demonstrative, the sort of crowd that can turn a mid-sized city into the best show of tour.
There was just the one green room for all the bands, and after our set it was crawling with sweaty Rainers Maria, the perpetually buzzing Street to Nowhere, all the Formatters who've rolled out of the bus tweaked on Gatorade and are slowly getting psyched. And of course the terrific, super sweet members of Anathallo. One or another of them is always embedded someplace nearby, the Federal Air Marshals of tour.
Nate from the Format was chattering away amicably through a megaphone. Apparently pulls a Michael Stipe on one song. I don't know. It was a funny gag, I don't remember what he said. I think it was, "Erica, put your hands on your head! Step AWAY from the Budweiser," something. Caithlin grabbed me the megaphone and I remember what I said. It was, "Jetzt ist Schluss mit dem Afftheater!" People love it when you holler anything German through a megaphone. In this case I yelled, "That's enough of this theater of monkeys!"
I was an exchange student in Germany for a year. That's what my host father yelled, banging his fist on the table, as he kicked me out of the house for good.
After the Format went onstage, Caithlin looked at me and said, "Pax?" That means, "Had enough?" in Greek. I nodded my tenuous consent to her proposition of a cease-fire. She gave me a high five. Seriously--she gives the best high fives.
But so our idiotic repressed argument was totally over, and even without someone to blame, my black mood held strong. It could only be that "ground-into-the-gravel" feeling that only comes from having driven 15,000 miles in under six weeks AKA tour exhaustion. Didn't matter.
I don't know how the food fight started. I think I threw a food item at Dave unprovoked. Something grilled. He sized me up from under his bangs and tossed something back. Something one-uppy, sloppier. There may have been a condiment involved. My mom had bought me nice new white T-shirts and brought them to the Austin show, and I pulled mine off over my head so it wouldn't get ruined. Also because I grew up in Texas, and I learned early that if you're going to whoop, holler and behave like a jackass, it's best to go shirtless. Time to pop open a party ball o' whup-ass on this kid.
I wanted to throw this entire paper bowl of salsa at him, but it was too much. We were squaring off like in West Side Story, Sharks and Jets--he was just singing about how we should allow bricks in the brawl, and here I was already reaching for my gun. So I put the bowl over my head like a hat instead, salsa running down my sideburns on either side past my ears. And then I tucked my chin into my chest and hit him in the middle like a linebacker. I believe it was Dave who then threw the tray of creamy yellow potato salad across the floor. For this, I deeply apologize on his behalf to the custodial staff of In the Venue, where we played, or at least to the person who cleans the rugs, should such a person exist, which they don't.
I grabbed the remaining catering tray (wet ass coleslaw! the coup de grace of any food fight) and chased him out of the room, past the stage and into the club. The coleslaw flipped over right about here. I managed to hold on to the tray for another couple seconds, but slipped on slaw and went straight down. Tried to stand and keep running, fell face down again in the same spot, arms pinwheeling. When we got back to the green room, Dave had slaw slime all on his back, which made me feel better. But I suspect he and a buddy maybe faked that mess, out of pity for me.
My mood lifted, maybe just from the exercise.
. . .
Oh, almost forgot--some fans had brought baskets of candy for all the bands. Later that night, I saw Bill tossing Mr. Goodbars to kids through a hole in the drywall that separated the green room from the rest of the club, giggling. If you're looking for a way to cut your tour stress down quick, there's just no beating airborne foodstuffs.
-Kyle

August 27th Rainer Maria will be live on the air in dallas

www.kdge.com you can listen live on the "New School" feed
Adventure Club is on Sunday nights from 6-9PM CST
The session will air about 7:30

Those in Dallas can tune in on 102.1 FM

Opinions expressed here are not necessarily blah blah

Each tour is different, every tour is the same. There's a simple rhythm to every day that is lulling--even comforting. Wake, pack, drive, eat, drive, load in, wait, sound check, dinner, wait, play, wait, load out, drive, sleep. Repeat indefinitely (feels like infinitely). All this you can count on.

