After the initial release tour we have taken a sweet break and realigned our spines. It is time, once again, to head out and play a bunch of shows.

Between a chance to hit Robin’s Restaurant in Louisiana and our very first show in Santa Fe this trip is stacking up to be one heck of a good time. Even NPR wanted to get everyone hipped to what’s happening:

http://www.npr.org/2012/03/01/147637518/the-austin-100-a-sxsw-mix

So come on out and see the sights and hear the new sounds (we have a secret weapon this time) and get into the deep, deep groove.

I got it last night. Terrible headache coupled with scalp pain and sore everything became my shroud. But I couldn’t have been happier. I smiled through the whole sleepless night. The reason for my joy-despite-the-pain was this last trip. None of us in the band can ever remember going out on a tour with so much good feelings and positive light. It was really cool to see all the guys in the band smile and content at the end of the trip.

So to everyone that came out to a show: thank you.
Everyone that bought records: thank you.
You all gave us such a magnificent lift.

We’re now resting and getting prepared for the next leg of the tour which will start in a few weeks. I’m off to bed; for a few days. My body has now stopped being angry with me and I am going to try and sleep as a small thank you to it for carrying me through an intense time.

Love, peace and Death Gospel to y’all

Adam

First let us discuss the video. A bunch of people came together to have a good time and try a little experiment. Alex and Kristian did an amazing job of filming and directing and capturing moments. The people who are in the video did an amazing job of keeping smiling faces and being amenable to drinking and having a party for about 10 hours straight. Then you factor in the good people that let us invade their house for an entire day and night; we cannot thank you all enough. Because now we have a video and it is lovely…oh and it is premiering on PASTE Magazine’s website. Here it is, go take a gander and then share it via the tube system:

http://www.pastemagazine.com/blogs/av/2012/01/adam-arcuragis-hypnotic-melodies-and.html

Next there is the interview with The Huffington Post. It is a sweet piece wherein I get to talk about the new album Like a fire that consumes all before it… (which hit the streets yesterday…go buy it) and you can read it for yourself right here:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mike-ragogna/hell-no-im-not-alright-a_b_1245938.html

Then we’ve got the Spotify playlist. It is the first volume of a series wherein we discover and enjoy the progenitors of Death Gospel. It is the song we’ve been singing since the beginning so it is only fitting that we celebrate it right. Three hours of fantastic songs…organize it by track time length in order from longest to shortest run time. Let it wash all over you:

http://open.spotify.com/user/brieracket/playlist/54OXF17uo2ORLzBAmSlcW3

That’s all for now. Will check in the next time there’s some Wifi.

Kisses,

Adam

But then when you are driving through country like that you are also getting great breaths full of might Douglas Fir trees, Lodge Pole Pines and Spruce trees that dwarf the nearest town’s tallest buildings. When you’re in that kind of mountain country you’re near MSG-free, home made jerky and places that put bacon on doughnuts. You give a little, you get a little.

But the first few days of this trip have been so nice. Great shows and a chance to play a bit for a music video outside in the forest. No Bob, no owls…but then again we were there in the day time. Aside from the snow storm, it has been smooth sailing.

So much is going on and we are all so excited. Right now though we just got the word that the pre-sales on iTunes for the new album Like a fire that consumes all before it… are up on the iTunes site:

http://itunes.apple.com/us/preorder/like-fire-that-consumes-all/id496396728

Point your browser and head on over to pick yourself up a copy. If you pre-sale the album as a whole, you get a pre-sale discount.

We really appreciate all the pre-sale orders already. We all here want you to know your support means a lot to us. Thank you.

Washington, we’ll see you soon. There are so many places we are going to be headed to; I just can’t wait.

Oh, if anyone sees a cheap copy of Crazy From The Heat(Diamond Dave’s autobiography) then let us know when we’re in your town.

It worked. We are through the woods of ‘getting to know you’ and diving head-first into the swirling joy vortex of playing together like humans. The drums are stunning and simple. They are, in fact, perfect drums for what we’re doing; that thing being seven-part harmony. It is something else.

So there will be a new profile soon. Just need to get it together.

Today we wanted to pass along this fun bit of doing: http://www.kgsr.com/discovery/index.aspx

KGSR in Austin Texas wants to know what people think of us and our work so as to deign wither or thither they will put us in their regular rotation. It sure would be something else if you could head over there and let them know what you think. It is a “pass/fail” situation so just hit the tab that you agree with.

More soon.

Those dollar signs are there for a reason. You cannot encapsulate what she does with mere letters. No sir, extra characters are needed to stretch your mind around the magnitude of what she does, the near Dianian-Herculean tasks she undertakes each day. That she relishes these challenges every day with the wide smile of a lioness makes our reverence for her all the more substantial because it is one thing to watch a person do great work, it is another to watch them jump head first into the shark-infested waters with a knife between their teeth and a smile on their lips as they sing of their opponents doom like some character from Greek myth.

