Monday, February 2, 2009

200Fine

Hello and long time no speak (some of you I have NEVER spoken to, i suppose)

I am writing to point you in the direction of the Bishop Allen myspace page, which is a host to past and future blog entries from the band. This blog that you are at right now is called Bishop Allen Tour Blog, Oh Yeah 2008. It is no longer 2008, and to carry on posting tour updates here would be a complete and total sham. Likewise, to start a batboy2k9 would just be wasteful. The web is polluted enough with websites, don't you think?
so yes, www.myspace.com/bishopallen is the way to get to the page, which has tour dates and new music and bloggerblogs.

Also, to those that were looking forward to more photos from the november tour, I apologize, but my camera is not the best and most of the photos from the last tour that were on the memory card i had were erased by some sort of formatting issue. It was a bit sad, but when i get back to nyc (i'm in texas right now) i will upload the ones that I do have to the band's new flickr account, which you should visit here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bishopallen/
right now there's not a ton of photos up, but the ones that are up there are good and a nice way for you to look back at BA in years past.

In conclusion, what's with those phone calls that you get telling you its your second warning about your car's warranty? If you know what that is all about, beyond "it's some sort of scam", please let me know.

Glad to be in the new year with you, i know i should have told you that over a month ago,
Keith.

Monday, November 24, 2008

Til the End of the Road

So it's November 24th and that means the tour is over. It's hard to believe. It's one of those situations where 1 month ago seems simultaneously like 3 hours ago and 3 years ago. Really successful tour though. Fun was had. I assure you that fun was had.

We ended with shows in Cambridge and Swarthmore, and then two final shows at the Music Hall of Williamsburg, and they were all really great and yet completely different from one another. I think the Saturday Brooklyn show might be one of the most fun shows that I have ever been a part of. The place was packed with people singing and dancing and it was just nice. Special thanks to my aunts, cousin and godmother for driving up for the show. It was a great night (as was last night! and the last 23 nights!)

Oh, also this weekend, we played a Kidrockers show, which is where you go and play with a couple other bands to an audience unlike one you've ever played to. How so? Well in order to get into the show, you must be a child or a parent with a child in-tow. So, it's a yooooooung front row. The kids were hilarious and adorable, although I felt bad as one child in the front was covering his ears for much of our set. There was a Q&A after our set and i'm pretty sure that one of the questions was "boring!". Another question was "wind". These were hard to answer but easy to listen to.

As promised before, a photo recap of the tour is coming very soon, but the main reason for me writing this today in my day of exhaustion rehabilitation is that I just wanted to take the time to thank some of the people that helped this tour be awesome.

Very very very big thanks to the An Horse crew, who are all wonderful to be around and it was great getting to play 8 shows with them. They are so good and have such charisma that it's hard to look away. Also, big thanks to The Republic Tigers for saving us with that miracle drive when our van broke down, as well as for playing 3 great shows with us. Drink Up Buttercup, One AM Radio, Savoir Adore, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart are the bands we played with,(sorry if im leaving one out, and this doesn't include FFF Fest bands) and they all were so good, that it felt like a very blessed tour. Please check out any and all of these bands. They are all much better than Pocket Full of Pickles, a band that does not actually exist.*

I think it goes without saying, but you should also take the time to learn more about Electric Owls, who toured with us for the entire tour. Andy Herod is one of my favorite human beings, and I don't know what this tour would have been like without him. He's a good man. Hilarious. Talented. Fair and Balanced.

To the kind folks in Little Rock, Dallas, Los Angeles, Denver, Chicago, Bloomington, and Cambridge, thank you for letting our band crash at your house.

To all the promoters, sound people, bartenders, lighting technicians, in-and-out burger employees, days inn front desk clerks, friends, family and acquaintances we met along the way, you are really something special.

And though it might seem like the obvious suck-up-to-the-fans thing to do, im gonna do it anyways and thank everybody that came to our shows. I'm being completely sincere and serious when I say that it was a beautiful tour and to see people come to the shows and put a bunch of energy into it and encourage us and all that other supportive mumbo-jumbo that you did, it was really one of the greater things that i've been a part of. Thanks.

