I wonder how long Oscars hair is going to be when I see him?

Okay, lets see here....Where do i begin?  Well, Saturday morning me (Zach), The Big O, and Seth are going to get together and see if we even remember these damn songs.  Hannah likes to do things in her room where she can hear herself, so I'm sure we will practice with her when she's ready.  Whats been going on lately?  I'll tell you.  Oscar has been working on a taco truck in  NYC, and growing his hair out to get ready for his role in some movie about 70's baseball players.  He also just finished up a few shows with his other band Baby Birds Don't Drink Milk.

 I have been touring with my other band Mouthbreathers, we just finished up the west coast, we're headed East in October, and then back West in November.  I have also been doing some basement recording under the name Trailer Blazed.  Mouthbreathers has a 7" out now, that you can by at www.intheredrecords.com  Other than that I have either been working, or working.


Hannah has been busy being happy, and away from the boys.  I secretly thinks she misses us though.  She just moved into a nice apartment, and has a good job, and all that jazz.  Occasionally, I see her out at night.  That is usually followed with a big hug, and a shot that we both later regret.

Seth has been plugging away with his other (amazing) band Dry Bonnet.  If you haven't seen them yet do yourself a huge favor and check them out.  Seth has proven to be a skilled bass player, and a sexy man on stage (His pant's fit now).  Other than that he's in the same boat as me.  WORKING.

As a band, we we're dead for a bit.  I feel like it was a much needed rest for a band that was working as hard as we we're only to constantly be shat on by a bunch of middlemen.  We had a run of tough luck.  Cancelled and/or botched tours, internal problems, time constraints, strange circumstances, weird label issues, other weird label issues, even more weird label issues, oh and I almost forgot LABEL ISSUES.  We decided to avoid all of that carrot dangling, and empty promises by just doing everything ourselves.  On the upside to all this complaining (or should i say explaining).  There was a whole heaping load of awesome shit that happened to us.  We got to play with some of the most amazing bands in, and outside of Lawrence.   Played two great festivals, Dmmr Bmmr in Portland, and The Garage Fest in Lawrence.  We got to meet and work with J. Robbins, and met one of our dearest friends of all time, Jessi Frick!  Eating Buritto's in Big Sur was also pretty sweet.  I'm happy that we decided to just finally put our second record out ourselves and just close that chapter. Its going to be a lot of fun playing September 29th at the replay.  It's only the greatest place to play on earth!

After that show you won't be hearing from us for awhile, but don't be alarmed.  We're not going anywhere.  We are releasing a new EP "Party Animal" early next year as a 7".  Also, we are recording record number three "Let It Be".  We're going to keep busy with our other bands too if you get bored and want to check out a show.  There will be new tours, and more hometown shows in the future.  See you around!  I plan on drunkenly blogging on this more often now, since I have a reason to.

-Zach

Did anyone pray for giant shoes?

So a little update on what we've been up to lately.  It was a busy October, followed by a slow November. Thank god for December! (except for that whole painfully cold weather part...oh, and the no money part).  We have been practicing a bunch with new material ect.  Now we're watching a ton of Simpsons!!  More practice tomorrow, we gotta get ready for all these shows coming up!  December 17th at the replay everyone!!  Can't wait for tour.  We shall see you soon west coast!!

Ok, let's try this blog again

West Coast Tour January 2011, y'all!

Dec 17 – Tour kickoff show! Replay Lounge, Lawrence, Ks
Jan 4 – Hi-Dive, Denver, Co
Jan 7 – Funhouse, Seattle, Wa
Jan 8 – East End, Portland, Or
Jan 10 – Hub, Sacramento, Ca
Jan 11 – Hemlock, San Francisco, Ca
Jan 12 – Uptown, Oakland, Ca
Jan 13 – Five Star Bar, Los Angeles, Ca
Jan 14 – Park Gallery, San Diego, Ca
Jan 15 – Dressing Room, Phoenix, Az
Jan 16 – Dry River Collective, Tucson, Az
Jan 17 – Something rad!!, Albuquerque, Nm
Jan 19 – Beerland, Austin, Tx
Jan 20 – Rubber Gloves, Denton, Tx


We can't wait to see your lovely faces.
h e l l y e s !

we borrow yr pets

Along the way, we get to meet the animals of those who host us and pet them as though they're our very own.

