The thief that busted my car window last night and stole the stereo that my dad gave me for my birthday also took the excellent new Joe Pug CD that was stuck inside of it. I hope the thief listens to it and then feels very very bad and convicted about being an earnest man who is worth something in this world; I also hope he goes out and buys the rest of Joe Pug’s superb catalog and changes his life. And stops being a jerkface jerk.

Hymn 76 – Joe Pug

In the meantime, I will attempt to anesthetize my wounds by going to see Joe’s afternoon BBQ show tomorrow, part of the Larimer Lounge’s excellent BBQ Series. This is a good way to spend your Saturday afternoon and you should come with me.

CONTEST! I have two pairs of tickets to give away for the Joe Pug BBQ (3pm tomorrow). Email me if you would like one of the pairs! tickets are gone! Come anyways!

Also: this interview I did with Joe is still one of my all-time favorites.

[photo above was totally taken at my house, actually, by the wonderful Todd Roeth]

Ten days shy of the one-year mark from the Saturday morning in March 2011 when we recorded our very first fledgling chapel session ever, my friends in The Head and the Heart made a special trip south to meet me at my house one Friday so we could head into the chapel again. I’d left my door unlocked for them, and walked in to them eating the leftover Cuban black beans I’d mentioned in the fridge, with a Townes Van Zandt documentary on the television, and the Alabama Shakes advance album doo-wopping on the kitchen stereo. I loved how much it felt like home, to all of us.

It has been a hell of a year, a rollercoaster that I’m sure was hoped for but never would have been predicted when I first met this band in the summer of 2010. After their debut album wowed people and their live show exploded across the US (back and forth and back again), Europe, and even Australia, it’s been gratifying to see their exuberant songs of home resonate with so many. The album that’s out now was recorded over two years ago, and while the band has always had a fertile creative process and freely experimented with new songs in their live set, actual recordings of these songs are hard to come by while we wait for the sophomore effort.

Therefore I feel pretty dang lucky to get to peel the lid off this second Fuel/Friends Chapel Session with The Head and The Heart, filled up with new and re-envisioned songs. They’re the first band to come back for another go-around. This session was recorded in a very small, secret-feeling white clapboard chapel nestled next to a creek in the Manitou Springs foothills on the way to Pikes Peak, amidst all the resonant golden wood and humble stained-glass windows. It was called Our Lady of Perpetual Help, and felt like Sunday school. I palmed the keys and let us in those creaky painted doors with no one around but maybe the church mice, and the songs started unfolding.

The session was laced with the fresh. I just laughed to myself as I re-read what I wrote about that very first session: “After multiple takes of whatever felt right, three of the four songs we ended up with here are not recorded or released anywhere else, and the fourth is reinvented.”

Ditto on this one: three new, and one reinvented. Bookends.

THE HEAD AND THE HEART
FUEL/FRIENDS CHAPEL SESSION (MARCH 2, 2012)

Honey Come Home (chapel version)
The version of this song on their debut album sounds downright jaunty in comparison to this fingerpicked, darkly re-worked rendition. Here the song is weary, and almost completely defeated. It sounds older. It sounds bruised and slow and exhausted. None of these things are bad things, because the sentiments Josiah is singing about are difficult and they are sad. The laser focus of grief in this version smolders and hurts, echoed somberly by Charity’s prescient and mournful backing vocals, and I am immediately drawn to it.

I feel like this version of this song could have only come two years after the album version. “…And I am ready to be home.” This time, I might believe him.

Gone
Starting with lyrics about sailing into the fog and vanishing, this is an unreleased song that strongly invokes a departure from a solidly known shore and a journey away. It’s been a fast favorite since I first heard it in 2010, then googled various live versions and fell in love with it. There is the resonance in the naked wail of a confession that we are tryiiing here. On this version, Jon growls a little in seeming frustration. Don’t send me no postcards telling me you miss me. Maybe sometimes we don’t want to miss anybody.

Fire/Fear
This is a brand new song that I had never, ever heard before, and hoooo is it a kicker. This is the second time in the chapel that Josiah has brought something completely new, working out chord changes and sketching notes in the margins. After listening to the first performance (because I am linear in my narrative and always like tracing connections) I told Josiah that it sounded like a bookend to the song “Honey Come Home” – the same ache of a breaking or broken relationship, the same interminable distance from one person to another even as you sit nearby, or across town. He smiled the way that makes his eyes crinkle and affirmed that this is indeed a preface to that very song from their first album, but written from the perspective of the woman in the relationship, and from a younger time in their story. My favorite line in this new song is “so hold me down if I’m running off.” That one slices me, in particular, since sometimes I can appreciate a firm hand on the shoulder and an incentive to “come back.”

