Category: News

Bazan will be playing solo at Grimey’s Records in Nashville on Saturday, October 10th at 3pm. This is his only performance in Nashville on this tour. You’ll need to buy “Curse Your Branches” at Grimey’s to secure your spot. It’s like buying a ticket that plays glorious music. The list is filling up. If you haven’t picked up the album yet and hope to attend, don’t delay!

Grimey’s New + Preloved Music
1604 8th Ave. South
Nashville, TN 37203
PH: 615-254-4801

October 1, 2009 : The Independent : San Francisco, CA

Greetings,

My name is Caleb, and I will be doing some tour blogging for you. I’ll also be the one selling you things at the merch booth when you come to your city’s show.

After a lot of driving, flying, rushing, unloading, setting up, line checking, sound checking, waiting, eating hummus, and playing music, day one of the first Bazan Band Tour is in the books. I met Matt Barnhart, a seasoned pro at both tour managing and burrito holding, at the San Francisco airport around 2:00 pm. I’d been up since 4:45 to catch my flight out of Nashville, so I ended up sleeping on and off in a booth in the airport pizza hut booth for the hour or so while I was waiting for Matt to arrive. After collecting our bags we visited Aquarius Records, an awesome record store in the mission, and ate what was arguably the best burrito I’ve eaten in my life. Also the biggest. Also it cost $4.50. About 1/3 of mine fell out of the burrito and into the basket. Matt scolded me for this.

We headed to The Independent (a great club, with a really awesome staff) to Meet Bazan and the band around 5. They were originally hoping to arrive at 4, but that got pushed back. They didn’t make it into town, however, until 6. This made for a hectic soundcheck, considering Matt (pulling double duties as sound bro and Tour Manager) had never heard the band play together, and it gave me very little time to open, catalog and set up about 20 boxes of merch. It was the first day of tour.

Didn’t seem to effect the band(s) very much. Say Hi was stellar and sounded nice as a 3-piece (comprised of Eric, Andy and Alex, who will be filling in on drums for Casey until Denton.) The people really got moving to Eric’s jams, and I was psyched to hear “These Fangs” in the rotation.

BAZAN took the stage to the raucous applause of 358 San Franciscans. The opening ambience of Hard to Be was met with even louder cheers. The band tore through a set comprised of 3 Pedro the Lion jams, 2 songs from Fewer Moving Parts, and almost all of Curse Your Branches. The songs from the new record sound incredible with a 5-piece band, and Dave got asked out on a date by a same-sex admirer during Q&A and I think I saw him blush a little. Adorable. Also, someone found a setting on the GPS that makes Ozzy Osborne the directions-giver.

It’s going to be a good tour.

David recently stopped by the Daytrotter studios to record acoustic versions of Bless This Mess, Hard To Be and Curse Your Branches. You can download the songs for free. Please take a look around the Daytrotter website. They are doing a lot of great stuff over there.

UPDATE: Sept 28

David purchased this van with your help and support. We can’t thank you enough!

# # #

UPDATE: Sept 23

We have sold out of the Van shirts! Thank you all for your amazing support. We were able to raise enough money to purchase a touring van and trailer. We’ll post photos of the new van in a few days.

David is very excited about bringing the new band out on tour and you made it possible. Be sure to say hello to David at one of the shows so he can thank you in person.

We’ll be shipping all of the orders out on Thursday and Friday. Watch your mailbox.

– Bob (David’s manager)

# # #

David is about to go on his first tour with a band in four years. The old Pedro the Lion van has gone to vehicle heaven (see below). We need your help to buy a new touring van. In an effort to raise money for the new van we are offering a very limited edition shirt designed by Chris Kro.

Shirts go on sale Thursday, September 10 at Noon and we’ll take orders until Thursday, September 24 at Noon. After that they are gone forever. No re-prints. We’ll ship all orders on Sept 25th.

Each shirt comes with a discount coupon to save $5 on any merchandise purchased at a Bazan show.

We are offering these package deals:

$20 – SOLD OUT
“I Helped Bazan Buy a Van” Shirt.
$5 Discount coupon.