Two other things you can count on: near-complete lack of privacy and filthy bathrooms everywhere. Changing clothes in the van or the parking lot (that's me! standing behind the van soaking wet in my underwear after the show); whispering a sexy or grave conversation with your loved one in the van with all your bandmates present, music cranked and the balance set hard left, face turned towards the window, a towel over your head:

Me: "Oh my God I just love you."
You: "What? Sorry [ak ak ak ak] breaking up."
Me: "What? Sorry, you're breaking up."
You: "You want to break up?"
Me: "Oh my God [white noise]."
[three sharp beeps. silence].

End of relationship.

Something's always broken, or missing. If a bathroom has toilet paper it won't have paper towels. Assuming the sink works the hot water won't. Or it'll be scalding, with no cold to balance it out. Soap almost never, hepatitis sometimes. And apparently guys do ten times as many drugs in club restrooms as girls--what else could explain the complete lack of stall doors on many men's room toilets, sometimes with the toilet inexplicably situated in the middle of the room, sometimes directly facing the bathroom door, sometimes without a lock, sometimes with a clear view in from the stage (you listening, The Living Room, Providence RI?!?).

Imagine: you're onstage in five, you're nervous, the woman who made your Taco Bell kept rubbing her cold sore with her latex-gloved finger (true story), your bladder tenses, your colon FREAKS, you're at the club and thank God there's a stall but it doesn't lock and the toilet looks freshly imported from Bangladesh--never even SAW a scrub brush before, couldn't point it out in a lineup even if it waved its arms. You're crouching, jacket thrown over the stall door to say "occupied!", one hand full of cocktail napkins from the bar, the other gripping the bottom of the stall door to keep out the drunk punks, who lift your money out of your jacket but leave your wallet so you don't catch on til way later. And then: no soap, no water. You ask the bartender if you can wash your hands in the bar sink. She hands you a bottle of bleach and picks up the soda gun to rinse your hands.

What's stupendous about this whole affair is that the 35-60 minutes or so we get to play music every night somehow balances all this out. Even the crap nights, like first tour nights where no one knows you're there because the bill is all jam bands and you're listed as sth like "Rainy Marina" on all the flyers. The door money consists of a mason jar passed around, half-full (check my optimism!) of nickels and menthols. And nobody can figure out if they're supposed to put stuff in or take it out. At the end of the night you make $6.87 and what amounts to half a pack of Newports, give or take. You play to a dozen or so bombed hippies, the majority of whom are half-conscious at best. And somehow, I'm not sure how, you have the time of your life.

Because music--despite the mountain of books dissecting its innards with sharp instruments, despite all its schools just bursting with applicants, despite the countless traditions across the world and all their thousand virtuosos--music is ineffable. Inexplicable. There's no reason this thing should work at all, let alone well. Sympathetically undulating waves of air pressure are supposed to make me cry? No, Oprah is specifically designed to make me cry, and even that doesn't work.

Face it--all our daily endeavors, even weird obtuse things like coding html or being Al Gore or designing topographical maps, these things are there for only one or two of a coupla three reasons. Either you gotta eat, and it helps feed you. Or you gotta take care of the brood, and it advances that goal. Or you gotta propel the species forward, and _everybody_ knows that topography will get you laid. Basically: eat, sleep safely, prolong your existence, reproduce, protect your offspring until they can protect themselves, then get the hell out of the way. That's all you have to do. Most all our activities help accomplish those goals, by whatever circuitous routes we've devised to better the prospects of our species as a whole. Not so with music.

