africadabra - a simon dawes blog

The good old days

2007-09-20T17:43:00.000-07:00

I guess until Matt gets his computer fixed, we can't get that last set of pictures posted. BUT I have something that can tide us all over, (especially all of us who miss Darren so much).

http://www.luminomagazine.com/CityVision/simondawes.php

Enjoy!
-taylor

Incublog 6

2007-09-06T15:06:00.000-07:00

Hey weeples,

I apologize for not updating you sooner. My computer broke about a week and a half ago. I currently write you from Blake's computer. The severe malfunction (and possible demise) of my computer means that I have no access to the photos I've taken since the last blog. I feel terrible about this, but I feel more awful about the fact that I may have lost all my stuff, including movies, music, documents, and massive amounts of invaluable pornography. But I won't lay that burden on you guys. Hopefully sometime over the next week, once I get home (after they surely fix my computer), I'll be able to post those pictures.

So, since the visual aspect of the tour blogging is currently postponed, I think I'll save the journaling for when those pictures can actually go up. For your own peace of mind though, Wylie's leg is slowly healing, and we're all barely surviving. I've dropped down to a measly 87 lbs., Taylor contracted polio, and Blake lost his arm to leprosy. But Wylie's leg is healing--thank God. We're home soon, and we're all very excited. Excited to get home to mom's sweet cookin', excited to get home to our bestest friends. Excited to get home to TAYLOR'S ACOUSTIC SHOW ON SEPT. 9 -- YOU SHOULD ALL BE THERE EVEN IF YOU'RE NOT FROM LOS ANGELES!

There's not much else to say right now. I'm sorry once again for not letting you guys know what was up sooner. I promise I'll get the last pics up as soon as possible, and I promise some sort of sweet surprise for the last blog. Thanks guys for reading and responding all along; we miss you all already.

Forever young,
Mati

NOT an Incublog (but a blog nonetheless)

2007-09-06T09:57:00.001-07:00

Hey everyone, it's Taylor this time. As you can tell by the wonderful job matt is doing, we're all really enjoying ourselves out here. We only have 3 shows left. Our last one being this Saturday in San Diego. BUT, the night after on September 9th at Tangier in Hollywood, I'm gonna play an acoustic set. I think it'll be a good way to come back home. So anyone in LA and 21+, please come say hello. Hope to see everyone.
-taylor

Incublog FIVE: A cross-country discourse (or a lesson in mindlossnessness)

2007-08-19T12:05:00.001-07:00

EDIT: ***NEW DISCLAIMER***
After reviewing the posted blog, it appears as if the pictures were resized to too large a size to be fully viewed on this blog. It doesn't necessarily hinder your ability to tell what's going on in most cases, but it's kind of a bummer. On a good note, though, there are lots of pictures, so enjoy!!

---Begin---

Hey peoples!

I apologize. I am sorry. My soul has shriveled, my mind hath flown. This blog has taken far too long to dribble out of my head like the other molasses that's in there. Matt, Griffin, Chris ™ and Taylor, have begun their cross-country drive from New York to Canada. For those of you not in the know, this tour’s routing has forced us (them) to venture across more than 3,000 miles of land and water in order for us to arrive at our destination within the next five days. Incubus and the tour production staff, though, fly home over this time for a short vacation. BUT NOT THE DAWES! Well, actually, half the Dawes do, while the other half lose their noodles. Here’s what’s up:

Wylie hurt his leg something awful. Or it might be his back. We don’t really know yet. He’s seen doctors, chiropractors, masseuses, MRI doctors, dermatologists, etc. etc. etc. to find out what’s gone on with his leg, and the diagnosis is still uncertain. To convey to you all a better understanding of his condition, Wylie has a difficult time doing almost anything. It pains him to walk (he cannot run), bend down, sit, lie down, sit in a chair, sit in his row, lay in his row, be, live, eat, use the restroom, talk, think, do. Makesaythink. Poor guy. Anyway, long story short, he is staying over these next five days at his grandparents’ apartment in New York City in an attempt to rehabilitate himself. Don’t worry, he’s not just bailing on us: he has physical therapy appointments. And don’t worry again, because he’s flying over to meet us in Canada and finish out the tour. Our hopes and prayers go out to you, gimp.

Blake has undisclosed business going on at home. Even we don’t know why he’s there, really. He will also be flying over to Canada to meet us for the rest of the tour. We wish him luck with whatever it is he is doing back in Los Angeles.

And now for the saddest of parts… Darren (Sauce, Sauz, D-Monay, Money), the man you (we) all came to know and love has left us for good. He came out on tour to help out, and now he’s got his own business to attend to (i.e. living it up in a sweet pad in East Village, NYC. Anyone who wants to know his address and phone number, just ask). Darren, it was a great four weeks. You will be missed, brother.
An homage:

Now now, children – dab those tears, right those frowns, for with every death, we see rebirth. In this case, we see it in young drum slayer, Griffin Goldsmith (Spicy Griff, Griff the Stiff, The Griff, The Stiff), kin of the infamous Taylor Goldsmith. He is 16 years old and full of rotten potential. Unfortunately, he is too young to permanently join the band, but perhaps someday a dream will come true. This is the Griff, do you think they come from the same parents? You be the judge:

Okayokayokayokayokayokayokayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy.
So now you’re all pretty much caught up with what’s down. We’re driving in a 12’x8’ van across the country. It sucks, but it’s great. Books, Pokémon, Movies, letters… These are the things that keep us occupied. Now, going back to the future…

Last place we left off was our glorious camping trip in Ohio. Greg got shot in the testicle, we rode down a midnight river, trees were speaking. After this adventure, we continued on back into normalcy over to Columbus, OH. Here, the band did a nice little interview.

They also played a set!

That’s all I got from Columbus. Sorry dudes.

But, from there, we continued to Cleveland, which was even a bit more rocking.
Here is one of the things of which the city is most proud: a mediocre (at best) baseball team. Ha! Got you, suckers!:

Cleveland had a pretty cool ampitheatre. It sat right next to a large body of water. This is what it looked like:

This patio area is also where we happened to partake in our ritualistic cigar-smoking session. Here’s what we look like:

I’m the one sitting in the empty seat.

As for the set, here’s what that looked like:

That's for you, Mr. Man who wanted more performance pictures!

And, for extraneous enjoyment, here’s Mike’s guitar rack. He sure loves his SGs:

After the show, I went to sit on the patio area you saw earlier, and I snapped a picture of some of the skyline at night. It was really pretty:

Oh yea, and here’s SD playing with Incubus during their cover of “Stand By Me:”

MOVING ON!

…To Toronto, Canada. Don’t worry, I’ll tell you aalllll aboooott it.
First of all, this venue was really cool. Their backstage area was almost as big as the performance area itself. We got a really cool dressing room, and the catering company brought us loads of cool Canadian-inspired novelty toys for us to play with. Here’s the dressing room, along with a picture of the silly toys they brought us:

This place also had a really cool patio thing outside of our dressing room, which overlooked a little harbor:

And in the “game room,” they had a pool table, and José and Kilmore from Incubus set up their XBOX station in there.

Oh yea, oh yea! Simon Dawes also had a little interview done while in Canada, but more importantly, one of the interviewers informed us on something that now seems rather questionable. Let’s take a poll. Who here believes that this person’s biological father is black?

This person tried to make this claim (he even showed us a picture of his dad). It became the consensus of the band that this poor kid’s mother had been lying to him his entire life. What do you guys think? I really don’t know what to believe, though I’m leaning in the way of doubt.

Here are some photos from the Toronto show:

After Toronto, we had to head over to New Hampshire. This was quite a drive, both positively and negatively. For one, it was long. Real long. However, it was also really beautiful. We drove through parts of upstate New York and Vermont, and most of the time, it was gorgeous. Here are some photos of the scene, and a little town through which we drove:

Once we got to New Hampshire, Chris finally found his prayer spot. He loves that money. Please don't ask me what he's actually doing, because I have no idea.

Here are some photos from the NH performance:

Here’s a nice man-man love shot of Blake and Mike in a warm leg embrace after the show.

And another cigar session:

-----------Day 3 of blogging----------------
After New Hampshire, we made a hell of a trek down to Philadelphia. We had a hilarious dressing room that looked like some kid's musty basement-room from the 1970s. Tie-Dye curtains over the windows, fake wood walls - it was great. Here are some photos from there:

After our FIRST Philly show, Wylie, Darren, Taylor and I decided we would take an hour and a half train ride out to Neeeewww Yoooorrkk City. Wylie and Darren went early, and Taylor and I went later. Here are a few pictures of the 30th Street train station in Philadelphia:

And here are a few photos from the train:

We got in late that night, so not much happened, but the next day we went around and checked out the city:

We also met up with Julian from The Morning Benders (he and Chris were there mastering their record; quite a happy coincidence!). We all went to a Japanese tea parlor, but had to leave after they informed us that there was a $15.00 minimum per person. It was cool, but screw that place!

And here's Darren's apartment - so cool.

That day, Taylor, Darren and I went to a park and relaxed. On the way there, we discovered a little taste of home: good ol' "Rader Joe's":

We also ran into two of our favorite movie characters of all time: Indiana Jones and Michaelangelo the Ninja Turtle:

After the SECOND Philly show, we all went into NYC for some good times. SD had a show at Jone's Beach, which was just a ridiculous venue. It pretty much sits on the water. Here's Wylie standing outside of our dressing room after just having caught a fish with a spear he fashioned out of a piece of bamboo and the blade from his pocket knife:

Here's what the venue looked like empty:

I feel badly about this, but I didn't get any digital photos from the Jone's Beach show. I ran out of batteries and a completely inopportune time. BUT I got some in time to document the rest of our times in New York. Here are some of those:

Check out these firemen and Darren!

We spent three days in New York, and on the third day, we got some really great breakfast at this bagel place. Check THESE things out:

Later that day, we got to go to Central Park, and I got to ride the subway for the first time in my life! Our friends Ingrid and Ashley took us around. Thanks so much guys!