$30 – SOLD OUT
“I Helped Bazan Buy a Van” Shirt.
Curse Your Branches CD.
$5 Discount Coupon.

$40 – SOLD OUT
“I Helped Bazan Buy a Van” Shirt.
Curse Your Branches CD.
Bazan: Alone At The Microphone DVD.
$5 Discount Coupon.

Or if you prefer to donate a few bucks you can do so by clicking the button below.

Thanks for your support and help. We really appreciate it.

If ever there was a spokesman for those suffering from the God-sick blues, David Bazan is it. As the frontman behind Pedro the Lion for nearly a decade, Bazan has created a virtual trademark on doubt-ridden lyrics, sketching characters constantly slipping to-and-fro on a moral slope, or candidly confessing his own ambivalence toward God and his own faith.

Now that Bazan has dropped that moniker following the band’res split in 2005—a schism that was shared rather openly on the Fewer Moving Parts EP a year later—and released Curse Your Branches, his first full-length under his given name, the ever-dubious songwriter is yet again at the crossroads. Maybe it was the two solid weeks of tending to his newborn son. Maybe it was his newfound sobriety and spearheading a fresh career path. But when American Songwriter caught up with Bazan in his Seattle home over the phone, the man was almost eerily at ease. [ READ FULL ARTICLE ]

Thanks to everyone who’s helped with the house shows so far! We are planning a few more before the end of the year.   If you live in or near these cities and want to host a show in your living room on one of these days, please read the details below and then get in touch.

Wed Dec 9 – Ann Arbor / Detroit MI
Thu Dec 10 – Cleveland, OH
Fri Dec 11 – Columbus, OH
Sat Dec 12 – Dayton, OH
Sun Dec 13 – Cincinnati, OH
Mon Dec 14 – Indianapolis / Ft Wayne, IN
Tue Dec 15 – East Lansing, MI

Be sure to put “Bazan House Show” in the subject of your email so it gets past our spam filters. Thank you!

Here’res how it works.

1. You have a house or loft space that can comfortably and safely host 30-50 people. A place with a big living room, finished basement or other large indoor space. There would need to be enough parking nearby and your neighbors should be cool. It would be a huge bummer if someone called the cops because of all the extra cars and people coming to your house. If you live in a small apartment with a bunch of uptight neighbors or a cranky landlord… you should probably not do this. We’d done over 70 of these shows over the past few months without any problems at all.

2. The shows will not be open to the public and no tickets will be sold at the door. We will pre-sell a set number of tickets for each show on David’res website before the show. Be realistic on how many people your place can hold. We need to know how many tickets we can sell in advance. Ticket prices will be $20.

3. We will provide you with a detailed list of everyone who will be coming a week before the show. This way the host won’ret have to deal with money and will only need to check people off the list as they arrive.

4. The host will get up to 5 free tickets for the show. If you have other friends who want to come to the show you can direct them to the link to buy tickets on-line.

5. We’rell ask people to arrive around 7:30pm. The show would start at 8pm and would be over by 9:30pm. Everyone should be out of your house by 10pm.

7. You don’ret need any sort of sound system. All you need is a chair or bar stool for David to sit on.

8. Your home address will not be published on the web and only given to those people who purchase tickets.

9. The shows will not be promoted or advertised anywhere except David’res websites.

10. After we agree on a date and location we’ll ask you to sign a simple performance agreement. READ THIS FIRST!

After reading all of this and you are interested please send an e-mail to:
trey@billions.com and bob@undertowmusic.com

Please include a photo of the space where you would like to have the show and put Bazan House Show and the city where you live in the subject line of the e-mail.

We’ll review all requests. Once we have a routing figured out we’ll be in touch with people in the towns we are able to work into the schedule.

Thank you for your interest and support.

Tune in to Sirius XMU on September 23 at 9pm (ET) to hear David talk about his new album with and perform a few songs in the studio.

Replays:
Thursday @ 4pm ET
Friday @ 9am ET
Sunday @ 12pm ET

http://www.sirius.com/siriusxmu

David played a house show in Brooklyn last week. Enjoy!

David and his band played their first show together at a venue in NYC on September 1st. Someone captured a clip of Bless This Mess.