Photo by Jake Merten on Flickr.

DISCLAIMER: I think I'm the only person that posts incomplete blog entries, then goes back later on and finishes them. This is weird, I'm sorry! I'm also putting together a video. I am, however, making a 90 second video every single day on Flickr.

Alright, you wanted it, so you got it! Here's our blow-by-blow account of our second tour with the bigger, badder, and 100% live Vampire Weekend. The "100% live" reference is about how they used to play to a DAT tape on the last tour we did with the Dirty Projectors. Chris was just learning the bass and hadn't gotten all the songs down after Demetri left the original lineup to pursue acting (kudos to him, Ironman actually looks like a really promising film).

Well, delay no more, here you go:

Day One: San Diego, California

Previous to this tour with Vampire Weekend we were in Austin, Texas for SXSW, then back in Portland for literally one day. We hit the streets in our brand new Mazda Miata (convertible) and made it to the city of angels (Eugene) to stop at our favorite gas station. Seriously, if you're ever in the windy city (Eugene) you should stop by SeQuential, exit 189 off the I-5.

Our drive to San Diego from Portland via the emerald city (Eugene) took 40 hours. Don't ask.

Then we played a show at the Casbah.

Day Two: Los Angeles, California

Well, would you believe that the 2 hour drive from San Diego took us a whopping 13 hours? Believe it. Again, don't ask. We took a meeting with a manager, drank 7 Red Bull drinks, and smoked around 22 cigarettes outside of Jeff's Famous Deli.

We played at the El Rey and Andy Samberg, Jonah Hill, and Spike Jonze were in the mezzanine. It was pretty good.

Day Three: Day off

'nuff said.

Day Four: San Francisco, California

VICE COOLER

OK, I'm sounding like a broken record now, but seriously, something happened and it only took us 2 hours to get to San Francisco. Don't ask.

We played a show at The Independent and it was possibly the best show we've ever played. Google it. The promoter hired a string quartet as a present to Vampire Weekend after seeing them with strings on SNL, for his present to YACHT he "hired" a gold Rolex watch for yours truly and $5,000 in backstage catering JUST for Claire. But somehow I STILL feel like we got the rough end of the stick...

Day Five: San Francisco (Part 2, this time it's personal)

I'm not going to lie, we got mixed up in some shady dealings in the Castro today. Maybe we bought the wrong guidebook or something, but whoever said $48 is too much to pay for a used six-pack of Dr. Peppers was probably right. We needed those like we needed a hole in the head. Am I right?

Our second show in San Francisco -- we're kind of a big deal around there -- was a blast. On this tour we got a lot of questions about how we don't have a traditional band (no live guitars, drums, etc.) and even a couple excited comments about how he/she hadn't ever seen a band with a computer before. This is interesting.

Day Six: Day off

We rolled the car six times and landed in a ditch. I lost a couple quarters in the mess and Claire still can't find her sunglasses. Thank god for insurance, State Farm specifically. We're A-OK.

Day Seven: Portland, Oregon

Fuck the Doug Fir. We're never playing there again. I hope this gets me "in trouble." Seriously though, you need to stop going there.

Day Eight: Seattle, Washington

Day Nine: Vancouver, B.C.

RULED. I was expecting it to not rule and I was so wrong about it not ruling and it ruled so hard. This might have been our best show of the tour even though we lost $6K at the border and I'm now legally a personal slave to a border patrol guard named Christopher Baskins. You could say it could be worse and you'd be right. Christopher is actually really nice and so far he's only made me open up his 7-Ups and fluff his pillows after his afternoon nap. It's very mild.

Day Ten: DRIVETRAIN: Vancouver, B.C. to Missoula, Montana

We've been touring with a travel french press Thermos and some Stumptown Coffee and it's been lifechangingly awesome. Also, I need to talk to you about something very serious if you tour in a band, or travel a lot. You need to start bringing a very nice scented candle with you. I recommend a soy candle because it will last long. We got ours at Aveda, I know, fancy, but dude, it's a very good item to bring on tour. Burn it while driving. Burn it at night while driving and listening to the new Valet record. Burn it in the club. Burn it backstage. Burn it in the kid's house. Burn it in the cheap motel room. Burn it.

We ran into so much more snow that I imagined late March would bring us. Trip on that.

Day Eleven: Missoula, MT

Have you ever even been here? Man, it's really beautiful. Around 5 years ago I was on a tour that presumably had a show in Missoula and when we got there, no one had heard of us or knew that there was supposed to be a show that night. So we ate at a Thai place on the corner and kept driving, no big deal. This time around was similar, but almost the exact opposite. The crowd was fucking pumped and screaming so loudly after each song we played that I felt my ears melting into themselves. The PA sounded like it was dying.

After the show the division of merch zone, audience, backstage room, and all personal space was destroyed. It was awesome. While I was loading our stuff into the Volkswagen Golf I noticed a dude walking around with Claire's laptop asking if anyone was looking for a laptop. I explained to him that it was Claire's and he told me he found it on the floor. Something happened. The screen is now cracked and broken and it takes a very long time to check your email.

