Under Crooked Trees video by Billy Hunt

Just before heading out to Las Vegas we met up with Billy Hunt in Charlottesville to shoot a video for Under Crooked Trees from One Tongue.

We projected beach footage from our time in Destin, Florida where we recorded One Tongue and then went out to the site of the demolished IX building just in time to catch the dying light of a winters day.

Billy worked his magic and just got us the finished video. He's an awesome dude and super pro to work with! Check out his stuff over at Billy Hunt Photography.

Red Rock Canyon, Nevada

In the Material World

We had a nice break from the road this past holiday season visiting our families in northern Virginia, throwing logs in the wood stove and cranking out some new hand-painted copies of One Tongue and Emanations/Powerlines.

I think Lindsay got carpal tunnel from painting non-stop for a few days in a row.

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gold edition of Emanations/Powerlines from our last tour

'One Tongue' CD Release!

BIRDLIPS ONE TONGUE
CD RELEASE PARTY
FRIDAY JANUARY 7th:
Olivia Mancini & the Mates
Birdlips (Celebrating the release of our new CD, 'One Tongue')
Greenland
Diamond's Ahead
at THE BLACK CAT (UPSTAIRS)

1811 14th St NW Washington, DC (202) 667-7960
9pm, $10 in advance,
BUY TICKETS HERE

The fourth installment of our DRIFT project, One Tongue, was written and recorded along the beautiful white sand beaches of Destin, FL in October. We've been on tour since then and are finally getting to release it! It will be a magical sensory experience with light and sound.

This will be our last show in the area for a while, as we're headed west to Las Vegas in mid-January to record our next album...and who knows when we will be back! Hopefully not 'til it gets warm again.

Joining us for this lovely evening are:
Olivia Mancini and the Mates: http://www.oliviamancini.com/bio.html
Greenland: http://www.myspace.com/greenland
and Diamond's Ahead

Nov-Dec East Coast Tour Dates

11/10-Chattnooga, TN - Discoteca
11/11-Charlottesville, VA-Tea Bazaar(w/Matt Hemerlein, Frau Eva)
11/12-Philadelphia, PA-Greenline (w/Cinnamon Band, Lux Perpetua)
11/15-Cambridge, MA - ZUZU (w/Invisible Hand)
11/17-Providence, RI - the 201
11/19-Albany, NY - Jack’s Place
11/20-Brooklyn, NY - Rock Shop (w/La Strada)
11/21-Burlington, VT- the Radio Bean (early show! 7pm!)
12/1-Richmond, VA - the Camel
12/2-Roanoke, VA - the Bazaar (w/the Situationist)
12/3-Lynchburg, VA -Speakertree Records (w/Naked Hearts)
12/7-Winston Salem, NC - the Garage
12/9-Athens, GA - Rye Bar
12/10-Charleston, SC - Tin Roof
12/11-Tampa, FL-New World Brewery(w/GreatDeceivers, SleepyVs)
12/12-Orlando, FL- Will’s Pub (w/Great Deceivers, Sleepy Vikings)
12/16- Birmingham, AL- the Nick
12/18-Knoxville,TN - the Birdhouse

more dates coming soon...

facebook event: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=125468850843111

Metaphorical Acid + other new EPs!

New 3 song EP: Metaphorical Acid
recorded summer of 2009 by Thomas Orgren




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Emanations
recorded in Anne K.'s apartment in Los Angeles July 2010

***



Powerlines
recorded in the Mission District in San Francisco, April 2010

Writing from a coffee shop in Woodbridge, VA. Lindsay and I have holed up for a few weeks to book an East Coast tour for November and December. We're going to spend the month of October in Pensacola, FL recording some more new songs for our DRIFT project you can read about here.

But first we are playing a show in Lovingston, VA at Rapunzels tomorrow night with Wes Swing!

THIS SAT. SEPT. 25:
Wes Swing + Birdlips
at Rapunzel's in Lovingston, VA
8PM - $5 - ALL AGES
Rapunzel's is 30 miles south of Charlottesville, down 29
924 Front St, Lovingston, VA 22949

We may not be using our college degrees but at least our Alma mater did write an article about us, yay! Read it here on the University of Virginia Magazine's website.

Back on the east coast for a hot second

Come to our show this Saturday in DC!

And boy is it hot. The humidity here makes it FEEL hotter than the Arizona desert! I can't stand the humidity. I step outside and I'm instantly drenched in sweat.







We're crashing in the DC area right now recuperating from our harrowing trip across the country. After the we got a new (rebuilt) transmission put in the van and got out of Arizona we had to book it to make it to our show in Columbus, Ohio. Along the way, we ran out of gas in between Oklahoma City and Tulsa. We hit this terrible traffic and were sitting in stop and go nonsense for hours when we noticed we were out of fuel and the nearest gas station was 10 miles up the highway! It was also over 100 degrees and we were out of water, but luckily a car in front of us got a flat tire and then broke their jack trying to change the tire so I jumped out and used our jack to get the car back up and help them change it and then they gave us a few bottles of water to tide us over.

A few hours later we ran into another fellow who'd run out of gas but was filling his tank with some spare canisters. He told us about a gas station on the other side of the highway and gave us an empty gas canister. I was able to hop the median and cross several lanes of traffic to walk to this gas station and fill the canister and then we finally made it out of there. When we pulled into the next station 10 miles down the road I was the ecstatic. Absolutely the happiest I'd ever been pulling into a gas station.

We found a motel, slept for 4 hours and then got up to keep driving. Three days of this... driving nonstop, hitting terrible traffic at some point in the day, sleeping for a few hours in some crummy motel, then waking up to do it all over again, just so we could make it to this show in Ohio where we played for like, 6 people. But we met a nice guy who let us crash at his mom's place and demonstrated his newly rebuilt Fender Twin with tremolo at 3am on a weeknight.

