tomorrow @ the Che Cafe : Swim Party + Writer

you know how time flies? we Modlins first played with our friends in Swim Party at Buster Daly's (now known as U-31 for all youngin's) on November 19th, 2005, and have had the honor of rocking stages with them quite a few times since then, including the cd release party for our first full-length Here's To Being Happy, and LA release show for the followup With Friends Like These. and Writer was kind enough to join us for our most recent Where Does It End? cd release show. now tomorrow night, the two of them join forces to rock the Che Cafe, all ages style. will we see any repeats from their split 7" release show? we can only hope! its a good thing Modlins only practice on tuesdays and thursdays...

saturday update #2?

yet another successful saturday session tying up lose ends, as I met eric and matt at our practice room studio to lay down bass for This Is The End and Tell Me What I Should Do. now its off to run errands before meeting up with Stoph at the 2nd ever Wii Olympics, where the nation of Almerica has high hopes for going golden in Archery and Wakeboarding, and defending its gold in the Ski Jump, while eric is still hard at work recording guitar parts, or maybe just hanging out with matt in the practice space. who knows what goes on in there when Stoph and I are gone. ha. then if we can get a good take of White Lies (Modern Lovers), record the intro to The Hunt for Red November (as heard/seen at both of our shows last month), and get Stoph to lay down hi-hat on Benefit of Doubt, we just might have some new versions of a whole lot of new material next weekend. pretty exciting! (oh yea, i just name dropped like 5 new Modlins songs)

another day, another round of recording

stoph and matt are still at our practice room studio, while eric is at a wedding and i am about to leave for the Stone Brewery, but in the mean time, here is a quick picture of matt in action...



and another shot of matt and i in action, from last month's Casbah show...



cheers!

5 Years of Modlins!

Yes yes, today is the today. Or rather, 5 years ago today was a day, a day that shall live in infamy. Wait, no. Anyways, what DID happen 5 years ago today was The Modlins' album release party for The Andrew EP, at which it was announced that I, Alex Smith, was officially the fourth Modlin. So today is the 5 year birthday party of this group of four of us known as The Modlins.

At practice yesterday, Stoph said we should come up with a quiz that noone will be able to answer, but that seems like a lot of work. Instead, here is my mp3 mix of songs from each Modlins release from the past 5+ years, in reverse-chronological order :

1/ The Mark EP - O, What to Believe!
2/ Where Does It End? - Monday Morning
3/ With Friends Like These - Warm Up (Or Say Goodbye)
4/ Here's To Being Happy - Thirty-Seven, Japanese
5/ The Michael EP - Waiting To Wake Up
6/ The Andrew EP - What You Had In Mind
7/ The Daniel EP - Please Shirely

Download the full mix (zip)

great success

friday at the casbah was hugely great. stoph took lots of pictures which i think you can find on facebook, but also might need an fb account to see. arlene also took pictures, and a few video clips, but then she left my camera in her parents' car, so maybe we'll get it back in another few weeks. ha. anyways, its almost like taking a break from live shows to work on new material, and then taking a break from recording that new material to play a few live shows, is a balancing act that we Modlins seem to finally be getting down. a balancing act...

getting back in to the swing of things

get it? like tiger tiger woods, y'all? too soon? anyways, we Modlins took a vote, and the group consensus is for us to start blogging again. like hey, if its good enough for CatDirt, its good enough for us, right? anyways, a lot has gone down since our last post, on June 10 2009. We played another 10 shows between June and August of last year, and I got engaged! And then we Modlins played one more in October before going in to hibernation for the winter. And by hibernation, I mean we are working on super secret new material. just to give you a bit of a teaser, some of the working titles we are throwing around are "that one song where matt plays the organ", "that other song where matt plays the piano", "the one where eric plays the organ", "stoph's song (even though matt came up with the chord changes, lyrics, and structure)", and "Please Bear With Me ('cause I'm Not Lion)".

anyways, we came out of hiding two weeks ago to pack the Tin Can Alehouse alongside longtime role models (is that the right term?) Billy Midnight. and tonight, we are going to rock the Casbah, playing with the likes of Joel P West, The Hot Moon, and Dead Oceans' The Donkeys! Hard to believe it's been over a year since we played The Donkeys, and also like a year and a half since we were at the Casbah. Well i guess since it'd also been some 8 months in between blog posts, maybe it all makes sense now...



correction: i was wrong, last casbah show prior to this one was 7/18/09. only 9 months ago...

On the road again!

The Album release is behind us ..... and what an amazing one it was. Huge thanks go out to Writer (especially Jayme for helping out with the drum "marching line") and to Hot TV (esp Tim for similar reasons). also, thanks to Tyler from The Exfriends for rounding out the drumline. and to Dayna and Joe for forming our first horn section. and a debt of gratitude most likely never to be fully repaid to Mark Bertuldo for being awesome. it was an incredible night, thanks to everyone who came out. Thanks to Rosey and Natalie, our local music blog heavyweights, mingling admist the crowd. and thanks to Tim Pyles for giving the title track Where Does It End? a some spins the last couple of weeks on fm 94/9. and of course thanks to the Whistlestop for being the proud sponser of "the modlins release another recording".

If you weren't able to make it out and pick up a copy of the new record, we should have the online ordering section up soon. but until then, we're hitting the road so catch us around california. We'll be in SF (sat 6/13), Sactown (fri 6/12), LA (sat 6/20) and one last show in June in san diego with The Minor Keys at the always lovely beauty bar (sun 6/21). Flyers above, love below.

love,
the modlins (xoxo)

one chord to another

looks like our trip up to Olympia, WA and back was all that more nice, as i saw today that there has been some good love for The Modlins on Olympia's 89.3fm KAOS , during their One Chord To Another show, Monday nights at 9pm.

According to their oc2a blog, the first our of this past Monday June 1st's show was "Tonight" by Jason Anderson, Jeremy Egnik's "Life's Too Short", Connor Oberst & The Mystic Valley Band "Slowly (Oh So Slowly)", The Modlins "Bad Night's Sleep", Camera Obscura "You Told Me A Lie", Grizzly Bear "Southern Point", John Vanderslice "Sunken Union Boat", Built To Spill "Kicked It In The Sun", Silversun Pickups "The Royal We", and Spiritualized "I Think I'm In Love". That is not bad company at all.

Where Does It End? - Album Details, Full Tracklist

the albums are in our possession and ready for distribution. And this friday will be the long fabled release show of our third album, who's tracklist we've yet to disclose to you. let us remedy that now:

The Modlins - Where Does It End?
1. Where Does It End?
2. Pink Parachutes
3. Monday Morning
4. Blue Balloons
5. Well, What's It Gonna Take?
6. Marching Line, 1945
7. It's All Gonna Blow Over, Soon (Positively 4th Ave.)
8. O, Diana
9. Will You Wait for the Chance
10. Wait in Your Words
11. The Birds of Manhattan (reprise)

see you friday!!!! (and if you're unclear on what's going on, look down a couple posts, you should find some flyers)

(note: monday morning and the b-side "it's out of your hands, chuck berry" are streaming on myspace now ..... in case you read this blog, but somehow missed that bit of news)

Where Does It End? tours more than we do...

tracking on UPS is great, since it looks like we'll actually have the shipment of lots of new cds, potentially tomorrow, with plenty of time to spare before next Friday (see you at the Whistle Stop!). but at the same time, it kind of makes me feel like a bum. i mean, here it is the end of May, and we Modlins have so far played in 5 states this year: CA, OR, WA, AZ, and NM : but our cds have already been in 4 states, just over the past 15 hours! i guess all i can say is, Where Does It End?