Surfin' Sandy Tour - Day 9: St. Louis, MO @ The Crack Fox: 11/09/12

St. Louis has been a growing market of ours for almost two years now. We have never encountered foul people here, but this is based on the few kind souls we have collided with during our travels. This time around we had a much better/denser crowd and still the sweetness was in the air.

The Crack Fox is a really hip joint with some of the sweetest staff you'll ever find in downtown St. Louis. Remarkable still shots cover the walls; any pictures I could have taken would not do them justice. All the stills are in a burlesque-vain with beautiful women in beautiful poses; creates a great atmosphere for Rock n' Roll... and rock we did.

We were the last of 3 bands and seemed to capture the crowd quite well (Where's The Chief? and Living Room Lava were the first two)... but to be completely honest I did not notice the crowd while we were playing. It was just one of those majestic nights where I could feel the music through my bones and the band was all on the same page; speaking through our instruments and completely one with what we were producing. Stephen had a great solo during, "Balance" and we shared a great push-pull momentum during that outro. Kevin and I were a completely synced rhythm-section laying the ground work for the set which consisted of a lot of our darker, Stranger, tunes. It seems we pour our souls into every set we play, this one was just plain evidence of that concept.

-VinSauce

Surfin’ Sandy Tour – Day 8: Indianapolis, IN @ The Rock House – 11/8

Indianapolis is our home away from Chicago.  Lazy Hawk Promotions has done so much for us there and we cannot thank them enough.  This was another show that Will and Bebe from LHP helped us out with since the venue doesn’t typically have bands on Thursday nights.  We’ve played at The Rock House before and they treat us very well.  This show was no different except we played a longer set than our fans are used to seeing there so they got to hear some deeper cuts as well as covers that we got to pull out for fun.  After catching up with some fans as well as making new ones and selling some merchandise we loaded out and took off.  Will and Bebe let us crash at their place so we got a good night’s rest and had some lunch with their family before heading off to St. Louis.  

Surfin' Sandy Tour - Day 7: Lousiville, KY @ Hideaway Saloon 11/07/12

Of all the cities we hit during the Surfin' Sandy tour Louisville is the one I could most see myself relocating to. In my opinion, it is the Austin of Kentucky. They have everything I need: music, bourbon, good food and a lot of weird. On par for us, we hit another brewery before load-in, Bluegrass Brewing Company. The best part of the brewery for me... Vegan BBQ wings, flippin' delicious.

This was our second trip through Louisville and our reception was superb. The staff and patrons of The Hideaway Saloon were beyond kind our first time through and more than exceeded our expectations this second pass. It is very easy to play music and feel at-ease when you are playing to a room filled with music lovers whom love to dance... Simply awesome. The club has a great bohemian vibe with the crowd to match.

My favorite part of the evening was sharing the stage with The Pranksters. We have shared the stage with a lot of acts, however, these guys in particular were a VERY talented bunch and couldn't have been any sweeter. Tom Browning, their guitarist, was a phenomenal player and was the one kind enough to let us share the evening with them. He has played with the likes of Bo Diddly, players of The Grateful Dead, Stevie Winder and many more (it was obvious after seeing them play); Grade-A awesome.

Hideaway gives the touring bands a house to stay at; so we microwaved ourselves some grilled cheeses and got a good nights rest. The day after the show we had some time to kill so we wandered over to our favorite local leather shop, Leatherheads. This is a slice of heaven for me; kickass cowboy boots, belts, cowboy shirts and custom guitar straps. Nick, the master leather worker there, has a patented design for a guitar strap that takes the stress off of guitar players' back and trapezoid muscles.

He has sold these straps to many folks including: Dan Auerbach (The Black Keys), My Morning Jacket, The Rolling Stones, Johnny Depp and more. We saw this spectacular strap our last trip through Louisville and Stephen was even fitted for one. This time through we pulled the trigger and bought Stephen and Kevin an early birthday/Christmas gift. Nick, then had me draw our Model Stranger logo next to Kevin and Stephen signature on his own personal straps that he keeps in the shop. It's cool to see their names surrounded with some of our idols... I dig it.

