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"What
Deerhoof did this year" As we drove up the hill towards Berkeley's Greek Theater, we saw the enormous line of fans that had already formed for the Radiohead show. Security was tight and since we and all of our equipment fit into an economy car, there was a minor hassle at the artist parking lot as we tried to convince them that yes we were really the opening band. But again all nerves dissolved when upon entering the theater, Colin Greenwood immediately comes up and wants to take our picture, treating us like old friends. Jay and Ian Pellicci who are doing our sound for this California tour want to take a look at the mixing board, so we walk over there and take a seat. Thom walks onstage for their soundcheck, spots us, and intones into the mic, "Welcome members of Deerhoof!" Even with years of buildup and knowing there was no way they could live up to the legend, Radiohead were so much better than even my highest expectation, that my whole outlook on the world had to be immediately revised. But what people might not know is how they are in person. All five of them, and everyone in their enormous crew, were all so sweet to us, and such jokers. Colin kept posting pictures of us on dead air space, and he'd imitate Satomi's dance during their show. Phil brought us cupcakes. Jonny brought us champagne, if we played well. Thom would watch us from the side of the stage. Ed asked us how we got our guitar tone, he wanted to steal it. If one of John's pedals got busted (a frequent occurrence), someone from their crew would immediately offer to help.    The Berkeley show was general admission, meaning everyone got there super early and we played to a full house, the terraced seating allowing us to see everyone clearly. Those Ancient Greeks must know what they're doing. In LA an odd coincidence occured when film composer Ed Shearmur came to the show, being a longtime Radiohead fan. Although he'd never heard of Deerhoof, he apparently he liked the show and left wishing he could work with us somehow. The odd part happened when he got to his office the next morning and there was a DVD on his desk with a letter from Justin Theroux saying here's a movie I'm working on called Dedication, it has a lot of music by this band Deerhoof, would you be interested in participating in the soundtrack? An honor was bestowed when Radiohead asked if we would come and do some more concerts with them the UK and Amsterdam. The only problem for us was that the time we'd given ourselves to make this new album was getting munched down to a frightening minimum. So between these two Radiohead tours we met at John's apartment in Oakland and showed each other our song ideas, and started recording things into his computer, which was set in his bedroom closet that doubled as our recording studio. When we started, the only song we knew for sure we wanted to use was "Look Away", which is actually several sections from John's soundtrack to the animated movie Heaven And Earth Magic by Harry Smith, which we had performed a few months earlier. Everything else we were starting from scratch. Whereas on The Runners Four, where we wanted the whole album to sound like it was played live, with each of us on our respective instruments, on this new one we put no such restriction on ourselves, seeing our limited time as restriction enough. So all three of us played drums, guitar, bass, keyboard. All three of us mixed, wrote lyrics, pasted samples. As usual we had no idea what we were doing. Although it mostly done on home computer as usual, we did make a couple visits to real studios. Eli Crews was a dear and let me come into New Improved one morning and record a bunch of overdubs on his crazy organ collection, a return favor for me getting him into the Radiohead show. New Improved, in Oakland, is incredibly well set up and must be one of the best studio deals you can get anywhere. Later we went to Tiny Telephone with Jay and Ian Pellicci (who had also recorded some parts of Reveille there several years before) and did piano, some drum overdubs in the big room, all the main vocals, and even some gang vocals with everyone, when we discovered the Pelliccis' considerable tonedeafness. Since there was no way we could bring our beloved Jay and Ian with us to Europe, we figured we were stuck for a sound person. But Jim Warren, Radiohead's sound mixer since the early 90s, casually said he'd be happy to do it, he already knew our songs anyway. He went and researched The Runners Four's mix to refine his plan. To add to this honor, we had several chances to talk a bit of shop with him about microphones and whatnot, an event of some significance given that Radiohead without a doubt had the greatest live sound I've ever heard at any venue in any genre of music. And the secret to his drum sound was not only revealed to me, but used on me: a cheap clip-on lapel mic taped to the top of the bass drum.  (John and Jonny in Edinburgh, by Jonny) Jonny offered to play his ondes martinot on our album, but then said no when we made him a cd of our rough mixes, saying it already sounded done. We were flattered, but didn't really agree, and while we spent our days traveling and playing concerts, we spent our late nights sitting at the computer trying to figure out what was wrong with our stupid songs. Like I mentioned before, we had long A-B'd our rough mixes with Radiohead albums. The only comparison more crushing than that would have to be mixing your album in a hotel room directly after a Radiohead concert. Several of the people who've done our album artwork in the past, such as Trevor Shimizu (The Runners Four), Ken Kagami (Milk Man) and Satomi (who did Reveille's cover) were all great fans of Scottish artist David Shrigley, and inspired by his work. When we discovered that he had heard our music and liked it, we were overjoyed and immediately inquired into the possibility of collaborating, and he agreed. Backstage at the first show (Edinburgh), we met him for the first time. He turned out to be so mild-mannered, not exactly what you'd expect from his images. He said he'd just make a bunch of paintings and we could use them in any way we wanted, and choose whichever for the cover. At the time he hadn't heard any of the new music, and we had only just come up with the title Friend Opportunity. Wandering the streets of downtown Dublin the next day in search of some din-din, with Barry and Deborah of All Tomorrows Parties, we were snubbed at the Japanese restaurant when they said it would be a 45 minute wait, but we had to get back to the club where we were playing our own small show the day before the Radiohead Dublin show. So continuing down the sidewalk, we see VEGETARIAN RESTAURANT on an orange sign and decide this is our destination. Much to our surprise Jonny and Thom are sitting together at one table having dinner. Their hilarious tour manager Brian Ormond, an Irishman, had roped Jonny into playing an traditional Irish music concert in town tonight. We can't come we say, we have our own concert. Surprised to hear this, Thom suddenly says he's skipping Jonny's thing and coming to our show instead. Now why in the midst of a long, grueling tour, he would want to spend his night off in a noisy crowded club hearing a band he hears every night anyway is beyond us, and we hardly expect he'll actually come. But we enjoy our veggie burgers and J and T keep us in stitches with stories about how cold the AC is on David Letterman's set and how the "look ahead" setting is essential for getting the best sound out of your compression plug-ins. After the last song I exit the stage towards the merch table and get a surprising pat on the back from Thom, and though he retracts