Rad photos from our Greenhouse show

Photos by Samantha Wood.

Help Rock n' Roll Camp for Girls End Rocklessness!

For a moment, I'd like to take a break from this new album bruhaha.

This summer, I had the good fortune of volunteering as a band coach and guitar teacher at Portland's Rock n' Roll Camp for Girls. It was amazing, inspiring, and a crazy rad time. I wrote about on the KEXP blog: Part 1 and Part 2.

Like a lot of rad things, RnRC4G is a non-profit and thus, largely run on donations. This is where you come in. If you care at all about the future of music and having the voice of music representative of music fans, you should give. I mean, come on. Look at how viciously these girls are throwing the horns! With your help, more young women can become shredding badasses.

But don't let me tell you what to do. Learn for yourself. Please, now view this touching video about the tragedy of rocklessness:

OMFG!!!! WE'RE PLAYING A SHOW!!

People.

Five months.

No Hellgate.

The last time you saw us, we looked like the picture at left - drunk, sad, crazy, and playing waaaay to many songs in our set.

After finding a new drummer, waiting for him to move here, finding out he got in trouble with the law, having to find another new drummer, etc, etc, I still, somehow, have a stomach lining. More importantly, me and my stomach lining are playing our motherf-ing comeback show TOMORROW at the Skylark!!!

New guy, Jon (pictured in the tree), is going to blow your brains out. Ben and I....well, we'll be very Ben-and-Jamie-like. Except maybe more excited since we've been rock n' roll celibate for several months.

Please, come join us at what will be, if nothing else, a fun goddamned show.

Hoorays,

Jamie, Ben and Jon

Sneak Preview - Dusk At Devil's Tower

Each Monday until our second full-length album Come For the Peaks, Stay For the Valleys is released on December 2nd, I've been posting a song off the record on our myspace page for you to preview and enjoy and talking a little bit about each song on this here blog. This is the final song I'll be posting. Yep, only nine songs on the album, but come on, one of them is almost nine minutes long.

Week nine: Dusk At Devil's Tower

For me, this song is the centerpiece of the album. It ties together all of the other themes and is also stylistically towards the middle. It was written during a time when I was finally starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel with all the crap that 2007 had thrown at me (the death of my father, the end of a relationship). The chorus, "Your hand, my dear / I'll take you there / Just south of where I was last year" was an invitation for my now-ex to see exactly what I had been through as I dealt with my grief and she was feeling so cut out of my life.

The inspiration for the title and imagery comes from Devils Tower in Wyoming. The picture of a little Jamie is from a road trip I had taken with my dad visiting landmarks around Northern Wyoming and South Dakota. I learned the legend of Devils Tower (the name of the monument doesn't contain the apostrophe) on that trip and, despite my horrible memory, it's always stuck with me. The most popular legend is something about seven Native American sisters being lifted in to the heavens (into the constellation named after the Greek Pleiades) to escape being chased by a bear and as the rock lifted out the ground, the bear's claw marks were left on the stone. The next time I saw the monument was in May of 2007 at dusk as I was driving from Minnesota back to Seattle after my dad's funeral.

However, this song tends to be more cathartic than sad when we play it, probably because I feel it with kind of a smug "show me what you're made of" sentiment and that I'll always fight for myself.

An interesting thing about recording this song was the guitar solo overdub. Mark, our engineer, was really trying to get me to use this vintage Fender Champ amp that Avast had. I finally broke down and used it on this song and "Quid Pro Quo" to fatten up some of the solos. But we discovered as we were recording it that one of the tubes was loose, so Mark had to hit "record" in the control room, then run out into the studio and hold the tube (which get very, very hot) in place with his sweater over his hand.

Next week I'll be putting up a few mp3s from the record to download for free on MySpace and our website. Check back!

Dusk at Devil’s Tower

My right foot pushes on the grey miles
I can fake some blue smiles
If you can’t be here
If you can’t be here, at least be absolute

Reigns in hand
A settled saddle
This is the last time (I think you know)
His feet touch the ground

I thought I’d seen it all
Scorpion sits
Sharks await
panoramic pull is breaking my neck

Your hand, my dear
I’ll take you there
Just south of where I was last year
Your hand, my dear
If you insist, we’re there
Where I was last year

Seven sisters out in the brush
Out on their own, out of the hush
Monolith, igneous sandstone
A bear scare, help!

