Who: My Dear Disco wsg/the Mike Moran Band

Where: Traverse City Opera House

When: New Years Eve

Price: $15 advance/ $20 at the door

On New Years Eve, My Dear Disco is returning to Northern Michigan, this time to say thank you to their fans by throwing a massive blow-out party at the Traverse City Opera House!  This party boasts a free local wine/champagne toast at midnight!

 

We are working hard to transform the Opera House into a venue unlike any other in Michigan, so it should be a great spectacle in addition to a great time!  We are offering a bundled ticket package for sale in our store, so if you get that you not only get an advanced ticket held at the door for you, but you also get a HEAVILY discounted CD and T-Shirt with the ticket.  Think about it.  It makes sense.  Do it.  I know you are thinking about it, because I just said you should.  Yep.  Now take the mouse.  Mmm-hmm.  Move it to store.  And Click it.  Yep.  Buy the ticket bundle.  Ok good.  Now come to the show and get your goodies.

 

Luv,

The [play] Button

Day 7: NYC

Arrive at 3am from our philly drive . . . who wants to split the couch?
Theo: “There’s a bed downstairs, a loveseat in that room up front, umm, i think someone might have to sleep on the floor. ”

(Convenient that i have a pattern of having my best sleep on 3 couch cushions placed on the floor)
–  “hey i’ll take the floor.”

How the hell did it get so warm all of a sudden?  I woke up yesterday looking out the window at falling snow and blustering cold, and today I’m waking up to gentle rainfall and 50 degree weather.  And I am DOWN.
And hell yeah, i love bagels.  I think we all love bagels — thank you THEO!!
Internet is down, office time unlikely, how am i gonna rock today’s blog?  Well, no time to dwell, bob and i gotta go downtown to meet our lovely publicists at fanatic promotion.
There’s an amazing quality that NYC has that i recently noticed: in one underground, dirty, and crowded subway, you can be surrounded by beggars, buskers, teenagers,  grandmothers, and business men on their way to sign a multi-million dollar business merge — all at once.  There’s an unusual sense of equality down there.
Out of the subway, into the rainy streets of manhattan we go.  Lets run, its is coming down pretty hard.
Book it to the fanatic office: contained by yet another obscure doorway merely displaying an address.  I have a tendency to romanticize success – surely the people who spend all day making artists like the Chemical Brothers, Sigur Ros, and Sufjan Stevens famous must do so in a stainless steel office aboard a NASA test mars capital building.  The office was beautiful, but the lack of brain-detecting 3D CGI machines  reminds me that it’s not about the gear, you just gotta have a group of extremely knowledgeable and passionate people coming together to share a common goal.  Hell yeah!

“Hi hey hello! hey whats that? whats that? what’s that mean? what’s he doing?”

Ok, gotta go soundcheck now — rain_run_subway_rain_run pt 2.
The venue is the mercury lounge — they gotta big rep and we’ve all been excited about this gig for a while.
Little confusing to set up, the backstage is in the basement on the opposite side of the building, there’s no real good place to set up our merch display, and damn it’s such a pain dealing with the bus in manhattan.  We also have to get everything off the stage and put away within 15 minutes of the last beat, which, for a 7-piece electronic rock entourage, is a serious serious undertaking. Despite it all, the show went great, the crowd was awesome, the staff super helpful, and we got to see a lot of friends.  AND, we were awarded a $120 parking ticket from the city, despite the bus being on and a driver in the drivers seat.  Yee haw!
Next up: scatter MDD’s members to the four corners of the city for a couple hours,  reconvene at a bar called the Library, have a couple drinks,  more catching up with close friends, and catch the 1:20am subway back to long island.  Which means you gotta RUN!  It’s incredible how in shape dave schall is for someone who smokes and doesn’t regularly exercise.  Someone’s gotta start rocking some science on that human, there’s something profitable there.
Get back to the pad, hit a little 3am office time (ie, get the last blog up with a very spotty internet connection), and hit that hay at 4:30am.