So far:
Halloween twin black kittens + 2 grown cats (Denver)
alarm clock meowing crazy cat (Missoula)
Belle the Golden (Boise)
Clovis and Mia (Los Angeles)
Linus the big jerk cat (Los Angeles)
Boo (San Diego)
Earl the Bassett Hound (Tucson)
Shawnee the Lab mix and Sid the half-feral grump (Austin)

oscar has tiger balm on his balls

Portland-We played the DMMR BMMR festival at the east end, it was crazy! we show up and ask around about the goings on, and find out that we get free unlimited beer and pizza ALL NIGHT LONG! (i want to say this now, its late and i'm tired so im not going to type anything properly, so deal with it). The beer was some organic ale, or if your not into that thing PBR tall boys (I said yes to both). they also gave us drink tickets on top of this.....why? i wasn't about to ask. i just said thank you very much. the pizza was some sort of faux new york style fold slice, but a very very good version of it. super tasty!!!! we played, and despite technical difficulties (seth's hi hat stand busting, mic's, and monitors shorting, guitar amp cutting out) we played a great show, and they audience understood and didn't care about any of this. the drummer from the band asked us if we were mad at each other because it looked like it, we all said no it was just a little weird to have all of that shit go wrong. then he proceeded to tell us how great it was. which is good because his band the unnatural helpers are fucking incredible! also NEW FAVORITE BAND ALERT! THE FRESH AND ONLYS! seriously....SO GOOD! around the time of the 5th or 6th act all the booze really started kicking in, and by the time coconut coolouts played we were all rocking out very very hard. eventually oscar got kicked out of the gig for passing out and pissing on the club. him and hannah swapped clothes and he took off his glasses and snuck back in when he caught his second wind. buy this time the closing act no bunny was on the stage(this was after a slew of other amazing acts such as the pets, shannon and the clams, the eubonics, ect..) they were so fucking awesome and the lead singer played the majority of the set with his dick swinging all over the place. lets move foward to the afterhours party. the first thing i see when i walk in is a girl fall into a trashcan and destroy it, which instantly reminded me of my graceful exit of the replay lounge employee xmas party....we talke to a lot of different people about a lot of diferent things, mainly punk rock, indie rock, ect...ya know a bunch of drunks in bands chatter(i'm sure we've all been there...often). me and seth were talking to sean from the eubonics and then the next thing you know we have a second show in sanfran!!!! we were stoked, so we took off that night, which may have been stupid but seth swore he was sober, and i was drunk enough to believe him.

san fran-we show up at the knockout for our matinee happy hour show, and was greeted with open arms by johnny boss a.k.a. the coolest bartender in the world. free drinks, and anything we want, and he meant anything...me and oscar were drinking spiked root beer floats, hannah was strictly rum and coke, seth tall boys of tecate. the opening act was a truck driver/beat poet. it was so fucking weird. we ripped through our set, and people were stoked. so stoked that we got offered to open for NODZZZ! before we had to go play what would now be our third show of the evening at the hemlock. obviously we accepted. ripped through another great set, backed up and drove to the hemlock. when we got there we had drink tickets shoved in our face. played a very odd show which mostly consisted of looking for seths glasses. it was our third show in one day give us a break! our sound guy looked like rob zombie, that was pretty sweet. we ate pizza, and feel asleep at my friend heather lipp's place. we all were very well boozed at that point.

LA-after taking beautiful highway 1 for most of the ride, we were forced to drive through "the butt". which is a 30 minute drive between san fran and LA that smeels like cow shit, and its unavoidable. when we got to the club we loaded in, and then we took off to the gold room where the nightly special is a shot of patron' a mug of beer for 4$ with unlimited free tacos!!!! there was an elderly mexican man with a guitar with a bow on it who had clearly been there all day, and may have had a screw loose to boot. as we were drinking, and eating he came over and befriended us. it was pretty interested, i mean i couldn't understand a word he said, neither could anyone else at the table, but that didn't matter. it was so entertaining. I really dont think words can truely express what happened. when we got back to the club out buddy douglas armour played and it was incredible, afterwords we played and it wasnt as energetic as i would have liked i think we were all a bit tired from the day before. but it was good none the less. we went back to dougs place and stayed the night. when we woke up in the morning doug had bought us tamales for breakfast. They were incredible, we would have hung out longer but he had to drive out to the desert to record with gang gang dance. we went to the beach and hungout for hours before we went to in and out burger and stuffed ourselves! after that i went to barns and noble to have a little bit of me time, and got sucked into the book "bob dylan chronicles". i cant wait to finish it. we pulled up to the smell, got ourselves settled, then went to a bar called five stars where a homeless man tried to sell us stolen cell phones. we went back to the smell, and played a great set, all of our gear was laying in shambles when we were through, and i fucked my back up from falling into everything. oscar was bleeding. the show ruled. today we woke up at our friend james barr's place after watching yet again a healthy dose of stella!!!! which continuted on into today as well. Seth went to go hang out with some old friends he had not seen in years, as for the rest of us we went mountain hiking! after words we got some smoothies, and then picked up supplies to make fajitas with. they were so good, and the hot tub was really great(my back appoved!) now im drinking a very cold miller lite, blogging about tour on goings while watching clueless. oscar and/or hannah is snoring pretty badly, and im not tired. im ready to get out of LA and go to san diego (which is german for a whales vagina). LA makes me lonely. it weird because there are sooooo many people here, but really does. we're about ready to makes our second turn of tour and start heading back east. its been a good tour so far. i'll see you all soon!

