A month on

Sometimes things move slowly, like old cars or stale air. Sometimes things get made out of things moving slowly. An old truck becomes a statue without ever knowing it, a tribute to decay. But then one morning, you wake up and realize you have to breathe again, and it hurts, because it's so unfamiliar. But then the first breath gets inhaled and then exhaled, and it's ok, then another and another, and it begins to feel like childhood again.

halloween parties.

you work and work and you work.

then friday comes and you play and play and you play.

halloween parties are awesome. i wish they could just go on forever and ever, like an expanse of poppies.

that'd be the best.

but it doesn't go on for long enough, and you wake up and you work and work and you work.

tour

man, a week has passed on the tour and nobody posted anything.

you'd think tour would be the perfect opportunity to write and share about adventures and shows and people and jeff & casey and swimming in a river and the monte vista and money and tire explosions and contagious sickness and a fucking parade with marching bands! and brake noise and red ruby and this guy with big muscles and no shirt and no hair and the laurelthirst and these cool led stage lights and the dance dance revolution and green chile and a lot more.

sometimes we even played music! wow! haha!

aaron

ladies and gentlemen, it's up

thanks to Aaron for the mad mixing skills and to Emily for guest-starring, beginning her career with the New Mexican Revolution. May it be long and fruitful.

Theories of sun and rain

Sunday 8pm. It's the deadline. The time when a cd will be ejected, the computer turned off, and the new project finished. It will be a six, maybe seven, maybe eight song project. Much of it is slow and pretty, some of it moves a little bit quicker. But we're all proud of it so far. Unless something terrible goes wrong, it will be up on the website soon. Good listening. Send comments to us (thenewmexrev@hotmail.com). Tell us how much you love us or wish we would sink to the bottom of a hot tar pit. I don't care.

there are no words to express my loathing for web design

specifically for posting photographs. Christ. It took me an hour of swearing, bitching, moaning, and retyping the goddamn html to realize that the photopage setup was fucked because I forgot to put quotations at the end of a jpg tag. I hate web pages. So enjoy your photographs, you motherfuckers.

Reports from Texas

There is word afoot that a new album will soon be in the light of day. Recorded in Texas, this new album is sure to set the world on fire, or douse it if the world is already burning. Shows will be planned, played, and talked about.

We never did thank Tenlon's Fort and Wilson for touring with us. We shared shows in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Flagstaff, before the two headed back to Texas, and we moved north. It was great to watch Jack change from night to night and keep getting better. Can't wait for the new album.

A New Way Forward

resolved: we shall post about every show, dammit.

Wednesday at Ash Street was entirely too much fun. King Hen put together a fine set, starting up with Shatterville, then us, then them, then a last minute addition, Call Sign Cobra from Colorado. Had a good crowd of friends and strangers, and probably the best sound we've ever had. Heather knows her shit, I daresay, and a new bell mic for the clarinet went down real easy. King Hen in particular was a treat with good sound equipment. God bless rock bands with trombones; I want a rock band with a french horn, personally, but trombone is a damn fine substitute. Call Sign Cobra is, what, eight kids from Colorado, including guitars, bass, drums, sax, trumpet, and two girls doing backup vocals and what the heterosexually inclined amongst us dubbed very hot dancing. I imagine that is a wicked awesome tour for all involved.

I need Burgerville.

There is only one clarinet player that I fantasize about.

Skipper "Don't call me Skipper" Wes

reports of my demise have been greatly exaggerated

I think that's a misquote.

at any rate, since we announced on the blog that I was in fact leaving, I feel we should announce on the blog that I am not, in fact, leaving, so Skipper needs to stop fantasizing about this new clarinet player he found who's way better than me and knows stuff about Middle Eastern music and gypsy jazz and all this cool shit. You hear me? calm it down there, Skipper. I ain't goin' nowhere.

-j

All junk food, all the time.