Day Twelve: Boise, ID

Holy shit the drive from Missoula to Boise is intense! CHECK IT OUT. There was a good bit of snow and Vampire Weekend was pulled over and their van was torn apart in search of drugs. They had lost their drugs and tore apart the van looking for their drugs that they lost. Just kidding. The police pulled them over, I bet because they were in a nice Sprinter van with California plates, and searched the van only to find nothing. Vampire Weekend does not do drugs. Neither does YACHT. We do sniff white out though, which isn't technically "a drug" or "cool" or "good feeling" or "real." Please don't do drugs.

Day Thirteen: Salt Lake City, UT

Our favorite fan made a really cute shirt! She also left us a note on the back of our car.

Day Fourteen: Denver, CO

Our friend Chris Adolf is in a band called Bad Weather California and they got to be Daniel Johnston's backing band when he came to Denver. I wish so hard we could have been there.

Day Fifteen: Day off

Claire had to fly to Portland to fix some of the crap that went wrong with our new business, Manila Mac, and almost singlehandedly ship out the remaining 400+ orders. We are now sold out and making more of our AirMail sleeves for the MacBook Air. This is a strange and new part of our lives. BUSINESSPEOPLE.

Day Sixteen: Minneapolis, MN

I was so happy to see both Dr. Garlich and my Best Friends Forever. Before the show I went with Vampire Weekend to try and find where Bob Dylan used to live. We found a pasta place.

Day Seventeen DRIVETRAIN: Minneapolis to Madison

I stopped at a Rest Area in Menomonie, Wisconsin and the men's restroom featured a dude talking very loudly over his two-way cellphone while in a stall. I only caught this:

"..the only one I did in February was the one with the...uh... flapper bent up."

Day Eighteen: Milwaukee, WI

Day Nineteen: Chicago, IL

The very good-looking "Possibilities" in Fort Davis, TX. (21 miles away from here) On Flickr.

It's been months. Since we last spoke, Claire and I drove down the west coast of the United States and made our first stop in Los Angeles about 16 hours after leaving Portland (epic time!). We hung around for a couple days then headed off to Tucson to visit our friend Molly, then on to here, Marfa, Texas, where we've been living for almost two months now.

We essentially came here to complete new projects in what we thought would be a mild (and slightly more social) version of isolation. This has proven to be a pretty inaccurate assumption on more levels than we could have anticipated. First off, the people we've met here have proven to be great friends that we hope to keep for years and years. Secondly, this town is manic: both in its physical being, which has delivered giant cartoon-like snowflakes and 80-degree sunshine over the course of 72 hours, and in its incredible social climate. Claire and Flint have compared it to their "college years." There have been many events ranging from artist talks to minimal techno DJ sets in our living room. True story: the only party in Marfa we chose not to attend, out of sheer overload, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs were at. Sometimes we have to make an effort to stay at home and work on our junk. Other days we have really felt the smallness of Marfa. There is no Thai food. One time we had to drive 25 miles to buy an ink pad. No one here has a Nintendo Wii for us to play. There is only one FedEx drop box and the post office is closed on Saturday.

Flint has not been this social, ever.

Claire actively says "y'all" now. It's actually a pretty effective and endearing phrase.

On top of our manic social life here, we went ahead a invented a laptop sleeve and subsequently started a real deal by-the-books LLC business. We never saw this coming! We watched Steve Jobs' keynote address and we instantly had an idea that we decided to fully realize. I'm a huge fan of this kind of fast action, but neither of us expected this project to yield such an immediately intense response. We thought we would sell 100 tops. OK, I don't want to type about this anymore. It has been such a rough and crazy experience starting this weird business. What next?

Really, we're in love with Marfa. Here are some more photos:

We're leaving Marfa on the 5th of March to return to our on tour forever lifestyle. We'll be back in Portland only for a couple days before sticking around for a bit in the middle of May and making some new music and/or product stuffs. We are so stoked to tour with Vampire Weekend!

Also, http://yachtisyournewbicycle.com/

iTunes screenshot.

I download music. I download a lot of music. I don't purchase music often, so I completely and totally understand when kids come up to me at shows and look me straight in the eye and tell me they're not going to buy my record tonight because they've already, or are going to go home and, download it. There just isn't any reason to show animosity towards this new-ish way of communicating; to me, this feels like a natural way of weeding out assholes and the people that aren't smart enough to make interesting work.

I want to give back. Here are three ZIP files of instrumentals. Download them, use them for karaoke, perform as YACHT or The Blow, chop them up and make your own remixes, make your own new songs, put them on indietorrents, upload them on alt.binaries.mp3.cooldudes, do what you will. These are 256 kbps DRM-free MP3s properly tagged with album art. Have at it!

First I'd like to give you all of the instrumental versions of the songs I've recorded and been playing on tour in 2007. This includes all of the songs from I Believe In You. Your Magic Is Real., a bonus track that was included on the European release of the album, and the song I made for the David Shrigley book and music compilation, Worried Noodles.

1. So Post All 'Em
2. See A Penny (Pick It Up)
3. We're Always Waiting
4. Platinum
5. It's All The Same Price
6. The Magic Beat
7. Drawing In The Dark
8. It's Coming To Get You
9. If Music Could Cure All That Ails You
10. I Believe In You
11. Your Magic Is Real
12. Women Of The World
13. Don't Stay In Bed (Bonus Track)
14. I Saw You (From Worried Noodles)

I totally forgot about The Summer Song, so here it is, as a lonely 7.2 MB MP3.

