Saturday 16 October 2010

San Luis Obispo to Los Angeles


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We drove to los angeles right after our san luis obispo show. fortunately for us, chris rock was playing the fine southern gentleman and let us roll in at 4 am and wake his ass up and let us in. he lives just off franklin and made us coffee and provided his comfy clean carpet and a couch for our crew.
We woke up to a rainy day in L.A., but we went walkin' anyhow. just chilling with a salad & coffee, waiting until our show tonight at vacation vinyl.
We play tomorrow night @ 3 clubs

Berkeley to San Luis Obispo


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we left ant & kelsey's and made the long drive to san louis obispo. this was a house show, pretty small space, but a really fun show. thanks to miguel for having us, and to everyone who showed up!

San Jose to Berkeley


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Technically, this was san fran to berkeley, since we drove at the end of the night.
Lights on at 8 or 9... the cleaning lady cometh!
we had to pack up at lightning speed, roll up the sleeping bags and vacate without showers or toilet time :(
and it was raining in san fran to boot! luckily, Nathan took us to a proper coffee shop and we got jacked up on fine brew and slowly came back to life. we met a cute coffee drinker named alissia and tried to get advice on what to do for 3 hours in rainy san fran until our next show. the answer was get back to nate's for showers and food and more rehabilitative rituals until showtime.
Gliman Street is a famous west coast punk/pop punk stronghold. Just check out the wikipedia page. it was kinda like an exhibit at a music museum you get to participate in... thanks to Matt for setting up this show!
video forthcoming.
Afterwards we made our way to the ruby room, where the bartendress lit the whole bar on fire!!!!!
we sadly said goodbye to the litany crew (sob, sniff, hug) and proceded to hang with ant & kelsey, who put us up and made us an INCREDIBLE breakfast with broiled eggs and kale & veggies from their garden and fresh blended juice, coffee, yerba mate, red pepper paste, yogurt, and more... it was sunny and warm in their backyard and we left their place refreshed and grateful... thanks guys!
hop in the van, it's time to drive to san luis obispo!

Santa Rosa to San Jose


View Larger MapThe drive to san jose isn't so bad, so we chilled at Jef's and watched the first half of JAWS... or up until they get the first barrel on the shark. classic.
san jose was a house show at the Texas Toast house. there is a little well-constructed shed / guest room in the backyard where they play shows, and when i first stepped in, i thought that there was no way we'd all fit in there... but we set up tight and the house was PACKED with peeps, full of energy and pumped! I had soooo much fun playing this one! got it on tape too, so once I can edit a song out I'll be posting! Thanks SOOOOOOO much to texas toasters for making us pasta and a beautiful salad, it made my night.
we drove to san francisco and stayed with Nathan on 16th... Jef from litany drove with us, which was awesome. we look forward to seeing all the santa rosa crew again tomorrow at GILMAN ST!!!!

Portland to Santa Rosa


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finally, reunited with Litany for the Whale, our best buddies from santa rosa california! It was, as always, great to see everyone from the crew & it lifted our spirits and put big smiles on our faces.
we chilled at the flying goat for a while and drank coffee by the train tracks, and then loaded in at the arlene francis theater, which was a gorgeous big brick space. we played a great show under blue xmas lights and then had the pleasure of watching Litany rock the house... probably the best litany performance I've seen - the new tracks were strong!
Thanks to Jef & Rochelle for putting us up!

Friday 15 October 2010

Seattle - Jewelbox Theater

We played at the jewelbox inside rendezvous, its a cute lil' theater with olive green fancy wallpaper and movie seats and a projector room. It looked like the perfect little place for us to play, but the room had a killer buzz that we could not kill, thus threatening to kill our buzz.
strings broke, the monitors buzzed, vocals fed back, but we persisted and had our bodies bathed in a wacky colorful lightshow courtesy of the lighting guy whose name escapes me from the projector booth!
all in all, we did our best, and I still enjoyed performing as per usual. -gonna try to post a song from the show if I can masterfully edit out some trip-ups. (coming soon)
***Bryce posted a couple of youtube vids of the first two songs...
no no no no no
i never left my head

Seattle to Portland


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We left our gracious hosts Conor and Julie on Wednesday and hit the road for Portland, OR. We got a serious view of Mt. Rainier hanging over the horizon... its absurd that this made me think of some NES game backdrop, maybe ninja gaiden... I'd simply never seen anything like it in real life!
We arrived in portland in the early evening, showed up at the Garfield house and went to grab some food on NE Alberta st.
\\\la bonita mexican... had a great show in the garfield basement & then stayed with Sarah, whose job, among other things, is to rid portland of bedbugs like a true entomologist... I sincerely enjoyed all of her insights and anecdotes and frozen specimens!

