Continuing on from last time...

Cologne, Germany

I packed light for this trip. I can wear the same pair of jeans for the whole trip. I try to milk two or three days out of a t-shirt. Socks and underwear require daily changing. So my luggage is basically just socks and underwear. I brought two button-up shirts, and today I rip open the back of one of them trying to do a Ray Cappo jump in a music store parking lot.

Tonight’s club is another one of those converted factory/warehouse spaces. Not sure if it’s a squat, necessarily, but it definitely feels like one. The promoter is a very outgoing, boisterous, jolly German guy named Uncle George. It winds up being my favorite show of tour thus far. Good sound, good crowd, good vibes. Even Deafheaven seems to have gotten over their whole choking-and-punching incident from Paris.

Uncle George arranged an afterparty, which basically amounts to a DJ spinning records in the venue bar after the show. We get everything loaded out and the vans head to the hotel, leaving Mike, Korey, Joey, Kerry, George, and I to hang out at the bar. Also in tow is Mike’s friend from St. Louis, Chris, who’s working abroad as a scientist. The DJ is actually spinning some good stuff, and as the show crowd peters out, we get more pushy with our requests, which veer more and more to our high school soundtracks. He spins lots of Pantera and Faith No More, until eventually we commandeer the sound system and start playing Gorgoroth, Can, and the Drive soundtrack. It’s basically just us, the DJ, and the bar staff. We keep getting told that we only have time for one more song, but they also keep feeding us drinks and seem content to hang out. Eventually they call us a cab and the seven of us hop into the little black minivan. Chris is nearest the door of the backseat, and no sooner does the door close than he starts frantically pawing at it and yelling “Ausfahrt.” Everyone’s confused. It’s dark, and no one can help him with the door because he’s blocking it. Suddenly he turns around and there’s puke all over his chin, jacket, and hands. Everyone recoils. We start yelling at George, who’s riding shotgun with the driver to open the door. We haven’t even left the venue at this point. There’s a solid minute of mayhem and everyone yelling at each other to do something while Chris continues to yell “Ausfahrt” and desperately scrambles to find a doorknob. The door finally opens and Chris hops out to puke more, and we try to clean up the interior of the cab. The driver is not happy and says we must pay a cleaning fee on top of the cab fare. We get back in and take off. The smell of puke is like the sourest Parmesan cheese. We’re all gagging and giggling about how uncomfortable the whole situation is until George turns around from the front seat. “Oh, you guys are uncomfortable? I’m sitting up here with the driver. How about that?”

We get to the hotel. Chris pukes again. I pay the cab driver fifty Euro for the mess and Chris pays the taxi fare. On the plus side, I somehow wind up with my own hotel room. Score.

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Continuing on from last week...

Hamburg, Germany

You know what’s depressing? Cutting through a red light district in broad daylight with the prostitutes already hanging out in their windows while Adele’s “Someone Like You” plays over outdoor speakers.

Just down the street from the red light district is Hafenklang, one of my favorite venues in Germany. The people who work here are always a pleasure to work with, the size of the room is perfect, and the club is easy walking distance from the Reeperbahn. Tonight’s show is a drone festival. Two stages, six bands. And the ticket price is still less than half of the fest we played in Estonia. But ya know, as much as I enjoy listening to drone stuff when I’m at home, it’s not really the kind of music I want to spend an evening watching at a club. I watch a few of the acts before I start feeling narcoleptic. I’m not even bothering with beer tonight; I’ve switched to some sort of carbonated yerba mate drink in an effort to stay awake.

Tonight is Derek from Deafheaven’s birthday. There are plans to go out on the town after the show, but by the time we’re packed up and loaded out, it’s 3am. The other guys go for it, but Che and I opt to sit in our hotel room and eat Burger King before going to bed.

Utrecht, Netherlands

We’re almost three weeks into tour and finally hitting that stride where things generally go really smoothly. We know how the set goes. We’ve figured out the best way to pack the van and everyone knows the order of loading gear. And with just Deafheaven and us on the majority of the bills, there are few surprises, few variables to enter into play and complicate things.

But still, things can go wrong. Gear can break. The monitor mix can change between soundcheck and the show. The crowd can be obnoxious. Tonight’s show should be solid. The club is good. The turnout is good. But things still seem somehow out of order when we play. These things happen, I guess. And even though it’s a bad set, I have to acknowledge that “bad” is relative, and a lot of bands would kill to have a night like tonight as one of their “off” shows.

I wonder if Rolling Stones and U2 get off stage 25% of the time and grumble about their concert.

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Continuing on from last week...

