the new record is actually done. ahead of the release date. weird. if yr within traveling distance of cafe bourbon street, you can get one on october 13th. other than that, the release date is october 24th. we will come and see you very soon...

we are in the studio this weekend, record retention in columbus, with nick and dwayne. we're working on a total of 11 songs for the new record and it should be out in september on dead canary (CD) and CDR (vinyl). we'll be posting a few songs once they're ready....

found some notes under a greasy burger king bag today, thought i'd get 'em out to you, the peoples.

Day 1. Just hanging out in Chicago, no show today, ate enough food to survive the first week in a worst case scenario, and it's always a worst case scenario. Devin broke out a case of Port he got in, well, Portugal, and I have found the new love of my life. mmmmmmmm......

Day 2. Milwaukee, Wisconsin. At the Riverwest commons, but first we have to get there, and from chicago that shouldn't be any kind of a big deal, it's maybe 90 mins tops, but there's obviously weather on the horizon. we get some bad directions via a phone call to a buddy (david lynch, seriously) with a computer, and we end up about 20 miles west of our destination. the wind was really picking up and we HAD to stop for gas, and while i'm inside paying there's a call-in radio show playing on the PA: (man screams) I'VE NEVER SEEN ANYTHING LIKE IT!!! IT'S ABSOLUTELY UNBELIEVABLE!!! there were tornadoes just outside of town. so we pile in and haul it back towards milwaukee, make the show, not even a drop of rain on our dirty backs. had a so-so show, first nights can be a little creaky, but the catholic boys were great, as were the marked men, to whom a little guitar loner love was lent. badass. devin and day got us a hotel by the airport and we nearly burned it down.

Day 3. breakfast, fix the window (passenger side has a thing where if you look directly through it, it falls down into the door), and smokes. happened to see a local newspaper and just had to buy it. the photo was of the town we had been in the previous night, it's been leveled, and the headline "THE SKY JUST EXPLODED". sigh of relief, hit the road for St Paul. Big fun at the show, stayed again with our perennial friend sandy, drinking and smoking something out back on the gazebo.

Day 4. Fargo. Fargo . Fargo. Fuck. we misjudged how long it would take to get to fargo and showed up wayyyyyy too early. however, fargo has the cheapest smokes this side of the free-camel guy, like 2.50 per pack. so a great opportunity to stock up, recharge, great eats, cool fucking people, head to les dirty frenchman's house and sleep for....

 

Day 5

(10 minues later)

about 10 minutes,

cause we're driving to SEATTLE. we have 2 days but it's still gonna be tight. brought a mini dvd player for the trip. i'm watcing movies while driving, but it's ok 'cause i'm in north dakota.

Day 6. 10 pm

just driving and gassing. occasional food. found a kind of coffee that should probably be illegal, i have 3 cups of it at all times. i hit jason in the stomach just to prove that we were still alive. he threw coffee on me. we are still alive.

Day 7. Seattle never looked so good. The Funhouse is the new version of Zack's, by the needle. peed on the needle again, trad., getting ready to play and aaron roeder shows up, and lifts the spirits. really good show, energy we shouldn't have, everything's feeling right. finish it off and pack it up because aaron's got a room for us in bellingham for 2 nights and when we get there it's already full of people (at 4am). so YAY and HOW YA BEEN and i gotta get some sleep come 10. a little later wake up to get some smokes out of the van and there's the comrades, about 20 empty beast cans, and a pile of ashes all over the driver's seat. standard. also a page from the yellow pages, but there are no strip clubs in bellingham. sorry fuckers.

