New EP

So, we don’t really have recordings of a lot of the stuff that we like to play live. Heartbreak Hotel and Hey Hey Hey (slow version) are good examples – we’ve played these songs at just about every show ever, but we don’t have any recordings of them. Sorta lame, I think. Anyway we’re remedying this by releasing a new EP of our best live material.

We’re recording it in our practice space, just like how we did Walking on Sunshine. The whole thing should be ready for your free downloading pleasure in a month, probably sooner. Yahoo!

- Dave

Posted on August 23, 2010 08:43

Cesstour!

Ahh dear god that was an awesome tour. Jesus. Quick recap:

DC

We had a big crowd here, mostly consisting of people who looked like they wouldn’t be caught dead at a Cesspool show. It ended up being one of the best crowds we’ve ever had though. Everyone was rapt and quiet and listening attentively. Crazy.

Thanks: To Stephanie Winzeler, for being quite possibly the nicest girl of all time. And to Leila, Camille, and all the Frenchies, for being so endearingly French. And to Monica and Katie for being awesome.

Cleveland

We ran around outside in our costumes and tried to recruit randoms to come see us, and much to our surprise it worked pretty well. We ended up selling mad uniporn t-shirts.

After the show we went out to a place where you should absolutely go if you are ever in Cleveland: Steve’s. Steve’s is this unassuming little diner where everybody always talks to everybody else. Drunk folks interact with totally different types of other drunk folks. A big Puerto Rican dude asked me pass him a napkin, and I misunderstood and handed him the police radio of the cop who was sitting next to me.

Thanks: To Chelsea, Bethany, and everyone else who tried to drive all the way to Ann Arbor to see us again four days later. And to Austin and Jake and erryone for helping us set this shit up and for bringing little footballs to the show that said things like “HOLLA if you love Morrissey!”

Columbus

Also sick nast, we played in some underground basement area. We danced in the crowd and got most of the crowd to do the same, and I bit Abe on the shoulder hard enough to draw a lil blood. Afterward we went to some party and it was like “damn I forgot what it’s like to party in the Midwest, everyone hanging around in a big ass room in a house.” It was fun to throw beers off a balcony with no fear of killing passersby with shrapnel.

Thanks: To Ann Boggs, for stealing the side mirror off of our car. To India and Charlotte and Gianna and Leigha. And to John and Chris and e’eybody for singing along really loud. I don’t think anyone’s ever sang along like that at our New York shows before. Singing along is great. Please feel free.

Bloomington

The one big mothafuckin bust of the tour. We brought ZERO people to come to the show. Two guys from the opening band stayed to watch us, and Megan semi-flirted with some dudes in the bar and got them to come out as well. Other than that, a big fat nothing.

We still had fun though, and afterwards we went to Pizza X and got delicious pizza and I bootydanced on some dude’s food and made it taste better. We went back to a motel 6 because we weren’t about to find strangers to let us crash when there wasn’t anybody at our show to begin with.

This guy rules:

Thanks: To Paul and the Sinkholes for helping us get the show and staying to watch us. And to those dudes at the bar who saw us because Megan is charming, but stayed because they thought we were sweet? I dunno. Yall seemed chill though, sorry we ditched your in favor of pizza / sleeping on real beds.

Chicago

We had a some dead time in Chicago before the show, so we decided to do a public performance. We wandered into a guitar center one at a time and meandered around, picking up instruments and acting like fools at guitar center (“how’s that guitar working out for you?” “I think it’s good – will this model will help me pick up dumb chicks?”). Once we were all tuned and set up, we coordinatedly burst into Longest Longest. It was really fun. Then we had more time so we hit another music store and did the same type of thing. It actually worked – a bunch of music store employees came out and saw us.

The show itself was up there with DC for best show of the tour. The bar was packed and everyone was listening like crazy. I’ve always thought of us more as a get-everyone-to-dance kind of band, but it seems like our best shows lately have been ones in which people aren’t dancing and losing themselves so much as listening and using their brains. Weird. Maybe this will only be true for the time being, and as more people begin to come to our shows, we will get dancier responses. Or maybe people just like to brain out at a Cesspool show more than I realized. Either way is great by me.

Afterwards we went out and did our usual split-off-and-try-to-find-places-to-crash routine. I ended up at a dominatrix club that was actually kinda friendly and unthreatening and warm and quaint. Chicago is great.

Thanks: To Bailey and Andrew from the music store and Emily from Potbelly’s, for defying my expectations and making it to the show. I will definitely contact you guys next time we go through Chicago. Also to David Barr and Shayna and Jin and Etan and Greg Brown and all our old friends for coming out. Thank you so much, we really appreciate it. Hopefully you had an awesome time.

And to Large & Lovely for a great show.

Ann Arbor

This gig was our big homecoming. We played Deb’s co-op and it was a tight cramped loud ass party, exactly what we like. Mad dancing – we played a rare Digital Love cover. It was our last non-NY show of the tour and I got extra drunk so it’s hard to remember too much of what else happened, but I do remember climbing up some balcony, and getting “iced” like a bro for the first time by Expooler Rosie Morrison (about six months late, but whatever).

Thanks: to the millions old friends who showed up: Phil/Mike, Max Friedman and Danny, Colin (good fucking luck man), the ETW folks, Aaron Silver, John Yip, Adam Gluck (!), Stephanie and Libby, Rosie and Lawlor of course, Marc and Zwickl, Geoff and Sean and John, fucking everybody. Thanks so much yall – you’re always welcome to stay w/ us in NY.

New York

Our return to Lit! We didn’t get as big of a crowd here as we did on most of our tour stops, which is sort of counterintuitive and weird since we actually live in New York and have a lot of friends here, but that’s how it goes. The show felt good and people said we’ve gotten way tighter on tour, which is nice to hear and probably true.

After the show we moved the party back to our practice space, as we are wont to do. It was fun as hell – just cool people drinking beer and eating peach pie and telling stories. Gayle and Allison and Ann and Maggie turned things into a dance party, so they get ten points apiece. During a James Brown song (I Got the Feeling?), Megan taught me that if you move your feet around as quickly as possible with absolutely no rhyme nor reason, it feels really awesome and looks at least sort of awesome. She also taught lots of people how to “booty pop,” which is an urban dance movement in which you jerk your “booty” backwards so it looks like an airbag just deployed out of your ass. Megan is the dance instructor as well as the band mom.

Megan: mom
Alex: dad
Jared: kinda emo youngest child
Dave: aggro middle child
Abe: oldest child, from a different mom

Thanks to: Ann, Maggie, Allison, and Gayle, for being the dance leaders.
Megan: for being the dance commander.
John: for being the king of the dance!
Alex: for being total fucking tour MVP, booking a million shows, dealing with sound guys, driving all the time, setting up and selling merch, solving equipment problems, figuring out directions, and just generally being excellent.

Thank you to everyone who helped us on this wonderful tour. We hope to see you again soon.

- Dave

Posted on August 10, 2010 15:44