3-10-07 (update by brandon young (delta spirit drummer) The van has gotten predominantly worse in the steering. It constantly feels likes its windy outside when its really not. It jerks back in forth like were at sea. Its quit dangerous and I am probably going to check myself into a clinic for getting addicted to Dramamine. The left side of the vans speakers are busted. Its gotten to the point where we cant listen to anything before 1978 because the pans on the records of that time were mixed so weird you pretty much just hear the voice or just instruments. There's an unknown leak on the floor which keeps us doubling up our socks everyday rain or shine. The heat and air conditioner is a joke. It only has one setting. HIGH or OFF. It's a fun game on our immune systems to constantly be turning our body heat up and down. The Bat has gotten to be very savvy with fuses and cigarette lighters. Why you ask? Its because we blow em every damn day! We figured out that it's a bad idea to plug in every electronic item that we own only in one outlet. That's it for now. Oh! We also want to thank the Cold War Kids for letting us borrow there old van. - brandon spirit 3-09-07 (update by the bat (delta spirit keys & trashcan & tambo) to my surprise, the windy city was not covered in snow, and the temperature was actually bearable without wearing a jacket. We hit a little "hole in the wall" thai spot that I always eat at when I come to chicago (it's called Duck Walk, if you're interested), and then cruised belmont ave. for a bit. On our way to the venue, even though we were already running late, we managed to make a little time to stop by Lake Michigan. The lake looked like an Antarctica Discovery Channel special, covered with icy slush, and icebergs floating here and there. When we got enough of the crazy view, we headed over to Subterranean, where I'm sitting and typing to you now, waiting to play the first of the 2 sold out shows tonight. Pretty exciting. Hope we don't blow it. -batman (Delta Spirit) 3-8-07 (update by old saint sean walker (delta spirit axe player) millewakee's finest? treading our way from minnesnowta we made our way to chillewakee, wisconsin. the weather and G.T.'s so far have been pretty sick(in a chill way....bro). nature took its course and allowed tour mates, tokyo police club, to join us after a picle of a snowstorm. the storm caused their absence unfortunately. line up tonight, an ole Hatrick Swayze...: d. spirit, tokyo police club, and cwk. should be promising. till next time, take it cheesy. -sean connery (delta spirit) 3-7-07 Alright update junkies, so as to keep the picante in our journals, we are going to hand over the pen and let guest writers from the Delta Spirit camp spit knowledge on the life and times of the opening band on it's first US tour. Ouevre. 3-4-07 Writing from a snowy hotel in Minneapolis whose hallways are eerily straight outta "The Shining." Drove all day long, but this time around on tour, we've really stepped up the luxury a notch into the world of DVD watching. Dreary deserted flat land has never been more riveting. We watched "Gangs of New York." Sure it's nice to order your groceries on line, but don't you wish you lived in the old chaotic America when politicians were real outlaws and you would find creative ways to rob people so it wasn't even a choice? I think we all really want less options in life but can't resist clutter. 3-3-07 Just about every venue we end up at has both decent book and record shores nearby. Omaha certainly ain't no exception. We love looking around. Just across the street we walked into a store where behind the counter two men in their 70's wearing battered tweed coats turned around stunned like they were sneaking a jay and gave us a nod like we passed for being cool. Getting little tidbits of inspiration from photos on album sleeves or book jackets. Maust will get really excited if he finds some typography book of nonsense poems. During this time, we could actually be finishing all the books we've bought on our trips but something about trying to see it all, every name and picture and word we don't expect can be so much more exciting than finding out how the story ends. Maybe it's our generation's short attention span but I hope we never stop giddily hyping the long gone writer's limited edition flop. 3-2-07 When you've been touring as long as we have, the dressing room is sort of like your bedroom. It's the only place you can put your toothbrush on the coffee table and have a beer in what should be relative peace. But more and more it seems that people just wanna hang around. They may want to talk your ear off about your band, their town, they might want to smoke weed, or they might just want to sit and listen, maybe hoping you'll break out in a backstage encore. In any case, can you imagine some girl walking in to your room at midnight, going to take a beer out of your refrigerator, picking up a magazine and asking for a light? Every single night. 