USA Tour: Part 2

And the saga continues...

During our two week stint in LA we had a couple of quick little side trips - one out east into Arizona and one down south to San Diego. The first of the two was for a gig in Tucson. But we had a gig back in Long Beach (LA) booked for the following night... so it turned out to be a brutal one night road trip across the dessert.

                      Cactus rule.

                      Two 8-hour days on the road with gigs each night will make any man turn feral.

We played at a place called Solar Culture in downtown Tucson, a really cool venue/art space. And at the end of the night Steve, the old tripper who owned the joint, showed us his psychedelic palace next door, complete with multiple tripping caves. Which were hand-built mind you.

    Trip Cave 1

    Trip Cave 2

I can't remember his exact words, but he said something along the lines of, "Yeah, we eat our cactus and then crawl into one of the tripping rooms and play didgeridoo". I couldn't quite tell if he was serious, or if he was trying to make an Australian joke... he was pretty stoned at the time.

The second side mission out of LA was for a gig in San Diego. This little trip is worth a mention because San Diego was where we had the best burger of the whole trip. And we ate a LOT of burgers, so this was something pretty special. Shout out to the Snack Shack for their out of control Triple Threat Pork Burger. Good lord, I'm getting wet just thinking about it (in my mouth, ya sicko).

Oh and we played an awesome show while we were there too... although apparently we were plan B for that Tuesday night in San Diego.

                                     Surprised they even knew we were coming to town really.

So after a couple of weeks in the LA heat, we were pretty keen to get out of the city and get on the road northwards. First stop was San Francisco. We had a couple of days to spend in San Fran so we did a bunch of touristy shit like go to Pier 39, look at the seals, eat clam chowder, gaze over at Alcatraz, and crossed the Golden Gate Bridge.

                                Dork.

Also hit a pretty bangin park which had a butt load of squirrels in it, which to us was an amazing novelty. Cute little bastards, gotta be up there as the most loveable rodent.

    "Nature wank anyone?"

Had a great gig in San Fran too at an awesome venue called Thee Parkside. Played with a local band Blood Sister, who turned out to be one of my favourite for the whole tour. Well worth checking them out.

And that's enough for now, next post we will continue up the coast to the Pacific Northwest and beyond. Thanks for reading ya'll. Hope you're having a banger.

Love Zeahorse xx

USA Tour: Part 1

Ok, so the recount of our USA tour finally begins. I will try my best not to drag it out for too long and just concentrate on the best bits… but a lot of you guys helped fund this tour, so I’ll try make sure you get your moneys worth too.

So let me start with Day 1 cause it was a bloody doozey. It was a baptism by fire, almost literally… we landed in a fucking heat wave. The entire two weeks we spent in Los Angeles the temp was pushing 40 friggin degrees Celsius plus. We went straight from the airport, jet lagged as fuck, to pick up our hire van. We dubbed the van “Sauso”, cause she was long and sausage roll shaped. And boy were we stingin for a sausage roll by the end of the trip, crikey! Americans knows how to do deliciously bad road food EXCEPT for savoury baked goods.

    (Jugs 4 Lyfe)

So anyhoo, after we’d acquired our road hog, we immediately set out on an almighty gear hunt to find an entire backline we could take around the country with us. I almost got shot in a pawn store for walking behind the counter, an innocent mistake I thought, but apparently the penalty for this is being blasted with a shot gun, of which they had two next to the register. Luckily for me they realised I was just a harmless, funny-sounding, dumb Australian. We were off to a good start.

    (Our backline crammed into Sauso. The boys are lookin pretty chuffed with their work.)

After running around in the heat all day... 

    ("Get fucked it's hot.")

...we were bloody exhausted and decided to find a place to crash for the night. The cheapest place we could find was a nice sounding motel in Inglewood (nice sounding on Trip Advisor anyway). Little did we know that Inglewood was a gnarly ghetto right next door to Compton. But being four innocent white boys from Australia we didn’t know any better. Shit got pretty real all of a sudden when we walked around the neighbourhood later that night to find some dinner. Within a hundred meters from the motel we’d already encountered a pimp and his (white) ho, dealers slingin crack, and Latino gangsters complete with authentic crip walk and mean ass neck tatts. Morgs even busted in on some dude in the toilets doing the drugs he’d just acquired from out the front of the Japanese take away joint we were in. Ha! It was pretty damn obvious that we weren’t locals. But we managed to avoid any trouble and quickly retreated back to the motel room, not daring to resurface till morning.