his hand instantaneously upon contact with my sweaty shirt, he had not only come, but apparently made a scene by being the only one there who knew how to dance to our songs. Elated, we then head outside only to find that our rental car had been clamped. Our final show together in Amsterdam was actually the first to be indoors. This might seem an insignificant detail not worth mentioning in this account, except when you consider that at all of the outdoor shows, being in summertime, it was always still daylight when we played. Tonight was the first time we needed a light show. Again, the reader may wonder as to why this is noteworthy. If asked at the time, I myself would have wondered the same thing, until seeing some mysterious hooded figure in control of our lights, later revealed to be Jonny Greenwood. In "Gore In Rut" he even broke out the strobe, normally forbidden for support bands. Back home we finished Friend Opportunity, with some valuable mixing help from Ian who would step in when our exhausted ears threw up their cilia in confusion. The final nail in our recording schedule's coffin was the two shows we did with Marc Ribot and his amazing new trio Ceramic Dog with our friends Ches (currently also of Xiu Xiu) and Shazad on drums and bass. It was another experience of sharing the stage with that rare musician who was already a hero to each of the three of us. Ed Shearmur, by now in touch with us, skipped James Brown to see us in LA and we made plans to come back and record soon. The day after the LA show we drove to Ventura for Friend Opportunity's final mastering session at John Golden Mastering. Deerhoof had been doing our own home-computer-style mastering (the final step of finishing a recording where you assemble the track order, make sure all the songs are the same volume, try to give it any final polish you can to the overall sound) since Reveille, but actually I had experienced John Golden before, at a mastering session for the Curtains. He is beyond friendly and possesses a motormouth that may surpass even Wayne Coyne's. We had brought along "No One Knows" by Queens Of The Stone Age and begged John Golden to make our songs sound as loud as that. I do remember that our instruction gave him pause when when he arrived at "Whither The Invisible Birds?"  Soon we were in Boston to meet The Flaming Lips again for a tour. As we were unpacking, I noticed some TSA-caused issues with my snare drum that would have been fatal to our performance, were it not for the generosity of Lips drummer Kliph Scurlock who offered his snare as a substitute. I had so admired his sound and style, as well as his drums, ever since seeing them on Austin City Limits, and now he was lending me his snare drum, and not only that, he said that when we get to Oklahoma City, he'll get another snare he had and just give it to me.  I
happened to mention to Kliph that we had just finished our new album.
He asked if I had it with me and when I said yes, he asked if he
could hear it. When I saw him later that evening before the concert,
he was going crazy, he'd already listened to it twice, and as we
bumped into other members of the Lips entourage, we realized they'd
all listened to it too! We received such support from them all,
and later in the tour as we started having our inevitable doubts
about the mastering and the song order, Kliph, who at this point
had listened to the complete album 45 times (his iTunes play count
confirmed this), was such a great help to us in deciding what to
change and what to leave. Thank you Kliph! Deerhoof good buddy and spiritual advisor Peter Venuto, resident of Toronto, creator and constructor of The Trashlites and the soon-to-debut Electric Rainbow Machine, is on hand for the Toronto and Montreal shows. As if Satomi and I are the baby Jesus, Peter brings us a gift of frankincense and myrrh, which almost gets confiscated at airport security on our way to London, as well as the entire first season of Star Trek The Original Series in quicktime files that unfortunately won't play on Satomi's computer. When our new album comes out in January, we hope to have Peter touring with us as much as possible. For an example of his genius handywork, please see trashlites.com. In Montreal we run into Michael at the dollar store - both bands are making last-minute preparations for tonight's Halloween performance. Michael's shopping for masks, and Satomi convinces him to get what she thinks is a child seal with glasses but is actually a mouse, but the woman behind the counter says she won't sell just the mask, you have to buy the whole costume. [FF end up skipping the masks and instead do a spooky organ intro with an uproarious voice-over by Michael, sounding like a Long Island Vincent Price.] Satomi has been "slavin' away" on our Halloween costumes for days, and is almost finished with three Japanese ghost kimonos. But we can't find the right thing for the "obi" (which is to be tied around the waist) until I spot some very reasonably priced cream-colored table runners. Someone came to the show dressed in a spooky Milk Man costume, and will come on stage and dance during his song. We're so excited to show off our awesome costumes but once we start playing my costume disintegrates. John's witch wig slides in front of his face and he's playing nothing but wrong notes! 
Jason keeps recording all the shows, and we're incredulous every day when the FF say they listened to the previous night's Deerhoof show over and over in the van...Then again, we listen to Bitter Tea and Rehearsing My Choir over and over in our car too, always moved and amazed. You know when you watch 2001 or The Shining and it's like a different movie every time you see it? So it is with these albums, they're so huge and ambitious and complex that a first impression, even if it's a good first impression, is not sufficient. These albums are not just worth hearing, they are worth READING, like a novel, and they're worth rereading again and again, they are beautiful. Live, all these songs are completely rewritten and the version we hear every night, unique to this tour, is truly stunning both in its conception and its performance. I consider myself one lucky dog to be able to listen so many times to the entire album Bitter Tea as one gigantic medley, because it's a lot to comprehend. Daily, it grows in power and I more appreciate its intricacies. In addition to this, as well as "Single Again", "Quay Cur", and "Blueberry Boat", they also play "Slavin' Away" from Rehearsing My Choir, in a version that sounds nothing whatsoever like the record. Every night of the tour I go to sleep with it repeating in my head and I think I heard it repeating in John's head too. All tour long Satomi keeps requesting an obscure Fiery Furnaces number called "Mouse House", the only appearance of which was on Pancake Mountain, an amazing kids' TV show that has bands like The Fiery Furnaces and Deerhoof come on and do children's dance parties with puppets. Eleanor says she can't remember the lyrics, but we do attempt a version at about 1am on the last night of the tour together, on stage after everyone had gone home - Eleanor on drums, Michael on lead vocals, me on guitar, John on Wah-Wah pedal, Matt on packing up the tshirts and Satomi on dancing. [Since then Eleanor has been good enough to send us the lyrics - it's a killer song and we might try to incorporate a cover of it into our repertoire.] After that we repair to the hotel next door and the only people checked into this hotel seem to be Deerhoof and The Fiery Furnaces - needless to say we are not cautious about our decibel level as we joke and talk nonsense until 4am. Those cats are the funniest people ever, I don't think I've ever laughed so hard in my life! 
