Category: News

One October night I was sitting on my porch with Dave Bazan and a few close friends drinking wine and cheering up a friend who was in deep despair over his  personal life. This didn’ret look very fancy. We drank, we made deeply inappropriate jokes, we cooked dinner.

Dave pulled out his phone at one point later in the evening and asked if he could show us something. It was a video, shot by award winning documentarian Brandon Vedder (LA Source, In Pursuit Of Silence), that was going to be used as a promo on Kickstarter for their upcoming documentary about Dave’res career and life.

Dave hasn’ret appeared in a video before. But there on the porch, with eight of us gathered around a screen, I watched his daughter run in slow motion as his face looked directly into the screen, and cried as he sang over and to her as she bolted down an empty street.

Either way
You are worthy of love.

It was beautiful. I wept even though it was a phone screen.

I wept because even back in the halcyon days before the results of this election, as a woman (a white, privileged woman) I have been told my value lies in my relationship to men. I am a daughter, a sister, a girlfriend. Never a human. Never allowed to sever the umbilical cord that I was taught to wrap around the wrists of the men who love me. Never pushed out the door and told to run.

Never told that just because I am, that is why I am worthy of love.

And just because I am, means I am worthy of my humanity.

I woke up on Wednesday morning empty and numb. I reached out to friends, especially friends who were LGBTQ, POC, immigrants or children of immigrants, and parents. I reached out and didn’ret say much. We just wept. Not because of something beautiful, but because we had just been told by a wide margin that we were not worthy. That because we are, we are less.

Dave woke up that morning, unclear how he would explain to his own daughter and son about what had just happened in our democratic republic, and realized he needed to put that video out out now.

Because art speaks. Art is important. Art is personal, and it is binding. It is for when words fail. It is for when we fall down and need to crawl with our elbows through the mud toward a shrouded destination because we cannot stand.

He called me and told me he didn’ret want to sell records from this or raise money for the film. He wanted this to be what it was – art that meant something different a month ago, and suddenly shifted overnight to take on a new purpose. Because that’res what art does when we allow it to speak – it moves and changes and grows.

I watched that video again, as a woman now decisively told that my value is diminished. I watched that video as everything I am – a person, a daughter, a writer, a friend. And I wept. But it had changed. I watched Dave cry, staring down the lens like the barrel of a gun. I watched a white man tear himself open and let his daughter be a person while knowing that the world may be cruel to her because of who she is. I watched him let her run away, and give her love because she is, not because of what she is.

And I walked out the door and started my own long journey into whatever comes next – untying the cords and breaking into a run.

-Kathleen Tarrant

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“Trouble With Boys” From the album “Blanco” on Barsuk Records.
Directed, Shot & Edited by Brandon Vedder
Colored by J Michael Neal
Production assistance by Andy Fitts

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David Bazan  +  The Passenger String Quartet embarked on a 40-city North American Tour in the fall of 2014. One of the stops was at Lincoln Hall in Chicago  where director Bob Davidson and his crew filmed the sold-out show.

SONGS
Hard To Be
How I Remember
Wolves At The Door
The Berlin Patient (Instrumental)
The Fleecing
I Do
Bands With Managers
When They Really Get To Know You
Lost My Shape
With You
Cold Beer and Cigarettes
Little Landslide
Shit Talker
Strange Negotiations

David Bazan:  singing, guitar, electronics
Rebecca Chung Filice: Cello
Seth May-Patterson:  Viola
Alina To:  Violin
Andrew Joslyn:  Violin, composer and string arrangements
Chris Colbert: Live audio mixing

Running Time: 58 minutes
Video Format: HD / 1280 x 720 / H.264
Audio: 2-channel stereo
Download size: 940mb
Directed by  Bob Davidson.
Edited by Luke Theobald.
Post production mix and mastering  by  Chris Colbert.
Cameras: Bob Davidson, Kevin Schmalandt, J.J. Starr, Luke Theobald.
Production assistant: Kelly Reed.
Special thanks for Matt Rucins and the staff at Lincoln Hall.
A Rule29 & Wonderkind Studios Production.
All songs except “The Berlin Patient” written by David Bazan.
“The Berlin Patient” written by Andrew Joslyn.
Viva-la-Undertow!

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March 20 :  Portland OR – SOLD OUT
March 21 : Eugene OR  – SOLD OUT
March 23 : San Jose CA  – SOLD OUT
March 24 : San Luis Obisbo CA  – SOLD OUT
March 25 : Santa Ana  CA  – SOLD OUT
March 26 : Redlands  CA  – SOLD OUT
March 27 : Bakersfield CA  – SOLD OUT
March 28 : Modesto CA  – SOLD OUT
March 30 : Davis  CA  – SOLD OUT
March 31 : Reno NV  – SOLD OUT
April 1 : Ashland OR  – SOLD OUT