sinaloa

it’s been quiet

we’re still here….just trying to figure out what to do next.

come out to our show on thursday in allston

thank you to john mccarthy for the flyer design.

go to the facebook event page

Boston Show - 6/9 @ Great Scott - DRUMMERS, SINALOA, TIDAL ARMS (NY), GRASS IS GREEN →

show next week w/capsule, furnace, now denial →

grooveshark

we’ve uploaded our music to grooveshark so you can listen to our records that haven’t been available for a long time, or check out some of the new stuff before you buy it.

the player displays the songs in alphabetical order, so you’ll have to jump around a bit if you want to listen to a whole record.

stop it, life at these speeds, sinaloa and wilderness medicine spend three days on the road together in september of 2004. here is some of what took place.

How Long Will You Be Staying On The Moon?

as we approach 10 years of being a band (next summer), we thought it would be a good time to look back a little. we will be posting some old tour journals (either snippets or longer sections). first up will be our first europe tour, with ampere, in 2006:

Friday 3.10.2006

For the first time since winter invaded Boston, the temperature rose to the mid-sixties, and the sun felt warm and healthy. Having the day off from work, to prepare to leave, I woke up around ten to pack. This process utilizes abstract mathematics wherein the number of days gone is loosely converted into subjective ideas of comfort, cleanliness, and practicality. For example, one would normally assume that the number of days away would equal the number for pairs of underwear packed. However, when sleeping on (often dirty) floors and scrambling to get in a van without a shower on a significant percentage of days….the math gets a little fuzzy. What I like to do is to pack way too many of SOME items, and way too few of others.

After failing math, I went out in the sun to meet Megan for lunch in Harvard Square. I saw Mike Z., too, which was nice. Mike was the one that had introduced me to Megan about 6 weeks prior. Things were going well, and it was great to get to see her before leaving - especially since she had been effectively quarantined for the last week, with the flu. I couldn’t risk getting sick. In the past few years, I hadn’t had a girlfriend for longer than 6 weeks. It felt like this one just might have legs, but I wasn’t taking any chances - I joked that I was leaving the country so that she wouldn’t have access to me, to break it off. I was going for personal best, here. Eight weeks, at least.*

I came home to help Buddy pack records, shirts, and other stuff for the tour (this is different math, with a lot more geometry involved). Pete needed to be picked up in Brookline, so I battled afternoon traffic and…goddamn it my clutch was starting to stick to the floor - which is annoying both for the immediate hindrance to driving effectively and for the money and time I now knew I would have spend fixing it, later. For the moment, though, everything was fine, because we made it back before the cab pulled up. Not by much, but we made it, and very suddenly we were packed into a minivan with very large and heavy bags.

We arrived at Logan airport, and Ampere pulled up right behind us. As a (now larger) group (of 7), we squared away the flying details, and had a little time for sushi. I don’t remember how it was, but it was at the airport, so I’d err on the side of not good. In addition to the excited talk of going to europe for the first time, and the usual excitement of a tour’s beginning, our discussion was heavily focused on what we’d built up to be the equivalent of international espionage and smuggling. We would not be paying taxes or tariffs on any of the records that we intended to sell. We would not be getting work permits for playing music for (very little) money, abroad. Clearly, anyone with a real understanding of the scale at which we were participating in commerce and labor abroad would laugh at the thought of taking steps to do things ‘on the level’. We were well below that level. Many people, though, have a certain idea of what something called a EUROPEAN TOUR means for a band, and that idea generally includes what you’d expect for Bon Jovi. “Excuse me, sir….does that bag contain any smoke machines, sound boards, light rigging, roadies, or Richie Samboras?” No. It doesn’t.

