june madrona

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2009-10-10T22:29:00.000-07:00

This Blog has moved to junemadrona.com!

Interview on Pop Rock Candy Mountian!

2009-04-16T16:16:00.000-07:00

Indie 101 With Aly Carr: June Madrona

September 2, 2008 by poprockcandy · Leave a Comment

Aly Carr is the creative writer and co-host of The Merry Andrews Show in Tampa, Fla. She is an amateur small cat trainer and she is very fluent in knock-knock jokes. The Merry Andrews Show can be heard online at the show’s official site.

The Merry Andrews Show At MySpace

June Madrona is a folk band based out of Olympia, Washington. They create songs that will make you laugh, cry, and dance all in less than 4 minutes. I recently got to talk with lead singer, Ross Cowman, and melodica player, Micah Ellison, about how they came together, their Europe tour, campfires, secret music projects, and Clint Eastwood.

Aly Carr: It sounds like there are a gazillion people in the band, which is one of the reasons I think I’m drawn to your music. How many people are actually in the band and how did you all come together?

Ross Cowman: Ha! That is a funny question. There are actually 4 and 1/2 people in the band. I’ve never actually counted how many people have been in the band historically… I’m going to do it now … 16. That is just everyone who has played a show as part of June Madrona. If you count people who have recorded an album with the band it goes down to 8. Currently I play guitar, Danielle plays flute, Micah plays melodica, and Bob sings and claps (he is the half because he never actually comes to practice). The story of how we all came together is complicated but briefly, Micah and Sean both met me by coming to June Madrona shows, Danielle and I met at a Valentine’s Day party, and this crazy lady named Celina introduced me to Bob, whom she was stalking at the time.

Micah Ellison: I came across June Madrona when it was in a time of transition, in early ‘08. I’d heard a bunch of songs from the Winged Life online and really liked them. I eventually had the chance to see Ross at a house show and it totally blew my mind to be exposed to this incredible acoustic experience. He was playing with Bob Schwenkler, his partner at Bicycle Records. I went to the Bicycle website, saw that June Madrona was working on a new album, and e-mailed them saying, “Hey, need any melodica on the album?” Then I met Ross, played with him for a couple hours, and he made me dinner. I think we were pretty much sold on each other at that point.

I think Danielle’s and Sean’s stories are interesting but they should tell you those stories themselves if they want to. =)

AC: You all toured Europe last year, was this a first for you, and how did it go?

check out the rest here!

Summer '09 Tour Dates!

2009-04-16T14:50:00.001-07:00

Hey folks,
thanks for writing to us with your suggestions for places to play. they were super helpful! We have decided to visit the northern and middle part of the country on this tour since we haven't been to many of these places before. (don't worry west coast, we won't forget you!) What follows is a list of cities and dates we plan to hit up. If you would like to help us, book a show, sleep at your house, or put up fliers, please let us know! you can email me at ross@bicyclerecords.com!
xoxoxo Ross

date city
Fri Jul 31 tacoma
Sat Aug 1 seattle
Sun Aug 2 couer 'd alene or spokane
Mon Aug 3 missoula
Tue Aug 4 Billings
Wed Aug 5 fargo or pierre, ND
Thu Aug 6 mineapolis
Fri Aug 7 wynona
Sat Aug 8 chicago
Sun Aug 9 chicago
Mon Aug 10 chicago
Tue Aug 11 grand rapids, kalamazo, lansing
Wed Aug 12 clevelend or toledo, oh
Thu Aug 13 jamestown
Fri Aug 14 syracuse, binghamton or albany, ny
Sat Aug 15 montreal
Sun Aug 16 montreal
Mon Aug 17 montreal
Tue Aug 18 portland or turner, maine
Wed Aug 19 boston
Thu Aug 20 providance, ri
Fri Aug 21 brooklyn
Sat Aug 22 manhattan, new york
Sun Aug 23 philadelphia
Mon Aug 24 DC
Tue Aug 25 DC
Wed Aug 26 DC
Thu Aug 27 pittsburgh
Fri Aug 28 columbus
Sat Aug 29 columbus
Sun Aug 30 dayton, oh
Mon Aug 31 st louis
Tue Sep 1 kansas city
Wed Sep 2 salinas, ka
Thu Sep 3 bloomington
Fri Sep 4 bloomington
Sat Sep 5 denver, co
Sun Sep 6 denver, co
Mon Sep 7 saratoga
Tue Sep 8 salt lake city, ut
Wed Sep 9 bosie, id
Thu Sep 10 nampa id
Fri Sep 11 kennewick, wa
Sat Sep 12 portland, or