Now nobody can leave the party!!!! muwahahahahaha!!!!

Seattle,  Oh Seattle.  Not only have you brought so much music to the table that has molded, and at times saved my life.  You also no how to throw a fucking party!  After the Olympia "show" we drove to Seattle, and woke up and had most of the day to sort of chill.  It was nice, and Jrip and Susan are two very rad people.  We ate at Veggie Veggie, and if you are ever in Seattle it comes highly recommended by the Rooftop Vigilante cast and crew.  Our bass head farted out on us, so we had to go see Seths buddy Andrew at the music store he works at.  WE GOT THE HOOK UP!  Andrew was a very sweet guy, and I'm glad we all got to meet him.  That night we had a show at The Funhouse.  It reminds me of the Replay only bigger, and everybody that works there is liferz.  So of course, we got shit canned.  Our set was great, we blazed through most of it, except for that part were i busted a string, and we had to tune the back up guitar, but luckily for us I have a razor sharp wit that everyone loves, and thinks is funny....................Anyways,  after our set my buddy Andy Gassaway bought me a pack of smokes as payment for a cd.  And our pal Jeff Johansen took me to his car were we proceeded to pound a fifth of really really good vodka.  I don't know why i thought that was a good idea, because it was not a good idea at all!  yeesh.  The Pets played, and they were out of control awesome!  there was a very large crowd there the whole night, and since Olympia was a ghost town it felt very nice.  Coconut Coolouts are like the best band ever!  Please don't break me out of party jail!  After the show is where it really starts to fade for me.  I did talk to Ripley a lot, though i have no idea of what on earth it could have been about.  I guess at some point at the after party me and Seth had an emotional( "bromantic" as Oscar likes to put it) talk about something, I dunno.  It happened and thats all the more detail that I can give because the rest of it I forgot to save on my memory card.  Oh snap!  I saw a sweet Dead Moon tag, and a Killer Pierced Arrows flyer.  Sorry i back tracked for a second there anyways, where was I?  oh yes, the after hours party  as a group no one can really remember it.  I asked, no one knows to much but, I did pass out cold in front of the front door, so no one could leave the party without having to move my lifeless body out o the way first.  I'm sorry if this post is a little bland as compaired to some others.  Im usually good at remembering idiocy.  Not this time.  Maybe I did and said some things I don't want to remember.  Maybe this is a good thing.  Were on our way to Portland.  Exploding Hearts, and Flaming Lips are the jams of choice right now.  I want to throw in some Teenage Fanclub in the mix soon.  Stay tuned for the holidays.........

I was this close to punching Danzig!

So last night we drove 8 hours to play a free show basically........We show up at the club and got food for free, really good food at that. the first band "eyes like saucers" was super drony pump organ stuff. the guy was sweet, but a total gear nerd. I don't care what you got, its what you do with it. The next band "poor School" was super good. then it it was our turn. It was freezing in the club, and I was in a very very bad, and strange mood for a lot of different reasons. Weird night. Rock n Roll came rushing through my viens in the long run, and i started to have a good time. The 8 people in the club that actually gave enough of a shit to watch the bands really dug it. Especially this one particular traveler kid named Patrick. He came with backpack, and acoustic in hand. He was in a band called "wasted Youth" that he repeatedly reminded us that its not the one from L.A. he said we were so punk rock, and kept giving us devil horns while he talked to us. He had a song called "Zach" which of course had to be about a zombie apocolypse, what else could it have been about?

"Zach"

better watch out cause this shit is real
im gonna get on this mike and get ill
zach is out and looking to kill
the people he kills kill!

because zach is at your front door and he's got your mothers face!
zachs replaced the poor its the new master race.
zachs moving in next door!
its fucking war!

destroy the stairs! (x forever)

He also had this classic song:

"Star Wars"

Star wars is better than star trek,
its better than star trek by far.

