Boston Music Awards

Rubblebucket is "Live Act of the Year" 2009! Thank you Boston for your love and support.

Stoires from the Midwest

Hello All,

Long time no blog, I know. Well, I thought I would share a little taste of our recent travels, so here we go:

This tour out to the midwest has been many things. It's been exhilarating, illuminating, hard, fun, silly, uplifting, social, and fulfilling. We were taken in by so many awesome loving people! We had a chance to work out a few new songs, and get them solid, including an Ian Hersey original informally known as "Ribbons" and Alex and my new song "Rescue Ranger". We had a lot of great bonding time as a band in the van (voluntary and not-so-voluntary), out of which came our new in-joke: you just bellow/schreech out the most god-aweful noise you can and everybody laughs.

We were hosted in Kalamazoo by the band Rock and the Hive, and we played a show together at the Strutt. By the way, Kalamazoo is an awesome town, and the Strutt is an awesome venue. It's a coffee-house by day, bar by night in a quirky triangular corner room with lots of light and art, creaky floors delicious home-made pizza and really nice people. I finished this necklace there. The Rock and Hive played their set of passionate indie rock and then we played two sets for a generally energized crowd. That night back at the Rock and the Hive's house we met a very friendly cat (named Alfonso?) and it had the funniest meow that sounded like a very unenthusiastic "wow". wow. wow.... um, like... wow. Darby kept saying his wows like that the whole rest of the trip.

Our third time in Grand Rapids was just as awesome (if not more) than the previous two visits. Founders Berwery is a big warm open room smelling like hops with windows into the brewing area. When you walk in there are peanut shells covering the floor, and usually about 50-100 people chatting loudly and drinking and eating. We had lots of old/new friends come out to see us, and we played furiously and were offered 2 cases of beer as a kind tip for the night. Our GR angel Beth put us up and recommended Bill's Family Restaurant for breakfast, where we could have ordered (but didn't) Duke of Rib... wow.

Des Moines is another beautiful city. During our day off there I went to the mechanic to check out a wiring problem. On the way back the entire sky was filled with crows. The biggest coven I've ever seen in my life. I pulled over to get out and watch, found a bench and propped my head back so I could just let my eyes take in the constant writhing, flapping, circling movement, of the crows' black bodies in the pale late afternoon sky. I could hear their flapping too. Then we played at Vaudville Mews with Tiger City, an awesome band from Brooklyn with the coolest front man I have seen in maybe ever. He is big and bald and his name is Bill and he sings like a lady sometimes. We all loved their set and their new CD Ancient Lover stayed in the front cup holder of Puppy for a long time (it is still there) (front cup-holder position is highest praise).

In St. Louis we played a fun show and then partied until daybreak with Liz and Maggie and their amazing crew of friends. Thanks for the doughnuts guys!!! The next day on the radio I heard Beyoncé's song "He's Got A Big Ego" for the first time and was blown away (as I often am by that lady). Somewhere along the way to Iowa City we stopped at a rest area and I took this video of me getting my jumppys out.

Then we all started jumping and taking pictures of it...


In Iowa City we were invited to Doug and Leigh Zalatel's house to stay for 2 nights! They made us dinner and breakfasts and sat around their fire pit with us for hours drinking beer. What amazing kind souls. Happy to have such a great network of friends and family to make strenuous tours a bit more bearable. Our show in Iowa City at the Yacht Club was wild. The highlight for me was briefly popping in on the after-party upstairs, where the hosts were a friendly married couple with an talented DJ friend, pebbles in their sink and an amazing hat collection.

And finally Chicago. A great way to end the tour. We were sandwiched between two talented hip-hop groups, Treologic and the Heiruspecs. We danced for a bit and then had to cut out early to begin an all-night drive back to New Jersey with lots of cozy van-bonding time. Lots. Lots... wow.

Love,
Kalmia + Rubblebucket

It's Here!!!!! "Rubblebucket" the Album

We are so happy we could thimble dance on a fried moon while playing a Timberland kazoo in the sunshine... It is here our new album yeah!!!!!!!!!!!! With beautiful artwork by Kelly Joy Sandall and heart-full production by Jason "Jocko" Randall. It's downloadable on ITUNES, and you can purchase a hard copy on our webstore HERE. Much happiness abides.

Love,

Rubblebucket

Bucket Leak Week 9: There Was A Time

Awesome show with David "Solid" Gould and the Temple Rockers in Ithaca this weekend. We've been cruising all around the northeast this September, and now we're entering into a nice couple of weeks off for Rubblebucket. We earned it, and we're excited to recuperate and play around and write new songs!

