Unsolved Brew Blogs #3 from The Brew on Vimeo.

Has Twitter elbowed out long form blogging? If so how does this reflect on us as society? Have we become so lethargic and lackadaisical (or other synonyms for lazy that begin with L) that we have let our blogging digress to 140 character status updates? 

The implications could be as vast and as far reaching as the harnessing of the cold fusion, organized religion or the invention of the internet itself. 

Or not...

www.twitter.com/thebrewmusic

MAY.24.2009

Blogging is kind of like jogging. First of of all you can't spell either with out the letter combo 'ogging'. Second of all, sometimes you want to do it and your pumped about it, and other times you need to cow prod to the face to get this party started.

Needless to say, The Brew is out of shape. (Not physically of course, under our concert attire there are washboard abs, firm sets of moobs, and serious semi-automatic guns). Yet, The Brew is panting pathetically in the gym of blogging. So, lets workout.

This last weekend we played a couple festivals, one being Summercamp with Moe., Umphrey's McGee, and Willie Nelson. This was a seriously great time, what was not so seriously great was the drive from MA to Chillocothe, IL. 20 hours there 20 hours back.

Our set on thursday night was very well attended and after being in the vanbus for so long it was natural to want to rage, and rage we did. So did the hundreds of festival patrons listening! We got a hotel at our preferred chain, Red Roof Inn, and realized that it's a lot of other bands preferred chain as well. In the parking lot we ran into our friends from The Bridge and noticed the band Lotus' rig parked next to ours.

We had a 11a.m. set at Summercamp friday morning, and didn't know what to expect for a turnout. We figured everyone would be passed out from raging the previous night and be pissed at our sonic alarm clock, but that was not at all the case. Hundreds of people came out for another fun set and we had friend and bassist Brendan from The Macpodz come sit in with us on 'Eyes of the Giant'. Joe then went to the Macpodz set to sit in with them on a tune! After hitting the batting cages and pitching clock over at the 'Authentic Gear' bus we left Summercamp fully pumped with our experience.

The next show was in Connecticut and was a serious drive which we passed the time with internet trivia. Pat our tour manager looked up Trivia questions on his iPhone and we all beeped in Jeopardy style. But there was a catch, if you beeped and got the answer wrong, you lost a point. So we decided the first one with 11 points wins. The game lasted 6 hours. Team Dave and Kane took the first win over team Joe and Chris. But Team Joe and Chris rebounded with a win later in the drive and it is currently even.

Sunday we played Strangecreek in Greenfield MA. Playing festivals somewhat locally is pretty kick ass for many reasons, one being we get to drive home and sleep in our beds that night, also we get to run into familiar friends and fans. We saw our buddies in the Ryan Montbleau band and watched them tear it up after our set, and then we drove home for some serious sleep recovery.

We are psyched about this week coming up. The schedule is as follows:

Thursday 5.28. we open for legendary band The Radiators in Ridgefield CT

Friday 5.29. we open for Grateful Dead Drummers side project The Bill Kreutzman Trio (Bk3)

Saturday 5.30 another Bk3 opener at Toad's Place in New Haven CT

Sunday 5.31 we are at Mountain Jam with The Allman Brothers, Gov't Mule, Ray LaMontagne, Coheed and Cambria and more! That gig will be ridiculous!

See you folks soon and know we are going to be training hard for the blogolympics.

Love,

The Brew

BLOG #6 


This day began with some breakfast at the local ‘Waffle House’, best WH
yet...onto Michigan, home of school spirit. Grand Rapids seemed somewhat of
a distant memory although we only were here six months ago. Great crowd!
They actually came in busloads, and not hypothetically. We dove further
into rarity-mode, playing to the sit-down crowd, with songs like ‘Let It
Slide’, ‘I Do Believe’, ‘Reactor’, and many others soon to surface. With
over a hundred to prove ourselves to, we closed with the choice closer of
2008, ‘Chance Reaching’ and felt good about doing it.


Andrew Ripp ripped again, with a nice four song sit-in with Chris on keys,
including some Stevie Wonder numbers, and a couple sandwiched Andrew Ripp
tunes. We are pumped to be on the road, playing with more respectable
musicians, in un-trounced territory. We have a great run to finish in
Wisconsin and Chicago, and we can’t wait to throw the party down at the
Paradise in Boston on April 18th. See you there!

BLOG #5


We drove about five and a half hours through snow, rain, and ice to arrive
at Skully’s: a place that looked like a hole in the wall from the outside,
but contained one of the best and biggest rooms we have ran into outside of
New England. It being Monday, the day rarely rocked, we didn’t know what to
expect...nevermind never having been to Ohio.

