So Many Dynamos touring/recording/all-purpose blog

2009-07-14T09:18:00.000-07:00

We're doing an in studio for KEXP at noon. You can listen to it here if you're into that sort of thing.

2009-07-09T19:18:00.000-07:00

This was down the street from Record Bar in KC...

WE ARE ON TOUR

2009-07-07T23:08:00.000-07:00

Here's a map with our tour route, complete with venue info, other bands, etc.
Check it out!

Deal With This

2009-07-02T15:10:00.000-07:00

Our one-time booking agent and good friend, Alina, posted this via Facebook.

TOO CUTE.

Write A Haiku, Get a Poster

2009-06-27T12:11:00.000-07:00

from The Firebird Twitter:

The 10 best So Many Dynamos' Haikus win a ltd edition poster by John Vogl.
Bring on your best 5 7 5's about St. Louis' fav palindrome band.

Come to the cd release show tonight!
Don't be late!

Ouch

2009-06-25T10:58:00.000-07:00

First this and then this. Today sucks so far. Let's hope the Vintage Vinyl show raises morale. I need something above a 5.5 today.

When it rains, it pours

2009-06-24T11:55:00.001-07:00

Usually we return from tours and relax, but not this time. We're caught up in CD Release madness with 2 shows this week - the freebie exclusive show at Vintage Vinyl for folks who have already bought the CD and the official release show at the Firebird on Saturday. Plus interviews and press stuff and cramming in a practice or two, we've got a pretty busy week.

These are things:

-some of us will be doing an interview at 4:30 at St. Louis radio station KWUR today

-some (or all) of us will be participating in an interactive chat thing on Absolute Punk.net tonight at 9 EST. We've never done anything like this before, and it could be a crazy fun time or it could be the four of us sitting in a chat room talking to each other. Shall be interesting either way.

We had our first rehearsal in the cool, concrete basement wiith surprisingly decent acoustics that will function as our new practice space. My Fender Jazzmaster, which I purchased to be my "adult guitar" that I respect and treat well, took a spill and now its lower bout has a nasty ding. So I'm off to buy Strap Locks today. Wish me luck.

Come see us for free

2009-06-22T11:01:00.001-07:00

Holy @#$%! The release show for
"The Loud Wars"
is this Saturday at The Firebird!

John Vogl designed and printed up a limited run of posters ------------->
which will be available on Saturday.

If you want, you can pre-order tickets here.

You can win a copy of the new cd,
New Bones 7", and a ticket to the show here.
Winners will be contacted shortly. Thanks for all who shared their stories.

For everyone else you can get a free ticket to the show of your choice when you pick up "The Loud Wars" from the Vagrant website. Check it out.

Oh yeah, don't forget about this:

Baltimore

2009-06-15T00:27:00.000-07:00

Things the sound guy and/or his underage cronies did tonight that have NEVER been done to us before:
1)Threw a beer can at Ryan's face (points for accuracy)
2) Took a swing at Clayton (zero points for accuracy)
3) Told us we will never play at that club again

Despite the above, tonight was our best show in Baltimore to date. Thanks to the level headed lady in charge of the show and the kids who drove from Philadelphia.

Finally! Finally! Finally!

2009-06-09T08:34:00.000-07:00

Today is June 9th, which means our record officially has no more road blocks or delays, it is out!

Check it out!

2009-06-05T07:09:00.000-07:00

The Loud Wars is now streaming online over at Buzzgrinder!

Internet Win!

2009-05-28T16:47:00.000-07:00

Messages like these prove the internet rulz:

From :*********
TTo: so many dynamos
Date: May 28, 2009 4:14 PM
Subject:

Love your music! I will be traveling from Russia to the US and I will visit your gig with Maps and Atlases in Philly in June! Hope to meet u in person! and have a beer

Also, this is really cool.

Is legalizing So Many Dynamos bad for Small Businesses?

2009-05-22T21:05:00.000-07:00

For this exclusive in-store we'll be playing out entire album from front to back!

If you want to get e-mail updates about us you can go to our myspace page and sign up for our mailing list. We promise not to flood you inbox with a bunch of malarky.

I still can't get over what a dick Michael Steele is. I mean, come on.

ATTN:Tor

2009-05-18T21:43:00.000-07:00

You can now pre-order The Loud Wars and get a free 7"!

We also succumbed to the pressures of technology and got a Twitter and Facebook.

I'm not sure how I feel about them yet. I am leaning towards 'pro,' but with great caution.
Still, if they don't work out well I've got a back up plan.

We've Moved!

2009-05-11T06:52:00.000-07:00

After nearly three and a half years of living together in a house Edwardsville we have finally moved out.