Though it's hard to believe it now, it was in the middle of this same tour that we made a visit to the remote island of North Haven, Maine, population 300. This was the birthplace of the Milk Man Ballet. We really couldn't believe our uncanny good fortune, we had originally thought of Milk Man as a kind of music theater style album for kids, so to have someone pick up on that and bring it to life was a very proud moment. When we released Milk Man, I got an email from a total stranger (Courtney Naliboff) saying it "would make a good ballet." I appreciated that she would bother to have a thought such as this, and tried to think of a nice way of saying "Yeah, right" back. But then in summer 2006, two years later, she wrote again "OK, I'm ready to do that ballet now." She had been hired as the music / drama / songwriting / chorus / band / rock band teacher of a one-room schoolhouse on North Haven. And it was her job to put on three productions a year at the community theater, and they had just finished Pirates of Penzance so she figured, "Hey let's do the Deerhoof ballet." She took it upon herself to transcribe the entire cd note for note and arrange it for a crazy ensemble of banjos, kazoos, and the local church reverend on trumpet, the reverend from the next island over on clarinet, a 12-year-old saxophone player, and the local bluegrass group, The Toughcats. Gym and dance teacher Ken Adams choreographed the whole thing. It all happened totally independently of us. We just showed up a day before the performance and our jaws dropped. Our music had taken on a life of its own and found its way into the fabric of the lives of total strangers, and they worked so hard on it. Of course they didn't remain strangers. Says Satomi: Always I like our music to be listened to by all ages and I think it's so awesome that children want to not just listen but even dance along with the music. When we made the song "Milk Man", I came up with a dance that everybody can dance to. That was going to be on our music video but it never was finished, but surprisingly when we went to see this children's dance, they did exactly what I had imagined! That was weird, almost like I predicted the future. And they were wearing the white clothes, and in my drawing board, my rough sketch for that dance it had all white clothes. And that album is about children, and children as all human beings, but I think it's very interesting that the real children could get into our music, which is often said to be weird. We talked to those children, and we had some workshops in their school, and they had so many questions about music. And when we gave them cds and tshirts at the end of the concert, they went to the backstage right away and changed into the Deerhoof tshirts, and were so happy and running around. It just made me smile really big.("Dog on the Sidewalk") A DVD of the Milk Man Ballet has since been created as a fundraiser for a new schoolhouse in North Haven. You can get the DVD at milkmanballet.com and watch a clip from it here... Would I be exaggerating if I said that the ballet seems to have spurred a Deerhoof mini-wave among the wee ones? We flew then to London, to continue The Flaming Lips tour. Part of the fun was that Wayne would always set up his surveillance camera, which normally was attached to his microphone and the image projected at ridiculous size on a screen, making his nose look overlarge and his eyes glow a sickly green, this little thing was set on the floor next to John's feet while we played:
Once 2006 was over, Satomi photographed my shoes and then cruelly discarded them. 
Soon it was January 2007 and Friend Opportunity's release was upon us. The three of us got together and tried to figure out how we were going to play the songs. Partly because there was so much percussion on the album, and perhaps partly inspired by Michael from The Fiery Furnaces, Satomi insisted that I add a woodblock (actually plastic) and cowbell to my setup. There was no way these little doodads were going to grind the axles into the ground, so, at least until they got dented and cracked over the next couple months, they were part of our sound during this time. The album came out first in Japan so that we could do the tour there before starting in the US. Our Japanese and U.S. tours lasted from mid-January to mid-March and were expertly summed up in a myspace blog John wrote when it was all over: Post-Tour Expansions Dear Friends: I've just been informed by Myspace Central Command that I can't run the advanced blog editor because I have improper settings. Fair enough! This is my first blog entry ever, and my settings are bound to be flawed. Still, I muddle on. We have just finished about two months of touring yesterday, and I thought I would take this opportunity to describe, in necessarily insufficient detail, some experiences we've had in that period. The timing seems right as I am indulging one of my vices and making my favorite recipe of pasta sauce, and I have about an hour until it matures. More than time enough to catch you up and make my first internet missive! Ha! Our first stop was Japan. I have always loved going there, and we have been lucky insofar as we have been able to make that trip at least once a year for several years. Touring in Japan is an exercise in joy, the absolute perfect place to begin a tour. The preferred method of travel is the bullet train, and the venues provide most of the equipment necessary to make a concert happen, so we just have to get on a train with our guitars and clothes, and we disembark, some 1000 miles and a couple of hours later, refreshed and ready to rock as best we can. The entire japanese tour was with OOIOO, a group many of you are no doubt already familiar with. I had seen them, and loved them, at an All Tomorrow's Parties festival in England a couple of years ago, but the tour far exceeded my expectations. It's one of those things where you hear the music, and it sounds like beautiful, searing music, and you have no idea where it came from. is it current or ancient or . . . ?? To top it off, they brought their children along on the tour, and it was such a great feeling being around kids! My favorite moment was in Nagoya when we went out for dinner, came back to the venue right before the show was going to start and went into the dressing room, and Yoshimi's daughter was splayed out on the table in the corner of the room asleep and everyone was tip-toeing around and shooshing each other so that she wouldn't wake up. That's my ideal backstage environment! We almost had to cancel the show because she was still sleeping. Our Japanese booker's name is Shioyama (which translates to Salt Mountain in Japanese), and she went above and beyond in every posible way. And Yahata (the meaning of whose name I am unclear on), our liaison with our Japanese record label, was characteristically amazing, though we didn't get to spend as much time with him as we would have liked, given his incredibly busy schedule. We owe these two more than we can possibly express. They are amazing! We had a day off before our Nagoya show and got a chance to go see the Roots play! It was ?uestlove's birthday, and unbeknownst to him, the band had made "Happy Birthday ?uestlove" placards (in english and Japanese) for every member of the audience, which they held up at the proper moment in the show. It was amazing to see, and it was so great to see the Roots in a smaller venue. Most of the drum sound was the acoustic sound of the drums (as opposed to being pumped up really loud in the PA) so it sounded natural and clear. It was great to see them, and I never cease to be amazed at how nice they are to us. (as a sidenote, I thought I'd update you on the pasta sauce situation. It appears to be going well. The sauce is darkening in color and reducing. The whole tomatoes are breaking down nicely. As far as I can tell, this should be a good batch.) After a day or two at home after Japan, we entered into the second phase of Friend Opportunity Tour '07, this phase being labeled the "suicide" phase. In this phase, the idea was to hit Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and San Francisco . . . in 4 days -- in short, a flying tour with almost no sleep. We've never done anything quite like this before, and I don't think we'll ever do it again. On the one hand, the shows were incredible, and we got to play with amazing bands. On the downside, we