Next I'd like to give you all of the instrumental versions of Paper Television, and a b-side track called "Get Around" we made at the same time and released on a Yeti Magazine compilation and on a 7" single for Parentheses on Tomlab.

1. Pile Of Gold
2. Parentheses
3. The Big U
4. The Long List Of Girls
5. Bonjour Juene Fille
6. Babay (Eat A Critter, Feel It's Wrath)
7. Eat Your Heart Up
8. Pardon Me
9. Fists Up
10. True Affection
11. Get Around (B-Side)

The last thing I want to give you, for now, is my side of a split 12" I made with my friend Luke (Lucky Dragons) in 2005, but didn't come out until this year. Buy the 12" here from Marriage or here from States Rights. Randy of the band No Age listed it on a best of 2007 Pitchfork thing.

1. I Can't Complain
2. Like Most Babies
3. No Apologies
4. (New Wave) Polly
5. Healthy Student
6. Until It's Fucking Gone

I don't need your money.

If you're a company and you want to use these songs for commercial purposes, that is a whole other story. Contact Jeff Pachman at Domino Publishing if you would like to do so.

Photo: After the party in London. Taken by Ben Roberts.

It's all over, clap, clap, clap-clap-clap!

Sort of. Two concerts in the near-future you should know about:

Friday, November 30th, 2007- Portland, OR @ Backspace (115 NW 5th Street)
8pm, All-Ages, FREE! (with The Thermals)

Review in the Willamette Week | Photos by Jeff Mawer | Photo by Justin Kent

Wednesday, December 5th, 2007- New York, NY @ Knitting Factory (74 Leonard Street)
6pm, All-Ages (with Mt. Eerie, Islands, Tussle, Nick Krgovich, R Stevie Moore, Roger Ferguson, Christopher Francis, and Tomlab DJs) as part of the Worried Noodles release party!

Photos on Pitchfork | Photos on Brooklyn Vegan

It's all over, clap, clap, clap-clap-clap!

Where do I even start? I played nearly two hundred shows in 17 countries in 2007. I played to 21 people in Hamburg, Germany and 1,500 people Detroit, Michagan. I flew on countless crappy airplanes, rode on both nice and not-so-nice trains, illegally drove cars, rode on multiple tour busses, both with wifi and without wifi. I made new friends that I'll keep for the rest of my life, and I was harassed by drunken English dudes for wearing pants too tight for their preference. Sometimes I was with a busload of friends, and other times I was more alone that I have maybe ever been. I renewed my relationship with Tetris, this time on an iPod.

I'm not sure if I'm a better, smarter, stronger, wiser, or more rugged human being. I'm just glad to be at home and have the space and time to be bored again. Right now this is endlessly satisfying for me. As far as this blog goes, I've almost completely forgotten how to document this shit. After China I started touring completely on my lonesome and I lost the spirit of documentation somewhere out of the window of the hired Peugeot, right past Fabrice, my nearly silent (but very friendly and supportive) driver for the French leg of the last European tour.

For documentation's sake I'll give a rundown of each part of this last tour starting right now:

France: I started off by visiting Flint at his residency at Cité de Internationale des Arts, which was so incredibly nice. I hadn't seen Flint in months and being with him in Paris was a treat. Being with friends out of context in non-English speaking countries. I played in Paris, Bordeaux, Toulouse, Nante, Lyon, Reims, and Nancy before coming back to Paris for an unintentional extra day off (I missed my flight to Norway) and I brought Flint this "present" that he has very appropriately been using as a blanket. The shows in France varied from completely awesome to very small and very awkward. I played on another boat. That was great. I didn't speak very much during the day.

Scandinavia: So, I missed my SAS flight from Paris to Oslo and I had to buy a completely new and unrelated ticket due to SAS's poor customer service. Note to self: avoid SAS, Virgin Blue, EasyJet, and Ryanair. These airlines aren't exactly "nice" or "helpful" or "worth the cheap tickets." Once I got to Oslo I got to hang out with the incredibly awesome Ingeborg who showed me around, introduced me to the best candy designs, and took me to her warm apartment to hang out, watch Pimp My Ride episodes from 2002 on Norwegian MTV, and eat Thai food. I almost didn't want to play a show after that. But I did, and it ruled:

A very nice trio named Echodeck offered to drive me from Oslo to Malmo to Gothenburg in their red Volvo, which is Swedish just like them! After this trip I decided that I have to get up to Trondheim, Bergen, and have an extended hang out in Norway. I imagine this would mean some extended touring in Scandinavia as well. 2008!

Berlin: This was my first extended hang out with Thomas, my favorite contestant of Ultimate Blogger Season 1. Just to give you a little insight, he fooled everyone into thinking that he was a Russian Italia Disco playboy named Lyova living in Thailand, when in fact he and his roommate had infiltrated our game and had been basically controlling the series from the get-go. Also, he's Polish/British. Also they lived in Taiwan, not Thailand. It was deeply impressive and so much fun to watch unfold. Anyway, I hung out with Thomas and his girlfriend Liz in Berlin, it was great. I met David Shrigley at the Worried Noodles party the Dirty Projectors and I played. I blushed because I like him so much. True story: I blush sort of a lot. I'm looking into this.