TOUR JOURNAL-EUROPEAN TOUR 2005 “HEY MAN, YOU GOT A CIGARETTE?” Day 1. March 21-22 Well, swinny dropped us at the airport and we laid-over in newark, lovely, and the overnight to amsterdam had a bit of a technical problem being that the lights wouldn’t turn off in our section of the cabin, oh that and they played fucking “ray” on a loop all night long. No amount of meclazine will knock me out. Arrive at schipol airport hoping to see someone from kalium (our booking guy’s “agency”), nobody holds a little grafton sign. So we head to the bar, 9am local time. After about 15 euro (at an exchang of 1.36 usd’s per, plus fee) worth of phone calls, we figure out that no one is coming, fend for ourselves in the form of a cab to a likely hotel, somehow get everything right, and go to sleep at noon. 3 pm there’s a knock and dutch inflected “Hello” and we’re up to meet our driver, Jochem. Turns out it’s not his fault we weren’t met at the airport, it’s seetz’s (the booking guy from kalium). Jochem turns out to be really cool, very tall, and a hell of a driver/sound guy. He will help save our tour. Just before sound check I pull my guitar case open and, but of course, the headstock is broken. They say “loosen the strings”, so I loosen the strings. I say “be very fucking careful with this, it’s all I’ve got, please put it upright” and they say “sure”. But there it is. Broke, sickeningly un-guitarlike. Everyone is head shaking, I’m vomiting, jeff evans lends me his amazing custom tele for the night. So, sound check, good food, hang out with bassholes and jeff, who’re finishing a 7 week tour, have some drinks, swap some stories, play show, head off to another bar called diepte for after-party, play a completely impromptu set with bim, making up songs, covering songs, making a hell of a racket, close down the bar (5am) and half cab/half stumble back to the hotel. Sleep comes at around 7 am…. Day 2 “Tele-phone, TELE-phooone” 10 am, up for shower, check out is noon but we have to get to groningen early to get the SG fixed and we have the day off so we’re staying with Jochem, who lives not far from VERA. His phone rings and the ringer is one of the Explosions in the Sky singsonging the word telephone. We kind of kill the day wondering how the tour is going to shape up and witness Jochem eat a “salt-herring”, apparently a good hangover cure, just raw herring covered in salt and onions, eaten whole save the head, held by the tail and lowered dangling into the mouth. Cured my hangover just watching. Walk to vera and check out a japanese band with some great ideas and a lackluster drummer, and then see sunn-o, 5 guys with guitars and druid robes, huge amps, and more or less one long note. I allow my bowels to rattle for around 6 minutes and then seek out the downstairs bar, where we are well taken care of even on a day off. I think they closed the bar around 4, so back to jochem’s to finish off a bottle of jack daniel’s, a gift from bim the day before. At some point will says something to jochem, who replies “I can no longer understand you or speak your language. I’m going to bed.” The sun is up. Hay is hit. Day 3 Somehow able to wake up at 3 pm, head down to a great little restaurant in the neighborhood. I have a kip shotel, following the dutchman’s lead, and jason decides to play it safe with a pepperoni pizza. Will rolls the dice, opting for Altona pizza, a “let’s just see what the fuck it is” kind of a thing. Here comes the flop, kip shotel is grilled chicken on a plate with fries, mayo (yep), and veggies. Yum. On the turn, Jason draws his “pepieroni” pizza, which the waiter pronounces as he places it on the table, while Jason stares at it blankly. Green peppers, onions, red peppers, and what look like maybe banana peppers cover the pie, no meat in sight. Tough break there. But the real trouble comes on the river, Will’s Altona pizza. Will hates fish. Altona pizza is tuna pizza. Serious tuna pizza. An inch and a half thick. He chokes down one slice, starving, and jason gives him some of his. Moral of the story: don’t gamble with yr food in the foreign land. We load in to VERA, the single greatest place to play music ever, at 5pm. We are shown our rooms at the club, green and blue for those who know, sound check, explore the club, dinner is great indonesian, the thermals show up a day early and are staying in the other 2 rooms and we shoot brief shit with them, play the show which is great good fun, sell way more records than we could handle in such short order, people were great, supportive and very enthusiastic, drink till 5. I’m asleep shortly thereafter. Jason and Will stay up… Day 4 Wake up is 11 am, and I go looking for the guys. Jason is there but no Will. We’re having breakfast at around 2, we need to load up and drive to hamburg soon, still no will. 2:30 he walks in, still awake, “hey I went walking around with this guy and we hit all the coffee shops and bars that would serve us and I just realized what time it is and came back ooo is that breakfast?”