2-16-07 Who invited Mitchell? 2-15-07 Here we are pausing to remember the 5th verse of Desolation Row. Windham knows but he only wants to talk about rolling pastures and misty mountains. 2-13-07 In London we decided to go on one of those double decker guided tour bus deals to really see the sights proper but we only made it to the Tate where they have a three story clear plastic tube slide much like our wild rivers that shoots you down at the bottom and they're calling it art. If you're in town, go see the Russian Poster Exhibit from David King and see where we get some of our ideas. Also, Tacita Dean drew a big storyboard with chalk of sailors in a storm and it will make you want to make something. 2-12-07 The real reason we became a band was so that we could go to Paris and Maust could find himself a gal. We're not sure what to shoot for next. Suggestions? 2-9-07 A day of freedom in Berlin and we walk around but bus system in Berlin is difficult and the cold debilitating. The film festival is in town, the film festival in full swing and we gather round photographers flashes to spot a long silver pony-tailed man ducking into a limo whom Elvis is pretty sure was Versace or one of those guys. We have dinner with the Kinsey's and there is talk of real estate, the state of rock music, and the south of Spain. 2-8-07 We celebrate Elvis' B-Day both on and off the stage. Nick has family in from out of town and shaves two year old beard for reasons that are not entirely clear to him. Jackie dons swiped shades that come straight off the nose of Scottie Mickmikkon from the cult group Dr. Dog. 2-7-07 We are in Cologne. The crowd is losing their minds as the CHYSY steps off. Will they play an encore to complete this frenzy of sweaty chanting? They are not sure. Will it take Nathan sounding the trombone and Nick tumbling on the stage with his tribal drum to bring the band back for the nights big hurrah? Absolutely. 2-6-07 Brussels is so cold but truly truly top three greatest cities in the world. We wake up in the morning here and get out of the bus and rub the sleep from eyes and say "Hey! This is a beautiful city, old and wondrous, spellbinding even, and we would walk these cobblestone streets and buy your expensive antique furniture if it were only twenty or thirty degrees warmer and if we spoke an impossible combination of Flemish and French with a dash of Dutch "Brabantian." 2-5-07 In Belfast a young woman asked Nathan for his scarf, begged him practically, stating that he can buy said scarf again with no problem, but for her to have this scarf would mean massive respect from her respective peers. Nathan couldn't help but think about back home in the U.S. where the current cover for Newsweek Magazine states that all that is wrong with our country is our idea of celebrity. Do people want to "own" a piece of other people in order to feel validated? Is it true that most Americans know more about and are more intrigued by, and thus have a stronger opinion on, a few famous, albeit pleasing to the eyes girls, than they do our current politicians? Sorry if we are rubbing off on you Europe. 2-4-07 Elvis and Alec in a moment as warm as Grandma humming you to sleep and as wild as Cash and Dylan gone acoustic, we sang early into the morn' the songs of yesteryear. 2-3-07 The Barrowlands! Glasgow is a tough neighborhood. After the show three teenage girls were chasing after Maust. He wasn't sure if they wanted to hug him or kick his bum. 2-2-07 Hey Hey! We're in Manchester hanging with the CYHSY and Perkins fellahs celebrating Aveiro's twenty first b-day. We've just unofficially dubbed this European tour "bad beer blues tour" as we have been drinking low grade american drafts thus far. 2-1-07 This is Nick the dynamite drummer of the outfit Deerland w/ Elvis Perkins. Here's him at the Tripod having his first drink since '99! 1-31-07 We went to France to do a show for tv that airs one song per night for a week. I forget the name of the show, but it's a big deal. So we hung out and drank wine all night with Eva and Sigrid, and, you know how it is in France, you get all caught up, and Brett was riding Eva's bike which is her only form of transportation, and Nathan jumped on the seat with him from behind thinking that it would be marvelous and impressive to all his friends, but instead the rim of the tire withered like an LP laying in the sun and everybody laughed not with him but at him and when he tried to offer Eva money for the tire she cared not for money, but only for a new bottle of wine for all to share. 