straight-on gaze

download whole EP

SpidermumS
straight-on gaze EP
2008

spidermums are:

justin piatt - drums
trevis stewart - bass
james capps - guitars, vocals
josh thomas - guitars, vocals


recorded and mixed by josh thomas in his basement

1. people are animals (words and music - josh)
2. cholera (music - james and josh, words - josh)
3. ring arena (words and music - james)
4. flyover state (words and music - josh)
5. landslide (music - james, words - josh)
6. to my surprise (words and music - james)

lyrics to some of the songs are in the zip file.

love/josh

email from a friend i do programming work for...

"last night i saw this friend of james, he actually works for Ceylon solutions sister company 3 cube. His name is john and it was SO FUNNY… he started talking about bodisartha and I was like, you know josh? And he said yeah every time I’ve seen him he was tripping on acid. LOL and then I said yeah I’m his boss. And then he said “oh not josh thomas, josh brommas” LOL!!!! Trying not to get you fired. It was so hilarious .anyways it was a business meeting with the owner of Ceylon that’s a friend of mine and I guess he’s friends with john and for some reason piatt came up in the conversation before you did. He was talking about piatts dui thing. WHAT A SMALL WORLD!!!!

LOL I go to a friggin work meeting and everyone knows you!

Anyways john said that he was really sad that bodisartha and spidermums were no more.

I said me too and told him I went to almost every single gig you had except for the ones in Lawrence or out of town.

Hopefully you will be out playing again soon"

new songs. new band?

justin (the factory workers) came over the other day and we recorded some tracks. some new stuff, some old stuff, a song about batman, a flaming lips cover, a song about doing drugs in my dreams.

here's a demo of that one....

drugs/dreams

i don't know what i'll call it eventually, but i wrote a song the other day that i like quite a bit.

meatheads

trevis has a new music myspace where he's posting some things.

james recorded three songs before he moved, once i'm done mixing them, i'll post some of them too.

i might or might not be forming a new band called skinwalker, i wasn't really planning on it, but i've got lots of new songs and there are some people that want to play, so we might book a few shows in a few months.

love/joshaway mum

some new songs

since i haven't posted anything in a while...

these three songs were recorded about a month ago with gaurav (boo and boo too, oregon as a shape) playing drums.

bad news
the world is dark
troll (newer mix)

crows - this is a demo from about a year ago, i thought it would be a good idea to have a full band version of it on the 'racket' cd, but after listening to it again, i'm going to use this version on the album.

i live in a war zone, i smell like smoke - a few days ago, in the middle of the night, i made a beat in fruity loops, exported the beat to vegas, wrote some guitar and vocal parts, and mixed it. it was all done really fast, but i don't think i want to change anything, this probably won't be on 'racket', it'll probably be on the 'disabled veteran orphans' album.

the 'straight-on gaze' EP has been done for a while, i'll post a zip of it soon.

love/franklin honey

july 18th - springfield

i woke up in eric's bed alone. he was on the floor. i guess i kept rolling on him mostly unclothed and was making him hot so he got in the floor, or something like that. oscar, eric's son, got home right after i woke up, so i put some clothes on and we played with light sabers and video games for a while.

it was a pretty long drive to springfield from wichita. there are no decent highways connecting them, so we kept going through lots of small towns. when we finally got to springfield, we went out to piatt's mom's house to pick him up. he was hanging out with krunchy k.

we had a bit to drink and smoke, eric and james worked out what guitar parts eric might play that night since he'd never played guitar with us before. we'd written down a few notes for each of the songs just to give him an idea of what we were playing. eventually we made our way down to the outland.

we know the bar people there so we started getting free drinks as soon as we got there. we loaded our stuff into the front of the venue near the window where we always do and a girl from some touring band started telling me we needed to move it because they were using that space for their massive merch station. i suggested a booth near the same spot, she was cool with that, we kept loading, then i moved the car around the corner.

while the first band played, i showed the guys who'd never been to springfield before around the square and told them how there used to be lots of venues there and now they were all lofts. we went to the tatoo place where piatt used to hang out a lot to see ron little. turns out some of the guys we knew there were being watched by the FBI on suspicion of selling heroin, so ron had to let them go. he told us a story about one guy shooting up in the basement right before he loaded up his stuff to leave. but it all worked out okay, ron's place is still up and running and the FBI left him alone after he fired the guys they were watching. craziness.

we were supposed to play last, but one of the touring bands (the same one complaining about us loading gear where they wanted their merch) were insisting on playing last. we really didn't give a shit, so we went back to the bar and set up. the bar people gave us ever more free shots because of the mix up.

i handed the camera to krunchy k and showed him how to use it right before we went on. after the show i found out that he left after the second song so we didn't get hardly any video. that kind of sucked because it was one of our best shows ever. by the end of our set, it was super crowded in front of the stage, we played everything perfect. with piatt on drums and eric playing noise guitar, it was really beautiful.

lots of our friends were there, my brother even came up from fayetteville, it was a fun night.

we spent the night at jared's (bartender at the outland) apartment, it was in the same apartment complex that i'd lived in for a few months when i was 18, cherry plaza estates, on the corner of cherry and national.

around five in the morning, piatt jetted, saying something like, "i just gotta get outta here." so he takes off on foot, but somehow ends up back at his mom's house outside of town. he said he went to a waffle house and met a girl that took him out there. eric fell asleep in jared's closet sometime around then. zack and his friend took off for fayeteville around then too. the rest of us were up until the sun was.

after sleeping curled up in a chair for a few hours, i woke up and felt horrible. i threw up a few times, then went outside. it was blazing hot, i was wearing jeans. i threw up some more. i threw up behind the same art supply store i used to throw up behind in college. i was filled with nostalgia.

july 17th - wichita

i didn't reserve a trailer, so i spent the afternoon trying to find a trailer to pull behind my car. eventually, i found one in blue springs. trevis and james met me back at my house and we loaded guitar and bass stuff, no drums though, eric played drums for the kansas shows, so we used his drums.

left kc about 3, got to wichita about 6:30 and went to the bookstore where eric works. he had a PA and his drums set up in a vacant strip mall store connected to the book store. we loaded into the unrented strip mall store and played for a few hours. it was fucking hot in there. for the first time we'd ever played with eric, everything sounded pretty good. eric was wanting to practice more, but i like things messy and convinced him we'd be fine without practicing anymore.