Today we released our final Bucket Leak installment before the official release of "Rubblebucket" on OCTOBER 13!! #!#!#!#!#!#!#!#!#!#!#

You can sign up for the bucket leak to hear/download all the songs of "Rubblebucket" and order the album by clicking here.

There Was A Time is about a time when humans were closer to the land and to the dream/spirit world. I don't know if I've ever been there in this life, but I think it did exist, and I think it might exist again one day. I wrote the words last fall (a year ago) at a gig at Princeton University in NJ. First I just formed sound melodies, and the words came from those sounds. I was trying very hard to incorporate big grey alien beings that don't see, they only hear and feel, and they are telepathic, and they are the most completely sentient being.... something that we might evolve into if we don't wreck the earth first. But I couldn't make the words sound good, so they ended up skeletal, and they leave a lot to your imagination. This is also a party song.

In the next to last version of the song before we got it mastered there was the shout: "Yes that time is coming!" in the breakdown before the bari solo, but for various reasons we edited part out. But that's what I'm thinking in my head during that part.

Our new bikes video should be out any day now on the myspace page!!!! See you around the bend........

Love,
Kalmia
+ Rubblebucket

Bucket Leak Week 8: Ba Donso, We Did This

Hello Everyone,

Alex wrote this song while on tour in California with JBB. He says, "Something about San Francisco is always so inspiring to me. This song is more guitar based than a lot of our other stuff and its like nothing I've ever written." Ba Donso is Craig's nick name and it comes from the Malian Bambara language. Ba mans "great/ wise/ big" and a donso is a hunter of the ancient hunter n'goni tradition. N'goni is the stringed instrument you hear Craig playing throughout the song. Alex wrote the music and melodies, and I started out wanting to write a story about dirty gritty pain, because all my other songs seemed happy. And from that seed came this story, about people oppressed, being held down in a hole by a big strong evil person. Then they get rescued by a big orange bird and brought to a new life. We Did This refers to pain we inflict on ourselves, and especially everything we humans have done to the old beautiful wild world to make it the way it is now... and now we're suffering and so is our Earth.

This is the drawing I made to accompany the song.

Enjoy it!

Love,
Kalmia
+ Rubblebucket�

Click here to become part of the bucket leak and hear this and 7 other songs from our new, unreleased album peeps!

Bucket Leak Week 7: Maya

Maya was written over a few weeks sitting behind the counter working at Boarder's (before I finally quit my day job). The song is musically inspired by Ethiopian musician Mulatu Astatke. It is about the thresholds of light and dark that are experienced in love. It is dedicated to a very special human being in my life, and we hope you can find a place for it's melancholy sound in your life. Hope you enjoy it.

Love,
Adam & Rubblebucket

Click here to sign up for the Bucket Leak (if you haven't already) and hear Maya and all of the past Bucket Leak songs right away.

Bucket Leak Week 5: Phillip's Van

Phillips van was born in a desolate corporate parking lot next to a bunch of big box stores and chains. Alex had an inkling of a beat in his head but we didn't have any rehearsals coming up. It was two HOT July days in a row in this parking lot with almost nobody in the audience, but somehow we were all merry anyway. Over the course of the two gigs we experimented with Alex's beat and Phillip's Van was born. I was thinking a lot about fashion a lot at the time and I wanted to express how fashion doesn't just have to be about corporateness and consumerism, but it can be about celebration, art, beauty, feeling your finest, and sharing your finest self with the world. The words really hit for me later in the summer when we were playing a beautiful Vermont wedding, and everyone was there, all ages, all dressed up and dancing together. The drawing is my visual rendition of Phillip's Van.

Click here to sign up for the Bucket Leak (if you haven't already) and hear Phillip's Van and the 4 other songs right away.

Enjoy!
Kalmia + Rubblebucket

Bucket Leak Week 4: Don't Exaggerate

One day Alex was starting to take a nap and suddenly an idea for a new song came into his mind. He quickly went to his computer and recorded all the parts. Then he called me in from the next room an asked me to make up some words. So I sat down and just started recording and improvising. My voice was all crackly and tired. At first the melody was there but the words were mostly jibberishy. Later on I fleshed them out. I was thinking of a story about a guy who isn't appreciative of an amazing and beautiful woman, and rejects her and hurts her because of his own problems inside himself. "Whether the stars are near to mars" was one line that I never fleshed out or found a replacement for. "Don't exaggerate" came from the french version of that expression, which I love: "T'exagères!" It's like saying "You're f*#!@* kidding me!"

To celebrate this song being out in the world I put together a little video of footage from our touring this summer, entitled CASIO MANIA!



If you don't have a subscription to the Bucket Leak yet you can sign up by clicking here. Or you can just wait until October 13th to hear the new album..

Love,
Kalmia + Rubblebucket

Bucket Leak Week 3: Landing

Landing

"This seeds of this song came while on tour with John Brown's Body last fall and winter: a humid truck stop in New Mexico where a Subway lady said 'I see a whole lotta faces and I make a whole lotta sandwiches', a devastating phone call in Olympia from a close friend who broke up with me musically, the overwhelming feeling of economic recession in America, and the scariest day of flying I've ever had. Writing this song was torturous!

The Northwest shuts down in heavy snow storms. Attached is a picture of two busses hanging off the interstate in Seattle during one of those storms last December... we passed these on the way to our gig! A few days later, my flight from Oregon to Boston was the only flight they let out of the airport. The runway was all white and packed in with snow and as we took off I prepared myself for death. The depth of this song came from the way I felt staring at the icy wings of the plane and the little lights of Boston's suburbs as we descended through the desolate night. Relief, emptiness, pain, and human life/death."
- Alex

Enjoy!
Rubblebucket

The 20,000 Butterflies Tour: Highlights Pt. 2

After a day of rest and relaxation chez Zaletel (Austin, a member of the awesome Euforquestra invited us into his parents' home and we were wonderfully taken care of!) and a movie we woke and continued driving through the cornfields to the beautiful venue, Off Broadway in St Louis. We played again with Public Property, and were invited home by some newey-befreiended fellow UVM alumni. Lawrence, KS the next day, and then an epic drive to Denver and the beginning of our Colorado circuit.

Denver: Maria, Darby and Dan invented the "party bed".













Breckenridge: We camped out by the wildflowers and the amazing Lake Dillon.



























Dave finally took the facial hair plunge and allowed Craig to craft him a sweet fumanchu.













Steamboat: We got lead by a savvy osha-growing local up to an awesome creek/ waterfall and (some of us) dunked repeatedly in the frigid water.













Somehow the dishwasher of the band condo got filled with suds and Alex, Ian and I put them to good use.

















On our way to Crested Butte we got SERIOUSLY misguided by google maps. The pass they wanted us to go through turned out to be no more than a treacherous MOUNTAIN BIKE TRAIL! The local guy that was (thankfully) there at the end of the road said he'd mountain biked it recently but it was still crusted with snow and he had to walk his bike for a good portion of it. How did Google think we were going to get over it with our van and trailer?? Oh, right: Google doesn't think. So we had a high-altitude pee and a whistle and then headed back down with our hearts wounded. The next few hours, despite the disgustingly gorgeous scenery, were dark ones for Rubblebucket. A stop in Carbondale for beer and popsicles helped, but it still took 3 solid hours of curvy bumpy moon-lit mountain driving to get to Crested Butte...














































So thank goodness that our time in crested butte was UNREAL! Alex's buddy Kruger let us stay in his beautiful trailer (AKA home of the lost boys) and helped us put on possibly the best show of the tour, at the Eldo. We had a day to assimilate: went for a dip in Long Lake, thrift shopped, met people from the local radio station, and paraded around during the intermission of a big outdoor concert that was going in town. People caught on and the Eldo was packed come 10:00pm. It was so wonderful to play for such an energetic crowd, and I think none of us will forget that night. Especially not Maria, who's beloved saxophone, Bari White, took tumble number one of the tour :(

Ian and Kruger hanging in the Butte:















Boulder: as always, a wonderful town to visit. Adam's aunt and uncle took us in. We had a rockin' time at the B-Side (Mike Gordon came and sat in!) and then the next night at a house party for some old/new friends and other local crazies.

Montana: Driving all night is never fun (unless it is but this time it wasn't) And that's what we had to do to get to the Big Sky Music and Art Festival in time after our post-Phish very-late-night Carnival show in Golden. When we landed in Big Sky we were all a little delirious. We had just enough time to shower and then truck ourselves over to the festival. The stage had a view of giant mountains, sagebrush hills, and sky- the most beautiful view from stage I've ever had! We started to play, and a couple of songs in something amazing happened: three impeccably-dressed ROBOTS came dancing over from the parking lot. It was our friends Kiernan and Rachel from Boston who had just moved out to Montana. I knew they were planning on attending, AS ROBOTS, but for me the whole scene was so unreal, and I couldn't stop myself from laughing. And laughing and laughing- uncontrollably! I was supposed to be singing but this delirium swooped me up and wouldn't let me go. Oooh. Then at the end of the evening Bari White (Maria's sax) took tumble #2 and it was very sad and laughter turned into tears. It is always so hard to see harm come to one of our instruments, our life sources, or best object-friends.



And then we drove home..........
Love, Kalmia

bucket leak week 1!!

Today we released the first track of our new album "Rubblebucket" via the Bucket Leak (a gradual song-by-song release of our album through email to whoever signs up). Meet NOVEMBER! Alex wrote this song in November of 2007 in the asbestos laden basement of our apartment at the time in Somerville, MA. For awhile it was called "11.17 Idea." The song has constantly evolved over the past year and a half and with recent lyric contributions from Ian and me (Kalmia) to what it is today. We were so excited to finally be able to record this song and now for the first time ever, RELEASE it! Anyone can still sign up for the bucket leak on our website www.rubblebucket.com and if you do, next Monday we'll send you November and the next song of the week.

To celebrate the first bit of our album being out in the world, I want to share this (I found it when I was sifting through random footage from the past few months): A video from a rehearsal we had earlier this summer in Burlington VT, around the time of Discover Jazz Fest. We were all loopy after 7 hours in that tiny room, dinner was finally visible on our horizon and we were just rocking around, getting our extra energy out.

The 20,000 Butterflies Tour: Highlights Pt. 1

Ian and Alex call this the 20,000 butterflies tour because we decided that if we had a choice to play to a room of 15 people or of 20,000 butterflies, we'd choose the butterflies. We're rolling home now in the midst of a 3-day drive from Big Sky Montana to Lambertvile, NJ, with stops in Fargo and Chicago. The scenery in North Dakota yesterday was particularly stunning. Craig couldn't find it in him to leave, so he bought a plane ticket and we left him in a Dollar Tree parking lot in Bozeman.

It's been hard to keep regular updates, so I'm going to break it down a little bit... The earliest, Mid-West part of our tour peaked in a large equipment shed at Camp Euforia, amidst the cornfields of Lone-Tree, Iowa. We played an awesome show and then celebrated the completion of that leg of the tour by staying up all night, dancing to We Funk, a 17-piece Parliment cover band from Iowa City who marathoned all the way to sunrise.














Dave met a Banana...


















And when we weren't dancing we were exploring the cornfields... a giant endless sea of tunnels and centipedes, roots, growth and monoculture. The fuel of America.

































In Chicago we got to play with Maria's family's new puppy Rosie!!
















In Saint Louis we played for the 3rd time of the tour with the awesome Iowa City reggae band Public Property and Darby got in touch with his inner-Michael Jackson.


















And then we headed out over the great plains to Colorado, where the story continues...

Funny Walks

OK this was last week on Cape Cod: me, Adam and Alex just being silly around the beach, and I thought I would share with with the world...

On The Road!

YAY! We're off on our big mest-mid west run/ summer 2009! We all just hopped in the van (I'm using the little internet usb thing that we've dubbed the denger). Wow, New Jersey farmland is so gorgeous. I'm admitting this despite my diehard Vermont roots. It's good to be all together on a big adventure. Ithaca tonight with Elliot's band Black Castle and then Cleveland tomorrow and Grand Rapids after that.... we're going to be really moving across the country. I stayed up until 5:00AM last night finishing up the Rubblebucket website, so I'm a bit tired. I've been meaning to put up posts here, but I keep not getting to it! So here are some fun things from the past few weeks. Last weekend in northampton a bunch of us just HAPPENED to be wearing yellow shirts so we formed the yellow shirt club (Dan Durham didn't make the picture). Then that night on the way back to Darby's house in Amherst I spotted these plantains on the dashboard- it wasn't much of a surprising find because I had put them there, but they looked vivid. Oh and I've been working like a busy bee on the new album artwork, and I took this picture of my spread out on the sidewalk in Jamaica Plain. Yum. And last week we took a little rest time on CAPE COD and Adam caught all these fish! Now he's a pescatarian instead of a vegetarian. So we're going to keep driving now and hopefully I'll remember to keep you (whoever's reading this) in the loop with all the crazy things that happen to us, of which I'm sure there will be many. Like right now: there's a conversation going on in the back about how to choose a genre for ourselves amongst all the cores. Ian: "We're like a cross between space-core and granola-core." Dave "We've got like 6 cores."

Signing out,
Kalmia

In the Studio

Sitting in Jocko's studio working on "Phillip's Van" drum sounds and overall mix. This's the most 80's glamorous sounding track on our new album... and I'm pretty excited about it. I've been also playing lots of Nintendo the past two days here, trying to heal my body from a little cold so that I can go out into summer and run around, swim, garden, play tag and croquet, jump on trampolines and dance dance dance. I need my body for those, you know?

Singing (ha ha) out,
Kalmiiiiiiia