12-13-06 Saturday Detroit Bar! Yeah, we're playing the same old tunes at the same old place, but we might have some new clothes on and certainly will have new things to talk about after the show. In other news... when the folks at David Letterman asked us if we'd like to break into late night tv, we said "Sure! When?" "Thursday the twentyfirst of December," they replied. So be sure to watch us play our song and hope that the live studio audience goes wild. 12-10-06 So we are once again doing the forbidden, the undoable. We are going to play shows in Los Angeles and New York at our favorite clubs during the month of January. This is extraordinary because we will be traveling in a hot air balloon! Midwesterners look up and wave! 12-8-06 Well heck, we're in France and its time to quit fooling around and tell the folks back home what's really going on. You might even find some past days filled in. 'But how are you going to write about the old trip now, so much time has passed, aren't the facts all rearranged?' you say. Well Mr. Marquez says: "Life is not what we experience, it is what we remember and how we remember in order to retell it." There you go. 11-28-06 Back in London, readers and talk of a football match tonight in Hammersmith. Everybody is in good spirits about heading west to see family and friends whose faces we have little recollection of. 11-24-06 Hamburg! Ahh the history! This city has been through the ringer in WW2. Not to mention the Beatles. Wikipedia that knowledge! Germans definitely get the most intellectual with us, which after a few beers, we dig. People have been asking us lately "...so the drummer is the one that gets all the girls, right?" We say "ummm.. I guess so." 11-22-06 "French girls, ciggarettes, feelings that hit you in the chest." These lyrics (to a Matt Hopper song, see CWK tours about a year ago) ne'er rang more true than this night when Eva broke our silly hearts with her ramshackle broken English. "Rushing through the Paris nights, they hounded you, you lost control..." Also was sung, in this, the city of love. 11-21-06 This guy, Jean-Louis is like the mob boss of France's music. He's very sweet though. 11-20-06 Oh the places we've gone! If you are a retiree, escaped convict, or post-college vagabond and are looking for a beautiful city to grow old and die in that seems like its on another planet then I believe Stockholm is the place. But let me burst my own balloon for a minute and tell you what's on the plate; With this European touring lifestyle many friends from back home really think we've got it made. And I ain't gonna lie, it ain't bad to wake up in a new city everyday and explore. You get snippets of people and towns to toss in the memory suitcase. But after a while you start feeling a little weird and well...touristy, even soulless. We have this idea that Europeans are more cultured than Americans and that they view us as having less exposure to the rest of the world. And that is probably true. But do you need to physically go all over the place to gain exposure to a culture? Generally speaking, great thinkers over history didn't travel the world, they stayed home and read. They weren't ignorant. Some people use their travels as escapism, an accomplishment to validate themselves. What I'm getting at here is that there is nothing you can't learn from your living room. Don't sensationalize travel. Where your mind is at is more important than where your bodies at. People tell the best stories about the places they know inside and out. Right? 11-18-06 Amsterdam was a dream, playing the Paradiso (ever heard of Nirvana?) on a gorgeous day, walking the cobblestone streets and canals. But much like New Orleans of the US of A, things get kinda trashy at night. 11-11-06 lets see here. we're in belgium. last night we were at the botanique rotonde. this is the closest we have come to playing our songs in a magical place. there is a large garden hundreds of years old looking like the labrynth outside of this museum that was holding a charlie chaplin exhibit that we couldn't get into. The room we played had a ceiling about a hundred feet high and you could hear ever whisper and shhshh from the kids inside even if you don't know no flemish. Today is a tribute to the end of The Great War. In Antwerp there is a statue dedicated to Babo who, allegedly defeated and cut the hand off a giant that stole the money from the people. The name Antwerp, quite literally, means hand-throwing. If only we had that kinda myth in the states. Be a lot more imagination. 11-5-06 Tonight we meet up with Two G's and took over for the Richard Swift camp (see websplash page). We are all pretty huge fans of the music and the man Richard Swift so we of course got a real kick out of chilling in Manchester with brews and fireworks and representing So. Cal. 11-1-06 The Cold War Camp is always a wreck by the time we hit NY. All sorts of friends came out of the woodwork; planes trains automobiles, it's amazing that everybody that lost their passports got new ones in time to get on the aeroplane o'er the Atlantic. 10-30-06 We'll be in NYC playing at the Bowery with Tapes brothers, Dr D. Elvis P, and more. This is maybe the greatest event we will have played so be there if you are able. Come to the Apple Store in Soho on December 2nd and we will do some songs there in the regular fashion. 