around 9, we went to barleycorn's and started drinking free PBR. it was a two band night and we were playing second so we loaded our shit into the back room of barleycorn's and i changed from my swimming trunks and sandals into more bar friendly apparel (jeans/shoes). the first band, dream supreme, was pretty cool. one of the guys in that band had been in raygun administration with eric years ago, they'd just moved back from colorado.

the show wasn't as packed as it usually is when we play in wichita, but some of our friends were there: adam, charles, and their people. our set was pretty good, it was hard to get really into it with so few people there, but we played pretty decent and the sound guy did a decent job.

sweet baby james was passed out in the back seat, but when we pulled up to the only taco place we could find that was open at three in the morning, he mumbled something about needing a quesadilla. so we ordered some bean burritos, a fish burrito, and a quesadilla and went back to eric's house. turns out they gave us beef burritos, i ate a few bites anyway, but it was nasty, trevis got beef juice all over the only shirt he brought.

i stripped down to my underwear and got under the covers in eric's bed.

closing in

on the end.

there was a bit of a booking fiasco with our last show. it was supposed to be at the replay in lawrence with boo and boo too and norrit, but the 20th got double booked and we got bumped.

i sent a message to jeremy at the tap room about moving the show there, but haven't heard back. in the meantime, the replay is letting us stay on the show on the 20th since that's really our only option for a decent venue in lawrence this close to the date, but we have to open and we're not getting any door money, something about the contracts of the bands that bumped us.

but the bands playing that night are actually cool, so it'll probably still be a fun time, we're playing with the moaners and the spook lights. the show on the 19th at the brick should be really good, we're playing with witch and hare and the black tarantulas.

we met with crystal, a writer from the pitch, a few days ago and talked for a while. she's working on a piece about the end of the band and our last few shows. we needed a song to post with the article, so i remixed 'people are animals' for her to use.

it's here.

don't know if i should do this or not, since it's nowhere close to being done, but here's the rhythm tracks (drums, bass, rhythm guitars, main vocals) for a new song we recorded with gaurav last week. it still needs lots of noise guitars, background vocals, and more mixing, but it's getting close to sounding like almost being on the verge of somewhere close to done.

it's called troll.

baby birds is out on tour and just posted a live recording on their blog.

it's called 'are you going to the party at fuck mountain?'. go get it.

boo and boo too's new album No Tempo
is the best thing i've heard in a long time.

love/josh

about the recordBar show last week

piatt was able to make it up for the show, we hadn't played with him since our last show, but it all sounded pretty tight.

our friend Cole played a set as Badge, then the Factory Workers killed it.

this show was a show swap for a detroit show on our last tour. the detroit band, Tone and Niche, played right before us as a four piece and it sounded pretty dope.

i put a camcorder at a table toward the back of the venue and the audio turned out surprisingly good. i'll post videos soon.... probably (my external drive got smashed in the back seat of my car on the drive home from minneapolis yesterday, it had all the tour videos on it that i was going to post).

James' cable was cutting out so we played the first four songs as a three piece while he figured out what was going on. here's the show in mp3 format....

http://spidermums.com/recordbarLive

go there and do a right click -> save as on the song(s) you want.

there's also a zip file with all ten songs in it.

Set List:

listens to the underground
over and over, the same things
in the ocean (bodisartha cover)
to my surprise
landslide
when you are
cholera
people are animals
spiders and cats
koren

Last stand of the Spidermans

One more short run of regional shows and one more EP.
That's all that we'll have time left to do.

Trevis is moving to Austin in August.
James is moving to Germany Rotterdam in the fall.
Piatt has already moved out of town to deal with his legal situation.

But we have a few more new songs to record,
Gaurav (Boo and Boo Too) is going to
play drums on the last Mums EP.
It'll probably be called 'Complete Racket'
or something like that.

I've been lazy lately, but I'll have a bunch more videos up soon.

Here's the dates for our last shows:

June 22nd - recordBar (KC)
July 17th - wichita
July 18th - outland (springfield)
July 19th - The Brick (kc)
July 20th - The Replay (Lawrence)

Eric (Peerless Princess of the Plains, Thunder le Boom, The Raygun Administration) will be playing drums and guitar at the shows in July.

There's a few other things I'm involved with, and some people I've wanted to start bands with for a while have said they're ready to do something. It's possible there will be another release under the name Spidermums, but it won't be the same lineup.

Spidermums was formed in December 2007 and will be no more after July 2008.

Spidermums members:

Justin Piatt (drums)
Josh Thomas (vocals, guitar, recording)
James Capps (vocals, guitar)
Trevis Stewart (bass)
Oscar Allen Guinn (drums)
Luke Namee (guitar)
Drew M Gibson (guitar)
Gaurav Bashyakarla (drums)
Eric Ramos (drums/guitar)

hardcore bromance

Monday May 12^th

Right before we left for Minneapolis, Justin (Sleeper Cellar) asked us to play a show with a few touring bands at a new-ish venue called The Point. We’re not going to be around much longer so we said we’d do it. It started out okay….

spidermums

May 11 2008 7:04 AM

hardcore bromance at the point tomorrow?

52 minute, 87 guitar drone fest?

no set list, no school, get fucked up.

Baby Birds Don’t Drink Milk

May 12 2008 4:17 AM

BE MANY HAND-JAMMERS TONIGHT!! SEE YOU SOON.

__________________

sounded promising, hand jammers == good times.

But the good times ended not too long after we got to The Point. Some guy that worked at The Point was letting Justin put on shows there and that guy got there late…. and was super trashed. I didn’t see it happen, but apparently this guy punched Justin a few times in the neck and face. Lame.

So all the bands loaded out and we started calling other venues to find the touring bands somewhere to set up and possibly make a little money. Me and Allen called a bunch of places, but the only place we could get in three bands at 11pm on a Monday was the Newsroom.

