That's that

We're nine hours deep in a twenty five hour drive,
coasting through the yawnfest that is West
Texas in the middle of the night. Once in a while,
you smell an oil rig or see a flattened armadillo,
but otherwise...pretty boring. Unless you like
counting mile markers. If you do: boy, do I have
the place for you.

The bad news is that we've got sixteen hours left
and that's if we make it through LA without
traffic, which would be a miracle on par with the
Second Coming or me enjoying a Kevin Costner
movie. We'll see how it goes. We're all a little
homesick though, and if you combine that with
coffee, in-car naps, and Graceland, we may not
stop at all. I say this at 1 in the morning, so
there's plenty of time to reconsider. For now:
onwards.

We finished our tour, appropriately, in Texas at a
Hell Ya! show, who were actually among our first
and most enthusiastic fans in the aforementioned
city of angels. We even got one of them up on
stage to help break my long suffering tamborine.
That poor thing was held together with two kinds
of glue and three kinds of tape and it got a proper,
destructive funeral. So to Ashley: thanks.
Although, when I go home and put on my Dr.
Frankenstein lab coat, who knows what might
happen. I owe it, I think, one more surgery.

While whiling away our last night in Austin, we got,
yes, the last mix of the last song from Brad, who
was fresh off a plane from Japan. Now, we
master this puppy on the 20th, and send it off for
printing. Then, all you fine folks who've purchased
them already will get new birdmonster in your hot
little hands, which has really been the idea all
along.

When we get back to the City, I'll get some of the
more amusing pictures together and share them.
For now, I'm going to chose some loud, sing-along
-y CD for Peter so he doesn't start going glossy on
me.

There'll be a good deal of new in the next few
weeks, so, hope to see you soon.

Everything since Monday

Alright. Hello again. I'm a bit bloodied but all is
well. I'm going to do my best to bring us all to
speed. Here we go:

San Antonio.

I remember a guy stage diving backwards, except
it was more of a stage fall and, sadly enough, nobody caught him. We
played at a spur of the moment type place, being that the original venue
mysteriously shut down, and you'd think that would be mean something
along the lines of a fetid shithole. But, in fact, the place---the
Limelight---was just a new club, something like a month old, and they
happened to be open on a Monday evening. Honestly, it was really, really
fun. I got to actually see Tapes n' Tapes and Seventeen
Evergreen, whereas, in Dallas, there was an
inpenitrable mass of humanity (tall ones too) in
front of them and me. That was pleasant.

That night, we stayed at a motel which claimed
bargains and delivered none, and debated the
merits of drinking out of the bathtub faucet. The next morning, it was
off to Austin, where we've been for a few days
now, watching the city devolve into a massively
loud festival. It's fairly bizarre. Everyone has those convention center
badges I usually associate with bad temp jobs I used to get...and will
probably be returning to. Thankfully, this is much
more fun than handing out fleeces at a B of A
convention. There's certainly more booze.

Originally, we'd planned to play two shows here,
Thursday & Friday, but the next day, we got an
invite to play instead of this band Diamond Dogs, who'd apparently
dropped out for reasons unbeknwownst to me. We played at a daytime,
Little Radio party (who were actually the first people to ever play any
of our songs on anything but our friend's CD players), and we
loved it. The show ended a bit unceremoniously,
with a cymbal getting kicked to the ground and sawing a cable in half,
but fuck it. You can't plan for things you didn't know were actually
possible.

I have to say that I enjoyed the night a bit more
than the show. We ended up scouring the city for food, choosing dog food
tacos, and settling in to a
dueling piano bar. Pete's Dueling Piano Bar, to be
precise. There's nothing like a Texan ridiculing some
Canadians while flubbing Oasis songs. There really isn't. One of the
guys playing that night was like the Texas version of the Jungleboat
ride at Disney land: really terrible jokes, but somehow, really
entertaining. He did a mean "Blister in the Sun." Seriously. Anyway, at
some point, when he had a few requests, he casually asked if there was a
drummer in the house. And you know what
we did? We ratted Zach out. Let it be said: never
commit a crime with me, because, apparently, you're going to jail.

So, Zach, Rusty, and the other guy with the hat
played Steppenwolf. It was that or Waren Zevon, and since Werewolfs of
London can't really hold a candle to Magic Carpet Ride, I think Zach
chose wisely.

Then, more shows. Watching them, instead of
playing them. Which is of course exactly what I need: loud music. But
I'm not really complaining. I just can't hear anything you're saying
right now. But, let it be said:
Group Sounds: you rule.

Which brings us up to today, where We played at this Fader Magazine tent
downtown at 5, which involved other people's gear, playing after Jose
Gonzales, and free pants. The stage there was outside and so, was
preheated to a pleasant hundred and eighty degees for
our set. I think we all felt a little delirious
afterwards, but it was a good kind of delirium,
the one you can remedy with free booze, water, and a big comfy chair. It
was really nice to see so many friends there, so, to everyone who was in
town and took time out of the musical clusterfuck to come see us,
thanks. I had fun.

Now, all I have to do tonight is eat this by now cold pizza and try to
rally for an evening of not messing with Texas. See you soon
...sent via sidekick, with apologies for the predictably screwy
formatting...