2009-03-12T11:42:00.000-07:00

Eugene, OR!
We're staying with in eugene for a week while danielle attends the Midwifery Today conference. Some super nice folks named Jeff, Molly, and Richie, are letting us stay at their house. Molly works at a bakery in town and Jeff plays drums in some local bands. We havn't met richie yet, he's been in portland. It has been super cold in the mornings here, but quite nice once the sun warms things up. We've all been really usy getting the last of the tour scheduled, i think we're pretty much done now.
Tomorrow we are going to play at the museum of unfine art, which is a record store in downtown eugene. It is pretty last minuet but it should be fun. It feels so good to be on the road again and away from all the day to day things I usualy think about. Last night the train kept waking us up. One came by blaring it's whistle every half hour or so. Eventualy I got out the earplugs and got some sleep. Still I drempt about trains, I kept seeing them run past me in strange cities. ok, enough for now!
-ross

June Madrona Spring 2009 TOUR DATES

2009-03-12T11:41:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone! We're on the road!

June Madrona Spring 2009 TOUR DATES
3-13- Eugene, CA @ The Museum of Unfine Art
3-15 – Redding, CA @ Sue’s Java
3/16 – Chico, CA @ Café Flo
3/18 – Sacramento, CA @ The Hub + R5 Records
3/19 – Santa Cruz @ The Crystal Plaace
3/20 – Santa Barbra, CA @ The Furnace
3/21 – Los Angeles, CA @ Echo Curio
3/23 – Gilroy, CA @ The Myatt Farm
3/24 – San Jose, CA @ Barefoot Coffee
3/25- Berkley, CA @ Nabolom Collective Bakery
3/26- Oakland, CA @ TBA
3/27- Arcata, CA @ TBA
3/28 – Ashland, OR @ The Bike House
3/29 – Salem, OR @ The Space

Let us know if you'd like to help out with one of the TBA shows! Details about these shows can be found at bicyclerecords.com/junemadrona
junemadrona@bicyclerecords.com
xo june madrona

विंटर इन ओल्य्म्पिया

2008-12-08T19:23:00.000-08:00

I don't understand why our blog keeps translating the titles into another language! We just got back from touring with sleeping dog from belgium. The tour was a short 5 days through washington along the puget sound. Now I'm home again working at Bicycle Records and teaching guitar lessons. Danielle is in school, studying to become a midwife, and Sean is finishing his quarter at Evergreen. After the quarter ends, we will be working on some new songs.

We played a show at a toy store in olympia. I have a bunch of children's songs I wrote when I used to work at the children's center at evergreen. It was more adults there then kids, but all the same it was fun to play them. The owner of the store bought tea and coco for us.

I went to the Hollow Earth Radio Indie Record sale at the Healthy Times Fun Club in seattle, to table for Bicycle Records. There were a ton of labels there. Mostly from Seattle and Olympia. There was even someone from Sub Pop tabling there. Which felt kind of weird to me because the owners of Sub Pop are millionaires.
.
We're planning two tours right now. One down the west coast this march. the other through europe june-september. It is soooo much work to plan a tour. I am looking forward to seeing all the friends we made on our last trip. So many nice folks.

2008-04-29T12:36:00.000-07:00

we've been doing it all wrong!

http://www.wikihow.com/Get-a-Crowd-Going

seattle folklife festival / new members

2008-02-08T09:46:00.000-08:00

Some exciting news came today, June Madrona has been invited to play the seattle folklife festival this year. I grew up in kirkland so playing the folk life has a strong element of childhood fantasy fufillment for me. Today danielle and I will be meeting up with this fellow named simon who plays the flute. Dani is looking into buying an alto flute, which plays a couple of octaves lower then a normal flue, if simon works out we might start having two flutes in the band. I am really excited about the possibilies of that. Also bob schwenkler who records all of our albums is thinking abot joining. He already knows all of the songs and usualy sings with us at shows. We practiced together with him doing harmonies and percussion and it sounds really good. Micah is living in seattle now and working as the music director for a musical. It sounds like a really challanging job. We realized that for the band to work everyone really needed to be living in olympia, so he is not playing with us right now. It is really exciting and challanging having to recreate the band again. It has happened after every album. I'm not scared of it like I used to be.
I'm at bob's house right now working on bicycle records stuff. Bicycle records (www.bicyclerecords.com) is a label that we run together. Today onyx and colleen of polka dot dot dot are coming over to talk about touring europe and new zealand. I am really excited for them. They will be playing the folk life festivle as well.ok back to work.
xo ross

ग्रेट आईडिया

2008-01-29T09:35:00.000-08:00

I don't know why but all of my headings keep turning into some strange language. I'm at bob's house in olympia washington right now, aka Bicycle HQ. Fun times, bob is mixing the new Yes Please album and I just ordered 1000 5" polyvinal sleaves. I really want to start an all scat band and call it "scat attack!". I realized the other day that there are certin syllables that you really should never use in a scat solo. these syllables include...
-"mup"
-"rub!"
and worst of all
-"poo!"

try it. It dosen't work. You can email home recordings of scat solos to danielle.chiero@gmail.com
xo ross

देअर्बोर्ण हौस

2008-01-28T10:55:00.000-08:00

Bob, Danielle, and I drove through a rainstorm that streatched all up and down the highway from olympia to seattle. The Dearborn house is a diy venue run by our friend tiffany in wallingford. The show was a little bittersweet for us since we wern't sure when we could get to play with micah again. After we returned to olympia micah moved to seattle so we havn't been able to function as a band the way we used to.
When we arrived at the house, Clyde was there with his friend Roy making pie. Tiff and Forrest, Josepha and Sibsi from Berlin were there as well. This was the last day of their us tour. We had played with thim the night before in olympia.
The show happened in a gallery nextdoor to the house, the place was totaly packed and full of good vibes. Lots of folks sang along to the show. Amber and Garrette, the founders of Hollow Earth Radio were there as well and they recorded the whole show. (hollowearthradio.com).

lyon, revisited

2007-11-25T10:52:00.000-08:00

the cathedrial was full of old french people singing hymns, we pass a line of folks waiting for their turn at the confessional. The stairs leading to the crypt bears a sign saying “be quiet” in 4 different languages. We go down and see some folks trying to shush their baby who keeps chirping like a bird. Each little noise it makes echos off the stone walls. Babys are always being fussy at funerals. I remember how when my grandmother died these kids kept making noise and laughing during the service. An adult sushed them up at some point. I remember my mother saying how she liked it how kids made noise at things like that and how it made her remember that life was still gonig on.

munich

2007-11-25T10:51:00.000-08:00

The german government decomissioned an old WWII era military hospital after the war. Now they rent out the buildings to different groups like a montissori school and this collectively run cafe called Kafe Kult. Against Me! performs the same night as us. We know because this kid there talks about how they used to play at Kafe Kult before they signed onto a major label. Now all of their old fans can't afford to go to their shows anymore.

strakonice and the velvet revolution

2007-11-25T10:50:00.000-08:00

a communist govornment controled czechloslovokia until the "velvet revolution" on 1989. Petr lived in strakonice at the time, for him the revolution was something he witnessed on the television. day after day workers gathered in the city and stood oddly silent, occasionaly singing the national anthem or listening to a speach. One day it ended and suddenly for the first time in his life, petr could leave the country. "There used to be many beautiful buildings in strakonice but the communnists tore them down because they were innefficent." he tells us . Petr works in a library in a castle near the river. We walk there together and pend some time looking a books and using the internet.

avenyeshka's apartment

2007-11-25T10:49:00.000-08:00

avenyeshka works with a diy collective that promotes events in prague. She lives in a house with her twin borhter, mother, and grandmother in a placethat wasn't on our map. (aparently we got a crappy tourist map of prague.) we experienced nothing but wonderful hospatility the whole time we were in the czech republic.

downtown prague = gothic disneyland

2007-11-25T10:48:00.000-08:00

I first visited prague in 2001 at the age of 21. the month I spent living there stands out in my memory like an island surrounded by an ocean. Prague seemed like an island to me. I flew in on a plane and traveled around on foot and my subway my whole time there, experiencing a different culture for the first time in my life. Now as I drive in these memories collide with my knowledge of european highways and how everything is connected. When I first came to prague I was a tourist, fresh out of college. Now I am a musician, invited there to perform. Downtown prague is not for the czech anymore. they've been pushed out by capital, by tourists. We see thousands of them on the streets, gawking at mozarts clock or at the punk kids gathered around the horseman in wenseslas square. Prague is a city that is raing it's first generation of teenagers to live under capitalism, and a city where beer is cheaper then water and the ”authentic“ mexican restraunt uses exclusively canned vegetables from mexico. The czech republic is a land locked country and, I'm told, obsessed with the sea. I think about how we all want things we can't have, and how anything can become ordinary, tike these angles with golden wings staring down from the rooftops, or traveling to ancient cities day after day on a european tour. I think about the bitterness I hear in people's voices as they talk about how forginers have taken over the down town and how we're all losing our homes to wealthy people. That's how it is now. If you are wealthy you can just buy your way into any communnity, take it over and reshape it to your desires.