All three bands shared equipment to make set changes faster, but we still didn't go on until about two in the morning. There was a one song Baby Birds reunion with Jameson on bass and vocals, Drew on guitar and Allen on drums. Then we played for the first time as a seven piece with Allen and Piatt both playing full drum sets. Luke, Drew, James and I played guitar and Trevis played bass. It was chaos.

During 'To My Surprise', our third song, someone grabbed James' microphone. This somehow led to a fight that pretty much stopped the show. Kind of. Drew's pedals got fucked up on the fight and he was already fed up with the KC violence before round two, he walked out during the song. Trevis' bass cut out at some point during the fight song. The rest of us kept on playing noise while Piatt and Allen beat up on their drums. Allen destroyed his drum set and started beating on the pieces while we were a loud mess.

A few days later, I plugged in and tried to use my amp, it's all kinds of fucked up.

places drew slept on tour

minn - under kitchen table
milwaukee - on egg shell, baby birds sleep in piles
chicago - jenna's wood floor sans blanket or pillow
detroit - urine stained mattress at scrummage
pittsburgh - drove all night
nyc - inside lit lounge
nj - under living room table
nj day two - couch in studio
philly - hallway by the bathroom at pat's
greenville - in the van
charlotte - guest bedroom floor
charlotte thru kc - drank too much blue stuff - RIP diplodocus

Sweet Baby James

Friday May 9th
St. Louis, Missouri
LEMP (all ages)
w/ .e, the word association (reunion show) and the top grossing films of 1984

The four original Spidermums left for St. Louis about three, Dottie said there was some food being cooked for us at LEMP and to be there about seven. Piatt and me, but mostly Piatt, went through a whole bottle of vodka on the way to St. Louis. I-40 East was closed so we had to take some backwards, messed up way to get to the venue, but we finally got there around eight.

We were fed some really awesome toasted veggie subs and spaghetti. Usually I don't care too much how our set goes, but after eating that food it hit me that I'd feel kind of guilty if we sucked. We ended up sucking, but I didn't feel guilty. It's not like it was our intent to suck.

After .e's set, we set up all our shit and realized how broken the drums were. We didn't use them much at all on tour and we were really careful with them. But the kick head was broken, the toms were loose, the snare head was warped, and the snare stand was kind of fucked up. My guitar amp was cutting out. James broke a string during the first song. Trevis had so stand in front of Piatt's kick the whole set with his foot on it so it didn't scoot all over the room. Almost everyone that was there came up to us after the show and told us that they liked us, but I felt like it wasn't our best. It was kind of chaotic and dangerous, but Piatt didn't have a kick the second half of the set and we had all kinds of technical difficulties. Oh well. We sold some merch and got paid well.

We got a retarded amount of cheap beer at a grocery store and went back to Ryan's house. Nothing much happened after that, we played some racing game where you had a real wheel and gas and brake pedals, I never used the brake. We drank a bunch of shitty beer, Piatt wasn’t too happy about how his drums were fucked up, but I bought him a new head for the kick and we’re going to get some nuts for the bolts holding his toms on his kick. No big deal.

Sweet baby James fell asleep first and Piatt filled his ears with pretzels.

lemp friday, the point on monday

hello.

thanks for letting us shower at your houses and eat your food.

we still smell pretty awful.

the last show of the tour is
friday at LEMP
w/.e (dottie),
the word association,
and tgfo1984.

it should be a really, really good show.

a couple days after that,
we're playing a local show
at a new-ish venue called The Point
with some cool out of town bands,
Sump Pumps and Prizzy Prizzy Please.

Monday May 12th
the point w/ sump pumps || prizzy prizzy please
917 W 44th St
(44th St and Southwest Trafficway)
kansas city, Missouri 64111

this will be the last show for a while
and having just been on tour for a few weeks,
and knowing how impossible it is
to make enough money for gas,
it would be cool to bring in some money
for the touring bands.

if you're not busy,
this will be a good show.
promise.

we're working on remembering what happened on tour
and writing a blog. it'll probably be up within a few days.

josh

Home

Thursday, May 8th

When we got home, Allen, Drew, and Luke headed out to Lawrence. The rest of us vacuumed the inside of the van and washed the outside. My thinking was that if the outside looked nice and the carpet looked clean, they wouldn't notice how we'd totally scarred the inside of the van with cymbal stands. There was broken plastic, the inside of the back doors had at least 20 chunks missing.

Trevis dropped off James on his way back to Lawrence. I took the van back. I slept and had some really freaky dreams about being in weird places, drinking with people I didn't know in cities I'd never been to.

When I woke up, I thought it was time to get up and get in the van. I started walking around the house looking for everybody. I even went downstairs looking before I realized I was at my house, I was alone, and we didn't have a show to go to. It was pretty interesting.

tour blog

coming shortly.

stone bitches, cut a rug lisa

Wednesday, May 7th
Murfreesboro, Tennessee
Temptation Club
w/ Goodmorning Powerheart, Violence & Valentines, The Wickersham Bros.

A few days before the show, Drew had looked up the Temptation Club and found a ghetto-nascar-and-miller myspace page. The pictures were pretty awesome though.

Cut a rug lisa.

The ride towards the Temptation Club was maybe the most fun I had on the whole trip, we were making endless jokes about the situation. "Now which one of you is the "The Spiderman"?" Maybe to hide our fear that the bar would be just like we thought it would be. This was a Wednesday show, and it was one of the last ones we were booking. James found this venue in the indie bible and called them up. He said he heard nascar in the background and talked to an older sounding hillbilly lady. When he asked about setting up a show, the lady said sure, no problem. We should've probably known that a venue without a website that had NASCAR on the tele wasn't going to be a good place to play, but we were tired of booking so we just went with it.

It was all we could have hoped for and nothing more. It was the shadiest place I'd been in a long time. Some guy saw us hanging out at our van and started talking at us.

"What kind of music do y'all play?"

"rock."

"Do you know any Skynyrd covers?"

"no."

They had clean bathrooms though; a few of us emptied out our rotten guts and stunk up the place. Two of the three other bands showed up and kind of felt the same way we did. They were all from Nashville and hadn't been to the venue before. When they saw the place and saw there was no PA, we all decided it wasn't even worth setting up for. If it'd been the second show of the tour, we might have played anyway just to tighten ourselves up. But being the thirteenth or fourteenth show, we had no desire to unload all of our shit and play in front of five people yelling 'skynyrd!' at us.