He also smiled as he said, “And let’s call it Fire/Fear, in honor of where it was first recorded.” Um, sure. Yes.

Untitled
The session ended with a nuanced performance of this untitled, unreleased song from Jon. I hope that it is someday called “Not Afraid,” because that lyric and that declaration feels like the place in the song where everything hangs for a second, the limbs bend, the constitution is braced. A very early version of this was also part of the first fantastic house show they did for me in November 2010, but this is the only time I’d heard it on the piano, echoing so redolently. The punch infused by the piano is the perfect accompaniment to this song, changing it from a striking campfire song to an irrevocably gutting eulogy. It’s getting harder these days.

At the 2:14 mark, this song made my stomach hurt.

This whole session left me reeling, which by now I should be used to for these folks and their music, since the first time I heard them. I’m glad I’m still not used to it, and that they keep furrowing deep and leaving us shimmering.

ZIP: THE HEAD AND THE HEART CHAPEL SESSION #2

Fitting.

[audio done, as usual, by my favorite talented guys at Blank Tape Records]

One of my favorite live experiences at SXSW this year was seeing the buoyant and catchy music of You Won’t. Not only is their debut album completely irresistible, but during their live show they won my heart by playing their drums with kitchen utensils (because it made me pretty sure they’d wash their dishes if they ever come through Colorado Springs and stay at my house), and generally making everyone want to dance, even though it was Saturday and all our feet were blistered. Listen:

Right?!

CONTEST! WIN TICKETS: You Won’t is currently on tour with Alcoholic Faith Mission, and Fuel/Friends is co-presenting their Denver show tomorrow night at the Hi-Dive! I have two pairs of tickets to give away. Please email me if you want to check out the show and I’ll pick some folks tomorrow morning! It is going to be totally terrific, and a lot of fun — help kick this grey drizzle right out of town.

[photo by the lovely Brittney Bush Bollay, from the band's KEXP SXSW show at Mellow Johnny's]

Her adopted name comes from a literary quote that couldn’t be more apt at describing the way her music glints. From James Joyce’s Ulysses: “Born in all the dark wormy earth, cold specks of fire, evil, lights shining in the darkness.”

I’ve written about Cold Specks back in December, on the strength of one cover song b-side that resonated so strongly with me as everything lay icy frozen in the world. After listening to her debut record on tremendously emphatic repeat these last few months, I’ve finally slowed down enough to watch (and re-watch) the accompanying video to the a-side, her first single “Holland.” I am completely riveted, eviscerated by its statement.

This video is one of the best things I’ve seen in a very, very long time. I generally don’t seek out music videos, but I can’t stop watching the way this one replicates the best of what I see in my head when I listen to a genuinely amazing song. The visuals knit together and contrast the external and the majestic with the quiet, the internal, and the personal. I feel like there is a giant patterned spiderweb strung through and around all that we see and know of ourselves. When the silvery dew falls on it, you can see the web for a few minutes.

This record is that dew.

So watch this video three times full-screen, at least, to start. From the opening grainy peephole examining the microscopic world of swimming protozoa, it begins humbly, but with acute observation. Eyes wide open as we listen: the starry scatter of galaxies juxtaposed next to our busy boulevards, our arteries of headlights. A spiraling c-curve of an ocean wave aside a silent snail-shell of a human ear. A thousand red Chinese lanterns rising, illuminated and flickering into the night sky, right next to the silent phosphorescent translucence of a jellyfish orbing through the black ocean, miles away from where any human can see it.

With the crash of the chorus at around 2:06, it really digs down with a pickaxe. A hurricane force wind whips branches off full-grown trees, while in the parallel frame the sun dapples the last of a dandelion seed breaking free from its stalk in the gentle breeze and floating off to become someone’s wish. A mushroom cloud of crushing destruction detonates on the horizon in unison with a thousand pink spring blossoms opening, smiling and soft in time-lapse.

Olivier Groulx, who made this video, is a genius because of this reason — and listen: he linked together beauty and death, the torrentially massive with the invisibly internal, the chaos with the intention. And it made me realize — maybe they aren’t so far apart after all.