Dublin: I'd met Deerhunter before, but I'd never seen them play. We played together in Dublin the night that I found out Whiskers died, and I opened up the show by talking about being bummed about Whiskers and it was nice, sad, and pretty awkward. I felt like I could fall apart at any moment and I think that gave the show something extra. Deerhunter was awesome and we talked about playing together more in the future. Adam and Honey are going to be touring with Bradford's new shit, Atlas Sound, next year, too. White Rainbow eternal love forever respect wisdom warrior chamber.

UK: The UK is fucking dark! At this point, it had been about three and a half weeks since I'd seen Claire, and a month before that, and a month before that... We decided that enough was enough, so she flew to London to meet up with me and do the whole UK leg of the trip, then fly home before me so she could go to (and write about) a Science Fiction/Fantasy convention in Portland. I played mostly club nights. The only other experience I've had with club nights was in Australia, and those were equally out of control, as well as being not exactly the most familiar or comfortable setting for me. Not that I need golden pillows or even a backstage area; that's not the kind of uncomfortable I'm talking about. I'm from this very small Northwestern North American city where I started playing shows in living rooms, basements, speakeasies, treehouses, and crunked-out warehouses turned all ages "venues." Club nights, on the other hand, seem to be all about fashion, getting fucked up, and doing everything possible to avoid taking part in the actual show. There were totally extreme exceptions to this: the tight lyrically laden mosh pit at PUSH in London, for instance, or the kids smashed together and smiling on the elevated blocks at DURR, but yeah man, fuck club nights. I want to play in places with less hangups.

London: Thank you so much Matt, Cherise, and Alex for hosting us, rolling deep, and keeping us warm.

Berlin (again): The show at West Germany was the best show I've played in Berlin to date. West Germany is a small venue that used to be a dentists' office. It's pretty thrashed in resemblance to a squat or something, and I heard that it's run illegally, which makes it a little cooler. The morning after the show Claire left at 5am and I went to Yellow Sunshine and got their amazing vegan chicken burger. Oh man.

Lüneburg: Everyone was very drunk and there was so much confetti. I think I swallowed enough to create some sort of new paper-based illness. My computer still has some of it coming out of the disc drive. The DJs in Lüneburg were some of the best and most joy-filled people I've met in a while! They had a microphone and kept screaming LÜNEBURG, all night long. What if the Juice Team DJs had a microphone?

Hamburg: Was small and sweet.

It's all over, clap, clap, clap-clap-clap!

It's all over, clap, clap, clap-clap-clap!

Portland and Marfa: December, January, February, and possibly March and April will be devoted to making new YACHT musics, documents, performances, lifestyle items, and visual displays. As of right now I'm planning on making two new albums, but that could very easily change; it's only a plan for creating some sort of structure for the different kinds of songs I'm making. I don't want to talk about this too much. I just want to do it and surprise you. So forget that you even read this and just know that I'm never satisfied with what I'm doing, so I'll always keep trying to make even better stuffs.

Feel free to copy/paste this image on your blog and post a memorial or moment of silence.

Goodbye my oldest friend. I love and miss you. Whiskers on Flickr. Check out her profile on Catster (I forgot I made this).

Please join me in a minute of silence:

Photo: YACHT @ Yue Festival in Shanghai, China by Abe Deyo.

GETTING THERE: The European tour with Architecture in Helsinki ended in Dusseldorf. Kellie, Cameron, Haima, and I stayed in a business hotel near the airport together, while Sam and Gaia stayed in a hotel downtown before spending their days off in Italy. Gus, Jamie, James and Pauline flew back to Australia before another AIH tour starts in the US, which unfortunately I won't be on -- I'll be back in Europe for a month of more touring! AHH! I MISS YOU GUYS!

Back to the story.

I woke up after sleeping in; the dudes had already gotten up and were calling me from the lobby to say goodbye. I got ready and made my way to the airport where I would be spending upwards of eight hours before my flight from Dusseldorf to Dubai to Hong Kong would leave. I travel and tour light, with only a small roller suitcase and a backpack, but I didn't feel like roaming around Dusseldorf on my own so I just decided to go deep at the airport. This would prove to be one of my more epic battles with boredom, loneliness, and frustration with battery technology.

THE STORY: So how did I end up touring in China? How does that even happen? MySpace. I got a MySpace message. A girl named Megan Malone from Omaha, Nebraska moved to China in June and wrote me a message telling me I should come to China. I said "I would LOVE to, but how do I even do that?" She wrote back a month later and CC'd a guy named Abe who was apparently putting putting on shows in China and bringing bands from the US to tour. Megan had done some deep internet detective work and found Abe through an ex-pat message board or something. Abe got stoked on YACHT and the rest is history.

HONG KONG: I really didn't know what to expect from China. Honestly, I didn't know much about it at all before going there. I didn't know anything about Hong Kong at all. I ended up having to fly into Hong Kong to get a mainland China visa instead of going directly to Beijing, which forced me to cancel shows in Beijing, and for that I'm super sorry! I promise I'll be back soon. Getting a mainland China visa while on tour in Europe proved to be pretty difficult. Anyways, Hong Kong blew my mind. I don't love comparing or dumbing down places and experiences to movies, but I couldn't help thinking of Blade Runner a lot while in Hong Kong. I mean, look at this skyline. I'd left my camera in the US on the Dirty Projectors tour somewhere, so I had to buy a new one. Luckily buying electronics in Hong Kong can be a pretty cheap affair, and documenting this trip felt very important to me. We walked around, took the double-decker trams, bought amazing glutinous rice based desserts, and ended up going to Hong Kong Disneyland!