Sunday in Texas

I'm in the car right now, outside what is perhaps
the most infuriating chain store ever. That's right!
Guitar Center! All purchases are guaranteed to
take at least forty-five minutes. All employees
are guaranteed to call you "bro." And regardless of
what you want to buy, they guarantee that none
will be in stock, even if you can plainly see
forty-five of whatever it is behind the counter.
Of course, when you're in Fort Worth and you
don't know any better, sometimes, you gotta
make a deal with the devil. Sadly, no Charlie
Daniels songs were involved.

Yesterday was showless and travel free, so we
spent the greater part of the afternoon and
evening tromping around Fort Worth. We went to
this place that had a hamburger bun signed by Wiliie
Nelson in a hermetically sealed glass case on the
wall and ate some meat. You can only eat meat
here. Potatoes are acceptible, but I think citrus is
actually illegal. Also, I was thinking about buying
this pink, confederate flag purse on the way to
the car, but I reconsidered, being that it was
perhaps the most innapropriate thing I could've
ever bought. I got a purple one instead.

That place with the Willie Nelson bun was
thoroughly badass though. In addition to John
Hancocked bread products (there were other buns
signed by Styx and Dolly Parto), there was live
country music ("You can take the girl from Texas,
but you can't take Texas from the girl"), pool
(which Pete & I lost), and a video game called
"Extreme Hunting", wherein I accidentally
slaughtered countless bear cubs with a crossbow.
There was even a mechanical bull somewhere,
which, in retrospect, I kinda wish we would've
ridden, but I couldn't stop thinking of that shitty
Travolta movie and it sort of soured me on the
whole ordeal. In fact, I think it's good policy to
avoid doing anything Travolta's ever done, except
breathing and drinking water. Next time, though:
the bull.

Today, we drive down the 35 to San Antonio, to
play on almost the same bill as the 10th in Dallas.
We'll be joined by Tapes n' Tapes & 17 Evergreen
again, which is really rather nice, since that night
still makes me smile. The venue we were going to
play originally closed (yes, for good and forever),
but the fine folks who put it together (Music For
Listeners) swooped on another space before we
even knew what happened. So a big, hearty round
of applause for those guys. If it wasn't for them:
street corner banjo.

Now: more driving.

This weekend, so far

Apparently, it snowed in San Francisco. Not a blizzard or anything, just some whispy little things that turned to puddles when they reached the ground. I mention this only because here, in Texas, it's a humid eighty degrees and I'm walking around in flip-flops. There are some things I don't miss about home.

I do miss breakfast though. We've been in the habit of waking up around noon-ish, and at that point, your typical Texas restuarant serves obscene amounts of meat and obscene amounts of meat only. There's nothing like a pound of beef brisket to the face in the morning.

But so far, I'm liking this state. We're going to be here for about a week or so and have played two out of our planed five shows thus far. Dallas found us playing at the Cavern, a cozy, loud little dive, with Tapes n' Tapes & Seventeen Evergreen. Neither dissapointed. We've been dweebed out internet penpals with Tapes n' Tapes for a good third of a year now, and, I have to say, they're great guys. We met them late for dinner, they dining on pizza, while we chose to order BLTs slathered in rancid mayo and filled with lettuce I'm sure was from a salt water aquarium. They just seemed to be really enjoying themselves all night, which is not always the case with bands we play with. God knows why. We certainly do. Anyway, we play with those boys again tomorrow night in San Antonio. Seventeen Evergreen, weirdly enough, was the second SF band we hadn't played with at home but met out on the road this trip. I dug 'em. Where they've been in our Bay Area lives is a mystery, but we're remedying that next month at the Mezzanine.

You know another thing about Texas? Compliments sound waaaay better in a thick, southern drawl. Last night, this guy told us our show "changed his life," and, you know, if he wasn't southern, it might've sounded scary. We spent last evening at the Wreckroom---and don't you have to love a club whose name is a pun?---with a band called Black Tie Dynasty, who we realized as the night wore on, we played with exactly one year ago: March 11th. It was almost enough to make me go new-age on everyone, but I refrained, drowned my chakra with a two dollar beer, and enjoyed the show. It was BTD's hometown crowd & they worked it. Thanks again boys.

Below this post, you can see another thing that happened in Texas, namely the arrival of some long overdue merch. See, we were planning on having the album already, but as you folks who have pre-purchased know (and thanks again for that), we didn't quite get that together. Instead, we got some shirts and posters, one of which I'm holding proudly below. Make sure to notice, the drunken, 4 a.m., shit-eating grin.

Today, we're thinking of doing something non-band-y...which isn't even close to being a real word. Sorry bout that. We'll post some pictures soon too, now that we have a base of operations that isn't a borrowed Toyota. And I should of course remind you that our myspace page has three unmastered songs that'll be on the LP, out in about 4 weeks.

So, if you're in Texas, hope to see you this week. If you're in San Francisco, see you in a few weeks. And if you're anywhere in between, seeing you would mean that our car broke down or that we'd become honest to God vagrants. So, sorry---hope I don't see you.