Richard Buckner played a set for The Line of Best Fit when he was last in Europe, and has just announced another trip for May. Don’t miss Richard on the road, either here or abroad, in 2012. Our Blood is available in stores and online now!

Richard Buckner on tour:
Feb 22 New Haven, CT BAR
Feb 24 Lexington, KY Cosmic Charlie’s
Feb 25 Atlanta, GA Highland Inn Ballroom
Feb 27 Easton, MD The NightCat
Mar 02 Bayport, NY The Grey Horse Tavern
Mar 10 North Adams, MA MASS MoCA
May 01 Winchester, UK The Railway
May 02 York, UK Dutchess of York
May 03 Bury, UK The Met
May 04 Kilkenny, IE Kilkenny Festival
May 05 Kilkenny, IE Kilkenny Festival
May 06 Belfast, IE Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival
May 07 London, UK Cecil Sharp House
May 08 Newcastle, UK The Cluny 2

Watch the performance now at Relix.com.

Richard also stopped by the Daytrotter studios on his travels to play a few tracks. Listen online now.

Our Blood is available on CD, LP and digital download now in the Merge store.

Richard Buckner on tour:
Nov 06 Winchester, UK – The Railway
Nov 07 London, UK – Pancras Old Church
Nov 08 Leeds, UK – Brudenell Social Club
Nov 09 Cardiff, UK – The Buffalo Bar
Nov 10 Glasgow, UK – The Captain’s Rest
Nov 12 Liverpool, UK – Americana UK Festival
Nov 13 Brighton, UK – The Basement
Nov 14 London, UK – The Social
Nov 18 Trondheim, NO – Credo
Nov 19 Oslo, NO – Mono
Nov 21 Stockholm, SE – Debaser
Nov 22 Gothenburg, SE – Jazzhuset
Nov 23 Malmo, SE – KB
Nov 24 Norderstedt, DE – The Music Star
Nov 25 Utrecht, NL – Le Guess Who Festival
Nov 26 Den Haag, NL – Paard
Nov 27 Ottersum, NL – Roepaen
Nov 29 Ravenna, IT – Bronson Club

A European tour for Richard has just been announced! Be sure to catch him on the road in October and November, and check back for a few more dates.

Our Blood is available in stores and online now.

Richard Buckner on tour:
Sep 28 Little Rock, AR Sticky Fingerz Rock ‘N’ Roll Chicken Shack
Sep 29 Memphis, TN HiTone Cafe
Oct 01 Ft. Worth, TX Ft. Worth Music Fest after show at Lola’s
Oct 02 Austin, TX Cactus Café
Oct 04 Mobile, AL Satori Coffee House
Oct 07 Columbia, SC Tapp’s Art Center
Oct 08 Asheville, NC The Grey Eagle
Nov 06 Winchester, UK The Railway
Nov 07 London, UK Pancras Old Church
Nov 08 Leeds, UK Brudenell Social Club w/ Mark Eitzel
Nov 09 Cardiff, UK The Buffalo Bar w/ Mark Eitzel
Nov 10 Glasgow, UK The Captain’s Rest
Nov 12 Liverpool, UK Americana UK Festival w/ Mark Eitzel
Nov 13 Brighton, UK The Basement
Nov 18 Trondheim, NO Credo
Nov 19 Oslo, NO Mono
Nov 21 Stockholm, SE Debaser
Nov 22 Gothenburg, SE Jazzhuset
Nov 23 Malmo, SE KB
Nov 24 Norderstedt, DE The Music Star
Nov 25 Utrecht, NL Le Guess Who Festival
Nov 26 Den Haag, NL Paard
Nov 27 Ottersum, NL Roepaen
Nov 29 Ravenna, IT Bronson Club

David Malitz of the Washington Post writes, “The new Left by Soft is his seventh album and solidifies his status as an unlikely guitar god.” Read the interview with David Kilgour interview here.

Both Richard & David stopped by KEXP Seattle last week. You can now listen to the sessions online! David Kilgour’s set is archived here, and Richard Buckner’s set is here.

Richard Buckner & David Kilgour on tour:
Aug 23 Atlanta, GA – Smith’s Olde Bar
Aug 24 Chapel Hill, NC – The ArtsCenter
Aug 25 Arlington, VA – IOTA Club & Café
Aug 27 Brooklyn, NY – The Bell House
Aug 28 Boston, MA – Brighton Music Hall
Aug 31 Los Angeles, CA – Old Style Guitar Shop * David Kilgour only

Our Blood is in stores today!

“Our Blood, Buckner’s third for Merge, is worth the wait. Urgent but elaborate, it’s a record that finds Buckner’s baritone as fluid and forceful as it’s ever been, backed by arrangements that strike the perfect balance between Spartan and swollen.” —IFC

“The nine songs here provide an excellent crash course in Buckner’s unlikely combination of gifts, most notably his ability to sound bone-tired and weather-beaten at the same time his songs shimmer agreeably. Even when it slows to a crawl, Our Blood is full of stealthy, subtle earworms—appropriate, given the stubborn resiliency of the immensely gifted artist who crafted them.” —NPR

Magnet Magazine has a series of posts written by Richard this week, as he acts as editor of the site. The link will be updated through out the week with some of Buckner’s favorite things!

Richard Buckner will be teaming up with David Kilgour for a co-headlining tour beginning August 16 in Los Angeles! It will be Kilgour’s first stateside visit since the release of his latest album Left by Soft. Don’t miss this opportunity to see two legendary songwriters and guitar “gods” share the stage!