started to lose our marbles, given the fact that we were at the venues until 3 in the morning after the shows, then our flights would leave at 9 the following morning, necessitating that we wake up at 6:30 or so to drop off the rental car and get to the gate on time. This is when our immune systems began their understandable and excruciating decline. . . Upon returning from that tour, we were home for a day and then did a week-long west coast tour with Black Black, an amazing band from Los Angeles. Attemps to describe Black Black will fail, but what I can say is that their songs are these perfect little gems with no excess anything on them. And they're all just incredible musicians. Alex has become one of my all-time favorite guitar players. I never understood it when people used to describe guitar players as "tasty." It always creeped me out and seemed like a disgusting way to describe the way somebody played their instrument. At the same time, I would have to say that, if there ever was an appropriate way to describe Alex's playing, it would have to be "tasty." Please listen to their music if you get a chance! You won't be disappointed. They are heroic and grande. Upon returning from up north, we had a few days off, and then flew to the east coast to do a tour with Busdriver and the Harlem Shakes. I have had to control myself in order to wait until now to discuss Busdriver, but now is the time! For me, seeing Busdriver is like having my cerebral cortex deep-tissue massaged. I am more than just a fan. I feel like I am inside his music and can't get out. The live show included Caural as his DJ, who is hands-down the most incredible DJ I've ever seen (and a heck of a guy, to boot). We even got to play together, as Caural joined us for our entire encore every night, and Busdriver would join us for the last song. I can't describe what a joy it was for us to get to share the stage with those guys. I felt like we were living some long, lost dream that we didn't even know we had had. Amazing people, amazing music, and we even got to play miniature golf together (see the photos section)! Busdriver's website: www.busdriversite.com. Caural's myspace: www.myspace.com/caural And the hits just keep on comin'! Also on the tour was a band called the Harlem Shakes. We had played a show in Brooklyn with them at the McCarren Park Pool last summer, and we all really loved their show. I ended up talking with Lexy (the singer) for a good hour afterwards and felt like we made a very strong connection. When we were thinking of bands to play with on the east coast, they were the first name that came up. It would be obvious to say that we were all expecting the Harlem Shakes to be great and that we already knew we were going to have a fun tour together. What we didn't know is that everyone on the tour would become ravenous fans, waking up with their songs in our heads and going to sleep with them still ringing. They really took us all by surprise at how incredible they were. And such great people too! Their site: www.harlemshakes.com Nashville was a really fun show. At the end of the night, we were loading out, and I left my guitar leaning against the back of the van so I could bring more things out. I went upstairs, grabbed some more gear, and went back outside. When I got there, some friends said that they saw some guy running like crazy and drop something on top of a car (coincidentally, it was Peter the Electronic Rainbow Machine Man's car). I went over to see what it was, and it turns out somebody had stolen my guitar, started running with it, and then thought he was being chased so dropped the guitar on Peter's car and took off. The funny thing is, nobody actually saw him running with the guitar. Nobody was chasing him. In Winston-Salem, about 3 songs into Busdriver's set, I started to hear this crazy crackling sound in the right side of the PA. By 5 songs in, the entire side was completely distorted (and quite amazing sounding) but was about half the volume of the left. By the end of his set, it was basically gone except for occasional pops and bursts of noise. The last two shows of the east coast tour, we were joined by Flying, whose music I will not even attempt to describe but will only say that they truly are one of my favorite living bands. Their website is: www.flyingflyingflying.com. (I think it would be remiss of me at this point if I didn't mention that the sauce seems to be going well. It's a joy to watch large plum-shaped tomatoes devolve into caramelly mush. I may need to add the wine soon.) It would be even more remiss of me if I didn't mention our other tour companion, one Peter Venuto, inventor and the world's greatest living performer of the Electronic Rainbow Machine (ERM). We met Peter through our friends Fat Worm of Error. At the time, Peter was working with a device called the trashlite (www.trashlites.com), a homemade sound-triggered light freakout machine with LEDS mounted on trashcan lids. The Rainbow Machine goes one step further, with the LEDs mounted onto several 6-foot in diameter propellers that are rotating at some ridiculously fast speed. Again, the LEDs are responding to sound, and Peter "plays" the machine by choosing various modes that it can operate in. I was prepared for it to be cool, but it really took me by surprise when we actually were onstage with the thing. It's utterly mesmerizing and is totally responsible for any wrong notes that I may have perpetrated on any of those shows. It's also scary as hell to be onstage with. It was right behind me at most of the shows, and there were a couple of times that I was sure I was going to go out in an LED blaze of brain-crushing glory, but it wasn't to be. I have to say that the only thing that could possibly eclipse the complexity and glory of Peter's machine was Peter himself. One of the smartest, most earnest, affable, confusing, spontaneous and utterly genuine people I've ever met. I couldn't have asked for a better roommate! And he's doing my astrological chart (my first time ever) -- I'll let you know if it's accurate! (As an aside, I had to ask my mother what time I was born in order to get my chart done, and I got a really great email from her. She told me that when I was born, I came out humming. I couldn't believe she hadn't told me that before! She said it was a "portend" of things to come. There's a word you don't see every day. That's what happens when you actually sit down and read books.) After the east coast tour, we came home for a couple of days and then started south for a two-week tour with our old friends Experimental Dental School and our label-mate Macromantics. It was a real pleasure touring with both of these bands. I hadn't seen Experimental Dental School play in years (it seems like we were always on tour when they played locally), and I was absolutely flabbergasted at how much they had changed. The new songs are just so cool! I am really attracted to the harmony on this one song called "Shoko Can". I think that's a real new one so maybe isn't recorded yet, but everytime that song came on I got shivers up and down my spine. Their website: www.experimentaldental.com The touring version of Macromantics is a duo, Romy (who raps) and DJ Amy. We actually met Romy at a Dim Sum restaurant in Sydney a year and a half ago or something and all got along incredibly well. We later discovered that she was a musician, and she gave us her cd. When we were thinking of bands to tour with, it seemed perfect as she had just made a record with Kill Rock Stars. Romy and I immediately bonded over our mutual love and admiration for Rakim (of Eric B. and Rakim). "Follow the Leader" is one of my favorite albums. In fact, it was the only tape that I had in my car for about two years, but I digress. If I could describe Macromantics' music, I would, but I find myself tongue-tied, much like I would be if I actually attempted to deliver some of Romy's scathing and oft-hilarious lines. Describe it for yourself! Her website: www.macromantics.com. Well, that is the utterly abridged and criminally under-informationalized account of the last two months of our lives. Left out are the details of sicknesses, bad hair and truly profound beauty. I won't bring up the broken strings, snare drums, shattered bass cabinets (2 of them!), broken pedals, patch cords, and no doubt countless broken hearts (Harlem Shakes! Yow!) left in the wake of this steamroller of joy. I have nothing