Cat's Cradle

Here's a photo Tim took of the show last week at the Cat's Cradle in Chapel Hill. I love the stars hanging above the stage. I didn't notice them that night but Tim's perspective accounts for a lot I don't see.

Toronto

True or False: Land of Talk kicked ass last night.

Tonight Ann Arbor. In the dressing room right now. "Nirvana" is written in blue painter's tape above the door. Something about that surprises me. Not that I'm in the dressing room Nirvana was in because they played a lot of these venues when they were our size, but more because I guess I think of them as a band who might not have had the energy for putting their name all over dressing rooms. You know? I picture them as a band who would roll out of the van hung over, come in and have a drink, sound check, nap until doors, drinks, play, then pack and leave for the hotel where they might leave a bunch of beer cans and drug odds and ends laying around. But apparently they were the kind of band to tape their name around. Unless somebody else put it up. Chris? What's the true story here? Dave?

Upstate NY

Just driving through Albany area, listening to the Breeders. Is this not the perfect pop song in the end of everything?
Spitting in a wishing well.
Giorgio has been driving the whole trip until now. Matt just took over and there was a back and forth about cruise control. Some people are for it. Matt’s against it. It got quiet for a while and we were all just looking at the hills when Giorgio said, “I like cruise control because sometimes my foot gets tired.” Matt said, “Yeah, that’s how it is with pussies usually.”
Josh left the tour to go home today like he’d planned on doing. The plan was that he’d just go for a week but by the end we all realized that he’d have to come back and at least do the west coast with us. So he’s going home to normal life for a little while and we’re going to Canada. He said he’d have to email the “tips” address at Pitchfork that The Rosebuds’ merch guy “Is going to do the west coast after all.”
Are we the only band that has a merch guy that people blog about? I’ve read about Josh in blogs—about how nice and funny he is. When we play shows without him, people who have seen us before ask about him.

East Coast

We’ve been making our way up the east coast and are headed to MA right now. I was told to try melatonin for getting to sleep on tour. Might have taken too much because I’m in a sort of dream state today. We are in Memorial Day traffic and there’s nothing to look at. We make a lot of how close people sit to their steering wheel. One woman was so close to the wheel that there were at least six different fatal scenarios floating in the van having to do with proximity to the airbag. Giorgio: “No, it’s just that the bag won’t be able to fully inflate.”
Josh: “Vertebra man. That’s the way to break one. That’s the way it happens.”
Justin: “Crush her fucking chest man that’s for sure.”

Passing through Yonkers I remembered a trip Saskia and I took to the big city when we were in college. We drove up to Yonkers so we could meet another friend and stay with his sister. She lived in one of those yellow Yonkers apartments. We’d been warned by Saskia’s mother not to talk to anyone because of muggings and murders. She’d been a writer in NY in the 70s and told us all about the crime. As we walked up to this woman’s apartment building a man wearing a baggy blanket-coat affair shiftily whisper-hissed “White trash white trash,” to us as we passed.
The apartment was really nice because the sister of our friend was rich from exotic dancing in the city.

Philadelphia

Tim Lytvinenko took this photo of us in the photo booth of the venue. The camera in the photo booth wasn't working very well with all of us in there and Tim stuck his arm in to get this shot and we all loved this photo and we said, "Yeah, that's great! Let's do it again!" and put more money in the photo booth. Then we said, "What are we doing!? Tim, you just take more of the good ones!"
From left to right: Justin, Giorgio, Kelly, Matt, Ivan, and Josh. Justin plays guitar, Giorgio plays bass, Matt plays drums, Josh is in charge of everything.

Ivan's knee

I'm sure some people noticed something was going on with Ivan's knee last night at the Bowery Ballroom show. He really hurt it playing basketball recently and he reinjured it last night on stage. Too many leg kicks, too much jumping around. So he crawled off stage. Today it is pretty bad--he won't be able to walk without something. We plan on continuing the tour as of now though.

Conway Twitty

Conway Twitty's bus went down my dirt road when I was 10. I was the only person to see it.

Get Up Get Out Video Shoot

This is our first official video shoot with people, a set, cameras and all that. You should know that we are very stubborn and this makes us think we can just do everything ourselves. This doesn't always produce positive results, but whatever. Inventing the future is always weird because you don't know what people will decide to do with your ideas. The point is, we decided to forego all the great directors who had really solid ideas. We didn't know what we were waiting for, but we just couldn't commit to working with anybody we didn't already know. Then Charles Story--our long-time friend who plays bass and recently played with Ivan at the Great Cover Up at King's--said he could do it. So we started talking about ideas and ways to make it happen and Charles totally became our hero. So we put him in charge. Then he said, "No, I'm not in charge." Then I said, "Charles, you are the director." He said, "No, I'm just gonna..."
"No Charles. You're in charge."
"No..."
"Yes."
Anyway, he's a nice guy so we agreed on a compromise: We won't call him "The Director" and he will be in charge of everything and direct and produce the video.
Agreed.