Music is all about making the hair on your arms stand on end. It can, in fact--I know what you're thinking--result in the making of babies, but not really as often as anybody wishes, especially not musicians. Believe me, I've tried. If in fact you're all mainstrEMO, music is likely to get you a breakup at best. Or worse, some sort of emo handicraft (a zine, a drawing, a flyer on the importance of a regular breast cancer self-exam with a personal message scrawled on it, like "you saved my life by ruining it") handed to you by a college student who ought to know better and who runs away like a headless chicken, gushing.

No, sorry, music is there to shove you into the chasm of whatever depression you're teetering on the edge of, or to lift you up til your widdle wax wings melt, or to make you embarrass yourself with your pathetically fidgety milkshake, which brings the boys about as far into the yard as the curb. It will ensnare you, it will confound you, it will thrill you, it will hurt you, it might even kill you, if you love it enough. Certainly, whoever you are, it will subtract years from your life. But a year, ten even, is worth it just for that forty-five minutes or so--I promise, I swear to you, please believe me. Come to the show.

. . .

Did I forget to mention the specifics of the tour we're on? All the wonderful details and hilarious caricatures will have to wait for our next installment, faithful readers. Thanks for joining me out on the road. Now get your ass in the van, we're running late.

--Kyle

in case you missed the live show, check out the podcast version from Y100 in Philadelphia. the show includes an interview and acoustic performance.

enjoy!

Hi everyone --

Our summer tour officially starts tomorrow (July 14) - here's a long overdo update with what's been going on and what to expect in the coming months...

The Summer Tour
We have a full summer tour with the amazing band The Format - openers on the tour will be Anathallo and Street To Nowhere.
See complete list of tour dates below (you can purchase tickets at the usual ticketmasters, ticketwebs and venues).
http://www.theformat.com
http://www.myspace.com/anathallo
http://www.streettonowhere.com

Lollapalooza
While your checking out all the other cool bands at Lollapalooza, dont forget to come by and see us play on Saturday, August 5th at 12 noon.

In your store and on your radio
And if the tour dates werent enough! Catch a rare acoustic performance or an intimate electric set as we invade your local record store and airwaves.
See below for the current schedule of in-stores and live radio performances, be sure to check our website for the latest information!

Philadelphia - August 15, 6:00 pm at AKA Music
Seattle - August 26, 2:00 pm at Easy Street Records
Berkeley - August 28, 3:00 pm at Rasputin

St. Petersburg - July 25 on WMNF 88.5 at 5 pm

Did you join our family yet?
For those who dont know, we finally created a street team - aptly named Catastrophe Crew! Weve had a great response on our recent tour, thanks to everyone who has joined and worked hard to spread word. If you're interested in becoming part of the r|m family you should write to: streetteam@rainermaria.com. Be sure to include your Name, City and State, and school if applicable. As a part of the street team, you'll be eligible for exclusive live tracks, free tickets to performances and meet and greets, and exclusive merchandise!

Message Board is up and in action
Recently we have brought back the Rainer Maria message board - its better than ever with loads of topics and threads - space to post photos from shows or to introduce yourselves, to ask questions about your favorite RM songs and ask about shows, you name it. Take a peak inside, login and chat away with other fans!
http://rainermaria.com/board

As always thanks for the support, can't wait to see everyone this summer!

r|m

tune in to LA's Indie 103.1 on Sunday, May 28th for the specialty show "Dead Air" when we'll be one of the featured performers on the show.

out of towners, here's the link to listen

here we are with Chuck, host of "Dead Air", from the taping on May 4th

Check out InSound to get a FREE pin pack with purchase of the new album!

InSound is giving away Rainer Maria pin packs with the purchase of Catastrophe Keeps Us Together - but supplies are very limited, so click here to order now!

After years of selling t-shirts, cds, pins and stickers out of the back of our van, we've finally made the leap into cyber-space. Click here...Rainer Maria Online Store to pick up brand new EXCLUSIVE online-only merchandise designed for Rainer Maria by Brad Surcey.

Much love,

r|m

The message board on rainermaria.com is up!! Go on, treat yourself!

<3
r|m