Blog
Park Avenue Records acoustic instore date change
The Park Avenue Records acoustic instore in Orlando has been changed from Friday May 8th to Thursday May 7th at 5pm. Hope to see you out there!
posted by: at 5/5/2009 12:39 PM | link here | comments (0)
WE DID IT!
oooh, where do I begin? I'm not entirely sure where I even left off... the last four months have been somewhat of a blur- the timeline lost its linear arrangement and more closely resembles something from my "puzzle narratives in post modern film" class. Okay, maybe it isn't quite that extreme... but spending four months in a van with the same group of people really makes one lose their sense of days, time, and place. Asking "did that happen in Florida or Seattle? Was it last week or last month?" would be commonplace. Right now, I'm just excited to be sleeping on something that isn't rumbling down the highway at 60 miles per hour. I'm excited to open a dresser drawer to get a clean shirt or pair of socks, instead of turning to my under-sized suitcase where things always emerge wrinkly and it's usually difficult to distinguish that which is clean, from that which isn't. But aside from getting robed blind in Montreal, getting stuck in the middle of a blizzard in the Blue Mountains of Eastern Oregon (literally, on the Oregon Trail: "Your Family is dying of starvation" or whatever), having to pay over $5 for a gallon of gas in some places, and encountering an alligator during my morning run, it has all been strangely enlivening. Okay, the alligator wasn't even that big, and there was no way it was going to inflict injury on me... I could have totally out run it, at least for a short distance. But for serious, the last lap around the country was perhaps the most adventurous- meaning, we stayed in hotels more frequently than we ever had before (sometimes that mysterious smell in the van makes it difficult to accept it as your bedroom) or maybe we were just in a daze- like zombies feasting on the brains of the living, we played show after show (after show, after show, after show, after show…) and drove (ourselves) roughly 17,000 miles (sorry, Earth). To counteract the van rot from which we were all suffering, we even started making use of the hotels' pool and fitness rooms (when available), and even coordinated The Vegetarian Challenge- which consisted of a whole set of rules and regulations that were subsequently forgotten about. Also, on this tour we made a habit of seeking out Whole Foods in cities, and thus eating food that doesn’t make you feel completely sorry for yourself. Sorry, Subway- we’re over you. As for our visit to the northwestern part of this country, it was like a breath of fresh air. Actually, it was a breath of fresh air, both literally and figuratively. We even got to spend another night/day in one of our favorite place ever which I think we’ve all agreed is pretty much the ideal place to simultaneously work and relax. It was our fourth or fifth time in Seattle, but it was the first time we’ve ever had any free time to spend walking around downtown. Four of us were lucky enough to go to the library (which is amazing) and the pike street market. As if Seattle isn’t warm and sunny enough as it is, we also met with our friends at Barsuk to give the day a little extra sprinkle of happiness... and to pick up some vitamin waters. During that meeting we agreed upon working together, which is very, very exciting. Further down the coast we were lucky enough to get to catch The Dodos (whose CD we’ve been listening to pretty regularly in the van over the past couple months) at an in-store performance at Amoeba. It was awesome.
A couple days later, we were sipping celebratory mojitos and Coronas at Brian’s for finishing up such a behemoth tour, which most recently included six weeks with The Little Ones (who are all awesome, as people and as musicians- we will miss them!) Brian, who is probably the best host ever, also cooked us delicious food, which we packed our bodies full of in order to prepare ourselves for the 2,800-mile journey home.
The drive back was exhausting, although we did get to see the Grand Canyon… which, as the name implies, was… pretty grand.
posted by: Milo at 5/25/2008 3:19 PM | link here | comments (15)
Past Few Months
Hey everyone. We've been truckin' around the country for the past four and a half weeks, beginning with our trip to Austin for SXSW which I'll tell you about in a minute. Then joined up with The Cribs for a few weeks, heading back east from Austin and then across the country ending at the El Rey Theater in LA. Continuing on to San Diego where we met up with The Little Ones, now heading back east.
This tour's been pretty exhausting, luckily we had a day off a few days ago in Vero, Florida. We spent the morning at the beach, each got our respective tans and sunburns, did some extreme boogey boarding, ect.