Vilnius, Lithuania

It’s another early wake-up call. I feel better cold-wise, but I’m still exhausted. I feel like I’ve avoided the whole jetlag issue where I can’t sleep at night and can’t stay awake during the day, but I’m just not getting much opportunity to get more than three or four hours of sleep a night.

Sleep deprivation is making me extremely moody. One minute I’m listening to Jawbreaker in the van and getting misty-eyed from nostalgia, the next minute I’m in a Polish gas station laughing hysterically at a malfunctioning automatic espresso machine spewing hot milk all over the counter.

I’ve never been to the Baltic states. We’d received an email from a concerned fan about the venue we’re playing tonight because the club has a history of hosting National Socialist bands. We’d contacted our booking agent about the concern. Our booking agent said that he’d just booked the Japanese band Mono in the room and had had no issues. He contacted the promoter anyway, and the promoter confirmed that other outside promoters had rented the space and hosted some pretty politically dubious bands. But they’ve also booked Jewish klezmer bands, leftist punk bands, and hiphop artists. If you want to play in Lithuania and don’t want to play a club that has a history of hosting extreme right-wing bands, you’re apparently shit out of luck. It doesn’t bring a whole lot of peace of mind to roll up to a club with Nazi graffiti spray-painted by the entrance, though. Still, the people at the club are nice, though we get a lot of stares while we walk around town.

The venue is pretty big, but the turnout is solid. In an effort to stay warm, I avoid the frigid backstage room and hang out in the bar where an enormous jet engine-style heater blasts out flames to warm up the entire venue. The show feels really good. We get down to the last song when Mike announces that he can’t play anymore. It’s a weird moment because it was a good show and neither Dave nor I had any idea Mike was struggling or in pain. In the backstage, we talk with Mike to figure out what happened. Apparently he had shooting pains in his thumb to the point where he was having difficulty focusing on the songs. He seems pretty freaked out about the possibility of further injuring his thumb, whereas Dave and I (and the rest of the touring party, including Mike, I imagine) are pretty freaked out about the possibility of cancelling the tour. Mike talks about just cancelling the next few shows to see if he can mend a bit. It’s a tense conversation, particularly with post-performance volatility, exhaustion, and alcohol coming into play. Not helping the situation, people from the audience keep wandering backstage to get autographs while we’re in the midst of the conversation.

By the time we’ve reached the hotel, Mike is adamant about cancelling the Latvia and Estonia shows. It’s a stressful end to the night, and there isn’t much sleep to be had.

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What follows is perhaps the best cover of Hall & Oates' "I Can't Go For That (No Can Do)" performed in a moving tour van by Nicki Bluhm and the Gramblers you will ever hear. I'd love to see them live—but who wants to sit on the hood of a van for that long?

Lots more van covers here!

Image courtesy Bloodshot Records.

Chicago's JC Brooks & the Uptown Sound describe themselves as "post-punk soul," but I hear very little punk on Want More, their second full-length (and first for Bloodshot Records).

That isn't meant as criticism, because I hear plenty of soul, funk, gospel, and R&B. If they intend the term to mean "after punk" or "we listened to a lot of punk while growing up," then I'll buy it (though I appreciate the fact that they look like a lost Two Tone act, with their skinny ties and pork pie hats).

Instead, they pile bright horns, expressive keyboards, and soulful vocals on top of dance-party grooves. Since I tend to favor music with a minimum of audio sweetening, I can usually tell if a band is going to be any good live, and Want More has me convinced me that this four-piece should have no difficulty in transferring their beat-driven sound to the stage (they play Seattle on Friday).

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Originally submitted last Thursday, but posted now because I had approximately 8 million irons in the fire. Condolences to all. —G.B.

Stepping out of a van into the chaos of SXSW after a 13-hour drive is a little disorienting. Unlike the other guys in Grave Babies, this is my first time at the festival. I was in Austin last fall, but it's now been transformed into an unrecognizable clusterfuck, and you can sense the urgency of hundreds of bands anxiously competing to get recognized. I go walk around the packed outdoor venue we're about to play and watch the adrenaline-inducing magic of one of my favorite bands, the K-Holes, and I feel like I'm in a k-hole. So I sneak out into the alleyway where we parked our van and try to poor some vodka into a half empty bottle of gatorade, but it's pitch dark and I spill most of it. What I haven't spilled I drink quickly, trying to adjust myself to the chaos around me and unwind from the tension of the long drive. On my way back into the venue I almost get run over by a bike rickshaw, which are everywhere in Austin. Hours later after we've played I'm standing on the side of the stage watching the Oh Sees, when I see Danny stage diving. When he goes back for it a second time he crashes into the pavement but luckily comes away with just some cuts and bruises.

