Homecoming - September 10

! We made it back to Austin, safe and sound, my friends. I would love to tell you way too much about a mostly boring day, save for the few hours spent at Emos and my post show hangout with Andrew and Alex Dupree, but I am exhausted. We will see how much I get through. Tour is a tiring thing! And I'm nearly convinced that you feel it the most once you get home and lay in your own bed. It's like it all falls down on you right then.

BUT I will share that we played at Emos outside tonight as a part of the Wild Frontier Fest and it was so much fun! Granted, there is a silly amount of stress that comes with trying to set up and line check a 7 piece band that uses 20 some odd channels on the mixing board (weeee have a lot of stuff) in 10 minutes (deeeefinitely went over that). But we made it through. It was a quick show. People squished together as far as I could see. Lots of dancing. Lots of hooting and yelling and clapping. We only played 5 songs or so, but they were good ones. Fun ones! It definitely was not the most flawless set but hey, the people liked it.

We signed some records, some posters, some cds. Met some new fans. Met some excited old fans and posed for pictures (?!).

How in the world did I get here? Life is weird, but this is pretty great. And as life goes, this won't go on forever. So here's to my attempt to soak it all in now. I try to remember every detail of these days, so when I tell this story when I'm old, my kids might somehow believe that way back when, their mother was pretty alright at that there violin and played music with super talented good-hearted musicians--and for some reason, hundreds of people stood to listen.

Good night friends.

It's been a good one!

Until next time,

-aisha

September 8

Saturday. The tour is almost over. We are currently trudging through some Dallas area traffic and listening to Broken Social Scene to keep our spirits up. Just three hours to the last show! But lets time warp for a quick second!

Wednesday we played in St. Louis, MO, after waking up in Bloomington, IN. We ate breakfast there with David Chapman, Travis' dad, before leaving the small college town for the big city.

St. Louis, St. Louis! I've driven your highways twice now, walked a grand total of 4 blocks, and I still have absolutely no sense of what you are like! I really hoped to finally ride up to the top of the famous arch, and to explore The City Museum. I'm writing from my cell phone so I can't link you to it, but its some sort of awesome museum that also functions as an all ages fun zone--think giant replica of a cave, giant spirally shiny slide, huge climbable tunnel fun land, etc. You know, all the great things about Discovery Zone that you loved as a kid and wished existed for your adult self.

Maybe I'm building this up in my mind... anyway, the St Louis show was infinitely better than our Bloomington performance, save for the fact that hardly anyone was there. 50 people? Maybe? We decided it would fall into the bucket of great but unmemorable evenings. Its weird how much the crowd shapes how you feel about things.

Thursday was an epic driving day. 10 hours! From Missouri to Dallas. Something about our breakfast at Denny's kept us full for 7 hours. Ugh. The day was comprised of mediocre food and weird mid western gas station stop after weird Midwestern gas station stop. We must've looked like freaks. Kendall with his long hair. Me with my Jamaican hair. And the mustasche men ambling about. The locals definitely found us um interesting to say the least, if their bewildered stares meant anything at all.

But we eventually made it out of the Midwest and back into Texas, nestled into our sheets and the familiarity and peculiarity of a suburban Dallas neighborhood.

Texas!

Sept. 9

Dallas! At long last we made it back to Texas. After sleeping in at Mike's Dad's house, and eating scrambled eggs (18 to be exact) prepared by Mr. Kendall Clark, we loaded up and were on our way to Deep Ellum.

Club Da Da hosted a festival presented by Spune. Six bands, two stages, free stuff. why not? Today was one of those days where I wish I'd done some sort of time stamped journal, so when people get jealous and imagine that every moment of being on tour is thrilling and glamorous I can show them what happens most days. We loaded in at 2:30, and had a doozy of a soundcheck. I think we tapped out at about 5:15. Then we proceeded to undo half of what was just done, to make room for the three bands playing before us (this is way more frustrating than it sounds). We walk down the street to dinner. Eat entirely too much food. And then it's 7 o'clock...and we aren't scheduled to play until 11:30. awesome.

So what do we do? Grab a beer. Sit around. Twiddle our thumbs. The boys seek out Baseball on the TV and find it. I groan and wine and scoff. When they are huddled around the screen so enthralled, captivated--mesmerized one might say--in a sport that woos my attention for no longer than a meager 10 seconds, I am blatantly reminded that I am the only girl among 6 dudes. They watch. go on walks. And I wander. Somehow, after watching a couple sets, chatting and warming up, 11:00 rolls around.

