Listening to:
Alejandro Escovedo - Gravity
Tom Waits - on shuffle
We Barbarians - In the Doldrums

In band-related news (aka, why you’re here), we’re just taking it easy at the moment, enjoying the summer with friends and family, and getting ready to start rehearsing for the upcoming UK/Europe/Australia/Hawaii tour that we’re doing in August and September. I’m working on some new parts/songs on my own at home during the down time and I’m psyched to get together with the rest of the fellas and bounce some ideas around soon. We also have a Fall US tour lined up, that I’m not allowed to share details about at the moment, but I’m sure you’ll hear something from some of the other parties involved very soon. Things are good.

I hope you’re all well.

I’m eager to hear the new Sigur Ros tomorrow, on a pretty big Pedro the Lion kick at the moment, and tempering the mellowness with healthy doses of Botch, Slayer, Converge, Zozobra and Barkmarket.

R.I.P. George Carlin. We lost an absolute genius yesterday, folks.

-riley

Love, Teppei

I went to my first baseball game in 1977 at the age of 2 (Angels v. Yankees @ Yankee Stadium), played competitively until my junior year of college, and some of my earliest memories are of playing catch with my dad in the yard and watching games on TV with. I was born and raised a baseball fan/player. Ever since I first saw Wrigley Field, I’ve dreamed of getting a chance to go watch a game there. In my eyes, the “Big 3″ stadiums are Fenway, Yankee Stadium, and Wrigley–the holy trinity, of sorts. I’ve been to Yankee Stadium a few times, had a chance to see a game at Fenway in 2002, and Saturday I completed the trifecta.

It was amazing. Being in a place that rich in baseball history was a religious experience for me. I couldn’t have cared less about the match-up (Cubs v. Pirates), or the outcome (7-6, Pirates). It was all about just being there. The experience. Eating a Wrigley Dog and having an Old Style. The 7th inning stretch. The manual scoreboard. Drunken Cubs fans. And…

Getting the world’s most brutal sunburn.

The genius in me decided to leave my Angels hat in the bus, forget to put on sunscreen, and resist buying a Cubs hat from one of the ten street vendors on the walk from the Metro to the stadium (I am not a Cubs fan, and won’t pretend to be, even if it leads to sun poisoning. (Hello, I’m a dumbass.) As I walked down to my seat, I thought for a second that I’d be sitting in the shade. No such luck. There was shade, but it was about eight or ten seats away from me, and there wasn’t an empty seat in the house (it was biggest Wrigley crowd this season). So there I sat, slowly roasting in the Chicago sun. I really thought my sun-experienced Southern California skin would fare much better than it did. Lesson learned.

That said, this sunburn (and the fact that my face will probably peel like a snake shedding it’s skin in a couple of days) is totally worth it.

/uber baseball geek story

On a more relevant note, big thanks to those of you who made it out to one or both of the Metro shows in Chicago. Despite the sunburn and trying to kick the tail end of a nasty cold/phlegmtacular that has been ravaging the bus, I’d say those shows were the most fun I’ve had on this tour so far. I love how close everyone feels at the Metro. It a great-sounding, intimate, comfortable place to play. Good times.

It’s crazy that we’ve only got 11 days left on this tour. It’s really flown by.

Hope you’re all well.

-riley

I’ve been through many phases of beard enjoyment and absolute loathing. Now, I would never actually razor shave my face because:
One: I don’t like razors near my skin anyway.
Two: eew the horrid rash those razors give me.
Three: a clean face and I look like a baby man.
Growing the beard out meant going past my regular comfort level. This means that normally… when my beard gets to a certain length, I have to shave it because it itches and starts looking silly (my opinion of course). I’ve found that the beard growth hits many of these stages. Lengths that are comfortable, lengths that are itchy, lengths that make me feel unkempt, and lengths that make me say, “Damn! I look like a grown man!”

At the moment I plan on cutting this beard off at the and of this tour. Namely because of one specific part of this beard, and I’m not actually sure if this part of the facial fuzziness would actually be considered “beard.” This evil entity of hair rests upon my upper lip. YES, THE MUSTACHE!