One of the bands we were supposed to play with, Violence and Valentines, started calling up friends about putting on a house party for us. It didn't end up working out, but they were really nice. They were on the phone with venues in Nashville and house party people for quite a while. They bought a few CDs from us too. I tried to just give them to them, but they gave us money anyway. I would have liked to grab some drinks and go somewhere to hang out with them, but it was time to jet. We were sure we weren't going to play, and we had another long drive to start on.

On the night drive to St. Louis, it hit me that if we drove the van all the way back to KC and took a trailer to the LEMP show, we could save two days on the van rental and we could also get some of the guys back for a Boo and Boo Too show. So we drove through the night, Charlotte to Kansas City, we got back about 9 o'clock. We had the windows cracked in an attempt to dissipate some of the smell that's created when six people live in a van for two weeks.

HAND JAMMERS ALL AROUND!!!

the legend of the hand jammer

May 6th
Queen City (Charlotte), North Carolina
Jeff's Bucket Shop w/ silent weapons

The Milestone was closed during the few days we were coming through North Carolina, but Eston from Silent Weapons was able to set this one up for us. He usually hosts an open mic night at the Bucket Shop on Tuesdays, but he canceled it so we could play there.

We were introduced to the phrase "hand jammer" by Henry Killian. He played a really cool acoustic set to open the Bucket Shop show. His right hand killed. I'd imagine he's on a workout schedule that includes lots of hand jammers to keep his wrist in shape.

Definition: hand jammer - noun - to perform a hand job on one's band mate.

Silent Weapons was pretty cool. They played as a three piece, two guitars and vocals with programmed drums and bass playing through the PA. I'm probably the only one in the bar that thought so (since everyone told us how loud we were after our set), but I thought they could have turned up a bit.

After the show, we all went back to Eston's house. He hooked us up with waters, snack cakes, and some fire. Trevis drove James and Allen to Wac Arnold's. From what I heard, Trevis got kind of lost on the way back and James got really excited. He opened a bag to get his fix and was like, "fuck yeah, they gave me double cheeseburgers instead of regular cheeseburgers." So he chomped them up on the drive back to Eston's.

When they got back though, everything seemed clearer. They didn't give James doubles, he ate Trevis' food. After the long drive back to Eston's, Trevis was a bit let down that he didn't really have any food left to eat. But it just reaffirmed what I've known for a while; don't trust James with yr Wac Arnold's. He'd run over his mom's dog for a cheeseburger (with ketchup only).

Henry was super trashed and at some point disappeared. We looked outside and his car was gone. He showed up before we left the next day, so we're sure he's alive. He was saying all kinds of hilarious shit that I wished I'd written down.

Eston had some kind of crazy ESP thing going on, or maybe our taste is just predictable. Before the show, he played Loveless over the PA, we'd just been talking about that album on the ride to the show. That one's not so crazy since Loveless is pretty popular, but at this house after the show he stuck in some Pale Saints. We'd been listening to them in the van earlier in the day.

The next morning, we got a nice fat slice of the internerd. Gaurav posted the original Albini mixes of In Utero so we downloaded and burned that before we left. I was kind of let down that it wasn't that much different. I'd always heard how different the original mixes were. The vocals were a little lower on some songs, on Scentless Apprentice the vocals were really loud and distorted, but overall, it wasn't much different than the version that got released.

the spazzz

Monday, May 5th
Greenville, North Carolina
The Spazzatorium Galleria!(all ages)

It was a long drive to Greenville, but we were excited about the Spazzz. We'd heard there had been attendance problems and Jeff didn't even want to do a show on a Monday, but I was able to convince him.

When we first got there we thought it was a cool place, but we were doubtful if anyone was going to show up. We went out and grabbed some pizza at a gas station and killed some time. Back at the Spazzz, Jeff was on the phone and people were starting to show up. By the time we played there were probably thirty people in and out of the venue.

This was probably our best show of the tour. Everything felt right. We were all spread out across the room, with people standing in between the three of us on stage and the rest of the band. There was some crazy energy happening, there was a guy on acid standing right in front of me, staring straight at me during part of the set, after the set he grabbed me and gave me a head rub. He had molly, but was too fucked up to deal with hooking anybody up with any. I could have pushed for it, but I didn't want to encroach on his trip. After we loaded out, we played an acoustic version of 'Paranoid Android' and 'Karma Police' before going to the after party.

The after party was sick. There were bottles and bongs everywhere; Greenville is a really fun place on a Monday. After a few hours of that, Jeff and a few of his friends took me and James to a diner. Sweet Baby James ate a double order of French toast, half of another guy's sandwich and passed out before the bill came, high style.

the warehouse

May 4th
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
The Dock (all ages warehouse venue)
w/ mourning electra

Pat (Mourning Electra) set us up with a really sweet warehouse show in Philly. We'd had a show booked at the Khyber but it fell through, Pat was able to set this show up kind of last minute style. The warehouse was huge and creepy, and full of all kinds of stuff.

We went downstairs to Pat and Tim's practice space and saw the "energy drinks" for the first time. We split a couple and started speeding. The drinks were in blue viles and full of sugar and caffeine. They made my teeth hurt on contact.

We made a bunch more merch at the venue. Luke and Trevis made some really cool shirts while I burned more CDs. We ended up getting stuck playing last and most of the people were leaving as we were loading in, but it worked out okay. It was a fun show, we played on the loading dock and there were crazy flood lights on us that created huge shadows on the warehouse wall.

After the show, we rolled back to Pat's apartment. He hooked us up with everything. We were smoking, just glad to have somewhere to stay, and all of a sudden two pizzas show up. The next morning Pat hooked us up with coffee and doughnuts. Meeting people like Pat restore your faith in the human race, if you were having doubts. He gave us pretty much all the door money for gas.

We listened to Bleach on vinyl and decided to play 'Floyd the Barber' at our next show even though none of us really knew it. At a few of the shows, we played the Breeder's song 'New Year' with the same, "we kind of know it" attitude. We'd never practiced it; just listened to it in the car a few times to make sure we kind of knew where the changes were. Sometimes it was awesome, sometimes it was just a mess, but it was always fairly interesting.