A good tour — thank you east coast!

Quote of the tour comes from Bob, during our last pre-show huddle:

“I just want to tell you guys, several times this tour i’ve literally gotten goosebumps from all the love being musically transmitted from everyone on stage.”

see in you in february My Dear East Coast.

Love, [record]

 

Day 6: Philly

 

There’s something that makes cell phone alarms more annoying than alarm clocks.  We gotta leave boston at 10am to make it to philly on time, which means i gotta wake up at 8:30, take a shower, pack, and help make sure everyone’s on the plan at 9am.  

I’m gonna miss this drip coffee.  Christian goes to the bus a half hour early to rock some more grease, gets back at 10am, get the bus loaded and out by 10:30am.  

Only a half-hour late!  That’s a record!!  

Except we’ve only driven 10 minutes and everyone has to pee (how many empty water bottles are on the bus right now?  uhh, two — ok we gotta pull over).  One thing that’s interesting about touring is that since you’re usually playing the same markets (east coast=NYC, Boston, DC, Philly, etc), you start to find yourself at the same gas stations and rest stops by chance (or is it . . .).  I think we hit 2 that we had stopped at before.  It’s a cool way to distinctly remember a pretty un-interesting moment (oh yeah, i got a coffee here, that sink doesn’t work, there were sunglasses sold outside, and those smoothies are too expensive!).  Why should we only recall the interesting moments?  

Pull into philly, looks like we’re a 1/2 mile away!!  Alright, we made it!  Ten minutes later, and 15 feet further, uuhhh we’re still about a 1/2 mile away!  Another 10 minutes, another 15 feet.  Rinse and repeat.  My god this is taking forever.  Wait wait ok here’s the left turn that’s gonna get us there — shit that’s the lane that puts you into the massive hotel parking lot and spits you out where you started!  Rinse and repeat.  Lets not take that turn again.  Ahh, here we are this is the left turn lane, and hey there’s the club! Where do we load?  In back?  We’re on a bridge but ok . . . ok there’s no where to turn.  Dammit, we missed the club.  Where can we turn around?  Oh up here — oh hey, remember being on this exact corner 45 minutes ago?  Being on this short bus feels so appropriate now.

The venue is the World Cafe Live.  Clearly very swanky as soon as you get in the doors.  

 

 

 

 

They made a flyer specific for us, which is a great sign for a venue (versus “hey, did you get the flyers we sent a couple weeks ago?”  “uhhh, i dunno maybe are they not up?”  “Guess.”).  And the stage is carpeted — this is my signal to play the show barefoot.  

 

 

We’ve never played in philly, don’t know many people, and 10 minutes before the hit the only people ready to listen are the cafe staff.  Huddle: lets just do what we do and hit as hard as we can anyways.  

Then what looks like 50 people come into the club all at once, including some great friends who graduated from U of M.  This is a good good thing.  

 

 

 

 

 

The show ended up being super fun, the audience was awesome to play for, the club staff loved the show (we even sold a handful of cd’s to the staff — which they told us was a first).  Looks like we might be coming back to open for a national act in february . . . lets hope!!  

Take a good long time to load out after the show (after selling merch, finishing off our drink tickets, taking a tour of the facility, catching up with friends, waking joey up from his post-show nap . .  ), christian fills up the bus with some grease from the kitchen, we all load the gear, and leave philly at 1am to sleep on the floor at theo’s family’s place in NY.  

At the end of the day, this whole music as life thing is really f*cking fun.

 

Love, the [record] button

Day 5: Day off in Boston

They say days off on tour are one of the 1000 paper cuts that can kill the beast.  But it’s monday.   It’s Boston.  Mondays are a musician’s saturday: chances are you’re not playing that night.  And the sundays are fridays: you might have to work, but it’s still the weekend because tomorrow is saturday.  

