Howrad, mulched.

Hi. How are you? Matt just got home from 5 weeks on the road with A.C. Newman, so we’re finally doing stuff again.

Here’s what we have coming up:

• Apr 18: we’re playing Good Records’ big Record Store Day/9th Birthday celebration. There are a million bands playing, including Erykah Badu. We play at 1:30 PM.
• Apr 25: Dust Congress are celebrating the release of their new 12″ EP, regurgitate sunshine state, at the Fra House in Denton. Not sure what time this starts, actually, but it’s them, us, The Make Believers, and Drink to Victory. It’ll be free, there will be beer (probably), grilling (maybe), and Erykah Badu (not likely).
• May 15: We make it to Austin again to play with Beautiful Supermachines and The Distant Seconds at Beerland. Erykah can’t make this one, sorry.

More shows & recordings on the way.

Related: Howard is playing with The Howling Hex at the Mohawk in Austin this Thursday, Apr 16. Matt will be running sound for them. Erykah Badu was going to sell merch, but she has a dentist appointment that night.

Also, Matt will be in Spain with The New Year at the end of May for four shows, including the Primavera Festival in Barcelona. Erykah has a warrant for her arrest in Spain, so she can’t make it. Come say hello and buy us many many drinks. (Cosmos for Howrad, Old Fashioneds for Matt.)

Our friends in Shiny Around The Edges have a new album, Holy Roller, on the great Sounds Are Active label.

In celebration, they’ve assembled a compilation of Denton bands called 20 Bands/74.4 Minutes!. Our track is called “The Visible Hand”, and we’re really happy to be a part of it.

Our long-suffering producer. Photo by howrad.

We tracked four new songs yesterday at The Echo Lab. mb engineered, Bubba Kadane ate sandwiches (as always).

We and Shiny Around The Edges and Geistheistler and another band TBA Drug Mountain Delmore Pilcrow are playing at The Majestic Dwelling of Doom (f/k/a The 8th Continent and Wisconsin) in Denton on Sunday, Feb 8.

10PM. Free. BYOB.  Email us if you don’t know where this place is.

SATE may well be selling copies of their new album, Holy Roller (on the great Sounds Are Active label, and which Matt recorded). We’ll have a bunch of new songs that we’ll probably fuck up royally. Geistheistler slays faces live. Drug Mountain had to cancel. Delmore Pilcrow — what can you really say about these guys? Maybe Bryan will bake beer bread for the show. I mean, really, the world is full of wonder and mystery and chance, so you might as well hope for the best.

We have a lot of things brewing, a lot of burners working, a bunch of metaphors, uhhh, metaphorizing. We can’t let those cats out of their respective bags just yet, tho. Suffice to say, if you like the idea of a band recording their songs, and then asking for money in exchange for copies of those recordings, your future looks pretty nice, my friend.

In the interim, here are a few things to pass the time with:

• Our Faster Now, Slower Later tour EP is out of print. Don’t say we didn’t warn you. Expect these recordings to re-surface later on a more widely-available format.
• Howard posted a Flickr set of the New Year’s Nov European tour, which includes a few shots from the Tre Orsi/Dirty on Purpose/The New Year shows in October.
• Popmatters wrote a nice review of our show in Philadelphia with The New Year and Dirty on Purpose.
• French site, Millefeuille, wrote some apparently nice words we can’t read about our no. 7 7″. For the non-Francophones in the audience, enjoy the always-hilarious Babelfish translation. Have I ever mentioned how much I love France?

We’re all finally back in Denton, after many tours (our tour with Magnolia Electric Co, then Bryan with Centro-matic and South San Gabriel, and Howard and Matt with The New Year) and many holidays (one of us gets both Christmas and Hanukkah presents).

Plans are being made, and there will be lots of stuff to talk about pretty soon, I swear. See you next year, which is like two days from now.

Our 8-show “BBQ and Bourbon Tour” with Magnolia Electric Co. starts Monday in Denton. We’ll be sharing the stage at points with David Vandervelde, Will Johnson, and Bottomless Pit, all fine people of unimpeachable character. I expect to never be able to look a cow in the eye again after this one.

Shows are: 
27 Oct 2008: Denton, TX @ Rubber Gloves (w/ David Vandervelde)
28 Oct 2008: Houston, TX @ Walter’s On Washington (w/ David Vandervelde)
29 Oct 2008: San Antonio, TX @ Casbeers (w/ DJ Jester the Filipino Fist)
30 Oct 2008: Austin, TX @ The Mohawk (w/ Will Johnson)
31 Oct 2008: Norman, OK @ The Opolis
1 Nov 2008: Lawrence, KS @ Jackpot (w/ Bottomless Pit)
2 Nov 2008: St. Louis, MO @ The Bluebird (w/ Bottomless Pit)
3 Nov 2008: Chicago, IL @ Abbey Pub (w/ Bottomless Pit)

We still have copies of our new, tour-only EP, Faster Now, Slower Later. 5 new songs, produced by Bubba Kadane (The New Year, Bedhead) and us. $5, only at the shows.

Is it October already? The months have kinda zoomed by, but we’ve all been busy: Matt’s been on tour with The New Year, Bryan’s been touring with South San Gabriel and Centro-matic, and Howard has been saving the world from self-aware computers run amok.

So hey, this weekend: we’re playing three shows with The New Year and Dirty on Purpose. These will be our first shows in the North East, our first time flying together as a group, and (hopefully) our first time being arrested together.

9 Oct 2008: Philadelphia, PA @ Johnny Brenda’s
10 Oct 2008: Brooklyn, NY @ Music Hall of Williamsburg
11 Oct 2008: Cambridge, MA @ Middle East

We’ll have copies of our new, tour-only EP, Faster Now, Slower Later for sale at these shows. It has 5 new songs, and was produced by Bubba Kadane (of The New Year) and us. Jennifer Hermann helped us out immensely with the packaging, glueing and shellacking and stuffing. There are only 50, hand-assembled copies available, and once they’re gone, you’re SOL, buddy.

Those not hip to the Beggars Group blog might want to right themselves. You can learn about a lot of important stuff that makes your life better.

We just confirmed Fall shows with The New Year, Magnolia Electric Company, Bottomless Pit, and other folks. These will be our first shows in the Northeast.

We’re also currently working on new songs and will be recording at the end of August (with Bubba Kadane wearing the producer shades again). More info to come as we work out the details.