He also told me that he saw the misfits and was very very close to punching Danzig....mind you this kid is also 21 years old and wasn't alive when Danzig had anything to do with the misfits. but i let him talk because what else did I have to do? You don't meet people like this everyday...we'll i guess if your me you do. Im a freak magnet. Lets see, what else. He said he was going to get us all high if we met him in the alley, when we did he asked if WE had any weed or beer. I stepped in a pile of dirty diapers, and for the rest of the night was freaking out about it. i felt sooooo gross. in the end Olympia turned out okay. What i took away from our little visit is that the food is good in Olympia, and that apparently someone can punch Danzig before conception. Seattle is going to rule. See ya soon.

Instead of smoking, or killing people. I play with a skull. How metal am i?

Okay so picking up where Hannah left off...(I just want to say before any of this begins, I'm still drunk from last night so there might be errors within this blog).  With that being said here we go..up..up.. and away!!!!!!

Tour has been a masterpiece of debauchery so far at least, so for the sake of us remembering things, and you getting (hopefully) a good laugh out of it, this is our laugh and Oscar puts it best when he repeatedly says "Tour is weird!"  

Omaha, NE-  We pull into Cooper Moon's place for a house show and first things first....uuuuuhhhh...we get our van stuck!  of fucking course! But that did not stop this Greatful Dead non stop party bus.  Quickly we score a ride to the booze farm, and pick up a handle of canadian whiskey (cooper called it a "homewrecker") and a 30 of High Life, hung out and talked soooooooo much shit (we are really bad about shit talking, but its all just good natured ribbing).  The first band plays  "the Dinks".  They were great.  Seth yelled at Oscar for punching the heater or something.  I don't know why Oscar did it, and I also don't know why Seth yelled at him for it...they probably don't know either.  (I don't--oscar) The Lepers played next.  SABBATH!!!!!  it was rad.  so then it was our turn,  at this point we had basically polished off our beer and was doing some fucking damage on that bottle of whiskey.  It is 3 A.M. and we have not played a note.  Oscar is passed out in the living room with a giant party all around him.  Once we revived him from the dead,  we strapped a bass around his neck, and  gave it thee ole' college try.  It worked out about as much as college did.  The set ended up with me and Ocsar falling over each other and our equipment.  I think we tried to do some sort of AC/DC rock star back to back pose and we missed each other.  After the show I had the most logical conversation ever with a clearly insane person.  Me and Hannah tried to polish off the rest of the handle.  I ended up being the last person up and drinking alone.  I dunno if thats Hardcore as fuck, or just pathetic.  Omaha!!!!

Denver, CO-We show up at the Hi-Dive and were greeted with open arms, and with the drink special from heaven(or hell)  Tecate and a shot of kentucky gentlemen is what we had every time we went to the bar, and it was for free!!!!  I caught someone fucking in the green room.  AWKWARD! every single band we played with was incredible,  Mersman is the coolest dude in the universe,  the food was great and  the after hours was kickin'.  We went to The Oriental Theater, which is this really old historical looking place and partied like crazy with the owners until like 5 or 6.  That night I thought it would be a ggggggrrrrreeeaaaatttt idea to try and start smoking weed again.  Nope!  still can't.  Panic attack city.  But i do remember how much i loved having the munchies.  We went home and ate ham and cheese sandwiches with pretzels.  Yum.  (Oh, and Mersman gave us some delicious fig-and-walnut-infused whiskey and amazing and totally redundant hot toddys to usher us into sleepytime--o)

Salt Lake City, UT-Okay, so on this specific night we were supposed to "take it easy".  that didn't really work out to well.  We didn't drink at the show really because it was an all ages place that didn't allow it.  I thought that was refreshing, and it was really rad to have kids at a show, and to play with kids.  They are still so wide eyed about everything, and its totally innocent still.  They don't see the evils of the music biz, they're not bitter or jaded or anything like that.  If anything they are fucking hilarious.  I mean it.  Its really cool.  Okay enough with that.  The show went seemingly well i suppose, after we played this like 14 year old kid in an Alice In Chains shirt came up and told us if we gave him a cd we would burn it off for all of his friends at school to try and hype us.  We agreed.  The next day we recieved an email from him asking if he could be our P.R. rep(this is what i mean about kids being hilarious).  We stayed with our Friend Vannesa who is awesome!  she bought us so much beer, and bloody mary's.  She also bought us pizza!!!!!  Everyone smoked pot out of an apple, and watched Stella.  In my mind anything that involves Stella is a perfect situation to be in(thank you Jenny Sinn for stealing my young impressionable heart, and introducing me to Stella while you were at it).  Everyone I met there was so cute, even the boy's.  It's true!   They had cool boots.  We also got to take showers!  Oscar and Hannah have refused to take off their pajamas since.  Its really funny to see oscar rock out with his sweatpants on.  He's really taking care of buisness.