Richard Buckner on tour:
# with David Kilgour
Aug 16 Los Angeles, CA – Bootleg Theater #
Aug 17 San Francisco, CA – Great American Music Hall #
Aug 18 Arcata, CA – The Logger Bar #
Aug 19 Portland, OR – Bunk Bar #
Aug 20 Seattle, WA – The Triple Door #
Aug 23 Atlanta, GA – Smith’s Olde Bar #
Aug 24 Carrboro, NC – The ArtsCenter #
Aug 25 Arlington, VA – IOTA Club & Cafe #
Aug 27 Brooklyn, NY – The Bell House #
Aug 28 Boston, MA – Brighton Music Hall #
Sep 09–11 Big Indian, NY – Truck Festival

David shares some details about the video and his one-of-a-kind guitar:

“We were playing at the Empire in Dunedin, an old bar that only holds abut 140 people and was made famous by the old Dunedin Sound-ers. The guitar I’m playing is a hybrid—the neck is off an oldish Epiphone acoustic, and the body was made by a guitar dude called Rob Scott. One weird thing about it is that the pickups sit on rails, so I can move them to whatever position/sound I want. It has the sound of mountains collapsing, especially at volume.”

Left by Soft is available on CD and digital download in the Merge store.

David Kilgour & Richard Buckner on tour:

Also, David Kilgour & the Heavy Eights have just released a live video for the title track off their latest release, Left by Soft. David shares some details about the video and his one-of-a-kind guitar:

“We were playing at the Empire in Dunedin, an old bar that only holds abut 140 people and was made famous by the old Dunedin Sound-ers. The guitar I’m playing is a hybrid—the neck is off an oldish Epiphone acoustic, and the body was made by a guitar dude called Rob Scott. One weird thing about it is that the pickups sit on rails, so I can move them to whatever position/sound I want. It has the sound of mountains collapsing, especially at volume.”

Watch David Kilgour & the Heavy Eights perform “Left by Soft” live in New Zealand

Richard Buckner’s new album Our Blood is available for pre-order on CD and LP now in the Merge store. While supplies last, Our Blood pre-orders come with a limited-edition “Don’t Blame Me I Voted for Richard Buckner” bumper sticker! Also, David Kilgour’s new album Left by Soft is available on CD and digital download now in the Merge store.

Richard Buckner & David Kilgour on tour:

Be the envy of your friends and all who drive behind you with this pledge of support to our favorite road warrior, Richard Buckner.

Richard Buckner premiered “Escape” from Our Blood and talked about the making of the new record on IFC.com. Listen and read here.

Richard Buckner on tour:
July 29 Chicago, IL Schuba’s
July 30 Milwaukee, WI WMSE 3rd Annual Radio Summer Camp
July 31 Minneapolis, MN Triple Rock Social Club

IFC.com’s Grayson Currin writes:

Our Blood, Buckner’s third for Merge, is worth the wait. Urgent but elaborate, it’s a record that finds Buckner’s baritone as fluid and forceful as it’s ever been, backed by arrangements that strike the perfect balance between Spartan and swollen. In fact, as a Buckner devotee, I’m willing to claim it’s his best since the 1997 landmark Devotion + Doubt. What’s more, the second track, “Escape,” might just be the best three minutes of music he’s written since that album’s “Ed’s Song.” Informed by recent years of working tough jobs in upstate New York and by his generally peripatetic nature, it’s a resilient tune for temporary escape.

Download “Escape” right here, for the first time anywhere

Our Blood is available for pre-order on CD and LP now in the Merge store. Orders will include an album poster and a special Richard Buckner bumper sticker while supplies last.

Richard Buckner on tour:
July 29 Chicago, IL Schuba’s
July 30 Milwaukee, WI WMSE 3rd Annual Radio Summer Camp
July 31 Minneapolis, MN Triple Rock Social Club

First, there was the score to a film that never happened. Then there was a brief brush with the law over a headless corpse in a burned-out car that had all eyes in Buckner’s small hometown in upstate New York turned toward him and his long-suffering truck. Shortly after a move to a safer, less popular corpse dumping ground, the death of his tape machine led to yet another reboot. After Richard called in pedal steel and percussion players and put new mixes on his laptop, his new “safer” place was burglarized. Goodbye, laptop.

Buckner says: “Eventually, the recording machine was resuscitated and some of the material was recovered. Cracks were patched. Parts were redundantly re-invented. Commas were moved. Insinuations were re-insinuated until the last percussive breaths of those final OCD utterances were expelled like the final heaves of bile, wept-out long after the climactic drama had faded to a somber, blurry moment of truth and voilà!, the record was done, or, let us be clear, abandoned like the charred shell of a car with a nice stereo.”

And so finally, we present Our Blood, in stores August 2, 2011!

Download a free MP3 of “Traitor” now

Pre-order Our Blood on CD and LP now in the Merge store. Our Blood is the first Richard Buckner album to be released on vinyl!

Richard is working on the follow-up to 2006′s Meadow, but in the meantime, you can visit the Merge store for digital reissues of Bloomed, The Hill, and Impasse. You can also find the two Merge releases – Meadow and Dents and Shells – on CD and digital download.

Richard Buckner on tour with Sebadoh:
Mar 23 Milford, CT – Daniel Street
Mar 24 Boston, MA – Paradise
Mar 25 Philadelphia, PA – Johnny Brenda’s
Mar 26 Washington, DC – Black Cat
Mar 27 Carrboro, NC – Cat’s Cradle
Mar 28 Atlanta, GA – The Earl
Mar 29 Orlando, FL – The Social
Mar 31 Birmingham, AL – The Bottletree
Apr 01 Nashville, TN – Mercy Lounge
Apr 02 St. Louis, MO – Off Broadway
Apr 03 Chicago, IL – Lincoln Hall
Apr 04 Cleveland, OH – Grog Shop
Apr 08 Northampton, MA – Pearl Street
Apr 09 New York, NY – Bowery Ballroom
Apr 10 New York, NY – Bowery Ballroom

The limited-edition Destroyer 12-inch “Archer on the Beach” is out-of-print in the Merge store, but you can now buy the songs via digital download!