The provocation made the hairs stand up on my neck: the simultaneous burial in the terrifying avalanche and the slicing forward relentlessly through the ice. Sometimes we can be both: overwhelmed and making progress. Defeated and possibly decomposing, while budding into something stunning. My brain has trouble comprehending that. And my brain also gets it, if I just let it. IT HAPPENS AT THE SAME TIME. Why do we think it happens separately?!

When she measuredly states, “I predict a graceful expulsion” (also the title of her album, out May 22), you don’t doubt her at all. All will be expelled. And all will be radiant.

Holland – Cold Specks

There is a sense of suspended restraint on this record that speaks louder than thunder could. With a voice that summons the celestial, each song commands me to listen — to stop, and listen. Although there are those epic swells and crashes (like on “Holland” — wow), there are times when the song stays tightly wound, aching for a release. On “Lay Me Down,” I keep expecting, every time after that pause at 0:56, for there to be a release and a break of all the tension — but instead it’s that single strum, a chime hit. It’s as if you were to round a corner and see a colossal waterfall but hear only the sound of the kitchen faucet dripping slowly in the middle of the night. I always feel suspended in that silence, feet kicking.

There’s also a definite primal, raw element to this record, maps bloody and blank all at the same time. On several songs, she brings in a strong single male voice rising strongly behind her, to help shoulder the load in the darkness. The effect is not unlike an old Southern spiritual in its unity. She was mesmerizing live at SXSW. The Globe & Mail called her “a songstress flung from darkness,” and I love that because there is definitely a feeling that she brings words from a place I can’t quite see into. Friend and fellow blogger Adam wrote eloquently about her recently; “the more I listen to it the more I’ve become convinced that there’s no way she could have lived with these songs inside her any longer.” Yes.

The debut record from Cold Specks is out May 22, on Arts & Crafts in Canada and Mute Records in the U.S. It will be one of the best records you could spend time with this year. Completely stunning and understated and wise, this woman is.

At the SXSW conference this past March, I was delighted to be a panelist for a session called Man vs Machine: New Music Discovery. Anyone who has ever had the (mis)fortune of sitting me down in person and asking me my thoughts about the role of music in a healthy society, why music resonates with us, and how media serves (or doesn’t serve) this goal – those folks know that I like a good rumination, a good extrapolation of ideas. I’ll talk for hours; more if you give me a good beer to cogitate over.

For this event we only got a little over an hour, and the panel was a lively discussion between me, Anil Dewan from KCRW, Philipp Eibach from wahwah.fm, Richard Slatter from We Are Hunted, and Scott Perry from New Music Tipsheet as moderator. It was a substantial deal of fun, to sit back and discuss where we might all be going with this, and why. As I wrote in March, the panel was pitched intentionally as a somewhat false dichotomy, since we all know that both the human recommendation and the technological algorithm can lead to a rad discovery — I suggested we just cage-match fight but no other panelists took me up on that at 8:45 in the morning.

My points eventually crystallized around the fact that I believe the nature of music discovery has changed: where you used to need a friend in the know to play you that punk 7″ they got in London in 1976 because humans helped to counteract musical scarcity, nowadays you need humans for almost the opposite reason – to place songs into some sort of a meaningful context, and to genuinely curate good music in a neverending flood of songs.

“Man vs Machine: New Music Discovery” SXSW Panel audio

Now that you can all listen in and join the discussion, what do you think about the things we reflected on? What role does context play, and how important is human connection in new music discovery? Should machines be able to cry? Is there a perfect robot DJ, and will he also clean my house like on the Jetsons? So many questions.

The other night I headed up to the Hi-Dive to see (what was, of course) a completely fantastic Damien Jurado show. This, I expected. I am never disappointed by his astounding talent. But somehow up until 10:00pm that night I had sidestepped the music of Peter Wolf Crier. By about 10:02pm, I was blindsided by its taut magnificence and colossal, confusing heft.

Peter was riveting; he confused me in a sense where a scan of my brain in those moments would have been lighting up all sorts of conflicting colors like a holographic palette, fiery hot and thoroughly happy. With just Peter and his drummer Brian Moen on stage, they looped together these hauntingly tumultuous, soaringly vibrant sonic pictures. Their songs live are completely different than the thoughtful beauty on the album – they breathe fire and become chimera-like mythical beasts, life injected confidently. Peter reminded me very much of live videos of my beloved Jeff Buckley.

Settling It Off – Peter Wolf Crier

There was a tightly-strung tension and magnificent improvisational quality to Peter’s performance that glued my eyes to him and Brian (brilliant on drums) for the entire performance. This song in particular feels like a struggle, like one of those dreams that you fight to untangle yourself from all night long, but keeps looping and pressing into your head with images of birds and old family home movies and the gravitational pull of the shoreline.

