New England Tour Recap

We had an awesome time playing New England this past weekend. We left NYC Friday and headed up to Maine to play Slainte on Preble Street in Portland. Our good friends in The Natch from NYC played first and gave everyone an amazing set. This band consists of the 3 surviving members of the recently-broken-up America's Sweetheart. They only had a few weeks as a 3-piece to get ready for this show, and you could never have known.

Then we took the stage. We opened with our new song "Jagged Cross" and right from the first chord and beat the crowd seemed really responsive. We had a total blast playing. Slainte is kind of small and intimate, but it ended up suiting us wonderfully. The set list for those who need it:

1. Jagged Cross
2. Make the Escape
3. Sarbanes-Oxley
4. Spin Cycle
5. Better Lives
6. The Door
7. Night Scales
8. Alien Homeland
9. Binge
10. Motherfucker

Apparently we were the loudest band to ever play Slainte, which of course delights us to no end. Huge thanks to Laura and Rob, and all their friends for coming out, to Ian of Slainte for assisting us and being such an amazing host, and to Trish and The Natch for setting up the show and inviting us on to the bill.

The following day we went to see X-Men: Origins in Newington, New Hampshire, then booked it on down to Lowell, Massachusetts to play 119 Gallery.

We fell in love with this combination art gallery/music space immediately. It had been recommended to us by our friends in Runny, who played there a short while back. The booker Angie was super-nice to us from the first e-mail I sent her asking if we could play, to the moment we left after the show. And it was an awesome bill of local bands that preceded us: 1,000 Paper Cranes kicked the night off in grand rockin' style with their third show ever as a band, Wednesday Night Militia revved it up a notch with their first show ever, and Hayburner nearly blew the roof off the place before we had our shot at it. Folks in Wendesday Night Militia and Hayburner stuck around for our set and were very complimentary and supportive. We really liked everyone we met and hope to play with all of them again at some point. Again, it was a great crowd who shouted, jumped around and gave us a fantastic response after every song, and even demanded an encore (which we rarely grant, but for these special folks we made an exception!).

The set list from that show:

1. Jagged Cross
2. Make the Escape
3. Sarbanes-Oxley
4. Better Lives
5. Into Debt
6. Alien Homeland
7. Binge
8. Transparent
9. Motherfucker
10 (Encore). Name Today

Thanks on this one first off to Lemon Cookie of Runny for giving us the low-down on the place, to 119 Gallery, to Angie for booking us and Mike for helping us out with sound and set-up, to all 3 of the amazing bands that played before us, to our Boston-area superfans John and Theresa for coming out, rocking out, giving us a great place to crash afterwards and feeding us so generously, and to everyone who came out and stuck around for our show. We love you all, and can't wait to go back.

We're gearing up now for our trip to Ohio this weekend to play 19-South in Athens, Ohio (home of Ohio University) with the totally-rad, all-female punk band The Revulvas. We are PSYCHED.