but thanks to our companions and artistic compatriots, all of whom made what could have been "another tour" into something truly transcendent. We thank you for your art and companionship and for keeping us alive (I'm not joking)! Until the next report (I expect in 2012 or so), I remain, John (PS: The pasta sauce was an unabashed success. It was nearly burned due to overzealous blog editing on my part, but it pulled through in the end) A couple of highlights I'd like to add: January 30: Somehow playing in San Francisco in front of people you know is always so nerve wracking, much more so than, say, playing in front of 20,000 people who are there to see someone else. Whenever we play Great American Music Hall, everyone there is so friendly, but once on stage something always goes wrong! John: This was the show that two of my pedals broke, so I borrowed Alex from Black Black's multi-purpose pedal thing, and I couldn't quite figure out how to get it to work. I kept pushing the wrong pedal and discovering some new sound. Quite fun. For me the beater on the bass drum pedal did not want to stay on the pedal, it kept wanting to jump off onto the floor, from which position it could create no bass drum sound. One such "abandon ship" occurs near the end of this video... But having Black Black and Busdriver there made it a joyful occasion... February 1 - February 4: LA's Black Black, on their first tour, took to it with gusto. The occasion was Diva's birthday added to the joy of our Portland show... February 11 - February 25: About the Harlem Shakes I would like to add that their drummer Brent looks absolutely identical to the drummer John for Bay Area band Sholi (who've just finished recording their first album with a little bit of production participation from me). Either these two were separated at birth, or they're actually the same person and playing a trick on me. In DC we were thrilled to tape another appearance for Pancake Mountain, this time right on the stage at the Black Cat where we were playing later that night... We had already posted video streams of the Electric Rainbow Machine, but creator and operator Peter Venuto was driving down from his home in Toronto for this tour, which was to be its live debut. He had previously set up his Trashlites at some of our shows, but the ERM was new and far more elaborate. D.C.'s maiden voyage of the ERM was a great success, save for the fact that John crashed into it at one point, temporarily turning it off, and almost causing himself horrible injury. John: I almost lost an arm at this show. I was set up roughly 6 inches in front of the rainbow machine, which is essentially a horizontally-aligned helicopter blade spinning at top speed. It made me play faster, I think. Asheville NC was notable for its extremely low ceiling, which required Peter to assemble and operate the ERM on the floor, off of the stage, and for the fact that when we left that night we forgot to take our cds with us. In Tampa, a venue called The Crowbar had only recently opened, but this little booking experiment of bringing Deerhoof and Busdriver to Tampa for the first time proved to be a wild success, the place was overrun... I don't normally think of myself as boastful, but all of these shows made me feel a definite pride in our audience. If you look at them they seem so different from each other, but they're all amazing listeners and so open minded. My pride was only disrupted two times that I can think of on this tour, one listener in Athens GA who shouted racial insults at Busdriver, and one listener in Charlottesville VA who shouted our band name so continuously the entire night that I don't think he or anyone around him heard much of the show. In Athens we played along merrily, oblivious to Busdriver's onstage experience until after the show was over... We celebrated the our final night together with Busdriver by performing together with both DJ Caural and MC Busdriver... In one of those uncanny world-shrinkings that seem to happen constantly on tour, DJ Caural (Zach) and several members of Harlem Shakes discover that they lived right around the corner from each other. Busdriver and Peter Venuto also stayed in touch, and even made an ill-fated plan to combine audiovisual forces on stage in Montreal, when Busdriver was to open for Coco Rosie. But as any studious reader of pitchfork knows, Coco Rosie was prevented from entering the country and the tour was cancelled, although Regan himself did not find this out until he was already on the plane leaving for the east coast. In Charlottesville, my old teacher Fred Maus had me come in and do a question and answer session with some of his grad students at the University of Virginia. It was scheduled to be an hour and a half long, but my answers were such that during that time I only answered three questions. March 2 - March 10: Only upon arriving at the parking lot of the minimall that housed San Diego's Epicenter did we realize that we had played this same room years before, to a crowd 10-strong or so. Both Experimental Dental School and Macromantics had already arrived. XDS was a trip for me because they were playing several of the songs that I had recorded with them on their album 2 1/2 Creatures, but alas it was not me on the stage playing the drums, but their new drummer Ryan. (Now they've just finished a new album which has a bunch of the songs we heard every night of that tour, including John's beloved "Shoko Can" with a different name.) Anyway I was so happy to see them make friends so easily with Macromantics. Our next show in Tucson had the odd distinction of being only 30 minutes long, cut short in order to allow for an important saturday night dance party at 11pm in the same space. Attendees of our low priority rock concert were understandably miffed at us, having paid a normal ticket price. We were consoled by the fact that at least we could get to bed early for once, and that the venue Club Congress was housed in the beautiful and historic Hotel Congress, which would be putting us up for the night. However that blessing turned into a curse as our room was directly above the club, so sleep wasn't possible until the bass drum quarter notes came to an end hours later... Oklahoma City meant of course a reunion with Star Death And White Dwarves, who consisted of two of The Flaming Lips' roadies, and had shared the stage with us at the Zoo show. Not only that, but Kliph made a solitary 5-hour car trip just to see us try to play our new songs, and to sit in on drums on "Milking". We were of course overjoyed. Getting the chance to visit Australia is one of those things that I don't know how I would have ever done without using the band as an excuse. Ironically, we and Marcomantics were slated to play the same Melbourne festival, the Great Escape, but were not there on the same day and missed each other. By the way John and Satomi both claim, consistently, that the world's best coffee is to be had not in Italy, not in France, not in Sumatra, but in Australia. I don't drink coffee personally... For our final show on the Australia tour, we were lucky to be playing Melbourne's Corner Hotel, one of the few rock stages anywhere to substitute for the usual black back wall, a white one, which shows the colors of the lights so much more vividly. Earlier that day I bought a flat ride cymbal (has no bell on it) on clearance at a drum shop in my never-ending quest to make myself quieter on stage, since flat rides are known to be the quietest cymbals available. But with the rest of the equipment we were using being borrowed from the great Melbourne trio My Disco, one of the loudest bands ever, I'm afraid this purchase amounted to a worthless gesture amongst the racket... Istanbul! We thought we'd never make it. I mean we thought we'd never be invited in the first place, but then once that happened we still never thought we'd actually arrive...It was to be our first stop on the European tour, and getting there involved several layovers. Upon arriving in Amsterdam, we get in line at Austrian Air, and when we reach the front, we are told in excellent and polite English that there are no such tickets, no tickets were ever bought. Immediately we start thinking how that hotel outside the window looks like a great place to stay for the next three days. But just in case, John calls the Turkish promoter from a pay phone. They'd never spoken before, so John introduces himself