Along with moving out, we've been pretty busy with non-dynamo related things.
Ryan and his longtime girlfriend Megan got married and took a honeymoon in Canada. They live just down the street from our old house with their 2 cats and our friend Chad. My girlfriend and I moved to Soulard with our cat George. Clayton went camping and is learning to play drums and keyboard simultaneously. Aaron played a show with Target Market to celebrate the digital release of their new record and is getting our van's cracked windshield replaced.

On a completely different note

About a month ago we had a show in our basement with Target Market. At some point during the night someone thought it would be a good idea to steal our RFT award from our bathroom. A few weeks later I found this on our back steps:

Mr. Whiskers

2009-04-22T11:13:00.000-07:00

Thanks to The Bronzed Chorus and everyone who came to the show Saturday.
I just realized it was Ryan's last show as a 'bachelor' because he is getting married this weekend. Craaaazy.

Some people outside St. Louis have asked us about getting the New Bones 7".
It looks like Vagrant is going to be sending them along with pre-ordered copies of The Loud Wars.

The next few days should be pretty hectic in our camp, but once things settle down we should have all the details ironed out for our cd release show in June. Once we know you will too.

THEY HAVE ARRIVED.

2009-04-16T14:37:00.001-07:00

Yesterday while we were all at home practicing, we were greeted with a package of 100 copies of our new 7'! With that being said, we're pretty excited for both of these events:

Record Store Day is AWESOME! If you live in St. Louis, make sure to stop by Vintage Vinyl, APOP, and Euclid Records. All three stores are having events and sales throughout the day.

And then after wards, come to our 7" Release Show! It's free and we only have about 100 copies of the record for sale. Plus, this is going to be the only time it's available until "The Loud Wars" is released in June.

OMFG!!!!

2009-04-08T10:17:00.000-07:00

I found this on the internet today. I think this may be the most "note"oriety my drumming has ever received.

Operation Condor - Caw!!!

2009-04-01T10:23:00.000-07:00

Here is a link to a video interview/ live footage of everybody on the Pattern is So Many Maps Tour! Thanks to the wonderful people at This is Fake DIY for documenting just how gay we are for each others bands. Anyway, we've got lots of exciting news coming up in Dynamo land. In no particular order next month we're moving out of our house, releasing a New Bones/New Bones RAC Remix 7", playing a secret show in our basement, and this guy is getting married! Over and Out - Caw!!!

When I say "Sophista", you say "Funk"

2009-03-28T18:31:00.000-07:00

Oops!

2009-03-28T12:05:00.000-07:00

5 days into this tour and we still haven't morphed into Passion Pit. People in Rochester are apparently pretty pissed about that.

Olive Garden, then Syracuse. Let's do this.

Catsized

2009-03-27T17:36:00.000-07:00

The travel plaza on I-90 by Buffallo, New York has a walkway that is built over the interstate and the entire place smells like clothes that have soiled from soaking in the washer too long before drying. We pulled over here to urinate and get coffee and swap out drivers, and this tour's rotation puts me in shotgun and Aaron in the driver's seat. Griffin has taken over my most recent spot in the far back bench seat of the van right in front of our personal belongings and the wooden wall that separates us from our gear. This is the most comfortable seat to nap in, and one obtains this coveted position in the van as a reward for finishing a driving shift.

We woke up this morning in Ann Arbor, Michigan in a giant, almost Victorian house that was probably home to a fraternity in the recent past. A fellow named Sean had invited us to stay over before our set was even finished. The conversation went like this:

Me: Thanks a lot for watching us, we have CD's and shirts and records in the back. Oh, and we need a place to stay tonight.
Him: You can stay at my place!
Me: Oh yeah?
Him: Yeah, I live in a mansion!

We're on tour with Ra Ra Riot and our new friends Cut Off Your Hands. COYH is from New Zealand, and they prove that being a sweet dude is a universal concept. The show last evening in Ann Arbor was decent. It was at a dive bar called The Blind Pig whose claim to fame is that Nirvana and Tad played there together once. The show actually sold out, but we couldn't seem to crack the audience. I did the math and if everybody who came to the show put a dime into a bucket and donated it to us, we would have made more money than what we made on merch last night. Oh well, what can you do?

Douchiest Cut Off Your Hands fan moment at the merch table last night: A woman asked their drummer Brent, "Where's Murray, your band manager?" After Brent made it apparent that he had no idea what she was talking about she continued, "oh, come on. You're from New Zealand. You HAAAAVE to love Flight of the Conchords!"

Why this is lame: Yes, she was just trying to be affable, and she just mentioned Flight of the Conchords because they're a band and they're from New Zealand and that's all she knows about bands and New Zealand. But it would be the equivalant of somebody assuming that she likes Meg White's drumming style because she's a chunky woman from the Detroit area.