Check out these sweet kicks:

While in Central Park, we ran into this idiot:

But, he was right next to a merry-go-round, so we rode that. Here's the Griff sitting next to me. It was a totally almost homo-erotic moment. I felt like a kid again.

On coming out of Central Park, we also encountered the John Lennon Memorial. Here's a picture of that, if you haven't seen it:

We also passed by the hotel outside of which John was shot. It was pretty crazy. Here's we are standing outside of the entrance.

After this, we went up to Ashley's apartment, which is in this enormous 60 floor apartment building. Her roof has a roof garden, and just looking through the bars over the edge is scary. Here's what that was like:

And this was about the end of our time in NYC.

AALLLLLLLLLLLRIGGGHHHHHHTTT............ So, this blog has taken me a couple days to write. I started it in the van on the way over here about 4 days ago, and now we're just outside of Seattle at Taylor's uncle's house. A few things that are really nice about being here:
Homecooked meals
Clean, comfortable beds
Lots of trees
Not a van
Clean air
Baseball Game
Good Fish
Rain
Cold Weather
Rain
Cold Weather
Cold Weather
Good food
Taylor's Parents
Awesome Dogs

We went to a Mariner's game, and that was really fun. Griffin knows how to trash-talk, I'll tell you that much. This place is just covered in trees--it's insanity. I've never seen so many trees! I'll post photos of life here on the next blog, but I feel like I should get this one up for now. I really apologize about the length of time it's taken me to get this thing up, and I do realize it's not necessarily the best blog yet, but I'm trying, I really am!

Anyway, like I've said before, you guys are awesome. I can't even BELIEVE that we got 44 comments on that last blog. The band is so happy that they're thinking of upping my payrate from 10 dollars a day to 15! You guys are great, thanks so much, I hope you've enjoyed! Thanks for sticking with us!!

Forever yours,

Matia

Incublog 4

2007-08-04T12:41:00.000-07:00

Friends, it's time for a fresh update.

First of all, I want to thank you all for providing a record-breaking (I'm being serious) number of comments on that last blog. Africadabra has never seen anything like it. I feel honored and revitalized! This blog is going to be especially long and enjoyable, featuring lots and lots of pictures as a gift to you guys. Let's try to crack 19 comments and go for 20! I know we can do it.

I think I left us off in Detroit where we spent some time at Orley's manor. If I said Indianapolis, I meant Detroit, because NEXT up was Indianapolis. I have to say Indianapolis, you were quite humid. Miserably humid, in fact. I mean, humidity is humidity, and being from the west coast, it is difficult to appreciate this weird water-air stuff. However, also being cigar smokers, we found a new appreciation for the humidity, as it greatly aids in keeping the cigars from drying out. So, thanks for that.

When we arrived at the venue, it turned out there was going to be somewhat of a delay, so Darren decided to take a peek (not a pee, sorry) off a nearby bridge. Here's what it looked like:

While Darren was checking out the scene, Blake was checking out of reality (this will never get old).

After waiting around a while, we decided to go into town, which, once we got there, we realized was only really comprised of a few tall buildings and a large mall. It was around here that we not only found our cigars, but a few new pairs of shoes for the guys as well. Here's Wylie with his new boat shoes that he's really stoked on. If you ask me, they'll be the new trend in no time.

Here's a view of one of the streets from a large window in the mall:

We noticed a few funny things while walking around downtown. First, they had these really weird "walk" signs. They weren't inanimate hands or white cut-outs of people in walking position, but rather, they were full-size, animate digi-people walking in place. It's hard to describe, but here's what it looked like:

Imagine that thing in motion.

Also, they had horse carriages!

...And homeless guitar players...

So, like I said, after getting our cigars, we got back in the van. But, upon entering, Darren hit his knee on something and flipped out. Quite literally, in fact.

Poor guy.

So, once we got back to the venue, I managed to get a few funny pictures of Darren and Wylie. Just enjoy, I guess:

Then, they started playing, and here are some pictures from there. It was really weird, almost the entire middle section was empty until much later on in the night. But as you can tell, the general admission areas were quite full. Also, check out the skyline in the background. Pretty cool, eh?

For anyone who didn't know how hard Darren rocks:

A Blake Mills solo. Like his funny sleepy-faces, these never get old:

And I just needed a picture of Wylie playing:

SO THAT'S IT! Thanks for reading and... No, HELL no! There's much, much more. From here, we went to Ohio. My camera was dead at the time, so I don't have any pictures, but it's okay, because I got some batteries in time to document all the fun that happened after our first Ohio show.

The reason the next bit of time was so much fun was because we (Simon Dawes, Incubus, and Production) all went on a big camping/rafting trip. After the Ohio show, we all busted out to Wal-Mart to get some goodies for the following day. Some people bought wiffle balls and bats, some got soccerballs, some got fold-up chairs, and some bought air-soft pellet guns with which they could shoot each other. Invading the Wal-Mart at 2:30 in the morning was quite funny. This superstore was located somewhere in the boondocks, so of course the few customers and employees inside were quite shocked to find a fleet of super-energized/excited weirdos raiding the store. And it was quite a raiding - no lie. Here are some pictures to prove it:

Wylie and Darren entering the store:

Then Taylor:

Now we can get into some new introductions...
Ladies and dudes, meet Tim, sound tech:

Trew homie.

Another bromie, Michael the monitor man. 10-4 good buddy.

Here's Greg and Shawn. Greg works front of house, and Shawn is Jose from Incubus' drum tech.

Oh yea, you guys have to meet Dale. He's a bus driver for one of the production crews. This is one funny man. It's great playing dice with him because I think he has a difficult time adding up the numbers. He also has a tattoo on the inside of his arm of a skull holding a smoking gun with "Death" written in the smoke.

I told him I wanted to take his picture for our blog and he said "Oh, he already has my number." Somebody tell me what that means?

Then, of course, you have to meet Old Man McGee. He did not get out of this thing the entire time we were in there. He even had people get things down from the shelves for him.

In addition to many other things purchased, everybody was looking for the perfect boating hat. Whose was best? You decide.

This is Warndahl, if you don't remember:

We were really surprised to find Lil' Jon in the building. YeeeAAAAaaawww!!

Here's me Wylie and Darren:

No, I'm kidding. That's Ben, the bass player from Incubus. Great dude.

While everybody else was off finding things they wanted to bring camping, Taylor became well attached to a certain, pretty bike.

He learned to ride in that damned Wal-Mart.

That concludes the Wal-Mart excursion. Afterward, we continued on to the campsite and hit the hay at about 5:00 in the morning. Here are some photos of and around our cabin that I got the next morning.

This is how we roll!

Some of the dudes decided to make their way across the river that morning. It was a bit early for my taste.

Now on to some of the day's festivities. But first, here's Sherra. She's Incubus' super-cool private chef on this tour. She was kind enough to bring out all of her supplies and food and whatnot to serve us all. You're the best Sher!

Some of the foods:

This was a game that took up a lot of our time that day. It's called "cornhole." Don't ask me why. Figure out your own technique - it's harder than it looks!

This is the hole into which you have to throw your beanbag from about 30 feet away.

Later, here were Ben and Kil loading up their shotguns. These things were way more powerful and accurate than the automatic ones the rest of the campers got.

This was the result:

Kilmore ended up shooting young Greg (there's a young and an old Greg) in the testicle from about 20 feet. It looked and sounded incredibly painful. If you're wondering, Greg's made a full recovery.

This is the point at which I apologize for not having any more camping/rafting photos, but things just got a little too hectic. I hope that you've gotten a good sense of what it was like out there. Oh yea, and we took a full-moon, midnight raft ride down an almost stagnant river. For me, it was almost a spirit quest.

I hope you're all doing fantastically. It's time for me to go to bed. You know what to do.

Serenity,
Matt

Incublog 3

2007-07-27T23:30:00.000-07:00

Hey my friend-pal-buddies!

Sorry it's been a couple days, but much has happened, and accordingly, we've been very busy. The good news for YOU guys is that there's quite a bit to blog about.

So, where did I leave off? I think something like Omaha? Or Iowa? Or wherever that crazy festival was? Anyway, I'm not really sure what city exactly followed, but I think it was Minneapolis, Minnesotta. Correct me if I'm wrong. We had some good times in Minneapolis, I must say. Probably the most notable event was Darren's transformation from what he felt was somesort of a metaphorical caterpillar to a beautiful, grown-up, new hair-cutted butterfly. Here's a real-life video for y'all to catch the low-down.

What a crazy night. Here are some funny pictures of that evening if you can't watch or don't feel like watching the video:

And then here's all of us. But you won't be seeing the author!

Let's see... What else...
Oh, we got to walk around town a little bit, and we ran into this really, really cool bookstore. I forget what it's called, otherwise I'd advertise for them. Here's Taylor in one of the knooks:

Also, there were two book dogs in the store with whom I pretty much fell in love. Here they are (they aren't related, if you wanted to know):

There was also a book bird in there, with whom Darren tried to become a little too friendly. Let's just say he learned that male birds do not have external sexual organs. I was loving the pups, but not in the way that D was loving that bird.

What next, what next...
AH YES! The show. Even though you can't really tell, here's Taylor and Blake on stage with Incubus, soundchecking with "Stand By Me," a cover that Incubus has begun to integrate into their set.

And what a fabulous audience! Here are some of you. If you'd like to have yourself removed from the picture, please don't sue, just send us a nice little comment:):

But really, we are so appreciative of your guys' enthusiasm and your contribution to keeping us alive and fed on this tour. You were awesoooommmeee!!
Here are a few other pics from there:

Here are some buddies of ours that were sitting sidestage. They are in a really cool punk-metal band called 2cents. Be sure to check them out if you're into that kind of music.

Next, we rode on out of there into Chicago, Illinois. SD played at a venue that was right next to the water, just outside of the city, but you could see the skyline behind the stage. It was really cool:

I saw a contraption with which I was highly unfamiliar while I was out and about in the city. Perhaps one of you could explain to me what this is and what it does:

Now here are some SD pics before/during the show:

Also, some sort of media company was around to interview SD after the show. Apparently, it was a very compelling interview.