The Brew was just introduced to Andrew Ripp and his kick ass trio for the
first time, knowing that we were to spend the next week or so together,
trying to turn the midwest into fans we know and love. Instant
Respect...much needed on the road of big and fragile egos. These guys
showed us very quickly we weren’t alone in our genuine pursuit of happiness
in a daunting industry, knowing music can make these drear and cloud filled
drives feel all worth while.


Being the first show of our midwest run, we felt the urge to delve into new
soundscapes and embrace songs that were very new, rare, or have never been
played before.

We tested the waters in the new realms of “Hard Enough To Break”, “No
Future”, and an unnamed, to be debuted song at the Paradise on April 18th
in Boston. This room filled up with a hugeness we haven’t felt this far
west, and everyone in attendance seemed into what we threw at them. Thank
You Ohio!

Blog #4


Today is a sad day. Will Dailey and the Riders, the band we have been
touring with for the last couple weeks are jumping off tour, their portion
of the scheduled shows is over, and that is a damn shame cause they are some
of the coolest guys we have ever shared the stage with. Their songs are
incredible, playing is perfect, and they are a hilarious band.


On another note, the show in Buffalo last night totally kicked ass. Big
crowd of music loving humans (See picture below). We have the day off today
and we are driving to Ohio where our next show is. We will probably stop and
see a movie get some good dinner and hit a hotel early. Good times-

Blog #3

Day 3 on the road. We are now in Buffalo NY. Last time we played Neitzche’s
it was a true rager. Hope to continue the trend. I am guessing that at any
moment this blog will be abruptly interrupted with my cell phone getting an
eruption of text messages beckoning me to sound check.

Us here in The Brew have a serious beef. Our opponent is a formidable one
but all the same defeat-able. I am speaking of course, of Mother Nature.

April 4th or 5th and we are getting a shistorm of rain/snow/sleet and winds
up to 50 mph. Not happy, especially considering our van/bus looking thing is
like a giant f’ing sail. When you are rocking a 40 foot long 10 foot tall
beast at 70 mph and an opposing force (wind in this case) hits you at 50
from the starboard side bad things can happen. Luckily our skilled driver,
(cough*me*cough) guided us gently through what could have been disaster.

We stopped in Rochester NY at the “House of Guitars”, and let me tell you,
that it was, a giant house filled with a shitload of guitars. From 1 of 300
Elvis Costello signature Gibson acoustics to heady veggie boutique amps it
was a maze of things we want.

Kane bought a nice new ride cymbal which sounds pretty incredible.

Anyways, about to sound check then eat some food and dominate Buffalo, hope
to see you sexy people soon. (cough*paradise*cough*cough*april 18th*cough*)

BLOG #2

We woke up this morning and had a bunch of time to kill so we set up our
mobile studio in our hotel room and cranked out this funky juice. Check it
out. (Photo of funky juice jam below...press play)

BLOG #1

First day of a packed april tour. Just to debrief you sexy people we are
hitting upstate NY, Chicago, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, all preparing our
for our extra special show at the Paradise. After the dise we are heading to
the Virgin Islands (true Paradise).

Today is what...? April 1st? 2nd? I dont know, Im on my 3rd glass of Saki
and its 2:30 in the morning at the Red Roof Inn in Utica NY. Our show in
Syracuse was totally kick ass. People that were there were totally receptive
to whatever we wanted to play, so we gladly took the opportunity to switch
it up a bit.

The setlist goes as follows:

Definitions

Straight Believin’

Castle Walls
Hard Enough to Break

Go Ahead

Let’s Dance (David Bowie)

Chance Reaching

It Stoned Me

Looking Down

Africa (toto)

E: Machine

We talked to some really cool people and even turned the door guy into a
street team member, thats the sign of a good show. Apparently we crushed!

Hitting the road tomorrow heading to Albany for a big show at the Red
Square!

Even though many exciting/hilarious/disturbing/bloggable things happened over the past month or so we have decided to invent a new sub division of blogging. For now Im going to go with Bloginiscing (reminiscing through the art of the blog). I must say that I anticipated being able to come up with a better name than that. Word combos in general have been a past time in The Brew van for many years and I consider myself a skilled linguist in the practice of word fusion. Yet 'blog' + 'word that describes pondering past events' has not come easily.  Lets run through the options:

Blog+memory = blogemory...not bad...maybe better than bloginiscing. But it doesnt have the same call to action that bloginiscing seems to.

Blog+retrospective = blogospective...again not bad but Im not convinced. 

Blog+remembering = blogembering...totally shitty. 

I think the main lesson here is that the word blog sucks. 

