blizzard in d.c.

this past weekend of december 19th, silent way plus julie, caitlin, and matt drove down in the van from nj to d.c. to play the LF record release show. we were SO psyched and ready to play, but unfortunately, the weather snowed on our parade and trapped us inside our friend alyssa's house for the entire day on saturday and dan's show for saturday night got cancelled. luckily though, we still played friday night in d.c. at st. stephen's church. (apparently minor threat used to play there and we drank beer in the church... ian mckaye would kill me.)

the show at the church went really well. we rocked out as always. LF KILLED it, as always. dan bounced around the crowd like a pinball and looked happy to be surrounded by his close friends. he even gave matt a big, sweaty kiss on the cheek in the middle of the set.

....and then the snow came. we got trapped at our friend alyssa's house. our crew included: rob, marty, julie, adrien, caitlin, matt, jeremy, ian, and myself. in case you can't tell, that's a big (read: loud) group to handle in someone's house. also, there was no heat on the first floor where we were staying. did i mention there was no heat? we were frozen to each other. and we had to dig out the van from 25+ inches of snow. BLERG. but really overall, we had so much fun being trapped with each other.

unfortunately though, i forgot to bring my camera, so here's some old pictures from the last weekend tour that we did up in new england. enjoy.

warming up.

adrien in a pizza place in providence, RI.

i met a real police officer and gave him a hi-five.

ROCK OUT.

blurry photos courtesy of tanya kaur bindra.

amanda: sleeping or dead?

marty: van driver or murderer?

beautiful still life of me sleeping on the couch at diana's.

this is what silent way looked like in the blizzard.

clockwise from left to right:

marty, adrien, rob, amanda

this is what we looked like when we had to manually push the van out of the snow. except we're not ugly hippies.

from left to right:

jeremy, rob, julie, matt, me, adrien, marty

next blog: 17 DAY TOUR!!!

wound

so silent way is putting out a full length album soon. like january i think? i dunno. but our friend diana from high skool designed the front cover and then rob asked me to design the back layout. our friend matt took the pictures of us playing for the back. i accidentally made two back layouts with two different pictures but we all agreed to use the one where most of us are screaming and more of my cleavage is showing.

silent way, "wound" album cover by diana p.

final back of the album. note the extra cleavage and more screaming by me and rob.

here's the first layout that i did with a different pic. i still like this one too.

next up? playing lotus fucker's record release show on dec 18th. can't. freakin. wait.

sonic yoooooth

a few weeks ago i saw the reunited jesus lizard with my friend lauren. they played at irving plaza and they didn't suck, but it's always a slight disappointment to see one of your favorite bands on a reunion tour. david yao was a sight to see. he crowd surfed throughout the whole show and was a total maniac. 'goat' is one of my favorite albums of the 90s so it was pretty amazing to hear them play mouthbreather and then comes dudley.

david yao crowdsurfed during the whole song of mouthbreather.

YAO.

then a week later i saw sonic youth @ music hall of williamsburg. this was like my fourth or fifth time seeing them play but i still always take pictures cuz they're so animated that it's fun to photograph them. they were playing songs off their new album, "the eternal", but as always they snuck in a few "classic" ones as well. most notable were catholic block and shadow of a doubt.

my rock god.

awesome photo i took in between encores.

thurston doesn't know the words to his own song, "silver rocket" which i found to be hilarious

kimbo.

they had these beautifully lit backdrops.

lovvers.

at this point i almost feel like sy have done so much it's like, what the hell can they possibly pull out of their slacker jeans now? it's not that i think they're trying too hard, i think it's just that i'm very selfish when it comes to them. the old fans at the shows (and i mean OLD) complain about the good ol' days before the internet, wah, wah, wahhhh. then the new fans either bop up and down to the one or two songs that they know, then go back to texting for the rest of the show, OR they're so obliterated, wasted out of their minds that they ruin the little fun that's left for everyone else. meh. i love sy. they're still my fav band, but i think they just need to reconsider what venues they're playing at and who their audience is.

cambridge and providence

saturday nite we played in cambridge, mass at a place called the democracy center. it was a show thrown by vegan, straight-edge punks and the venue was literally on harvard's campus. it was kinda cool to see harvard i suppose, but it was just so CLEAN. we walked around the square trying to find beer, but it was so nice and neat that it was almost impossible to find the only liquor store! then when we were leaving it, some kid walked up and asked marty to buy him beer. haha, we were like the creepy older kids on campus. i wasn't really into any of the bands at the show because it was just like new brunswick bands--loud hardcore. but the people were totally nice and we had fun playing, even though our sound was kinda eh, in the large room. (i think we've grown accustomed to dingy basements and cramped rooms).

