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

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...

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

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!

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

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

i already said no, don't make me re-no

Hey from Reno. I will make this short.

I am currently by myself in a hotel room at the Peppermill Casino. This is the first time i have had a room to myself in a long long time.

Read the next sentence very closely, as you really don't want to miss a single word. I am in my hotel room, which includes a jacuzzi located approximately 3 feet from the bed.

There are also mirrors on the ceiling above this jacuzzi. i am not getting in the jacuzzi. i realize that i will probably regret this decision at some point in the future, but i just can't do it. its just too much.

on another renote, i lost money tonight in a deadly combination of craps and blackjack. i didn't play for very long, and i suppose i should count my blessings as in the end i only lost 26 dollars. Although if we're being completely honest, i also lost an additional 19.34 at the all you can eat buffet. This buffet had a neat marketing trick that works out for the casino, because they make food that you don't want to eat very much of, so they don't get hit by the "all you can eat" aspect of it too much.

San Francisco last night was one of the highlights of the tour so far. nice venue, nice people, sound was good on stage, people were supportive. thanks san francisco! four people i knew were there, angela, heidi, emily and laura. it was nice seeing all of them.
Also, sorry to the person that yelled out Mazzio's. I didn't hear it, and then when it got relayed on to me i felt weirdly on-the-spot and i kind of froze and forgot what i was even supposed to say and then the whole crowd was confused by an inside joke that really doesn't even make any sense in the first place. But you are a real trooper for reading the blog and taking action, and i hope that one day you will find yourself in a hotel room with a jacuzzi in it.

-jacuzzi keith

Oblogitory

ALSO:
Earlier today I discovered that somebody (I believe from London?) blogged about this blog. In other words, my blog has been blogged about. Blog blogging. Deal with it

Tour Days: Califoooooooornia

We are currently in the backstage area of the Independent, a nice venue in San Francisco. The wireless network that I am using right now is entitled "Backstage". This is what life is all about. Free wireless on a borrowed computer.

San Diego/Los Angeles was an interesting adventure. We are about to play a show, so I can't get into the required detail on how weird the last few days, but we did shoot live performances for an internet tv show for the WB, where they had paid extras pretending to REALLY love our band. It was like playing the Peach Pit After Dark.

Then we played a college show at UCSD, which was actually a well organized and fun show. I have heard that college shows are often times a stressful/unfun situation, but i wasn't stressed and i had some fun, so i think that i can officially say that this wasn't one of those. We had Jess, a friend of the band, play a sweet saucy saxaphone solo, and we also played the first of two shows with a band called One AM Radio, who are good. Since it wasn't a normal venue, i was worried that it would take too long for us to set up and all the students would go home, but because of veterans day the next day, there WEREN'T classes the next day, and they chose to stay and watch Bishop Allen. I hope they think that they made a wise choice, but i have no idea what the kids are thinking these days.

Andy just lost a 10,000 dollar bet and he feels horn-swaggled and he has been wearing the same socks for like 2 weeks. These are the things you learn about in the backstage room. That was what they call an "insider scoop"

Yesterday we played a couple songs for Fuel TV, which is an "action sports" network. There were 9 year old professional skateboarders watching us, and we played these songs on a weird skateboard park set and it was fun and there was spit and falls and jams. I think its gonna air around December 1st. We played one new song and one older song. Look out for it (also i think wayne coyne will be on that episode).
Then we played the Echo. It was a strange show. There weren't enough cords for all of us to have mics, so i was sharing a mic with christian and almost tripped over some wires, and it was just a little chaotic. My brother and some old friends were at this show, so i had fun, but i think all can agree, that if you were at this show and you felt a little horn-swaggled, that you should keep the faith and come back to our next LA show. We will have more microphones!

Today we ate, and we drove, and we ate, and we drove. And now we are in beautiful San Francisco, although its dark, so im sorta guessing that its beautiful, mostly gauging it from the opening credits of Full House. I'm hoping that a beautiful Golden Retriever shows up to the show tonight.

Tomorrow we're driving to RENO. we aren't playing a show though. next show after tonight is salt lake city, which i hear is a really crazy party town.
-keith

more than a week in, more than a weekend

Hello from sunny Los Angeles. We are staying at Michael's place. It's nice here and after a ridiculously long drive from Texas, it is nice to just be staying in the same general area for a little while.

Where oh where did I last leave off? Dallas?

ok, well that night we went and played a show in Denton, and it was sort of awesome, as the parents/siblings of me, justin and michael were all in full effect at Hailey's. We had a nice turn-out, some old friends I hadn't seen in a long time were there. All was good, until the end of the night when a guy who is apparently a serial puncher in Denton went ahead and punched a dude. People of Denton, look out.