I would offer up some examples of truly great word combinations but most of them that the brew has come up with are grotesque and offensive. But here are a few we would use to describe an undesirable circumstance:

Shitaster

Shistorm

Shistain

If this is offensive to anybody I apologize, but my apology is only truly sincere if you watch this George Carlin video and still find it offensive. 

Moving on to the bloginiscing...

This blogemory occurred in the summer of 2007.

We were on our way to play a festival that is not to be named. After we play this festival we are driving down to Virginia to meet Bobby Read (famed musician and producer) for our first recording session of "Back to the Woods". We wake up around 6 am, and drive about 5 hours to play our afternoon set. A topless girl is riding in a golf cart across the festival grounds. So far so good. 

We play our set and it is a good time, sound is good, place is full, dancing commenced, domination occurred.

We get done with our set, and decide to chill out, eat some vendor food and watch the next band. We are sitting on a hill as we see seriously dark clouds in the distance and a lightning storm that is truly a spectacle. Its dusk, the sky is purple, you can see forever and there is this kick ass storm raging miles away. Meanwhile we are safe and sound observing from a distance. 

In what seemed like 5 minutes (probably more around 15) this storm is directly over us. Kane and I (Chris) are at the vendor getting a second veggie burger. The wind picks up like crazy, its fully raining Forrest Gump vietnam style, and Kane and I instinctively run towards the van which is about 500 feet away. I am about 15 feet in front of Kane. I see empty cans whipping past my head and all of the sudden out of the corner of my eye, a giant white object is flying right towards me. It is a huge tent that for some unknown reason was not staked down. Now when I say tent dont picture a camping tent. Think of a giant wedding tent with aluminum scaffolding that could fit a United Nations luncheon with ease. 

So the tent is flying towards me barreling end over end, from Kane's persective I fully disappear in a cloud of mud and vinyl. The tent missed me by inches but my hulk-esque quadriceps powered me through my near tent experience. Lightning is striking literally every 10 seconds all around us. Kane and I make it to the van soaked where Dave and Joe (also soaked) were recovering from their own sprint to the van. Im in the back behind the drivers seat as Kane gets to the van and said he thought I got taken out by the tent. 

Now there is another problem. The tent is on the van. We want to get the hell out of this shistorm but the tent is obstructing us from moving forward. 

Joe, now shirtless, volunteers to go lift the tent off of the van while I drive out of range. Keep in mind that the tent was probably 300 pounds from all of the metal framing and there is lighting striking everywhere around us. 

Joe gets outside and lifts the corner of tent off our van but as soon as he does a thunderous crack of lighting explodes maybe 10 feet behind him. Considering the fact he was holding a lighting rod for a tent into the air, we all, including him, thought the lighting hit the tent frame. The second he hears the noise he drops the tent and ducks down. The tent frame succumbs to the force of gravity and smashes through the window behind the drivers seat which I was sitting in. Auto glass sprays into my face and lap, and a collective "oh shit" utters from our lips. 

Joe again gathers the courage to lift the tent off the van and I get in the drivers seat and drive away from the scene. Joe gets back in the van and we go to the bottom of the hill to get paid and get out of this place. 

After waiting for Joe for about 20 minutes I walk into the production trailor to find out we aren't getting paid. The promoter some how lost money on the festival and he figured that we should too. riiigghhhttt....

So now we have a new giant hole in the side of our van that we have to patch up and drive 8 hours to Virginia in. 

Some biker chicks were nice enough to locate a trash bag and duck tape and helped us tape it up. They said they have done this many times and showed us the patented "weave technique". This is the strongest way to trash bag a window. 

We drive till about 1 a.m. and pull over to get a hotel. No vacany. Next hotel: no vacancy. This process continues as we get denied hotels for several hours. We then come to realize that we have entered a portion of the country that has seemed to be immobilized by a Jehovah's witness seminar. Eventually we convince a very nice lady at a Hampton Inn to give us rooms that someone didnt show up for. We told her we would give her an 8 hand massage but she declined. 

We drive down to Virginia, explain this whole story to Bobby Read and minutes later another huge storm rolls into Virginia, knocks down trees in Bobby's drive way crushing a fence. 

I wish this was a video blog. It would be up for an oscar for best short blogumentary. 

What an insane weekend. This whole shindig started on thursday when we left for NYC to play Sullivan Hall in Manhattan. So we bought this new GPS, so we could navigate our giant space shuttle looking rig through cities with out hitting our 10 foot tall roof on any over passes. Long story short this GPS has the option to say what type of vehicle you are, so we pick bus. You would figure since its giving you the option to pick different vehicles, then the one chosen would have an effect on the roads it decides to take you on. Yeah we thought so too, but apparently not. It sent us right onto FDR drive which prohibits commercial vehicles. WTF? Anyways that piece is going right back to Best Buy, and we are onto the real deal GPS. 

