12 weeks and counting...

We've been busy getting things together. We booked our flights a couple of weeks ago, that was a task in and of itself, Tricia had been keeping an eye on flights for quite some time, a decent deal came up so we jumped on it. We're hoping they won't stick it to us when it comes to taking our instruments over there. Travel light is the best plan I guess. It's a bit worrisome when I think about taking my Travis Bean on the plane, I hope I can carry it on. I thought about not even taking it but I love playing that guitar. They've gone up quite a bit in value since the $700 I paid for it in 1997. I've played that guitar for every live show since then. We're planning on having quite a bit of merch to sell at shows. As of now we'll have a repress of Instant Winner that antena krzyku is releasing, the Concrete Bruises 7" is also going to have a limited pressing of 300 with an alternate cover. We'll have a few copies of Punishment Room and also possibly a compilation of tracks from each release as well as comp tracks. They'll be at least one poster, possibly two, and some buttons. I hit up Manual and the band if it was cool to bring along some Leopold CDs so those will be eventually floating around Europe too. I just found out that our friend Will, is going to be joining us. We've met over Facebook a while back when he asked Michael Gerald from Killdozer to be on one of his projects and he ended up recording his tracks at my studio. Since then he's also had Tricia on a track and he's put up David and his wife when they visited the UK. We're trying to figure out rehearsals before the tour. David will have to get over here (L.A.) from Austin for a few weekends. I am an owner in a rehearsal studio business so we'll luckily have access to that and we also hope to rehearse once we arrive in Italy. Usually I'm used to being overly prepared for shows but this one is going to be by the seat of our pants. I think we're pretty confident though since we've all played together before and know we can do it. I've been trying to get pedal setup to take on tour. Since we're not taking our amps, it's kind of rough to rely on pedals. I went to try out a few pedals this weekend with my buddy Dani from Barcelona from Beauty Fool Records. They're fronting the Barcelona show. Luckily he's a guitar player so it wasn't much of an ordeal for us to go check out some stuff. I settled on a Real Tube pedal and luckily found one for really cheap on Craigslist. It sounds ok but I won't know until we land and I plug into whatever backline we have available. I may also take some other distortion pedals like a RAT and maybe even a DS1 or Eq pedal to tailor the sound a bit more. Last time we played I also had a boss noise reduction, Hyper Fuzz, and I'll probably have some kind of delay in there for a few songs where the feedback has a bit of ambience to it. To be honest I'm not a big pedal guy. Once I got my Soldano the search was over for my tone. That was it. I also need to take my Jazzmaster for a couple tracks that need tremolo and that behind the bridge noise. It's a fun guitar to play. I tend to like the Jazzmaster for the Punishment Room tracks and the Travis Bean for the Instant Winner stuff. If anyone in Europe has a Soldano Decatone I can borrow please let me know. ;-)

8 Years Later...

It's been a while since I've even looked at this blog. The reunion shows went well that we did in terms of our playing but the attendance wasn't all that great. The show at Echo Curio (RIP) was by far the best one we did, more of our friends and fans were there that saw the band in its original form in the 80's and 90's. I had a great time playing those songs and as a fan I think I did Robert's parts justice, I hope so anyway. We got together to record a new song a few years ago but not much came of it. It's up on Distorted Pony's FB page so feel free to take a listen. Fast forward to the later part of 2017... First thing I heard of the potential for a European tour was when Ted mentioned it on FB. A guy that's been reprinting shirt designs from noise rock bands contacted us some time ago asking about the Punishment Room t-shirt. Ted said to go ahead and do it and that lead to discussing us going to Europe. (Links at end of entry) I had tried to get us over there when we got together but the guarantees were not going to cover the costs, not even close. As much as we appreciated all the offers, 100 Euros for a gig was not going to cut it. We did get a few good offers but when it's five person operation, flights, backline, van, accommodations is a costly proposal. I met up with Ted for lunch and he told me the few details that he had. Manuel was going to try to book us a two week tour. He'd taken the Cherubs and some other bands out there and had some success so he was willing to see if he could get some interest and go from there. We posted about it online to try and spread the word and see how people would respond. It's been quite amazing how excited people are out there to see us play. The band never got to go out there the first time around since they broke up in '93. So as of today, we're are good to go. We bought our flights and have about a dozen shows booked, maybe more by the time all is set. There's also an effort being made to re-release Instant Winner, put out a compilation of rare, unreleased, and "best of" tracks. And my old label Total Annihilation along with my friends in Spain Beauty Fool Records is planning on re-releasing the first single that Piece of Mind put out. This all came about quite quickly so we are all scrabbling for time. I'll post more about those things as things progress. I've been going back each night and relearning/practicing the songs, we are expanding the setlist a bit to include more stuff since we last played. We'll see when we can all get together to rehearse. I have to tell you guys, this whole thing, when I think about it is incredibly cool for me to be a part of. Distorted Pony was a band that really excited me and inspired me to play music again when I was a kid. I was in a hardcore band during high school but that got boring after a while and I didn't want to repeat that. So all the bands of the 90's like DP, Slug, Sandy Duncan's Eye, Oiler, Babyland, The Jesus Lizard, The Unsane, Melvins, Cherubs, Shellac, Fudge Tunnel, on and on the list goes...they really excited me and I was lucky enough to form Leopold and be a small part of that lineage of music...but I never thought I'd be actually playing in Distorted Pony and especially now, it's quite mindblowing that I'm going to be on tour in Europe playing guitar in one of my favorite bands. I love the music and the people very much. Even when we haven't been playing music together I still meet up with Ted or Tricia once in a while. As expected, every one is just a lot busier now, some are raising kids as well as have careers so it's quite a task to find time to go to Europe for two weeks to play music. A while ago I was talking to a friend about how much I missed playing loud noisy music and maybe I should get Leopold going again or start a new band...well here comes Distorted Pony again and I can't wait to make noise. (US shirt link) https://thedarkslide.com/products/distorted-pony-punishment-room-t-shirt-by-surgeon-knife (EU shirt link) https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1795276230503323&set=a.166758370021792.33883.100000628891227&type=3