All-in-all, Louisville will always have a piece of my heart and I can't wait to get back.

-Vinny The Dominator 

Surfin' Sandy Tour - Day 2: Columbus, OH

We have grown quite fond of Columbus ever since The Moustache Bar Crawl brought us there in 2011. It is a quaint, yet progressive, oasis in Buckeye-Country chalk full of boutique bars, music clubs and (my favorite) great vegetarian-friendly fare.

Columbus had a lot to live up to after having a successful night in Muncie; and I didn't want my romanticized idea for the city to flicker out like a dull flame in the wind... It did not.

We were lucky enough to get into town a bit early and relax at a friends' posh digs while watching "Street Thief" (a great mock-u-mentary about a burglar in Chicago) before heading to the club for load in.
I knew I was going to have a great evening as soon as I walked into Circus. The walls were lined with vintage-esque sideshow posters and circus themed regalia... My favorite. The staff was extremely kind, as well.

We were billed with a good band from Columbus called Emily and The Complexes; I highly recommend checking them out. One song in particular that I enjoyed was ”I Don't Want To Brush My Teeth," awful title but great track. The turnout for our first show in Columbus was good, the response of the crowd was great. We couldn't ask for much more from a new market and the second day of Surfin' Sandy.

-Vinny Fresh

Surfin’ Sandy Tour – Day 1: Muncie, IN @ Be Here Now – 11/1

Who would’ve thought Muncie, IN would be such a cool place to play?!  We’ve played there a couple of times now and made sure to kick off the Surfin’ Sandy Tour right which Muncie was perfect for.  We got into town a little early, Kevin stopped at the same craft beer store he goes to every time for some choice picks, had some dinner with the owner Whitney, who is a super human being, along with some Strangeloves and headed back to Be Here Now to play.  The energy was right for a Thursday night and the crowd danced and enjoyed our set and stuck around to chat with us after the set.  Some students at Ball State are putting together a documentary on the Muncie music scene and stopped in to interview us and get our opinions on Be Here Now.  Once we were done and all loaded out we wandered over to Whitney’s where he let us hangout, have some late night conversation and crash for the evening.  After getting solid rest we hit the road again to head on over to Columbus, OH for our next gig.  All in all Muncie was a great start to the tour.

Barfly - Nuvo - Comics from a Strangeland

Once again, stopped work in the studio and took a short trip out to Indiana for a couple shows this past weekend that involved the legendary and new favorite Indianapolis club Melody Inn. The crowd was one of the best we've seen so far in Indy and we fell in love with the venue.

You can view pics from the show here.

We also had the treat of playing Crash McClains in Crawfordsville which gave us an opportunity to catch up with our friends in Polar Island, whom attended the show, always a treat to see them.

We found this here comic printed in the local newspaper and online. Kind of a nice treat to have our press pics and show pics immortalized. Rock.

Thanks to Wayne Bertsch at Nuvo for this comic and show mention. Going to do you proud sir! We will be heading back to Indianapolis on Sept. 22nd to perform at this years ORANJE festival. More on that later!!!

New Music?!? Live at the Double Door EP.

It has been quite a long time. Over two months since our last blog! There is new music! Just not ready for release yet. In the  meantime we have a live bootleg of some select tracks from our May Double Door performance in Chicago.

Our recent efforts have been focused internally as we experiment with new material and continue touring around the Midwest, selling records and meeting so many lovely people.  The most exciting things along the way have made their way to this blog or to our webpage but everything else is just silly stories and videos that will end up on You Tube sooner than later.

In the last year, over 125 shows, we ended up with a good collection of solid recordings of some of these many live performances. Some live videos have made their way to our You Tube Page while the rest of them have been collecting digital dust in a desolate file folder.


Our initial effort to share some of these recordings with you was sidetracked by a remixing of Dreams & Bones for some TV licensing opportunities so it wasn’t until very recently that we had an opportunity to rummage through these videos/audio files.  