So Sullivan Hall kicked some ass, although my keyboard rig is fully busted and I had to scrap together a back up rig which consisted of a CME pro midi controller keyboard, running to an old school Roland JV1080 piano module, as well as a korg triton on the second tier. Now I know what you are thinking, you are feeling overwhelming amounts of sadness and empathy for the horrible revelation of my rig being out. Let me calm any apprehensions that may cause any sleep loss tonight: My rig is being over-nighted to Muse Research in California. They will perform surgery on the rig and it will be fully upgraded to a super computer the scope of which has never yet been tested. They are bringing in a specialist named Steven Hawking to oversee the operation. 

Although I might have been feeling a little weird without my beloved sounds, the rest of the band was on the money and making up for any lameness coming from my corner.  

Next show was in Connecticut at Toad's Place supporting John Brown's Body. Let me start by saying that Nate Edgars of JBB might be laying down that fattiest reggae bass lines in the scene. Deepest. Pocket. Ever. They kick ass. Our show was a ton of fun, I got to use the JBB keyboard rig which was super weird. Stood up the whole show on stage right. Weird...but fun. At the JBB show, Joe caught wind of the Willie Waldman Project playing in

Bridgeport CT at The Field, 20 minutes away, got in a car with some
friends and headed on down to catch the last few songs of there show.  A
long list of our musician buddies were part of that evenings lineup:
Willie Waldman (Memphis Horns), Greg Keorner (bass master), Vinnie Amico
(moe.), Adrian (The Breakfast), Brian Jordan (L.A. Guitar Master), and
another guitar and saxophone player I don't know.  In between songs, while
Joe was talking to some peeps near the front of the stage, Greg the bass
player, put the bass on Joe and said, "go".  Luckily for Joe the song was
mostly an improv groove jam, and from what I hear it went down nice and
thick in big funk fusion madness

The next night was a underground warehouse party in Brooklyn which was truly the epic icing on the cake of this magical mystery tour...

First let me say that this space we were in is out of some freak movie where the dude is a genius yet an outcast and at first you think he is psycho but then you realize towards the end that he is actually proving the big bang theory while deciphering a dead language during a quest for the truth while hooking up with a totally smoking chick. The chick isnt sure if she should be into him but by the end she just realizes he is the man and they totally make it happen right then and there...Yeah it was that dudes house. Which was actually more of a warehouse turned into massive art space filled with books from the 17th century signed by the authors. 

(This is PC our lighting master on this guys mega bike he built...the thing actually functions!)

This environment allowed us to stretch out musically and some crazy shit went down quite naturally. For example we opened up with:

Black Train>armless pull jam>about to rock>groovin high>Black Train

and got to bust out some rarities such as "Light From Below" and "Frogman".

Anyways, this place was pimp and got filled with people-in-the-know and we are planning on doing another show there possibly in the spring so keep an ear to the meat packer. 

Hope all is well with you sexy individuals. Keep bringing your sexy selves to our sexy shows and all will be well. 

We recently flew out to Los Angeles to record a little demo for a sample of what will be on the next record. We had the pleasure of working with a great producer, Mike Daly, (Plain White T's, Grace Potter and the Nocturnals, Donavon Frankenreiter) who was also in the band Whiskey Town with Ryan Adams. Also our engineer out there, Travis Huff (Fall out Boy, Lil Jon, Yellowcard) is the man and was blowing our minds with his skills. This might have been one of the most fun recording sessions we have ever had. We recorded three new tunes which have potential to be on the next record "I Do Believe", "Reactor" and "Hard Enough To Break". Needless to say we are psyched with the way these are turning out.

We got to record in the pimpest studio we have ever seen, a place called Glenwood Studios, (which looks more like a day spa then it does a recording studio, at least on the outside…). The sounds we were getting out of this place and their sick vintage gear pumped us up quite a bit and the caliber of people we were working with was incredible.

This is Mike and Travis in the control room at Glenwood Studios.

We also got to hang out at some pretty cool places after the sessions, for example this one place the Chateau Marmont is where CSNY, The Eagles, Jerry Garcia and all the old rock stars used to stay when they were in town, and from the looks of it, it was still the place to be. When we were there we ran into Christopher Loyd, Kanye West, Jason Seagul, Kim Kardashian and more of the like. Good times.

Flying out in an epic ice storm and flying into Boston during a blizzard after a 14 hour delay in Dallas was pretty nerve wracking but the band, and almost equally important our gear, is back safe and we are ready to crush some shows back on the east coast. We are pumped to be back in town and hope to see all you sexy people at some shows soon.