Day 2 was also pretty special because we played our first gig. Which just happened to be 4 hours north of LA in town called Fresno, the meth capital of America. Bizarre place for our first gig, and that’s exactly the vibe we got from the place when we got there, strange. Luckily for us the people that organised the show were the nicest bunch of people you could hope to meet. We played at Peeve’s Public House with Midwest Moms and Space Apes. Afterwards we got on the American tins! Crashed at the Midwest Moms place, and slept on the floor with the cockroaches. Big ups to Ryan and the others for their hospitality and for making our first gig experience in America a good one.

So next day we missioned back to LA, hung over AND jet lagged as fuck. Oh and hot as fuck too. We had another gig that night but this time in Murrieta, an hour or so south of LA, another slightly strange spot for a gig. We played at this place called The Dial, a really cool DIY space in the middle of nowhere. We were in the van kinda lost in some sort of industrial/business district with not a sole to be seen, until all of a sudden we turned a corner and were greeted by a sea of underage high school kids. We were a bit uneasy at first, feeling like a bunch of Rolf bloody Harris peddos, but all the teeny boppers went absolutely skitz when we played, so it turned out really well.

    (The Dial)

They were definitely the two best and most interesting gigs of the first week or so. The shows we played in the actual city of LA were nothing special, so I’ll spare you the details. I’m already at risk of this dragging out into a marathon saga of epic proportion. The next instalment will deal with our quick side trip into Arizona and our journey up the coast to the Pacific Norwest.

                      (Our best pal in LA, the Liquor Clown.)

Oh, and to those still waiting for pozible mail-outs, please know that they are not far off! We’re really sorry for the delay, there’s been a bunch of reasons for the hold up, but I’m not about to start whinging about them now. So rest assured, your goods will arrive soon. Thanks for being patient with us.

Love Zeahorse xx

USA Tour: Prologue

We’ve returned from the northern hemisphere, a place where the moon is up-side-down and they measure things in strange quantities like gallons and hogs heads. Which for a place with some very sensible metric ideas, such as organising the streets into blocks and labelling them by numbers, is like a bizarre ride at the contradiction carnival. BUT alas, this blog post is NOT about our wacky adventures in the land of the free, but just a little something to whet your appetite, the real dirt/gold (depends how you look at it) will be revealed over the coming weeks. This is also a chance to give a shout out to all of you who helped make our trip a reality.

So let me try and explain the weeks leading up to our departure. The idea was to play a run of shows around Sydney to raise some funds and to get gig-ready. It started with a show at Mona Pub on a Friday night with Coffin and our good buddies Milt. We hadn’t played a show for a few months, so this was a slightly strange one to come back with, but man oh man the beaches boys go hard! I’ve got a very special memory of about a dozen long-haired surf rats in the front row head banging in effortless unison. Beautiful salty, golden locks of hair flailing in time with our high-voltage rock moves (HA!); so perfect it had an almost choreographed feel.

The next show was the very next night, our fundraiser show at Sashimi warehouse in Marrickville. A very special night for us. Firstly what a great venue, it was the perfect place for us to have our fundraiser and the turn out we got for it was extremely humbling. I’d like to thank everyone who came out to that show, it was a really special moment for us and hands down one of our best shows ever. Not only did we play with some of our favourite local bands, Ok Cocaine, The Nuclear Family, and Reckless Vagina, but it was a real tear-jerker moment to be in a room full of people and feel so supported by our home town. It really meant a lot to have our Sydney faithful show up and help us fuel the adventure we were about to embark on. Our good buddy Jack made a film clip with footage from that night, so post comments on facebook until someone puts it up.