So, we played with Minus 5 and Cabinessence in Eugene on Friday the 22nd. We did the dinner hour on the patio at Sam Bonds. The sound setup wasn't ideal, and therefore we felt like we didn't play that well, but people were excited, clapping and whatnot. We sold a handful of CD's after the show, which is always a positive sign. Then we drank beer and whiskey all night, mostly for free. Cabinessence was a great band with great harmonies and good rhoads piano. Minus 5 had members of The Young Fresh Fellows, The Bottle Rockets, and REM. Geof chatted up Peter Buck from REM at the end of the night and slipped him a CD. The next morning Peter Buck looked in the van and called it luxurious. We don't think he was kidding.

W

happy birthday amber!

thanks for the tequila, sunshine, and tamales.

congratulations on winning the poker tourney - if only jack were there, perhaps we might've had a struggle of epic proportions. i hear he's good.

happy birthday amber!

Another Late Tour entry

There are many thanks due to people who were incredibly kind and giving of our road grime soaked skins. In Denver, the McDonald family (of Aaron fame) treated three of us well. Aaron's dad looked at the van, which had run into problems telling us how fast we were going down the road. I don't know what went down, but it got us back to Portland, and for that we are all thankful. Jill and Phil showed two of us Denver and gave of their showers and apartments and food. Zoe entertained at the Thin Man with good conversation over good beer. Jill drove us to the meet up point at 6:30am.

Liz in Ogden let us jump on her trampoline and sleep in her back yard. Then let us get up and moving at our own pace and met us out for breakfast. Darcy played good host, and Emily flew to SLC to see our show. WOW!!! If not for that, and Emily's and Darcy's friends, we would have played to an empty room, literally.

Thanks to all my sociology friends who came out for our show at Sam Bonds as well. We are returning soon and hope to see them all again.

Wes

i am the ugly,

of two daughters and tomorrow i must celebrate the 'getting older' that we all suffer, the dust of
everything settles upon the same,
wand that makes us move, the string that other people pull, plush pulse keeping us all alive
-
fall over. the fun never ends.
wren.
fall over.

that smile (from here) looks like the clothes held up by an unhappy bird
living a blanket across the sky

-

latetourentry

Tuesday, June 28th

Rolling north out of Santa Fe. We played Burt’s Tiki Lounge in Albuquerque last night, and I think the consensus is that it went well. Toma was there and videotaped most of it. Maybe someone’ll figure out how to get clips of that online someday; watch this space, I’m sure. That show was the climax of three days in New Mexico…. I (Tony) took the shift driving from Flagstaff to Albuquerque. Well, that’s not strictly true. I drove all but the last 20 miles of the way to Albuquerque, and then pulled onto the shoulder because of the tire that had just exploded….

Outside of Albuquerque on the shoulder with a blowout,
Shoulder with a blowout, shoulder with a blowout,
It slow us down a little but that ain’t the way we go out,
We got a show to play.

It was two days before we had a show to play, and at that point, the revolution made like tumbleweeds and scattered across the high desert: Jana’s family were in town, so when Toma showed up, there on the I-40, to rescue me, we went ahead and gave Jana a ride to her brother’s place in the city. Aaron, Wes and Geof stayed with the van until Triple-A arrived (we had just used the spare that morning to replace a leaky and all-the-way-flat other tire) and towed them to a Discount Tire store managed by an old high school friend of Wes’. Aaron the next day did his runnin’ off, up to Santa Fe to visit his friend Liberty. Meanwhile, I was alternately up on a mesa outside of Villanueva and in Santa Fe with Toma, resting from the touring we been doing. Wes and Geof stayed at Mrs. Shirley’s place (I assume she’s called Mrs. Shirley) (it's Sleeper, Wes) recuperating and eating good home cooking, which we all got to sample when we reunited before the show last night, happy to be back in action after 48 hours of visiting family and exes. God bless family and exes, right, but it is nice to be back on the road.