For this experiment I decided that I would not trim any part of the beard what-so-ever. This means that, I must endure the torturous lip-hedge that haunts me so. My distrust/dislike for the mustache starts with eating food. I’m fairly skilled at eating without getting food in the mustache, but I do often mistake mustache hair touching my lip as food and take a bite at my self, “ouch.” Also there are times when my facial lip fuzz hops into my nose, resulting in a sneeze, or a reaction similar to a fly landing on my nose, “gah.” Lastly and somewhat specific to my profession is the microphone mustache hair pluck, “OUCH!” Every once and a while my mustache with find it’s way between the metal weave of the microphone grill. When I step away… pluck! a sharp pain.. and then watery eyes.

The ’stache is honestly my only bane, spoiling my love of bearddom. As I said before… My respect for all those bearded has grown from the experiences I have had with what little beard I have generated in the past few months.

Conclusion:
Beards are great. If you see someone with a beard at least give them a thumbs up, if you haven’t already congratulated them… and I don’t mean a little beard… I mean something that took some commitment! I’m not by any means claiming that I have reached even close to a “serious beard,” but I do feel somewhat closer to the beard world.

Words I’ve heard describing beards: “Cool, sweet, gnarly, rad, bruly, dope, crazy, itchy, fuzzy, and much stremph.”

Love,

Edward

The multi-talented musician, backline tech, computer wizard/programmer, and photographer, Chris Jones, took some photos during rehearsal.

In other news, the “Come All You Weary” video is done, and will be premiering on absolutepunk.net on Friday. We’re really happy with how it turned out, and I actually think it’s the quickest editing process we’ve ever been a part of. Zach (Merck), the director, did an awesome job. Hope you all enjoy it. Let us know what you think in the comments.

We’re in Philly tomorrow at the Electric Factory (one of my favorite venues). A trip to South Street, and Jim’s Steaks is in order. A hometown show for Circa. Hanging with the mewithoutYou dudes. Stoked.

The new Russian Circles album, “Stations” is out now. Go get it.

More photos, videos, and babble coming your way soon.

Be good.

-riley

-PLAYLIST-
Russian Circles - Station
Back Keys -Attack & Release
Radiohead - Live from the Basement
Jakob - Solace
Pedro the Lion - Control
any and all video of Jojo Mayer playing the drums

Anyhow, the shows have been going fairly good. Some great, some ok. It’s taken a lot longer than usual to settle into the set since we’re completely changing it every night, but I feel like we’re just starting to get the hang of it. Keeps us on our toes I suppose. Thanks to everyone coming out to the shows. I feel like the vibe has been really cool. A bit more intimate maybe with the air/earth stuff. We’re having fun, and I suppose that’s what really counts. Doesn’t hurt that Circa and Pelican are great dudes/bands. We’ll make an effort to check in more often, but if you don’t hear back from me, that means I’m being oh so productive and you should be happy for me. Oh, and the highlight of the tour for me so far was probably visiting the legendary Sun Studio in Memphis. The place is EXACTLY the way it was when it was first build. Same linoleum floor tiles, same acoustic tiles on the walls, unreal. If you don’t know, Sun studio is where people like Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison, Howlin’ Wolf, Johnny Cash, etc. got their start. Crazy. It’s late. I need to sleep.

Teppei

haven’t done this in a while, but here’s some stuff I can think of off the top of my head that I’ve been digging:
The Band - The Last Waltz Soundtrack
The Kinks - Part One Lola Versus Powerman And The Moneygoround
The Beatles - Revolver and anything after
Harry Nilsson - Pussycats
Devendra Banhart - Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon
Dr. Dog - anything they do
Spoon - GaGaGaGaGa
Richard Swift - Walking Without Effort
De La Soul

I was listening to music while I browsed pedal circuits online and realized I have some friends that are in great bands that not many people know about…so:
Aushua (who are joining the west coast leg of the tour)
We Barbarians
Yellow Red Sparks
The Valley Arena

And finally, stuff I just bought off iTunes:
Dr. Dog - Passed Away Vol 1
The Black Keys - Attack and Release
Trojan Records Compilation

Goodnight.

