Hello fans and friends!

Has it really been so long since we've kept in touch? You haven't changed a bit. Well, your hair's a bit different, but I can tell those eyes from a mile off. I'm sorry we've been a bit incommunicado. John has even taken a brief break from his hectic schedule of waking up, Twittering, eating, Twittering, and then Twittering in his sleep. If you haven't been following JR's Twitter site, you can follow him HERE.

The reason we've been so quiet recently is because we have finally put the pedal to the creative metal and hunkered down on those last little bits of the new record we've put off for far too long. Also, we've been rehearsing for some super special festival appearances this summer -- the first at the Doe Bay Festival on Orcas Island in WA, the second at the Bumbershoot Festival, and third as a part of a very special Barsuk Records showcase for Musicfest NW in Portland, OR.

This has been a difficult process because, as you may or may not know, Nabil accepted a job as Label Manager for 4AD which requires him to spend less time in a van traveling our great country and more time sitting behind a desk in New York and shuffling papers. We are super excited for his rise to prominence, and are glad to hear that the label's uniform policy was updated to allow ridiculous sideburns and mustaches specifically as a part of his contract. That being said, we now have the daunting task of filling Nabil's shoes. As John posted on the Long Winters Message Board:

"For Doe Bay we're going to have famous American Mike Musburger, formerly of the Fastbacks and Posies, (and innumerable others), and for Bumbershoot we're pleased to announce that Nabil will be flying out to play one last show. Both of these guys are amazing musicians and each show will have it's own unique character. After that, look for us to have a permanent replacement fro Nabil by the time we play in Portland in mid-September."

We are excited to be back on stage and playing new and old favorites for you again. If you'd like to catch up with what's been going on in our months of uncharacteristic quiet, you can check out the YouTube channel 13SongswithJohn, which, only 8-episodes in, has already featured throaty chuckles, tears, and near-death experiences. Who says John gives run-of-the-mill interviews?!

For those of you unable to make it, we hope to keep in better contact over the next few months, both here, on Facebook, and on the band's Message Board.

We will be seeing you all soon!

The Long Winters

There's no denying that the Crocodile played a central role in this town's music culture for the better part of 16 years. Even though it was closed when we stopped by, from the outside it still looked exactly as it always had. But as we stood there with our noses pressed against the windows and I tried to explain the historical significance of the place, I could see my European guests were nonplussed. They had never heard of bands like Satisfact, or Unwound, or Varnaline, or Lucky Me. They wanted to know about Nirvana and Pearl Jam. Fortunately for me those bands played the Crocodile too, but I felt like I was betraying the place by touting only the "big names" that had graced the venue. Our tour moved on, yet part of me wished I'd had a way to tell the story of the Croc as I knew it.

Hello Little Winters!

We hope you are doing well, and apologize for being incommunicado for the last little while. We promise we have been keeping busy; work is well underway on our eventual follow-up to Putting The Days To Bed. To tide you over until then, we have an exciting announcement!

The wonderful team at Dorsia films has just released a DVD chronicling our tour-closing, homecoming show at Seattle's Showbox Theater on April 14th, 2007 that we wanted to draw your attention to. It's available through Barsuk and other respectable retailers now!

It's chalkfull of goodies, including 19 live tracks filmed in HD with 5.1 surround and 2.0 stereo sound mixed by John Goodmanson. Extras include a commentary track, and a featurette on the Through With Love documentary.

We are confident that it will be great for stuffing stockings, but perhaps not so great at stuffing turkeys.

There is only a limited pressing available, so be sure to act fast! Thanks everyone, and happy holidays! We wish you the very best for 2009 and hope to see you all soon!

The Long Winters

In 1986, when I first attempted to grow a beard, the general consensus was that beards were for murderers and maniacs. Almost no one in mainstream America wore a beard during the eighties, and even in Alaska a beard was a serious statement that the wearer ate cold beans from a can and slept with his dogs. The only public figure of any note who wore a beard at that time was Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, who also wore a bow-tie, rode a mule, and carried a blunderbuss.

I always felt that clean-shaven adult men were suspicious-looking—either too vain or too conformist to let their face do what nature intended—so I strove to grow a beard from the first sign of a fuzzy wisp under my nose. In every country from Greece to Pakistan adult men wear flourishing moustaches as soon as they are able and until they die, just as they are expected to wear pants, and many of the world's religions consider the beard an obligation for the observant men. Unfortunately this association with fundamentalism has discredited the beard over the years, so that clean-shaven faces have come to represent modernity and beards, by extension, to signify archaic and traditional ways. In the sixties, the hippies wore beards to announce their rejection of modern life (and their embrace of nutritional yeast and zucchini bread) just as in the eighties American men rejected the hippies by pampering their cheeks like babies' asses. The nineties featured a brief explosion of goatees, so that in 1994 it seemed like a majority of American men were auditioning for a job as a sitcom bongo player, but the mass-insanity passed and the goatee returned to its rightful place as the beard of choice for doormen in Irish bars. [...]

Read more at SeattleWeekly.com

"My reputation as a ladies' man was a joke. It caused me to laugh bitterly the 10,000 nights I spent alone."
-Leonard Cohen

It is almost universally assumed that rock musicians avail themselves of copious, practically on-demand casual sex with their fans. The images of rock stars lounging backstage after a show literally covered in a blanket of squirming young girls, or running for their lives from hungry teens willing to perform any deed no matter how depraved are so pervasive they practically define the job. It's a case of collective wishful thinking, shared by the fans, their detractors, and the musicians themselves, that casual sex is a crucial and inextricable fringe benefit of being a musician. My married friends accost me with salacious and knowing winks, our female fans eye each other at the merch table like hungry cats around a wounded bird, girlfriends past and present peremptorily accuse me of everything short of sex-slavery and will not be assuaged, and interviewers leer and blatantly solicit for details— all while the unglamorous truth flops around like a beached carp. Whenever I've attempted to disavow this myth of constant sex-having, which I'm forced to do whenever I'm introduced as a "rock star" or whenever I so much as shake hands with a girl, I'm roundly ignored and even scorned. I can't count the times I've stood in a group of guys and patiently denied ever deflowering a single teenaged groupie or making it with a Satan-worshipping sex-cult, only to be dismissed as either blatantly lying or shouted down by rousing disbelief and horror. The myth and legend of rock debauchery is too powerful, too precious, for even my closest friends to not suspect that somewhere, after the show and behind some velvet curtain, I must be shagging teeny-boppers three at a time.

Like all fantasies and myths, this one is so powerful because it's based in fact. People DO go crazy for their favorite bands, and that craziness often gets expressed in sexual form. Teenage fans in particular often don't have the maturity to separate lust from their other feelings—I know I didn't. Hello, Jane Wiedlin— but even well into adulthood people will go slightly bananas when confronted with the physical presence of the person who sings their favorite tunes. Likewise, musicians are often quite receptive to the idea of receiving adoration in sexual form. It's very confusing to be treated like such a special person for an hour a night, and doubly so to be stared at unblinkingly by your excited fans after the show. An attractive person willing to steal you away and lavish you with kisses is a welcome respite from the routine, especially since your bandmates have long ago stopped treating you like a special person. Still, even with both parties striving to make it happen it's fairly difficult for touring rock musicians to hook up with their fans, and the vast majority of interactions never get anywhere close to sex.

For more, visit SeattleWeekly.com

John's weekly blog for Seattle Weekly.com was posted earlier today. Here is an excerpt, followed by a link to the full article.

Continue reading Seattle Uber Alles at SeattleWeekly.com