SHANGHAI: We took a train across the border and into mainland China after I got my tourist visa and flew from Shenzhen to Shanghai. I was worried about crossing into mainland China with a tourist visa even though I was basically going to China for the sole purpose of "business" and I was to leave the country with more money than I came in with. The border crossing was completely painless and quick. Canada has something to learn from China. WHO CARES IF SMALL BANDS PLAY IN YOUR COUNTRY AND GET PAID? The next day I played at the Yue Festival, a big festival that happened in Shanghai's awesome Zhongshan Park. This was the first year for the festival and apparently stuff like this doesn't really happen in China, and there isn't really an indie or smaller than BIG TIME scale music culture. I felt totally honored to be in China in the first place, and to play a show like this on top of that was really awesome. I played right after Talib Kweli and right before Ozomatli. After Talib Kweli played I was totally nervous. My time slot was perfect, but dude ended with such high energy that I wasn't sure if I could keep it going! Luckily this was the kind of festival that only had two stages and none of the acts overlapped, so everyone that was watching Talib Kweli walked directly across the grass and watched me. The crowd was rad! So much screaming, a pretty good Q&A, and lots of dancing. It seemed like the crowd was mostly made up of foreigners rather than locals, which was a surprise and a bit disappointing, but nonetheless it was an amazing show!

The next night I played in a tiny bar called Logo Bar and I produced more sweat than my body has ever produced, ever. I don't know how, but something like 230 people came to the show and there is no way that more than 100 could comfortably fit in the room. Everybody was on the small stage and the sound was totally fucked up but it didn't matter. After the show everybody spilled onto the street and the cops came to make sure everything was alright. I sat down outside and created a remarkable puddle of sweat on the concrete.

Here's my Flickr Set of photos I took in China.

DOCUMENTATION: There were tons of cameras around, and I mean tons, but I've yet to try to seek out photos from the shows other than ones on Flickr. Here are some of those:

Here's some YACHT video people shot from the Yue Festival show via YouTube:

THANK YOU: Thanks so much to Abe for getting me over there, working everything out, and being such an all-around rad host. Thanks so much to Megan for creating the spark that burnt my face off! We're already planning a second China tour for spring of 2008, this time with more dates and a tour crew tentatively including Bobby Birdman and the Juice Team DJs. LOOK OUT!

DAYS OFF: I've been home for a couple days now. I helped save The Ultimate Blogger Season 3 and left Portland to come hang out with Claire at her art residency in Oysterville, Washington, a tiny coastal village across the river from Astoria, Oregon (my hometown) and on the Long Beach Peninsula. This is where I am right now! It's amazing. I'm going to work on new stuff for the European tour that I'm leaving for in 10 days, and start working on some new musics. See you later!

Hi to Zurich. Photo on Flickr by pastalane.

Tonight was the last night of my European tour with Architecture in Helsinki. So far we've toured the US, Australia, and Europe together and it's been about 100 to 300% fun. Some bands were just meant to be friends, both socially and musically, and I think we've really got something here. Also, they have a double-decker bus. Yeah, check it out. I mean, they don't have it, like OWN it, but this is how we rolled. We packed it to capacity and rolled 14 strong.

Expect to see some collaborative releases both musical and miscellaneous sometime within the next year or so. You heard it here first! We're thinking BIG.

I'm flying to China tomorrow! I don't have a visa yet, but the Chinese Embassy in Zurich told me that I could get one at the airport in Hong Kong. So that's it, I'm flying to Honk Kong via Dusseldorf via Dubai tomorrow. I've researched the visa process online and it looks like I'll be at the airport for a upwards of 5 hours waiting for a visa. Wish me luck, dear readers. Wish me luck. In this time of infinite touring, I need your spiritual guidance, tender love, and optimism. It's a thin line I walk here, folks. I could go nuts.

Sorry Beijing! Visa stuffs forced me to cancel the Beijing dates, but I PROMISE YOU that I'll be back soon enough!

October 5th - Shanghai @ Yue Festival (I play at 5:15pm)

October 6th - Shanghai @ Logo Bar

I'm headed back to Europe after a few days off somewhere on the coast Washington State and/or in Portland. Here are the dates!

OCTOBER
20.10.2007 Paris (FR), Point Ephemere
21.10.2007 Bordeaux (FR), Son'art
22.10.2007 Nantes (FR), Université De Nantes (w/ Antelope + Thee More Shallows)
23.10.2007 Toulouse (FR), L'Ambassade
24.10.2007 Lyon (FR), Epicerie Moderne
25.10.2007 Reims (FR), Festival Electricity
26.10.2007 Nancy (FR), Badaboum Festival @ L'Autre Canal
27.10.2007 Rennes (FR), Electronik Festival @ UBU
30.10.2007 Oslo (NO), Spasibar
31.10.2007 Malmö (SE), Inkonst

NOVEMBER
01.11.2007 Göteborg (SE), Berg211
02.11.2007 Arhus (DK), RECession Festival
03.11.2007 Berlin (DE), Worried Noodles Release Party @ Festsaal Kreuzberg
05.11.2007 Dublin (IE), Whelans (w/ Deerhunter)
06.11.2007 London (UK), 93 Feet East (w/ Numbers)
08.11.2007 Glasgow (UK), NicenSleazy
09.11.2007 Manchester (UK), Charlies
14.11.2007 Exeter (UK), Cavern Club
15.11.2007 Bristol (UK), Thekla (Club///stutter)
16.11.2007 Berlin (DE), West Germany
17.11.2007 Lüneburg (DE), Asta Wohnzimmer
18.11.2007 Hamburg (DE), Fundbureau

+ you may or may not see a few dates in Brazil in December! Cross your fingers for those ones! I miss Claire, I miss Claire, I miss Claire, I miss Claire.