Missoula, MT- We woke up and watched the inaugeration, and played the first show ever at a club called The ZACC!  like woah!  Oscar-food+booze=something that children think live under their bed, or in their closet.  Hannah with that same equation equals hysteria!  In a good way.  the set started with me and Oscar performing a call and response with the crowd.  We screamed at the top of our lungs, and then they did the same.  This lasted for about five minute, it was then and there we knew this was going to be a hella rad show.  We drank a shit ton of beer on stage(I just wanna say this right now.  Look out Replacements, and Guided By Voices.  There are some new drunk assholes in town).  Oscar played half the set with is sweatpants around his ankles.  We played an impromtu accapella version of "Blister In The Sun".  Oscar single handedly ended a relationship(we think).  Dane is a bad ass mofo, and made us veggie stew.  It was delicious!  Daves band The Streetlight People were incredible.  It reminded me of like a Modern Lovers meets Dylan infuse, how could you not love it?  Everyone in Missoula is so awesome, and completly crazy.  I think its something about living in the mountains that does this to people....So get this we go buy more beer  "Moose Drool" to be specific, and we show up to the party.  Apon  arrival we were greated by five people holding machine guns, screaming and listining to some sort of Fiesta music (something that you would hear at El Mezcal).  we all were stoked on this, everyone except for oscar who if he could remember this would have been totally stoked!  we partied hard and talked a lot about Against Me!  for some strange reason.  Some one put on the Refused by my request, this really made my night.  Then the cd started skipping.  Instead of cleaning the disc and trying again the dude grabbed a baseball bat, and seth grabbed a lead pipe and all of a sudden we were trapped in the board game Clue.  No, actually they went outside and smashed the fuck out of that stereo!  then they went and played beer bottle baseball.  I woke up on a mattress underneath a sink.  Missoula is the best town ever, and i will forever play there on tour.

Boise, Idaho-Where do I begin.....The Neurolux pours the strongest drinks of all time(and we should know).  We had a dude who played in The Doobie Brothers talk to Oscar about how much of an asshole George Thorogood is, then he told me that Mickey Heart from the dead got his house broken into by drug addicts(duh).  After that he asked us for a place to stay.  Also, This conversation happened to me;

(A firm hand gently caresses my arm)

me-Yes?

dude-Hello(looooong pause)

me-Oh, hello(loooong pause)

dude-Sorry to bother you. (looooong pause)

me-Its okay. (loooooong pause)

dude-  I'm Captain Ron.  (Captain Ron exits the bar).

During our set we talked shit on The Meat Puppets(who we all adore), and everyone in the place because thats how we roll i guess.  We get away with it because we talk the most shit on ourselves.  We had two tamborine players join our band for the show.  it was pretty awesome, they kept stealing me and Oscars mics, we didn't stop them, instead Hannah just took Pictures. There was some sort of lazer light show during our set and it kept fucking us up, and made me feel sick.  People were buying us shots of whiskey while we played because Boise rules.  By the end of the set me and Oscar both had our pants around our ankles showing off our goods.  I can only think thats why all the ladies bought or record that night....Well, one did at least.  You got to start somewhere right?  After the show we went to the pie hole and at copious amounts of pizza, then bought the king of beers for the after hours!  MOTOWN DANCE PARTY BITCHES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Seth is a really good dancer but at that point it didn't really matter.  Eric and Heather has a really cute dog.  We stayed up really late of course.  Hannah said that at some point i wondered downstairs and face planted with a beer in hand spilling it everywhere and then went to sleep in it (classy).  In the morning seth came downstairs while we were all trying to sleep and started playing guitar  (what an asshole).  Now we are on the road to Olympia listing to The Get Up Kids-Something To Write Home About.  We just drove past a sign that says "Eat Gas".

inaugural

in honor of our first tour, we finally got around to starting a blog, mostly because we've taken like 300 pictures already and we're getting to0 wasted to trust our memories to remember all the rad shit we've done.
i'll give an outline and let the boys fill in the blanks:
OMGmaha
denver / steak mtn
slc cold chillin
missoula = machine gun mariachi
boise is currently giving us a great juke soundtrack, stolen wifi and the stiffest drinks we can stand.