May Days

In early May Saturday Looks Good To Me departed on a short tour with our friends Wild Moccasins from Houston, Texas. It was the band's first tour since 2008 and the first time in the US since even a little bit before that. I took one million photos.

Amber writes set lists at our first gig of tour, the Firehouse in North Manchester, Indiana.

 Wild Moccasins wylin' out.

 We did a radio interview and a few songs in Chicago. Shelley and Carol did most of the talking.

 Love of Everything played with us in Chicago. It was amazing, and sadly Matt's last show as the drummer for the band. They were great, and I told a story about having played shows with them since 2004.

We slept at Chris' house that he'd just moved into the day before.

 In the morning we listened to the Aki Tsuyuko record pictured right. If you've never heard it you should really check it out, it's one of the most beautiful sounds ever, super peaceful and playful at the same time. It was made in the year 2000. Good year! We hung out in Chicago for a little bit, eating at two restaurants and going to Andy's Music before hitting the road for Wisconsin.

The place we played in Spring Green, WI was called Shitty Barn, but it was actually not shitty. So weird.

Cole from the Annas jamming in Champaign, Illionis.

Idiot Glee played our show with us in Lexington Kentucky. It seems like he plays more and more Fleetwood Mac and Lindsay Buckingham covers every time I see him. We played a cover of his jam "I'm Going To Yum Yums" as part of our set.

We slept at Antoine from Dead Sweaters' house in Cleveland. The guest room was immaculate!!!

Breakfast in Cleveland was also immaculate. DeRoche was beside himself about the vegan spot we found.

Richie was tired after breakfast.

We stayed with Michael & Emily at their lakehouse after an amazing show in Ithaca, NY. We had a little time so we went to see the waterfall, always a day-brightening thing.

In New Haven Connecticut I overheard a really bizarre and seemingly unprofessional drug deal go down when I was in the bathroom. Then when we got done playing Jason and Kori from Mates of State had been there the whole time!! I love those two!! We toured with them in 2003, and neither of our bands have any indications of stopping at all.

We hung out with some amazing folks after our show in Portland, Maine. They made us burritos and taught us a lot of Portland, Maine slang and customs. For instance, when people are talking about Portland, Oregon, they just call that O-PO, short for "Other Portland". Speaking of O-PO, the next day we jammed at the New York City Popfest with, among many others, our friends Orca Team, who are originally from Portland, Ore.

Philly was the last night with Wild Moccasins and we played with Pet Milk. It was a bittersweetly awesome night.

After the show everyone was jumping all around and then a dude showed up and started balancing stuff on his face.

The next day we drove back to Ypsilanti (10 hours!!) to jam with our friends Body Holographic, Santa Monica Swim & Dive Club and Danny and the Darleens. It was our second Michigan show in so long and a bunch of great people showed up. Tour was then done, and that was kinda sad, but it was one of the best tours of life.

Sway

Motionlessness

Some friends at the Australian indie-pop label Knock Yr Socks Off have just released a really interesting bootleg-style cassette. On one side is a 2010 gig by Aussie jammers Milk Teddy, and on the other is an entire set by Saturday Looks Good To Me from the Seattle show of our 2003 summer tour. It's intense how short of sets we played then and how punk it all sounded even though it was our first headlining tour and we were promoting a very gentle chamber pop record. I blame drummer Steve Middlekauff for making things so beautifully raw at the time. You can listen to the tape or even order it here. There were 200 made.

Recently

A week ago today Swimsuit got to jam with our beloved Grass Widow in Detroit. It was the fourth show the San Francisco band has played in Michigan and somehow the fourth show Swimsuit has played with them!! We love them, what can we say? It was a great show and someone took a really nice video of us playing our jam "Chandra".

On Wednesday I went to WCBN to talk on their Local Music Show about the new LIFERS compilation tape that just came out on my label Life Like. The tape is a pretty dense collection of sound artists, pop bands, fuzz and minimalism from people I've worked with over the years and it turned out pretty great. You can read all about it here.

Since they usually have a local musical guest play on the show, I also did a really brief City Center set. I played two newer songs, "White Out" and "Wasted". You can download the entire 7 minutes in heaven right here.

I haven't had an internet connection at home, so it's been difficult to keep up on bloggerhythms, but there was a whole two-week Saturday Looks Good To Me tour we did where I recorded most of the shows and took 2,000 photos. I wanna share some of that sooner or later, too. For now I just hope everyone is still smiling.