Darwin Deez

Hey guys! It’s me again. It’s Andrew. It’s been so long!

In 48 hours, the brothers Deez will be flying over to London town to release our new record, Songs For Imaginative People. We are going to be exchanging our imagination waves with you. Hope to see you in the crowd this year beaming your creative fantastic love flows in our direction.

We actually already did a band warm-up / sneak preview tour of sorts in November. I know I never wrote you then! Feelin a little guilty, in that regard. It’s not that I don’t care about you.

A big reason I was not writing was because I was working hard practicing guitar. Did you stream the new album today on NME? You might notice, the guitar parts have gotten a lot harder since last time. Darwin’s playing them all on the recordings, and now it’s up to me to faithfully bring half of them to the stage.

Remember how in the early days, one of our things in Darwin Deez was like: “Darwin grabbed a bunch of his friends to play in his band even though they can barely play their instruments”? It was charming, i think. Greg had never played drums before, but there he was, kick snare kick kick snare. Michelle the tap dancer learned just enough bass to make it through the sets. Well, those days are gone! Greg is back on his actual instrument, the bass. We have a new drummer Tim who’s super pro. And Darwin, during his Asheville hermitage, has conjured crazy Hendrix shredding chops. So now it’s just me left (somewhat) proudly carrying the amateur torch. Me, Andrew, the bassist and pianist, hanging on for dear life trying to pull off these tricky new guitar parts. So wish me luck. Send me some heart signals from the audience! You know, that shape you make with your hands. I will need your heart shaped signals.

So anyways, yeah, more practicing, less photos and tour diary blogging, so far. But even once I get my guitar parts locked in, I still haven’t decided if I’m going to be the faithful documentarian that I was in 2010 / 2011. I’ve always got this creative itch, you know, and I’m always thinking, “OK, I did that. Now what else can I do?” I’ve recently started exploring the new-ish (to me) social media of Instagram and Twitter, so if I’m not blogging enough, you will surely find regular peeks into our Darwin Deez touring times by following me on Instagram at username givetolight, and on Twitter at @givetolight. (https://twitter.com/givetolight)

The pictures on this post are some of my favorite Instagrams from November.

Speaking of faithful documenting, did you know that the new deluxe edition of the album will have my entire blog writings and photographs in a 110 page book? Plus album on vinyl! Plus amazing DVD documentary! This is the link to buy that:

http://www.recordstore.co.uk/search.html?l=en&term=songs+for+imaginative+people

“Why would I need this book?” you might ask. “I can read your blog and see your photos here for free.” But try to go back to the beginning of the blog. You can’t go back that far, can you? It stops you at a certain point. The internet, it stops you. That’s why you need the book. The internet stops you, but the book will not.

Darwin parked our new US tour van outside of NYC in Jersey this evening. I picked him up. We hopped in my zip car. “Adventure time!” I declared. “Our lives are so exciting!” he replied. It’s a happy day. I feel good. Anticipation!

There’s this structure built alongside Interstate 87 when you start driving north in the Bronx, on the right-hand side. It looks like elevated train tracks, maybe abandoned. Also kind of looks like an aqueduct. I’ve been seeing it for a long time. I noticed it when we departed on that first Creaky Boards tour in 2007, which was the very first tour that Darwin and I had ever embarked on. I noticed it again when I left on a tour to play bass for Saturday Looks Good To Me. I noticed it again when the Darwin Deez band did our US tour in January of 2011. I might have even written about it on that January 2011 blog. Anyway, this structure, these train tracks, this aqueduct, for me, it’s a symbol of adventure. We are going to be touring pretty much nonstop for two months. England, Paris, Germany, then the entire circumference of the United States. Canada. SXSW 2013. This structure next to I-87, it gives me such a feeling of awe and mystery. What is about to happen? What is about to unfold? This silent structure. It almost seems like it knows the future.