February 2012
8 posts
Currently at T.
Our European tour.
Guitar in the face in Milan.
Paris.
We had one of our two days off on this tour in Paris.
The Eiffel Tower:
People in the Metro:
My friend Cosmic Neman:
And his cat:
And then we played a show:
Now we are in Toulouse.
United States Patent and Trademark Office
Amsterdam & Lille
Like I was saying, its incredibly cold over here. Cold enough for the canals to freeze over in Amsterdam, which according to locals only happens once every several years (the amount of years, according to locals, was either once every 10 years, all the way up to once every 100 years. Either way, people were hella #occupying the canals.
We always try to go to the tourist attractions in...
Take Me Out to the Coast (Acoustic)
Performed in Tiny Telephone right after all these pretty people lent their singing talents to the “Out in the Light” version of the song. Filmed by the great Heidi Petty in San Francisco.
Glasgow, London, & Tilburg
We’re currently in Tilburg, Holland, three shows in to our European tour. Most of the shows are with the nicest dudes in the world Nada Surf. So far, we’ve played Glasgow, London, and Tilburg. Tonight, we’re off to Amsterdam. Its FREEZING all over the place here.
Here is my band of warriors: Niko, Nicholas, and Alex.
And tour manager Dennis.
Glasgow:
...
"Mickey Mantle" Live in SF.
This is my favorite song from the WATERS record, performed here with a lot of my friends in my new hometown. Via Filter Magazine.
January 2012
10 posts
WATERS in all caps.
When I named the band WATERS, I knew I wanted it to be in all capital letters, because it looks better (with that W and the A curving into each other all nice and tightly), and because it would distance us from all the other Waters out there (Roger, Alice, Maxine, John to name a few), but Facebook has this stupid rule about not allowing bands with over five letters in their name to use all...
Neighborhood sesh.
Last night, we played our first show as SF residents. It was a really special night hosted by Noise Pop, Audyssey, and BAMM.tv in SoMa. We played broke-down style for the intimate vibe of the night. We didn’t take any pictures, but I stole some from Hipstamic and Instagram-ers on the ol’ Twitter-verse. The whole thing was filmed by BAMM.tv, so hopefully we’ll have some...
On the beach.
This afternoon, I’m going to the realty agency and picking up the keys, and my girl and I are moving into our new apartment in San Francisco. Months ago, we were dreaming of living here and we were hanging out a lot at Ocean Beach. Our friend Heidi Petty shot this acoustic version of “For the One” down there, and I almost got killed by seagulls towards the end of it.
Cookie, I think you're tame.
I was getting a drink with a friend the other night at this kind of swanky bar in the Upper Haight and we were having a pretty good flowing conversation about living in San Francisco, and how to survive living here while touring a lot, but then the bartender started playing Doolittle all the way through, and we both kind of starting drifting off, and our conversation got really fragmented and...
Are you ready for the country?
Because its time to go.
Happy to announce an epic tour today. WATERS is hitting the road with our friends Delta Spirit this Spring. Also, we’ll be playing at SXSW this year in Austin. All the dates are up on the website.
Gabba gabba hey.
I always forget about much I love the Ramones. I was in a Ramones cover band in junior high called the Adolescent Smurfs. I’m going to try to find some old home videos of that and put them on the internet. We did songs from their entire catalog, including their underrated final album Adios Amigos. In my memory, we were absolutely incredible, but we might actually have been horrible.
...
Home in San Francisco.
I’ve been touring pretty constantly over the last five years. After I graduated college, I went fishing all summer in Alaska to earn money to buy a tour van and I’ve haven’t had my own apartment since. I’ve paid rent a few months in Brooklyn and Oslo, but mainly I’ve been couch-ing it up in between tours. I’ve wanted to live in San Francisco for a long time....
Quit mumbling.
As a touring band, we do a lot of these video-blog things. Sometimes they can be a hassle or a sort of forced-feeling performance. But the session that was posted today on Quit Mumbling is the best sort of one. We were all in kind of bad moods, tired and hungry, from driving the entire previous night from SF to LA. To be honest, the idea of doing a full band acoustic session sounded really...
Driving up the One and frantic
Welcome to the last year on Earth.
This was a Yeti I saw a few minutes after midnight on New Year’s in San Francisco.
One of my main New Year’s resolutions is to blog more. So I though I’d start with the Yeti, and a brief recap of 2011. It really felt like three or four years in one to me, so I think it will help if I remind myself of what happened. Its strange to think that on Jan. 1 of 2011, this project...
September 2011
2 posts
I'm not waiting for the one.
Directed by the wonderful and crazy Allen Cordell.
On tour in America, Part 2
Our tour across the Western half of the US is now sadly over. It was one of the most fun tours I’ve ever done, and it was awesome to share the stage with Mister Heavenly every night. The last string of dates took us from Texas (Denton, Austin, El Paso) through Phoenix, and ended back in our home state at Bar Pink in San Diego the day before yesterday. I’m already on a plane (right...
August 2011
2 posts
On tour in america, part 1
Hey all y’all. I’m currently in beautiful Lawrence, Kansas - which provides a great beacon of sanity after hundreds and hundreds of miles of anti-gay, anti-choice, “obama is a secret muslim dictator,” highway billboards. We drove last night from Denver to Lawrence, which is a solid 9 hours of beautiful country (other than the billboards). We are out with the fucking...
Music video time.
Usually making music videos can be a little bit of a grind, but the shoot for “For the One” which just wrapped up in LA was a surprisingly fun and enjoyable time. The video is directed by the AMAZING Allen Cordell, who has a flair for insanity when it comes to videos. Here are a few pictures from the shoot, all taken by Marte Solbakken.
