Nov 24
The internet is incredible.
If you make it through this whole video. It's pretty funny...er...yeah, pretty something.
Larger view here - http://www.tackfilm.se/en/?id=1259092439689RA38
May 27
May 25 / Welcome Fest!
We were honored to know the folks who created this festival. Hopefully this is the first of many Welcome Fests to come. Attendance was in the 100's and for a first ever, DIY, music and arts festival at a camp outside Cleveland ... we felt like it couldn't have been more of a success. We played into the evening at a small outdoor theatre on a hill. If there's been one recurring element of this tour, it's been that each day, no matter where we are, we've made friendships with people who we are better for now knowing. The bands we've played with have been phenomenal and the people who have been gracious enough to let us crash with them have been some of the most amazing folks we've ever met. Playing Welcome Fest at the end of this tour was too perfect. At the end of our set the drummers from the Lighthouse and the Whaler, Quietly to Himself, Tallahassee and Wildboy of Aveyron all came out and played with Andrew ... it was one of the funnest moments of the whole tour.
May 26
May 24 / Live on WPTS Pittsburgh
As if we don't look forward enough to the flights of stairs and bizarre places we're going to have to carry our equipment into each day on tour ... instore for today were flights of stairs outdoor the Pittsburgh University student union, into an elevator and up to the 4th floor, all while doors are locking behind us due to access restrictions on the holiday weekend. Thankfully we had help. We set up in one of the WPTS studios and ran through 9 tracks off Be One of Us and Hear No Noise and 3 tracks off Ambling EP. The performance will air in August to coincide wih the official ...Hear No Noise release.
May 24
Beaver Falls Coffee & Tea Company
If you've ever seen the documentary, Heima ... picture that (only 1/100 as brilliant since we're talking about us rather than Sigur Rós) in a small town in the hills of Pennsylvania. Clean air, spring in full bloom, canyons and hills just beyond every string of houses, small shops and businesses on every corner, and an old home whose first floor is dedicated to the town's finest coffees and teas. Wood floors, tall ceilings, an old piano, a black lab named "Abraham" who sits at the landing of the flight of stairs up to the second floor ... and us ... setting up for our performance in the BFC&T living room. Just in front of the piano. By the time we were ready, the room was filled with who would later be all our friends in Beaver Falls. The live visuals were projected onto a far wall, one PA speaker on top of a bookshelf, the other on top of the piano. We were all inches away from one another. Intimate and, like in Heima, seemed to be just another performance among the local music lovers of Beaver Falls. After the show, we left everything in the living room and moved to the front yard. A firepit kept our faces illuminated into the night while we laughed and talked until we couldn't keep our eyes open.
The evening was too perfect for any of us to remember to take any photos or video. You'll have to watch Heima ... and then watch Home Alone. It was probably somewhere in between those two.
May 24
May 21 & 22 / Brooklyn and Lower Manhattan
Last year we finished out the tour playing in Brooklyn and it was easily the highlight of the trip. We wandered Bushwick looking for a place to eat and ran into Steve from Cheif Magazine and the Brooklyn Bodega venue. Not having ever heard of us and having only met us for maybe 10 minutes, Steve gave us a show 2 hours before the show that brought us to Brooklyn. We played with Titus Andronicus and Anamanaguchi and then the folks in the audience helped pick up our crap and walk it down the block to Goodbye Blue Monday where we played it all over again. Couldn't have gone better.
One year later, we've booked two shows in New York. Brooklyn and Lower Manhattan. Aside from being eager to play in New York again, we couldn't wait to experience the city a little deeper this time around.
To kick off the visit, we set up camp at a pizzeria in Bushwick and in a matter of minutes, we were reunited with Steve. Apparently Steve is working on a novel right now in which a band loosely based on Metavari are among its characters. That's scary. Scary and hilarious. I think we love Steve more than NYC itself. Below are a handful of photos from the two days we spent there. Discovering amazing food, hauling the van through Times Square, climbing up onto the roof of the apartment we stayed in, and taking audio recordings of the sounds of the street.
May 24
May 20 / Philadelphia
Just south of the heart of the city there's a community of people in Philadelphia called Circle of Hope. They were beautiful and encouraging and filled the room with energy. The only light in the room came from the city beyond the windows and our projector. We've been so fortunate to have been able to play in some intimate spaces this tour. Places where we are able to be quiet, turn off the lights, and perform the pieces we've written together in an environment that feels right. Circle of Hope just felt right. The turn out was great and the bands we played with were absolutely amazing. Anglebrahd opened the evening with a collection of songs he had written over the years using laptop programming, chiptune and 8-bit Nintendo modding, and his acoustic guitar. The evening closed with Geology, the solo project of mewithoutYou's bassist, Greg Jehanian. Geology is a full-band operation but Greg played that evening with an acoustic guitar and a friend on backing vocals. Andrew and Ty and I sat together with goosebumps on the back of our neck listening to Greg's songs. And as if the evening couldn't have gone better, we all went to Geno's afterwards and experienced a "real" cheesesteak.
Andrew captured the audio from a few songs in Greg's set here:
"My Girls"
"Two-Headed Boy pt.2"
"The Deepest Blue"
May 24
PA Tunnel Vid #1
(soundtrack: David Lynch + excitement from Ty playing GeoDefense on Nate's phone)
1242760402-2.mov
May 23
you stop and i'm in over drive you hooked the stars with your eyes in the drive on to me.
The van stereo, mile marker 27, 80W, Penn
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