. On to hamburg. On the bill with a ska band, we only get 7 songs out before the snare head pops and I’ve broken a string and the 200 in attendance have just started really warming up to us. Oh well, we’ve had shit shows before right? Sleeping is above the club and there’s a reggae dance party thing that lasts until 5. Nobody sleeps in europe… Day 5 At this point it’s worth mentioning that our tour is shoddily booked at best. We had a tentative date in denmark for tonight, and we wake up to a text msg saying that it’s off. Add that to the 3 days (sun, mon, tue) that we were SCHEDULED off, and you get what looks like a gaping hole in the middle of the tour. 4 days off, and we’ve already had one off last week. The bar lets us stay another night in hamburg so we do some bar hopping and hit the fish market, which opens at 4 am that night/next morning. Great brats and pastries, hard to find the fish, tho. Day 6 Decide to drive back to groningen and crash at jochem’s. seetz finally returned a phone call yesterday and informed us of all our time off. He has just returned from tour with the dwarves…which probably has a lot to do with the shambles our tour is in. Day 7 Bored. No shows. Fuck seetz. The carton of smokes I bought before leaving ohio is gone, and euro camels just plain suck. Switching to lucky strike, which are also easier to order over the language barrier anyway. Day 8 This is a driving day, still off, but munich is 10 hours and we booked our own hotel there for the night. Stopped somewhere in germany for coffee (we do a lot of that) and were searched by the german police, roving border guards since the european union and open borders and all. Is there anything more intimidating to media obsessed american youth than german police? I don’t think they know the melody from “springtime for hitler”, if they do they didn’t comment as I whistled it while they rummaged through our van. At the 9 hour mark we’re all pretty delirious and traffic first slows and then stops. On the fucking autobahn. Dead standstill. 2 hours of not moving at all. Townes on the tape deck does not help one bit, we all get out and take pictures of ourselves standing in the middle of the fastest highway on earth. Day 9 Finally a fucking show tonight…Ljubljiana, Slovenia. Easy drive, great meal (STEAK!), cool people, nice club. Maybe all the days off, maybe dehydration, perhaps a little too much red wine sauce with the steak, whatever the contributing factors, about halfway through Slowpoke I passed out. Not punk-rock-fall-down bullshit, not oops-I-slipped. Tunnel vision, fading sound, a couple swirlies, and the next thing I know I’m looking up at the bottom of a cymbal. Which is still being played. So I keep working my hands back and forth until it sounds like what the other guys are doing and get back up, find my place and finish the song. We made 22,000 tollars that night in merch, which sounds like a lot and looks like a lot in your hand but isn’t much really. Day 10 VIVA ITALIA As we leave slovenia we stop at the italian border for some caffee and cheapo cigarettes (they cost the equivalent of 18 USD per carton), and I see a van full of guys who are obviously a touring band. I introduce myself, and the guys are from italy, and they’re on tour with an american band. They say “the Flying Luttenbachers.” Wow, cool. So they come over and ______ says “oh we’re on tour with the sax player from the stooges, he’s been telling us all kinds of crazy stories, would you like to meet him?”. Sure. So we did. 4 hours later we stop at a gas station and who’s fueling up but the luttenbacher’s caravan. I can’t pass up the opportunity twice, and give them a copy of both Blind Horse and the Bassholes “Out in the Treetops”. Weird. Been looking forward to this for 6 months now. The italian booking agent is great, he’s got a solid schedule for us, this weekend is my birthday, and the food (it always revolves around food) is excellent. Tonight played with the chronics and stayed with andy from the hormonauts in a place that can only be described as beyond thunderdome. Tons of metal sculptures and re-rigged cars, buses, motorcycles. We slept in a shed next to andy’s bus, which is parked in the middle of this huge squatted piece of land. A very weird place to wake up. Day 11 Tonight at pois pub. small enough, big enough. Again, I cannot say enough about the food. so goddamned good. 2 encores and i hacked up lung later, we head back to the hotel, which is a small place and has that exteremely italian fell, like someone's gonna get killed in a very classy way. the courtyard is beautiful, shower with the doors and windows open, lots of night air... Day 12 VIVA ME My birthday all day long. Show in torino, at spazio 211. Cool ass place, rock’n’roll obsessed like most, small room and you play on the floor, which we love. After dinner, watching tv, a man in black says “casa di padre” among some other italian shit I can’t understand and I realize that the pope has died. Grafton goes to italy for the first time and the fucking pope dies. On my birthday. I’d apologize to the catholics if they’d apologize for the inquisition, child rape complicity, persecution of “heretics”, powerlust, trying to make me feel guilty for not