The next morning was a bit painful, as we had to be in Austin sorta early for load-in at the fun fun fun fest. we were running on about 3-4 hours of sleep that day, which is a strange state of mind to be when playing for 1000ish people out in the texas sun, but it seemed to work. Biggest crowd I have ever played to, but there were so many austin homies there that it was comforting, not terrifying. Before we played, i got in a depressingly small amount of good face-to-face with austinites near and and dear to me, so that, among other things, made this a highlight of the tour so far for me. Thanks to Adam, Andrew, Andy, Annecy, Beth, Bob, Karen, Lindsey, Maggie, Max, Mike, Michelle, Morgan, Sherry and all the other people that i saw from up on stage. YOU KEPT ME GOING.

Then we drove and drove and drove and drove and drove and drove and drove. Austin to Los Angeles.

Right now we are getting ready to go do a taping for this Internet tv show that is created by the guy that created The OC and Gossip Girl. WHAT IS HAPPENING TO MY LIFE. i hope i have a stylist


NOT AGAIN!

-keith

on the road to california

in a west texas days inn, we eat our breakfasts. we drink our coffees. and we prepare for the 14 hour drive that the day is ready to give us.

TOUR!

Tour Days: 5, 6, and 7 (i think?)

So blogging on the road isn't as easy for me as I thought it would be. I don't have my own computer, so I'm left to borrow others and we obviously don't have the internet in the van, and so it's a real tricky situation. But my dedication to this webspace is unyielding, and just as the tour continues on, so must the words about the tour.

Some people wonder what it's like to tour. Well I have only been on the road for a little less than a week, so I'm no expert, but here is kind of a summary of what happens. We wake up, we get a little coffee and breakfast, and then we drive. Some days we drive for 6.5 hours. Some days we drive for 13 hours. Today we only drove for 4.5 hours, which is partially why I'm able to type this. (We are hanging out at Justin's parents house. Tonight at our Denton show, the parents of Justin, Michael and me will all be in attendance. Family affair!). Most days when we arrive in the city we are going to, it's already time or we're late for soundcheck, so we head straight to the venue, no time for sightseeing. We often get dinners provided once we're there, though not always. We eat and have a few drinks. Then we set up our equipment and, if we're lucky, get a sound check which may or may not be what our levels are actually like once the show starts. Then we sit around and wait. People start showing up. Andy plays his good set. We hang out. An Horse plays their good set. We hang out. Then we set up, we play, we hang out for a little bit afterwards, and then we pack up and head straight to the hotel which is preferably in the direction of wherever we are playing the next day. It's all fun. I'm not complaining about it. I think before i left for tour maybe I expected to be meeting more people, but instead i've just met a few awesome people, who we luckily get to see every night, and then each night i meet one or two people that helped put the show together that are always fun to meet and maybe a couple people that came to see the show. When I'm selling merchandise before we play, nobody knows that im in the band so i dont talk to any bishop allen fans except to tell them "15 DOLLARS", and then when the show is over, 95% of the people have cleared out pretty much right away. So, in some ways, being the headliner means that I sorta miss out on the experience of talking to a bunch of people after the show, so my ego isn't allowed to burst through the roof like i was hoping, but, like i said, it's fun and i like it and i had a waffle this morning and it was delicious.

ANYWAYS, we left little rock on wednesday morning, happy as can be (see previous post). We drove to Norman, Oklahoma. It stormed. We played at the Opolis. Michael and I had some food at a sports bar on the sixth floor of some office building. The 3 bands all played pretty good shows. The owners of Opolis are from the band Starlight Mints, who Bishop Allen has toured with before, so that was good. I dunno, i was really feeling Chapel Hill, and i felt this show was maybe a little bit sluggish in comparison. Sluggish might not be the right word, but i'll stick with it.

We got a hotel in Norman, then yesterday we drove to Houston. We got to Rudyards. Hardly anybody came to the show. (it was a late notice situation, so we should just be happy anybody came at all i suppose.) I had a couple austin friends come. They were nice . Jagi, the promoter, was also nice. When this blog is all said and done, i want you to count how many times i say "fun" and "nice".

Got a hotel about 30 minutes away at like 3something in the morning. Got up at around 10, hit the road, and now we are here in Dallas.

Kind of a more boring, long-winded entry than usual, I suppose. But I will try to make the future ones more interesting. This one was more about setting the stage. Future days will be about the pyrotechnics going off on and around the stage.

On to Denton, Austin, and Califooooooooooornia!
keith

Way to go

Congratulations, America. You are smart and encouraging. We shall continue this tour!

Tour Days 3&4: Driving, drivving, diriiiviivingnggg

Greetings from Little Rock!