I had to get my face molded for some special...
July 2011
2 posts
Get ready, Felix.
The van formerly known as Nessie, now know as Felix, is finally getting ready to end its year+ break from doing what it does best: touring. In the past year or so, Felix has turned into more of an all-purpose sort of badass, taking camping trips, helping move shit around, and also just being my super-huge car, but the whole time its felt a little sad. I have a deep love for this van, so its...
GOING GOING BACK BACK TO CALI CALI
Well, after a year+ of being spread out over the globe between Oslo, New York, Alaska, and California, I am back in my home-zone of CALIFORNIA (for good, kinda?). Its hard to be anywhere “for good” when touring is concerned. But I’m now seeing myself as a full-on Californian again for the first time in a while. And now that I’m here, WATERS will start playing some...
June 2011
3 posts
Tour Update, Pt. 2
Tour can be a hectic and awesome mess of days and shows that just kind of pile on top of each other and overlap. Its hard to find some narrative in it some time. Along those lines, here is a non-chronological look at our tour through Europe with Wye Oak. We have one more show, tomorrow’s sold out Hoxton show. Then, its off to NYC!
Some of those photos were taken...
Tour Update, Pt. 1
We’re currently on tour with Wye Oak. Both of our names start with Ws and both of our names have 6 letters. So far, we’ve played Amsterdam, Ghent, and Hamburg. Tonight we’re in Groningen, Holland. Its been an awesome time so far. Here are some pictures from the start of our journey.
Here is our tour manager and sound man Fritz.
This is the first time I’ve ever...
"For the One"
Our first song to be released is “For the One.” It was released yesterday for free download. The song is the lead-off track for the WATERS record, to be released in September. Follow the links below for more info, and to download the song!
Stereogum (in American)
Drowned in Sound (in British)
Aufgemischt (in Deutsch)
May 2011
11 posts
upcoming tour - updated
hey all! so our upcoming european/nyc tour has a few little changes. our first show will now be the 7th of june in amsterdam. we are no longer playing in paris on this trip - but we’ll surely be there soon! the other change is that we were added to this year’s annual “summer slang” show in berlin. from city slang:
This year’s annual “Summer Slang”...
immergut festival!
Hey all. I just got back to Oslo from the first official WATERS show. It was at this awesome little festival called Immergut, about an hour and a half outside of Berlin. I was a little nervous, but mostly excited to play all these new songs for all these people that had never heard any of them, but the audience was SO amazing. So supportive, and most importantly - SO damn fun. It made me even...
NEW JAM COMIN'
one week from today, our first song will be released. stay tuned!!!!!!
back in oslo
SO. I’m back in Oslo, Norway rehearsing for the first shows ever as WATERS. Immergut Festival is this weekend, so we have a lot to get ready for. Its a little overwhelming that our first official show is at a festival in Germany, but its better just to dive in head first with this shit, you feel me? Anyway, when I left Oslo to go to Dallas and record, it was pretty freezing and snowing...
done and done in dallas
hey there everybody..
so i’ve been in dallas for the last 8 days or so, mixing the record with john congleton. its been a super intense experience. i’ve been staying in this little guesthouse out by the airport by myself, and have generally been feeling insane - albeit in a very good way (mostly).
but today - a few hours ago - we put the finishing touches on the last two mixes we...
immergut
I’m happy to announce WATERS was added to the Immergut Festival in Germany, specifically at Bürgersee Weg in Neustrelitz. The festival will be going on May 27th and 28th (we play the 28th), so in a few weeks! It will be the first “official” WATERS show, and I couldn’t be more excited!!! For more tour dates, see the post below this one.
tour!
So I’m happy to announce the first tour dates for WATERS. I am even happier to announce that most of them will be with the awesome Wye Oak. After a string of shows with them in Europe, we head Stateside for the first u.s.a. WATERS shows ever. Here’s a list of all the dates:
June 4 Paris , FRA La Fleche D’or *
June 7 Amsterdam, NETH Paradiso *
...
momager
in honor of mother’s day, i’d like to take the time to give props to the raddest mom ever, who i also refer to as momager. she sent us boxes of trader joes snacks for recording, which is obviously crucial. love ya mom.
nikolai & zygmunt
so i’ve put together a band for my new project. these two other dudes are norwegian badasses. they lent their awesome talents to the record, and will join WATERS on tour.
meet nikolai haukeland, multi-instrumentalist extraordinaire, shown here actually playing the one intstrument he’s NOT good at.
and on drums, we have zygmunt koźniewski (he’s polish originally, which...
two month or so update
allrighty. so the time has come to really start updating this shit on the regular. here’s what’s been going on over the last couple months.
i spent the last half of february, all of march, and the first bit of april in oslo, norway. WATERS was born there in a lot of ways, and this period was full of super intense rehearsals, lots of snow, and one warm up show in oslo at cafe mono...
January 2011
3 posts
back in the studio (for a day)
i’m in the studio mixing what will probably be the first song to be put out by waters. it feels so good to work on this new shit. O HOLY BREAK OF DAYYYYY
plus, me and the engineer are kind of matching flannels, which is always a plus for vibe. YOU FEEL ME?
peace out, brooklyn (for now)
So, I’m on a plane right now headed west. I’ve been in Brooklyn for about three months.. writing, writing, writing. It was a wonderful stay, and I will miss it while I’m away. Now, I’m off to the sunny west coast for some warming up.. some fam time, some mixing/recording projects.. and then off to oslo to start rehearsals!
introducing waters
(its my new jam)
photos by marte solbakken.