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...