After all our best laid plans, disguises, and secret hand signals, Will was stopped at the security check. He had a suspicious bag. After a little while, with the rest of us gathered in the land of airport freedom, Will emerged from wherever they questioned him - free to move along with his suspicious bag containing about 35 cans of vegetarian chili, that Meghan will need due to food allergies. We all boarded the plane, got settled, and, as a group, plugged headphones into our armrests, turned to air channel 7, and rocked the hell out to The Final Countdown. The only way to fly, really. Iceland air provided us with a strangely amusing safety video, and an (even more strangely) satisfying vegan in-flight meal. The hours slipped away rapidly as we flew over arctic waters, and crossed the many bunched time-zones at the top of the world. We left boston at 8:30EST and landed in Reykjavik Iceland around 6am…moon time? MST? We passed through the sleek, modern corridors of the Reykjavik airport, situated seemingly outside of our own planet - with rock and snow stretching forever into the darkness. Even from the air, there was no sign of….anything? In one corridor, we passed through a checkpoint to officially enter the European Union. “How long will you be staying on the moon?” “Two weeks.” Stamp passport. Doors open. We made it.

3.11.06

A shuttle from the moon dropped us off in Amsterdam (Old Old New York), Holland (Netherlands). We christened our landing spot “airport city”, because of it’s vastness and inclusion of everything anyone could possible want or need. It was big, it looked like a mall, and it had very uncomfortable seats. Our carefully orchestrated song and dance for customs didn’t even happen, because Customs seemed to consist entirely of a door, an empty vestibule, and another door. We waltzed through both doors - so at least we go to dance. The nervous excitement wound down from overflowing to palpable to understated to numbness as we sprawled on our pile of bags from noon until 5:30, waiting for our rendezvous. Eating frites with peanut sauce. Which were outstanding. No airport city should be without these frites. Order the grutte.

Eventually, Flo and Steven arrived to rouse us from idleness, and to move the pile of bags into our new home - a tall white european-style van. We had to repack the bags and organize equipment, as snow squalls blew around us. Flo was the guy who set up our tour, and Steven would (temporarily) be our driver. There wasn’t much for introductions, as we were apparently running late. Driving on unfamiliar highways, we passed cars and architecture that weren’t like home - subtle reminders that these stretches of road were different from long drives from show to show, back in the US. Buildings had bright colors, and boat-like structures. I was up front, and it took me a few tries to realize that asking Germans to interpret Dutch signs wouldn’t work. “What’s THAT ONE say?” “Vee STEEL dahnt speak dutch.” It was dark, raining, and we were exhausted. I woke up to realize that we were lost - possibly due to the dutch signs. I did my best to help interpret directions to Vera, the first venue, in Groningen - finding it with more luck than skill.

Groningen is an old-looking city (which is a description I’d suspect most americans would give for most European cities) with many alleys, wide sidewalks, piles of bikes, and throngs of young Groningeners out and about. I would suspect that this was some sort of college town. Vera has a basement show space / bar, which is where we played, in addition to an enormous room upstairs with a large stage, dancehall/discotheque, which is where we didn’t play. The upper room would erupt, after our show, with dancing revelers. It turned out that we weren’t terribly late, and we had time to assess the rented equipment, and put things together. And the perks were flying at us - we were brought to a private room with chinese food for dinner, and given a tour of the back of the venue which contained what amounted to a hotel area. Our hosts gave us keys to our rooms (for emphasis - OUR ROOMS), complete with beds and towels, and showers nearby. We were all thinking “well ALRIGHT! We are going to live like kings over here.” It seemed like a long way (figuratively) from the basements and dirty floors we were used to at home. It turns out, though, that this wasn’t QUITE the norm for the rest of the tour, but it was a hell of a way to start.

Ampere played first, we followed up, and that was the show. The room was dark, and packed with people. Everyone seemed excited to see the 7 of us, attentive and into the music, and they bought records. It’s hard to describe how it felt to have the familiar and the completely new mash together, so far from home. Looking around, there were the Ampere kids, and punk kids piled around merch tables talking, but the language was different, the water was bubbly, and we had hotel rooms to sleep in. At one point, after the show, Pete and I took a quick walk through back alleys and the young people out enjoying the night. If the mechanics of playing a show with our friends, and the people that attend that sort of thing, was familiar and comfortable, stepping outside was a reminder that the context wasn’t the same. This wasn’t a city that looked anything like anywhere we’d played, before. And walking around, Pete and I with very thick beards, I heard something that sounded like “Jihad” from a group of teenage dutch boys. It dawned on me that, not only does this place feel weird to us, but we look weird in this place. I talked to many cool people, at the show, and tried to keep up with the party, but hadn’t really slept in a long time. I think I bopped a little amongst the mass of people on the dance floor in the upper room, with Stephen and Andy of Ampere being the hardest chargers of our group, but the lure of a hot shower and comfortable bed won out, for me, pretty quickly. Breakfast was scheduled for 11:30.