weimar

2007-11-25T10:47:00.000-08:00

I read "rise and fall of the third reich" the summer before I came to germany. All of the names of places keep jumping out at me. My grandfathers fought a war with the old men in these places. I think of fighter planes dropping bombs on the homes, on those beautiful buildings we saw in dresden, or the remnants of the wall that used to run through berlin. I had a conversation with josepha's father in leipzig after the show. He talks about how his family escaped the gdr with the help of a truck driver. They got dropped off by the side of the road with their things on a foggy day. The driver then crossed the border while they walked silent through the forest to the road on the other side of the border. Weimar is home to gouthe a famous german writer. The town is considered the cultural capital of germany. It's a collegetown and we happen to be playing on theday the college kids all get back from break. Zum Falken is a very old bar, with old insturments hanging all over the walls. By the time we start playing the bar is totally packed and quite loud. We play a bunch of our louder songs which was fine but they mostly talked over josepha which sucked. Even with the pa it was hard for her to compete with all the sound.

leipzig

2007-11-25T10:46:00.000-08:00

a tall vinal poster of a stream running through a forest covers the wall of the windowless hallway outside the bedroom where we sleep. Five of us slept there together last night, myself, danielle, micah, josepha, and her partner vincence. It feels good to sleep in a room with lots of people. We heat the space with our bodies like a hive of bees.

dresden, susie asado

2007-11-25T10:45:00.000-08:00

josepha conrad, also know as one half of crazy for jane, set up an amazing tour through germany for us. we traveled together for a couple of weeks and got to meet most of her family in the process. here are some pictures of her performing as susie asado in dresden.

anatomy of a melodica

2007-11-25T10:41:00.000-08:00

micah's melodica started acting funny so he bought a new one and took the old one apart to figure out how it works.

berlin, dirk and cera

2007-11-25T10:39:00.000-08:00

dirk and cera used to live in olympia. then last summer, a paid informant snuck into dirk's neighbor's yard and saw a few leaves of one of the 6 marijuana plants he was growing in a green house back there. A few days later a swat team busted into their house and made them sit on the couch while they tore through everything. They slashed open the greenhouse wall (there was an unlocked door) and took hundreds of dollars in cash that dirk had hidden in his room (money from his band's savings). He went to trial, and settled for some fines and communnity service. There was one other catch. Dirk was born in germany and even though he'd lived in the usa for most of his life, he'd never been properly naturalized. The lawyers informed him that he could be deported at anytime. So he and Cera decided to get married and move to berlin. We met up at their apartment, and drank tea while talking about their experiences moving so far from home. Later we walk to a children's park in the middle of a huge wooded area in berlin. On our way home we saw a car accident.

merch tables

2007-11-25T10:38:00.000-08:00

touring involves lots of administrative work. we divided our duties amongst the band members, micah was in charge of navigation which ment finding maps and addresses andprinting things our when need be. Danielle was in charge of merch and accounting, which meant keeping track of band money and money we had to pay to bicycle records for albums of theirs we sold on tour. I was in charge of booking the tour and forwarding the shows. Forwarding shows means to contact the person putting on the show in advance and confirming details such as, load in times, if there would be food, where we were sleeping that night, and how money was being handled.

reeperbahn festivle, hamburg

2007-11-25T10:37:00.000-08:00

We're in or near hamburg's red light district, a mixture of bars, sex shops, and fast food restraunts. a group of drunken men shout at each other. I can't understand what they are saying but it looks like it could get violent and when I open the automatic door, one of them tries to get in our car. danielle has to tell him to stop and I lock the door and we walk off, leaving the car. later we come back and to get our stuff out of the car, the street we're parked on is empty, but all around there are groups of drunk people yelling, someone smashes a bottle on the ground and broken glass skips along the stone road. Off to the side a see a man climbing up the construction scaffolding outside a building.

utrect

2007-11-25T10:36:00.001-08:00

we played a hostel in the town of utrect called strois where pot plants growing in the garden right by a pond filled with snails. I'm not much of a pot smoker but the plants smell so good. It feels really strange that the american govornment has such a big problem with this innocent plant. People's lives get ruined over this. The black building is a big squat, one of several in utrect. Trees and plantsline the canals here, we see a flock of ducks nibbling at the water. (by the way, does anyone know what you call a group of ducks? we couldn't decide but I micah suggested a waddle of ducks and I like that alot.)

amster-damn thats a lot of bikes!