After leaving Chicago, we were on our way to Indiana. The show went very well--here's a photo:

Despite a wonderful audience and a great performance, what made Indianapolis so great was a friend of Wylie's (and now of the rest of us) named Orley. He came to the show and offered us a free night's stay at his house. He informed us that there was plenty of room for all of us, but we wouldn't realize the magnitude of what he was saying until he actually brought us over.

I don't have any pictures of the night we spent there, but I do have a few of the next morning, which will hopefully provide you with an idea of how amazing this house truly is.

First of all, the house is three stories tall. On the top floor, there are something like 8 bedrooms. The hallways seem to extend as you walk down them, almost like some sort of ghost-fun house. This was the first time I had ever gotten lost on one floor of a house before. Here's a photograph of one of the hallways on the bottom level of the house.

This is Wylie sitting at the far end of one of the many dining tables set throughout the house:

Here's Taylor's "Imagine" moment, playing a piano by a large window overlooking part of the yard.

Now getting into the amenities of the house, which were obviously the most mind-blowing to me.
1) They had a pool table!

2) They had a movie theatre room (with automated reclining leather chairs)!

3) They had a maaaassssiiiveee front yard with a sweet firepit (see Darren and Taylor for perspective).

4) They (we) had homemade french toast (thanks, Orley's mom!).

5) They had a huge steam shower (picture not available).

6) Etc., etc.

7) Here's Orley. Thanks so much dude!

I'm not going to lie, it's taken me a couple of days to get this blog together. This stuff isn't easy! We're now in Cleveland, Ohio, and I have more pictures of the past few days to show you guys (including those from the Incubus/Simon Dawes camping trip we did yesterday on our day off). I appreciate you guys reading my entries, and I appreciate you even more when you comment in some way to let me know you're reading. I know there's gotta be more than 8 or 9 of you reading these things.

Okay pals, keep me encouranged and motivated to continue in this pursuit of photographic tourism!

Best,
Matt

P.S. Who can I bill for my advancing case of carpal-tunnel syndrome?
P.P.S.
P.P.P.S. Nadia (and whoever else cares), we have all been listening to a lot of Bonnie "Prince" Billy, Darren's listening to his jazz, I've been listening to some ambient music, Blake is listening to folky stuff as well... I'll get you a more detailed list in the upcoming blog, but I'm in a hurry now! Thanks!

VIDEO TEST!

2007-07-24T13:58:00.000-07:00

Does this work? It's the ending of The Awful Things during the Kansas City performance.

Incublog 2

2007-07-22T14:25:00.000-07:00

Hello friends, new and old!

Matthew here once again, bringing you your not-so-daily picture-tour update. Just to warn you (though it was expressed that long blogs are not so much of an issue), this will be another long one. I have lots of pictures to show you, and for your sake, hopefully less writing? Anyway, we are riding in the van right now, leaving from this crazy radio festival SD played in what we initially believed was Omaha, Nebraska, but was actually somewhere in Idaho.
Here is the bill; kind of funny, maybe?:

There are seemingly thousands and thousands of cars on the highway currently static on their way to the venue from which we are leaving. We have been driving for almost 10 minutes and the line of cars is ever-extending. Hopefully they’ll make it in time for Incubus, though it looks like they’d have a better chance if they just got out of their cars and walked. It’s that bad—like that R.E.M. video for “Everybody Hurts.”

Now, going back to a few days ago, here are some pictures from a venue just outside of Salt Lake City, Utah...
The pre-show lapdance:

Taylor singing to a rained-and-thundered-upon crowd:

Now on to that place which I was most excited to tell you about: Red Rocks, Colorado. What an amazing place, what an amazing crowd. I'm going to post these pictures only so you get an idea of what this place actually is! Man, it's crazy!
This is a rock arch you drive under to get to the venue:

Look at the people and cars to get a little perspective on how big these rock-boulders are:

This was the backdrop to the stage!:

As we pulled up, it looked just like Woodstock, hackie sacks and all (no offense, I fucking love hackie sacks). The single road leading up to the amphitheatre was completely packed, as you may be able to see from the picture.

Here's Wylie signing a fan's t-shirt.

Gee whiz, what a place. Hopefully the pictures get across at least a little bit of what I’m trying to say.
I also feel somewhat obligated to mention the superb treatment provided us by the staff at Red Rocks. Everybody was so kind, the food was so delicious, the dressing rooms were so lavish (i.e. flat screen television, foods, drinks, clean bathroom, masseuse?!), etc., etc.
Here's a photo of Darren using our breathtaking bathroom:

Here's a photo of the catering (caVering) room... What the hell?

Here’s what this place looks like with one person sitting in the audience:

And this is what it looks like almost full:

And here is Simon Dawes playing to the packed theatre of 8700. You guys all rocked—it was an extremely satisfying experience. Red Rocks will live on in our hearts forever.

Perhaps this will give you a little taste of what it might be like to be on stage playing for about 8500 people... I came off stage with a pee stain all down the right leg of my pants.

We love you Colorado!

Next up was Kansas City. We love the city, we love the name of the city, and we love the fact that there are two different Kansas Cities separated by only about 40 miles, but for me, the humidity was just a little too much. It was very hot and sweaty. SD got to play on a stage that was set up in the middle of what appeared to be some sort of food square/country market type place, and that was pretty weird and kind of amazing.

Some pre-show goofiness...

Here’s Blake eating a sandwich from an Italian Deli that was in the marketplace:

Darren bought a pear nectar drink from the same place... He didn't like it much, but I really did.

As some of you may have noticed, Taylor's last blog post was titled something a little funny, a little crazy, and a little intriguing. This is Kariki (just like Hannukah, it can be spelled many different ways), minus the rules:
p.s. it's a gambling game

We play for the big stakes:

And finally, here are a few performance pictures from there. To be honest, there were a lot of people there:

AAAHHHHH!!!

Simon Dawes ACTUALLY rocked color out of existence for a moment. I was lucky enough to have captured the moment.

After playing, Taylor, Wylie and I hung around for a little bit, spoke to some people, and went out to a local bar with a couple of friends. We drank a local Kansas City beer called Boulevard, which is actually quite good. I recommend it to anybody aged 21+. Man my hands are hurting.

That leaves us up to date, having just played the festival in Idaho. Here's a picture from the show:

That’s it for now! Feel free to write and talk about those things of which you’d like to see more or less and perhaps I can adjust accordingly.

Dictated but not read,
Matt

Simon Dawes Tour-Picture Blog (Incublog)

2007-07-20T16:07:00.000-07:00

Hello Simon Dawes-O- Blog-O-Sphere, this is fellow Simon Dawesian Matt Jacoby. I have decided to direct my travels in the way of the Simon Dawes/Incubus tour, taking photographs, lidding amplifiers, coiling cables, driving van, class clowning. I am here to inform you that I will be your tour guide for this... tour, updating you with photographic (and hopefully sometimes videographic) blog entries that will aid in letting you guys know how this whole shindig is going. Of course, the band members will be doing their share of blogging too, it's just my responsibility to provide you with some kind of visual storyboard. I'll try to do my best. This blog, specifically, will be a long one, as we have a bit of catching up to do, but bear with me; it will be fun!
By the way, I'm taking lots of nice photographs with my film camera, but I can only upload photos from my exceedingly sub-par digital camera until I get some developing done back in LA. I apologize about the poor quality.

Okay, so where to start, where to start... We began in Arizona, for which I had no camera. It was fun, but we were still figuring our stuff out, getting used to the overwhelmingly lovely treatment we're getting from everybody on this tour. We had two LA Dates, and I got one measly picture of Taylor sitting in a chair in what was actually a really cool dressing room.

The Greek in Los Angeles is really cool. If you can ever make it there, you should do it.

Next, we ventured up to our home away from home - Berkeley, California. We have some really great friends up there, namely the dudes of The Morning Benders, and of course Cameron, who really helped make it happen for us up there. Thanks Cameron!

Here's Julian, the drummer, of The Morning Benders. Say hi to Julian!

SD got to play to an almost packed house in Berkeley; what a pleasure! Somewhere in the range of 8000 people I believe? What a sight. Way to go Berkeley! Way to get hyphy!
Our stay in berkeley was great, as usual, but if you asked Wylie, I think he'd tell you that something made his time extra special:

Here's that sweet little kitten up close:

That little kitty slept on Wylie's head the first morning, but after waking up, Cameron informed Wylie that as the cat was still young, it didn't fully know how to avoid stepping in its own feces, so he often had poop-feet. Needless to say, he wasn't sleeping on Wylie's head the next morning.

Off to Tahoe, the first venue for which I have a picture of the audience; and what a lovely audience they were. But first, some random van pictures.
If the music thing doesn't pull through, Wylie is considering becoming a professional Tetris Grandmaster.

Some of the dudes:

Oh yea everybody, this is Darren (Sauce, DMonay, D-Sauce, Sauz): the outstanding drummer that has come out for this tour. What a homie. Say hi to Darren if you see him!

And here's that lovely Tahoe audience:

And SD playing for them(/you?)...

Whew.. I'm getting tired. But we must move on! We're almost done for ths entry! Next, was Salt Lake City, Utah. I still have to upload performance pictures from there, but here are a few fun ones to hold you over.

So, on the way out to Salt Lake, there are these massive plains of salt/white sand, and Blake had to pee, so...

Crazy, right?

Here's Darren doing his wussy warm-ups, for which we give him a hard time every single day. He's happy when he does his warm-ups.

And then finally, to leave you on a really happy note, look for the secret message in this picture (Hint: check out the sign behind Darren and Wylie, we thought it was funny).

Oh yea, I can't forget to introduce you guys to Chris, our well-kempt, overly-organized, germaphobic tour manager. We give him his own bed for obvious reasons. It was pitch black in the room when I took this picture, and he was out cold. Thank God for flash and for Chris' unconditional tendency to do to a bed only what a tornado, or perhaps the Tazmanian Devil, could.

Okay folks, thanks for reading/looking. I'll be back tomorrow with some more shots (some REALLY, REALLY cool ones from Red Rocks, Colorado, where SD played to a packed house of 8500 people. That place is just insane. Thanks Colorado!. I promise to make these entries shorter from now on, I just felt obligated to develop some sort of background. Also, I promise some more performance pictures from now on. Sorry!

