Thursday in LA and it's classic calamatous lo-fi madness for WWJD as we head into the Indie 103.1 studios for our live session only to blow up our decks about 3 minutes before we go live. 

It's Friday afternoon, the guys are sound checking for tonight's Bowery Electric gig - this is the one we have been building up to.  

so last night we played at the Annex in the lower east side. and, well, it was kind of weird. after the party atmosphere and great crowd in Brooklyn it was a bit of a change in vibe. The venue was weird, the bar staff unfriendly, the promoters half insane, and the crowd too cool for school. It was like being back in London. still, we made the best of it, played a good show and went home early (2am) for a much needed full nights sleep. we'd hit the wall. too much partying and jet lag makes WWJD a tired band.

Role call, everybody present?  So it's Weds afternoon on the Lower East side.  Our hotel room is full of clothes, there's an airbed, krazee glue, and St Mark's best dressed man in a bowler hat sat within touching distance. 

im meant to have written a blog week ago. i keep forgetting. so, i'm at rehearsal and i'm writing it here and now

so far, i don't think is going very well. i'm not a natural blogger. hopefully it will pick up toward the end and get more exciting.

so yes, anyway...whats going on? we are currently rehearsing for our upcoming tour of the US of A. A tour which i am now naming: A TOUR OF TWO CITIES (thats Dickens, he's a big deal round our way) because the tour consists of one week in New York and one week in LA.

so far todays rehearsal has been terrible. we ruined every song. Gemma has some kind of eye problems, and Amy has some kind of issues which are better not dicussed on a public forum. Tim seems healthy. I feel a bit tired.

we have a gig in Maidstone this friday at the Druids Arms. should be a laugh. come along.

the S key on this laptop is not working very well, and i refuSe to blog any further until the situation has been resolved

more later. apologies for the drop in standards represented in this blog. i'll try harder later

Kindest Regards

John

28 days until we’re on our way to NYC and the panic is starting to set in.

Will all our equipment work after surviving the flight and will it work with the difference in power supply? What if the airline loses our luggage / equipment? Am I going to have to go back to using dreaded CD decks? Are we going to have to resort to plan B? Does anyone know what plan B is??!!

I’m sure it will all be fine, Tim’s found us American adapters that apparently work and I’m going to have a go on John’s laptop to see if I can come up with a back up option on there just in case. Anyway, I’ve got a whole 28 days to think of other disasters that are waiting to happen.

Luckily we’ve figured out we’re not staying in the LA hotel with the glass bathroom (or The Great Glass Shithouse as it came to be known). It was my fault, I got it mixed up. I am really rather glad that we’re not though. I think after the tour we’re going to know each other really well anyway but I didn’t want to know everyone that well!

Despite all the panic, I’m looking forward to the tour more than anything. New York! LA! Woooohoooo! We’re all discussing how we’re going to document the trip, I’m going to take photos, Amy’s going to have the video camera and John’s going to write a blog which I’m sure will feature here on myspace soon after the event (edited, of course).

Oh, and we’ve got a gig on the 1st June which you’ve all got to come to for three reasons:

1.       We’re great.
2.       It will be our last UK gig (until we’re back of course)
3.       It’s my birthday on the 3rd so everyone has to buy me drinks!


love
Gem xxxx

I'll take a quick break from the thankless and interminably frustrating task of trying to find a shop in the US that will post a power adaptor to the UK, to say a few words about the comings and goings in WWJD-land of late.

The album is all finito! Finished, mastered, put to bed not to be awakened until 28th September. Yes that's right, you heard it here first, we have a release date!! Don't get too excited, this is bound to change at least half a dozen times in the next few weeks. However, we do know that it will be called Black and Blue and the first single from it will be Your Awful Kids which will show its dirty face around mid-July. We debuted this live the other day and it rocked all over the frickin place...in a good way.

John and I have been preparing the album sleeve thanks to the genius photos of Ross Halfin and Huw Davies. I'd like to tell you we suffered like a fury with the DYMO label maker to do all the lettering but it's all done with computers these days y'know.

Preparations for the US tour continue and we're apparently only about 6 weeks from lift off. We are currently confirmed to play 4 shows in New York and 2 in LA. We are also hoping to find the time to squeeze in a session for Indie FM in LA. The brilliant Chuck P has been playing some tracks off the album and we look forward to finally meeting him. We had the crushing news recently that the room we are ALL sharing in LA has glass walls round the bog and the shower. Some sort of rota seems to be in order. I think by the time we get back be will all be a lot closer or utterly disgusted with each other. It really could go either way.

Talking of sessions (which I was if you go back 92 words) look out for our BBC Kent session when we get back from across the pond. We will be playing some acoustic tracks (what?!?) as a preview to the Lounge on the Farm festival where I believe Sunday is the day all the cool bands show up.

On a peronal note, I've been doing a lot of circuit bending lately. The reason for this is threefold. Firstly, I'm nerdy and its fun. Secondly, we've customized our keyboard setup this way so it is unique (eat that shit, Crystal Castles). Thirdly, I am now gonna start selling the little beauties to help fund the accomodation in the US and maybe get us out of Willy Wonka's Great Glass Shithouse. By the way, for those who don't know what circuit bending is, it is the short circuiting of old eighties toys or keyboards to create new sounds and effects. Remember, battery powered only. Circuit bending mains operated stuff may give rise to being killed extremely stone dead!!

So that's that for now.

Remember to follow us on twitter so that I'm not tapping in all those inane updates for fuck all reason. We are under the username _WWJD (which is perhaps not a surprise).

Tim

We have been very busy in WWJD camp recently.

Firstly, keep checking in for blogs from each and everyone of team Jesus that includes agents, managers, radio types and randoms.

We are gearing up for our American tour and Gemma and I are laying out our shopping plans and trying to figure out how we are going to squash soundcheck, gigs, eating and (more importantly) drinking into our heavy shopping regime. I’m sure we can do it, watch this space!

Also, it has been very unusual time for us as we have been in front of the camera a lot! We worked with Ross Halfin again, which was incredible and amusing. Ross had his work cut out for him as we are a motley looking crew but we were really happy with the end result.

Number of times we got told to

• STAND STILL 8
• LOOK UP 6
• STOP LAUGHING 17
• STOP LOOKING FAT (john) 3

Many people are wondering what Gem is standing on. Because of the height differences we had to put her in heels and up on her decks. (our li’l diddy rascal!)

You can check out the pics on our photo section and if you fancy a gander at all the amazing stuff Ross has done go to ross halfin . com

We have also just finished our photo shoot for Blown magazine. It’s a new national glossy coming out soon and we will put up pics ASAP.
We worked with an amazing photographer called Huw Davies.
He got about 6 different looks out of us and we have had a little sneak peak of the end results……WICKED! Once the magazine has picked the photos they want to publish, we will upload them here.

Don’t forget to follow us on twitter (@ _wwjd)
The whole band is on there and you can check in with us at any old time.

I think that’s it for now. Have a great week and check in next week for a new blog.

Big love
Amy wwjd
xxxx