Don’t miss out on Swim Remixes—Caribou’s answer to what happens when you put one of the year’s hottest dance records in the hands of some of the world’s best DJs! With reworks of some of Swim’s hottest cuts by Junior Boys, Fuck Buttons, Nite Jewel, DJ Koze, Walls, Gold Panda, Gavin Russom, and more, Swim Remixes contains over an hour-and-a-half of new, fresh takes on Caribou’s latest opus.

Let’s Wrestle bring us a tasty piece of next year’s sophomore record with the “Getting Rest”/“When I Was In Hospital” digital single. Be warned: these young Londoners are not to be missed.

Shout Out Louds’ Fall Hard EP expands upon Work’s catchy first single with non-album cuts “Fall Hard Pt. 2” and “Can’t Explain.”

Lou Barlow + the missingmen’s = Sentridoh III is Lou’s first recorded output with new backing band the missingmen. Described by the band as “an almost live representation of the Lou Barlow + the missingmen live show,” this mini-album breathes new, rocking life into Sebadoh and Sentridoh classics, Lou’s solo material, and even a haunting cover of the timeless Skip James song “I’m So Glad.”

Tracey Thorn followed up this year’s gorgeous Love and Its Opposite with a pair of digital EPs, Why Does the Wind? and Opposites, that offer up wildly creative remixes of some of the album’s most-loved songs. Why Does the Wind? pairs the album track of the same name with remixes by Morgan Geist, Michel Clies, and André Lodemann, along with a radio edit and dub version. As for the Opposites EP, Tracey herself probably says it best: “If the remixes for the last single ‘Why Does the Wind?’ were aimed at the dancefloor, these are perhaps aimed more at the head.” Visionquest (“Swimming”), Walls (“Kentish Town”), and Blue Daisy (“Late in the Afternoon”) provide penetrating new takes presented alongside the originals.

Let’s also revisit Lambchop’s magnetic Live at XX Merge performance; Portastatic’s Make It Sound In Tune EP; digital reissues of Richard Buckner’s landmark albums Impasse, The Hill, and Bloomed; and The Ladybug Transistor’s fantastic Here Comes the Rain covers EP.

Our Holiday Coupon applies to digital releases, too, so download away!



If you missed Richard recent Daytrotter session, give it a listen now! Find lots of excellent Richard Buckner titles for preview and purchase in the Merge store.

Richard Buckner on Tour:
05.29 Somerville, MA Johnny D’s
06.04 Hoboken, NJ Maxwell’s w/ Jay Farrar
06.05 New York, NY Bowery Ballroomw/ Jay Farrar
06.12 Arlington, VA Iota Club & Cafe
06.18 Northampton, MA Iron Horse w/ Tift Merritt
09.09 Columbia, SC Columbia Museum of Art
09.10 Raleigh, NC Hopscotch Music Festival
09.23 Cincinnati, OH Midpoint Music Festival

Presented by The Independent Weekly, the Hopscotch Music Festival is the Triangle’s biggest music festival yet and a strong addition to the country’s festival circuit. Scheduled for Sept. 9-11, 2010, in downtown Raleigh, with 120 bands in 10 venues over three days, Hopscotch offers fans high-quality local, national and international options in just about every genre imaginable — rock, hip-hop, alt-country, heavy metal, dance, punk, classical, noise, drone, folk and more.

More than 110 bands will be spread between ten venues located entirely in downtown Raleigh throughout the festival’s three days. For more information and to buy your festival pass, visit hopscotchmusicfest.com.

Richard visited Daytrotter the last time he toured, and the session is finally online for your enjoyment. Give it a listen at daytrotter.com.

Buckner has also just been announced as part of Raleigh’s first Hopscotch Music Festival this summer! Tickets go on sale 4/1 at etix.com.

All photos by Brian Vetter

Welcome.

I’m pleased to announce a series of performance dates based on Merge’s digital releases of three of my earlier records, “Bloomed”, “The Hill” and “Impasse”.

“Bloomed” was originally (erroneously?) released on an unnamable German label in 1994.  I was living in San Francisco at the time, having just moved out of a residential hotel and into the 1906 hilltop prefab that adorns the cover.  At the time, I was heading a band called “The Doubters”.  We were playing high profile events such as The Covered Wagon Saloon’s Musical Barstools, but weren’t making much headway.  We had been turned down consistently every year by SXSW, but I was somehow finagled in as an unannounced guest onto an already unofficial SXSW showcase created by Butch Hancock at his gallery in downtown Austin.  There, I met up with Lloyd Maines, who agreed to produce my first record. We met in Lubbo  ck, TX a few months later, where we worked in a small recording studio walled in wooden shingles Sharpied with bible passages from various church groups that also enjoyed working there.  It was 112 degrees F the morning I arrived under the suspicious (Californians are merely B-grade yankees) gaze of downtown’s Buddy Holly statue.  That first night there, it hailed so hard that heaven’s angry pellets were storming in under my hotel door.  It only let up for a few moments that first night, allowing me to run across the street to get a butter burger and fries to go.   We finished four days later and I flew back to San Francisco, dismembered the band and embarked on a tour that would last about 15 years (or a few days, if you count what I actually remember).

