Prosperous-looking Dresdeners stood cheek-by-jowl in a city park, clinking glasses of Riesling and restlessly awaiting the appearance of local heroes Die Nierentische (translation: the kidney-shaped tables). Led by longtime friends of Mark’s, Die Nierentische recently played all over the Triangle, including a memorable set at Guglhupf when lead singer Martin climbed on the patio tables [...]

The magic kingdom of Bohemia never let up its aesthetic flood: literally every direction yielded a new vista that would send Imagineers running back to their drafting boards. A wall-to-wall carpet of tourists made streets hard to navigate without a battering ram. This preponderance of non-natives also gave the city an ersatz, vacationland feel.

People packed in to hear the show, including one chemically-saturated guitar player in a green hoodie who kept trying to grab my mic and scream about Kurt Cobain and Elliot Smith. He seemed poised to join their ranks, and soon. Then he settled down onto the floor at the base of my mic stand and proceeded to pour a side-salad sized pile of weed onto my setlist to start sorting out the seeds.

The time has come for us to unleash our newest album, Tender Age. A few things we’d like to tell you about it before you take it into your home and your ear space:

We’re about to head out on the road again, even braving the wild and woolly Canadian border. Hopefully, this time our papers will be, as they say, in order. As we all try to get our fill of homemade meals and real beds before we leave, we’re also getting excited to see our friends in [...]

The problem with recording is always that the live energy and the ‘vibe’ that a live performance creates, gets squashed and sucked dry until you’re left with some barely recognizable artifact. It’s like translating something into Japanese and back into English: something gets lost.

We had a great time weaving around through dancing girls and a guy who had some early hip-hop moves while looking like a cross between jed clampett and ziggy stardust

When we arrived at the Canadian border for our Montreal and Toronto gigs, we had no idea that we were about to enter a different dimension. The ponytailed, Kevlar-clad Canadian immigration officer seemed nice enough as she took our documents and paperwork and started her online research, but two hours later, as she conferred with one colleague after another without ever looking our way, things weren’t looking so smooth.

The Mercury Lounge show last night in NYC was ‘a good ole time,’ as our fearless organist likes to say. Chris Stamey (along with Anton Fier, Mr. Matt Brandau, and a short cameo from me (Django)) opened up and melted faces with his Ornette-Coleman-meets-Richard-Thompson guitar leads. Then TOC played and it was great having people [...]

On Friday, we played the gorgeous new Brooklyn venue, Bell House. Skippy, who runs it (and also runs union hall), always makes us feel at home, and Friday was no exception. We did an early show, together with my old friend chris moore (moore n sons - check em out!), and then there was a [...]