Peter’s second record is Garden of Arms, and it is out now on the fine Jagjaguwar label (Bon Iver, Sharon Van Etten, Cave Singers).

Listen to the whole thing over on Bandcamp; and, more importantly, find a way to see him live as soon as possible.

[photo by Kevin Ihle, who was at the show, and when I saw him I said, "oh good, I can put away my camera." You can see why]

Adam Arcuragi has this rumbly deep, soulful voice that roils down into the bottom sediments of the lagoons and trolls up things for me. His is a kind of sturdy music that radiates equal parts gospel retribution, the pull of the sea or the drive of torrential rains, and so many voices rising together to answer the questions (or at least give it a shot, with conviction). Somewhere along the line his music got deemed “Death Gospel,” a name that totally fits when you listen to the way he describes it: “Death Gospel is anything that sees the inevitability of death as a reason to celebrate all the special wonder that is being alive and sentient.”

I fell for Adam Arcuragi & the Lupine Chorale Society pretty instantaneously when I saw them pouring out all their musical joy and four-part harmonies in their song “Bottom of the River” in a NYC flea market for the Blogotheque Sessions. Then after I finished the battery of my first graduate school residency, feeling dessicated, the torrent of his songs roared through again with the release of Like A Fire That Consumes All Before It… (out now on Thirty Tigers), saving me from that particularly pernicious breed of self-doubt and soul-weariness.

This chapel session was the first one recorded in the shiny new year of 2012, at the end of January on a Saturday morning so gorgeously clear and perfectly ice blue. The band had slept at my parents’ house the night before, due to me being full-up with wonderful couchsurfers, and my mom had laid a clean set of towels on each bed and made them all breakfast. So I think they were in a pretty good mood (me too), so much so that they were taking requests and inviting me to sing along. Like most bands who end up in the church, I knew from the first time I heard them that I wanted this recording to happen (Lupine: “of, like, or pertaining to wolves” – I’m all for the howling) and it didn’t disappoint.

As I said in January, how can any of us doubt our reserves when there is music like this to explain the questions?

ADAM ARCURAGI & THE LUPINE CHORALE SOCIETY
THE FUEL/FRIENDS CHAPEL SESSION (JANUARY 28, 2012)

President’s Song
The opening growls that Adam uses to start this song off remind me of a massive engine trying to turn over. It’s got an immense load to haul here, so forgive if it bucks a bit. Adam puts all his wonderfully wordy lyrics up on his website (like vocab-porn for me) and this song seems to juxtapose a foreign influence bringing church and promises, contrasted with the wilderness and surety of elemental certainties like the coming rain.

Broken Throat
Many of Adam’s songs strike me as either being taut with the sense of something unknown looming on the horizon, or the sure certainty of knowing certain secret things. This song is the latter for most of the verses, the reassurance of all our voices rising together to answer that which we do know, and making sense of us all in there together. As you can see beaming off me in the video, I loved being part of this knowing, this chorus of voices (I have a secret aspiration to be in a gospel choir, true story).

But for all the choruses and verses, the line that still sticks in my throat a good deal is towards the end, sung quietly: “And if I saw it, I still don’t think I’d know.” Huh. Yeah, I don’t know if I would, either.

(this song was my debut singing on a chapel session with real musician-folks. I’m available for weddings and background vocal tracking.)

Port Song
I’m pretty tickled to know an actual living-breathing sailor who goes off for months at a time and then returns to step down off that boat. From what I gather, the fragmentation of life at sea & life on land with the stability all around you of those you love can be disorienting, even when it is welcome. This song gets right at that, and always makes me think of my sailor friend. It’s a beautiful metaphor not only for reconnection but for the ceasing of the fighting alone. The first verse sounds restrained, like fatigue mixed with the slow creeping regeneration setting in around the roots, and then by the end everything is fully re-engaged, full-throated and wailing. “So, let me be your come back down, steady as a hand to hold / let me be the first voice as you step down from that boat / and tell me of the sea and foam, a thousand ocean miles from home / the simple gift is the song you hear from this small familiar shore.” It also gets me right in the gut how Adam makes his voice sound like an otherworldly theremin at the end, all Neutral Milk Hotel-like. Unsettlingly penetrating.

Bring It On Home To Me (Sam Cooke)
As the band loaded their gear into the church on that dazzlingly sunny morning, I was suddenly gripped with a string of melody that wrapped itself around my brain – the magnificence of Sam Cooke’s “Bring It On Home To Me.” I casually asked the guys if they ever covered it BECAUSE IT WOULD BE PERFECT. They smiled, and this was the result. (I once posted about seven trillion versions of this song. Adam’s reminds me of the spaciousness of Britt Daniel’s version the most, but with more ooomph and soul-sadness). This rendition could have easily been a forgotten b-side to a vinyl single sixty years ago; I love the space and the clatter and the toe-taps, underscoring the uncertain shuffle and the pleading wail.

ZIP: ADAM ARCURAGI CHAPEL SESSION
(for other videos from this session, go visit Kevin Ihle’s YouTube)

They’re in Europe in May, my foreign friends. Please GO. And tell them I said hello.

[Recommended reading/listening: Death Gospel's got a Wikipedia page and a Spotify provenance playlist, and even an article from the University of Chicago's divinity school about the genre. Ooh]

This is ab.so.lutely stunning, and penetrating all the way to the little crackly-lightning neuron connectors along the base of my spine, and the scattered hardened-black corroded outputs around my heart.

Hallelujah (Leonard Cohen) – Daniel Blue with Hannalee

[video from the Fremont Abbey series, shot by the talented wild-haired Eratosthenes Fackenthall]

Spring has its own special brand of fidgetiness. I start to feel slowly like there are little invisible crawly things on my skin, in a picnic sort of way, and I get all these ideas about exploring and adventures. Combine that with the calescent glow of things warming up all around us, and I spend a noticeably increased amount of time staring out the window lost in daydreams.

As with any other season for the last few years, I’ve stitched up a soundtrack of twenty songs that are compelling me in these days, wafting out my opened windows and across the lawn that is slowly turning green. We’ve all been beaten back a bit this winter, haven’t we?

Let’s come on back to life.

REARRANGE THE OLD / CALL IT NEW :: THE FUEL/FRIENDS SPRING 2012 MIX

The Scientist (Coldplay) – Willie Nelson
With birds chirping and a slow-build of the world waking up & all of us going back to the start, this Willie Nelson cover is one of the most perfect April songs ever. It’s also a Chipotle commercial so, you know, now you want burritos. Sorry.

January White – Sleeping at Last
This is where the title of the mix comes from, and even though it’s technically a song for the new year, it also works effervescently well for the rebirth of springtime, exceedingly so. Every word of this song is just exactly where I am in life right now. The future is brighter than any flashback.

Spring Forward – Baobab
This North Carolina band fuses febrile African rhythms with sweet electronica bleepy-boops to make one of the most infectiously catchy songs I’ve heard in a while.

Don’t Stop (Loving Me Now) – Floating Action
Like Andrew said, reggae for the indie rock kids. Tis the season for a little ungainly dancing, with your pale white limbs.

Best Thing For Me – Release the Sunbird
Zach Rogue from Rogue Wave has a new endeavor, a shimmery gorgeous album full of songs that feel like sunrises. He really is one of my favorite musicians for this particular time of year, in all his incarnations.

Hallways – Islands
Cue more ungainly dancing. Pounding piano, handclaps, and strong multi-part vocal harmonies: SOLD.

Ten Years Old – You Won’t
One of the most charming songs on an album jam-packed with damn charming songs. After wooing me at SXSW, You Won’t is on tour with Alcoholic Faith Mission, and coming to Denver on May 8.

Broken Minds – Northern Youth
Northern Youth is the musical endeavor of one Luke Messimer who all by himself has crafted songs of clattery delight and uber-melodic underpinnings. He’s just finished a stint working on the railroads of Arizona (no, really) and is finishing an album — Kickstart him!

Seer – Motopony
There’s so much swagger and animalistic growl to this song that it reminds me of feral skinny bears waking up from hibernation and coming out of their caves ready to rip something apart with their teeth. And yes, that is a metaphor.

Old Pine – Ben Howard
My friend Craig played this for me in my car recently, as we rode through the neighboring hamlet of Manitou Springs with all the car windows down, and wow what a gem of a tune. Ben is part of the Mumford-Communion Records family, and I love how this song starts about a thousand sonic miles from where it ends. Also, all this talk about cold sand in sleeping bags is giving me ideas.

Danse Carribe – Andrew Bird
“Here we go mistaking clouds for mountains again / here’s the thing that brings the sparrows to the fountains.” It’s kind of like bringing all the boys to the yard, but with more whistling.