and explains our predicament, and is told, "call me back again in half an hour." We sit around the airport dejectedly, knowing there is no way this Istanbul trip is happening. But John calls back. Turns out Austrian Air was itself a sponsor of the show, was supposed to supply the tickets but failed to do so. Once this was corrected, we were on our way! Now Austrian Air has no vegetarian option, but if there were any beef dish in this universe that was going to tempt John and me back to carnivorousness, this Austrian Air lunch was not it. However, they did have the most striking plane interior I've ever seen - the color scheme between the chairs, the floor, and the wait staff were all coordinated in light blue, green, and red in such a way as to make me want to alter our lighting on stage from then on. The only thing out of place in this dayglo melange was the passengers! We arrived in Istanbul to be greeted by three people who worked for an underground music magazine (who had invited us, and one of whom was who John called from the pay phone) and one person who booked the show. For the next two days we experienced nothing but the most incredible kindness and generosity from them. Istanbul was not quite what I expected with my American-media-trained preconceptions. Most people we met were not religious, but in any case the religious and non-religious seemed amazingly tolerant of each other. Everywhere we walked in this beautiful city, people were smiling, well-dressed, and seemed to be well taken care of and enjoying life. American cities look like an open wound by comparison. Meals were leisurely, delicious, and vegetarian-friendly. The club where we played was one of the most "set up" venues we'd ever seen. We couldn't bring much on the plane, so we borrowed gear from the venue. When I asked about a bass drum, the response was "what size?", since there were three bass drums to choose from... A nice green shirt that was made especially for the event is what is on my back as I'm typing this. The opening band drove 5 hours from Ankara just to play the show, and enthusiasm like that is a powerful contagion. Backstage one member of their band took this photo, which unfortunately was then cruelly defaced by Deerhoof's vocalist. 
Reluctantly we headed back to Istanbul Airport to forge ahead with the European tour. Our indefatigable Swedish booker/driver/tour manager/merch seller/friend Torkel Skogman met us in Amsterdam and we set off towards Rotterdam. The music festival there turned out to be only the first of four over the next few months where both Deerhoof and our old pals !!! both played. John maintains that their very first show was opening for us in Sacramento, back when they still lived there, and back when !!! was just a casual Outhud side project. I'm not so sure it was their first show. But I definitely remember opening for them in LA several years later - and let me tell you I've never seen a venue's fog system so abused, you couldn't even see the band...Anyway we were coincidentally booked together in Rotterdam, Hamburg, Fuji Rock Festival in Japan, and the Electric Picnic Festival in Ireland, but annoyingly we never got to see them play on any of these. If, as John hinted above, a dense touring schedule began to play havoc with or sanity on the previous tours, we were ready for institutionalization by the end of the European leg. We shared two concerts with the galvinizing Akron/Family, with whom I had the privilege of sitting in on drums during "Circle, Triangle, Square", and with whom everyone present had the privilege of sitting in on clapping and singing. They seemed to be adjusting to their European tour experience so happily and healthfully that we were inspired but a bit awed. Our show together in Bourges ran behind schedule - by the time we followed them on, it was already 3am, and there were few in the audience other than Akron/Family and the Japanese-French band Konki Duet. But despite everyone's exhaustion, the venue's pair of lighting engineers put on a nonsensically busy and garish display during our set. I don't know what it is about Lyon, France but the kids there are just nuts. I've heard that it's because the culture there is so oriented towards the classics, and everyone so educated, that that ignites a spark inside certain Lyon citizens that can only be satisfied by nights of incredibly loud noise and wild dancing and screaming. Our show at Grrrrnd Zero was recorded and shot with multiple cameras by the wonderful people who brought us there, and will be up for your viewing shortly... One pleasure was playing our first shows in northern Italy. For some reason, in past years we had mostly only ever played in Sicily opening for dance parties, with couples waiting for "Thriller" who kept yelling "basta" during our set. John: Rome was one of my favorite shows of the European tour, because they had a courtyard area with a garden and lots of grass. Torkel (our Scandinavian booking agent, European driver and good friend) joined me in an impromptu game of soccer. It was harder for him, though, because he was on the phone with his girlfriend the entire time. I kept trying to knock him off his game, but he managed to carry on a conversation while maintaining 97% accuracy in his passing. In Austria we played in Krems, and if this town's name doesn't ring a bell, don't judge yourself too harshly. A quaint hillside town of a type that I had assumed no longer existed, it had me transfixed by its ancient cobblestone streets and beautiful weather. First on the show were the revamped and awesome sounding Parenthetical Girls. We thought maybe we finally were going deaf when we heard them say they were heading south for a three-week tour of Italy. Then followed Justice Yeldam, aka Lucas Abela, with whom Deerhoof had done an East Coast tour in 1997 or so (when he was nearly deported back down under for throwing a snowball at a police officer in Portland Maine), and whom we had just seen when he came to our show in Sydney earlier that month. Nowadays he is well-known for his use of large plates of glass that are amplified through various stompboxes, but in 1997 it was an earlier version where he used a turkey baster. Like TPG, he was just starting a European tour, and had his girlfriend with him for the whole trip. When I asked her how she could stand to watch him hurt himself chewing on glass shards every night, she said gleefully that no, she loved it, she comes on stage and joins in sometimes. As always, at Koko in London they pumped the subs under stage way too much, undoubtedly making everyone in the audience wish they had their own personal bass knob they could turn down during our set. Still, it was a memorable night - we finally got to meet Psapp. Back before we recorded the album, we discussed what we wanted it to sound like. I said to Satomi and John that I wanted to play them something, and put on "Hi" by Psapp, whom I had just discovered. Within three thumb piano plucks John says, wait I've been listening to Psapp too, they just sent us their cd! The rest of May had only one more show for us - we had intended to take the whole month off, but how can you say no to David Bowie? In deference to the auspiciousness of the occasion of being invited to play on the Highline Festival he was curating, we thought we should try and get Peter to come down and rig up the Electric Rainbow Machine once again. We were glad to have him with us again, and he too judging from the special purple duct tape he brought for us from Canada. To our delight, Bowie had us choose our own openers (Robert Stillman's Horses and Dirty Projectors), appeared at the concert in a suit and tie, and asked to see us backstage right before we went on. David Bowie was an absolute pleasure to meet in person, in fact the exact opposite of the tired, jaded "expert" one might expect of someone of his stature. He was like a kid actually, and that's saying a lot coming from someone like me. Within seconds of being introduced, we were exchanging nonsensical quips as if we'd developed a whole vocabulary of inside jokes. He was so excited about seeing us and about the whole festival - He had just come straight from Ken Nordine whom he put on earlier that same night, and two films before that! How he raved, too, about the Bang On A Can versions of Nancarrow's studies for player piano, arranged for live ensemble and played at a concert a few days before. 