A couple of years later, I was on a slow burner to Tucson to begin recording songs with JD Foster that would eventually become “Devotion & Doubt” (out-of-print 1996 on the now-defunct Musician Career Assassin lab  el).  With a week to kill and nowhere to go, I drove east from Bakersfield and ended up near the mouth of Death Valley at a place called The Ranch Olancha Motel (on the 395 between Lone Pine and Dunmovin).  Originally, there were two hunting cabins along a desert landing strip built by Howard Hughes, but about 40 years later someone converted a few other buildings into sleeping quarters and called it a motel.  I checked into one that had previously been half of a garage.  There was no phone and no TV, so I checked in for a week.  I was traveling with a guitar, a four-track recorder and a copy of Edgar Lee Masters’ “Spoon River Anthology,” and spent the week doodling with the poems onto a cassette.  At the end of the week, I put the tape in my glove compartment and headed south to begin constructing the second nail in my coffin.

About four years later, I found myself in Alberta with writer’s block about halfway down a list of various other dysfunctions.  I had started a record earlier that year and failed and I was looking for a distraction. A future-ex found the Ranch Olancha cassette in my truck.  I had forgotten about it, but after listening to it again, thought that maybe it was the distraction I was looking for.  So, I rented an office space in a soon-to-be demolished medical building in downtown Edmonton and set up a studio with a 16-track mini-disc recorder, an E-Bow and a couple of guitars and keyboards.  A few months later I drove back to Tucson to re-record about half of the songs in a real recording studio with Joey Burns and Johnny Convertino, one of the finest rhythm sections in musicdom.  I gave them a handicap, though, that they couldn’t use the traditional bass and drums setup, so Joey played cello and Johnny ran around the room using various hand percussion instruments and such.  The result was “The Hill”.  I, or  iginally, released it in 2000 as a one-track recording of eighteen songs smeared into one another.  My thought, at the time, was to have the listener read the poems along with the music as one piece, since some of the characters in the book belong next to each other, story-wise.  My demands have lowered with age, though, and the digital re-release on Merge is indexed song by song.

With sales of “The Hill” rocketing into the dozens (half-hour song cycles based on 100-year-old poems generally don’t breach the top 40 niche), I headed back to Edmonton to reattempt an earlier failure.  I set up shop in the basement of my house with a live-in drummer and a number of cats.  Somewhere between tours of the lower 48 and ice hikes to The Black Dog in the Fog, “Impasse” was finally completed and released in 2002.

“Bloomed”, “The Hill” and “Impasse” will be re-released digitally in March 09.

As for the future, Merge and I are currently completing a new contract for the 2010 release of a new record.  The negotiations are being held up, though, by our lawyers.  Evidently, there are a few kinks based on something called “The BBQ Clause”  There is a “use of sauce” stipulation that has yet to be worked out (Porky vs. Supreme Court, 1873).  The lawyers meet after midnight in black, hooded robes under an 18th century oil painting of a smiling pig while medieval fugues played on dobro fill a cavernous KOA campground lean-to.  They are hammering out the details, though, between heated debates on the hopeful additions of shrimp and grits and possibly even mac and cheese.  These are matters of pride and hunger, and some things just cannot be watered down with Dixie Beer and legalese.

Thank you.  Come again.

There’s a web site, richardbuckner.com, with a ‘be-back-later’ note.  Since there’s nothing going on right now, it sits as a future dig, waiting for a body.  In the meantime, the iron chefs at Merge have been kind enough to set me up with a kitchen island to use as a rant-site until my cookies are baked.  We’ll begin in grand O.C.D. style, with a syllabus:

I. What Happened

II. What’s Happening

III. What Might Happen

Thank You. Please turn off your cell phone and pour a drink.  The following may or may not include images of punk-assed music critics (“fast-eating tongue swallowers” -Merck Manual 2008), the world outside of the music industry (from Know Where your Head is Stuck: A Guide), and audience/performer perimeters (“Really? I Don’t remember doing that…”).

Enjoy.

I. What Happened

I have no idea.

II. What’s Happening

In 2007 while touring on fumes, I finished a film score for a movie called “Dreamboy”, based on a book by Jim Grimsley and directed by James Bolton.  The movie is currently club-hopping around the theater scene after being featured at the Berlin Film Festival earlier this year.

“Awake, My Soul: The Story of the Sacred Harp” is a documentary that was featured on PBS.  Sacred Harp singing is a form of a cappella, shape-note singing born in the churches of rural deep south over 200 years ago.  The soundtrack to this film has been released this year along with “Help Me To Sing”, a compilation of Sacred Harp songs reinterpreted by artists such as Danielson Famile and John Paul Jones.  I was asked to contribute and recorded the song called “Windham”.  Begining with the lyrics “Broad is the road that leads to death…”, my version aurally lends itself to an apparition of the Osmond Brothers waking up hungover in a Nashville cathouse after finding Andy Williams’ Pall Mall stash.

I was also commissioned by Timothy McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern to write a poem for an upcoming theme issue called “Endangered Species”, focusing on archaic literary genres from various cultures and time periods.  I was assigned the task of writing a piece based on the rules of what are referred to as troubadours’ songs.  As the editors described, “In the high middle ages, the troubadours wrote songs of chivalry, political disputes, and the ubiquitous maidens fair.  These songs took a narrative form; some told stories of noble adventure (cansos), while others focused on politically-charged satire (sirventes).”  While a fist-clenching politico was tempting, I chose to write a canso and set it to music for an accompanying track that will be available on their web site at some point in the alleged future.