At the risk of sounding like a late nineties dance remix: the groove is eternal. It is the long-heart-beat that has been beating since we first realized that we could realize. So to tap into that and translate it into something tangible and recognizable is a skill that is on par with cooking a meal that wraps you in sublimity and helps you forget the weariness of the work-a-day. The drummer is a pillar and his drum a divining tool. We should regard them the way we do a doctor.

If you think of the beat as a spinning wheel there are specific permutations to wit the spinning might occur and affect the song. For our purposes we will focus on the most simple, subtle and important direction: backward. Spinning the wheel backward allows for all of the hits to land just behind the beat. This is important because it is…think of it this way; is it easier to push a length of rope or pull it? If you spin the wheel backward it is like pulling that length of rope. You don’t try to control the beat, you allow the beat to respire like the chest. Pull the length of rope, entice it to lead its own way to you rather than chasing after it; the relationship needs to be peaceful, even in its most seemingly tumultuous.

Think of the live recordings of Otis Redding where he is backed up by the great Al Jackson Jr. Especially in songs like ‘These Arms of Mine’ or ‘Pain in my Heart’, there is no degree of imprecision or sloppiness; instead there is a supreme feeling of ease and locking in to that long-heart-beat that pounds in the chest of every human. Good drums should almost be invisible like the hypnotizing sway of a praying mantis, only to strike your vitals right at the correct moment, ensuring a hurrying to ecstasy.

Too often drummers these days think of themselves as loud metronomes. They forget the divine place drums and percussion have in the human experience. It is the percussive elements that drive into the deep brain and seduce the centers that are responsible for joy and procreation (the ultimate creation forces). So, with that in mind, the drummer should stroke those skins with such aplomb and delicacy as to think of themselves as a shaman enchanting the air with the magic that lifts and transforms. I’ve heard too many drummers say “I can’t get the sound I want if I don’t hit the drums hard” or “Dude, I can’t play right if I don’t hit the drums hard”. I propose a counter point: let us all live by the maxim that was taught to me by a wizened jazz man one night in New Orleans. He taught this saying to me in response to our discussion of how he was able to drum behind acoustic guitars and singing with so much power yet so little volume. According to him this is an almost secret password that, those who know, trade in wordlessly as they work together: “If you can’t hear what I’m playing, then you are playing too loud.”.

Music is just a language. It is there for the purposes of agreement and communication. Granted it is divine communication and supreme, time-transcending agreement, but it still must fulfill its function. If you aren’t communicating anything or worse not even trying to communicate anything, then I’d ask you, on the behalf of the rest of us, stop wasting resources and energy that could be going to making something great. Listening is so important for musicians. The ability to listen comes first before any other practice.

If you’re like me, you wish for specific things in a drummer. Ideally they would:
-spin the wheel backward (for reasons discussed above)
-have a sweet, but small kit
-listen (for the reasons discussed above)
-be about 6′ 9″
-be able to sing harmony
-find my jokes funny

Well we’ve found all those things in a feller from Hickory named Brandon. Brandon is another of our miraculous North Carolina acquisitions. There’s something in the soil there; perhaps it is the two naturally-occurring radioactive isotopes tobacco plants produce? Well whatever it is we like it. Maybe the good lord just wants us southern boys to continue to keep the sweet magnolia-scented traditions wafting on the breeze. Regardless we are all happier than a whole mess of hound dogs with a basket full of chicken-fried steaks

Brandon does all the things above (including the being 6′ 9″) and he does them with the supreme preternatural delicacy of a master woodworker. This is our third or fourth time playing with Brandon but our first time really going the distance around the horn. I’m sure it will be fine. He is a listener, he rolls that wheel backward and (even if he’s pretending) laughs at my jokes.

He loves to hear about weird books that either are out of print or out of cultural relevance. He loves a good documentary film and speaks three languages…that we know of; you see Brandon is a bit of an enigma. Just when you think you’ve nailed down something about his personality and say to yourself “Damn, it’s almost like I made most of this up…there’s no way he’s all these things and more” Brandon throws you a curve ball and you feel like you need to go back and re-frame your picture of him that you have in your head. The kicker is that it’s all good stuff that you find out about him. He is the wine that only gets better.

Brandon’s a beer man, so in Portland we are going to rely heavily on the collective fine beer knowledge of the populace to treat our boy to the finest and wine-est. For the rest of the USA let’s make sure he has a man’s-man’s frosty one.

Raise one for the drummer and his elemental drum
It is his ecstatic pulse, for which we all will come

But I feel like I can talk about that now because Harrison Moses Barrow has shown everyone what he is capable of. First and foremost, as a musician, Harry is a phenomenal keyboard player. Just like you want a keyboard player to be; Harry is dedicated (he used to travel with an upright piano…which for those of you keeping score is heavy), he’s swift and inventive with his fingers on the piano and he loves what he does. He loves getting the right sounds dialed in; when you’re on the road that really changes the game because every sound system is different and each room responds differently.