The following weekend we played in Woolongong, our first time in The Gong. We were deflowered at Rad Café & Bar with Hound, Miners, and The Nuclear Family. Solid line-up. And kudos to The Gong locals for what was a good turn out and a fun show. Then the next night we were at Brighton Up Bar for the 1am slot. It was our last show before leaving for the states and was a good vibe to finish on. The vibe was so good we got half naked for half a set of skinny white-boy ghost rock (there may or may not be footage of this on you tube, ladies).

And that was it, we were ready. We’d had a good run of shows leading up to our departure, were gig hardened, had raised some funds and were ready to unleash our sausage-roll rock upon North America. And although we hit a few minor snags with our visa processing (and by minor I mean hugely expensive and time wasting) which somewhat squashed our momentum, we were super pumped to begin our adventure.

So we’d like to express our most heart felt “good on ya cobber!” to everyone who supported us. As I’m sure everyone knows, we ran a successful crowd funding campaign before we left, which we can’t thank everyone enough for. We felt so loved and supported it was overwhelming, so THANKS!!!  We love you all. Your treats and goodie-bags will be dispersed soon. And stayed tuned for the next post which will actually be about the USA tour, none of this pre-trip fluff.

xx Zeahorse

FUEL THE DREAM

So as most of you have probably already noticed, we’ve been flogging our pozible campaign like there’s no tomorrow…

http://www.pozible.com/project/183692

But that’s mainly because we’re f**king touring AMERICA!! And we couldn’t be more excited. So before I give the pozible campaign another shameless plug, let me first try to paint a picture of where we’re at in terms of the tour plan.

http://www.pozible.com/project/183692

So first of all, our flights are booked. We’re leaving on September 2^nd. We land in Los Angeles where the plan is to buy tour necessities; a bunch of amps and a hire van. Then the tour begins… we’re basically doing a giant Z across the country. Quite fitting really.

http://www.pozible.com/project/183692

We’ll firstly make our way up the west coast to Seattle, then head South-East(ish) to Houston, then up to Chicago, before finally heading to New York and the east coast - with about a million shows in-between. Ok, more like 40 shows, but we’ll still be covering A LOT of ground, and be putting A LOT of k’s under the belt (well, miles technically). Pretty much gonna go something like, play a show, get in the van, drive to the next town, play a show, get in the van, etc. By the end of the tour our bodies, minds, gentle spirits and supple wallets will all be trembling… And we can’t wait! It’s going to be the time of our lives; we’re all really excited.

http://www.pozible.com/project/183692

BUT (cue shameless plug) we need a bit of a helping hand financially. Because after purchasing flights, back-line and a van (not to mention visas and other expensive bureaucratic shit), our collective bank accounts will have taken a relentless and unholy pounding. Albeit an awesome one, cause we’re going to get an amazing experience out of it. We’re not whinging about getting pounded, after all we’re choosing to get pounded. We’re just hoping that you guys will help soften the poundage. Which is where our pozible campaign comes in. 

http://www.pozible.com/project/183692

It’s actually really cool to see all our buddies helping us out by chipping in what they can; it gives us a real sense of community. People we know and love (and some people we don't know) are coming together to collectively support us by providing the financial assistance we need to make this dream of ours come true. It’s really quite amazing, and we thank everyone who has helped us out thus far. You’re all fair dinkum true-blue bloody LEGENDS!

http://www.pozible.com/project/183692

And it’s not like you’ll get nothing in return for your hard earned cash. You’ll receive one of our awesome gifts in exchange for your precious money. So dig deep people and you will be rewarded!

http://www.pozible.com/project/183692

Please find the link below:

http://www.pozible.com/project/183692

Thanks again everyone, we love you all.

http://www.pozible.com/project/183692

xx Zeahorse

http://www.pozible.com/project/183692

http://www.pozible.com/project/183692

http://www.pozible.com/project/183692

http://www.pozible.com/project/183692

http://www.pozible.com/project/183692

http://www.pozible.com/project/183692

http://www.pozible.com/project/183692

http://www.pozible.com/project/183692

Shit Yeah!

After 192 grogs, 4 bottles of whiskey, 30 vallium and dozens of doobies, we’ve returned from the mountains with a bunch of demos for our next album.

Arguably the greatest week of all time, it had been a while since we’d spent a solid amount of time together writing new songs, so it was a liberating week for us all. And thankfully we’ve come back with something to show for it, apart from a steep decline in health and some well toasted buns (see below).

