North Carolina

On this past tour we made it down to NC for the first time and really enjoyed it. We played in Asheville one night and 2 shows in Chapel Hill.

Bowerbirds - Hymns For a Dark Horse
[website]

Met this band at our show at the Cave in Chapel Hill. (They are doing some touring with La Strada soon). We got their LP shortly after getting back and have been listening to it day and night on repeat. It's got such a deep, dark, earthy, bittersweet sound that I absolutely love. It's sparse and sounds like it was recorded in a cabin in the woods. The sweetly dissonant guitar plucking reminds me of Nick Drake; kind of an Andrew Bird or Beirut thing going on in the vocals; ominous accordion and violin lines, perfect roomy backing vocals and an overall cobwebs and creaky boards mood that reminds me of Grizzly Bear's Yellow House. Love the sage-like perspective in the lyrics. They have toured with some other really great bands including Bon Iver, John Vanderslice, and the Mountain Goats and hopefully we will be hearing more from them soon.

We made and passed out a ton of these handbills
the day of the show in Chapel Hill.

Asheville seemed like a cool town. Similar vibe to Charlottesville but definitely much bigger and a little fancier. Kinda like if someone tried to make a city that was a cross between Charlottesville and Georgetown, this is what you would get. La Strada put on a great show as usual and we got to listen to their new EP on the drive there. We also played with a really cool band called King Tut who were supper nice guys and put on an awesome show. Their recordings are pretty varied (check out the Books inspired "Here It Is and There It Goes") but their live stuff is very much in the Maserati / Battles vain of loop based, dancy math rock.

Tried to take a pic of Ted from La Strada in Asheville
but at exactly that moment he played a sick riff
and it broke the camera!

Wes Phillips at the Owl Room

In Chapel Hill we stayed with our friends the Never at the Trekky Records house and also played an afternoon show in their living room, aka the Owl Room. They had a roaring fire and some magical teas and cupcakes in celebration of Valentinesday. La Strada and this incredible singer songwriter Wes Phillips played as well. Wes Phillips totally blew our minds and gave us chills. Beautiful, beautiful music. He used to play in a band with the folks from Bowerbirds. Please go check out his stuff on his myspace page. "Poor Thing" is my personal fav.