being as evil as they are, etc…I, of course, have “just a few beers” and almost need to be carried to the hotel. Day 13 Sitting in an italian café, we witness a minor fender bender at the intersection about 100 feet away. I’m thinking there’s no way this is gonna end without fisicuffs, not one but TWO enraged italian drivers. The conversation is easy to translate through body language, “you hit my car asshole”, “you slammed on your brakes, dick”. There’s a lot of finger pointing and over-animated shows of inspecting the damage, or inspecting a place where damage is alleged to have been done. Hands in the air, rolling eyes, and I just know there’s about to be a punch thrown when, all of a sudden, someone produces a pen and pad of paper, info is exchanged, and everyone goes on about their day. Peacefully. American bloodlust spoiled again. We drive to piacenza, play with a couple young ass punk bands, the drum rug won’t stay still and jason nearly gets the whole kit off the floor and onto the stage by the end of the set. Sleep arrangemnets have been made….a hostle about 30 KM from the club. A 500 year old building with no heat or blankets. Beautiful but not really where you’d rather hang your hat. We play cards with slovenian coins, worthless as arcade tokens once they’ve torn down the mall. We realize how asshole-american this is, and drink some more. I cover myself with 2 jackets and pillows (provided) from the other bunks. Sleep is fitful. Day 14 Da daa da dun dun…..da da-da da da-da da dun dunnnnnnnn We are driving back to slovenia for a pick-up show on Monday. Otherwise we would have the next 3 days off. Monika from Ljubljiana has helped us out, we are in her debt. We laugh about stupid shit, fart jokes, we’re kids. There is a silence for around 20 minutes. Then Jochem, driving, points at me and says “B.A.”, points at jason and says “face”, and cranes around behind himself to point at will and say “murdoch”. We look at each other. From here on, we’re the fucking A-team. Orto Klub has taken us in for the night, and they feed us amazing chicken, local wine, seasoned potatoes and grilled veggies, and a local spirit they call rouda (don’t really know the spelling but it’s pronounced ROO-duh) which is kinda like grappe but is steeped in a local root and really fucks you up. More on that later. The show is great, 2 days notice and more than 30 people come out, we are able to sell some merch and they pay us from the door, an unspeakable amount in tollars but again no ransom, a very much needed night in the positive though. We drink at the bar and smoke some hash or weed with a slovenian cop. Try to introduce jochem to dave chappelle and chris rock on the dvd player, don’t remember much else… Day 15 The Day They Ran Us Out Of Town…or..Let Me Count The K’s Woke up with everyone gone. They left me the key so I venture out into the town of izola, whose center is around 2 K from where we are staying by foot/bike path that lays along the coast of the adriatic ( 2). I cannot imagine how I look to these people. Unshaven, unwashed, barely rested, shaking slightly from early morning DT’s, unable to fake even the simplest parts of the language, lurching through what is one of the most beautiful coastal towns I have ever seen. I manage a pizza and beer at the second restaurant I find, after confusing and/or frightening the staff of the first. I walk back to the club ( 2), where we’re sleeping again tonight, but still no one else around. I sit on a pier and watch a crab on a rock, skip stones into the adriatic potion of the mediterranean. Walk back into town ( 2), still looking for someone who resembles myself even slightly. Nobody. Back to the club ( 2). Find the guys. Back to town ( 2). We go to the office where our hosts publish a newspaper and hang out. They tell us that later there will be dinner for free at the neighboring restaurant. But first we should try some of their personal stock of rouda, special made for maximum flavor and potency. Three drinks a quarter inch deep in water-cooler glasses and we were all red faced and ready to go. Free dinner was the best calimari you could ask for, so fresh it was still trying to get away. Back to the office for a few more roudas and then back to the club ( 2) where we thought we’d have a “few beers” and then crash. But the club was closed. So back to town ( 2) to find an open bar. We found a place called rolling bar that was mostly closed, as in the blinds were drawn but the door wasn’t locked, and walked on in ordering beer on our way towards the bar. 4 shots and 4 beers. The owner was sitting to our right, with three guys who looked like they just clocked out at the docks. Arm wrestling each other. Two skinny teenager types to the left. The bartender can’t be more than 21, and she tells us we’ve gotta go in 10 minutes. We order 4 more shots and 4 more beers, and jason has this thing where he likes to make unlikely friends with people by doing magic tricks for them. So he walks over to the dock worker guys and offers to show them a trick in exchange for posing for a picture armwrestling him. Jason is not the biggest guy in