my friend jake lives in boston so he stopped by to catch our set. it was great to see him and he didn't even make us beg to crash at his place! we thought we were gonna be able to stay the guy who was throwing the show's house, but that didn't work out so we were really appreciative that jake let us stay. even though we just drank beer and played card games all night, it was a really fun time. tanya and marty bonded over heated debates and we all made too much noise and slept real late the next day.

rob vs marty vs tanya in egyptian ratscrew is intense and scary to watch.

it starts off nice and innocent enough.

then tanya always gets violent.

then we switched to this game called catan that jake had. it was like risk, but more boring? haha, i dunno. tanya and i are silly and have no attention span so we couldn't play.

rob and marty watched youtube videos. whatever, we can't afford to go to a bar anyway.

photo girl. although she's supposed to be merch girl. don't think she sold one damn thing.

our gear out on jake's porch. so sick of lifting stuff and it was ONLY three days.

on sunday morning we drove less than one hour to providence, rhode island, aka the most boring city ever? unfortunately it was a cloudy sunday with nothing much going on so we just walked around trying to entertain ourselves as much as possible.

goofin' around in a boring town.

bindra and i took a long walk and saw some pretty old houses.

i don't have any pics of the venue, but i took a picture of the crossword puzzle that i did while sitting at the bar for an hour to kill time.

the show we played was really great. we played on the floor instead of the stage (which i think makes us play a lot better) and had our performance recorded. since we hung around the venue for so long that night, we made friends with some of the other bands and the bartenders and i kept getting drinks and stuff for free. for me, it was the most fun night on tour even though we pretty much only played for the other bands. tanya has lots of photos of us playing that i will eventually put up here because they're really fantastic.

on sunday night we got to new brunswick around 5 am and i was able to catch a few hours of sleep before heading back to nyc for class and work. hard to believe that only three days can make me this exhausted, but it was so worth it! met tons of great people and now i can't wait to get back on the road for our next three day weekend in december to the d.c. area.

philly on friday

last weekend we went on tour to philly, boston, and providence. on friday i left nyc at 1 pm and eventually rolled into west philly around 7:30 with the band just in time to start playing. we played at a house called the terrordome and it was pretty sweet. aside from the half-assed bathroom under the stairs that i didn't really appreciate (seriously--no real door, just some sliding wooden thing), the place was great. there was a stage and plenty of room to watch the bands in the kitchen/living room area. we played a great set and everyone seemed to appreciate us. it was a great turnout for an early night house show. best house/show vibe we've seen in philly by far.

tanya came all the way from canada just to travel the weekend with us (!) and our friend diana from high school was kind enough to put us up for the night. her house in south philly was the most gorgeously designed place i have ever seen. it smelled like jockey hollow because they had a wood burning stove and old wood floors that had holes through them. it was very colonial and looked like it was taken straight from an anthropologie catalogue. very beautiful and we cannot thank her enough for letting us crash for the night.

then the next morning we piled into the van and drove up to cambridge, massachusetts for our show on saturday night.

this is all of the gear that i carried through nyc, penn station and nj. it doesn't look like alot, but it's a bass guitar in a hard case, guitar, and fully packed bag. packing lite is pretty much impossible.

diana's house, or anthropologie catalogue?

j'taime un elephant.

cat stevens and frida khalo live there.

exposed brick wall = every little girl's dream.

cello in her bedroom.

happy yellow table.

breakfast.

saturday morning driving through connecticut towards boston.

mommy marty drove the whole way.

adrien studied the whole time.

tanya acted like a hipster.

rob acted like rob.

i used to like them before everyone else did.

on saturday nite we played @ the glass door in brooklyn. it was in a really lively neighborhood in bushwick filled with puerto rican shops blasting music til ten at nite. then we ate mexican pizza and played and partied and drank beer with bang bang eche. it was so much fun, i think i'm still hungover.

confetti tabs outside of a party.

t'nealle is the best bassist!!!

charlie! and for some reason he kept walking up and saying to me, "if only you had facial hair...."

zach slapped me real hard last year so i poured a beer on his head. never forget yr enemies.

kevin from math the band puked on james while he was drumming. i wish i had a picture of it!

james is a babE!!!

so basically it was a lot of fun and i'm sad that BBE aren't gonna be back to the u.s. til next year! maybe they'll all have hit puberty by the next time we see them! JUST KIDDING! i love them so much.

this weekend, it's off to new england for shows in connecticut, boston and rhode island. it's our first time touring as the "new" lineup. i swear, rob is like mark e. smith the way he changes members. i've literally toured with silent way with almost every incarnation of the band. but as for right now (and hopefully for a long time/forever) it's rob=guitar/vocals, marty=guitar/vocals, adrien=drums, and me=bass.