I just peed my pants a little

Jenny Jimenez, mastermind behind our press photos, just gave her website a facelift. You should check it out. While browsing through her goods, I saw this:

I'll happily be the bottom to Sleater-Kinney any day of the week. Those Night Canopy/Bruce Springsteen/Neko Case people are cool, but since I'm mildly obsessed with the SK, this totally made my day.

In a world...

...where a gallon of gas is $4.00 per gallon, one band will find the strength to take on the open road and play rock music where rock music has been played plenty of times before. This Memorial Day weekend, H Is for Hellgate Pictures presents, What's The Capitol of Thailand: Bangkok!, playing soon at a theatre near you.

Until then, here are the pictures:

Ben and David having my back as we get a coffee for the road before leaving Seattle.















The unspoken reality about touring: A LOT of sitting around before the show.















And when you sit around a lot of have digital cameras, this kind of crap starts happening.



















Mootsy's in Spokane. Show 1 of tour.














This is La Cha Cha. La Cha Cha got us very drunk in Spokane. We will get them back when they come to Seattle.














"Fuckin' tiiiiiiiiits!!" brought to you buy Crown Royal.














Entering Missoula, MT. Day 2.














Hanging with our host and hostesses at the Union in Missoula.














Again with the killing time before the show.














The Badlander with a peculiar amount of Seattle posters.














MahaMawaldi was a metal band. The guitarist f-in' SHREDDED. With one arm. One.



















Van Hellgate outside of Luckey's in Eugene, OR.



















The Hellgate gear sans the Hellgaters.














Okay, so not the most exciting pictures in the world. The excitement was reserved for the mock movie trailer voices we (I) did all weekend, finding out the capitol of Thailand is (Bangkok!), talking about scissoring, and Ben tearing the only pair of pants he brought.

Hooray!

The life I love is making music with my friends

Since we learned that David is leaving the band (David is leaving the band, BTW, so work on his solo project, Zero State Reflex) last week, plus the potential of another internal shake-up, the band has a lot of realizations that things that have been regular for us for the last two years will come to an end. For example, the rampant use of the word "tits" as an adjective.

This weekend we're embarking on a mini-tour to Spokane, Missoula, and Eugene and it will be the last tour for H Is for Hellgate as we know it. It will be the last time I'll hear a 90-minute lecture on the year 2012, 911 conspiracies, aliens, and republican douchebags within the confines of a van barreling down the freeway slightly over the speed limit with three of my best friends. We played a kick-off show last night at King Cobra in Seattle and it totally felt like those last days of senior year in high school where I really just showed up to be with my friends as we shared the anticipation of the final chapter in a phase of life. I'm simultaneously really excited to spend one last trip soaking up every ridiculous band moment and saddened by, and nervous about, the impending changes to come.

H Is for Hellgate is not going away. We're going to take the summer off to regroup, restaff, and I'm going to volunteer for a few weeks of Rock N' Roll Camp for Girls in Portland. I know we'll emerge an awesome band with an awesome record in hand.

The show this weekend will be weird, but I know all four of us will be putting all of our hearts into playing.

Just how holy was that matrimony?

Here are some photos from Ben's Wedding Weekend Bonanza. First, we'll start at the Blue Moon where Hellgate, A Gun That Shoots Knives and We Wrote The Book On Connectors played a pre-wedding show to a packed house of Ben and Emily's friends and family. Photos by Bronwyn Kalish.

The groom-to-be on his last night of freedom:

Mid-Tina Fey: the only chance I have to use my hands for something other than playing guitar.

Stubby from AGTSK helping us out with a "HOORAY!"

It was a super fun show and a fairly weirdo-free night as far as the Blue Moon goes - no old guys asked if they could shit in my lawn and David didn't see anybody puke spaghetti in the alley.

The next day, Ben and Emily got married at Golden Gardens. It was beautiful and amazing. They walked in with Daft Punk playing, said some words about how they would take care of each other for all eternity, kissed, and three minutes later, there was dancing and food.

The members of AGTSK, WE and Hellgate, along with Matt Brown, Andy and others, sat together at the tables closest to the food and the bar. Guess who the rowdy people were? Guess who got the dancing started? Guess who continued the dancing? Yep. Photos by me.

This is the pretty table setting:

This is Marie and Matt Brown waiting for drinking to become acceptable. Note the "HOORAY" endorsement:

This is me waiting for drinking to become acceptable:

The first dance (I know, I should totally become a wedding photographer. What a poor photo of such a nice moment.):

Rick, drummer for WE, got his ass dirty doing some fresh breakdancing:

Mike from WE putting the moves on Marie as Jimmy from AGTSK checks out Mike's moves. Mike was an animal and was rumored to have fallen out of a car and onto his face at the end of the night. I have video footage of him that I'm a little uncomfortable putting on the internet. It's awesome.

Emily the bride and Matt Brown, The original Lady's Man:

Kristen in a Matt Brown and Marie sandwich. Obviously, the vodka lemonade drinks were 1) flowing freely and 2) taking effect:

I don't know what this was about, but it looks like Rick was being dressed in the table cloth and Ben had something to say about it:

Mike doing some unsolicited drrrty dancing with me:

Never afraid to break from tradition - Ben's car didn't get the usual post-wedding treatment of strings of cans and "just married" written all over, but MY van got crap put all over it by someone in my band who plays guitar and isn't me:

Sadly, I failed to snap any photos of the post-wedding trip to Mandarin Gate where a party of about 25 of us took over karaoke. It was a remarkable night of singing, more dancing (Have you ever seen dancing to karaoke? STELLAR.), and me being pulled on top of the crowd of everybody and being forced to crowd surf while I was belting out Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'."

BEST WEDDING EVER.

The end.

About our show this Sunday at the High Dive

This Sunday we're scheduled to open for Kelley Stoltz and Vetiver at the High Dive. Due to a death in Marie's family, we'll be playing a stripped-down, three-piece version of our set which should be an interesting flavor of Hellgate for the patrons of the High Dive to witness. It should be an over-all chill evening, at least according to what the Stranger wrote about it:

There's a peaceful easy feeling that pervades the music of both Vetiver and
Kelley Stoltz. The former are the neighbors of freak-folk: a breezy, laid-back
collective who borrow the back-porch aesthetic without sacrificing tunefulness
or melody. The latter is Sub Pop's criminally overlooked pop troubadour. You're
unlikely to find a record as buoyantly sunny as Stoltz's recently released
Circular Sounds. It's got a golden '70s AM-radio glow that radiates simpler,
more innocent times—a carefree, slacker vibe that saturates some finely written
pop nuggets. If you're looking for an evening of warm, unfussy music, this
double bill hits a grand slam.

Ben, David and I send our thoughts and condolences to Marie's family.