10-21-06 We're in Nashville now. We just played an instore at the fabulous Grimey's Records here in town. They were mixing margaritas and passing them to us midset like water at a marathon. We've been so busy and creative anecdotes are running low. We're staying at Chateau Le Derrick Brown tonight but only his galfriend will be there, so we will be shuffling through his private poetry in the underpants drawer. 10-20-06 We were greeted at The Hideout in Chicago by the bar owner Katie and commenced to pile in her car with bottles of wine and head for "Feed," to dine on chickens, okra, sweet potatoes, corn pudding. This woman has her finger on the pulse of the city; writes grants and drinks with her patrons, hangs with lobbyists and punk bands. Cheers to Katie for being swell. The Hideout ranks pretty high on the most vibey rooms in this country, and while having been host to just about every great band you ever wanted to see, you can't find anything resembling pretension. Place is legit. 10-19-06 In Columbia we reunited with the T's n T's whom we had not seen in a lifetime. During our ditty "God, Make Up Your Mind," there was an unusual surge of applause unbefitting to the moment and it took a minute for us to put together that the Cardinals made the series. 10-18-06 We drove 24 hours from L.A. only stopping for gas, through the Rockies with no chains to arrive at Kiev's Record store in Lawrence KS and play some acoustic versions of our tunes. If you don't believe you can always check youtube. 10-18-06 We¼re all fixed up and headed East now. We will make it to you, Lawrence Kansas. 10-17-06 Oklahoma people: Cold War Kids regret to inform you that we had to cancel tonight¼s show. Collectively we detest show cancellers with all excuses shy of death. Our situation, simply put; our van is broken down. Believe us when we say we considered every option while sitting outside a coffee shop in Tucson for three hours of fruitless dialing, finagling, and reconvening (including, but not limited to: „Cruising USA¾ RV¼s, jet airliners, rented Impalas, squeamishly dialing ex band guy friends who no longer need vans) The point is for you to know that we care greatly about you people of Tulsa OH, and we sincerely apologize for not showing up. 10-16-06 Writing from the Congress Hotel in Tucson here, a classy joint that has rotary phones and the tiniest beds you ever saw.No frills, just a certain 50's charm. Anyway there's many pictures to catch up on here. Yes, that gentleman smack dab in the middle of us is Nic Harcourt. We had a great time on the show, which you can both listen to and watch at the KCRW site. You see these cats walking the Hoover Dam and lefties hitting wiffleballs inside the Joint and you may think . . .Vegas?! What the?! But our lips are sealed like government documents people. Unless you already know, we'll never tell. 10-12-06 Instore at Fingerprints was the mid-tour Homecoming Record-Release show of a lifetime! All the people in our lives came, even new neighbors and landlords. What a city, this Long Beach! Spaceland was a real barn burner in its own right. Some clowns wanted to prove their bicep size and ended up clocking somebody, resulting in bottles broken over heads, gashed eyebrows, and all the testoserone that goes along with it. For better or worse, it definitely livened up the crowd for the last few songs and everybody had a swell. time. Goodbyes were said to friends not to be seen for two months, but no tears shed as far as I know. 10-7-06 As we anticipated the shows are in large rooms leaving attendees to really sprawl out and feel the music. It would be intimate enough for us to invite fans on the stage between songs to introduce them to the group and do a little Q & A on their impressions of our songs. But that would be silly. Delta Spirit is a breath of H20 to our gills both musically and interpersonally. So let me tell you some news we should've told you sooner. Tuesday we are playing our RECORD RELEASE SHOW in store at Fingerprints in Long Beach! Have you been to this record store? It's pretty radical and worth checking out. We will be packed like sardines between many compact discs. On Wednesday we are playing KCRW's Morning Becomes Eclectic, so listen in on your slow traffic car ride. Also, Wednesday we are playing at Spaceland with Foreign Born and Delta Spirit! 10-5-06 Yes Ladies and Gents, we're back on the road! Here's the story: Futureheads were headlining this tour and they snuck out the back door and left us holding the bag. The Kids' however are pressing on. The proverbial 'bag' is that we have never done a headlining tour and the rooms will be larger than we would prefer. But hey. We did get to bring our friends the fabulous Delta Spirit to play some shows up north, and another great Los Angeles band Foreign Born will be joining us in San Francisco. Listen to these bands music. We are playing two new songs that will probably remain titled "Every Valley Is Not A Lake," and "A Song For All Regina's."