Let's see. It's been a while so I'll give the highlights of the past few months. South By Southwest was awesome as expected. Saw a ton of great bands including Meneguar, The Dodos, Islands, Vampire Weekend, Tokyo Police Club, The Virgins, Parts and Labor, So So Glos. Also went to two unlisted late night shows, one an acoustic show on the Texas University lawn where bands of all sorts were playing songs with whatever instruments were lying around, buckets, acoustic guitars, clapping, little keyboards. The other show was a hardcore show on a pedestrian bridge over the river. Hundreds of kids crammed onto this bridge with a huge mosh pit in the middle, a line of people jumping into the middle crowd surfing. Probably one of the craziest shows I've seen.
Then we joined up with The Cribs for a few weeks. The tour was great-The Cribs are awesome, really fun guys. I'd say the LA show at El Rey was the climax, really cool ballroom looking venue and a packed crowd. The only problem was getting to and from the dressing room, you had to walk across the back of the stage. So we did our best to either army crawl across the floor or sprint without distracting too much.
So here we are now, on tour with The Little Ones who we love! Great guys. We're currently heading up the east coast with 22 shows to go. Check back soon, we'll be posting some current pictures up here.
Love,
Cameron
posted by: Cameron at 4/17/2008 11:19 AM | link here | comments (1)
Finally A Sunny Day In Syracuse
Good day,
We are just finishing up a mini tour which included playing at: Wesleyan, Yale, Skidmore, Cornell, Jamestown NY, Rochester NY, and Syracuse NY. We'll be playing Scranton, PA tonight and then finishing this leg of the tour tomorrow at Bowery Ballroom in NYC. I think it's an understatement to say I'm really excited for that show, Bowery is one of our favorite venues to play, and we have never had our own crowd there, so if our NYC fanbase is anything like our other fans, the show should be craaaaazy, and a blast for all. Not to mention the after party at Fontanas...
We haven't played in Upstate NY (besides a house party in Syracuse in Sept) in well over a year. In fact, the last time we played at the Bug Jar, in Rochester, it was only our 28th show, which is unbelievable because it seems like it was yesterday to me. It's definitely been way too long since we've played NY State because I forgot how great our fans are there. Friendly, enthusiastic, generous, just all around fantastic people. Also, they don't get as many bands touring there as say, NYC, so they really appreciate it when bands do come through. I can confidently say it will not be too long before we come back to Upstate NY.
The tour has been going really well and it seemed as though that black cloud Milo spoke of in the last blog had cleared up, until. . . in Rochester someone decided to graffiti our big beautiful red trailer. As artists we are into all different forms of artistic expression and when word spread through the band that our trailer had been tagged, everyone's first response essentially was "haha, go figure. Is it cool?" And you know what? It was not cool at all. It was actually really lame, probably some of the ugliest and unoriginal graffiti I've seen around. When we got back to where we were staying they fortunately had a solution to remove it, so our trailer is now free of lame ass, un-artistic, very rudely placed graffiti. At least they didn't try to break in, right?
Right now I've been in a bit of a new music lull. I'm looking forward to hearing the new Born Ruffians, TPC, and Virgins albums, but besides that I'm pretty behind on what's new, and, more importantly, good right now. Embarrassingly enough I've had Rihanna's little Umbrella song stuck in my head since I saw her play at the Brits with the Klaxons. I need some musical suggestions!
Last night we spent a few hours working on a remix for a new TPC song, Allie and I wrote string parts, Mat, a new bass line, and new drums parts, it's going to be crazy! I'm looking forward to finishing it. Our friend, Andrew, from SU, is helping us since, well, as you read in Milo's blog, we don't have the computers or the software that we used to. Or in some of our cases we're just not really sure how to use that software.
That's all for now, I'm SO EXCITED for SXSW. The people in Upstate NY are great, however, the weather is not. In the words of Cameron "I feel like I've been freezing cold for three days now." While I'm not as excited for the bigger acts, besides REM, of course, there are a lot of fantastic smaller bands I hope to catch. Not to mention I'm excited for our own shows. After SXSW we head out on the road until May 20th. We will pretty much be hitting every market so I hope to meet all of you reading this.