Deliver me into the night
Save a spot for me up in the sky
It may be scrappy
but you best believe I’m going to fight

If you can’t be here at least be absolute

Your hand (my hand)

Downhill both ways, my dear

Sneak Preview - change of plans

Given that California, Arizona, and Florida all passed their gay marriage band amendments, I'm going to let "City Hall," the song off of our upcoming release about the religious right pushing its agenda through discriminatory law making, stay put for another week. Booray, bigots. BOORAY.

Yes, God forbid me and my girlfriend who pay taxes that help fund vouchers so your kids can attend Christan private schools, so you have nice roads to drive your cars on, and so you can have the military "fight terrorism" be treated equally to all the other tax payers. Aghhh!!!

Sneak Preview - City Hall

Each Monday (or Tuesday, apparently) until our second full-length album Come For the Peaks, Stay For the Valleys is released on December 2nd, I'll be posting a song off the record on our myspace page for you to preview and enjoy and talking a little bit about each song on this here blog.

Week eight: City Hall

I chose to put this song up on election week intentionally. I'm not big into joining politics with my music, but every now and then, something will get under my skin, for example basic human rights and equality and dumb crap like that. I know - totally outrageous. I honestly don't recall if there was a specific event that was the catalyst for the lyrics for "City Hall" because generally I have a pretty big problem with the fact that, in the U.S., I can't legally marry my partner. Having grown up in an overwhelmingly conservative good-ole-boy Wyoming and Montana environment, I know first-hand that people who oppose gay marriage often have insane misconceptions about what happens in a same-sex relationship and thus are frightened by it. Plus, we all know the "sanctity of marriage" is bullshit considering how many heterosexual marriages end in divorce and that two loving, committed adults who are financially stable enough to procure a child into their lives are a lot better off raising said child than all the single teenage mothers from which resources and social services were stripped in the name of abstinence education. WTF? And seriously, if any nurse or doctor stops my partner from being able to see me if I'm on my deathbed because we're not legally related and because she doesn't have the Power of Attorney documents that I had the foresight have drawn-up on hand , I swear to god I will haunt the living shit out of that person.

Now look, I'm all fired up. Good thing I'm about to go vote.

Anyway, "City Hall" is about religious oppression, the hypocrisy in Christianity with regard to which "words of God" are chosen to be enforced, and people assigning themselves higher moral stature while disregarding the virtue of tolerance. Or, as Ben likes to say, it's about the Fat Cats in Washington.

Practicing this song is always fun because I usually nearly have an aneurysm after holding out the long note at the end. For serious - watch me at a show and you might notice me keeling over with veins popping out of my forehead after this song. It's a rocker and it's a blast to play.

It was the last song we ended up recording. It was about 3:00 am on our last day in the studio. Marie had been drumming for 12+ hours for three day straight and we were all insanely tired and becoming really, really goofy. Somehow, we got through this song and attempted to record "Tina Fey" afterword, but we were spent and couldn't even get through the first chorus of "Tina Fey". There was no music left in any of us. We usually end our set with "City Hall" and it felt appropriate to put it as the closing punch-in-the-face on our album.

In closing: VOTE!

City Hall

Foot over foot
Fist over fist
They marched to the stairs
Already plenty pissed
off

Take a number
Wait in line
When the time comes
They’ll call yours and skip mine
Next

Half-assed
Please explain your tattoos
Your long hair
Your chicks with bare heads
Pick and choose
The rules only you abuse

I don’t see a deity
To your left
So you’re not his right hand
And you’re not any more blessed

Take a number
Fall in line
When the time comes
Don’t be scared of a little riot

It’s a federation of people who believe they can leave
Unscathed in the end through storybook means
If it’s written, it must be true
It’s the foundation, it’s the glue
Of your Genovese Syndrome to look past what you’re doing

Bound tightly by ignorance
Held together by greed
Overfed and under read
No foot in reality
Proud parents of mediocrity

Is this God’s will - to be a Bluetooth borg?
Soulless in the suburbs with a handsome man and a mortgage?
A pile of bills and a load of guilt to pass onto my kids
Who exchange expression for economics
and fresh air for TV?

Step outside these lines and you’re a heathen or a whore
Now remind me again, what was your Christ nailed for?
To give you the capital and power to write laws that keep me in line?
Well, etch a name in my flesh when I die
Because I’m in this fight for life