As for the actual gig, we played what felt like a shortish set (about an hour?), which was well received. We sold at least five Cds, and hung out while a local group called Rakes of Mallow played a follow-up set. They were good fun, and had a guitar virtuoso from Transylvania named Zartan or Zoltan or something. They also had this super-stylish Japanese hipster boy, and D-cup chickie in a sequined tube top dancing through most of their set, and I’m real into the idea of getting a couple of those for our shows in the future.

signing off at mile marker 340 on I-25 north,
Tony

I need a proper cup of coffee
from a proper copper pot.
tea, that’s for chumpzilla.
his minions and him use half-eaten bananas to give their ball sweat a fruity scent.
I watched some porn on the computer,
and it made me completely re-think these van rides.
aaron

The unofficial tour song has become the little ghost song by The White Stripes. We all get real excited when it comes on. thanks matt.

I sorry, must brag

Playing Sam Bond's on Friday July 22nd. 6-8 (dinner hour), followed by:

Minus 5.

I.e. Wilco, minus their experimental guitarist, doing an anniversary show.

(geeking out in the corner here)

Nice try Jana, but in reality, Minus 5 is Scott McCaughey from the Young Fresh Fellows, an influential Seattle band. He has had people from Wilco play with him before, but we are doubtful that any Wilco members will show up at Sam Bonds for the show. But none the less, we are extremely pleased to be on the same night as Minus 5, (which may also include Peter Buck from REM).

a brief shout out

to Gabe, Tony's friend as what took some fine pictures of us on tour. Sampling above. For more, I'd suggest wandering on over to his weblog: Fiat Lux

now we're back. now what?

We returned safely and soundly from the road. Hours of naps and rug burns, nights sleeping in the loft of the hot van. Finished up playing in Eugene with a weird combination of music. Patrick Hayden did an amazing show of pretty songs and fingerpicked guitar. We put on one of the best shows we've done. We've got the 45 minute set down pat. Dan Jones and the Squids played, followed by the weirdness of Touch Force. All in all a good night. Trying to play there again in a couple of weeks for a super good show that I can only talk about in the bug-free privacy of the tour van. It's good to be back, but it'll be good to be on the road again.

Flagstaff Nights, Friday June 24th

Got into Flagstaff. Thirty degrees cooler. Geof danced like he had never danced before. There is a half-page picture of us in Flagstaff Live. We are one of the hot picks for tonight.

Aaron and I made up since I have to play his guitar now.

Wes

A California Cleansing, Thursday June 23rd

Hours in the hot, hot, really really hot hot van from LA to Tucson yesterday. We stopped and cleansed ourselves of California with a fine swim in the river as we crossed into Arizona.

On the road to Flagstaff now. Tucson treated us well. We were in fine company to be playing at Plush, but Spoon was playing last night as well, and took what would have surely been our crowd of hundreds. Ended up at Che’s after being invited there by James who left the Spoon show early to see us. He kept taking pictures of us. Somebody recognized me from our show. I didn’t know what to say. All I could do was shuffle my feet and rub the back of my neck. Claps were few and far between during the show, but Aaron is sure that no one has ever played the guitar like he did last night. All in all, the show was great.

Aaron made me mad for the first time in 10 years last night, and now he keeps petting my arm thinking that will make things better.

Wes

Swimmin' in the river at the Arizona border
Arizona border, California border
Jana took her clothes off but we're road gay and ignored her
and that's how it is on tour

Belly of the Beast lives up to its name, Wednesday June 22nd

Why does anyone visit LA? Filled Room 5, and didn’t make a cent. Old friends were all around. Melinda from my Santa Fe years was there, as was her boyfriend Fortunado, who worked on a Daniel Johnston documentary called “The Devil and Daniel Johnston.” Greg Flynn, one of the founding members of the Revolution came out with his friend, and by the end of the night, our friend, Seamus. We ended up at the Three of Clubs, a bar on the corner of Santa Monica and Vine, that The Volumes happened across in their time in LA because it has a single sign that says cocktails on the outside.

