Mercury Cafe in Denver

The Slowdown in Omaha, NE

What a great night for our first time in Omaha! The Slowdown was really fantastic and the bands we played with were breathtaking.

Birdlips with Brad Hoshaw

Brad Hoshaw has a gorgeous voice and impeccable song-writing. The kind of honest music that cuts you to the core.

We got to catch a unique lineup for Midwest Dilemma - flute, clarinet, upright bass and two guitars. Male and female vocals that were dead on and some really beautiful heart of americana songs. Wish we had a recording of that performance!

Project Lodge in Madison, WI

Birdlips as captured by Brad Lauretti

Great show at a wonderful little art space in Madison, Wisconsin last night, run by the kind and lovely Kendra and Christopher. We even had a write-up in the Onion here. Played with the bands This Frontier Needs Heroes and Attack Ponies. And look at all the beautiful people that came!

Project Lodge in Madison, WI

Jessica and Brad of This Frontier Needs Heroes
These guys were great! Check out their music. Seriously.

Cornbread

Niagara Falls (Canadian Side)





Chicago

First days of Summer Tour 2009

Well it's day five of our supposedly 2 month long tour (still working on shows for the return trip), and we are going strong. It's our first day off and it's been raining all day here in Cambridge, MA. Our shows so far have been awesome. While it's not like we are playing to packed houses, we have seen some awesome bands, met some awesome people, and had a generally pretty great response to the music.



Here's a dorky pic of us at Grimaldi's Coal Brick Oven Pizzeria in Brooklyn, according to some the best pizza in New York. We had to wait in line outside for an hour but I have to admit it was worth it. Normally it's the dough/crust that make a great pizza for me but in this case what made this pizza kick ass was that they used the most incredible fresh mozerella I've ever had, along with fresh basil and really, really dank pepperoni.


Our friend John Ruscher did a little write up of our show at Union Hall in Brooklyn on his blog HERE, and he took this video!

Birdlips Late Summer Migration (aka TOUR!!)

Mid-July we are embarking on our very first cross-country US tour. We're still working on planning, but we are going to start putting some dates on our myspace page soon, so you can start hassling your friends all across the US.

Also we are playing in Chapel Hill tomorrow with our pals the Never and (previously blogged about) Wes Phillips and are very excited about it. Yessssss. (Local 506, doors 8:15 pm)


I will leave you with this pretty picture I found on the internet while stalling writing this blog post. It's monarch butterflies migrating! I wish I was standing right in the middle of the forest.

Tracks on Repeat

We recently recorded our song "tracks on repeat" out at Monkeyclaus Studio in Nelson County VA. This is a song we've been playing live for a while now so it feels good to finally get it down. You can listen to and download the song HERE.

Cliff - vocals and guitar
Lindsay - vocals and keyboard
Lindsay and Cliff - drums and percussion
Abel Okugawa - Echoplex and recording/engineering

Sun!!

Snow!

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.