See you later and I hope you've enjoyed your tour so far!
Here we come rest of America!
Matt

CARRIKI!

2007-07-20T12:05:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone.

I'm in a hotel in Kansas City, Missouri waiting til we need to drive down to the venue. These shows have been so amazing. We've been playing the most amazing venues, particularly Red Rocks in Denver and the Greek Theatre in Berkeley. Even if you're not from those areas, everyone should somehow find a way to see a show at those venues. There is nothing better. Also, when we played in Red Rocks, Dylan was playing the very next night, so obviously that contributed to the whole experience; reminding myself that he'd be standing in the exact same spot I stood in a matter of hours!

Our friend Matt Jacoby, who has come on this whole tour with us is gonna start writing in these blogs along with us. He has been helping us with gear, but more importantly he's been taking a lot of good photos and he's gonna start posting them on here. Now that we've sort of found or rhythm on this tour, I'm certain we'll be on here writing a lot more.

Here's our current set list:

Love is After Me
Save Your Ticket
Wilderness
Peace in the Valley
Awful Things
History of my Life
Blood and Guts

The majority of them are new ones mainly because when we get back from this tour, we wanna get that second record MADE. This tour has served as a real nice set up for that.

Also, we've been adding a lot of people to the email list and we're gonna start making that a lot more active. So if any of you blog readers are NOT on the email list, go to the myspace ..... www.myspace.com/simondawes ..... and there's a little link to sign up. And then we'll have yet another means of communication at our disposal.

Write back - I'll be reading and responding...promise.

-taylor

daytrotter

2007-07-06T16:00:00.000-07:00

This is finally the blog you've all been waiting for. When we were in Austin Texas for SXSW we went down to the daytrotter studios to record some stuff live for their website. We thought it'd be really fun to ONLY do new songs for it. Something to listen back to I guess. And now they've posted all five on their website:

http://www.daytrotter.com/article/876/simon-dawes-conservation-of-blood-and-guts-with-a-bow-on-top

If you read that page, close to the top you'll see the little button that'll take you to the songs page. I hope you like it all.

And also, that is the first time I've ever seen a painting of myself, so you can imagine how exciting this is for me.

OTHER NEWS:
- TOMORROW'S THE WEDDING
- THE DAY AFTER IS THE FIRST INCUBUS SHOW IN ARIZONA
- TUESDAY AND WEDNESDAY ARE THE LA INCUBUS DATES
- THURSDAY WE LEAVE TO SEE THE REST OF YOU FOR THE NEXT TWO MONTHS

Everyone comment back letting us know if you liked the tunes.

I hope you're all well.
-taylor

The Wedding Band

2007-06-27T01:21:00.000-07:00

Hi.

So, first and foremost, go look at our friend's band Chief. www.myspace.com/chieftheband They're based out of new york but they've been in LA so we've gotten to see a couple shows in the last two weeks and I think you'd all really love it. We hope to be playing shows with them soon very soon.
I was thinking about it and it's really great that it feels like a lot of bands and writers are coming from the same place right now. Maybe I'm only hyper sensitive because that's where we're at. But with Chief, our friends in Delta Spirit, or our good friend Robert Francis (who has a record coming out soon on which our beloved Wylie plays some bass on), we all seem to be drawn to and drawing from the same pool. Here are some records that might help you know exactly what I mean....

Our Mother The Mountain - Townes Van Zandt
Everyone Knows This is Nowhere - Neil Young & Crazy Horse
Frisco Mabel Joy - Mickey Newbury
I Wanna See The Bright Lights Tonight - Richard & Linda Thompson

Maybe not. You might not see what I'm talking about at all. But at the very least, those are all great records.

We've been real busy with learning cover songs. We've been asked to be the wedding band a good friend's wedding and we have a list of 25+ songs to learn. The process has been so good for us, learning how different people approach the instruments and such, so we've been having a great time, but as you could imagine, it's been a lot of work for us. That's my justification for not blogging recently, so deal with it.

Also, tour's starting soon. Everyone have their tickets?
-taylor

From Headquarters at Debra Avenue

2007-06-11T18:55:00.000-07:00

So, after not writing a blog in a long time, I had assumed that perhaps we had lost some of you readers. And then to my surprise, 22 comments and counting on that last blog. You were here all along! I should have never doubted you. Hopefully someday soon it'll be 500 times that.

Also, I read that we have a total of 3 UK fans that read our blog. A small number perhaps, but from what I know of them...they're fierce and as long as they keep telling people, and they keep telling people to tell people, it becomes exponential. That's the whole idea.

For news....

For everyone 21+ in LA, come to spaceland this Wednesday to see the Morning Benders. They're bass player couldn't make the trip so I get to sub in. I'm sure most of you have heard them already, but their music is wonderful.

Also, for anyone who hasn't heard or doesn't own the song we did for the Spiderman 3 soundtrack, it's available for download here....

http://mainstreamisntsobad.blogspot.com/2007/05/web-slinging-songs.html

Note: Anyone who makes that download, has to make a promise to his/herself that they will eventually buy it, or find some sort of way to contribute to Simon Dawes financially as payment.

I couldn't think up too much else for news other than we are thoroughly enjoying our new home and getting ready for the tour with incubus which is sneaking up on us, it seems. Do you all have your tickets already?

Finally, again, everyone in LA, keep June 17th open. We're gonna be playing at Little Radio. It's a during the day kind of thing with a water slide. It's clearly going to be a lot of fun. When I get more info, I promise to post it. Talk to you soon.

-taylor

Prose in my Grief (yet another fine suggestion)

2007-06-04T10:51:00.000-07:00

Hi. I'm sitting in our friend Chris Chu of the Morning Benders' kitchen up in Berkeley. Everyone else is asleep. Blake on the couch, and Wylie in his sleeping bag.

'Why didn't you mention Stuart, Taylor?'

Oh, ummm....I guess there's a lot to say. Should I get into it?

'Yes, I'm very curious.'

The beloved Stuart Johnson is no longer a member of Simon Dawes. He's had certain circumstances come up in his life which make it so that it's not possible for him to be in a band right now. He has our blessing and understanding and hope we all end up playing music together very soon. THEREFORE, we've been playing with our good friend Darren Weiss of Wires on Fire for some shows, and some shows just the three of us with a more brokendown arrangement for the songs. Once we finish these colour dates, we'll be going home and finding out who will be playing for us on the upcoming incubus tour.

We found out last night that Tahoe is one of the most beautiful areas that we've seen. You should all find time to go see it. And if you happen to make that time around July 15th, we can experience it together, being that we'll be playing there at Harvey's Amphitheatre that night.

If anyone reads the comment from the wonderfully pleasant girl Hilary fresh on our myspace...let this be my opportunity to make it known that those words about Ernest Hemingway are HERS and regardless of their being a bit of truth in him being called a 'chauvinist,' I think of him with the highest regard and even wish to somehow learn to approach, understand and enjoy life in the same way he had (minus the suicide). Okay I said it! Now I feel better.

A couple blog entries down in '3:05 AM Thursday May 3, 2007,' a girl named Patricia posts in the comments, the lyrics to "Scared of Myself" from the Spiderman Soundtrack. That was very nice of her, and it is greatly appreciated, but there is ONE minor correction. The lyric in the third line isn't "rose in my tea," it's "rose in my TEETH"...Think more along the lines of a passionate latin dance, or even Zorro. While 'rose in my tea' definitely has strong suggestions of it's own (particularly aromatic) 'rose in my teeth' is more of the feeling I was trying to get across.

I know we've been slacking off with blog entries. We've had a lot going on. But I promise that the hiatus is over and that we will definitely talk very soon.

taylor

Ash-piring Directors in the May-king

2007-05-22T02:23:00.000-07:00

Chris Chu of the The Morning Benders sent this over. A first...

Blake

Oregon and Washington don't exist

2007-05-14T18:59:00.000-07:00

So, our dates with the Colour are up! - www.myspace.com/simondawes

But I guess that we aren't getting as far north as Oregon or Washington. How sorry I am. I know we're playing in Victoria, Canada. How far away is that? Everyone seems to be nicer in Canada anyway.

The picture on our myspace of our house is really our house, for all of you nonbelievers. Wylie covered up the address with the word 'perfection,' not only because he thinks so highly of his new home, but I guess he's worried about some of you gathering up your facts and finding out where the house was. I mean, even if any of you cared to come to our home, I'd be happy to see you. But I guess it's good that Wylie is better safe than sorry. He didn't include the picture of the roses that are blooming on the side of the house. When we went to inspect it before moving in, the house was in shambles. Smelled terrible, needed all new floors, needed walls to be repainted, needed all new appliances. Almost everything wrong that you could think of, but for some reason, out front, these roses looked as if they have had the most careful gardener ever:

Also, I recorded a Michael Jackson song. I hope you like it. www.recordcollectionmusic.com/SimonDawes/Ben.m4a

-taylor

3:05 AM Thursday May 3, 2007

2007-05-03T03:05:00.000-07:00

So, first and foremost....for any of you who have not counted the days, the Spiderman Soundtrack that we have a song on is now out. You can hear the whole thing at www.myspace.com/spiderman but who would only want to listen to it via myspace? Myspace doesn't play in your car stereo.

Secondly.....this Incubus tour is perhaps our biggest opportunity ever. You're going to see your unknown Simon Dawes playing for seas of people for 36 shows. Things look like they might be looking up. The shows are all posted on our myspace, so pick your city and venue and we'll see you there. Even though the venues might be bigger it doesn't mean we don't want to make sure we get to say hi to everyone....so get a hold of us beforehand and we'll make it all work.

I found some things that might interest you....we have a live set up on sony connect at http://musicstore.connect.com/custom/promos/exclusives/exclusives_landingpage.html?checkBos=false .....It costs like 5 bucks or so. Not too expensive, I'd say. Let us know what you think.