Pat gave us a box of speed viles and a hug for the road, good people.

Saturday, May 3rd

Saturday, May 3rd
Brooklyn, New york
Goodbye Blue Monday (free show)

Today was the day for showering, we all did it.

It was me, Trevis and Luke's first shower of trip. Before my shower, Gabby gave me a haircut, the mane was getting ridiculously out of control and she hooked me up with a very tasteful trim.

In the afternoon, we watched Return of the Jedi and walked around for food in North Bergen, but didn't get anything. It was a day of re-upping. I burned and labeled more CDs to sell, Trevis spray painted more shirts and CD cases.

Around Nine, we headed toward the show in Brooklyn, picking up Stella, a friend of Gabby's, on the way. We were able to park for free right next to the venue and the show was pretty fun. It turned out there was a writer from New York Magazine in the small crowd. Here's the piece she wrote about the show.

http://nymag.com/arts/popmusic/features/46822/index3.html

SPIDERMUMS
Goodbye Blue Monday
1087 Broadway, Bushwick
Though Spidermums are from Kansas City and definitely sound-check the early-nineties “shoegazer” scene of alt-British rock, they still looked something like a young band from Bushwick, albeit with baggier jeans. The band crammed six musicians and an ungodly number of pedals onstage, filling the room with feedback that was sometimes discordant, often delightful—much like the teeming towers of kitschy trash and treasure that lined the venue.
Up for debate: clueless bumpkins or refreshing outsiders?

We dropped off Stella and went back to Gabby's place to spend the night again.

We wrote on the walls some more.

Over-explaining the Obvious

Friday, May 2nd
Day Off

I drove around Brooklyn for a bit since I'd never been there before. After an hour or two of checking out what goes on in Brooklyn at nine in the morning, I came across a parking lot I thought was safe to leave the van in.

We all piled out and walked across the Brooklyn Bridge into Manhattan.

The Republic Tigers called Trevis sometime Thursday evening and were looking to borrow an amp for Letterman or some other New York show. We were talking about spray painting our band's names and Chomp Womp on my amp if they were actually going to use it on a tv show. I don't remember what happened, but they ended up not needing the amp, which was a good thing, I forgot all about it and left all of our amps in Brooklyn with the van.

We got some Indian food for lunch and then we split up. Drew, Luke, and Allen decided to walk; the rest of us got Metro Passes and headed uptown. After smoking in Central Park, we jumped back on the subway. Well... two of us did. James didn't make it on. I turned around as the door was closing. Just in time to see James go "oh" and pull his foot back out of the doorway. We got off at the next stop and went back to the stop we separated at, but he was gone. He didn't have a phone, but we figured we'd hear from him eventually. All six of us were planning on meeting at the Momo sometime between 4 and 7. The Momo has free admission after 4 on Fridays.

I ate a mystical altoid about 4. Me and Trevis started walking toward a subway entrance so we could make it to the Momo to meet everybody. When we got there, James was already there. We walked into the museum thinking it was free and were escorted back to the front desk where we were asked for a $20/person donation. Thinking this was the free museum and it wasn't a mandatory donation type thing, we gave a total of $9.73 between the three of us and went back in.

My phone was dead and I saw an outlet next to a three thousand year old statue. Lack of sleep and entheogens were making me feel daring, so I took advantage of the situation and started sucking power off the grid. I got away with it for about thirty seconds, then a security guard came and told me to unplug. I bullshitted with him for a minute and he let me keep it plugged in for another few minutes. Then I started returning missed calls while it was charging and the guy came over again and told me the party was over. Gabby had called while my phone was dead, so I went outside and called her back. I don't remember but I don't think she answered.

So back inside the museum I went off by myself. After bumping into a few tourists, I realized I hadn't showered in a week and was really stinky. I think I scared a few people, but I wasn't too worried about it. The museum was, as could be expected, really amazing, I liked the 20th century section the best, it was mind melting. I thought I'd come up with a really cool album name, "Over-explaining the Obvious". But in the soberness of the next morning, it wasn't a keeper.

We met back at the front steps around eight and called the other guys. It turns out we weren't at the Momo, we were at the Met. So we took the subway back down towards the other guys, I was still feeling like a surrealist painting. We stopped at a book store, I found a Robert Anton Wilson book for my brother, and I called my dad to say, "Happy Birthday." Whitney called and I was talking to her about what was going on, in a moment of brilliance she reminded me that if we had to pick up the van by midnight and we were still dicking around in a bookstore in midtown Manhattan at eleven, we needed to start moving south. That was a good call; we started toward the subway, hiked across the Brooklyn Bridge and made it back to van ten minutes before close. If we hadn't made it back to the van, we would've been fucked.

James called Allen and we picked up baby birds in Manhattan. We took James and Allen to Nick's house in Williamsburg, the rest of us went and picked up Gabby. She led us back to her place in North Bergen and we got hooked up with our first free parking spot in a few days. It's amazing how the simple things like access to electricity and parking spots can make you feel so happy. When we got out of the van, I took in every electronic device I had and plugged them all in at once, just because I could.

Gabby's place was sweet, graffiti all over the walls, futons, couches, blankets, a shower, a studio upstairs. After living in the van for the last week, it was a mansion of wild excess. I was upstairs brushing my teeth when I heard what sounded like a Beatles vocal melody, but it was isolated. I walked into the studio and heard something crazy; it was the four tracks that were used in the final mix of 'A Day in the Life'. There was also a 'Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds' four track sitting around too. I grabbed a copy to take with me.

Then it was back downstairs where everyone was starting to pass out. Even though I hadn't slept more than a few hours in the last four days, I stayed up until almost sunrise before passing out. As I was passing out, I heard Drew and Gabby talking about dinosaurs.

Thursday May 1st

Thursday May 1st
New york, New york

2nd Ave and 2nd St.
Lit Lounge
w/ kampion, algorythm & blues, Gringo Star

We put the venue's address into the GPS even though we were about 12 hours early for the show. We were able to find street parking pretty quick and we walked around the area of the venue for an hour or two, grabbed some pizza, I grabbed a glass piece.

