Get it Hot

2010-05-27T09:11:00.000-07:00

It's already starting. The heat is coming. Texas summer heat is like nothing else. It sticks. It stinks. Everything is a little bit more irritating. The funny thing is, Austin (guitar player) is moving into a new house right now. How come we always seem to move at the worst times? I can't tell you how many times I've moved in the middle of the summer. I guess the world just kind of works that way sometimes. It makes you pay for it.

So I'm off to Portland on Sunday for the summer / fall time. Trophy's will be missed. Mike is taking over my job. J Train is still booking. I'm sure it will be the same old same old when I get back. We're having one last blast this Friday. It'll be a kind of going away party for me. We're going to play a long set too. Don't worry, no opening bands. Just us and booze and the heat. Party at DP's afterwards? Probably. Mike is sleeping at the bar.

LA was great. Wrote some really interesting songs when I was out there. My favorite has to land with Jason Hill (Louis XIV) called "Smarten Up." It's a 70's prog stomp box. It's ripping and quiet, totally tripped out. It reminds me of what it would be like to lose my mind. He lives in Leon Russell's old house in Laurel Canyon. It took me about a half hour just to find it. He built a studio on the outside of the house with some pretty insane gear.. Vintage Neve Pre's, U67's, pianos, insane guitars, amps I couldn't really pronounce the names of, blah blah you know the routine. Yes I have pictures. And we sat in the Hollywood Hills and crafted our Queen epic. Hopefully it will make a record. Any record. Was it what the labels were looking for? Probably not. But what the fuck do they know anyway. I remember Jason telling me, "Well, at least it's fucking creative." I'll post the demo up soon enough.

So I got back from LA with a handful of new songs. Wrote one called "Want You" with a guy named Space from Australia. Oooh, I like this one. It pumps. A motherfucking anthem. We'll try and knock it out on Friday.

Our Nashville trip got bumped back till later in the summer. I'm going to go up and work on more tunes in Portland. The guys are staying back in Austin and we'll be hitting each other back and forth with takes and demos. I'm guessing we're going to have 20-30 working tunes by the end of the summer. We'll have a lot to sort through. Sometimes it's a good thing, sometimes it's a bad thing. Too much can always be bad.

One last thing. I'll miss you all this summer. It'll be the first time I've really been away from the band since we started. I guess it's something I just need to do. I won't get too sentimental, but I think when I wake up in Portland in a few weeks, I'll be missing the awful heat and the studio and my bros and gals and Frenchie and the springs and the shitty Tex Mex. I'll have traded it for a girl and the Pacific Northwest and, I guess, the Red Fang dudes? Those guys are just fucking cool. If you haven't heard them, check them out. www.myspace.com/redfangpdx .. Don't watch the video though. We've all made too much out of it. Listen to Wires. Totally cool. Alright watch the fucking video.

And yes, we're playing Come Around on Friday. As well as Movement and the some other older ones.

I'll be updating from the Pac Northwest. Let's talk and shoot the shit. Spoon's Loveways EP. I remembered I had it in the Trophy's jukebox and just got it out. Wow. This band was smoking on this thing. How come so many people haven't heard this one? It came out just before Girls Can Tell.

Matt D

Lions in Blood - The beginning

2010-05-05T10:15:00.000-07:00

So what happened to the band? No tours. No new record. No old records. What the fuck is going on? Lions in Blood? Blog? Ever going to do a video? Are you dudes still alive? Oh, these questions have been popping all too often. The short answer is yes, we are still alive. The second answer is, patience.

I stole the last half of Lions in Blood from the song “Whatever in Blood.” Only two people have heard it. I’m one of them. I’m hoping the other won’t sue me. I should ask Steve. He’s one of our managers. He lives in Chicago and manages some big bands. And then us, his baby band. All the sweat and chaos of the live shows have made it hard to pigeon-hole us into one niche or another. This in turn makes it hard for the Jeff (NY manager) and Steve to sell the band to major America. Ah, the industry. It’s so fucking shitty sometimes. This buy and sell mentality is why “Let No One Fall” (our most recent EP) has yet to be released in the states. Duff and Maybe Records released it late last year in the UK. We toured with Monster Magnet and sold a bunch of records. We got to go to London in December (dark, dreary, cold, miserable) and see Scotland. Bruce Dickinson starting spinning Gimme Riot on his BBC radio show. If that dude believes, what more do you need? Why does the world feel the need to constantly categorize everything? You know, the Stones is a pop band. Who doesn’t like Rocket Man? And why does everything have to be about Slayer now? I love Slayer. I love Megadeath. I remember listening to Symphony of Destruction on repeat when I was a kid because I thought the video on MTV was so bitching. I also love Beck. And I love me some old Pink Floyd. That’s right Sherman and the Red Fang boys. I said it.

So I’m heading to LA this week to write some new Lions songs. One of the guys I’m writing with is Jason Hill from Louis XIV. I remember being obsessed with his band or rather their first record about 6 years ago. I’m excited to hang with him. I always thought they wrote real cool songs. When I get back we’ll start sifting through tons of demos. We have loud, quiet, heavy, pop, madness, trance, drone, and everything in between. I want some Milk and Honey on this next record. I want something that pisses off the metal dudes. Remember that girl who was heckling me at the Typewriter Museum show over SXSW? I want to piss her off.

Then I want to get to Nashville. We’re heading up there in the beginning of June to start tracking what will be the next record with Ken Coomer. He played drums in a lil band called Wilco. Oh yeah, and ruled with Steve Earle. Big studio, big drums, big vocals, big everything. I can’t wait to get up there. We’re driving up in Mike’s car. Jake is worried about it making it up there. I love when Jake asks Mike about it. It’s totally Jake.

So this is the blog. I’m going to rant a bit. I’m also going to keep you updated as far as band activities go. Austin’s got a solo thing going on. I heard it’s good. I haven’t actually heard it yet, but I’m sure it’s pretty and weird. Mike is trying to start a funk band. Did everyone know that Mike’s old band opened for WuTang Clan? Digital Underground? RATM? Yup. Jake is now giving drum lessons to 4 year olds. Mike is also taking over my gig at Trophy’s this summer. I’m off to Portland for a few months. I’m going to finish recording the Battleme record. And I’m going to be psyched to be away from the Texas heat. Fuck the Texas heat. It’s insane. If you’ve never experienced it, you’re missing the absolute worst in humidity and sweat.

I once read a Spin interview where Josh Homme said something about keeping bands hidden and adding mystery to who they are, which is why you don’t see a lot of blogs or anything from certain bands. I believed in that philosophy for a while. But now things are different. What are we hiding for? And what secrets? That we all have jobs and the it’s tough to make a lot of dough playing music and it’s equally as hard to write a hit song? What does that mean anymore anyway? What happened to radio? What happened to MTV? What happened to everything I believed in when I was a kid? The keepers (A&R) are constantly telling us how much they like our band, but that we just need that one song. We once racked up a $800 bar tab on the labels’ dime in a Brooklyn club. What else? That I have a shitty eye disease that keeps us from touring like we used to? That we still love playing on the floor at Trophys because it just feels right and then we all go to Dawn’s afterwards and throw a big party and stay up all night and wander home drunk and some of us end up talking to Biram or Pinkus or J Train. And then we just get up and do it again. Let’s air some shit out. I’ve given up on being cool.

And can someone please tell me why I never heard MGMT’s first record until last week? It must have been that cool metal phase I was going through.