Taking it down low in Vienna, Austria. Photo by Paule on Flickr.

Wow, that was a long time. This site has been totally busted and is hopefully going to be moving to a brand new home in the very near future. Web site trouble is boring on all levels, so I won't waste any more of your time with this!

Let's talk about what happened not so long ago. OK, so Claire and I drove across the country in a nation-wide storm and made it just in time for sound check at the McCarren Pool party. After that I had a couple days off in New York and Claire flew home. Then I drove up to Portland, Maine, the "other" Portland, and also a city that I'd never been to, and started a tour with Dirty Projectors and Vampire Weekend. This lineup carried on through the midwest where we traded out Vampire Weekend for Nat Baldwin for a couple shows before meeting up with West Coast warrior and vibrational healer White Rainbow.

I drove across the country without a drivers' license. Alone. In a car that does not , and did not, belong to me. This experience was equal parts fucking horribly stressful and pretty exhilarating. I've never been much of an alone-time person, but this tour really felt good. I did a lot of thinking. Also I was very bored at times.

That video spawned some awesome comments on its Vimeo page. Check it out. I still would like a mixtape from every city! Not just music that you like, but music that is FROM your city. Rep your set.

I didn't take much video on the Dirty Projectors tour, and to top it off I left my camera in the glove box, so now I'm on another tour and I don't have my camera with me! Luckily I have cameraphone to at least try and document some of this tour. Here's a movie of the Dirty Ps tour!

So now I'm in Europe on a fancy double decker tour bus with Architecture in Helsinki, ripping through the mainland before I head to China for a handful of shows. Yeah, China! Then I'm coming back to Europe after a brief ten day rest in Portland with Claire and Whiskers. See you soon!

If you fell in love with one of the new gold foil YACHT t-shirts on tour, but didn't have any money or you only have a credit card, you can now buy 'em online from Marriage Records. Here you go:

Dates with Architecture in Helsinki:

2007-09-18 - Paris, France @ La Maroquinerie
2007-09-19 - Bielefeld, Germany @ Forum
2007-09-21 - Vienna, Austria @ Flex
2007-09-22 - Munich, Germany @ Ampere
2007-09-24 - Milan, Italy @ Transilvania Live
2007-09-25 - Zurich, Switzerland @ Rote Fabrik
2007-09-26 - Bordeaux, France @ Le Krakatoa
2007-09-27 - Toulouse, France @ Le Ramier
2007-09-30 - Düsseldorf, Germany @ Zakk

The Dirty Projectors in Toronto, ON. Alternate shot on Flickr.

NEW! If you saw one of the new gold foil YACHT shirts at a show, but didn't have any money, or wanted to use a credit card, here you go! BUY THE NEW SHIRT ONLINE!

YACHT w/ Dirty Projectors & Vampire Weekend

08-23 Portland, ME - Space Gallery *
08-24 Montreal, Quebec - Casa Del Popolo *
08-25 Toronto, Ontario - Sneaky Dee''s *
08-27 Buffalo, NY - Soundlab *
08-28 Cleveland, OH - Beachland Tavern *
08-29 Cincinnati, OH - Publico *
08-30 Bloomington, IN - Buskirk Chumley Theatre *
08-31 Ann Arbor, MI - The B-Side #
09-01 Chicago, IL - Beat Kitchen #
09-02 Grinnell, IA - Grinnell Lounge
09-03 Omaha, NE - Slowdown Jr.
09-04 Denver, CO - Hi Dive
09-05 Salt Lake City, UT - Kilby Court
09-08 Portland, OR - Satyricon ^
09-11 Sacramento, CA - Fools Foundation ^
09-12 San Francisco, CA - Bottom of the Hill ^
09-13 Visalia, CA - Howie & Sons ^
09-14 Los Angeles, CA - The Echo ^

* with Vampire Weekend
# with Nat Baldwin
^ with White Rainbow

Also, this just in from Cool Hunting Video:

I jumped off a very large stage. Photo by Rebecca Smeyne via The Village Voice.

I played in an empty pool in Brooklyn.

There are a bunch of Flickr Sets of the day. Here's another Flickr set. And another!

Photos/post on The Fader Blog, and on Pitchfork.

NEW! Klaire's Korner:

Now I start touring with the Dirty Projectors, Vampire Weekend, and White Rainbow, respectively.

Check out this trippy cut up by Blake Whitman:

I also played an in-store at Sound Fix Records later that night. Here's a Flickr Set by Jason Bergman.

Charlie (Panther), Claire, and me. Photo by Blink, full-size on my Flickr.

NEW! Video down below!

