Sincerely,
Joe

Dear non-Oneida people reading this letter: Please click this link and go to the Oneida website. If enough people click this link the Oneida website people will notice it, tell the band about it, and then the band will read the letter and then consider including Denver in their next tour. Yes, it will be so.

I didn’t want to sell it to the first person to email me … that’s boring. So I wrote this in the post: “If you want the ticket, send an email with a haiku about the Avett Brothers. Best haiku gets the ticket.”

Here are the haikus I got:

Hark! Honey on ears
sight, smell, touch, taste envious.
Avett Bros. good sound.

— Sean S.

Retarded are you
In the request that you have
For avett tickets

— Chris S.

Which begat:

Chris didn't mean it
He needs me to reconnect
Him to the beauty

— Kathleen M.

Avett Brothers sing,
soulful music together,
dancing righteously.

— Max B.

Sold yesterdays tickets by accident
Very sad
Makes me cry like the Avett Brothers
when all the pretty girls in their songs dump them

— Kathleen V.

the avetts are here
for truth and love they shall sing
they are fucking rad!

— Taylor R.

joe magically makes
a pretty girl from denver
so very happy

and

poor, starving, artist
can't afford pricey ticket
i'll buy you a drink...

and

ears full of music
ticket with my name on it
joe's my new best friend

— Jackie

And the winner:

bearded brothers play
by guitars grace, tasty lick
paint smile on my face

— Joshua W.

It’s too bad the BHP isn’t playing Colorado on their tour, but hey, Dutchess and the Duke are. Yup.

Also, hey, you can listen to one of the new tracks from Dutchess & the Duke on my blip.fm profile here.

1. The Beach Boys – Lets go away for a while
2. The Mountain Goats – See America Right
3. CFTPA – Tonight was a disaster
4. The Mendoza Line – It’ll be the same without you
5. R.E.M. – New Orleans Instrumental No. 1

And here’s the second cut of the video, done by Mat:

You can get more information on the Obama Bacon Man song — credits, the story behind it, etc. on sizzology.com here. If you’d like to help spread the Bacon Word, here’s a list I typed up of stuff you can do to help.

Here’s a blurb about the song from their record label, Jagjaguwar:

The album features 11 songs and includes the track “Lost Coastlines,” on which Sheff and recently departed Jonathan Meiburg of Shearwater share a duet on the joys and hardships of trying to keep the band together. Of the process Will Sheff explains, “We had so many songs we were excited about that we briefly threw around the idea of just putting out a double record. Instead, we decided to take a group of songs that fit with each other and turn that into The Stage Names, setting the rest aside for a future release, a The Stage Names sequel.”

And if you’re interested in ordering / pre-ordering the album, you can do that here.

The sad thing here for me is that while their tour dates include Lawrence Kansas, Omaha Nebraska, Fargo North Dakota and Arizona, they don’t include Colorado. I blame gas prices, and dumb bastard band managers.

U.S. tour dates:

• 09/12/08 Lawrence, KS – The Bottleneck
• 09/13/08 Omaha, NE – Slowdown
• 09/14/08 Madison, WI – Barrymore Theater
• 09/15/08 Fargo, ND – Aquarium
• 09/17/08 Seattle, WA – The Showbox
• 09/18/08 Vancouver, BC – Richards on Richards
• 09/19/08 Portland, OR – Crystal Ballroom
• 09/20/08 Eugene, OR – McDonald Theater w/ Sea Wolf + Zykos
• 09/21/08 San Francisco, CA – Treasure Island Music Festival
• 09/23/08 Los Angeles, CA – Henry Fonda Theatre
• 09/24/08 Solana Beach, CA – Belly Up Tavern
• 09/25/08 Tempe, AZ – The Clubhouse w/ Sea Wolf + Zykos
• 09/26/08 Tucson, AZ – Club Congress w/ Sea Wolf + Zykos
• 09/28/08 Austin, TX – Austin City Limits Festival
• 09/30/08 New Orleans, LA – The Republic
• 10/01/08 Birmingham, AL – Workplay Theater
• 10/02/08 Athens, GA – 40 Watt Club
• 10/03/08 Athens, GA – The Soapbox Laundro Lounge
• 10/04/08 Richmond, VA – The National
• 10/06/08 New York, NY – Webster Hall
• 10/07/08 New York, NY – Webster Hall
• 10/08/08 Northampton, MA – Pearl Street Nightclub
• 10/09/08 Millvale, PA – Mr. Smalls Theatre
• 10/10/08 Buffalo, NY – Tralf Music Hall

It’s a strong local effort for a newspaper that calls itself the voice of freakin’ Colorado, and I love me a good strong local effort.

It’s this weekend, and this year it’s two days instead of one. You can buy a two-day pass for $22 (with service charge). Apparently there is no option if you only want to go one day. That’s kind of a lame way to “keep things simple,” and I hope I’m wrong about it, but from surfing the Denver Post Underground Music Showcase website I can’t see any other way.

So, yeah. If you have the means, you oughta go.

Twitter Updates

I’ve been listening to

My LinkedIn profile

I didn’t pick up Springsteen again until 2004, when I put Nebraska on repeat for two or three months. Last Christmas my sister gave me Born in the USA on vinyl. JJ got me the BitheUSA book. It’s been a Bruce kind of year. And, this week, the keyboarder for the E Street Band, Danny Federici died. I never knew the guy. But — and this is what I came here to tell you about — I do want to share a little about what I learned about Federici and the Born in the USA song.

Springsteen had written a bunch of songs as demos — lots of those songs went on (in the “demo” version) to be an album (Nebraska). Born in the USA was one of those songs, but it didn’t make the cut. The demo version sounded different, a lot more desolate. When Springsteen still thought the demos he recorded were just demos, and when he got his band together to turn them into something more, he pulled out the Born in the USA song. The band played it through once, they played it through twice, and the second take of that song is the version you hear on the album.

1. “Maybe this next song is the one that will get the people dancing.”
2. “I’m not here to get the people dancing.”
3. “These people and their legs don’t understand my music. My music must be of a higher quality than any they have seen.”
4. “I don’t care.”

There were other djs in the evening, and dance-offs, head-butts and jumping contests were had. Happy 2008, y’all~