Flowers In Your Hair (EP version) – The Lumineers
And then we grew a little, and romanticized. The Lumineers’ new album is one of my soundtracks to this season – and here’s an early version of a song off their first self-released little EP, which I think I got at a house concert in Denver. They entered the Billboard charts at #43 last week, after selling 10,000+ copies of their record on debut. That blows my mind. They are on to terrific things.

No Nostalgia – Agesandages
I could listen to the 1:51 mark in this song just over and over and over. No hesitation, no nostalgia. Even before Barry added this to his campaign playlist, I was in love.

Your Own Kite – Isaac Pierce
From that same humble wonderful waking-up EP that gave us “Warm Bruise,” Isaac Pierce sings here about kites and I can see them dipping and nosing through the April winds.

Always Spring – I’m From Barcelona
There’s a sort of childlike joy in this song, those remembered twitches you’d get in your legs from sitting behind a desk in grade school towards the end of the school year and wanting to just go out and ride your bike hard.

Lakehouse – Of Monsters and Men
Every single song off this entire marvelous debut record could soundtrack spring because it is an explosion of color and jubilance. I just picked this one because I want to go to a lakehouse right now. You try out the other ones on the album and let me know if you come up with something different.

Little Spring – Rocky Votolato
This song is how I found out that Seattle’s wonderful Rocky Votolato has a new record that just came out a few weeks ago, and he’s coming on tour in the coming months all over god’s green earth. He continues to be so gooood.

The Road – Bryan John Appleby
Listening carefully and intentionally to this song with headphones on is closely akin to a resurrection.

Unto the Resplendent – The Mermen
From a compilation of surf music that I have, this song makes you see all sort of wavery watery patterns reflecting off the sand and up under your umbrella in shades of green and blue. It’s like floating.

What Am I Living For – Van Morrison
…and this is the slow shuffle back and across the deck, making me think of slow-dancing in the porchlight. Ending the perfect springtime day with some Van Morrison on the record player is just about the finest there is.

ZIP: REARRANGE THE OLD / CALL IT NEW

[album art, as always, by the fabulous Ryan Hollingsworth, who somehow interprets my vague requests ("ummm....like blue? and....spriiinginess?") and nails it every time]

Seattle songwriter Damien Jurado has been making exceptionally good music for a very long time. His latest record Maroqopa sees him paired up again with Richard Swift (who produced Damien’s incredible Saint Bartlett in 2010, and also that great Mynabirds record, and the forthcoming Pickwick debut). I still stand by my previous three-word review of Maraqopa: “ghostly doo-wop sadness.”

With his newest record, there came a small stack of 7″ singles, with six additional incredible songs. This song absolutely BREAKS MY HEART, and it is a bonus track. I mean COME ON Damien, it is unfair the crazy talent that flows out of this gentleman.

Diamond Sea – Damien Jurado

COLORADO CONTEST: Damien is playing Denver’s Hi-Dive tomorrow night. This will be one of the very best shows of the springtime in Colorado, guys. You can buy tickets here, and also email me to enter to win one of the pairs I have to give away! I can’t wait til tomorrow night. Come join me.

AND: In addition to immediately buying Maraqopa and coming to the show tomorrow night, you’d also be well-advised to listen to other Seattle luminaries covering his songs, via the Seattle Times (or, you know, on a rooftop).

DAMIEN JURADO SPRING TOUR
Apr 17 – Hi-Dive – Denver, CO
Apr 18 – Velour – Provo, UT
Apr 19 – Neurolux – Boise, ID
Apr 21 – Biltmore Cabaret – Vancouver, Canada
Apr 22 – HOLOCENE – Portland, OR
May 16 – Schubas – Chicago, IL
May 17 – Warhol Museum – Pittsburgh, PA
May 18 – Davis Square Theater – Somerville, MA
May 19 – Mercury Lounge – New York, NY
May 20 – Johnny Brenda’s – Philadelphia, PA
May 21 – Black Cat – Washington, DC
May 22 – King’s Barcade – Raleigh, NC
May 23 – The EARL – Atlanta, GA
May 25 – The Basement – Nashville, TN
May 26 – Russian Recording – Bloomington, IN
May 28 – Sasquatch Music Festival – George, WA
Aug 09 – Haldern Pop – Haldern, Germany
Aug 17 – Green Man Festival – Wales, United Kingdom

[photo by the talented & lovely Sarah Jurado]