June 1 was supposed to be Deerhoof and The Bird And The Bee, at The Los Angeles Natural History Museum. It was when we were in Japan in January that I first heard The Bird And The Bee. We were staying with Milk Man artist Ken Kagami, and he and his wife always like to have their radio turned on to a station called J-Wave. This song "Again and Again" came on and I was suddenly entranced, and halfway through the first chorus I was already singing along. Immediately I tried to figure out who they were, and discovered they were a California band with a new album coming out on January 23, same day as ours. I thought that my admiration from afar would soon become admiration from up close, until they had to cancel their appearance at the Natural History Museum due to double-booking. But then Autolux was suggested by the museum as a replacement, and happiness returned once again. On our first tour to Australia (2006), we were invited by John Baker, then road manager for The White Stripes, to play a couple of shows in his native New Zealand. His good-naturedness was such that before the tour had happened, before we'd even ever met him, he called up Satomi and me one night to say I'm in San Francisco now, The White Stripes are playing in 20 minutes, do you want to come and we can talk about the tour? I was planning to turn in, I said to myself, and then said, sure we'll be there in 15 minutes. (The venue was coincidentally just a few blocks down the street.) He led us in through a back entrance, straight to the stage where we watched TWS play from the side of the stage, with Lars Ulrich standing a few feet away. After what seemed to be a truncated show (the marimba and the big red timpani didn't even get touched), we spoke to Baker for a minute and started heading out, when someone called to us, someone who, when we turned to look at them, did not look familiar. He introduced himself as the guitarist from Autolux, who had just played on the concert. I explained that unfortunately we hadn't seen them play, we only found out about the concert 20 minutes before The White Stripes started. He insisted we come to their dressing room and meet everyone, they were all big fans. Satomi and I were stunned! The three of them, plus their sound engineer, were indescribably sweet to us and we made friends instantly and chatted about the long tour they were just finishing, opening for Nine Inch Nails. An hour later John Baker showed up and said that there is a room filled with a massive amount of red and white balloons that are just sitting, waiting to be kicked around and popped. Everyone obliged without hesitation, experiencing balloons to their fullest for another hour at least. The next time we saw Autolux was after the last Radiohead concert in Los Angeles - Jim Warren, front-of-house engineer for Radiohead, was and is also front-of-house engineer for Nine Inch Nails, and thus friends with Autolux. Autolux went all out for the Museum show, making hundreds of clip-on mini-lights by hand, that they attached to everything in sight, which in front of the North American Mammals dioramas made for an awesome display. I told them they need to get in touch with our friend Peter who had some similarly loony ideas about D.I.Y.L.E.D.s. LA resident Busdriver spent the evening with us as well and sat in on "Milking" which I thought we particularly nailed that night (i.e. I thought we sort of kept up with him). Our next UK tour brought us to several towns to which we had never previously been - Cardiff, Liverpool, Sunderland. If one were in a negative mood, one might think of this tour as the "Barricade Tour" because it seemed like most of the venues we played had these huge barricades in front of the stage, which the staff refused to remove or even touch, on account of their being "disgusting". But since I'm not in a negative mood, I will remember this as the "KIT Tour", where we got to play with KIT every night. There was no end to the side-splitting laughter backstage and the ear-splitting craziness onstage. We had fun in Glasgow making a few modifications to the marquee lettering. Every night, no matter what city we were in, I would acknowledge the efforts of our friend and driver Andrew Raine, and each time be surprised that it seemed that everyone in the audience already knew Andrew Raine. During long drives, our ongoing thirst to, as Andrew put it, "play fast and loose with the English language," was unquenchable. 