There's also an article written about us on campus circle - http://www.campuscircle.net/review.cfm?r=2981

The article is really nice but there seem to be some confused aspects....at one point he quotes me of saying 'If anybody likes the music, then I couldn't care less.' I can't imagine ANY context in which that would make any sense. I thought it was pretty funny. He also kind of confused what I was saying about my opinions as to what kind of writers Blake and I are, but otherwise, I hope you'll enjoy reading it.

Lastly, everyone in San Francisco, start clearing your schedule for May 25th now. We'll be playing with a really rad band called Nico Vega at Rickshaw Stop. 10$ and you can probably buy your tickets on their website. www.rickshawstop.com

Alright, it's 3:30 in the morning so I'm gonna go to sleep.

Comment back then I'll comment back then you'll comment back.

Taylor

Summer Tour Plans

2007-04-29T02:54:00.000-07:00

Looks like we're going to spend this summer playing shows with Incubus! Mikey, who plays guitar, is the fucking coolest. Have yet to meet the rest of the band, but all we've heard from friends is how great these dudes all are. It's pretty fucking generous of them to have us on these shows, so I don't doubt that they're even more extremely rad as people have said. We'll be covering the whole US on about 30 dates. Schedule and details to come shortly after confirmation...

Also just impulse-purchased a sickening guitar off ebay about an hour ago. I don't know what came over me, but that shit's mine now. Gotta give some guitar lessons to make some fast cash. How could I do online guitar lessons through the blog? Maybe like TABs or some shit? That could be fun. For a while.

How about that Joe Tex song on the Grindhouse Soundtrack??? Second coming of JC himself right thurr.

So here's me tonight... so dancy... so jazzed... a little richer, a little poorer...

Yep... 1:28

-Blake

The 10 west

2007-04-27T23:35:00.000-07:00

Short post with little content....

Hi, it's Taylor. For anyone in Pheonix AZ, our good friend Charlie's band, Miniature Tigers, is having their first show in that area. They're bass player couldn't make the gig so I am subbing in, so it would also be a good opportunity to reunite, or meet, if we haven't done that yet. I actually don't know where it is, but you can easily look it up on their myspace...www.myspace.com/miniaturetigers. And anyone who isn't in Pheonix, check out the myspace anyway, I think you'd like the music.

In other news, we move in to our new home in a matter of days! Expect exciting news....

taylor

Thunder Road

2007-04-21T16:03:00.000-07:00

We played our 3 dates with The Colour, which, despite how small they were, were really nice for us. Between us, The Colour and the other band on the dates with us, Delta Spirit, I can't remember a time spent with as many great players as well as great people. It seemed that we ended each set of each show with every member of every band onstage playing and singing along. With my affinity for those seemingly more family oriented records like Highway 61 Revisited, The Band's Self-Titled, or Deja Vu, I couldn't have imagined a better time.

Also, something we have not yet disclosed: we now have a tour dog. Her name is Kinglsy. On our way back from SXSW we stopped at a Dairy Queen where Stuart found a stray dog who was filthy, had some sort of wire tangled up on his head, and seemed as though she hadn't eaten in a long time. After confirming that no one at the Dairy Queen owned it, Stuart took it back in the van with him rather sneakily, being that Blake and Wylie and I were all asleep. After bringing her home and getting checked out, she's now in perfect health and all cleaned up. Stuart even puts a big red clip in her hair, which may put the credibility of the band at risk, but at least keeps her hair out of her face. Stuart, quite the fan of Wes Anderson's'The Life Aquatic', was inspired by the scene in which Dr. Steve Zissou tells his son that if he had a hand in naming him, he would've named him 'Kingsley.' I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure in the movie it was spelled with the 'E' but Stuart left it out on the dog tag, which obviously adds a whole new depth to the dog's name. A long story short....he has nowhere to put his new dog and therefore brings her on tour with us, and I will add that she has been great to have around.

While in Texas on this trip, I bought 'Nebraska' by Bruce Springsteen and lost my mind so today I bought 'Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J.' 'The Wild, The Innocent and The E Street Shuffle' and 'Darkness on the Edge of Town,' already owning 'Born in the USA' and 'Born to Run.' So I'm gonna go ahead and end this blog and get to listening. I hope to talk to and see everyone soon.

Taylor

Peter Parker's Alias Revealed....

2007-04-10T13:04:00.000-07:00

Huge news....While you get excited for the up and coming 3rd installment of the Spiderman dynasty, the soundtrack accompanying it will feature a song called 'Scared of Myself' by the band called 'Simon Dawes.'

The soundtrack features all new original material from the best bands out right now....The Flaming Lips, The Walkmen, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Wolfmother, Snow Patrol, Black Mountain, Rogue Wave and again, of course, Simon Dawes along with many others.

I wanted to post the song on the blog, but we're not allowed to so the best I could do is tell you the firs three chords which are Cm, Bb, and Fm. It's in 6/8 and the beginning of the first line is 'May I never....' Based on that information, everyone should come up with their best guess as to what the beginning of the song sounds like.

Tell all your friends that Simon Dawes has a fighting chance!

taylor

Nobody Died

2007-04-07T23:06:00.000-07:00

I just got home from rehearsal and thought, 'I haven't written in the blog in quite a long time.'

Lots to tell....

We're working on recording again. We're not gonna rush the record, but we're gonna get these songs down as they come....so it might be 6 or 7 now and maybe get the rest later. But hopefully it won't be much. How great does a short 9 or 10 song records sound? Just the real strong stuff. And as long as we keep it all coming, all of you who have an issue with short records will be getting another soon after that, so suck it up. So, we'll keep working and blog when we can, but please do get excited.

And has everyone bought the new(ish) live neil young record, Live at Massey Hall '71? If not, and you plan on remaining a fan of Simon Dawes, I want you to get it immediately On itunes or otherwise. Let me know what you think.

Taylor

Happy April

2007-04-02T02:27:00.000-07:00

One month. One more month before we move into our house in Northridge, CA. Simon Dawes. So ready.

So I was talking to Mr. Todd from Portland the other night online (I'd signed on the official Simon Dawes screen name which is "simondaweschat") and we were discussing an interesting idea for SD fans and band members...

It was along the lines of a trade situation while we're on tour, where willing participants would email their contact info (city, name, number, age, favorite local restaurant) and they'd get tickets to the SD show in their city, plus perhaps an exclusive live CD or some sort of something... in exchange for a modest-to-moderately priced meal outing with willing band members... Something like a Chipotle around the corner or a Whole Foods Market. Real-basic-old-world-food-for-art-exchange kind of thing.

Let me know your thoughts on the idea. Seem legitimate? Scheemy? Unfair? Any and all comments welcome... including any other band member feedback (who's down?).

Some TEXAS DATES are up. Peep the myspace. Working on new material to record and play live in a city near you. Some touring being planned in mid-May.

The first birds are awake. Love you all.

-Blake

SXSW Videos Online

2007-03-23T02:23:00.000-07:00

A "Darren", with no picture to place to a face, sent us a couple of clips from our recent trip to Austin, TX. Thanks.

Blood & Guts and All Her Crooked Ways

Very soon we'll be posting our Tour Dates for this (rapidly) upcoming tour with The Colour. This will be a mostly West Coast tour, with dates in TX, AZ, CA, maybe even Boise, ID?? Coming totally soon... right Warndahl??

-Blake

Cover Songs List

2007-03-16T12:32:00.000-07:00

In today's blog, I'm gonna introduce the cover songs list. It's gonna keep track of all the covers we've ever done, and every time we add a new one, we'll post the entire list and then add to it, to keep track of everything there was thus far. Being that we've been playing covers for a while now, the list will start with quite a few already. I'll give the title, the original artist, and the name of the album that it's on for you guys to go find it if you want.

1. Burning Down the House by the Talking Heads - Speaking In Tongues
2. Instant Karma by John Lennon - Single
3. Gimme Some Lovin' by The Spencer Davis Group - Single
4. Had To Cry Today by Blind Faith - Blind Faith
5. Dead Ends by Chad Vangaalen - Skelliconnection
6. It's Over by Roy Orbison - Single

More to come

Taylor

Stu Man

2007-03-16T11:27:00.000-07:00

ladies and gentlemen...its stuart. the drummer. bloggin out from behind the kit to say HOWDY from the great city of austin texas. we kicked ass today: ate crawdads and checked out daniel johnston. tomorrow, more ass kickin and another gig. saturday we play THREE TIMES... doesnt leave much time for ass kickin on THAT day, but we'll squeeze it in..we are SIMON DAWES .so ill leave it like this....ask me whatever you like. im a blogger now..and ..drummers rarely speak. this is your big chance. ask me anything about simon dawes.....and just in advance, im not giving out wylies cell "if thats your question. mom."

Sometimes...

2007-03-12T22:19:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, you wanna blog, but you just don't have it...

Sorry Folks!

-Blake

Hush Hush

2007-03-08T12:40:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I was on the way to breakfast with my friend Alex and we were on our way to breakfast on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood when we passed Guitar Center, which was packed with a bunch of press people on some bleachers with cameras out in front. Initially, we asked each other if either of us knew what was going on, but we didn't know and we didn't care all that much, so we soon forgot about it. I had meant to stay in Hollywood and have Wylie meet me with some posters that I could go put up in the area for our shows on Friday and Saturday, so until he called me I had to come up with ways to spend time. Alex needed a new practice amp so suggested visiting guitar center, which I normally detest, but yesterday it sounded fun.

When we first parked at the Guitar Center, we both noticed a man behind the car in front of us pushing his car along sunset at perhaps a little faster than a snail's pace. We asked him if he needed any help and said that he needed to push it all the way to the mobil station on Fairfax, which, for those of you not from Los Angeles, is perhaps 3/4 of a mile up from guitar center, and on a busy street like Sunset with yesterday's midday heat, it was quite an undertaking. Anyway, we committed to help the man who turned out to be a self proclaimed ex-LAPD officer who had been gambling for the last 86 hours straight with no sleep and no breaks. By us having to push the car this terrible distance to the gas station rather than having him buy a gas can and bringing it to the car made me assume that the gambling had not gone as well as he had hoped.