Trying to park a rent a car I bumped into another parked car. We rolled out, parked and found out there was a crowd waiting for the guys who scraped up their car. Geof and I had to get the hell out of dodge after hiding out for a while. No room at the Comfort Inn, but Julip, who had a pirate flag on the back of her bike said she had room. Geof and I find ourselves drinking sparkling white wine, eating gnocchi, and doing shots of an opium based Chinese liqeuer until 4 in the morning with Julip and Hito, who just got back from Belgium. They talked of their friend Jordy in Barcelona who has a tenuous grasp on the English language, and therefore says things more true than the rest of us. Before every sip we had to state our best moments. We got out of LA without getting beat, but just barely, only to find out that I left my guitar in LA. Hope I get it back someday.

Wes

Verses inspired by LA:

Stayin’ up all night with the Los Angelenos
Los Angelenos
Los Angelenos
We leavin’ in the mornin’ so you better keep a clean nose
Or you gon’ hurt all day

Scraping up the bumpers din’t yo momma tell ya not to?
Momma tell ya not to?
Momma tell ya not to?
Hidin’ in the bushes cause the locals almost got you
And you gon’ hide all day

Out on tour, tour, tour
Someone’s knockin’ on the door, door, door
I never seen yer car before, fore, fore
I’m just out on tour, tour, tour

Thanks go out in LA to Greg F, Melinda A (hope to see you again soon), Julip and Hito of course for making sure Geof and I didn’t have to stay up all night drinking Denny’s coffee.

Heading into the Belly of the Beast Part 2, Tuesday, June 20th

Our second poker game on tour and Jana’s first win.

wes told me to turn the radio down. it was a lance into my chest.
aaron

New verses to the tour song:

San Francisco Bay, drinking wine and tequila
Wine and tequila,
Wine and tequila,
If you wanna party harder then you gotta find a dealer,
An’ we gon’ drink all day

Speedin down the highway cause we gotta make the load-in,
Gotta make the load-in
Gotta make the load-in
If the engine overheats we jes’ gotta have it towed in
We gonna get there and play

Out on tour, tour, tour
It’s a quarter past four, four, four
Put the pedal to the floor, floor, floor
We out on tour, tour, tour.

Tony

We have many thanks due in the San Fran area. We got treated like the rock stars we wish we were. Paul and Doyle put up with us parking the van and sleeping on their street, getting up in the morning and demanding showers and way too strong coffee. They towed us around town, gave us scotch and video games. We watched Paul singled handedly carry a couch four blocks to his apartment. We offered to help, hoping he’d say no, and he did. Doyle took us to the Castro so we could watch half-naked bartenders serve beer to half-naked men. On Sunday we got to see (or at least hear) John Doe (of the infamous X) and Lucinda Williams play for free in Stern Grove. Jack and Wilson rolled in to town right about that time. Then we got to meet the infamous Chris Sawyer. He took us to Tommy’s on Geary, who has the largest collection of Tequilas in the U.S. They had $116 pitchers of margaritas on the menu. We didn’t do that, but we did drink two pitchers worth $98 (for free, thanks to Chris). Then we took a picture behind the bar with the owner (to be posted soon) where, between the five of us, we must have held $1500 worth of tequila in our hands. So the least I can say is, “When in San Francisco, visit Tommy’s Mexican Food on Geary.”

The Makeout Room was great. Watched a guy pull a switchblade on another guy across the street. It got us in the right mood.

On Monday Chris had us out to his house in Petuluma where we proceeded to down multiple bottles of good wine, plates full of amazing cheeses, grilled fish for some of us, grilled veggies for all of us. Dairy free gelato with organic strawberries and a big bottle of port and then more wine. Rolling Stones and Joy Division on the record player, Stereo Total on the CD.