The tour is off and running, and despite a little rust, some technical difficulties/evil robots (shocking, right?), and too many songs to choose from to make our set lists, everything is going well. Thanks to those of you who made it out to one or both of the San Diego shows. Great crowds both nights, and it was great to start a tour at home (kinda) amongst friends and family and phenomenal weather. We couldn’t be happier about the bands that are out with us on this run. Getting to share the stage and hang with Pelican and Circa Survive every night for the next six weeks, is a blessing.

There were some questions about the “Roadie for a Day” contest we’re running with MacBeth, PureVolume and LiveNation, regarding how much “work” you’d be doing and if you’d have to “carry heavy stuff”. The truth is, you’ll have to perform the entire load-in by yourself, set everything up perfectly (without any help from us), set up the lighting rig, go to front of house and run soundcheck, focus lights, line check everything before the set, and once the show starts… you’ll have to run sound and lights from front of house while teching on stage. You do it all. Once the show is over, you’ll have to break everything down, pack it up (again, with no help), load the trailer, and then once you’re done, we’ll take turns punching you in the balls (if you’re a girl, you’ll skip this step, obviously). Sounds cool, right?

Seriously though…

You won’t have to do any heavy lifting, or any lifting at all, really. You won’t set anything up, or be put to work at all. You basically get to come out to the show early, hang out with us and our crew, see the inner workings of what makes a Thrice show happen from start to finish, hang backstage and just be a part of our crew for a day. You’ll be a “fun tech” more or less. Plus, you get free shoes. Awesome deal, right? So go sign up.

Big thanks to those of you who have picked up Vols. 3 & 4 this week. We REALLY appreciate your support. We worked long and hard on this project and to have it finally be out in it’s entirety feels great. It’s crazy to think that we finished recording it almost a year ago, and it’s just now getting to your ears. So now that you have the whole Alchemy Index, I thought it would be cool if you guys could post track listings of your version of The Alchemy Index in the comments. You’ve got 24 tracks to choose from, you can put them in whatever order feels best to you, mix and match songs from different EP’s, think about segues and how songs flow in and out of each other, and just basically build your own Alchemy Index. Build and share playlists in iTunes, maybe? Discuss why you chose the order you did? It’s like Build-A-Bear, but without the bears, and without the five-year-olds. Or maybe it isn’t. What?

That’s about it for now. When your post references Build-A-Bear, it means you’ve had too much coffee and that it’s time to back away from the computer. We’ll be updating regularly, so keep checking in, and start posting your ideas for track listings in the comments.

Peace,

Riley

-PLAYLIST-

Torche - Meanderthal
Pelican - City of Echoes
Emily Haines - Knives Don’t Have Your Back

I see that the album has leaked, but I also see that everyone who comments on this site are digging it, and that’s great. We’ve all been super anxious to get this second half out to you all, because from the day we started this project, it’s always been about the whole picture and it’s been hard for us only having one half of that out. Thanks to everyone who have downloaded but are still vowing to buy the record. That’s very honorable :) And of course to those who are trying to “abstain” or “not cheat”, hats off to you gentlemen (and ladies). Self control is a rare gem in these times! But yeah, I’m very excited for next tuesday (4/15) for the album to be officially released. Dustin once again did a great job on the packaging/artwork. On second thought, maybe it’s totally lame of me to be mentioning our record leaked on our site, but no one buys records anymore anyway right? Come on, I dare you to prove me wrong!

I guess it’s obvious that I (we) have been snooping a bit on the comments, and I just want to commend everyone for keeping it clean, good, and productive. I have to admit I was pensive about allowing comments on our updates because we’ve had some disastrous message boards in the past, but this seems to have been working out…at least so far. Keep it up.

Finally, on the news side of things, like the video we posted mentioned, we’re just busy rehearsing and getting ready to leave. It’s going to be a fun tour. Great bands, great peeps, and we’re really excited to be playing some of the Air/Earth songs. Word people.

Teppei