During our push, a long haired homeless man started yelling, 'push you bastards!' and then 'Do you need any help?' He was about 5'8'', deeply tanned, thin, wearing board shorts, a t-shirt and holding a drink in a coffee bean cup. As he put it down he said 'if my drink spills, I'm kicking your ass.' When he realized that we were going further than the next available spot on the side of the road, he went back to get his drink and handed it to me in the driver's seat where I was steering as they were pushing. He said, 'Don't spill my drink. It's alcohol.' So we kept pushing, kept sweating and the homeless man kept yelling at us, thinking he was very funny. Once we got to the gas station, the gambler thanked us and Alex and I headed back towards Guitar Center.

When we showed up it was closed for the next 20 minutes because a Kenny Loggins (famous for hits like 'Danger Zone') private show was wrapping itself up. That explained all of the press people there earlier. So while guitar center reassembled it's main show room, we tried killing more time in music stores across the street, and finally the hall of fame, which is a room attached to guitar center filled with rock star paraphenilia (sp?) like guitars, amps, and clothes from people like Bob Dylan, Elvis, Angus Young, Johnny Ramone, Bo Diddley. We were carrying on some aimless conversation while looking at all this gear and then at the end of the room on a table we saw a pair of 'hands.'

Note: In front of the Hollywood Guitar Center, there are cement hand prints of famous artists as a walk way. They're all broken up into small squares so that each individual artist, or in some cases, band, has their own separated spot. I hope I explained that alright.

But the pair of hand prints we saw in the hall of fame should have immediately struck me as odd that they were inside this room rather than outside in the ground, but due to our wandering conversation, I wasn't paying a lot of attention to it and walked up, perhaps mainly as an impulse, the way anybody would, I placed my left hand into the indented left hand and Alex touched it with his thumb which turned out to still be wet cement, and I looked up at the name above the hands which read 'Kenny Loggins'. This meant that at his private show, Kenny Loggins made his own set of cement hands to be added to the collection out in front of the store. My hand was now covered in cement, which I jammed into my pocket to keep from anyone who worked there from seeing me. Alex and I could not understand why it would be left out unprotected like that, but we were grateful for no one catching us. And at the very worst, it truly was an honest mistake. The point of this entire story is that I have now replaced the left hand of Kenny Loggins on the Guitar Center walkway. If anyone gets a chance to make it out there, know that if you look at Kenny Loggins' spot, you're not seeing his hand print, you're seeing mine. Yesterday, I became immortalized.

I apologize for the long story, but I thought it was funny and thought you could appreciate something like that. Even though I've put it up on the blog, make sure that no one runs to Guitar Center to tell them what happened. They're be no proof and I will just deny it if I have to, but that would be lying.

TOMORROW'S AN ALL AGES SHOW IN LA AT SAFARI SAM'S.
Talk to everyone soon.

taylor

Noisepopping

2007-03-01T12:27:00.000-08:00

We're in Berkeley. We drove through the night, or rather, Blake drove us through the night. Thank Blake. We spent this morning eating sandwhiches, visiting music stores, visiting book stores and seeing all of these northern california friends of ours that we rarely get to see. We'll be driving into the city in about an hour to hang out before the show tonight.

Simon Dawes Trivia: For any Like friends that read this blog, listen carefully to who sings at the very end of Lazy Daisy. Z BERG. I thought that'd make some of you happy to know that.

Here's another demo of a new song. My girlfriend Josie and friend Matt were cleaning up beer bottles as I recorded it. You'll be able to hear that. As well as Josie calling for 'finch' who happens to be my dog. It's called Bedside Manner...Tell me what you think.

Bedside Manner

Here are the lyrics for anyone interested in that sort of thing...

There's sometime as a much older man
I will sit down and put on this song
It just might make me cry
Or at the very least a tear in my eye

I can't take all these years of my life
to be widdled down into a thought
That only appeals to the ear
I need memories perfectly clear

I just wanna be making my mind
Keep from changing my mind not to change
'Cause I'm greedy as the sea
And that's how I hope it always will be

I'll be somebody now and somebody then
And all of you all in between
And then I'll be ready to leave
When everyone's taken with me

Cause there's so many days in a year
And so many years in my head
So I think about when I'll be dead
And how those very last moments are spent
And if I think about you
Is that something you think you'd accept?

Taylor

Ugh

2007-02-28T16:15:00.001-08:00

Anybody have to deal with Myspace's pathetic bullshit today? Those bastards just outbid the EPA for "Worst Organization In The History Of Life God Damnit".

Upon having the SD account "phished" for the second time this weeek, I was prompted to yet again renew our password... Only I couldnt renew the password because one of the fields wouldnt transfer information (you know, the one where you have to retype the warped letters in the box? thanks you acid-burnout-google-tech-weenies. you can sleep easy, I'm a real human).

Myspace should hear about this dillema. I'll "Contact Customer Service"! Only the same moron who fucked up the Password Page must have doomed this one, because i couldnt edit a "sub-catagory" information field, and in turn, had no (obvious) way of reporting my problem.

In the meantime, I'd tried to post a new blog, and Safari froze my iChat. "WTF". Added bonus: It was right in the middle of a file transfer. Otis Rush's sideproject "Snatch and the Poontangs" is looking a bit more like "Snatch Poo" on my desktop.
Our Monday nights at the Echo are over. The final show was total glory. Spaceland Recordings taped the whole thing. Should be available soon on their site. I'll keep on it. In the meantime, here's a quick demo of a new one called Hiroshima Song.

Woo Hoo, Hoo Hoo, Hoo Hoo

Looking forward to a couple days in San Francisco this weekend. NoisePop Festival. Then a couple more dates in LA, then a big ass SXSW trip.

Also a tour in the works for April...

ta ta,
blake

Welcome Rain

2007-02-22T19:13:00.000-08:00

I ain't in to fat lippin, I'm in to gat grippin
A cat's slippin, is a cat drippin
Why I say that? the cat's slippin, the Mac's spittin
The cat drippin, look in the mirror you's a fat kitten
Puuusssssssssssssyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy-ah
-Clipse

Made this at home the other day. There's more rain in it than Seattle.
2_17_07.mp3
-Blake

The Manifest Destiny

2007-02-22T16:09:00.000-08:00

Our 3rd of 4 Echo shows went very well. It seemed to be the best turn out so far, surprisingly. I've never been very familiar with how these residencies worked, so I assumed there wouldn't be many people present after the first 2 weeks, but lo and behold...

Also, our good friends and GREAT band BlackBlack opened the show, which was a treat for everyone.

Our set list for the more curious...

Love is After Me
Be There Right Now
Wilderness
Bedside Manner (for Wilderness and Bedside Manner, our good buddy Alex Greenwald from the bands Phantom Planet and BlackBlack came onstage and played with us)
Every Single Time
Dead Ends (by Chad Vangaalen off of 'Skelliconnection.' Go listen to it)
Like It's Something (which you can hear 2 blogs down from this)
Blood and Guts
Awful Things
Bad Directions

So one more show at the Echo and then off to San Francisco for noisepop. All of you Bay Area kids know about this already, right? If not, look at our myspace or website (perhaps more credible than anything I'd say on a blog). We're also hoping to set up a show with the Morning Benders as well while we're up there but I don't know the status on it.

And anyone who hasn't heard 'Miniature Tigers' needs to. It's our good friend Charlie Brand's band and he makes really great music.

RECAP:

BAND MENTIONED IN THIS BLOG:

Black Black
Phantom Planet
Chad Vangaalen
The Morning Benders
Miniature Tigers

Everybody should take time to check out every single one of those if you haven't heard them already. We're starting a family!

Lastly, I've done some drawings recently and I wanted to show everyone and get some input. Maybe for shirts? Posters? Website? Record Covers? Overall Simon Dawes artwork style? What do you think? You can click on them to make them bigger

Alright, I will talk to everyone very very very very soon,
Taylor

heavy shit

2007-02-21T23:22:00.000-08:00

damn man,

man, this fuckin blog shit man, crazy shit.
man, i dont get this stuff man,
i like old shit man, i like typos man,,
i wanna keep bros interested man, dig man
feel me man, i just wanna make people stoked on the blog man, feel me;
feel me man, i get guff man, all around man, feel me?
people always talkin man,
people always speakin man, "man, wylie man, come on man"
never man, dig man, i never dont try nuthin man, dig man?
never man.
lets talk about real shit bro, the realest shit.
whats being really real, realistically man.
guns man, thats some real ass shit, damn man
guns fuckin kill men, man
fuck.
motorcycles man,
tattoos man,
damn man,
thats three real fuckin things, man, dig?

lets talk about true shit man, fuck man
what the fuck is still true man, fuck.
there isnt one fuckin true thing left man, shit man.
thats the one true fuckin thing man:
theres no real fuckin true things man, dig? shit.

man, sometimes i just think man,
"fuck man, whats going on man"
shit man, i dont think about shit man, fuck
i think about real fuckin shit. fuck
"whats your answer man, fuck, man"

Like It's Something

2007-02-21T12:16:00.000-08:00

Here's a demo version of a new song. It's called Like It's Something, and we've been throwing it into the set quite frequently. Though the best times to play live it are when people arent really chatting, cause it's not such a loud song.
Enjoy Like It's Something
-Blake

Valentines Video

2007-02-14T17:41:00.000-08:00

+ = This.

Happy V-Day.
-Blake

Sunday Drivers...

2007-02-11T23:01:00.000-08:00

I'd like to apologize to the driver and passenger of the small white car I flipped the bird at this evening, even though you almost killed us on that crosswalk.
-Blake

Instant Messenger Screenname

2007-02-11T02:23:00.000-08:00

For those of you who use an Instant Messenger service (AIM, iChat, Yahoo...) I have set up a band screen name. Add "simondaweschat" (minus the quotes) to your buddylists and say WTFUp Dawes dudes! I'll pass the log in info on to the other guys... who knows, maybe you'll bump into the Warndahl.

Pretty sweet SXSW show dates TBA very soon here... look for bills including the Walkmen and Polyphonic Spree.

For anyone who cares to judge me, I just bought a web-cam. Could be radically handy if I can figure out how to record passages for video blogs.

RIP Anna Nicole Smith... FYI, I'm the baby's real daddy.

Goodnight
-Blake

SD EPK

2007-02-07T11:53:00.000-08:00

Two blogs in two days....I'm sure you're all very excited.

http://www.recordcollectionmusic.com/SimonDawes/epk_final_300k.mov

Taylor

UNTITLED?

2007-02-06T17:30:00.000-08:00

We've had two shows since I've last blogged and therefore, much to discuss.

Our first show was at the Social, a night club that a lot of wonderful people frequent, it seems. The room we played in consisted of mirrors, candles, couches, pillows, and board games. No joke. And it fit maybe 40 people, most of which, I like to think, were good friends. So you could imagine what a good time we all had. This was the set list...

Awful Things
Wilderness
Love Is After Me
Bedside Manner
Like It's Something
Execution Song

That could be wrong though. It was, after all, FIVE days ago.

We played Lazy Daisy as an encore. I definitely remember that.

And then this Monday, we played our first night of our residency at the Echo. The first artist was an older englishman named Richard Strange. He played in a band when he was younger named 'Doctors of Madness.' I don't know if that rings any bells or not, but his music was phenomonal I thought. As if Leonard Cohen had gotten shot or something, and continued to write songs. Maybe my tastes are a bit particular, but I truly did love it. He played just acoustically along with drum loops from his Macintosh laptop, but I offered to put together and hopefully be in his band, if he'd like one, next time he comes down to Los Angeles. So hopefully we will be talking soon about that. Then the Morning Benders played, some of our closest friends in the whole world, and they played great. If you haven't yet looked them up, don't even finish reading this blog, and immediately go to their myspace....which I think is www.myspace.com/themorningbenders. We played about 10:30 or so in front of a very friendly audience and I think we'd all agree that the show went very well. My guitar wouldn't really get in tune at all...but I think it was in a good way.................

Oh man....The blog can't go on without me telling you what just happened while I was writing it.

My phone just rang and I picked up and said hello and on the other end was a man with a thick english accent who said, 'Hi Taylor, it's Paul, Steve's roomate.' I said, 'Oh Hey what's up?' assuming I knew him because he got my name right and that whoever it was would click in a second, at which point he said, 'I was getting ready to leave my place and I know I have some of your books so I thought I could bring them down. Where are you?' I said, 'Well I'm home right now. Where are you?' hoping that would shed some light on the situation. But instead he just said 'Oh, I'm home. And I'm gonna be coming through the U-district. So I thought I could stop by.' That's when I realized that I don't know this person and it was the wrong number, and I don't know if him knowing my name was a crazy coincidence or maybe he looked up the wrong name in the phone book, but I definitely wasn't who he thought I was. So I said, 'uuhhhh....uhhhhh....that'd be fine.' Because I didn't know what else to say. Picking up on my reluctance, he said 'well, if you're busy having a wank or something I can come by another time.' I laughed and said, 'Oh, no. It's fine, I'll be here.' But I have no idea why I said that to him. Finally, he said 'Okay, I'll call later for directions' and we hung up. I assume he won't end up here, but hopefully he didn't take the address from where ever he got the phone number. His area code seemed very foreign, so I'm not too worried.

Anyway, I've completely lost my train of thought......The Echo show was good. That's all I had meant to say.

Last thing....we need a title for a song. Everyone send in their suggestions. Think 'love conquers all,' 'inner demons,' 'struggle for equilibrium'....that sort of thing. good luck.

taylor

Thursday At The Social In Los Angeles

2007-01-27T11:48:00.000-08:00

It's Not Last Night Yet

2007-01-24T17:55:00.000-08:00

Hello everybody,

News:

The residency at the Echo in February has been confirmed. Every monday night. 21+ and free. I think Zach de la Rocha (of Rage Against the Machine) will be playing with us each night. Also, there's some talk that the Morning Benders may at least play that first Monday with us. A dream come true.

By the way, I've noticed some of your expressed frustration with the abundant amount of 21+ shows, and I want to let you know that, as excited as I am for these Echo shows, I am freshly 21 myself and sympathize. The all ages shows tend to be a bit more vibrant anyway. (If that seems like an open challenge to the 21+ generation, it is)

Maybe some of the more devoted blog followers will remember that I had recently mentioned our wishes of playing a completely different set each night. And while we still were very excited about the challenge, we realized that some of you who come would perhaps want to hear the song that you had heard the previous week. Or maybe I'm thinking too hard.

For all of you San Fransiscans, in early March we're coming up to play the noisepop festival. I hear that it's really great but don't know much about it yet. When I have the particulars, so will you.

Here's the set list we had for the Hotel Cafe show. If anyone has any suggestions or comments, feel free to say so.

Maybe Not Today
Save Your Ticket
Wilderness
All Her Crooked Ways
Awful Things (which you can all hear in a previous blog of blake's)
End of Every Day
Salute the Institution
Like it's Something
Love is After Me
Blood and Guts

If you don't know certain songs on there, go ahead and judge by the title.

Talk to you soon. I miss all of you non-southern californians very much.

Taylor

Post #19

2007-01-20T14:09:00.000-08:00

I'm in Yuma AZ this week for a huge family reunion. My entire family (of four) and my cousin, Jean-Pierre Louise, all hopped in the Simon Dawes Tour Van. There's like 70 people there I've never met before, and the ones I do know are either all grown up or too old.

Charlie Chickenpox sent me a great compiliation of Mike Tyson interviews. It's on YouTube, but don't watch it if you can't handle the word "fornicate".

How sweet is it that this place in Northridge might work out for us? You almost can't believe it: how happy you are for the band.
At the moment, we're trying to figure out what the living arrangements would be. Stu "Man" Machine will be staying at his Venice crib, which means we're gonna have Wylie, Taylor Turtledove, John Doe, and yours truely. We will have BBQ pool parties, and you're all invited. Bring your own beer.

Wedensday's Hotel Cafe Performance

2007-01-13T01:19:00.000-08:00

Well, so far all the feedback from last week's show has been positive. I guess all the haters are also cowards. Hotel Cafe was kind enough to record the show for a... "generous" $45 charge. We debuted quite a few new ones that night. Some have some more work to be put into them, some sound sorta rad...
There's one new song that I actually sing lead vocals on. It's called "Like It's Something". It's such a different world... singing vocals. Sometimes Taylor forgets lyrics at a show, and sorta groans or scats or something... On Wedensday I flubbed a word and almost lost it, it was so hard not to laugh! And the song's sort of a moody thing, kind of pretty or whatever, and it was like... like farting during a funeral or something. It was 100% fun that night, so that's all that's important. Funerals should be that fun!

Here's a somewhat unique performance of The Awful Things for anyone who missed the show. xoxo

-Blakemus

Lions And What It Feels Like To Be In Flames

2007-01-09T23:13:00.000-08:00

So as some of you may know I grew up in Malibu, CA. It's a small coastal city located west of Los Angeles. On Monday evening we caught fire. We have a long history of fires here, as well as mudslides, and viscious El Ninos.
The fire started around 5 pm when we were all rehearsing in Venice, which is maybe 10-15 miles away. We could see the flames from Venice! I heard these were walls of fire 200 feet tall. Epic flames. The area that was burning was about 300-500 yards away from my parent's home. A little scary, but not as much as some would think. I'm more frightened by elevators, airplanes, and ocean currents than fires or mudslides. But the fire made headlines; we read about it on CNN this morning.

I went to see my friend Atom's band called We Are Lions tonight at the Troubador which was F.U.N. They had a great show, and Matt the drummer was like Passion Of Christ on the drums. Look up pics online to see what I mean. Their myspace is www.myspace.com/wearelions

Looking forward to tomorrow night's show. We'll let you know how it goes.

See Beaut1ful G1rls Have Fun W1th T0ys

2007-01-08T01:01:00.000-08:00

I guess I've been somewhat lucky when it comes to not having my email spammed. Got almost 3 years of clean use out of it before all these great offers on sex pills and porn memberships started rolling in. The people behind online porn propaganda are a pretty crafty folk. They cut up articles and pieces of literature into these lovely little vignettes, so that the spam blocker bots will think it's an avant-garde poetry email of some legitimacy. The "ho*t old;- chiks that love it har*d" in the subject line must have been approved by some technicality. I usually end up deleting about 5-10 of these a day, right off the plate, but now I'm going to start collecting them. I'm going to try to use some of this material as direct/indirect inspiration for songwriting.

Here are just some examples from today's crop...

"leaving me in this horrible country by myself, and I will do all else. pretty, tender figure of a maid that brought my heart to a stand. I know but the one thing - that you went to Prestongrange and begged, and she gave" Man, sounds like some old Dylan song.

"At least, I owe you nothing. Here, I said, is the stillest place we have hit on yet in this busy conversation, and neither one of us the less pleased." Bonnie Prince Billy-ish?

"I sold my wife body to my best friends.
I have never seen such gangbang party." Shellac all the way.

"Whiles out with a vast deal of agitation. She had asked of Captain Sang" Leonard Cohen and Christopher Walken.

I think this stuff is pretty amazing. It should be noted that some of these have been more or less modified to a certain standard of grammer. There's about 2 paragraphs of babel in every email, most of which cuts of mid sentence and picks up inside some other random sentence.

We've had a couple rehearsals in this last week, which is very exciting because this band does not rehearse. As Taylor said earlier, we're in the process of looking at properties for a living/rehearsal space. So, this week's rehearsals were spent mostly learning and playing more new songs! And making some interesting variations to old songs, such as "The Awful Things" and "All Her Crooked Ways". It's funny, Wylie pointed out how every time we get into playing "Crooked Ways" we have some new idea or change to make to it. It's one of those "works in progress" I suppose". The new songs learned are called "Like It's Something" and "They Call Me Wilderness" and we'll play them on Wedensday night at the Hotel Cafe in Los Angeles.

Hopefully some more news to come on all the residency-related issues surrounding Simon Dawes. Bye, homies.
-Blake

A Place to Call Home

2007-01-06T13:12:00.000-08:00

So we're in the process of finding a spot for the 4 of us to live in together finally. After searching and searching it seems as though our prayers have been answered, but I can't be too sure. I don't want to count my eggs before they proverbially hatch.