2007-11-25T10:36:00.000-08:00

we pass by huge barges filled with bicycles parked on the canal just outside of the train station. Pakring costs 2-3 euros an hour here and bicycles are just as fast as cars in this town. We see punks, students, and buisness men in suits with their brief cases in baskets riding bikes through the streets. Hereby the station bikes fill up the parking barge and line the guardrail that runs along the street.

gent

2007-11-25T10:35:00.000-08:00

our first day without erwan and morgan and we've already gotten lost once trying to deliver two boxes of cds to the waterhouse records distributor. We learned the hard way that in order to find your way in a city, (especialy a europian city) you need not only directions but a detailed city map with all of the street names and one way streets listed on them. College students on bicycles crowd the already narrow streets, we pass a roundabout at the foot of a tall castle and pull over on the sidewalk so micah can hop out and check the city map posted on the bus stop. We repeat this process half a dozen times, trying to home in on the venue. Finaly we spot the tiny street sign

anarchy in orleans

2007-11-25T10:34:00.000-08:00

We walk past a cathedral, huge stone spires, gargoyles leering out of the facade, a roofless tower rimmed by columns and exposed the elements. People walk by not once looking up, it is amazing what you can get used to, I think as I watch them. We enter a bookstore in the no car district of orleanes. Books of marxist theory, feminism, and politics line up on the wood shelves. It reminds me of bookstores back home, only this bookstore also has a bar. "We are anarchists" the bartender explains. Folks young and old fill the store, necks wrapped in scarves, holding cigarettes with fingerless gloved hands. They spill out into the street outside, a tiny social bubble in the midst of a gentrified shopping center.

sound engineering in nantes

2007-11-25T10:33:00.000-08:00

almost every night of the tour erwan would come up to us and say, tonight you will need to use a PA. we have this thing about using PA systems and usualy we chose to play acousticaly without any amplification. there are a few reasons for this. First off we don't really like the way we sound amplified. there tend to be feed back problems, the guitar always feels out of balance with the other insturments, and I always feel like we're playing this guessing game with the sound engineer as we get louder or softer with out any warning and the engineer tries to componsate with the mixingboard. Secondly I think it creates an additional barriers between the audience and the performers and between the berformers themselves. Both the physical barrier of the microphone stand sand cords, and a psycological power barrier between the amplified sounds coming from the stage and the unamplified sounds coming from the room. Playing acoustic allows the sounds of the environment to enter into the song rather then taking over the sonic space forcefuly. I love loud rock music as well, i play in a math rock band and go to loud shows. But there is plenty of that out there already, we're trying to do something different and more inviting.

bordeaux, francious, and valerie

2007-11-25T10:28:00.000-08:00

bordeaux is more famous then paris in olympia. we could totaly tell the influence olympia had on the music of this place and vice versa. we played at a bar called el inca where we met the fabulous francious as well as squeeze me I squeak.We really like their music.

2007-11-25T10:25:00.000-08:00

psycho billy in renne

2007-11-25T10:22:00.000-08:00

j.f. and haley met us at our show in oakland where we played with yes please. now we are here at their home in renne playing at a psyco-billy bar called mondo bizzaro. graffitti of penises and homophobic put-downs cover the walls of the backstage room, and the fridge is crammed full of more beer then I thought possible for us to drink. j.f. and haley's friends come by with dinner for us and we eat and drink and talk. haley is from the bay area, it is strange for me to hear an american speaking french, the rythms and tones are still english but everything else being french.

toulouse

2007-11-10T09:30:00.000-08:00

mediatheque associative invited us to participate on a panel discussion comparing french and american d.i.y. they videotaped the whole conversation which lasted about an hour. an associative is kind of like a french non-profit organization. this one works as a show space and media library where folks pay an annual due and can check out things like music and zines. cyril led us around the town and let us stay in his lovely apartment. incidentaly cyril runs What A Mess! records, we got this really great comp from him with Antsy Pants on it. you should reall listen to "some times I dream" we listened to it at least 30 times on tour and know the whole song by heart now. There are bunch of different singers on the song who each sing a different verse about what they dream about, then the next singer appears as a character in their dream and a brief dialogue occurs before the next singer takes over with their own dream.

french alps

2007-11-10T09:26:00.000-08:00

There is a different place in my brain for places I've heard about and places I've been. I remember driving through these mountians for some time when morgan mentions that they are the french alps. “oh” I said and started looking at them with “french alps” in mind.

barjole

2007-11-10T09:25:00.000-08:00

the village of barjole gets its water from the streams that trickle down the cliffside. we encounter stone fountians whereever we turn as we decend a series of narrow switchback roads to the artist studio where morgan's mom works. barjole is a communnity of artists and a place of great beauty. the studio lives in an old tannery and we can see many other abandoned factories clinging to the cliff wall above us.

grenoble

2007-11-10T09:24:00.000-08:00

on the road to grenoble we pass the remnants of old roman aquaduct systems. Micah talks about how these massive stone structures were used to transfer water over vast distances. We stay with martin, amelie and ceaser pictured here with erwan on the couch. Martin is a professional comicbook artist, he has an amazing library of french graphic novels. He has this desk with paper pens brushes, everything you need to draw all setup. It makes mewant to sit down and start a graphic novel. It is amazing how much the right environment effects my desire to do creative work. When I taught preschool I worked with a woman named donna simon. Every day she spent so much energy on setting up a creative environment. Right when the kids started to arrive there wouldbe a table with playdough and sculpting tools, another with picture books, a sensory tablefilled with sand and buried treasure, and another with paper and markers all ready for coloring. You wouldn't have to say a thing to the kids , they would just sit down and start being creative. I want to try and make my home more of a creative space when I get home.