Fucking New Zealand! Let's start with this series of photos:

Fucking New Zealand #1

Fucking New Zealand #2

Fucking New Zealand #3

Fucking New Zealand #4

Fucking New Zealand #5

Auckland: We were met at the airport by a very interesting man named Matthew Crawley, a national celebrity here in New Zealand, mostly for his radio show on 95bFM and his TV show on Alt TV, but also famous for his devastating good looks. We vibed with this man almost immediately, especially after he made a Very Good Joke about getting us a discount on our hotel room based on the fact that we'd be sharing it with "dead people." Just watch the promo for his music video show:

At first I was afraid that no one was coming to the show in Auckland, then all of a sudden there were something like 250 people out of nowhere. Here's a photo of Claire and I playing The Summer Song, right after the monitor caught fire. This was my second experience (so far) with speakers catching on fire during the show (see YACHT on a yacht). I thought there was a hidden fog machine at first but once I caught wind of the actual smoking speaker smell, I understood what was going on. No worry, the show went on and ruled! Thank you Matthew, bFM, and Auckland!

Here's a photo gallery of the YACHT show from Alt TV's Cheese on Toast host Andrew Tidball. Here's a photo gallery of the Panther show, too!

Wellington: That's when we met Blink. Blink runs something called a low hum, which used to be a zine, then graduated to a magazine, then became a magazine with a CD, then toured bands, and now tours bands and puts on a yearly festival called CAMP A LOW HUM that takes place in the summer, which is February here. We played a nice and small show at the San Francisco Bathhouse and ate one of the more amazing meals I've eaten in my life, at a place called Aunty Mena's that's right next to the club on Cuba street. I had the vegan chicken Laksa and it destroyed. I wish I could eat this every night.

Christchurch: THE SOUTH ISLAND. Blink is pretty much the only person that tours bands on the south island of New Zealand. I'm not even sure if anyone I know has even been here, let alone toured here, before us. It feels real special! We took a ferry from Wellington and drove four hours from Picton and finally arrived in Christchurch. Blink was so good at making sure we saw all that New Zealand has to offer in the way of its natural beauty. Did you look at those photos up there? MAN!

In Christchurch we met some incredibly hospitable people. Thank you so much Chris and James for letting us stay with you for so many days! Thanks to Frase and Bri, a dance pop band and all around good people, for taking us around and eating vegan junk with us! We also met a group of kids that were so pumped on our show that they drove five hours to Dunedin to see our show there, even though we added a second last minute Christchurch show the day after! Check out Chris' photoset of the Christchurch show on Flickr.

Dunedin: It is very much winter here. We had heard that Dunedin was a weird place with lots of dudes on acid, but it turned out to be a pretty normal college town, including a pretty large amount of drunken kids that took over the main strip after dark, much like zombies. The show was at a small cafe and literally every single person at the show was dancing during both the YACHT and Panther sets. It was super, super nice. For some reason I started off a couple of the New Zealand shows with talking. Lots of talking. Chats. The Dunedin show was no exception. I started right off with a Q & A and got some questions, one of which was asking my estimated life expectancy for people in Portland. My answer was 80.

The best merch table of all time. Photo by Claire. On Flickr.

BRISBANE: We said goodbye to A.I.H. in Perth and took a couple planes to get back to Brisbane to meet up with Charlie, a.k.a. Panther, our new tourmate for 3 more shows in Australia, and 4 in New Zealand. Again, thanks so much to Andy and the Wolfgang crew for setting us up and taking us all around the place. Check out this photo from the Wolfgang show in Brisbane. BOOM! Before the show we did a photo shoot for the aforementioned UV Magazine for a YACHT/Panther feature they're doing in the next issue. We wore silly clothes.

SYDNEY: Charlie is an amazing dude. He invented one of my favorite jokes of recent times called "checking my sites." This joke is fairly subtle and may or may not be funny to you, dear reader, but hear me out... So you're on tour, or on vacation, or traveling, or just away from your computer, right? Now, you'd like to get back to the computer to conduct whatever business, leisure, or general computer usage you need to do, right? No one wants to say "I need to use the computer" or "I need to use the internet" or "I have some computer stuff I need to do." NO! Charlie's constant usage of "I need to check my sites" hasn't stopped being funny to me, but has also just become a regular part of my vocabulary. OK, enough explaining, I gotta go check my sites. SEE YA!

The highlight of the show for me was the merch table zone me, Charlie, and Claire made. For some reason the Australian label didn't have any of Charlie's albums even though they're FROM Sydney, so he just had t-shirts to sell. I thought it would be a good idea to fill up the rest of the table with little notes selling non-material goods like free handshakes, hugs, and relationship advice. You see the photo up there, you get it! My second highlight was excessively using the fog machine. I didn't realize how much fun is to be had picking those things up and spraying the stage and audience with a semi-harmless, nearly non-toxic fog.

MELBOURNE: You people are crazy. The show put on by US vs THEM was out of control. Seemingly everyone was drunk, jumping up on stage to either dance or make out, and there was even one angry looking man that kept insisting that he should have the mic so he could sing a Kenny Loggins song. I'm all for Kenny Loggins, but this dude looked like he was owed this experience and I was somehow ruining his life if I didn't give him the microphone immediately. Maybe this was actually the case. Sir, I'm sorry for ruining your life. Check out this animated GIF flyer from the show.

Thanks so much to everyone that saw me first with Architecture in Helsinki, then came back for more with Panther. Australia is full of good looking and big hearted people! Truly, thanks for everything!