After hanging out in that part of town for a minute, we decided to try to find somewhere to dump the van; this is where the trouble began. Couldn't really find anywhere to park; most places charge retarded money for parking vans in Manhattan. So we did some more street parking, thinking we could move the car a few times and avoid being ticketed. We were wrong. We dumped the van around 30th street, had a quick smoke, and started walking around. After walking around a bit and checking out some parks, we went back to the car, ticket number one ($65) was stuck to the window of the van.

This was pretty depressing to me since we were already losing crazy money on gas. 14 miles a gallon combined with >$3.50/gallon petrol prices is a fucking tragedy when you're averaging about $50/show. So I called Whitney and she transferred some more money into the band account.

If it was my car, I wouldn't even pay the tickets. But we weren't supposed to take the van to Mexico, Canada, or the state of New York. So, just so the van people wouldn't know we were in New York, we're probably going to have to pay the tickets, probably.

We moved the van up the street to a more legal parking spot, stuck some money in the meter and walked around some more. I have no idea what happened between then and the show. The next thing I remember is driving over to the venue, driving around for 45 minutes, and finally giving up on a legal parking spot. We parked in a spot that looked legit, but had a no parking sign next to it.

I saw a Chomp, but it was too high to Womp.

Lit Lounge has two levels, there's a regular bar type area with a DJ on the main floor and the venue was downstairs. It had a nice dungeon feel to it, everything was kind of sticky. The sound guy here was really nice and chill, especially when compared to what we'd been dealing with up to this point. Just to get it over with, we loaded all of our shit down the stairs and into the back room. Then we sat around for an hour or so while these two guys from Mexico - Kampion and Algorythm & Blues - tore it up in front of nobody. They had some really interesting music, lots of weird moans and ambient noise mixed with oddly timed beats. It was legit. I'm supposed to contact Kampion "via the myspace". He wants to do a remix of a few of our songs.

Sometime during their set, we got another fucking parking ticket. I went out to the van for a second to test the new piece and saw the proof on the windshield. This was depressing for a few reasons, on top of cost of the ticket, now I was worried that we were going to get our van towed during our set, and I didn't have time to move the van, we were supposed to already be on stage playing and my pedals weren't even plugged in yet.

We played a 20 minute set in front of maybe ten people, it was fun and noisy and a nice release from the stress of having to deal with a van in the city. as soon as we got into the noise part of the last song, i tossed my guitar down and ran out of the venue, imagining i'd be getting to the van just as the tow truck was pulling away. But the van was still where it was left, I pulled it around into the bus lane in front of the venue, put on the flashers, and went back downstairs to start loading our shit out.

After we loaded out, I drove around and smoked for about half an hour looking for a spot. I finally found a non metered legal parking spot only a few blocks from the venue, i can't even being to explain how excited I was about that, seriously, parking a van in Manhattan is impossible. I got back to the venue as the next band, Gringo Star, was starting. They were pretty cool; people were starting to show up and things were feeling better. We'd played a fun noisy set and our van wasn't in an impound lot, I'd already forgotten all the tolls and tickets from earlier.

Trevis found a sweet deal on pizza, there was a grand opening of some pizza place right around the corner from the venue and they had huge slices of pizza for $1. Deal of the century.

During the last few bands' sets, we were all in and out, and James was trying to see if we could get some money. The door girl said there was no door money, but James talked to the owner and they gave us fifty bucks. Some guy hanging out with the owner gave James another hundred, nice.

James told me how much money we made, then about an hour later he came and talked to me again. It turns out the guy that gave James a bill wasn't a gift; he was expecting at least a blow job. So James gave him back $80. I told him he should think about taking a shot in the mouth for the team, he could pay for the whole tour in a few hours.

The highlight of the tour for James goes as follows. While he was talking with the owner about the money situation, he met Matt Sweeney (Chavez, Skunk, Zwan), Matt was looking to smoke, so I went to the car and grabbed what we had left. The bar closed about five, but because Matt was in with the owner pretty tight, me, Allen, and James were able to stay in the bar talking/smoking with Matt until about 8 in the morning. James smoked about five of his cigarettes. He was full of sagely advice.

By the time we left, it was light out and we had to move the car so the street sweepers could come through. While everyone slept, I drove around Brooklyn looking for a safe, but cheap, place to park the van while we walked around the city on our day off.

pittsburgh

April 30th
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
The Smiling Moose
w/ Sort

I expected Pittsburgh for some reason to be flat and boring, it wasn't. It had the feel of a Pacific Northwest city. There was a huge river, beautiful bridges, and lots of cool shops.

Across the street from The Smiling Moose was a guitar store. The six of us stormed in like a hurricane, picking up guitars and playing them as loud as we could, unplugged. The lady that worked there didn't know what to make of us. Allen bought a really nice blue Squire Strat at the guitar for under a bill. Squire Strats are hit or miss, but this thing plays really nice.

As was kind of typical on this tour, the local band on the bill canceled and it was us and a band from Virginia on the bill, no local support.

The sound guy was really nice, I offered to smoke him up but he pointed me in the direction of the bartender, Scooby. Scooby looked like a tough biker, but as soon as we got him downstairs he was the nicest guy in the bar. They had chips and salsa, he gave us free drinks, and when he heard we were driving through the night to get to New York he gave us some red bulls and some chips for the road.

I don't really remember our set. Luke drove through the night and we were in New York City traffic by about 9am Thursday morning.

scrummmmmage

April 29th
Detroit, Michigan
Lager House
w/ elusive Parallelograms, Cetan Clawson, Tone and Niche

Allen showered at Jenna's and we left about noon to head towards detroit. Before we left, Luke suggested we walk to Sultan's for falafel. It was a good call.

Northern Indiana is a wasteland.

We thought we got to Detroit kind of early, but it turned out we missed a time change and we were right on time. The bar was open so we went in. The owner was one of the nicest guys ever. He and his bartender were working on a book of shots, they were making a shot named after every headlining band that played at their bar. He gave us what he was calling the "Spidermum Shot". It was kind of nasty, but it was free. It was whiskey, tequila, and hot damn, yikes.