lyon

2007-11-10T09:21:00.000-08:00

lyon is the home our friend alexia who used to live in olympia and toured with june madrona through california last spring. we came into town in the middle of bad traffic andgot a nice long look at one of lyon's two rivers while crossing a bridge. when onyx told me stories of lyon I always pictured a river lined with cottages and sunny cobblestone streets. in reality, lyon is one of the largest cities in all of france. two rivers flow through it, criss crossed by numerous bridges, and bordered by a steep cliff where catholics still climb to go to mass. (well actualy I'm sure most of them drive) we played a squat called grrrnd zero. It's an old toothbrush company that downsized leaving thishuge empty office building. before the show we sit on a balcony filled with planter boxes of veggies and flowers. Its really inspiring to see such a commercial space reclaimed forcommunnity use. the old offices are now bedrooms and guestrooms. afterwards we had a relay race, us vs france, with the loser singing the winning team's national anthem at the farmer's market the next day. an here we are singing the national anthem in our very best frenglish.

clearmont ferrand

2007-11-10T09:19:00.000-08:00

at one point we got so loud in this little cavern that a couple of folks were covering their ears. oops. we'd never had that problem before. I have to be careful about stomping my foot. We played with leopold skin and tayed with demetri in his lovely attic apartment that looked out over the city and had a view of the black cathedral. a cathedral made entirely of volcanic rock. the acoustics in that room were so amazing, you could hum a note and hear it echo forever.

tourning paris

2007-11-10T09:17:00.000-08:00

scottish football fans invaded the streets of paris for the weekend france/scotland game. we first found them singing and drinking in outside of an irish pub near bastille. We walked around the parks near the eiffle tower and the louve museum, we bought a loaf of bread and fed the crumbs to these cute little brown birds untill a swarm of pidgons took over. over by the eiffle tower a group of woman with no shoes begged for money going from tourist to tourist. I saw a young woman walk up to a muslum man and speak to him in arabic. he gave her some coins and immediatly the rest of the woman all crowded around him. he gave them all the coins he had. In the grass near the eiffle tower the scots were playing pick up games of socker. The games were intense, hundreds of drunk scots, shouting and cheering. I can't imagine the french/scot game being more exciting. This one particuralydrunk fellow started messingup the game by stumbling around and slide tackling everyone. it was imossible to tell what team he was on. eventualy he got into a fight and kicked one of the goalies in the leg. The whole crowd of scotts booed and yelled at him to get out, eventualy singing, “are you english in disguise!” over and over.

walking around town

2007-10-03T03:25:00.000-07:00

the center of clearmont ferrand is pedestrian only. this was our first cafe morning in france, hanging out with folks from the show the night before. Parking here is very expensive, we spend about 30-40 euros a day on parking and tolls. Thankfuly the venues take this into account and all pay pretty well. Everywhere we've gonefolks have been super nice and hospitable.

clearmont ferrand, and the black cathedral

2007-10-03T03:21:00.000-07:00

paris

2007-10-03T02:18:00.000-07:00

la fleche d'ore

2007-10-03T02:16:00.000-07:00

means the golden arrow in frence. this venue is built in an old abandoned train station. They are a bar but bars in europe are basicaly the same as all ages venues. anyone can get in. The show was free, they had 5 bands playing and each band got paid and fed an amazing gormet meal. crazy.

french graffitti

2007-10-03T02:14:00.000-07:00

french bikes are sexy

2007-10-03T02:12:00.000-07:00

so everyone in paris rides these public bikes. you can rent them for a euro a day (about $1.40) or pay 30 euro for a year, plus a 150 euro depoit on the bike. then you take the bike anywhere you want for up to a half hour at a time. at the end of every half hour you have to park it atanother one of the stations or pay an hourly rental charge (something like another euro an hour). during the day they also have these special trucks that redistribute the bikes to empty stalls around town.

birthday party, paris

2007-10-03T02:10:00.000-07:00

we go to a park where mrogan's nephew is turning 1 year old today. The park is full of famlies, picknicing and playing games together. You can drink in parks in paris so lots of folks have glasses of wine. We meet morgan's mother who works at a print show in barjole and is an amazing painter, and her father who is a computer engineer. morgan teaches us how to say "i don't understand what you're saying, and i don't care" in french. dangerous knowledge.