Photo: Taken by Michael Howard. I was giving that girl $10. Explanation on Flickr.

The internet is still expensive and elusive. Stay tuned while I update our journey piece by piece! It'll be like watching a tree grow at a somewhat faster pace!

Melbourne: I've only played two consecutive shows in a row a handful of times and they've always been fun. I don't know where my energy comes from, but I could play around 50 shows in a row and I bet they would get better as they went along. OK, that's probably a tiny exaggeration, but both shows in Melbourne felt awesome to play AND to watch Architecture in Helsinki. Melbourne is a very nice city. The look and winter temperature reminded me of a mix of San Francisco and Seattle. I'm sorry that I keep referring to Australia as a "mix of blah and blah."

Adelaide: Turns out it's the murder capital of Australia. It didn't feel so bad to me! The show was packed and full of cute kids and a couple goths. That night Gus and Cameron literally ate a kangaroo. Apparently it was a Thai satay, like an skewer, like an appetizer. Read more about kangaroo meat.

NEW! Here's two videos from the Adelaide show:

Perth: The most isolated city in the world. The most awesome city in the world. Just as rare as playing two shows in one night is playing two nights in one place, which is what we did in Perth, Australia. The winter weather in Australia had been really mild up until Perth, when we arrived it was crazy windy and later we were pounded with intense rain. The first night we were introduced to the very enthusiastic photographer Michael Howard, who took the photo up there. During my Q&A a girl asked for $10 and I replied with something about how the audience could probably provide this for her and I offered myself as an on-stage target. Most of the people gently threw up twenty cent, fifty cent, two dollar, and dollar coins, but there was one person that just fucking pelted me in the ear with a coin! It hurt pretty good but only for a minute or two. I'm glad that Michael captured the girl getting her $10 and I hope that it did her well. At first I couldn't tell if the crowd liked the show, but afterwards through emails, MySpace messages, and human interaction at the merch table people were so incredibly positive and excited about the show. Thanks Perth! I'll be back.

Then we had to say goodbye to Architecture in Helsinki. We had an early flight from Perth to Melbourne to Brisbane to start our tour with Panther. THAT'S NEXT.

Tour van friends by Claire. On Flickr.

AUSTRALIA! What a rad place! Maybe it's like England and Florida? London and Florid? Flondon! Everything here is just a little bit nicer. The quality of life seems to be pretty high and so far the percentage of amazingly nice people to jerks is pretty amazing.

The one thing that sucks here is the INTERNET. Australia you are crazy! No one has wifi, and if they do, it's expensive. FUCK THAT, THE INTERNET IS FREE. Australia, seriously, get it together.

DAY ONE: BRISBANE. We started off on Monday in Portland, Oregon at 3pm. We flew to San Francisco first, then hung out at the airport for a few hours before getting on the 10 hour flight from San Francisco to Auckland, New Zealand. We lived some sort of time warp day on the plane and arrived in Auckland at 5am on Wednesday. At this point we felt pretty normal. We both slept on the plane a fair amount and Air New Zealand was totally nice and had surprisingly good vegan food. The airport wait and the following 3 hour flight from Auckland to Brisbane gently pushed us towards exhaustion. WE MADE IT!

We met the incredibly nice Andy from UV Magazine and Wolfgang Monthly at the airport and he took us all around Brisbane and introduced us to the flat white (pretty much a latté with less milk and a better name) before dropping us off at the weird backpackers' motel we stayed at. Now we're seeing these places all over. They're pretty much hostels, but seem to be a lot more of them around than in Europe. Remember to bring your own shampoo if you plan to stay in one of those. I washed my hair with a bar of soap.

DAY TWO: SYDNEY. I played on live TV for the first time. Well, wait, maybe some of the shows I played with Devendra Banhart in France, Denmark, or Sweden were live, but this was definitely a first for YACHT. I played two songs on MTV's The Lair, a live show on MTV Australia, and taped for MTV UK, Germany, Baltic Regions, and some other MTVs that I forgot. I'm not sure if anyone even watches it, or watches MTV at all in this country (apparently not many people have cable), but it was an experience nonetheless! Of course the host was a total d-bag, as one might expect from a television show host.

DAY THREE: SYDNEY. Here's a clip from the Sydney show at Manning Bar taken by Waferbaby! He was an Ultimate Blogger 2 contestant, and I was a big fan of his site waferbaby.com back in the day before social networking sites or even blogs were really popular. He is a pioneer! He took some photos here, too.

Photo: Green screenin' at Portland Cable Access. Original on Flickr.

Men have had their shot, and look at where we've got.

My very first introduction to feminism was through Kurt Cobain and Nirvana. I watched every interview, read every article, listened to every bootleg I could get my small-town coastal Oregon hands on. Nirvana was the first band I had experienced that represented all of the people and ideas that weren't being represented in mainstream culture at the time. Obviously this had a deep impact on me.

To be totally honest, I heard Jim O'Rourke's version of Women Of The World first, but his version isn't what inspired me to make my own. The Ivor Cutler/Linda Hirst version is totally mesmerizing. Here, download it. It came out in 1983 and was a minor hit on the UK indie charts. Find as much Ivor Cutler as you can.

James Sumner made my epileptic hypercolor grunge dream come true.