Theo Katzman: the Man, they Myth, the Musician

My Dear Disco has enjoyed many years of playing with Theo, and now the time has come for him to leave his My Dear Disco family and further his budding solo career. MDD is very excited for Theo and you will be too!  Make sure to keep up with Theo’s latest developments — he’s already blown the lid off of Sullivan Hall in NYC, Bell’s in Kalamazoo, and The Ark in Ann Arbor.

And what is MDD up to, you ask?

My Dear Disco has recently started touring a spanking-new show.  We’ve got plenty of tricks up our sleeves and can’t wait to show you what’s been brewing.  MDD will be taking the show to both the East and West coasts, along with some stops in the beloved Midwest.

Stay tuned for tour dates and new music – we’ll be leaking some sounds from our album sometime this week.

This is an important moment in every person’s life: the first time they get their buttocks portrayed in an Original Butt Sketch.  Here’s ours:

In real life, trying not to show our immense stage fright:

Wanna know more about butt sketches?  Ummm, why not go to their website?

In the meantime, we’ve been climbing Alaska’s most daunting peaks:

And eating at the best restaurant we’ve ever visited.  This is the first Lao restaurant in Alaska, is entirely family owned and operated, and doesn’t do anything but blow your mind and palette in all directions.

With food this good, you gotta rock an after-glow group shot.

Ok, time to go back.

Many apologies for our cyber-absence, it sure is more difficult to update your website when you’re on the road!  Here’s a little recap, something to hopefully give you an idea of what we’ve been up to!  The picture above was taken in an all-too-normal backstage bathroom in Baltimore.   This show was part of a handful of gigs we did on the East Coast with our Chicago friends (and heros!) Baby Teeth.  They are phenomenal, and we had an amazing time touring with them.  You should listen to them!

We’ve been on the road since July 30th, where we played a couple shows in Chicago, made our way up to Empire Michigan for Dunegrass, down (and left) to Philly for our residency at World Cafe Live, which started a 2 1/2 week east coast jaunt.  Here’s some pics from our show at Union Hall in Brooklyn.  I love these for their 70’s low-budget indie film look.

Part of the east coast tour included taping an in-studio performance for Fox Network’s show “Fearless Music.”  The show airs to 45 million TV’s across America at midnight on Saturdays, and has featured some our big inspirations, including Imogen Heap, Shiny Toy Guns, and Hot Chip.  We can’t release images from the taping until the show airs, so keep your eyes out so we can let you know when it airs!  Check out more about the show here.

After our east coast adventure, we went to Alaska, our current location.  This is one of the most beautiful spots we’ve ever had the privilege of exploring.  Pictures really can’t do it justice, but here are a few anyway.  We’re playing almost every day in Anchorage, and are here till Sunday.  Then we fly back east to get ready for Moe.down!!

Thanks for tuning in, we’ll be back with more updates soon!

You have to check this out — we’re in the new Jurassic Park movie!

psyche.

But seriously, check out this amazing ad for the Kalamazoo Block Party we’re playing this saturday . . .

click this link:

http://www.downtownblockparty.com/

Oh . . . oh my — it’s the festies again!  Yup, time to get out that tent and finally buy some new undies. 

Then take those crisp and clean nether garments and come celebrate the world with us this summer!  This is exactly where we will be:

May 22: Bella Madre (Geneva, MN)

May 24: Hookahville (Thornville, OH)

May 30: Beginning of Summer Block Party (Kalamazoo)

June 4: Wakarusa (Ozark, AR)

June 20: Kentucky Pride (Louisville, KY)

June 26: Top Of the Park (Ann Arbor, MI)

July 23: 10,000 Lakes Festival (Detroit Lakes, MN)

July 30: Party in the Park (Chicago, IL)

August 1: Northalsted Market Days (Chicago, IL)

August 7th: SummerSounds (Greensburg, PA) 

September 4th: YpsiTucky Jamboree (Ypsilanti, MI)

 

This is how excited we are about the festies.  Except our undies will be newer.

The first week of tour — including H’update #2!

This Tuesday, we leave to go on tour for an entire month!  The tour is called, yep — you guessed it — the Michigan Bailout Tour.  We’ll be on the road with some of our very favorite michigan bands (and people): The Hard Lessons, The Great Lakes Myth Society, The Javelins, and Deastro.  Oh boy oh boy oh boy we just can’t wait to get into some of that warm weather.  And silky smooth grease.  Stay tuned for stories from the road!

 

Here’s a nifty map of the routing that we are looking at:

 

View Larger Map

 

 

 

We are delighted to let you know that we will be performing at this years Wakarusa and 10K Lakes Festivals!!

The press releases just went out, and our name was included in line-ups featuring Dave Mathews Band, Widespread Panic, Wilco, Galactic . . . kind of staggering.  

 

 

 

Anyone whose been to these festivals knows exactly how raging these weekends will be.  If you’re typical rage levels were the size of the average twinky, imagine a twinky the size of a hallway and 30 feet long.  

 

 

We hope to see you there!

 

 

My Dear Disco is coming back to the Blind Pig! Our shows at the pig are incredibly special to us, and we can’t wait to play for Ann Arbor again!

 

This show is really exciting because we’ve invited the incredible band from detroit, The Hard Lessons, to split the bill with us — and we’re doing two nights!

 

Here’s the scoop:

 

Friday, Jan 9th + Sat, Jan 10th

$12 adv/$15 day of, 18 + Doors @ 9:30 (non-smoking)

 

Friday night will be hosted by The Hard Lessons, which means that we’ll play first, and the whole show (including our set) will be about getting deep into that high-energy detroit rock & roll rawness!

 

Saturday night will be hosted by us, which means we’ll play second, and the whole show will be throwing down a non-stop dance-thrash!

 

Each night will be unique and contain some special surprises. We can’t wait to share them with you . . . lets rock the joint!!

 

Advance tickets ARE available and are great way to save time, money, and ensure you can attend the show/s!   Just go to: http://www.blindpigmusic.com/ and click “buy tix” for the night you’d like to attend.

 

Happy ‘09!

 

the [record] 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]

Newer Posts »