Deep back!
Keith

*I was just informed by Andy that Pocket Full of Pickles IS a real band, and in fact he went and saw them barefoot at one point in his life. I'm sorry for this inaccuracy

Thursday, November 20, 2008

Actually sick or just being a baby: the Keith story

Ahhh, the good life in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I had never been to Massachusetts before, but judging by my current accommodations, it is a nice place. We are at the home of Doug and Nell, old friends of Bishop Allen. Their house is awesome. I am doing laundry and blogging. Justin is doing laundry and playing some digital drums. Darbie is on a computer looking at some artwork stuff. Michael and Christian are joining forces to save villages in a video game called Pixel Junk Monster. Andy is downstairs killing zombies on a bigscreen tv, on a brand new game called Left 4 Dead. We all wish that you were here, drinking some ginger ale and letting out sighs of satisfaction.

Yep, this place is awesome. I am unfortunately a little bit under the weather, but I can already feel myself getting better. A warm house and good dinner helps with these kinds of things, as you see very little of that.

Not sure what shows I have and haven't talked about at this point, but I think when the tour is over in a few days I can look back and post pictures, in something of a end-of-tour summary, so look out for that.

Bloomington was a cool town to visit as I got to meet a lot of the people involved with the Dead Oceans/Jagjaguwar/Secretly Canadian labels and i got a lot of free cds, which now clutter my notoriously messy area of the van.

Last night we played in Gambier, Ohio, which is home to Kenyon College (which was home to Paul Newman, we found out today). I went to a school with 50,000+ people, so to hang out on a snowy liberal arts college with about 1600 students was something new for me. Honestly it reminded me of going on a church ski trip. We played a show in a cabin-like place, and the students were nice and the people that weren't students but traveled there were also nice, and it was fun and at the end it seemed like it was time to hit the slopes, we instead hit the van and drooooove.

Today was a lot of driving too. Gambier and Cambridge are unfortunately a little bit far away from one another. Now we have about an hour until we head back to the Middle East club and enjoy the night.

I know i'm forgetting to tell you about some good things, but for now i will blame it on my health. Ohhhh, my health...

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

zonino

We are back in action, ladies
Right now we are eating breakfast in Bloomington Indiana. And when I say we, I mean WE. Christian met up with us yesterday in Chicago. We are about to head to the secretly Canadian/jajaguar/dead oceans office.

Tonight we are playing in gambier Ohio at Kenyon college and then we are in the final east coast stretch

Woohoo/zonino

Monday, November 17, 2008

Full Speed Ahead! (i think)

So Christian will not make it to the Chicago show tonight, BUT he did get the van up and running and is supposedly headed to Illinois as I type this. So the tour will go on as planned starting tomorrow!

Sunday, November 16, 2008

Van Demons

Well, even though we have taken it into the mechanics like 4 times in the last 3 weeks to make sure that this wouldn't happen, our van broke down. And unfortunately this happened on a Sunday, in the middle-of-nowhere Colorado, which means there was no way to get it fixed.

What does this mean for the tour?

Well, by some crazy little miracle, The Republic Tigers, a band that we started a 3-day run with last night, happened to drive by as we were broken down. They agreed to take 4/5th of bishop allen with them, and though late, here I am in Ames, Iowa about to play a show. Unfortunately it means that Christian Rudder is not playing tonight with us, and unless the van gets fixed first thing in the morning, he probably can't play the Chicago show either. This is a huge bummer for all of us, but we are just thankful that we didn't have to cancel these shows.

We are really counting on the van getting fixed and continuing the rest of the tour as planned, but it is of course very hard to predict what is gonna happen. Tune in here, and we are sorry that Ames and Chicago most likely won't get the same kinda show as the rest of the tour. We will try to make up for it in someway.

Thanks for you support,
Keith

Saturday, November 15, 2008

magnets

I am writing this on andys iPhone in the van on the way to Denver. Salt lake city was really fun

Anyways we are collecting magnets for the bishop Allen van. If you have any good magnets that you feel like unloading please bring them to any of our upcoming shows and we will be eternally grateful

We like city/state magnets best

Thanks for reading this blog, also
Yours magneticly
Keith