Currently, I’m trolling through ideas and accidents for another record or two and trying to settle internal arguments on presentation and format.  I’m also attempting to construct a series of short stories based on views and visions from my various allotted Catskill detentions.

My first six recordings Bloomed, Devotion & Doubt, Since, The Hill, Richard Buckner (an untitled collection of acoustic recordings) and Impasse are out of print.  They will all be legally available online very soon.

III. What Might Happen

I’m afraid to ask.

In the meantime…

Please check out my friend Willy Vlautin’s writings.

Thanks again for reading.  I’ll write again when something happens, whether it happens or not.

R

Ahh, the post-CMJ sickness. It comes like clockwork. Now that I’ve been given a week to recover, let me tell you how awesome it was to see 5 of the Merge bands rock New York City! The Broken West burst onto the scene via CMJ’s Station of the Year,KEXP!

Thursday was College Day at Lincoln Center, where CMJ set up panels for all the music directors and handed out awards to the best of the biz – and yours truly was given one of the highest honors, Sexiest Phone Voice! Don’t ask me how I did it, but apparently I’m not allowed to send emails anymore.

Friday night at the Knitting Factory was definitely the highlight of the trip! The Broken West, Portastatic, White Whale, and Richard Buckner all represented in usual Merge fashion by blowing everyone away! It was an early night, which was good, since Saturday was full of Brooklyn fun.

The team at Sound Fix Records welcomed the Ladybug Transistor, Portastatic, and White Whale for a packed set of in-store performances! It was a relaxing ending to our CMJ trip, and hopefully some of you were there with us!

Oh CMJ, I’ll never forget you.
Lindsey K.

9/19 – Boston, MA

Got up early to get my broken window replaced in Albany before leaving for Boston and an incoming storm.

And Boston…Take a map, rip it up, throw it into the air: where it lands is the street layout of a town that overturns cars whether or not their team wins or loses. Sprinkle with scraps of LL Bean khakis and blue button-ups. Played a small stage in a club steeped in folk traditionalism: i.e., loops and e-bows need not apply. Driving out of Boston, you feel like a cockroach trapped between someone’s giant hands, and every turn you make, the hands move and you’re lost again. You just wanna turn over on your shell and kick your legs up into the clammy air.

9/20 – New York, NY

NYC / Bowery Ballroom-lovely sound and nice professional club and crew. You feel so welcome and secure until you step out on the street watching for gear-rippers, parking meter soldiers, and the grand-theft-auto-style drive to Brooklyn. Load the equipment in at 3am, and load back out at 8am.

9/21 – Washington, DC

Got to DC early for an XM Radio interview with Bob Edwards. He’s quite a presence: sat quietly as Doug and I set up our stuff, then made for an easy, enjoyable talk. Then, to the IOTA in Arlington, VA: I’ve been playing there since my first tour. Usually stay at a strange motel down the street where sometimes there are people in bathrobes in the lobby, but it’s an easy walk to the club and there’s a place next door for ugly, yet satisfying drunky after-hours food(?)-ish.

9/22 – Chapel Hill, NC

Chapel Hill/Local 506: Good rock club – easy hang. Didn’t get my shrimp and grits at Crook’s Corner this time, though.

9/23 – Asheville, NC

Asheville, NC / Grey Eagle: The LSD mountain fog was really rolling down the hills tonight. It’s always a little weird in Asheville, but good. Tonight it was a little stranger, though. Even the pavement felt strange driving around. Saw two different vehicles with either missing or open doors while driving odd patterns. A health food market with an agro-flute blower marking the entrance with some super-loud (louder than I thought a bamboo flute could ever be) hippie/eastern melody. The merch table reported that football-player-ish guy came in looking for gumbo and asking about shotguns.

At the hotel, people milled about without shirts, one guy with just a towel as he dug through his car for something.

9/24 – Atlanta, GA

Atlanta, GA / Variety Playhouse. I was the oldest person on the stage tonight; by even double, I think.

9/25 – Off Day

Day off in the ATL; got my shrimp and grits. Later, for old times sake, a yacht dog, and much later, the Claremont Lounge, just to be complete.

-buckner

On Tuesday night we, along with 600 hundred or so of our closest friends, were treated to an evening of music that holds no equal in recent memory. The Cat’s Cradle was packed to the gills for a mini-Mergefest: Portastatic; Lambchop and M. Ward. I doubt I could ever muster the words to aptly describe the awe, excitement and pride I felt as I watched these three bands put on performances that simply had my mind, my body, my heart and my soul reeling. It was one of those nights you never forget. One of those nights that helps remind me why I do what I do.

Portastatic kicked things off in high form with Mac and Margaret doing stripped down versions of songs old and new alike. But soon they were joined onstage by a revolving cast of musicians that seemed to turn each successive song into it’s own little universe. M. Ward finished the night off with an incredibly rocking set that had my jaw on the floor. I had the same reaction the first time I saw Matt onstage, alone with his guitar, 4 years ago. This time the tenor and energy was completely different, but no less engaging, as he and his stunning band ripped and roared through a set that seemed to leave the crowd exhausted but elated, wringing every ounce of energy from the room.

Both Portastatic and M. Ward were stunning and either set on their own would have been in the top 5 shows I’ve seen all year. But the main purpose of my post here today is to try to tell you about Lambchop, whose performance on this night was so powerful that I almost found myself moved to tears…

(CONTINUED: Click on jump to permalink below to read more)

You almost never know what you are going to get in a Lambchop performance. How many people are going to be onstage? (I’ve seen performances with anywhere from 5 to 18 band members) Will it swing you like an R&B revival, or sooth you like a lullaby? Will Kurt Wagner actually stand up at some point (I’ve seen this happen exactly twice in 13 years)? The one constant always seems to be the quality of the performance. On this cool September evening in Carrboro, NC they managed to exceed already high expectations.