"Aren't we going to wake up your mom?"
"Naw, she LOVES it!"



It was a rough stretch, for sure but we survived and our shows up in New England ended up being pretty sweet.

We played in Providence at the 201 with a great bunch of guys and gals called The Loom.

Outside the 201 in Providence

Then we got a slice of late night pizza and got back in the car that night and drove to my family reunion in the Berkshires. Slapping my face the whole way until our arrival at 5am. Sleep for a few hours then BAM! Meet the Ushers.

But after that we had really awesome shows in Boston/Cambridge and Brooklyn, NY.

Whoa! this band we played with in Brooklyn was totally mind blowing!

no link :(

They were called Pocketknife but recently got a cease and desist from the lawyer of a DJ who also calls himself Pocketknife so they will be changing their name. BUT they are recording a new album with Chris Keup near Charlottesville so I'm sure you will be hearing about them soon.

We also played with our friends This Frontier Needs Heroes and had fun hanging out with them after the show, where we met and stayed with Noah from Naked Hearts.


Then we raced back home to hand make 100 limited edition copies of our new Emanations / Powerlines double EP and then to Charlottesville to play at the Southern with two fantastic bands, Red Rattles from Charlottesville and Eternal Summers from Roanoke.


All in all, good times. And after a string of depressing setbacks and exhausting drives we have now had a few days to sleep and get ready for a killer show this Saturday at the Gibson Guitar Showroom in Chinatown with Matt Hemerlein. (Flier at top) See ya there!

Big sky break down in Arizona

Our van broke down on top of a mountain in beautiful Jerome, AZ. We were able to coast it into the town of Cottonwood where we had someone look at it to tell us the transmission is shot. We're having someone tow the van back to Phoenix to get it fixed and hopefully we'll be back on the road in a few days.

Unfortunately, it looks like we're going to miss a string of dates on this tour. Sorry to anyone that was hoping to make a show in Boulder, CO, Lincoln, NE or Madison, WI. There's a chance we could still make it to the Madison show but it looks unlikely.

We're making the best of it by kicking it AZ style. We were extremely lucky to meet some of the nicest people ever here near Jerome. A publisher we just met in Phoenix introduced us to a prolific songwriter out here named Steve Easterling of Easterling and Gildersleeve. His neighbor and sometimes co-writer is this dude Olen who owns a fudge shop on top of the mountain and has been letting us crash with him. He and his buds even took us off-roading way out into the Arizona desert. It was like being on the surface of another planet. Totally breathtaking. The sky is incredible out here, like nothing I've seen anywhere else. I think partly because you can see so far into the distance.

Despite the major setback in terms of time, lost shows and money for car repairs, we are getting to experience a side of the country we might never have found otherwise, and it's really been a joy being welcomed into someone else's town, home, and life. I feel like we've really tapped in to part of the soul of America here. It's kinda what this DRIFT project is all about. We're only a few weeks in and it's already been a really wild ride but we are learning a lot, going with the flow and soaking up some good stories and experience to use for inspiration.

Show tonight in L.A. at Echo Curio

Birdlips is currently wandering the USA for our project, DRIFT, where we travel around the country writing, recording, shooting videos and playing shows. We are recording a new EP right now in Los Angeles and we'll be playing just this one show while we're here.

an LA RECORDS 100 show

Tues, July 13th
BIG TREE + THE SHADE + C-HORSE + BIRDLIPS
At Echo Curio
1519 W Sunset Blvd

Show starts at 9PM. I think there is a $5 cover and Birdlips plays last around 11:30PM!

New videos from San Francisco

Birdlips - High On Yourself shot by Elena Coyle.

Birdlips - Closer (Marin Headlands) shot by Elena Coyle

Birdlips - Powerlines (Marin Headlands) shot by Elena Coyle

Our friend Elena was kind enough to take time out of her busy schedule studying for the bar exam and shoot these three videos in the Marin Headlands overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge and San Francisco last month. We wanted to find the highest, windiest place around for our song High On Yourself. We happened upon this great spot on a cliff overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge amidst dilapidated World War II bunkers and we ended up shooting two "take-away" style videos as well. Closer and Powerlines are live, semi-acoustic performances. We used a battery-powered practice amp for the beats and a battery powered Casiotone keyboard. Even though it was warm in the city below, it was really, really windy on the top of that cliff and we ended up getting chilled to the bone. At one point I dropped my guitar pick because my fingers had gone numb.

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The song High On Yourself was recorded and mixed by Thomas Orgren in the summer of 2009 in Vienna, VA.

Clifford John - vocals, guitar, drums, percussion
Lindsay Pitts - vocals, keys
Thomas Orgren - electric guitar, bass, drums

Birdlips - Powerlines (Clarion Alley in the Mission, San Francisco) shot by Karate TV

This last one was shot by our friend Crockett Bodelson aka Karate TV in Clarion Alley (in between Mission and Valencia) in the Mission district of San Francisco, June 2010.

Crockett used a tiny Sony HD Handycam mounted to an elaborate boom constructed from found objects (an easel, a tripod, and a golf bag carrier with wheels). It was kind of hard to control but managed to capture the moment in a pretty cool way. The sound is just from the built in camera microphone, and was not edited so it caught a few rattles and creaks from the boom being wheeled and manipulated.

The Mission District is bursting with beautiful murals everywhere, but Clarion Alley is especially cool. Completely covered with art and constantly changing.

Our friend Crockett Bodelson is an awesome and inspiring visual and recording artist of the collaborative painting duo SCUBA. Definitely check out his art, you will be glad you did:

drawingwhiledriving.com/
myspace.com/karatetv