The week was spent in the beautiful Blue Mountains, in a shack in the middle of the nowhere surrounded by the serene bush of Megalong Valley.

It was a week full of mountain antics and anal burns. If anyone can correctly guess who these flaming buns belong to you will win the ultimate prize of becoming Zeahorse's official arse health & safety officer. You will have the opportunity to maintain the extremely high standard of well being of our combined arses. Does it get any better than that? As Jesus once said, "No".

But now we’re really looking forward to recording these new songs sometime around the end of winter. So we’ll keep ya’ll posted as we progress towards the next release.

In more immediate news, we’ve got a few shows coming up really soon that we’re super pumped for cause it’s been a while since we’ve played.

We're playing this weekend at VISIONS (@ the Standard Bowl, Sydney) which is gonna be a banger! Plus it's FREE, so no excuses not to come along.

Then we’re headed to Melbourne and are playing at The Public Bar with Wicked City, Worm Crown and Teenage Libido. Can you say, “SOLID LINE-UP!”? God damn!! Gonna be awesome.

And we've got a few records left from the first pressing of our LP “Pools” that we’ll be selling at both shows, so get 'em while they’re still around.

See ya'll soon!!

Love Zeahorse xx

Mountain Retreat

We're headed up to the mountains ya'll!!! And while this might not sound like big news, it's really exciting for us because we're planning to demo songs for our next album while we're up there.

We've got an awesome shack to stay in (courtesy of the fine Howell family) on a nice chunk of bushland. It's going to be a serene week of intense male bonding.

So in-between face licking sessions we will hopefully get enough jamming done to record some decent material for our next release. We're set to head up mid March, so finger crossed we come home with something to show after a solid week of mountain shenanigans.

We'll keep ya'll in the loop as to if we survived, but in the meantime have a good fucking week.

Love Zeahorse xxx

New Year, Drink Beer, Have Cheer, No Fear, Kill Deer, Turn Queer, Shed Tear, Stay Clear.

Hey ya'll.

Happy new year ya druggo's!!

As lame as it sounds, I'm gonna take this opportunity to quickly reflect on the events towards the end of last year and look forward to what 2014 holds in it's powerful, trembling hands.

I suppose the most notable and exciting thing to happen in the back end of the year was that we (finally) released our album, Pools. It was a long time coming and we're all super chuffed to have it out there and to be floggin it at our shows. We did album launch shows in Sydney and Melbs, which were both really great, so thanks to all ya'll that came out to support us. Big ups to Narrow Lands and No Art, who played with us in Sydney, and to Heads of Charm, ESC, and Strangers From Now On who played with us in Melbs. They're all bloody great bands and we were blown away at both shows by how much better they all were than us. Quality shit ladies and gents.

So 2013 was a damn fine year for us, full of good times and belly laughs. And 2014 is set to be no different... For starters we're getting the year off on the right foot with a couple of awesome festivals. The first being Fish Fest put on by our buddies Spewborg and Frizz, which is set to destroy the Northern Beaches on the 18th of Jan. So get yourself a ticket and come get fishy with us!

The other festival is of course Bad Day Out, put on by Morgs and Sam at the Petersham Bowlo on Australia Day. This is set to be a bloody doozey of a day, with a fair dinkum grouse line-up of Aussie bands. It's probably the most Australian thing you can do without being even remotely patriotic... with no bare chested, southern cross tattooed, Australian flag toting douche bags in sight. So get yourself a god damn ticket and sink some piss with us at the Petersham Bowlo on fucking Australia Day. Check the links below ya'll...

http://inticketing.greentix.com.au/evinfo.php?eventid=370918

https://www.facebook.com/events/497902533658742/

We're also planning to start demoing for our next album soon, so 2014 will hopefully give birth to a new Zeahorse record. But while we slowly push that snarling beast our of 2014's supple vagina, we're also planning to do some touring (with some potential overseas touring too). So we'll keep you in the loop as to all those goings on throughout the year. And that's enough from me, so I hope to see you soon and have a great fucking year!

Throwing you many festive shakas,

Love Zeahorse xx