Tuesday’s performance featured 8 Choppers, with the Tosca String Quartet bringing the total number of musicians on the crowded Cat’s Cradle stage to 12. The thing that always amazes about Lambchop is that all those people can blend so seamlessly together, presenting layer upon layer of sound that draws you in as you try to enjoy every intricate nuance, every flourish. Playing a healthy dose of songs from Damaged, as well as digging into the treasure chest for a few golden nuggets, the band was tight and on point all night long. The Tosca String Quartet added a dimension that we don’t always get here in the States but that European audiences have probably grown spoiled by. I know I could get spoiled by it in a hurry.

All in all I can’t recall a more powerful night of live music in my recent experience.

Lambchop is heading through the northeast this weekend with shows tonight in Boston (Paradise Club), tomorrow night in Montreal (Le National) and Sunday night in Toronto (Mod Club).

Portastatic ends their stint opening for M. Ward with shows tonight in Denton, TX (Haileys) and tomorrow night in Austin (The Parrish), while M. Ward heads westward on the final leg his tour.

Me? I’m off to see Richard Buckner / Eric Bachmann tonight, and will probably get blown away all over again.

If you have the chance to check out any of these shows in the next week or so, I couldn’t recommend them more.

Lambchop tour dates HERE.

M. Ward tour dates HERE.

Portastatic tour dates HERE

Richard Buckner tour dates HERE.

White Whale tour dates HERE.

-martin

(photo courtesy of Enid Valu)

Check here to see if Richard Buckner, road warrior, is coming to your town!

Photos from last night’s Bowery show are here, and a great feature in the Riverfront Times is here!

And of course, you can order the oh-so-fantastic new record, Meadow, Here!

Christina

A growing summer cold and 700 miles ended up in a Jamestown, ND overpriced Days Inn; the building apparently had recently suffered a stroke. Dinner was Arby’s from a Goth girl who wanted to go home early, but couldn’t because we came in. She let us know this through kitchen conversation and rolling eyes as we ordered.

9/13 – Wednesday – Minneapolis, MN

Made it to St. Paul, MN for an early afternoon live public radio performance (photos of Garrison K abound), Jiffy Lubed, then got to the Cedar Cultural Center in Minneapolis for a polite folded chair crowd, and later, for a, thankfully, non-descript Red Roof Inn.

9/14 – Thursday – Chicago, IL

Got to Chicago in time to do laundry before sound check. It was a two-show night at Schuba’s. The lovely Sally Timms made an appearance, and then rode off into the night on a mountain bike. 3:30 am, after getting lost briefly, made it to an outskirt-downtrodden inn surrounded by all-night Check-Cashing services doing a brisk business for such a late hour.

9/15 – Friday – Kalamazoo, MI

Oh Michigan: Your gifts are appreciated and possibly even deserved. After a 2-year absence via boycott ala pointlessius pathetico, I landed, running.

As soon as we pulled outta the Lisle, IL Hotel, a rock-spitting semi gave the green bitch a black eye: a cracked, but still working headlight, held together w/ a paste of humidity-dew and insect carcasses…

(CONTINUED: click on jump to permalink below for more tales from the road)

I’d Map Quested directions to a studio for an interview on Acoustic Cafe in Ann Arbor. It led us past schools, to a wooded neighborhood. We pulled into the driveway of a cute secluded house. We didn’t get outta the truck, but watched as a dog inside the house went nuts barking, and a small boy came out, looked at us (“us” meaning 4 hours of sleep per night for two weeks, unshaven, sunglasses, looking lost), then ran back inside. Something wasn’t right. I called the interviewer, Rob.

He asked where we were. I gave him the address. “You’re at my house.”

Somehow, I’d gotten it wrong. He gave us another address and directions to the real location. We got there late, but it went off fine. I apologized for probably creeping out his child and pet & offered to pay for therapy during his teenage years, should the memory persist.

As a child in Marysville, CA, there was a neighborhood window peeper whose figure I saw one night outside the window above my bed. I rolled outta the sheets slowly, crawled to my closet and got out my junior 410 shotgun and slept in the hallway. I hope my image, to Rob’s boy, doesn’t stay in the same. I didn’t see the child grab for a gun.

After the taped interview, we turned around for Kalamazoo. Detoured through Jackson (home of the Nuge, his bow-hunting world headquarters – hunting gear, deer jerky, Nuge cassettes and fashion wear – and fitness center). We thought we’d hit our room on the way to the Kraftbrau Brewery show, check in quick and keep going. This was not to be.

Evidently, the first thing 62 year-old men do upon the first day of retirement is purchase a ZZ Top Car Kit. This particular weekend at the Battle Creek, MI, Motel 6, they, in new beards, descended for a gathering of cars in various stages of completion — evidently part of the newly retired uniform, making bad u-turns in the parking lot and telling me to just drive around them.

Checked in, brought the bags up to the room, opened the door. I heard Doug say “Oh no”. I saw empty food containers and used beds. Went downstairs and came back w/ the key to the next room over. Beds were made, so we brought the bags in.

The first thing I always do when I get in any hotel room is pull the bedspread and blanket down so that I and any of my possessions only touch the sheets. This particular bed-pull, though, exposed first, the blanket which held something close to dried cookie dough formations. The maid and manager, now familiar with me, were outside the first room, looking in. I brought the blanket to them.