Using our Twitter page we asked Strangeloves what songs of live performances they would love to get their hands. Thankfully we were able to fill all of the requests and were able to put together a short live EP. 


We printed 100 custom and limited copies of this record and released them to our Strangeloves in Chicago this past Saturday’s show at Martyr’s. Today anyone can download them in a pay what you want format by visiting our Bandcamp page. That package includes different audio options as well as 4 Hi Resolution Photos from the actual show, and the album artwork. If you don’t want to donate, or even enter 0 (it's pay what you want.. you can pay 0..) but if you are just lazy and don't want to leave this page and just want the audio files you can click here but this one doesn't include all of the fancy stuff mentioned above. Just sayin!

Preview of the Artwork - Ooh la la! I guess you could technically get the artwork here too.. Hmmm.

For a limited time you can grab a remaining hard copy at any Live Model Stranger show.

Discussions of a new record are still in the process as we decide exactly what it is and how it is that we want to record this next group of songs. A lack of new material is actually not an issue; in fact it is the opposite as we are sitting on over a dozen potential song choices and even more song snippets.  Discussions with numerous producers, studios and discussions amongst us have ended with a big hmmmm and altered our usual concise decision making process. What to do… Should we do an acoustic record? How about we release all of those ambient dancey numbers we have been working on? Should we release another Rock and Roll record? 

It is more than likely we will be releasing an EP of some sort over a full length. We will have more news to come regarding our next effort over the next few months.  In the meantime we will be trying some of this new material live and seeing what sticks.


What would you like to see Model Stranger do next?


Thanks for reading.


Stephen Francis - Aka Stevie Frankie.

Tour Summary Stats - Immeasurable

Miles driven - 3,119
States visited/played - 10
State Capitols visited/played - 7
Load - ins and Load - outs - 30
Shows performed - 15 in 16 days
Songs performed - 240
Guitar strings broken - 1
"Free Bird!" shouted - Lost count
"Free Bird" played - 0
Hours on stage - Over 27
Hours in van - Over 70
Nights in van - 3
Times Van Battery Died - 3
Gas + Oil - $423.52
Pounds lost - 26
MySpace/Facebook friends gained - Over 450
Tee Shirts sold - 20 (out of 29)
CDs sold - 52 (out of 56)
Boobs signed - 3
Random floors/couches/futons slept on - 12
Total pairs of pants worn between Kevin and Coate - 2
Showers - 5
Hot meals - 2
Chipotle burritos - 7
Deli sandwiches made out of back of van - 22
PB&J sandwiches - 32
Peanut Butter jars spilled - 1
Bottles of water - 72
Red Bulls - 24
Coca Colas - 36
Bags of ice for cooler - 14
Shots of Red Stag - 16
Shots of Jameson - Lost count
Beers - Lost count
Bottle of wines opened - 2
Bottle of wines opened with a corkscrew - 0
Vomits out of windows - 1
Genitals drawn on Brad because he fell asleep with his boots on - 4.5
"Jiggle Joints" visited - 1
Civil War graveyards visited - 1
Russian Mobsters met - 1
Stores Coate visited in search of "Throat Coat Tea" for Stephen - 17
Pockets Coate used to store money in - 9
Extra time spent in Pittsburgh trying to find the right exit - 36 minutes
Head injuries - 1

Memories and lessons learned - immeasurable

Who Wants A Beard Ride?

So tonight was quite an adventure in Des Moines. We headed into the main strip around 10 or so to do a little promo for our show at Vaudeville Mews Sunday night. So we swung by Vaudeville Mews and met a band that was playing there tonight called Larry And His Flask. They're from Oregon and in the midst of a midwest tour as well. The first thing we appreciated about them was their amazing mustache hair. If you're not sure why we appreciated that, you might want to check this out.

Later on in the night, Larry And His Flask took their gear out to the patio/beer garden area for an impromptu performance and put on quite a show. We want to you get a taste of it, so here are some clips Kevin took on his phone:





There are more photos to upload, but in the meantime take a look at one of their shirts: