As McCommon pointed out, I am Mutt's sole European correspondent for the next couple weeks which means I find myself extremely busy handling all of my duties here in the land of burning euros (i.e. jamon department, octopus and potato taster, American songwriter, tour manager, language butcherer & unleaded into diesel automobile master) I won't lie. I am, as far as I know, Mutt's only songwriter/copywriter and they've known all along I have this bad habit of seeing the darker side of things, writing folk songs about it and playing them in far away places where no one I know is around to make my skin crawl.
For Dolorean, my band of ten years, it's our first tour in support of our new album The Unfazed which came out on January 18th of this year in the US and Europe. In the three years since our last album, You Can't Win, another band hailing from Barcelona, Spain has claimed the name Delorean (slightly different spelling) and has seemingly made love aurally to every music blogger, painfully hip record label and American Apparel shopper on the planet. Even worse, they probably fix a beautiful breakfast before they leave in the morning... While the music of Dolorean (us) and Delorean (them) is very, very different (they specialize in electro dance music), in the world of zeros and ones this has become a bit of a nightmare - comment threads get heated, show listings get messed up, even iTunes got it wrong for half of the day when our album came out. So what do we do? Like any glass-half-full crew of optimists we decide that we will ignore it and tour Spain for a week and a half to kick off the support of the new album.
The Spanish leg of our European tour was incredible - Burgos, Zaragoza, Castellon, Madrid, Cadiz, Huelva, Granada and back to Madrid again. Every venue was pleasantly packed, we sold every single CD and nearly every LP that we brought for this leg of the tour and the Spanish hospitality is unmatched. The food, the drinks and the late nights in Spain are world class. So what to make of this Dolorean/Delorean confusion. Did we really lose our name, our identity to another group of musicians? The answer came to light in our last night in Spain. At our booking agent's request we played an all acoustic set in his friend's perfectly curated bookstore called La Buena Vida. It was arranged last minute, the invitation was spread via word of mouth. When we set up to play at 9:30 on a Saturday night in Madrid the bookstore was packed. It was probably the best show of the tour so far - no PA, no tickets, no green room. What's in a name? Who cares, there's so much more in a song.
From Paris where just moments ago I told a French waiter "Gracias" -
Al James, Mutt Copywriter
First tour photo set lives here. (enjoy a selection below)
For Dolorean, my band of ten years, it's our first tour in support of our new album The Unfazed which came out on January 18th of this year in the US and Europe. In the three years since our last album, You Can't Win, another band hailing from Barcelona, Spain has claimed the name Delorean (slightly different spelling) and has seemingly made love aurally to every music blogger, painfully hip record label and American Apparel shopper on the planet. Even worse, they probably fix a beautiful breakfast before they leave in the morning... While the music of Dolorean (us) and Delorean (them) is very, very different (they specialize in electro dance music), in the world of zeros and ones this has become a bit of a nightmare - comment threads get heated, show listings get messed up, even iTunes got it wrong for half of the day when our album came out. So what do we do? Like any glass-half-full crew of optimists we decide that we will ignore it and tour Spain for a week and a half to kick off the support of the new album.
The Spanish leg of our European tour was incredible - Burgos, Zaragoza, Castellon, Madrid, Cadiz, Huelva, Granada and back to Madrid again. Every venue was pleasantly packed, we sold every single CD and nearly every LP that we brought for this leg of the tour and the Spanish hospitality is unmatched. The food, the drinks and the late nights in Spain are world class. So what to make of this Dolorean/Delorean confusion. Did we really lose our name, our identity to another group of musicians? The answer came to light in our last night in Spain. At our booking agent's request we played an all acoustic set in his friend's perfectly curated bookstore called La Buena Vida. It was arranged last minute, the invitation was spread via word of mouth. When we set up to play at 9:30 on a Saturday night in Madrid the bookstore was packed. It was probably the best show of the tour so far - no PA, no tickets, no green room. What's in a name? Who cares, there's so much more in a song.
From Paris where just moments ago I told a French waiter "Gracias" -
Al James, Mutt Copywriter
First tour photo set lives here. (enjoy a selection below)
1 comment:
Good to hear & see from you! I think the other group is tacky :) Nice bunch of pics. Keep doin' your thing. You make me proud. XXOOXX LJD
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