I awoke the next morning to a brilliant breakfast with fresh beet+apple+celery+kale juice goin' in the kitchen.

oh, and I think I'm getting a little cold, so I've been zinc-ing, juicing, and resting.

Seattle

We reached seattle and got in touch with Conor and Julie, who were absolute angels and let us crash at their beautiful huge apartment for three days. We settled in and made our way up 15th ave to volunteer park. Mt. Rainier was just barely visible from the observation deck of the water tower there, which is supposedly rare for october. there were spiders everywhere in seattle, one specific species Araneus Diademadus, or the Cross Spider, had dibs on every lush vegetal corner of the city.
We found our fav thai restaurant, In the Bowl, and requested 2-star heat as opposed to the 3 stars that made me hallucinate in 2008. We were in town durning mid november in '08, and the difference was amazing... every day here was sunny and beautiful.

I spent most of my time at Victrola coffee house finishing my ink work for Nick's comic back in brooklyn. Conor did take brandon and I out for a real fancy-pants coffee experience which we were all 'bout. Try this on:
Espresso Vivace... the type of place that has signs up explaining how you can best enjoy the cup of coffee you just bought. I had a cappuccino with what I swore was a bosch painting in my milk.

Sunday 10 October 2010

Ghastly hits the West Coast!


We made it safely form lincoln to boise and arrived at the visual arts collective space, which kinda blew us away.
Huge, clean, pro sound, & a very sweet staff. We played with Red Hands Black Feet (whose drummer is a bad-ass) and Housefire, who had almost as much equipment as we do and really grabbed our attention.

We decided to leave later that night in order to enjoy three full days in Seattle. I fell asleep in the van and woke up to the smell of burning rubber. We had burnt our brakes during a steep descent down an Oregon mountain. We stopped the van to let the brakes cool, and after I emptied my bladder and took a peek off the mountainside I was kinda blown away. It was silent and absolutely breathtaking out there, you could hear crickets and a falcon screeching every now and then. The landscape looked unreal, like a painting.

Cutting through the cascades was amazing, I might have taken too many photos.

Friday 8 October 2010

Held over in Denver...




and loving it. I've been parking my ass at the yellow feather coffee shop every morning, drawing, blogging, & uploading photos.
Denver is sunny & beautiful this week. We ate at Illegal pete's and sputnik's, and are playing another show at 3 kings tonight! Two in a row!

Tonight (right after the show :( )we make a crazy drive from denver to boise ID for a show tomorrow night at the Garden City Visual Arts Collective Promenade Music Festival!… driving all night and day. wish us luck, we'll be breaking some mountain passes and stuff. I'm hoping I can sleep through the night and take the day shift tomorrow!
CB just changed our oil and made sure the ol' van is in tip top shape for the trip.

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I miss all my friends & fam and wish you all the best… next post will be from Idaho.

xo
m

Thursday 7 October 2010

En route to denver


we just finished driving across the entire state of Iowa. Amber waves of grain, yo. Interstate 80 all the way from Iowa city to Lincoln, Nebraska where our nest show is, after tonight, we get another much needed day off to rest and regenerate before the 7 + hour drive to Denver CO where we play at 3 Kings (we played there two years ago on our first tour, when we were graciously hosted by one of the members of Planes Mistaken for Stars - I'd like to mention that this time around, when in Chicago, another member of Planes - Garret - treated us to an incredible home-cooked mexican dinner that blew us all away and left us speechless.).