the room, and these guys were just huge. Not much english is being spoken but it’s clear they want whiskey as trade, not a trick. Jason does the trick anyway. A few of the guys are pretty impressed, but one of them is very vocally not. He performes a bullshit parlor trick of his own and then points to his arm, “tricks are for sheet, this is Naturale!!!!!” meanwhile will and jochem are working on beers to go, the barkeep ain’t having it because the return on the bottles is too valuable, and I hear will say above everything else “just rinse out those wine bottles and fillem up all the way with beer”. As though “all the way” wasn’t implied. Surprisingly, she starts filling these wine bottles with beer, and one of the skinny guys tells me “the owner is the the bartender’s boyfriend and I don’t think he’s too happy about any of this”. Will is holding 2 wine bottles full of beer, and the bartender is filling what looks like a plastic lemonade bottle to the top. The owner points at Jason “you small-fisted Meri-con!!”. A glass breaks on the floor. Bottle number three is full. I down someone else’s whiskey and drain the last of my beer, and we are out of there. We look back and the front porch of the bar fills with angry people who for some reason do not follow us. We drink the wine bottles on the way back ( 2) and piss in the mediterranean. The lemonade bottle lasts about 20 minutes into chris rock’s first hbo special, which is WAY funnier than the never scared dvd it comes on as a bonus. Day 16 Guess who’s off again today? Grafton is. So we’ll drive about halfway to munich from here, where we’ve picked up another show last-minute. This time seetz actually had something to do with it, but it was booked 6 days in advance. Enough about shitty booking agents. Got a nice hotel in the italian alps, had a fight between band members about the use of phone cards (my single biggest expense on this tour sans cigs) and got some much needed rest watching italian overdubbed sergio leone films. Weird. Day 17 Munich, at a place better known for dj’s. they have the ability to put on a show though and were gracious enough to help out where it was needed. We stayed with a really cool guy and he cooked us dinner, the show was a little substandard because my voice is finally going out and the monitors were just nonexistant. But we once again turned adversity to our advantage and won a few new friends and fans, which is why we’re here. As jochem, hannibal, says, “I love it when a plan comes together.” Day 18 We were up very late last night, something like 4:30. Woke up at 7 am to drive the ten hours to belgium. Tonight is at the pits, famous to me because of the stories I’ve heard from friends who’ve played it. Small place, urinals are in the entrance/merch area, an american fire marshall would look at it and if he didn’t immediately condemn it would say something like “twenty motherfuckers, tops”. I was told that the new bomb turks last show there drew over 130. Soundcheck and dinner, Steak again, and then hash and beer and then I think we played a show and I think it went very well and then we kept staying up and we’ve only had 2.5 hours sleep and there’s an after party where we’re staying and ramses (our host for the evening) is just having a blast and finally we go back out to the bar and there is more to drink and smoke and somehow we’re still awake and then there is sweet sweet sleep…. Day 19 Didn’t wake up till 2 today. Have no idea what time we went to bed. Tonight is the last night of shows. Utrecht. DB’s. we drag ourselves to breakfast and load up the van, have a couple beers with ramses and smoke a joint for painkiller more than anything. Short ass drive to holland and we’re in the club and tons of beer flowing and some crazy guy with a mask like a five year old with a coffee can through the eye and his foot on a record player chanting in dutch opens the show. I can’t understand the language, but I’m later told it’s mostly random shit, talking about fishing and strawberries, so I don’t get it AND I don’t get it. Couple other bands play while I get a few more beers in, the set kinda flies by, I’m having the best time I might ever have here, and now it’s over, done. It lies there shaking, waiting for the bullet. We order 2 cases of beer and a bottle of whiskey to the room, the whiskey lasts a confirmed 20 minutes, beer is not so lucky. Day 20 Another off day thanks to seetz. He has agreed to pay our driver for the tour, and we hope that happens quickly. Jochem has turned out to be a great guy to have with you on tour, even keeled and practical. Baseball furies play an early set at around 7 pm, and we go to see them. Turns out I already know matt from playing at the beat kitchen years ago. We swap some stories, their guitar player apparently split his chin on the vera floor on day 2 of their tour, drink 2 more cases of beer, just to make sure. at 9 pm we get a call saying we can play a free show at diepte in amsterdam at midnight if we want. We want to but are exhausted and already set off for the night, as is our driver. I turn in early, 2 am. We are going home tomorrow.