OK, the “breaking” part is a joke, since tour ended almost a month ago. Anyway, you may not have heard, but i play in a rock band what occasionally buys a cheap, dilapidated van and makes an effort to tour two to three weeks out of the year, since it’s all the time we can get off work. Ah, yes, the glamorous life of an indie rocker. Anyway, i’m not here to blab about myself (which may shock those of you who know me fairly well). Instead, i thought it may interest a few of you looking for some hott, obscure new music to check out a few of the amazing bands we met up with on tour–bands making a quality racket in front of 8 people in a Lansing, MI living room, 11 kids in a punk rock library in Huntsville, or maybe a couple dozen kids in a masonic temple on Long Island. Yeah, we play all the hippest venues.
In Lansing, MI we hooked up with the town’s very own Red Swan, an intense, sludged-out noise-rock band that could draw comparisons to Killdozer or the Birthday Party. The show was originally slated to happen at a local club, but their upstairs room was featuring Clutch that night, so our show was given the boot. Thusly, we were given the treat of seeing these guys tear through thick, syrupy, mucky feedback as they screamed about dead wives and other such tales of woe.
In Huntsville, AL, we met up with junk balladeers The Dandelion Junk Queens and fell immediately in love. It’s official: junky olde-type folk music is the New Hot Indie Trend, as evidenced by these guys, The Scarring Party, Wooden Robot, and Norfolk & Western. The Dandelion Junk Queens go fully unplugged and are built on a lineup of banjo, accordion, musical saw, a bass made from a tub and a rope, and teeny drums! They led the kids along on rousing singalongs of sea chantys about death and ghosts. They’re from Bellingham, WA and want to play your living room or street corner. Let them.
Finally, we didn’t technically play with this last band on tour, per se, but we did run into them in Chicago while playing an unofficial Touch & Go 25 afterparty. Triclops, from California’s scenic Bay Area, are a whirlwind of noise, fury, and psychedelia. The latest venture of veterans from venerable SF bands The Fleshies, Lower Forty-Eight, and a couple others, they put on a live show that’s just plain ferocious. The guitars lay down some seriously feedback-drenched wankery (yeah, not just dissonant chords and feedback–dude’s doing some serious riffage, Vai-style) while their singer wails and writhes on the ground, sending his voice through some seriously messed-up effects to give the songs that oh-so-no-wavey touch. Minds. Blown. Look ‘em up.
ENDNOTE: If you really are interested in how the tour went overall, our tour journal can be found here. Are stories about skanky hotel rooms, interminable drives, and shows played in front of five people per night your bag of crumpets? Then jump on in! Â
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also, don’t forget to make your links open in a new window. dork. 
Dandelion Junk Queens are a marvelous band.
Do you really buy a van and tour like that? What do you do with it after the tour?
Not by choice! We’ve just had a run of really bad luck with vans.
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Comment by joiezabel — October 28, 2006 @ 5:40 pm
someone put the damdelion junk queens on a mix for me not long ago. i am so excited to have found them again.