“I think there’s something human on this…” They looked at me. “…Not mine.”

“We’ll bring you another one.”

“Okay.”

I went back inside and decided to pull back the top sheet. It was a vast field of various length hairs and meal remnant designs.

After another trip to the front desk, we got our last room key of the day. Everything checked out with a physical inspection. In fact, we were so pleased with how clean the room was, we decided to ignore the how-do-you-say…room aroma: imagine truck stop aftershave, mixed w/ post-asparagus urine, and a hint of burned butter. At this particular Motel 6, at this point in the tour, this is an exceptional outcome.

9/16 – Saturday – Toronto, ON

In Toronto tonight, my summer cold slapped me in the face. Had to cut the set a little short when my body began rejecting me. Drove outside of town to the hotel amidst night flies driving through their drunken Indy 500.

9/17 – Sunday – Montreal, PQ

Got to Montreal. Found the promoter, Phillipe. Went to the car to start loading in and discovered that during the 5 minutes between finding Phillipe and going back to the car, someone had broken out my back window and taken my cell phone and passport. But this thrilled me: they hadn’t taken, only inches away, mucho tour cash & instruments. My cell phone was ready to die and my passport had my photo, which held me looking like a greasy, long-haired death valley terrorist w/ something evil/republican on his mind: imagine a repressed Bush appointee with a tan, on a shoe polish bender. I actually felt like I’d been given a chance to start over. Some stupid Montreal junkie doesn’t know what he/she missed. After filing a Canadian police report, and canceling the show, we headed back toward the States for repairs and a celebration of what didn’t get ripped, but easily could’ve. Crossing the border, back into the States, the immigration officer was completely unsympathetic. Told us to just keep going. On the way to a hotel in Plattsburg NY, Doug mentioned that bad things come in threes:

1. Flat tire in New Mexico.

2. Lost prescription sunglasses in San Diego.

3. Summer Cold

4. My final Canadian rip-off trip:

*1999 – Vancouver, BC club, post-show, non-payment.
*2000 – Vancouver, BC daytime truck break-in, where my all-time favorite nylon string guitar (1950’s Gibson w/ inlaid mother of pearl crosses on the bridge) and a cheap, but great, Danelectro were snagged.
*Brain cells lost at the Black Dog in the fog of Edmonton, Alberta (actually lost over a period of 4 1/2 years).
*2006 – Montréal break in

This actually puts me one ahead. I think I’m owed one.

Secretly, I have a feeling payback may be in the form of Merge Records crowning me artist of the month and awarding me a trophy, formed from BBQ and topped w/ slaw, in the shape of an e-bow smoking a cigarette.

Normally, I think that awards are for suckers, but I feel like I have this one coming.

9/18 – Day Off

My first day off without having to drive all day was spent tying up loose ends in a post office, a bank, and a Kinko’s in upstate New York.

-buckner

9/6 – Wednesday – Chico, CA

Chico CA swirled around us with no help from the ground. Afterwards, lilies from my past appeared, rising like beer bottles outta the snow after an unexpected winter melt.

9/7 – Thursday – Eugene, OR

Woke up to C-Span coverage of Congress addressing the most important issue on American minds: a ban on slaughtering horses for human consumption. Minimum wage debate, war crimes, the joke of the 4th amendment… its all so yesterday. Yelled at the TV, then got in the truck.

Said it before; lets say it again: Eugene, OR — never again.

Hackysack-brained hippies — about 10 of them came to see the show; somewhere in the woods, conservatives, and in the streets, urchins in torn black hoodies, acting homeless, but probably going home at night to their once-hippie-but-now-LL Bean-parents.

Last time I played at Wow Hall (the alleged venue), the sound-dude was on acid and ruined any chance of a show before the crowd turned on me, and, I, in turn, turned on them. What a waste of a beautiful place.

Oh, yeah…and we didn’t get paid, either. The hobby continues.

(CONTINUED: Jump to permalink below for entries from 9/8 – 9/11)

9/8 – Friday – Portland, OR

Doug Fir Lounge in Portland. Willy from Richmond Fontaine gave me a copy of his beautiful new book. He’s the only person that I trust from Reno, NV.

9/9 – Saturday – Seattle, WA

Sparse crowd…so much playing around town tonight…Devo, The Zombies, Silver Jews…

Got some supermarket sushi from an angry Japanese man working at a kiosk in the fruit section. I guess I’d be mad, too. All I wanted was a little more wasabe…

9/10 – Sunday – Vancouver, BC

Got up early to play a live set at KEXP not far from the Space Needle Travelodge. There was a Trekkie convention at the needle, but I saw no Klingons. Drove to Bellingham, just below the border, to leave our merch at a Motel 6. Taking it into Canada is impossible. After a merciful and pleasant immigration officer, we made our way to Richard’s on Richards in Vancouver, BC. Didn’t get any guitars ripped off for a change — only a few skeevy junkies tried to bother us, but I was in no mood, and made them aware of this as plainly and firmly as I could. Funny and talented sound staff made the show easy. Broke a string, made some noise, then drove back to Bellingham, WA after the show.

9/11 – Monday – Travel Day

4 hours of sleep, then off towards Minneapolis. The truck turned over 450,000 miles. Ended up in Deer Lodge, MT. Super scummy town filled w/ close-eyed cranky (literally) honkies. There’s an old frontier prison here that I that checked out a few years ago with gallows and everything — oh, yeah, and a car museum of sorts.