We are in Christian's parent's home right now, enjoying a day off. All of us are a bit nervous about tonight's election, so we have been dealing with it in our own ways. Christian and Michael have been working on building a case for the marimba, justin and darbie and i went cruising around little rock and went to a crazy antique mall place, andy disappeared.

Christian's parents are big animal rescuers, and one of their current projects is rehabilitating a young squirrel (named Barack, or maaaybe Michelle). Here is Christian with the squirrel. He is brave:


To track back a few nights: Chapel Hill show was a lot of fun. It was a smaller venue, I think there were somewhere around 120 people, but the people that were there were the kind of people you want to be at your show. Sound was good up on stage. My friend/old-bandmate Katie was there, which made things a lot of fun for me. Familiar faces are really exciting things when you're in a town that you've never been to before.

We stayed at a Red Roof Inn. The trick with Red Roof Inns is that they like to make their parking lots impossible to find, and they don't always clean rooms before you stay in them. Other than that, they are fine.

Yesterday was a driving day. I think we drove over 13 hours. From Chapel Hill to Little Rock. I did have some of these, so i was happy:


To kill time, some of the band-members did crossword puzzles and listened to book on tape. Seems not so tough, right? Wrong! They were listening to this really intense book about cholera, and it was all about pooping and dying. I had to put on headphones cuz it was TMI, IMHO. Bishop Allen: The band that can handle disgusting words, and in fact, invites them into their homes and hearts.

My friend just made fun of me for wearing Pavement-style flannel on this tour. People of the internet: Do not make fun of my clothing any more! Focus on my bass-licks, not my cowlicks and facial ticks.

But yeah, today is nice, we are looking forward to Norman tomorrow night, and I'm REALLY looking forward to the Texas dates. Ahh, Texas, gee shucks, who woulda known that i'm actually a huge fan of yours?

giving you some arkansass,
keith

Tour Day 2: A Whole Lotta States

Hello from Chapel Hill, NORTH Carolina. We are hanging out in LOCAL 506. "What's Local 506, you hipster!?!" you ask. Well, Local 506 is the venue that we are playing at tonight. We are the only ones here right now, aside from the other bands and the staff who are all nice, but hopefully in a couple hours we won't be the only people here. We will be with real life North Carolinans, and we will all be yelling and dancing and and singing and hugging and demanding justice and having a nice time. You should be here!

Yesterday we set sail from Brooklyn, driving through Staten Island, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, before finally arriving in the nation's capital where, according to their state motto, they live taxed lives but don't represent, or something along those lines.

The Black Cat is a great venue. The people were nice. Electric Owls opened up and Andy's voice turned eardrums into clumps of butter. The man can sing. Easy on the eyes, too! He is actually doing a soundcheck right now here in Chapel Hill, so he is the soundtrack to me writing a blog entry about him. He is riding in the van with us the whole tour. He is a good man.

Drink Up Buttercup are a fun, clangy, high-energy, snotty, slippy, slappy group from Philadelphia, PA. They are exciting to watch and luckily we are playing with them again in a few weeks in Brooklyn. Here is a picture of them. They aren't even playing music in this picture, this is just the way that they communicate with one another:


We played and the people there were nice. It was my first show as the bassist for Bishop Allen, and I can say that I enjoy being in this band. I had a girl afterwards come up and tell me that she could tell it was my first show, and that i seemed nervous but not visibly so. What does that mean? I don't care! She was nice!

It was Justin's birthday, we had shots and moist cake. Everybody agrees, the cake was moist.

I bumped into my old friend Riley in a bar, and it was very strange. After the show we decided to make some headroom on today's drive and drove to Fredricksburg, Virginia. Andy was very sleepy! I think the name of the county that we were in was Spotsylvania, which is obviously pretty cool. Virginia and North Carolina in the fall are as beautiful as you would think that they are.

Things to do in Virginia:
Enjoy the weather
Talk to friends
Have fun

Things you shouldn't do in Virginia:
Leave your cell phone in a hotel room in a Day's Inn.


Anyways, I'm having trouble uploading images, but will do more later. Doors are about to open!

sincerely,
keith



Things listened to (from Michael's IPod) so far in the van:
Sparks
T. Rex
Talking Heads
Fleetwood Mac
Bonnie "Prince" Billy
Iggy Pop
And a Girl Groups Compilation that has like 120 songs. We didn't listen to

Tour Day 1: Pre-Tour

Hello!

I am sitting in an apt. in Brooklyn, New York. In the next hour I will be sitting in a van in Brooklyn, New York! And in a couple hours we will be playing in Washington DC. My plan is to, at some point in the night, shake hands with one of Abraham Lincoln's descendants AND play a good show.

Here is a picture of the venue that we are playing.



More soon,
Keith