When I walked into Pearl Street, I had no idea I would soon encounter Mick Jagger’s incarnated self in The Booze’s lead singer Chaz Tolliver; watch a musical giant (quite literally) in Earl Greyhound’s Matt Whyte; or get blasted in the face by OK Go’s confetti canons.

When I walked out of Pearl Street, I had a new expectation for how head-shakingly fantastic every other Tuesday night show should be.

If you get a chance to see any of these bands, I highly recommend it. I can assure you, hearing a recording does not do any of them justice.

Read the entire review here…

And special thanks to @nagelface for the pass hook up and for taking this shot:

myself with drummers extraordinaire PJ Curtis of The Booze + Big Ricc Sheridan of Earl Greyhound

Bonus features of the night included talking shop with Ryan’s Smashing Life and Music Savage and meeting videographer Steve Legare.

Read the entire review here…

This slide show is from The Builders and The Butchers record release at the wonder ballroom in PDX with Loch Lomond & Ah Holly Fam’ly.

Check out the entire review right here…

Let’s face it, the answer is no. Great marketing move? Yes, but I want more.

I want an embedded cochlear audio player. Put that thing in my ear.

Make it 3G based (with easy firmware upgrades via the same network or via bluetooth from my laptop, so i can support the latest high speed networks). Let me stream my library or favorite service wherever I go. Make it respond to voice commands. No, better yet… thought command. Maybe have it automatically select songs depending on visual input or give it an accelerometer so it knows when I’m running and will play the theme from Rocky and not the John Denver & the Muppets Christmas album (I have a 2 year old ya know…).

I will sign up for this. I’ll even pay for the procedure out of pocket.

Does this exist? I can’t find it.

waking up 20 minutes or so from niagra falls was awesome.

walking out into a side-ways rainstorm was less awesome, so we decided to just hot-foot it towards massachusetts.

a few things learned crossing the country:

• i’d immediately go back to: omaha, deadwood and yellowstone.
• i wouldn’t go back to but am glad i saw: custer state park, the badlands, s.e. oregon
• i won’t go back unless paid to: idaho
• surprisingly enough, the best part of the drive was cruising through northern nebraska on route 20. no construction, no traffic, no speed traps.
• the worst part of the drive: highway 90 from NY to Mass. construction everywhere, costs a fortune (paid tolls twice in 3 miles) and the drivers are as you’d expect them to be in NY and Mass. keep your head on a swivel.
• neely loooooves livestock.
• cole is a bit of an exhibitionist
• gas is expensive everywhere
• candy can make the difference between misery and happiness
• cheap hotels are no longer cheap
• benoit is pronounced differently everywhere
• chicago has too many people in it (says larry the valet)
• sitting in the front of a cruiser is kinda fun, i can see why cops like it
• cops that laugh while giving you a ticket are worse than cops that are @holes while giving you a ticket
• music is my muse and broadcast radio (for the most part) sucks beyond all comprehension
• i’m completely dependent on my iphone, damn it.
• my iphone doesn’t work well as a phone
• i’ll most likely fly everywhere i go outside of new england from now on

soon to come OVER HERE (well relatively soon anyway) will be a whole buncha more pics from the trip. for now here’s a few i’ve gotten to:

*** a note on the playlists you’ve seen here: i’ll be putting them up for download as soon as i get a chance. stay tuned. ***

local(e) listenings:
Oliver James – fleet foxes
Moving, shaking – great lake swimmers
Kentucky gambler – tom leach
One day at a time – 2Pac
Islands on the coast – band of horses
Spinning plates – radiohead
Make you crazy – Brett dennan
Trust me – the fray

DOWNLOAD THE TUNES HERE

Correction: today still kinda sucks. 1.5 more hours to buffalo.

Local(e) listenings:
NPR

today was packed.

up and out fairly early considering. ang and cole hit the omaha zoo while neely and i headed over to carter park for the morning (the place has a skate park, dirt bike jumps, water ski jump and other park like stuff.. amazing).
soon there after we packed up and headed off to my second ticket in as many days. this one was for not wearing a seat belt (don’t get me started… ) and this cop, like the one who gave me a speeding ticket when the speed limit dropped by 20 mph in the space of 1/4 mile, could do nothing but smile and chuckle. thanks boys!

we found a little gem of a tex-mex place in iowa (los agaves) thanks to urbanspoon with good food, 3 dollar margaritas and a water fountain for cole to occupy himself with… score.

it would have been a flawless meal had cole not thrown up at the table. AGAIN. at least it wasn’t as bad as the incident in TGI Fridays last night. the kid just does not like to chew his food… any suggestions with this one? *fingers tapping*

ok, ok… we weren’t really off to just get the ticket, i was just lucky enough to get a ticket on the way to chicago. and yes… many more pics to follow.

local(e) listenings:
Look at miss Ohio – Gillian welch
Weep & wail – forest sun
I gotta story to tell – notorious BIG
Easy way out – Elliott smith
Rise – will dailey
Magik – Ryan adams

DOWNLOAD THE TUNES HERE

bonus picture: quite possibly the biggest branding fail ever. or, quite possibly, the best branding scheme ever.