Notes scrawled that night:
Equipment will work out okay. Not great, but makes noise.
Merch desperately needs organization.
People love to drink and dance in Groningen.
Hugo, Hendrick, and Michel are very friendly (these are the people that did the show).
People smoke weed in public.
This bed is soft, and my dogs are barking.

Traveling party (at this point):
Luke (me), Pete, and Brendan (Buddy) - Sinaloa
Will, Meghan, Andy, and Stephen - Ampere
Flo - booker.
Steven - driver #1.

3.12.06

Woke in the morning (the standard way to start a day), in the hotel, and went down to a breakfast of breads and spreads, and chocolate sprinkles. Coffee and juice. This is a common breakfast given to bands in Europe, and quickly became our favorite type of breakfast. The “spreads” are various vegetable pates, which were passed around with curiosity at first, which evolved into PASS ME THE DELICIOUS ONION ONE NOW! I DON’T EVEN CARE, I’M PUTTING CHOCOLATE SPRINKLES ON IT, TOO! Looking out the window, we saw the biggest tour bus in Europe pull up the narrow cobblestone street, like a whale in a home aquarium. The bands Sunn and Earth arrived for their show at Vera, that night. Not in the basement room.

We said our goodbyes to the Dutch, and it was off to Hamburg, Germany. Our handlers could, now, read signs with confidence. The drive was a blur of wind farms and snow. Hamburg is….an old city. It was also a cold and snowy city. Colder than outside, though, was the inside of the squat where the show was. It had a bathroom with a trough that smelled like cat piss. Now, our trip had really begun. I don’t think anyone was too surprised that the easy life of hotel-ish rooms and clean hot showers was over so quickly, and, really, it was probably for the best. We were more used to the grittier side of traveling to play music. When it’s too comfortable, it’s almost embarrassing or at least unexpected. What the Hamburg squat did have was foosball. In France it would be “bebe foot”, but in Germany, it was most often “kicker”. There was also a dog named Johnny. Johnny was a menacing looking German Shepherd, and was the subject of the first of many jokes of this type - “they just call them shepherd’s, here.” I’m pretty sure Brendan started this, directed at Johnny, and he is a genius. Johnny’s owner, Tobias, didn’t think it was as funny as we did.

Food was served - rice, salad, and curry in giant pots with huge spoons/ladles. This was much more of a ‘punk’ space. Lots of graffiti, anarchist/protest literature and fliers, and…dirtier. The cooks and other people helping at the space were great. Very friendly, those Hamburgers. We also met a band called Pete The Pirate Squid, who would be playing the next 3 shows with us. Felix, who has a label called Monocore that did a comp were were on, is in this band. The space had a tall, bouncy stage, which made things a little difficult. Andre joined the group, and would be our new driver. Flo and Steven headed home, after the show. It was sad. I visited a cafe a few times for its bathroom, and I wasn’t the only one. We tried to play some different songs, at this show, and it was…eh…not great. Okay, overall, though. There were quite a few people there, including a guy named Andreas - who took a 5hr train ride from Copenhagen, Denmark.* Ampere played an encore, which seemed odd at the time, but would turn out to be a fairly regular expectation at these shows. At one point, I ate a big scoop of garlic butter, thinking it was real food. Gross. We stayed with Tobias and Johnny, a short walk up the street, at their apartment. I slept on a mattress that half good, half terrible.

Updated traveling party:
Steven and Flo gone.
Andre added - driver #2 (final driver).