Again, we're playing at the hotel cafe on the 10th at 8pm and it's 21+. We're also still pulling for those February residencies.

Lastly, I added a demo of 'All Her Crooked Ways' onto today's blog. I recorded this with garageband the day after it was written. I hope you enjoy it.

All Her Crooked Ways (demo version)

LOVE,
Taylor

Just Friends

2007-01-03T16:54:00.000-08:00

Best wishes of love from Joe Kaplan and his French boy slave, C-3PO.

New Years Pics

2007-01-02T00:51:00.000-08:00

Homie in the yellow flannel is our buddy Matt. Today is Matt's 22nd birthday. Happy Birthday Matt!

My 21st Christmas

2006-12-30T11:33:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone. As some of you may already know, we are playing a show on the 10th of January at the Hotel Cafe here in Los Angeles. We're playing at 8 pm I think. Pretty early. Maybe we need to ease back into playing these live shows. We're also working on getting some residencies in February. And not just in LA bear in mind! I'll keep you updated.

Christmas was wonderful. I got Blake 'The Magical Mystery Tour' and 'Spencer Davis Group Live' dvds as well as the entire Police catalogue. He got me this amazing delay pedal that I couldn't be more excited to put to use. Now I can make as much noise as anyone else in this band. Wylie and I, unbeknownst to us at the time, got each other Yerba Mate tea sets. It's absolutely as pretentious as it sounds. Blake got Wylie a great graffitti art book, but I don't know what Wylie got Blake yet. Nor what's Stuart's gifts are (to and from) and I don't want to say what I got him in case he reads this.

Right now I'm off to look at rotary speakers for an organ. Let that be an indication of a Simon Dawes to come! Pray that I've found the best, cheapest rotary speaker in existence.

Tell your friends about Simon Dawes.
-Taylor

A belated holiday gift of sorts

2006-12-26T17:19:00.000-08:00

Hope you enjoy it. Our buddy Matt Jacoby made it.
-Taylor

In Vain

2006-12-26T15:03:00.000-08:00

I think it would be fun to play a house party for New Years. Anyone throwing a party in the greater Los Angeles area? Want us to play? How cool are your neighbors with loudness?

Was that lonesome comment on my last entry very dissapointing? That video is hillarious to good people. If Melissa is the sole reader of this blog, than the last entry was hugely successful. 100% Audience Participation. Thanks Melissa.

Hey Melissa, what's with the word "tragic"? And blueberries? What is the deal with blueberries? How do they manage to find their way into everything? Syrup, candy, soap, crayons, bagels, pancakes, muffins, my white collared shirt?

Jesus Christ had a good birthday. Daddy got him a Sex Machine.

I'm about to begin some sessions on Jonathan Rice's record. Lots of my friends are playing on these tracks. I'm very excited!

Why do my posts always read like bad stand-up comedy routines?

3,367,626.88 Acres of Ancient Desert Swallowed My Link to Civilization

2006-12-21T17:50:00.000-08:00

Sorry about the hiatus. I lost my computer charger in the middle of Death Valley, a National Park in California. About 3,300,000 acres of sand attacked my backpack. Stu and I went out there to be in a Honda commercial. They dressed us up in tuxedos, gave us a couple of mallets and timpani drums, and stuck us out in the bush with the car. It was about 36 degrees Fahrenheit. It sucked so bad that it rocked.

Today we have a video from Bas Rutten, champion bare knuckle boxer and streetfighter. He totally open mouth kissed my sister live on national TV at last year's Billboard Music Awards, and I couldn't do shit about it...

Don't forget to hide the spice bottle this Holiday season.

-Blake

Fuel TV™ Segment Online!

2006-12-14T16:01:00.000-08:00

Just uploaded our Fuel TV™ performance exclusively to africadabra™. I made it blog-exclusive in order to exclude others from viewing it. However, we reserve® the right to allow anyone™ and everyone© of various size and shape to view the clip®, granted they enjoy Snickers™ candy bars and/or other Snickers™ products.

Click© the Trademark™:

The Grand Opera

2006-12-13T02:25:00.000-08:00

I just got back home from our playing at this charity event at the roxy. We had somewhat of a stripped down approach and only played 4 songs, as did all the other acts. Friends like Tim Curren, John and Tony from Mellowdrone and Z from the Like played as well. On her chosen cover, 'Ode to Billie Joe' by Bobbie Gentry, Z had Blake and I come onstage and accompany her, while she lived out her kareoke fantasies...brilliantly ironic for a lead singer in a band. I'm not exactly clear on what the charity event was for, and I rarely do with these kinds of situations. I should probably take more of an interest.

For our more passionate readers, we've been considering different avenues to take with this 'blogging' business. We've thought to show you our developing shirt and merchandise ideas, or somehow incorporating some kind of shorts or videos made by us...a sort of artistic output through a different medium (I would imagine most of those being documentary or instructional, but not by any means serious). We've even been considering sharing appropriate recordings (be it early demos, good songs that seemed to have fallen by the wayside, or even NEW SONGS) to show you guys.

Definitely pictures as well.

Your thoughts? Feel free to add to this list of possibilities.

Also, let this news remain unofficial and something we can back out of at any time we please if it at any point becomes too ambitious, BUT... we have a possible residency coming up in January, and if it works out, we're going to be playing 4 completely separate shows in which we won't play the same song twice. 40+ songs in 4 shows. I've got a lot of confidence in us. Once things become confirmed any further, I'll keep you updated.

Blake Mills told me tonight that he listens to nearly 12 hours of music throughout the day. Now you know the secret.

Season's Greetings

2006-12-09T12:02:00.000-08:00

From where I'm sitting I can see the piano and the highway.

I like you.
I don't like you.
You help me get a cup of coffee.
hee hee hee

Taylor: I'm trying to get this blog typed up for a lot of reasons. Mainly to make sure that people don't think I've stopped posting them.
Laptop: But Taylor, don't you think you're ignoring the fact that there's a part of you that enjoys writing these blogs?
Taylor: Yeah, you might be right.
Laptop: Why do you think that's the case?
Taylor: Well, I guess I selfishly enjoy talking about myself.
Laptop and Taylor together: Maybe that's why (I/you) write songs.

You want a boy to melt your heart
I want a drink to melt my face

Photo Journal

2006-12-07T13:55:00.000-08:00

I thought it might be sweet to post a few pics from the tour. I mean what the hell else is there to do in Las Vegas when you're 20? Already seen the aquarium at Ceaser's. Gotten plenty sauced off the house wine at Hole In The Wall.
I may not have the gambling man's budget, but I'm working on his stomach; I handled one of the most pathetic waffles in the Western Hemisphere this morning. Served here.

I love our tour manager. Driving us 12 hours through the middle of the desert takes a very certain breed of dude. Say hello to a very certain Chris Warndahl this morning.

Let's see... one more. Came out of Everyday Music in Portland with some good stuff.

Plus more, but this is getting sorta boring. Catch you on the flip my little babies.

Downsides to the Information Age

2006-12-04T23:20:00.000-08:00

This camera business is so difficult for us. None of us know how to hold a camera correctly and none of us know what we're supposed to talk about or film. We need a person on this tour with us that only mans the camera. I'm confident that something will definitely be able to be derived from this, but we are so collectively inept with all of this sort of thing.

Trouble
Trouble
Trouble

We're in Vancouver right now and the shows couldn't be going better. The guys in both Wolfmother and Silversun Pickups could not be nicer and the audiences are very responsive.

Set list for those who couldn't make it:

Love is After Me
Save Your Ticket
Salute The Institution
Blood and Guts
End Of Everyday
Execution Song

Also, I thought of this great idea. If everybody reading this would immediately following the completion of the blog, call or email a friend and introduce them to simon dawes in one way or another. I realize you may not feel like it at the moment, but once you did, you'd probably smile to yourself and if you told me about it, I'd smile to myself and then we'd probably become friends and you'd most definitely be getting into all of our shows in your town for free. That's not a joke. But don't look at it as an incentive. See it as a reward. And the great thing is that if you don't feel like it, I'll never know.

Talk soon.

A blogger's blogger's blog

2006-12-02T04:10:00.000-08:00

It's difficult for our fragile L.A. body temperatures to get accostomed to those of up here near Portland. I'm concerned that at least one of us will be sick soon.

We've spent the entire day driving. Our manager Ryan came with us for the first couple shows, which is a rarity and a pleasure, I brought the first season of 'Lost' for the other guys to watch and they seem to be very much enjoying it, and Current TV has given us a camera for us to film this entire tour. Once Stuart, excited about any sort of visual documentation, got a hold of the camera, he's spent a lot of his time filming trees and gas stations and things. Enjoy, Current TV!

Also, in regards to this blog...As undoubtedly proud you all are of me staying punctual in writing to all of you, I've never really been familiar with the nature of these things, so if there is any way I'm supposed to approach it or any way you want me to approach it, I'm willing to do so. Basically, start leaving comments on these things, and through which we can start somewhat of a correspondense.

In the throes of anticipation!

2006-11-29T15:53:00.001-08:00

We leave in two days for our wolfmother shows and I'm proud to say new material will be played. You might be thinking, 'hmpf, their record just came out and they think it's appropriate to play new material?' You might be right. We probably should stay pretty true to the record and push the songs as you'd hear them on the cd itself in order to give people an accurate impression of a new band. By all past understanding of how to make a record successful, we should probably look less forward to writing new songs and redefining older ones. You might even say that we should do this all for the sake of new audiences. But if you DIDN'T say that, then maybe you'd be as excited as we are. If nothing else, we want to never be boring.

Some new song titles for you to think about what they sound like based on the title alone:

Triangular Syntax
Blood and Guts
Bedside Manner
Love is After Me

Collective recent interests of the band:

Klaus Kinski
Glen Danzig
Disrupting small birthday parties
Wylie's new glasses
Eating for blood type or veganism?

Lastly, a couple of nights ago an older friend said to us 'People don't know who I think I am.' And I thought I should definitely share that.