We had another pissed off sound guy, his name was Creggers. First he wanted us to load into the back, then he wanted us to put only small stuff in the back and everything else behind the stage. Anytime we asked him a question, he got super huffy. When we were trying to find power on the right side of the stage, he got under the stage, then came out yelling "who the fuck left the fucking shop vac under the stage!" to no one in particular. He was the only person working at the venue that was even in the room. So he just tossed it on the stage and dragged it to the back behind the sound board.

Tone and Niche showed up, they're the ones that set up the show, they opened and played a cool, mellow set as a two piece; acoustic guitar/vocals and violin. We're playing with their four piece band in KC at the RecordBar in June. Extremely nice people.

The hurricane of drunkenness known as elusive Parallelograms rolled up as we were loading in. They were rolling as a four piece for this show, with a new guy named Dave playing guitar. Dave was trashed and sporting permagrin. Before the show we met one of the other guys on the bill, Cetan Lawson, pronounced "Chedda". Or as we called him, Chedda the Shredda.

Me and Allen got on stage and did background vocals on the elusive Parallelograms song "Orange". We did the woohoo's in the chorus. We shared amps with them and played a decently messy and noisy 25 minute set. Chedda went on last and played some hardcore shredda shit. I was outside smoking some of the time with elusive Parallelograms, but at one point I heard him go from 'The Star-spangled Banner' to '?' to 'Eruption'. He played with his teeth, he played left handed, but we kind of wished he was trying his hand at more original stuff, he could definitely play guitar, but he played everything exactly technically correct, to the point of draining most of the emotion out of the songs he was covering. He's only like 19 though, I'm sure he'll get into original material when he's tired of memorizing extremely technical guitar solos.

elusive Parallelograms didn't have anywhere to crash, so they followed us to Scrummage University after the show. Scrummage is a huge warehouse space in a kind of dangerous part of Detroit. The guys that live there are beyond cool. They opened up the gate for our vans, and we hid them in the corner of the lot behind the building. The only parallelogram still conscious when we got to Scrummage was Cory, the rest of the band, being professional musicians, had drunk themselves into comas on the 20 minute ride from the bar.

The next few hours included lots of smoking/drinking, a freestyle rap session, Cory riding a bicycle while playing a tuba, Cory doing the worm on concrete and James taking his shoes and socks off (i don't know why, it was freezing in there) as he passed out in a chair. Baby Birds slept in the room where, at one point, a dog had lived and marked every mattress. There was a huge heater in the corner of the warehouse that I was unaware of somehow. I slept on a couch freezing my nuts off, but didn't get any sleep really.

Around noon, we said our goodbyes to the Scrummage guys and started a long drive to Pittsburgh.

martyrs'

Monday, April 28th
Chicago, Illinois
Martyrs’
w/ so long charlie, jack callahan

The drive to Chicago was short, but we hit rush hour and it took about an hour and a half to go the last ten miles.

Martyrs' is a classy joint. By that I mean that they have candles on the table, the sound guy is always telling everybody to turn their amps down, and beers cost at least twice as much as they should. Jenna came out towards the end, I'm not sure if she saw our set or not, but it was pretty tame. We had our amps at about half what they normally are but the sound guy wanted us to turn down even more.

After the show, we went and grabbed some cheap beer and went back to Jenna's place. Her roommates had to get up early and she had wood floors, so all of us but Allen and Luke split after hanging out for an hour or two. First we tried to sneak into some club, but that wasn't happening with four people. Me and Trevis went off in search of the kind of food that tastes good at three in the morning and found some place where everything came with "Fries and Can Pop." Everything. Even if you ordered fries, it came with "Fries and Can Pop." We got some cheese sticks, mushrooms, and of course "Fries and Can pop." The burning oil from the mushrooms burned a good size hole into the roof of my mouth that didn't heal for the rest of the tour. It was pretty easy to ignore though, I only noticed it when I was eating, which wasn't that often.

James and Drew went back to the club we tried sneaking into earlier and were successful, me and Trevis went back to the van, smoked, and went to sleep. I was in the back row of seats, where Drew and Luke usually hang out, and I saw a huge bag on the floor with what looked like a little bit of schwag shake and some stems and seeds in the bottom. It made no sense at all, I didn't think anyone brought anything that looked this ditchy and even if they did, why did they have it in such a huge bag?

But in my paranoia, not wanting any loose bags floating around in case a cop knocked on our window in the night, I tore the top part of the bag off, tied it up, and put it with the rest of the stash.

The next morning, I got into the stash and everything made a lot more sense. In the morning light, it was pretty obvious what was going on. The bag I'd found the night before didn't have anything illegal in it, what I thought was nasty schwag was bread crumbs, nuts, and a twisty tie.

magic racket

April 27th
Madison, Wisconsin
6pm

The Klinic (all ages early show)
w/ elusive Parallelograms

11pm
The Annex
w/ elusive Parallelograms, the Bismarck, Atlatl

We played two shows in Madison, the first was a blur. We were late, but the sound guy was cool and no one cared too much that it took forever for us to get our shit together. After we got done, someone said, "that was a long set change", and I had no idea what they were talking about. It turns out we weren't the first band to play and we'd made everyone wait for almost an hour while we got there, unloaded, smoked, and sound checked. oh well, the venue (The Klinic) wouldn't even give us free water, so I didn't feel too bad about anything. The sound guy was nice though, we ended up seeing him at the end of the night as we were trying to get paid at The Annex. He was wanting to party, but we were on our way to spend the night in Milwaukee at Cory's house.

But before all that, we had another show booked. A sparsely populated show at the Annex. Four out-of-town bands on a Sunday (who books four out-of-town bands on a Sunday?). When we walked in I saw a guy at the sound board and gave him a little nod; he looked up at me, shook his head "No", and looked back down at the board. He wasn't in a good mood, turns out he was just pissed that there were four out-of-town bands, but I'm not sure why that upset him so much, he was getting paid either way, unlike the bands.

Elusive parallelograms are always a good time; we played with them in Detroit a few days later. Atlatl was pretty good too. One good thing about this show though was that we got free PBR all night and the bar tender was a nice guy.

The Bismark are a professional band, and by that I mean, while the other bands were fucking around drinking, smoking, and banging on the wall with sticks crowded around a tape recorder, they took the little door money that was made and jetted.