Harry also is a fabulous arranger on par with Jack Nitzsche or George Martin. He can write a string score, a horn part or help organize vocal harmonies with a deft and definite ear that will just make your ears swim. His groove is a deep groove too. Harry lets that backbone slip, he use his neck just like a whip.

When it comes to the stage, Harry is the spit and image of The Killer. He regularly is overcome by the spirit of fire and stands up (kicking out whatever he’s been sitting on) singing like a hurricane the whole time. He really is a fancy tie that brings the whole suit of the band together. I feel like if he had a shock of blonde, curly hair there would be some folks that would fall out from thinking they’d seen a ghost. But it is not he who has passed dear friend, it is the one and only Harrison Asa Barrow.

He’s also a sweet man. He makes me laugh out loud right when I need it. Be it a funny diatribe about how wonderful Taco Bell is or a hilarious take on something commonplace like shoes, Harry makes the long drives a tiny bit shorter.

The Deacon brings the church. He’s a one-man, portable artillery battalion of soulfulness. So go on son, invert those chords and draw that fire in a straight line right into every human temple that passes through the venue doors.

It is because of this that, at long last, I can share with you that Harrison Aloysius Barrow is related to…aw heck, ask him yourself when you see him. He’ll tell you all about it.

There was a night like that for me three years ago in Atlanta. It was the basement of an art gallery that had been turned into a lovely venue. I was playing solo. I am become joy was about to come out and we were leaving, in two months, for the European tour. There were lovely youngsters and good sound that night and I played a decent set. Toward the end of the set, I thought about how my manager had suggested that I find a banjo player. She thought it traveled well and the Europeans would really take a shine to it.

So at the end of the set I half-jokingly said “If you, or anyone you know, plays banjo and has a valid passport and wants a free trip to Europe talk to me after the show.”. Two people came up to talk to me. The girl who was in one of the bands sharing the bill came up and told me that her friend played banjo. The other was this skinny kid with a huge smile and a knitted Sherpa hat on and he stuck his hand out and said “Hey man, I play banjo. My name’s Jack.”

Long story short, Jack was the one that worked out; and work out he did. As we got to know Jack he just became one of our favorite people. He plays anything. Literally can make anything a musical instrument. But when he plays something designed to be an instrument he sends the listener’s brain off into another world. He has the secret spell; that magical incantation that makes music more than a series of organized compression waves.

He also is one of the finest songwriters I’ve ever run across. He writes these songs that are simple on the surface in terms of their aim but as soon as you succumb to the winding path they end up on, you get swept up in this gorgeous miasma of song. I’ve never been able to do stuff like he does. His songs are the closest thing to “epic” that I’ve ever been this close to. I’m still trying to glean what I can from him in terms of his talent in writing.

He’s also so sweet and funny. One of the kindest souls I’ve ever met. He doesn’t say much, but when he does it is either laugh-out-loud funny or so right on that you’d think you were in the room with Oscar Wilde.

He loves the Dallas Cowboys. He loves a good whiskey. He loves his momma (like any good southern boy). He knows how to talk to cats; I’m not being funny, he’s like the Doctor Dolittle of cats.

People give him things too. It is phenomenal. People just walk up to him and give him things and it still blows my hair back to witness. It is a testament to just how thoroughly sweet and genuine his soul is. He’s done the work. It shows.

Make sure you call him Rooster. I love that nickname and it sort of has begun to stick.

Today we focus on the root system of the rhythm section; the bass that melts your face and lets your spine melt into cherry wine: Mr. Andrew Gerhan.

Andrew has been my friend for a very long time. He and I met a few years ago when introduced by a former drummer of mine in Philadelphia who knew Andrew from San Francisco. We’d traveled together when Andrew was in the band Our Lady of the Highway. We started working together when, during some time off in San Francisco, Andrew produced ‘Steal People’s Medicine’ and ‘The Guns That Bring the Morning Home’ for the last record I am become joy.

After that Andrew started playing with the band and has traveled with us all over the country and on our last European tour. He is a super talented musician and sound engineer. He plays bass like a dream. In fact all of his bass lines on the new record, Like a fire that consumes all before it…, are criminally good. They set the groove and keep it spinning like a whirling dervish. He is also the mainmast by which we keep the ship propelled whilst the ship is on the sea. He keeps our wits about us.

Andrew used to be a physicist. I can’t really get into it because some of what he worked on was classified…but he’s still the only member of the band to have something physical that he’d worked on traveling in space; still in Earth’s orbit. Pretty impressive.

At the moment Andrew lives in New York City and is an engineer, producer and co-owner of a recording studio in Park Slope. He enjoys fine bourbons and riding his bike safely. He’s also witty and very funny in a way that is surprising given how soft-spoken he is on a day-to-day basis.

If you should see him while we’re in your city, on tour, make sure to buy him a whiskey and ask him about his theory regarding the similarities between The Velvet Underground and The Grateful Dead…it will keep your rapt attention and stick in your brain for months.