longest trip ever

2007-10-03T02:00:00.000-07:00

There is a long cue of planes waiting to leave JFK airport and weleaveabout an hour late. This little boy laughs and smiles as the plane accelerated and lifted off. We get to the london airport and our plane is already an hour late. The plane stops in the middle of the field where a bus has to come and take us off in two trips. We almost make it to the first bus but it fills up just as we get there. At this point I'm worried about several things. One, we will miss our bus to paris. Two, danielle will miss the bus to paris. Three, customs will figure out we are a band and send one or all of us back home. we finally get on the bus shuttel and this little girl pukes on the floor. We were offered chicken and rice or beef and vegetables on the flight. I think she had the chicken and rice. The escalators and speedwalkways are all broken down and we see graffitti on the walls of the airport. There is a huge line at the check in gate. WHile in line I hear this guy complaining to his travelling companion. "what I don't understand is why I got 1.4 mill while you got 1.6 mill." when the other guy denys this he says, "don't lie I saw the reciept!". they check our passports and ask us a few questions. Micah gets asked why he's taking the bus instead of the train. He answers, because it's cheaper. oh, by the way, order your train tickets at least a week in advance. It gets way more expensive the last five days before you leave. We get to the bus station and daniell magicaly appears just as I'm about to go looking for her. Whew! The bus ride is 10 hours long. Longer then the plane ride. Our driver gets loston the way to the chunnel. Unfortunatly he doen't speak french or english. They have to shut down all ten lanes of this toll road to let us pull a U-turn to get to the chunnel. The chunnel entrance is right by the cliffs of dover. We get in this special car for buses. And the train takes us across. Danielle had fantasized about traveling through a glass tunnel at the bottom of the channel with fish swimming aroung. Our experience was much more Tron, then The Little Mermaid. Oh well. We drive through the french country side to paris where our host and traveling companion morgan finds us trying to work the ticket machine in the subway station. Morgan takes us through the maze of exits to Erwan's apartment right by the place d'republique. We climb 8 flights of worn stars to erwan's home. Erwan and Morgan run waterhouse records and released euro versions of all of the june madrona albums. They set up the french part of the tour and did all of the press for it. totally amazing. We hang out and eat some pasta then pass the fuck out.

the day we leave

2007-10-03T01:56:00.000-07:00

jess and lauren live in this adorable apartment on the lower east side. Jess is co owner of terrorbird media, a radio and new media promotions firm that kicks ass. Lauren works for kill rockstars. I met her when she was slim moon's personal assistant in olympia. She is chris schiel's best friend forever (chris used to play cello with us and now manages tom lab). So yep imagine the cutest couple you ever saw living and working together in perfect harmony. Thats what it felt like. We finally got the cds for battleground all mailed out and got some snacks for the plane ride. We took a bus, a subway, and an air train to JFK airport then said goodbye to danielle who had a different flight. Micah and I took british airways. I was worried getting through customs they stopped us for the big rolls of cds. Then let us through. Plane rides are super intense for me. So many people all crammed together. I managed to get some sleep though.

geek paradise, nyc

2007-10-03T01:54:00.000-07:00

So I'm a big role playing nerd and Igotreally excited about seeing all of the swords and armor at the met. Its so amazing for me to think about all of the time and energy that went into making all of these things. How everything we used or wore used to be made by hand.

plesant beech, nj

2007-10-03T01:52:00.000-07:00

We meet up with leah in plesent beech, nj to drop off our car on our way to new york city. Leah used to play banjo in june madrona and it is reallywonderful to get to see her and hang out in her childhood home. Pleasent beech is a vacation communnity that blows up every summer. The whole beech is private property. You can't go to the ocean with out a special permit. Leah tells us about how she used to race across the beech into the ocean. Once you get past the waterline it is public property again. "go ahead call the cops, I don't care!" now leah has to work at one of those resorts, checking people's passes. It's sucky but she can make lots of money quickly, then not have to work so much when she returns to olympia. Danielle picked up a bunch of classic sci-fi novels from her friend in chicago. I'm addicted to Ender's Game right now. I read it when I was a boy, now I see all of this stuff in it I didn't see before. It's about a boy who gets trained to become a starfleet comander to fight off an alien horde. I finish it on the train ride to new york.

danger danger house, philly

2007-10-03T01:50:00.000-07:00

there's a huge city hall with ben franklin on top right in the middle of downtown phillidelphia. I try to imagine ben walking around downtown philly, and what it must of been like back then. We play in the backyard of this huge old house. They grill hotdogs and kabobs. The beer flows like water. This fellow named Corndog opens up. He's totally amazing, kind of reminds me of sandman. It turns out they are friends.

grand rapids, mi

2007-10-03T01:48:00.000-07:00

eats tapes, and ben and bruno played a show with us at a park in grand rapids. the sun set as the how progressed and we finished up in the dark. This fellow named george set up a screen and projector in the park and showed garden state. Danielle were super hungry so we went off in search of a grocery store. We drove around trying to find one that was open. Stopped by a bakery to check it's dumpster. Nothing but coffee grounds there. Finally a couple of folks pointed us to a Family Fare a mile away. We got some cans of beans and tortillas, and veggies, and a big jar of pickles. They had this weird self-check out thing. We found 5$ in the coin return slot. Back in the parking lot I openeda can of beans with my leatherman and made burrittos. Micah was so happy when we gave him a burrito he made his happy face. Micah has this special happy muppet face he makes when ever something wonderful happens. We stawed the night at george's house. George has a large collection of these mass produced slik screen artfrom the 70s. I can'tremember what they are called. something like babooshka. but not really. Always, always bring earplugs on tour. I tell this to everyone I tour with. Now I ammend my rule to always bring extra pairs of earplugs. I think this to myself as I try to sleep through the meowing of georges two adorable cats.

chicago art institute

2007-10-03T01:46:00.000-07:00

we stopped by the chicago art institute on their free night. I'd never seen famous paintings before. The van gogh's and picassos looked so bright in person. You could see the brush strokes and imagine the movement behing them. there is a face in the background of the old guitarist painting by picasso that i had never seen before. apparently he covered up an old painting with that one and you can just see the texture of the paint beneath.

walnut castle

2007-10-03T01:41:00.000-07:00

live from Berlin!

2007-10-01T09:04:00.001-07:00

hello internet friends!

We are now in Berlin after a few days in Germany with Susie Asado, which has been great. We're staying at her place and she is giving us tea, rice cakes, little cookies, and almonds. Food is really central to touring for us, which, due to standard European hospitality, has made this a wonderful tour for me!

The computer kezboards in Germanz are almost the same except thez switched the z and the y. Other cultural differences include: the metric system, how alcohol is seemingly easier to get than water, and the size of various meals. Among the similarities are: horrible freeway traffic, lots of songs with English lyrics, and McDonalds.

We went to an awesome community center in Rostock yesterday. I don't even know how to describe it except to say that it was amazing. I took some video but I don't think I'll be able to get it online until we get back home in two months.

Hope everyone is doing well. We'll try to update more often!

-micah

sacramento

2007-09-13T13:34:00.000-07:00

mandy set up a sweet show for us in sacramento california, we took time the next morning to work on sometour buisness. her back yard was bursting with grapes. lateron a walk we found peaches and an flooded yard where the water had been left on.

chicago

2007-09-13T13:28:00.000-07:00

This fellow named max let us stay in his apartment while he went to visit his mother in florida. Max did a magic trick where he made two coin dissipear. Here we are all getting up in the morning. Max had no silverware or things to wash dishes so we borrowed some stuff from dani's friend lauren and from max's upstairs neighbors. LThat big white temple is the B' Hai temple in chicago which reminded me a bit of the islamic mosque's I've been to only everything is hella new. we practiced to gether for the firsttime since seattle in the garden in the back. later we ate pizza and acted crazy in milennium park which is

winona, mn

2007-09-13T13:26:00.000-07:00

winona and the surrounding region got hit hard by flooding from the storm. we passed a town where the flooding picked up a whole house with the family seeking refuge on the roof. The water swept it off its foundation and dropped it on a set of train tracks by the road. Cassandra and Froseph made amazing tacos. We traded for some patches cassandra made. So good, at night we slept with the whir of the fan.

61 to missoula

2007-09-13T13:23:00.000-07:00

the news said blamed the thunderstorm on a tropical depression. Micah and I hit the road through the worst rain we'd seen so far on the tour.

missoula montana

2007-09-13T13:21:00.000-07:00

Our first stop in missoula was Free Cycles this amazing free bike shop built out of the old area 5 space. I worked on fixing up a bike while Micah played piano. They loaned us a couple of bikes to cruze around town with. My headset came loose halfway through the ride and I had to hump it back most of the way to the shop while micah got the right tool to bring back to me. Later we fed a little squirrle at the college campus until he got to onery and stole our peanut butter jar lid.

fargo, nd

2007-08-26T21:09:00.000-07:00

micah and I drove 600 miles today from billings to fargo. whew! dominike and his wife heather have been super gracious and are letting us crash their amazing apartment which takes up half of the entire floor. It's an old apartment builting built in 1914 with craftsman everything. the toilet is one of those old kind that has the bowl way up in the air. We played a show to a bucnh of kids who were waiting for the punk rock show to start. It was pretty fun, they were really into hand claps and the dance moves we taught them. I miss danielle a ton. I think I was hallucinating her face in the clouds as we drove through the montana wildfires. wildfires in montanna, now a tropical depression here in north dakota. It is really windy outside. Wish us luck!
-ross