We got here late, so we had to stay at the lowest of them all: Super8 — always overpriced and soul sucking. The desk clerk was not happy that I needed a room. I think I’d interrupted her trying to eat her 20th potato of the day. Or, she might’ve just been distracted, thinking about what a bad tattoo she had on her cleavage. No real restaurants were open, so I had to have my second McDonald’s salad of the day. We walked across the road from the hotel to the McD’s. Outside, there was a skinny, shirtless skinhead standing on the hood of his car. Inside, behind the register, was a boy/man hocking up something from deep within as we ordered our meals (?). America the beautiful.

How many cracker-assed birth canal towns can there be? America the bottomless.

-buckner

9/2 – Saturday:

Left El Paso. About 150 miles towards Tucson, the road started feeling dreamy/rubbery, like I’d taken too many Actifed. We pulled over: Flat tire.

Cell phone worked. AAA said it would be 2 1/2 hours for a tow to the next town. A New Mexico State Trooper pulled up behind us. The trooper said he knew of a place that would take 30 minutes for $250. AAA called back and put me in touch with Pete’s Tire in Lordsburg NM, so the cop took off, and we waited by the side of the road with huge ants and bits of wrecks and debris.

Vernon pulled up in a black dodge ram 350 with, in the place of a front license plate: If it has tits or wheels it’ll give you problems. He put on a new tire, and then we followed him into Lordsburg, end of town. We drove over a meridian, onto a dirt road, to a landing by the freeway with three mobile homes, four doors on each side with numbers, a reused mobile motel with boarded-up windows. Around the complex were piles of blown tires, a purple Freightline semi, a corroded 80s Chevy van, a Camaro, a U-haul open trailer, a forklift, and a few more highway tire repair trucks. Vernon went to work installing and balancing the two new back tires, then we were back on the road. Got to Tucson just in time for post-traumatic-truck- disorder margaritas. Did the show — all on Tucson’s special brand of time and space.

Turns out Eric Bachmann’s van broke down in Moab, UT. Couldn’t make it to the first night of our tour.

(CONTINUED: To read more jump to permalink below)

9/3 – Sunday:

Bachmann showed up in San Diego in a U-haul bobtail straight from Las Vegas the night/morning before.

Onstage, Doug and I were accompanied by an industrial fan, talented in removing that annoying noise coming from the stage monitors – ME – an unintentional Jesus and Mary Chain effect. Later, at a Motel 6, a man in the elevator, recently escaped from his overbearing wife, showed me the sunburned front of his legs as small talk. I thought of offering him the Cholula hot sauce that I carry with me, for his backleg hot wings. I kept my mouth shut.

9/4 – Monday

L.A.: Two letters too many. As a child of northern California, I was trained not to venture below Kern County. I never learn.

9/5 – Tuesday

Drove to Bakersfield after the L.A. show. 3 hours later, woke up to drive to Fresno for a 10am interview. Had to pass Zingo’s (Buck Owens Blvd and Hwy 99) — one of my favorite truckstop/lounges. Chicken fried steak and eggs of unimaginable perfection. Last time I was there, in May or June, Doug and I walked in, found a table. As soon as we sat down, the baby in the next booth went nuts, screaming/freaking out. We decided to move and got up. A waitress approached us:

“Moving?”

“We’re just gonna move away from the baby.”

“Well, it was just circumcised…”

“Okay. Then were moving away from the circumcision.”

She just looked at us; the joke was lost in white gravy. I wondered, if I ever became a father, if I would take my new son to a truckstop for a celebration after his special snipping. Inconclusive: The chicken fried steak is very, very, very good.

Made it to SF for the super nice people at the Swedish American Hall. After the show, drove to Vacaville for a full 6 hours of sleep, waking in the morning to the sounds in the next room of someone removing their lungs one hork-of-phlegm at a time.

-buckner

Got to Dan’s Silverleaf in Denton TX. They had food waiting for us: meatloaf with jalapenos, garlic soup with jalapenos, and an apple crisp with jalapenos. Tasty and disturbed.

9/1/06 – Texas

Drove 640 miles to El Paso TX. huge storm. Red Roof Inn. Checked in and chased a feral kitten around the parking lot. Let a Grey Goose chase me around my room.

-buckner

Oxford, MS – 8/31/06 – 2:36am

Ole Miss Motel: An off-season (“‘cept on game night”) Taj Mahal too far from the redneck riviera to attract the a-list crackers. On the doors, are hearts with embedded room numbers — possibly a holdover from the days, only a few years ago, when the rooms were rented by the hour. Beige and brownish-pink motifs invite you into a set that couldve been used in 70s porn. I also believe the room hasn’t been cleaned since. Remnants of previous travelers sit, waiting to be discovered; something stuck to the side of a nightstand or a basin.

(“What is that?”)

(“How did it land there?”)

(“When did it arrive?”)

But, its around the corner from Proud Larrys and 1/2 the price of the more maintained cages around Oxford, MS. I was last here a few years ago. There were a couple of Springer-guest archetypes (females, we believed) next door, who talked at my guitar player and I as we loaded our guitars into our room after the show. The two of them were partying like divorcees on their first night out, but i think it was their one zillionth night out. They were somewhere between 19 and 49 years old, so any guess would work here. Tonight, though, its calm, with only a few southern trophies limping to the ice machine across the parking lot or to the trunk of their cars for the second carton of the day before goodnight-johnboy.

Andrew Bryant was playing a beautiful set when we got to the gig. He made me wish that I’d practiced more. We went on about 10:15 or so. There’s a midnight curfew at Proud Larrys (“‘cept on game night”). After a sonic breakfast sandwich and coffee, 551 miles tomorrow and a step-up bed-wise: the aging queen of motels — Motel 6.

-buckner