Wes

Heading into the Belly of the Beast, Tuesday, June 20th

the show was pretty good, but Geof had to deal with a broken bass drum pedal.. it was a neat place, the ‘make-out room’.. full of shiny silver bits and tiered stage. I felt like rice. nik abodeely was very brian Jonestown massacre, replete with a tambourine player/flute player. very cool. and tenlon’s fort was awesome, mashing songs together and drifting in and out of arrangement. altogether thrilling. it’s a very exciting time to be alive.
aaron

A fine hike through the hills of Petaluma, complete with views of the countryside, followed by dinner with Creanza & Simone & Noria, a writer whose first book will be coming out this October. On the hike Aaron was dubbed the leprechaun of the group and Wes the surly mountain gnome. All in all, I would say that if one must be dragged out to beautiful countryside with a gorgeous moonrise, hanging out with a wine writer who’s sharing the contents of his cellar is the way to go. And a writer with a vinyl collection and cow bones haunting the shelves of his cellar, not to mention a biochemist wife for Jana to geek out with and the aforementioned Noria? No complaints. No complaints at all.

sex drugs rock and roll : wine women and song
aaron

speeding down the highway ‘cause we gotta make the load-in
if the engine over heats we’re gonna have it towed in
we gotta play today

Cereal and Milk, Sunday June 19th

Jana just found out that milk has pus in it. Thank goodness she’s enjoying the wholesome goodness of organic soy milk. [I don’t understand why pus is so abhorrent. – aaron] [I'm pretty sure evolution has my back on this one, honestly. I can think of several very good reasons to be abhorred by a fluid filled with infectious material.] –jana]

Not right yet, Saturday

People were seen, fun was had. Day one is down and all appendages are still in tact. I sometimes convince myself that Portland is a big city with all the big city trappings, but then I visit San Francisco and see people lining up to eat burritos at Tacos El Gran at 2:30 am, followed by hundreds of people jamming every street corner between the bar we were drinking in and the cheap lot where we parked the van and might sleep in. I couldn’t count the ways words were spoken, but they were many.

Tony saw his brother from another mother, Geof saw Paul, or Charlie, or Gail, or Marcus Terrence, we never got his name quite right.

Why hasn’t anyone invented the toaster you plug into the cigarette lighter yet?

gotta get myself right. friday, 6/17/05

12:55 pm
the tour mouth has opened wide, spilling us between one farm and the next. my side hurts a bit, and my head hurts a lot, but I’m keeping food down. spirits are high – kept aloft with a mix of wes’ cheese and tony’s nuts, I believe this crew could take on a talking star.
right now we’re trying to stop the squeaking noise in the van, the belly of the whale isn’t as quiet or lonely as jonah would have us believe.
which is better for drumming, sycophant or syncopate?

3:20 pm
The Cali border sits just in front of us, and Geof just finished reading the introduction to Drumming for Dummies. Now we’re ready to tour.

4:50 pm
The first poker game has gone down. Geof was out first, Wes pulled jacks over aces next hand and it was all over as he collected all of Jana’s chips.

astoria.

the voodoo room was an alright place, with a haunted jukebox. tenlon's fort is pretty good. my cat's breath smells like cat food. by the end of a good long set, some pretty girls were dancing, and that was nice. judy gave us some drinks and a pizza came from somewhere, so astoria shall survive in my memory as something worth doing.

man, what a day!

in addition, i ate a hamburger with relish, and drank some corona, and did a handstand. and i saw a duck that was actually not a duck, but a bear.

and a deer, that might've been a mule.

aaron

Jana will leave us soon.

That's right. This isn't breaking news. We've known for a few weeks. But she will be greatly missed. After a year together, performing all over Portland (N, NE, SE, SW, NW), and our first tour about to happen, she is on her way to vet school to help save little critters from God's cruel fate. She has been an invaluable member of the band and made us into something we couldn't have been otherwise. And for that, I thank you Jana, (as tears fall onto my keyboard).

Wes

Tony's recording bass

The new album is fully in swing. Whether it shall end up an EP or LP is still unknown, but it shall be good. Tony is currently recording bass on a song, due to laziness, we call the Beta Band song. The album will be finished by mid summer and will most likely be released shortly there after. There are strange happenings surrounding the album, violin and piano and trumpets ending up on tracks, by a still unknown but incredibly talented sixth member of the band. The latest I heard from the happenings downstairs was something about Q-bert riding a two dimensional elephant.

welcome to the world

it's scary out there, yes. but we promise it'll be worth it.