Douchiest Ra Ra Riot fan moment at the merch table last night: A dude leaned all the way over all of our merch while Alexandra and Rebecca from RRR stood at the other end of the table yelling "Kayla!!! Kayla!!! Kayla!!!" After about 20 seconds of this he turned to look at me and COYH's merch girl Sarah and asked "Is that chick's name Kayla?" without specifying which girl he was referring to, to which we replied "No" to which he asked "Then what's her name?" to which we replied "Well, it's not Kayla" to which he replied "Oh man, if I don't get her name then I'll NEVER have a chance" and moped away from the table.

Why this is lame: Say, hypothetically, that he had gotten Rebecca's name right (sorry Rebecca) and leaned over to scream "REBECCA!!!" while she was busy selling merch to the giant line of people that had surrounded the table. Was he expecting her to turn towards him and lock eyes and stop what she's doing because she's just fallen madly in love? Was he thinking that maybe, just maybe, the ladies in Ra Ra Riot have just been waiting for the right intoxicated bro in a backwards baseball cap to sweep them off of their feet by yelling their name the loudest? He'll never know though, because he blew it by randomly pulling "Kayla" out of his ass. Sorry, bro.

Don't just stand there...

2009-03-24T16:09:00.000-07:00

Gas stations are a huge part of our daily routine on tour. These daily stops provide us with much needed fuel, coffee, and snacks, but also serve as a great source of entertainment. I always seem to come home and find the only photos I took are of ridiculous things at gas stations and incredible sandwiches I ate. Aside from being funny in and of themselves, I think the absurd trinkets available at a lot of gas stations speak volumes about America. I mean, where else would someone think this stuff up and go the trouble of mass producing it. More importantly, who do they think would (unironically) buy it?
Either way, I hope you think these are as funny as I do.

Seriously, who buys these things?

For a brief ironic moment we contemplated using band money for these things.

This is the newest shirt I have seen in a line of Christian parody shirts available at gas stations. I guess they must be selling well because I've begun to see them more frequently, yet I've never actually seen someone (outside a gas station) that was wearing one.

Nobody wants your stupid Cub's merchandise.

hahahaha

Tonight we are in Bloomington,IN (for the first time!) for the first of 5 shows with Ra Ra Riot. Tomorrow we get to see our pal Dawn at Musica in Akron,OH. Hopefully I will get some decent photos of her cute kittens, assuming I do not get sidetracked being cute overloaded.

There were marigolds.

2009-03-02T09:21:00.000-08:00

Well....

It's the second day of the third month of the year and it's my first post on the blog in 2009. I guess I've been neglectful. A few months ago I kind of looked ahead at what was coming, at how intense things are going to get after our album is released, and that part of me that desires an identity outside of "dude-in-a-band" started taking over.

But now I'm sitting in our friend Liz's apartment in Brooklyn with a belly full of eggs, pancakes, and coffee half-watching Lord of the Rings. We drove all night to New York from Boston, where there was a prediction of 14 inches of snow. At about 4 AM we had to pull over at a rest area because the snow was creating that sort of low budget sci-fi movie "time warp" effect where it seemed like we weren't even moving. Then there was a total white-out and we couldn't even see the road.

We're currently out on tour with Maps and Atlases and Pattern is Movement. When I heard rumors about this tour, I kind of thought "yeah right" because it's just sort of too good to be true. But it happened, and every show has been fantastic and we get to see two of the greatest bands in the universe every night.

It's also a feel-good tour because Maps and Pattern are such kindred spirits. Both bands have a similar position as us of genre-less, sub-culture-less bands with minimal buzz. The whole package has a sort of grassroots feel, and I can't help but think that the people in attendance are true believers. There's been a lot of air-drumming.

Tonight is Manhattan, tomorrow is Brooklyn, then it's DC, then it's Hoboken, then it's Holiday Inn express continental breakfast in Indianapolis, then it's home.

Hold onto your butts

2009-02-22T23:03:00.000-08:00

"The Loud Wars" will be officially released April 28th on Vagrant Records!!!! Here is the track listing and the cover art shot by Ryan Russell.

Track listing:

01) Artifacts of Sound
02) Glaciers
03) The Novelty of Haunting
04) New Bones
05) If You Didn't Want to Know
06) Oh, the Devastation
07) Keep It Simple
08) Friendarmy
09) It's Gonna Rain
10) The Formula

Also, we're leaving Wednesday for a little quickie tour with two of our very favorite bands Maps & Atlases and Pattern is Movement. Here are the dates!

Feb 25 – Lansing, MI @ Mac’s Bar #
Feb 26 – Akron, OH @ Musica #
Feb 27 – Buffalo, NY @ Broadway Joe’s #
Feb 28 – Troy, NY @ Ground Zero *
Mar 1 – Cambridge, MA @ Middle East Upstairs # *
Mar 2 – New York, NY @ Mercury Lounge # *
Mar 3 – Brooklyn, NY @ Southpaw # *
Mar 4 – Washington, DC @ DC9 # *
Mar 5 – Hoboken, NJ @ Maxwell’s # *
# - with Maps and Atlases
* - with Pattern is Movement