Hit the morning with some granola, fresh drip coffee, and a little “office” time (did you email those lyrics to samantha? should we call that new song “smiling” or “change A?”  What does “Change A” mean?  Oh shit we gotta make sure those download cards got sent to sam . . . ).  The grand finale of “office time” was me trying to learn how to put this blog on our website and include pictures+videos.  An extremely frustrating tutorial that included inabilities to import pictures from cameras, not having the right cables for the video camera, being unable to rotate pictures, learning basic HTML, myspace crashing safari, GAAH!  

 

 

The center snaps the laptop to the quarterback, its a GREAT snap, the QB confidently grabs it out of the air and places it’s corner to the grass, the kicker (Tyler) is already one step away, right leg cocked, ready to send this laptop into the atmosphere -- 

 

Mike: Hey Tyler, you want to come see an Imax movie at the science museum?

 

“Umm . . . yeah.  Ok. ” (Stupid computer)

 

That movie was called, “adrenaline” a feature about skydiving, jumping off mountains, and a 6-year-old’s first day of school (somehow they fit that one in there).  Experiencing the first day of kindergarten in full 360 degree sight and sound is a truly awe-inspiring entertainment experience not for the faint of heart.  Though I would love to skydive, i wonder how much it costs.  Maybe i could do that instead of driving to a gig -- at least it would have some practical application.  

 

End movie, negotiate some more museum attractions, walk back to the homestead.

 

Ok you damned computer, there’s only room enough for one of us in this town . . . 

 

. . . one hour later . . . 

 

aaaaahhhhh THAT’s how you do it.  I now know how to live my life through a computer.  What’s next for the record button?  FACEBOOK?!  

 

Nope, but there’s  PIZZA!  Really GOOD PIZZA!  

 

Now begin the post-dinner aimless hang.  A few friends come over, no plan, no objective, just the elements: tequila, oysters, IPA, youtube, and chin-ups.  

 

 

End the night with a midnight excursion to a local jazz club called, “the bee hive.”  Cool underground bar with lots of art to ponder — what does that make you think of--GO:

Umm, a train billowing out smokey labia rings?  

 

Next.  

 

*Weekend fun fact: a thumb is a hand leg.  

 

Love, the [record] button

Day 4: Boston

A beautiful morning (aka noon -- 4pm) at the carpenter family residence. Words can’t describe the beauty of this house nor the love that it contains.

One thing we always look forward to when coming to boston is the cannolis at Mike’s. ANYONE thinking about investing in the cannoli industry — this is the cannoli of the future. Imagine looking through the glass at 100’s of fresh, hand-made ‘nnoli’s in 20 varieties. It’s . . . perfect.

A day 4 mini-highlight: the paul mccartney and michael jackson music video for “say say say” i wish i could meet the people who wrote that script . . . i wonder if they live in a bathtub of jello tequila.

Follow that with a post-thanksgiving thanksgiving dinner — good god.

DAMN IT GETS DARK EARLY, how is it only 4:30??

Load the bus after dinner, get to the club (Johnny D’s), load in during their local blues jam. They have a half barrel of grease for us! (“um, someone called and asked if we could save some of our throw-out grease for a bus . . . )

A lot of great friends showed up for the show, and a good crowd in general thanks to our beloved street team and a great article in the local paper.

Staff was incredibly nice, and how about kevin doing the splits 20 times during clubbing?

Good pre-game and post-game talk on the bus (dude, could you try that beat on the other snare? hey dave, can we get more of tyler in the monitor for the 3rd verse of all i do? MYF bridge is in a 4 measure phrase, lets wait till measure 7 for introductions, oh man i love that feedback delay loop in the break of lost in a day… holy $#! michelle and mike killed it tonight!!).

Someday we hope to have a show where everything can go wrong and no one in the audience will know . . . i guess we’ll have to have a few more of those shows to get some good practice. Is there a book about playing legendary drum solos in the face of screaming feedback?

