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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)
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)