The sun has been shining all day, beautiful driving weather, t-shirts and sunglasses, rolling fields & lots of windmills (more than I remember last year!) which stand incredibly tall in the landscape and appear to spin really fast for their size. I find them to be kinda terrifying in a beautiful way - I guess that's textbook sublime - the way something so huge can move so fast, it's unsettling to such small creature. I'm happy they're there, though & they're fun to videotape.

I've been shooting lots of vids & taking pics, maybe this year I'll have the time to make a proper tour doc… I also have lots of 8mm movie film from 2008 that I never had the money to develop, but now I do!

cars make dramatic dust clouds on side roads along the highway, I imagine peeling through those roads can make you feel like you're in an action movie, even if you are just driving to the store to pick up birdseed.

Lincoln nebraska has a little coffee shop with cute friendly baristas and lots of space to camp out and do the internet and draw and kill time. We are all looking forward to nesting in this place and relaxing. Something I NEVER do in New York, for sure. That's one of the coolest things about touring, you get to experience down-time, which I know only by name, myth, and faint memory these days. having a moment to just sit and reflect during the day is now a major luxury for me. Funny how all the little pie pieces of an ideal existence are always shifting - money, time, relaxation, good health, sexiness;), friends, good job you like to work at, time for yourself, solid spiritual / inner constitution, etc….. well, down-time ain't one mine, I traded it for larger pieces of other pies.

Wednesday 6 October 2010




The number of hardwood floors these warriors hath laid upon, like grains of sand on the beach, like stars in the sky,
for their hearts doth open wide like great baleen baskets,
through which pour both the krill of fortune and folly,
we are merely hungry, for neither ebb nor flow, yin nor yang, marsh-mellow nor marble,
deliver us life's full spectrum, so that time's vesper-tine light waves goodbye to well-rounded stories,
dreams and nightmares, well-rounded characters, seasoned
by lady luck and her bitter sisters,
we love them all one and the same.

Monday 4 October 2010

Billowing live in Detroit


Sorry I don't think the last link I posted worked...

A little suprise outro here... it's nice to go crazy and rock out the end!

Sunday 3 October 2010

Saturday 10/2/2010
thoughts on the roadside world
driving across the midwest, en route to chicago & listening to strange new music.
There are huge weather fronts moving against us, we have been driving in rain all day from detroit, and it is now beginning to break. I can see brilliant rays of sun streaming through rolling grays and pale gold. But its all pale, there is no sharp high-contrast coastal color, the saturation of 5:30pm is very low, almost grayscale.
We pass a dead raccoon on the road. A church, depots, rural commerce.

I think about the intense social experience of the city, our godless intellectual dense webs of people and jobs and interactions. Out here there is god, liquor, tradition, autumnal swaths of land, duty, distance, mindless violence, beautiful human talents and graces twisted into a sparse landscape that might echo the dawn of human time.

You can go a whole day without seeing another person, even if you desperately want to see someone.

All of the food on the road is filled with sugar and chemicals. Progress is slow, a blind eye meets corporate exploitation, and enthusiasm for innovation is a flea pulling an oxcart.

Last night we played at the trumbleplex, which is a beautiful wooden warehouse with dangling Christmas lights and a big stage… felt like a giant barn in a good way. I videotaped the set, hopefully by the time I post this I'll have a link to some songs!
P.S. Billowing LIVE at the trumbleplex 10.1.2010 !!!!!

Friday 1 October 2010

U.S. Tour with Ghastly City Sleep! no.1

Hello everyone!
I am in detroit right now. We played our three-piece set last night at Hybrid Moments record shop. I got to see Matthew's noise set, which was wonderful. lots of tape machines hissing and blipping, really sweet textures.
Tonight we play our big rockin' set with Ryan from Darkest Hour, who we will be picking up form the airport momentarily. Ryan has brought a ton of fresh energy to the group and has had some great ideas that have seriously changed the way we play. our current set features some new arrangements of songs from moondrifts that really make me feel like I'm cut free from the tethers of click tracks and electronic beat backing tracks that have come to define ghastly's sound in the past few years. The result is something more organic, more expressive, & more fun! I don't think I've ever been this excited about our set!
Photos are forthcoming!
TOUR PHOTOS HERE!