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Though Sub Pop released Washed Out's Within and Without in 2011, main man Ernest Greene begins his first headlining tour on April 16, many shows with label mates Memoryhouse. No doubt 2009's "Feel It All Around," Portlandia's theme song, will be part of the repertoire. Tour dates and CNN's Greene profile below.

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Submitted yesterday, but edited and posted today, because there are not enough teens volunteering for the blog. —Eds.

There's something incredibly powerful about the air along the coast that begins almost immediately after crossing into the state of California. The window rolls down for the first time after descending in latitude from Oregon into northern California precisely at the most nonsensical government checkpoint ever created: the agricultural check point. No we don't have and fucking fruit or plants, and even if we did are you really going to do anything about it? Every vehicle that passes through is waved along with a big smile, the kind of smile that can only be perpetrated by someone who spends all their time in the beautiful outdoors of northern California.

As the scenery changes from mountains to rolling flat lands, and you pass the largest slaughterhouse in the nation, Cowschwitz, it's very comforting to know we'll be in the beautiful city of San Francisco in a matter of hours.

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Preparation for this trip means I must come to terms with the fact that for the next week and half I will no longer be able to enjoy any of the comforts of home. Everything that my life normally consists of will be abruptly disrupted and I will be thrown back into my natural habitat, to live free from the trappings of my everyday life and roam amongst the living, the truly free individuals who aspire to live their lives in ways most of us only imagine, as nomads in what is surprisingly enough, more often than not, a caring and forgiving world. Our trip will cover thousands of miles of scenic American highway, crossing through multiple climates and flavors of American culture. The only real thing we have to worry about is arriving at our destination on time and intact while trying to maintain our composure during the after hours spent relaxing in a van surrounded by our closest friends. To live this way is to truly live. It's not my life I hate, it's yours. I will escape however possible and as often as I can.

Tonight we play in Portland Oregon at the East End and then drive south along the Pacific Coast to play in San Francisco on Saturday at the Hemlock. We will wake up late, feel like shit, and drive south Sunday for 6 hours to then play in Los Angeles at the Echo for their popular Part Time Punks night. After Los Angeles comes the long ride through the desert to Austin. We leave tonight and I couldn't be more ready to go south. Seattle has the worst weather of any place I have ever been in my entire life.

I hope my boi Cleveland hooks us up with a place to crash and some smoke tonight hheeeyyyy! Shout out to my boi Nate holdin' it down in the PDX ;)

Check back in as we head through the desert.

fuck the world,

DANNY

Oh snap—just in time for SXSW! Ebay seller "taddoyal" (presumably Tad Doyle) of Montesano, WA has got it up with a current bid of $6100. It says "Local pick-up only," and judging by the picture, it looks like you'll need to bring along a tow truck. Kurt Cobain reportedly drew the KISS mural on the side of the 1972 Dodge Sportsman Royal Van "using sharpie markers shoplifted from the Thriftway grocery store in Montesano, Washington. (former employer of King Buzzo)."

h/t: Police Teeth!

• MP
• Dead Man

When we arrived to San Francisco we rendezvoused with Keith's old friend, Chase, who was going to put us up for the night. We split up for a walk around the Mission where Kennedy and Yos-wa ended up at this speakeasy bar. They still allowed smoking in the bar, but on the down low. We heard that if you asked about the smoking there during the daytime they would be dismissive, but if you asked at night they would hand you an ashtray.

Our show was at the Hemlock, which is a bar in the Tenderloin. We played with They Are All Dead and Dead Man. We told all the people we had changed our name to Deadnogamy Party. In between two of our songs Zach sent a beer can sailing from the back of the room toward the stage where it connected with Kennedy's forehead. Dead Man played a dark as fuck cover of "Negative Creep" by Nirvana that killed.

• MP
• Part of this bunker was flooded inside

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They're doing things like this to Canada:

Why did you move to Seattle?

"We were really influenced by Soundgarden and Alice In Chains, and there was nothing like that going on in Kalamazoo."

"Wayne was actually pen pals with Layne Staley."

• K.C. Fennessy

Since I like both bands and since the concert was sold out, I was grateful to get a guest list spot for the Sleigh Bells/Black Bananas show on Friday night. And I'm also grateful to the Showbox at the Market staff for setting me up with a photo pass, although I didn't really need one (there was no photo pit). Unfortunately, it was difficult to get any good pictures. Below you'll find the best of a blurry batch.

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