End the night with the discovery of a pizza box to the right of the stage, filled with cookies, with a note saying:

Dear, My Dear, My Dear Disco,

we’ve baked no less than 3

class I narcotics into these

cookies. Can you tell which ones?

Just kidding, the only ingredient

was love.

Sincerely,

Miguel and Marilyn

. . .

Thank you!!

(and another point for the karma team)

Sincerely, the [record] button

TXT MSG: from Christian
Meet at bus @ 9am

Bob’s b-day the night before — a celebration of 24 years of Bob life. Friends, cupcakes 2.0, wine, and hookah. A highlight of bob revealing his salvation army secret weapon: a white 3-piece bellbottom suit, complete with red Hi-C stains on the bottom right leg. Looks like we’ll have to have a red Hi-C squirt gun fight to match.

Day 1: Buffalo

Sleep 3.5 hours — wake-up up to a blizzard of packing, grocery shopping, bank deposits, missed alarms, printing contracts, and trying to ignore the annoying voice, saying”aren’t you forgetting something? aren’t you still forgetting something? maybe you’re forgetting something . . . ” Leave by 10:30, not bad for us.

Arrive at Nietsche’s, a club that has accurately recreated the feeling of being on a disney world Pirates of the Caribbean tour. Good news! The club has two jugs of grease for us — another 30 miles of deep-fat driving!

We meet an incredible traditional african drummer Alasaan Sarr, who sits in on “My Dear Disco” along with Marc Vitagliano, who both blow everyones mind.

Haven’t figured out where we’re gonna stay, who’s selling merch did you tip the bartender where’s the kick drum pedal case . . .

Joey: someone from a some co-op in town called nickel city said we could stay at their place
Everyone: hell yes

Try to park the bus in downtown buffalo for an hour, end up parking 15 feet away from where we started: across the street from the club. HA!

Day 2: Ithaca

little did we know that nickel city co-op would treat us to warm beds, pancake breakfast, fresh ground coffee, and home-made blueberry kombucha!! Time to pass on some serious love and keep this karma alive. Any one have a kombucha baby? I’m thinking a roasted-cherry-porter-soaked-peanut-filled-mango-lassi kombucha might be good.

A 2 hour drive to Ithaca feels like a 6 hour drive, wait was it only 2 hours? its getting dark, feels late, we’re supposed be there by 8 what time is it.

Playing at a club called Castaways with a local fav Jimkata. Pull up the club, another pirate-esque feel to the room (this time more mild). Jimkata boys are fun as hell, good time loading in and setting up, they brought a lighting guy (actually also their manager disguised as a lighting guy)!

To the our surprise, and even more to everyone else in the club’s surprise, a whole crew from Hobart College pulls up in TWO enormous stretch limos packed with the brim with peeps to see our set.

Pretty good reason to get on stage and hit it hard as we can. Super fun set, those kids can make a room shake. Jimkata pulled off a great set, and an equally fun after-party. They even put us up that night, put up another point on the karma score board (should we add curry to that kombucha?).

Christian falls asleep in mid-party on the living room couch . . . he is rudely awaked later that night by an individual sleep-walking and mistaking a coffee table for a toilet. Unfortunately, Christian’s shouting wasn’t enough to stop that force, lets hope the scotch guard is.

how do some people get so lucky?

Day 3: Travel Day to Boston

The band accumulates at the famed ithaca breakfast joint College Town Bagels. With the 8 person crew and our collective Ithaca friends we formed a formidable semi-circle taking over half the floor space. Thank fully breakfast for us started at 2pm. Christian is asleep face-down at his table. Poor guy. DAMN, i need a shower.

DAMN, it gets dark earlier out here. Awake for 3 hours and it’s already night time.

Arrive in boston 7 hrs later and rejoice with a late-night tray of veggie lasagna. I’ll take the futon, looks like 6 people are trying to sleep in the basement — thumb wars?
And there’s the shower . . .

More to come in the days to follow,

-The Record Button