We coined a new phrase, "Pulling a Bismark", which means, as I'm sure you can guess, grabbing the door money and diving into a moving van on your way out of town.

After a ton of free PBR, we drove from Madison to Milwaukee to crash at Cory from elusive Parallelograms' house. Baby Birds Slept in a Pile next to a drum set. I scored a bed with two blankets, it was amazing.

The next morning in Milwaukee, we went a radio shack for a power supply for my laptop. Then we hit the post office so Allen could mail something. Then I ate possibly the best sandwich of my life...

bremen cafe
milwaukee, wisconsin

the vorgie

tomato, bell pepper, onion, mixed greens, feta, provolone, creamy red pepper pesto, vinaigrette on an italian hoagie.

hey, it's the guy from heroine sheiks

Saturday, April 26th
The Uptown
Minneapolis, Minnesota
w/ Heroine Sheiks (ex-cows,oujia radio) & Economy Team

A few days before we were going to leave, Piatt got pulled over in Westport, driving without a license. For most people, this is a minor offense. But for Piatt, even minor offenses are a big deal. He's been to jail a few times and has been on probation forever, this minor offense violated his probation, so he won't be able to leave the state for a while.

So we had a few days to figure out if we were going to play the shows without a drummer or if we could find someone that was available and capable of playing drums with us. Luckily, baby birds don't drink milk had just gotten back from a tour and Oscar Allen was able to fill in on drums. He's one of the best songwriter/musicians we know, I burned him a cd of all the songs we were going to play live and within a few listens and a few hours of practicing, he had everything figured out. His ability to memorize complicated song structures is mind blowing. I wouldn't be surprised to see him smoke some fools on jeopardy someday.

Noonish on Saturday, i went and picked up the van, we met up at my house, played a few songs one last time and drove seven hours to Minneapolis.

Brian hooked it up fat in Minneapolis. when we got there and saw the venue was mostly empty and it was $10 to get in, we weren't sure it was going to be as big of a show as it was supposed to be, but as the evening rolled on, people started coming out and it got pretty packed by the end of the night.

After our set, Drew and Luke were downstairs at the venue eating some sandwiches and this guy comes up to them saying he's from Capital Records. It went something like this:

Guy: "Hey, are you guys in a band?"

Drew/Luke: "Spidermums"

Guy: "Oh yeah, I've seen you guys before, who's playing drums for you now? (Without waiting for a response) I know this guy that would be perfect for you guys..."

And on and on, then he gives them a business card, but it doesn't say anything about Capital Records or wherever he said he was from, it's a business card for some health care company.

The guy from Heroine Sheiks was downstairs being twenty kinds of freaky, Drew thought he might be on crack, but when I was talking to him after their set, he just seemed permanently spun, nice guy, he radiated an aura of insanity, good people.

Even though the place was really full, we only sold two CDs, and one of the guys who bought a CD was obviously confused about what band's CD he was buying. I wasn't around, but Trevis said he bought it, walked away, then looked at it like it didn't make any sense. When the guy left the venue, he laid the disc down at the table next to ours, but he didn't ask for any money back. So we sold two CDs and got one back, that's the way to do it. From now on, maybe we'll hang a banner with the name of the headlining band above our merch table and sell all kinds of shit, then as they leave they can put it back in our merch tub.

Heroine Sheiks were cool, they have members of STNNNG and Ouija Radio and the singer dude was in Cows. They had one song where the only lyrics I remember hearing were, "you want me....fuck you".

People were really nice, Brian bought us all shots. We got paid handsomely and stayed at Brian's apartment, nice start, no arrests.

a new plan

we're having our first practice with oscar/allen tonight,
the first show of the tour is four days from now.

allen's going to be playing drums with us for the first 13 shows of the tour,
all of them except the st. louis show.

since he wouldn't have to leave the state to play in st. louis,
piatt can play that show.

you never now what's going to happen,
but so far this whole thing is working out
better than any of us thought it would
after we heard piatt got arrested.

it's not going to be the same without him,
but at least the tour is still going to happen.

wayward blog entry

piatt + the law = piatt not going on tour

super sad news.

our drummer and good friend piatt will be going to jail for driving without a license, which broke his probation.

this is more than super sad though, it's super untimely, we're leaving for a two week tour one week from today and now he won't be allowed to leave the state.

we have some friends coming with us to help fill the hole though, so we will have a drummer, and maybe even another guitar player or two.

without name dropping, i'll just say that the replacement drummer who is saving our ass is someone most of you know, and what could have been a horrible situation isn't going to be as bad as it could have been.

if you're friends with piatt, you might send him a note, this has been tough for all of us, but toughest for him. he was almost off probation.

love/josh

tourrr time

it's getting close.
all the shows are booked.
all the flyers are sent.
the van situation is good.
see you soon.

April 26th
The Uptown
Minneapolis, Minnesota
w/ Heroine Sheiks (ex-cows,oujia radio) & Economy Team

April 27th
Madison, Wisconsin
The Klinic (all ages early show)
w/ elusive Parallelograms

April 27th
Madison, Wisconsin
The Annex
w/ elusive Parallelograms, the bismarck, Atlatl

April 28th
Chicago, Illinois
Martyrs’
w/ so long charlie, jack callahan

April 29th
Detroit, Michigan
Lager House
w/ elusive Parallelograms, Cetan Clawson, Tone and Niche

April 30th
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
The Smiling Moose
w/ Sort & School of Athens

May 1st
New york, New york
Lit Lounge
w/ kampion, algorythm & blues, Gringo Stars

May 3rd
Brooklyn, New york
Goodbye Blue Monday (free show)

May 4th
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
The Dock (all ages warehouse venue )
w/ mourning electra

May 5th
Greenville, North Carolina
The Spazzatorium Galleria!(all ages)

May 6th
Queen City (Charlotte), North Carolina
Jeff's Bucket Shop w/ silent weapons

May 7th
Murfreesboro, Tennessee
Temptation Club
w/ Goodmorning Powerheart, Violence & Valentines, The Wickersham Bros.

May 8th
Memphis, Tennessee
Murphy's

May 9th
St.
Louis, Missouri
LEMP (all ages)
w/ .e, the word association (reunion show) and the top grossing films of 1984