Have a great day,
Rebecca
posted by: Becca at 3/6/2008 12:40 PM | link here | comments (1)
Eye of the Storm
This is the eye of the storm, both in terms of the band’s tour schedule and the severe weather that is preventing us from rehearsing today. We’ve just finished up our first ever “headlining” tour, which was more or less a success. The word “headlining” is a bit misleading… it seems to suggest a superiority complex that hierarchically distinguishes one band from another. In this case, we were equals with our most recent tour buddies: The Virgins. This was, what I hope will be the first of many times we will get to share the stage with them. I say it was “more or less a success” because the first few days were bleak ones, and we seemed to have an enormous dark cloud over our heads. The first show was in Montreal, which was one of our worst-ever shows up to date. Maybe it had something to do with getting stuck in the snow with the van and trailer? Or not being able to find parking, and then having to double park with our hazards on outside of the venue during our set? Whatever it was, the weekend was only beginning to unfold with a series of misfortunes and straight up bad luck.
We were looking forward to filming some videos for TakeAwayShows after the show. If you haven’t seen the website, it is most definitely worth checking out. It’s the video equivalent to Daytrotter. Anyway, as we were finishing up the shoot for ‘Can You Tell’ (which featured the hilariously annoying SuperBass) I went across the street to put my ukulele back in the van. It wasn’t until I shut the van door that I heard a curious crackle of broken glass, and I noticed that there were shards all over the place. Somebody had smashed the back window (“what jerks!” I thought to myself. I assumed it was just a random act of vandalism by a drunk passerby… I would never have imagined it was the traces of an act of grand larceny)
I walked over to the others who were busy performing the final chorus in “Can You Tell” as they were being followed by a couple of extremely rude and severely drunk hecklers. I think after Rebecca asked one of them to stop, he replied in a violent tone: “I’ll punch you in the fucking face, Bitch!” (or something to that affect). I butted in: “Guys, somebody broke the van window.”
Somebody went in our van and took five laptops (four MacBooks, one MacBook Pro), a Sony digital Handicam, A backpack (and its contents), and a number of other personal belongings. Band financial records, countless digital photos, short stories, poems, Garageband demos and other personal and irreplaceable documents, were all gone. Banks, parents, and credit card companies were called in the hours that followed. By the time we left the Police station after filing out the necessary paperwork (as if the Police would actually be able to anything about such a crime…) it was nearly 5:30 am. We had nowhere to stay, and we certainly weren’t going to stay in Montreal any longer than we had to, so we decided to start out on the journey to Toronto. With a couple of our tour posters and some duck tape, I made a bandage to cover the van’s open wound, and we started on our way. We slept in the parking lot of a truck stop for a few hours that morning, drank the facility’s stale “coffee,” and continued on our way.
Finally, after 12 hours of driving/sleeping/window-repairing, we made it to the venue in Toronto (only 1 hour late! Not bad, for us) and were greeted by some of the Virgins, who had already heard about our misfortune. Despite being slightly numb after driving for 7 hours straight, I was beginning to feel human again. Toronto was already one up on Montreal (people were friendly, there was parking, the venue was pretty decent, we were well fed and showered) so I think our spirits were beginning to rise.
I just realized that I’ve been very wordy with this blog entry thus far, so I’ll try to glaze over the monotonous descriptions from here on out: the show was lots of fun (it was great to see so many people come out to a show in a city that we’ve never played in!), the following morning brunch was great (mmm Sneaky Dee’s… it was almost worth the additional $438 we had to pay to get our van back after it was towed from the lot across from the restaurant while we were inside enjoying our enchiladas), and then it was off to Buffalo, Pontiac, Cleveland, Toledo… The road to Chicago smoothed out quite a bit after those first two tumultuous days in Canada.
We finished up a few days ago in Northampton, MA (our first time playing there, it was tons of fun) and have since been taking some time to write, rehearse, and recover from a few weeks on the road. There is a bit of a lull in the schedule before we head back out on the road (for 10 weeks! YIKES!) at the end of this month. Blog entries will be as frequent as our now computer-less band can manage.
Guilelessly,
Milo
posted by: Milo at 2/13/2008 3:14 PM | link here | comments (3)
Tour Update: Bowling Green Cancelled
Hey everyone thanks for all the support on the tour so far... We've
been having a blast with you and our faithful buddies the virgins.
Yesterday we did an amazing loud messy and fun collab with them while
at daytrotter's HQ in rock island,IL (2 Basses?!?!)
We've been going full steam with no breaks and unfortunately after
last night's show I lost my voice! So unfortunately we wont be making it to the
Bowling Green, OH show tonight (sorry!). We're making our way to Pittsburgh
now though. Thanks again for all the fun!
Peace,
Wes
posted by: Wes at 2/4/2008 3:57 PM | link here | comments (1)
Hello Friends:
We've been really busy playing shows, putting massive mileage on the Econoline, playing more shows - you get the picture - so we haven't had time to write, but we thought you might want to check out a couple blogs, pix, and press clippings from the tour so far...
Main Act
Toronto
eyeweekly.com - Toronto
Shiv from WOXY
WOXY Show mp3
Chicago - Late to the Party
Chicago - Underground Bee - great pix by Robert Loerzel!
Madison - Isthmus
Madison - Miss the Signpost
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
Pittsburgh City Paper
Filter
More to come soon... stay tuned!
RRR
posted by: Wes at 2/4/2008 11:39 AM | link here | comments (0)
Ra Ra Riot's time off
Hey there. It's been relaxing having some time off from the band, although I haven't managed to escape my bandmates completely. Tonight my sideproject Isaac (www.myspace.com/isaacwisch) played a show with Wes' brother's band Thing One (www.myspace.com/thingone) at Asbury Lanes in Asbury Park. The show was hosted by Funk N Waffles (all of you Syracuse lovers will know what I'm talking about)! The show went very well, large crowd, a good lineup of bands, a nice walk down to the Jersey shore, and a delicious buttermilk waffle with strawberries to top off the night. I saw Wes there with almost his entire family supporting Thing One and enjoying some bowling and waffles.
So that's pretty much all I've been up to, playing a few shows with Isaac, going to see some amazing shows in Brooklyn and Manhattan, and relaxing at home. I don't know much of what the rest of the band is up to. In a short conversation with Wes he told me he'd been playing plenty of Guitar Hero. As for the rest of the band I couldn't say, got to have some alone time before we embark on our next bunch of adventures!
Happy Holidays
Love,
Cameron
posted by: Cameron at 12/23/2007 4:11 AM | link here | comments (0)
Last Day at the Studio
Hey everyone. Our time at Bear Creek is winding down. It's our last full day here and we're adding the finishing touches to all of the songs. We've had an amazing time here full of late night hot tub sessions, pool games (real games and games invented by the band), Geometry Wars! (our new favorite video game, extremely visually stimulating as you'll see in the video below), and to top it all off, an amazing record which we can't wait to share with all of you! Below we have some footage of Wes recording Gaffa in the dark, vibed-out live room, our producer Ryan working on the track, a pool game between Matt and Milo, and a very intense game of Geometry Wars masterfully played by Allie.
Along with those videos there’s some pictures below, including: my percussion setup for Gaffa (three pots, a handfull of spoons, an empty water jug, a pillow, a magazine, a big pot of water and other various items we found around the house), Wes laying down some vocals, and a failed picture-taking attempt of Wes, Matt and I in our Bear Creek bath robes. We were about to head out to the hot tub and wanted to capture the excitement of our late night bro-down; I used the toaster to steady the camera but it didn’t exactly frame the picture right. Luckily, there was a coincidental and conveniently placed plastic bag to sensor the photo.
Anyhow, enjoy these pictures and videos and we’ll see you soon!
Love,
Cameron
posted by: Cameron at 12/14/2007 3:25 AM | link here | comments (2)
Video Blog #1
Hello everyone! Man, we are having such a great time here! So I guess not much has changed since Becca's most recent and very thorough blog - besides there being a couple of more candles in the menorah. Other than that, things here at Bear Creek have been a little quiet. We've been plodding along, mostly doing string and vocal overdubs lately. The rhythm section is particularly inactive - Cam and I have been finished drum and bass tracking for days! We have nothing to do except critique everyone else's musicianship and take naps. Right now, we're all sitting in the control room as Milo's working on overdubs for a brand-new song that we debuted at the D.C. and Brooklyn shows last week. It's tentatively titled "Oh, La" and we can't wait for you to hear it! In fact, we're just as excited about the rest of the album, too, but I'm probably not allowed to talk about it in too much detail - so all I'll say is that Ryan (the producer) has predicted that its release will knock people's faces and socks off, and, in doing so, will be nothing short of "a faceless, sockless mess". As alluded to in the title of this blog, here is a video of Becca setting bread on fire and Matt, our reliable studio assistant, extinguishing it amid our astonishing display of collective inaction.
Love,
Mathieu
posted by: Mat at 12/10/2007 5:24 PM | link here | comments (1)
Seattle is FUN
Yesterday was yet another productive day in the life of Ra Ra Riot. Allie and I recorded our parts to Dying is Fine, and Wes recorded vocals for two tracks. Besides that, we did lots of fun things.
When we were in England in July we acquired lots and lots of Bjork DVDs (Thanks!), and she's pretty amazing so they're all entertaining. We watched the DVD for her 2001 Vespertine Tour. It's pretty crazy, she plays in all these incredible Opera Houses around the world, has a choir from Greenland, and much much more!
Then, we finished Season 1 of Weeds. We had previously started the season while attempting to stay up all night before our flight out here, so we're new fans to the show, but are hooked. After that, we smoked Baby Clive (Allie and Mat's hookah), it's great. He is travel size, has his own case, and always treats us well. We picked up some vanilla shisha back home and it was surprisingly delicious. We usually go for the more fruity flavors, but decided to spice it up a bit. I think we all recommend trying it.
Allie and I cooked a pretty awesome dinner, tacos and GREAT burritos. There was seasoned meat, chipotle sour cream sauce, spinach, seasoned rice, refried beans, cheese, onions, and tomatoes. All was seasoned by us, none of the pre packaged stuff. It might not sound so great, but it was. Tonight I think will be another Milo specialty, but not his famous spaghetti. We shall see.
Last night was also the very first night of Hanukah. Like all Jewish Mothers, my mom couldn't let me be unprepared to celebrate the holiday, so when I opened her holiday package for the band it was complete with a menorah, candles, dreidels, chocolate gelt, Starbucks Gift cards, dark chocolate M&M's, and a book entitled "The Eight Nights of Hanukah" which I'm assuming was to remind me how to celebrate in case I forgot how we did it every year for the past 23 years. Then, Cameron and I (he's a half) decided to light the candles and say our Hanukah prayers. While I wasn't going to formally celebrate, I felt obligated to since my mom was so sweet and gave us this whole package. I thought it would be rude not to celebrate. We got through two of the prayers, but forgot the third (there are three on the first night), and of course when I relayed this to my Mom in an email at 2 in the morning I awoke to an email with the english translation and phonetic spelling of all the prayers I need. Now Cameron and I are fully prepared to properly celebrate this evening, maybe we'll even sing them.
So here are some pictures of Wes and Ryan, our producer, in the studio mixing the vocal tracks, Cameron lighting the candles, our Hanukah package, and Mat working on some super secret and special ideas.
Happy Holidays!
Love,
Becca
posted by: Becca at 12/5/2007 6:08 PM | link here | comments (0)
Back to the Land of Delicious Coffee
We have had a very busy and tiring few days. We played the Rock and Roll Hotel in DC on Friday, and had a fantastic time. It was our first headlining show in DC and the crowd was incredible, really made us have a ball. Saturday we played Union Hall in NYC, which was the first show in NYC since September, it was also pretty amazing. The venue had a lot of character and the fans were really enthusiastic, and reminded us of the first shows and house parties we used to play up at Syracuse. Sunday we were supposed to fly out to Seattle but due to the whopping three inches of snow we had in NJ all flights were cancelled. The earliest we were able to leave was 5:30 am Monday, so we stayed up all night, headed to the airport at 3:30am, flew to Houston at 5:30am, had a five hr layover (during which most of us passed out on the floor of the airport for three hours), a four hour flight to Seattle, and an hour car ride to the studio. We arrived and Milo made his famous spaghetti. After dinner Allie and I had to finish a song from last session, which was followed by the whole band doing a live recording of one of our new songs. We're pretty exhausted. Here are some pictures from today, I don't have any from our travels because we spent the majority of that time sleeping. There is Milo and Mat making the special sauce. Actually, if you look closely you'll see Milo making the sauce and Mat stealing bites from it. Then there's Milo serving up his Spaghetti, Wes recording on the Organ, and Allie recording.
That's all for now I need sleep!
Love,
Becca
posted by: Becca at 12/4/2007 11:13 AM | link here | comments (0)