It wasn’t those massive beasts that put the fear of god into Cole though.

It was a burrow.

Even though he was the one who rolled down his window and called the overly-friendly equine over, when it got too close he began to shake and rolled up his window pronto.

Can’t blame him really… No one likes a jackass.

Neely showed none of coles fear as I had to keep him from jumping out the window after a deer(ishlikething) which broke neelys #1 cardinal rule: don’t run from me or I will chase you. Regardless of what you are (unless you’re a tennis ball).

A trip south to the badlands left us headed Omaha via northern Nebraska.

It’s a happenin’ place:

Remember what I said about Wyoming being just like Idaho? I was wrong. Nebraska is just like Idaho.

Local(e) listenings:
Creep – radiohead
Elevator music – beck
Slim slow slider – tim Easton
Seven spanish angels Ray Charles & Willie Nelson
You can’t always get what you want -rolling stones
Persons and machinery – unkle
Atlantic city – Springsteen
Gun – jeff tweedy
Can’t hardly wait (acoustic… whatever matt, i like this one) – replacements

DOWNLOAD THE TUNES HERE

That will make little sense unless you’ve driven through both.

The day wasn’t without excitement though. Somewhere on one of those beautiful plateaus, I really thought my transmission was going. I just had it resealed and flushed, so mt worst case scenario thinking took over. Middle of Wyoming, no cell reception and a blown transmission. Another great story to tell… Alas it seems to have just been my lil’ 4 cylinder struggling mightily with the looooong inclines.

Local(e) listenings:
Love and some verses – iron & wine
Patient patient – the morning benders
Honest man – MMJ
Somehow, someday – Ryan Adams
Thumb – j mascis
Bucket – Kings of Leon
Blue – jayhawks

DOWNLOAD THE TUNES HERE

we arrived about 2.5 hours later than expected (because of a seasonally closed road within yellowstone) and angie and cole got ready to crash and i took the about-to-scratch-a-hole-in-my-leg puppy out for a walk. we walked up to the edge of a bluff on what was supposed to be a five mile animal viewing loop. first of all, i have never seen so many friggin stars in my life. honestly it was a bright as day out and there was just as much light in the sky as there was dark. amazing. secondly, i figured that 5 mile loop would be a good way to start the day the next day and we’d all pile in to the four runner before splitting up into separate cars again. this is important later in the story…

morning arrived with one member of the brady bunch next door screaming at the top of their lungs. there must have been 25 of them staying in that cabin. anyway, we eventually got up and got moving and headed out to do the wildlife drive.

nothing. one bird, that’s all we saw.

here’s where this trip became important though. as we neared the end of the loop, we approached the northern entrance to the park and something happened that caught me completely off guard.

my phone rang.

understand, there is ZERO cell reception in the park. no internet, no cell reception (AT&T anyway).. nothing. i’d been in a cone of silence for a few days really. but as luck would have it, i must have gotten a signal right as katie called to tell me she was chatting on facebook with my wife who was stranded in london, had been held up at gun point, had all of her money and credit cards taken and needed katie to send her $900 dollars as soon as she could.

i turned to to my wife, sitting beside me in the car, and asked her if any of this was true.

ok no i didn’t, but i wish i had. katie’s call was quickly followed by text messages, facebook posts, emails and phone calls asking if we were alright. thanks to all of yous who were concerned for us.

turns out someone hacked into angie’s facebook account and was IM’ing everyone trying to get money sent over to the UK. they were good too. we tried for hours to get back control of the profile and couldn’t do it (they eventually wiped it out, and angie hasn’t heard back from facebook about its reinstatement yet).

oh yah and after that we saw some buffalo, elk, a grizzly, old faithful, the dragons mouth and lots and lots of beautiful territory… a few pics below. more surely to follow:

local(e) listenings 3:
Spanish death song – builders & butchers
Mayonnaise brain – bobby barr jr.
Two weeks – grizzly bear
Drunk and fucked up – Ryan Adams
Eyes full of roses – horse feathers
Notice – mute math
Divided sky -phish

DOWNLOAD THE TUNES HERE