The UK tour with KIT sadly came to an end in Andrew's hometown of Leeds, where in order for KIT to catch their plane from Heathrow, they had to leave directly after their performance. We were a little worried about our Leeds show as it was being put on by someone whose stratagem for encouraging attendance was to post blogs about how Deerhoof shows were usually bad, so you should really come to this one because it will be better. But the Irish Center stage turned out to have a back wall of Christmas lights that, when twinkling, could elicit pardon from even the most judgmental soul... We stopped in France to play the Eurockennes Festival, and were stupified to discover that the sound engineer for our stage was none other than Frank, who had done our sound in Bourges. So what if that was 2 1/2 months earlier, he recognized me right away, though he didn't seem to remember the name Deerhoof. Anyway this was a great pleasure because trying to explain what we sound like to a new sound engineer each day is no easier now than it was when we started the band. Now I was pretty excited to return to Scandanavia during the summertime - I'm not sure I'd ever seen anything like the general mood of happiness that I saw on that our previous summer trip there, everyone staying up late and enjoying life, so giddy to have the sun out till almost midnight. I was especially excited because the UK's weather had been uniformly foul. My meteorological hopes were dashed the instant we got off the plane however, and the sun didn't come out once until the very last day of the tour. Still, on day one in Malmo we were treated to a great PA system, green and pink lighting, and a visit from David Shrigley, who he was having a show across the bridge in Copenhagen that week. The next morning, Torkel made a valiant effort to get us from Malmo to Oslo in time for our soundcheck that needed to be over by 3pm, because the bar was opening then and had customers who wanted nothing louder than a quiet stereo as the accompaniment to their beverages. However, last minute confusion over the exact location of the venue, combined with a brutal maze of one-ways in Oslo's downtown, prevented our arrival until 2:50, giving us enough time to bring our gear into the venue and then that was it. Later Daniel, Josaiah (of Why?), and Chris, otherwise known as the Scandanavian tour version of Danielson Famile, showed up, being in this part of the world the same time as us by total coincidence. They had the night off and decided to spend it making us feel at once more at home and more nervous - I mean how can anyone be expected to play drums with a master of the instrument such as Josaiah standing right next to you? The venue in Oslo was certainly a tight fit, on stage and in the audience, but began to look bigger and bigger in our memories as the tour continued. The tour started to get a bit crazy...each night the PA shrank, from something compact but professional, to something more fit for a bake sale announcer, to something more like a small home stereo. In situations like this I switch from the normal drumsticks to the "Junior" size drumsticks for kids, which come in blue but don't sound as good. If we still can't hear Satomi, then I go to brushes. When that fails, next up is fingertips, which is how I coped with one of our Norwegian shows. These were some of the most challenging shows we've ever played, and although I groaned at the time, they turned out to be invaluable in retraining ourselves to be able to play very quietly but with the same intensity. Ironically and frustratingly, once we got to Stockholm and were relieved to once again have a big PA and stage, I became overconfident and played what I felt was one of my worst shows ever. Such is the nature of the human psyche and the little tricks it can play on you. When we got to Helsinki, we were on a teeny-tiny stage again and everything went fine. Of Swedish relevance was this Deerhoof cover sent to us by some Swedish high school students. My dream has always been to write songs simple enough that they would sound good on any kind of instruments, and anyone could play them. You can't imagine the joy it has brought me to see, contrary to the music journalists' descriptions of our impossibly esoteric music, my dreams come true. For those who have covered our music I express my deepest thanks. Actually this cover is way more like the album than we could do even if we tried... I offer as proof the fact that actually, we did try... Upon returning from Sweden we received an email from the manager of Swedish band Peter Bjorn and John, asking if Satomi would sing with them on "Young Folks" at the upcoming Fuji Rock Festival where we were both playing. We've since realized that this song is a big hit - shamefully we'd never heard of it or them at the time. Satomi loved the song though and almost most learned the lyrics - only a few had to written down on her hand for the concert. We were convinced that the whistling part would be prerecorded, and justifiably amazed when Peter started in on it on stage! In fact their whole show was quite incredible, they played their beautiful songs so energetically and flawlessly within literally an hour of arriving jetlagged at Fuji Rock from Sweden. As a festival, Fuji Rock was incomparable, if nothing else than for its sheer size - it took a good hour to walk between the two furthest stages, and many a tempting band was missed simply because we didn't think we could make it over there in time. Then there was the professionalism of the production, the incredible sound and lights on every stage. But what impressed me most was the trash. Because there was none. Thousands upon thousands of kids wandering around for three days at a rock festival, and I did not see one piece of litter on the ground. At last I could see The Bird And The Bee who were booked on this festival. A shock came when we were walking down a road and passed them, not really sure it was them but too nervous to ask, when they suddenly stopped and said, "Hey, are you in Deerhoof?" In disbelief I listened as they told me what fans they were. As we were congratulating them on a great show, a slightly awkward moment occured when Shonen Knife walked by and we congratulated them on a great show as well, and we all posed for a big picture, but I don't think The Bird And The Bee and Shonen Knife had any idea who each other were. For me the critical Fuji Rock discovery was a Korean band called Puri that combines traditional and electric instruments. Founded by the same drummer who started the respected percussion group Samul Nori, a longtime favorite of all three of us, but whom we never thought we'd see, this Puri actually played twice on the Festival (like we did) and I happened upon the first of the performances purely by chance. Dumbstruck and in tears, I asked everyone I could find if they knew anything about this group. As always P-Vine label guy and confirmed music maniac Koki Yahata was soon on hand with the needed information. We figured out that they were playing again, and that we might be able to see it if we raced over directly after our show the next morning. That we did, and later I was able to meet two of the members and attempt to express the power their music had over me. We traded cds and made tentative plans to play together in Seoul someday. After Fuji Rock (which is not at Mt. Fuji by the way - the first year it was there but an avalanche occurred, so it was moved to another location nowhere near Mt.Fuji) we played a very small show in Yamagata which was shot and recorded and which I hope to post here soon. At Electric Picnic in Ireland, watching Sonic Youth play against emerald trees and a sky going all pink and puffy, with Thurston introducing their songs as "jam-i-doodles," was a highlight. Since I see Mike Watt or Sonic Youth or !!! more often than I see some of my San Francisco friends, festivals like these have a peculiar sense of being home, even though they're invariably in some part of the world that's new to me. Over the past year and 1/2 we'd been working on a movie soundtrack with our friend Justin Theroux. At this point in the tale Dedication is finally being released in small theaters in certain cities. It makes me cry, but then I cry a lot and I like crying. Makes me laugh too, plus it's fun because there's tons of Deerhoof music in it! Some of it you will recognize right away because Justin uses it so prominently, and some of it is more subtle, like he's created some unusual sound collages using bits from several of our songs. And then there's some that we recorded especially for the movie. The Dedication Film Soundtrack CD has just come out as well. In going through youtube videos to find the ones I linked to above, I also found others I felt like sharing. Here are some more live videos from before the time period covered in this account... John: I just realized that the guy in the red shirt who sings "bunny" in the middle of the video is Brett Larner, an amazing koto player who now lives in Tokyo and who I sometimes get to play with. He looks really happy. Yes, Brett! +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ |