San Francisco 2-nighter

We played 2 whirlwind shows in SF last weekend. On Friday we were awake for about 26 hours straight. Talk about dedication people! Anyway, the San Franciscans were extremely kind and loving and energetic, and we had amazing attendance- nearly sold out the Boom Boom Room. Thank you all for such a good time. Ok, so this is about to be a photo journey from here on out.

First breath of fresh Cali air:

Wall art in the Mission. Cubist vaginas and coming out of ladies seemed to be a theme to this whole trip. So we were inspired by our publicists Girly Action and by especially Daniel Levin Becker of SFWeekly to make a cubist vagina t-shirt (see the very bottom).

Love and laughter at the Boom Boom Room two nights (photos by David Korman)

On an awesome little hike up some volcanic neighborhood peak I found this maze and walked through it:

The second night Dave turned mini! Ahh! We still haven't gotten him back to normal yet. And I found out that Ian has the most uninterpretable fortune he's ever gotten taped onto his guitar case.

And finally.... the cubist vagina t-shirt (maybe our new jersey design?)

Love,

Kalmia + The Rubbles

Shirts a-wow-wow

I've been meaning to share this for a long time... so, in the spirit of NYC fashion week, here is our wonderful and beautiful pal Sarah Pedinotti of Railbird rocking one of our home-designed and home-printed Rubblebucket tank tops. I just got a huge new shipment of blank shirts in so one of my goals this week is to crank out 180 new ones! AHH! It's going to be a Brooklyn rooftop work extravaganza. Me+ipod+screen+ink+blanks+wine+popsicles+hot sun (the drying agent)=MERCH! Also: thanks to Chad and Betsy who burned the screen for us- a great gift.

Here are other entries to my merch to-do list:
-hand-sewn and printed nylon tote backpacks
-a new style of 1" buttons
-MAYBE hand-sewn baseball caps but those will be very limited edition (because I only have so many hours in the day and I have to spend at least SOME of them practicing right?!?!?!)

Ok, back to work.

<3<3<3<3<3

Kalmia
+ Rubblebucket

Bent

So, I guess every band that plays in Bend gets a ROAD LOAF (banana bread, rummy, sweet, dense heaven in tin foil), which is what we got after playing a sweaty set for this beautiful volcano town-- a helluva welcome from otherwise strangers is what I call that. Wait back up: OK, after an awesome show in Seattle with Nomo (they are a kind band and they play creative, crazy good music) we headed out to Bend, Oregon. We got to drive right under Mt. Hood. Dave took about a thousand pictures (I'm sort of exaggerating) but this is the best one.

We also stopped in a stream and what was just going to be a pee stop turned into a foot-wetting (hahaha!!!), and then a full-body dunking for some of us.

Bend is a little desert town built around the Deschutes River, and on giant fields of lava flow. They were in the full swing of their yearly "Bite of Bend" festival. Right before the show I realized I had left my jewelry bag in Portland, so I scrambled around looking for something (anything!!) to up-spiffen myself with. I ended up making the coolest and most last-minute earring out of recycled materials that I have ever made (well, it was my first actually). I used Ian's old guitar string and pink twine. I was proud of it: do you like it?!

When we took to the stage the Benders we're totally ready to rock and so made us feel even more warmly welcomed. Our booking agent, Gabe, lives in Bend and so we finally got to meet his sweet family. Here is his awesome little dude Leo exploring Puppy the Van.

After our set we got to hear March Forth Marching Band from Portland. What a treat. They are a 24-strong group of drummers, dancers, singers, stilt-walkers, noise-makers, and most of all, HORNS! We loved their music and then saw them again a week later at High Sierra, and now I'm a fan for life and hope we get to hang with them more on the circuit.
That's all for now.
Love,
Kalmia
+ Rubblebucket

Muir Woods

Day 4 of our California adventure and all is super-well. I'm sitting in the Red Fox tavern getting ready to play. The day before yesterday we had a day off. Woke up 3 hours north of San Francisco. I took a dip in the pool, and we drove to a diner in a strip mall. All feeling a little cooky, over-excited; couldn't decide as a group how to spend our day. Finally we agreed upon Muir Woods, the famous old growth Redwood forest just across the Golden Gate bridge. We wanted to see some real piece of California. So we drove there... by the time we'd wound our Puppy up and down all those hairpin curves she was a little steamed at us. The deep dark soul-moving forest couldn't have been a better way to spend an afternoon and we all went off wandering for hours. I loved how the entire forest floor was covered in heart-shaped sorrel leaves. I saw a giant banana slug and immediately noticed that their slime was all over the sorrel. I cried thinking about these trees standing here, being alive for so long as we humans have been bumbling along, lifetimes bursting and fading, messing up the earth, messing ourselves up getting in fights, sitting in rooms... the trees jusr stand there simply with the sun, wind, fires, the night, the banana slugs and hearts all covering their feet. As John Muir said (I paraphrase), when walking in these woods, a journey OUT is really a journey IN. I felt lucky to be taking it with a group of such amazing people, my friends in the band.

The drive into the city, through the heart-stopping valleys, next to the misty pacific and over the Goden Gate was the perfect way to ease back into society. We landed at my cousin Ben's warehouse to park the trailer. He is a member of the club trio Pance Party and we got a tour of their sweet studio/ warehouse/ headquarters (use to be Journey's!!!). We got to see some of his mate Casey's bright stencil art sitting all around, getting ready for his first solo show (can't remember the name). Then we had some amazing sushi, they drank world-class beer at Tornados (while I slept in the van) and we called it a night.

Last night at the Boom Boom Room..... what can I say? It was more than I ever could have wished for! Amazing crowd of family and old friends plus lots of unexpected rub-lovers, great energy from the crowd, extremely hospitable crew holding down the bar. I can't wait to come back again soon. But I suppose we still have to finish this tour first. So we drive on. Until next entry...
Kalmia
+ Rubblebucket

Early Summer Update

It seems time has been passing in a whirl. Quick stream of consciousness/play by play description of the past month:

We played 6 shows with Ozomatli! They are amazing and such nice guys and musicians. Above is a picture of Ulises sitting in with us in New York City (on the song There Was a Time) (photo

courtesy of our wonderful friend Inspiracion).

We did our first music video shoot, for the song Came Out of a Lady. It was a blast, literally. A day-long blast for the band and a huge group of lovely friends who came out to help. All at the end of a MONTH-LONG blast for Dave Cole (our drummer who directed the video) and me (I sewed this giant lady head thingy that you can see in the photo below, courtesy of Ms. Yuan Liu. With the help of eye and mouth ((and lots of other feautres)) expert gea*). It was an awesome, inspiring and cathartic group effort, and none of us can wait to see the resulting video.

We played on a boat! It was ridiculous. Thanks the the crew of hard-core partiers who came to keep us company and share with us a mutual body-rock session. Here is what it looked like for those of you who couldn't be there.

We're heading into summer now, jumping into the van and getting ready to hit High Sierra music festival in California, and a number of other West Coast parties.... I hope I can promise that I will keep you all privy to our adventures. I CAN say that I will at least TRY.

The road is bumpy, the music is loud, the snacks are as salty as sweat in a crowd. Our hips get all sore, our lips turn all blue. But over and over we do it FOR YOU!

Love,

Kalmia

+ Rubbbbbbblebuckkkket

Spring News

Hello dear friends, fans, families, foes and feral animals,

Happy f-ing spring! It's hitting us hard down here in Brooklyn and we can't get enough of this sun and green out-peepings. We've got a lot of exciting things to tell you about in this little newsletter so lets get started.

1) Rubblebucket is officially going national! We'll be doing our first ever west coast tour this summer including two major festivals in California: Sierra Nevada World Music Festival and High Sierra Music Festival. Puppy is nervous and excited to be making her first ever coast-to-coast drive so knock on wood for her. More info and full west coast tour dates coming soon.

2) We've got some sweet spring tour dates very close on the horizon (they're all listed below), including a short east coast run with Ozomatli! The trip includes our first shows ever in Baltimore and DC (finally). Some of our headlining dates will likely sell out so be sure to purchase your tickets ahead of time for our upcoming shows in Saratoga, Ithaca, Northampton, Philadelphia, Burlington, and Boston (May 7 and May 8).

3) We are excited to announce that we will be playing Camp Bisco 9 in beautiful Mariaville, NY on the opening night of the festival: Thursday, July 15th. Lineup includes incredible artists such as LCD Soundsystem, Ween, Thievery Corporation and more.

4) We will be releasing a suite of music on April 29th, including our new single "Came Out of a Lady", a version that we tracked in under 2 hours in Queens on March 1st. This little package will also include remixes of several songs off of "Rubblebucket" and an amazing 8-bit re-creation of "Bikes" by our guitarist Ian Hersey (aka Fun Secret). "Came Out of a Lady" was produced through the Masters From Their Day project; our day of recording will be depicted in an awesome behind-the-scenes video, and released concurrently. Tasties! You can listen to and/or download Ian's version of "Bikes" now on our website.

5) We will be playing a Rocks Off Concert Cruise on The Temptress, chugging up and down the Hudson River (with gorgeous Manhattan skyline views) on June 11th. PARTY! This could be a wild night, and we reccommend to all of our friends in the NYC area and beyond to consider penning this one into your summer books. Buy advance tickets here.

We miss you all, and can't wait to dance with you in your neighborhood soon soon.

<3<3<3<3<3<3>

Pretzles, Snakesuits and Mega-Danceparties

We've hit February's ground running like parched maiacs to the sea of beats. Our first two shows of the New Year's new season, in Saratoga and Ithaca, NY were pretty much as bombastic as could be. We all felt fresh and inspired by a month of re-cretion, re-juvination and re-st. I think our friends in both those towns felt similarly because they seemed particularly pumped-up: screaming, dancing and really keeping the party going. In Ithaca a new (and way bigger) incarnation of the once-duo Beat the Grid opened up the night. They've got a huge horn section and dazzling frontlady, Hayden Eager, and so it was kind of the perfect warm-up. For some reason Ithaca wanted to do a costume party that night... so we joined in the spirit. Adam donned his snake suit, Mark wore Danilo's damlation outfit, Darby brought out his sexy librarian alter ego, and I wore a crazy polyester jacket that Liu Christmas-gifted me.

Above are 3 self-portraits of us doing hands-in right before the show. Please note Adam's snake costume, this is the only photo I have of it.

Our sweet friend Ryan Curtis showed up with his full body-painting setup, and he razzled a few of us up...

Gosh, I'm so lucky to be prancing around on stage every night, shaking my body like I'd always dreamed as a kid.... it felt great to be back in that energy. We finished our set with a brand new song, Came Out of a Lady, ran around blasting our horns in the audience, and it worked great. Just when I was ready to end it all and collapse backstage we went back out to make an encore out of Bad Mr. Kurtz and invited Beat the Grid up to play percussion and dance around. I was sweating so much! Wailing into the mic! And then... the song ended... but the music didn't. For another 10 minutes everyone kept playing their various tomtoms, shakers, cowbells, switching around instruments, dancing and laughing. This has never happened before onstage. What a silly and awesome moment.

This weekend that just ended was more of the same on the mega-danceparty font. We had local dudes Bodega and our Boston friends Spiritual Rez in Philly with us, and wonderful beautiful dancers came pouring out of the cracks in the snow and ice to rally and party. And that was SOME snow and ice! Now I understand what Obama meant by Snowmageddon: After the show we decided to seek out one of the infamous Philly pretzel factories that are said to be open all night, selling fresh ones to the vendors. The one we found was closed (ahhhh! what disappointment!) and the icy chunk nightmare we found on the tiny side streets leading back to I-95 was truly chilling. Foot-deep chunks of solidified snow rutted and scarified the as-yet un-plowed streets... cars were banked in parking lanes on both sides creating narrow yet severely bumpy passes, it was like threading a needle on a bucking bronco! Lucky we escaped without ripping off any bumpers with our manly grill.

Finally, Northampton... there aren't really any adequate words... And since there aren't any pictures either (I had to give Ian my camera's batteries for his Game Boy, cause I used his in my in-ears) I'll just have to be extremely minimalistic: (it was SOLD OUT and a) MEGA-DANCEPARTY!

Love,
Kalmia
+ Rubblebucket