We set up quickly did a short sound check and played the show and it was great!! The crowd was big and so excited. We all played super well. We've put together a pretty "rockin" set, as Andrew would say. Something like: Settler, Clamor, Coahuila, Night Squall, Candor, Harm and Boon and two new untitled songs. f.u.n. Everything sounded awesome from what I could hear. And people were hollering, un-bashfully cheering and seemingly having a blast.  Now tell me, what more can you ask for?

photo by Clare Dempsey.

September 7

Breakfast with Travis' dad. He rode his motorcycle all the way from Austin to Bloomington, IN.

Recap - Bloomington

It has happened again- I let this thing get away from me.  So now begins the series of back tracking posts. 

Bloomington, indiana, home of the University of Indiana.  This is probably the most random city on the map that we have now played four times for some reason. 

But perhaps that has something to do with Bloomington also being the home of Travis' brother Austin, who is also a member of a string laden orchestral band called Brother John.  They are a rotating cast of classically trained musicians led by composer/songwriter Travis Jeffords. 

He stands front and center guitaring alongside Austin and before 15 people with music stands. Their sound is voluminous, made of voaclists, violins, a viola, cello, bass, flute, bassoon, drums, and some other instrumentalists I can't quite see. They incorporate some samples, some wordless vocals, thoroughly composed parts- perhaps the most sonically compatible opening band for balmorhea.

...too bad we had more flubs in our set than we'd like to remember. What are the odds that we would all make mistakes we never ever make?

Note: shows most definitely go better when the whole band has had more than 5 hours of sleep and has not just finished four straight 12 hour days recording in the studio. Go figure. Its okay though, things would get better.

Soma Day 4

Well, yesterday was a bit intense. Lets just say, there were many takes of many things. Lots o scratch tracks. Lots o tracks scratched. BUT it turned out fine. Today we hopped back in and finished up the second song and haaaaaa it sounds GREAT! This record...man. I think I can safely speak for everyone and say that we're all more excited about this than any full length we've recorded before.

Mike is scurrying around, gathering our cups and glasses and washing them up. Kendall is packin up drums in the tracking room. Rob and Andrew are working on a final rough mix, while Travis and I sit back and enjoy the hugeness of this track!

We've enjoyed our time at Soma so much. Most of our time was spent inside these walls (nearly 12 hours a day), but we got to venture out into the neighborhood a little bit. From all that I saw, I have to say, Chicago is a pretttty cool town.

Good times. Fun times. We're packin up and headin out.

ciao.

-aisha

Soma Collage

Welcome to Soma.

Michael. Tracking bass.

yup.

photo by Michael Muller

listening back.

The Set up.

Synth jam sesh.

Peeking at the hall mic.

Andrew, the magician.

Twins.

Soma Day 2

5:00pm - This is our fifth hour in the studio today and things are going as good as they ever were! I just finished tracking some electric guitar. Mike is fiddling around on the bass here in the control room while Andrew is figuring out just the perfect sound. This control room looks like it is the brain of some sort of space station. The mixing board faces the window out into the tracking room. To its left and right sit two long wooden panels filled with more gear than I care to or know how to identify and explain. Knobs, knobs, knobs everywhere. Lights. Buttons. Cords. There's a whole wall of snyth keyboards and analog snyths that look akin to old telephone switchboards. And this thing:

which immediately makes me think its true purpose is to control a silvery robotic arm picking up and moving things around on the moon.

We are still working on the same song, but it's sounding prettttty great I think!

Dinner time all together once we get this bass done done done.

Soma Day 1

We played at The Empty Bottle in Chicago last night and had a blast. Sweet venue. Cool people.Great Bill (feat. Jon Mueller and Brokeback).

I'm writing to you now from the dimly lit control room at Soma, the recording studio where we are tracking new songs for our next full length album. We've been in here since about 1pm, chugging away at the same song, tedious perfected piece, by tedious perfected piece. Rob is working on a vibraphone part, Michael is rolling around the wooden floored room in a wheely chair, and Andrew is at the helm, sittin behind the board, making things sound pretty magical!

We are taking our time. We are getting things just right. And we've got a long way to go.

Here are some photos from today. Enjoy.

Listening Back.

Synthing Out.

Colony Village Restaurant

The Spot.

Store Front.

Big ol doors.

?!?

Andrew standing before an astounding dusty collection

of women's bowling trophies from the 1980s.

Gettin the heck outta there.

Notes

Mustachemen