JDub Records

Soulico - S.O.S (Feat. Ceci Bastida & Pigeon John)

Friends, we’re bummed to say that our dear friend Lyrics Born will be unable to appear at Spaceland tonight alongside Soulico and Ceci Bastida.  Hopefully that doesn’t stop you from coming out though!  1,000 apologies!

Soulico & Ceci Bastida @ Spaceland (CLUB NME)

8PM / 21+ / 1717 Silver Lake Blvd / $8

DeLeon is back in NYC after 20 cities and 8000 miles with the magnificent Brazilian band Os Mutantes.  As is our custom, we like to share a short video at the end of each tour to give you a peak at what life on the road is like.  This time around, in honor of the pared down set we were performing, we shot ourselves playing a simpler version of our song “Almond Trees” in various locales around the country.  Plus, our new friends in Os Mutantes joined in too!

Today DeLeon left to begin their big fall tour with Os Mutantes.  We’ll be giving you lots of updates from their adventure, and they’ll be blogging too!  Do you have twitter?  Follow them for real-time news @ilovedeleon!  Until then, here are all the dates.  Catch DeLeon in your town!

I’ve been back almost two full days since DeLeon’s two week tour with Gypsy Punk legends Gogol Bordello, and my recovery is nearly complete.  What a week it was.  Drive, rock, dance, find a cheap motel and repeat.  The trip consisted of several epic drives (over 5000 miles in all!), my favorite of which was from Tulsa to Tampa.  Because that, my friends is BBQ country.

We did a lot of good eating.  Gooey Butter Cake in St. Louis, Lemon Icebox Pie in Memphis, Boiled Peanuts at a gas station (ok, those sucked) Loose Meat in Iowa (also sucked) Peach Cobbler on a peach farm in Peach County Georgia (ruled)  There were car games, a video collage of which will be posted soon.  There was trouble with the law in Tulsa…shhh.  But most of all there was celebration.  Every show of this tour felt like a party, and that’s the way it should be.  In the words of Grand Funk Railroad, “We come into your town, we help you party it down” we’re a Sephardic Rock Band!

Gogol sets the celebratory tone each night with their raucous live sets, and their fans won’t settle for anything less than full throttle.  So we gave the crowd what they came for and we all danced together, night after night.   We met beautiful people from Omaha to Orlando and the members of Gogol Bordello showed us what Gypsy life is all about.  I was planning on taking a ton of photos but between the sweat and the drink, it’s better that they were left unshot.  So you’ll have to take my word for it and enjoy the handful of photos we managed to take, as well as the fan shots that have been uploaded to our MySpace and Facebook pages.

My girlfriend hails from Lancaster. PA.  Being a southern transplant to NYC, I was never aware that people from the north take trips to Amish country to view them in their native habitat.  It has always struck me as odd that people would venture out of their way to gawk at an ultra-religious group practicing their religion, and I have always wondered if the Amish appreciate all this attention.  So imagine my surprise when I discovered that yesterday an Amish tour group from Lancaster ventured to Crown Heights Brooklyn to view Hasidic Jews in their natural habitat Anna Karenina full !

Jesse and Chris, Northampton, MA (photo by Joey Lawton)

Two weeks ago, The Wailing Wall hit the road for an all-too-brief eight days of shows alongside our good friends Tiger Saw and Paper Birds. For most of these shows, we were a two-piece band with myself on electric guitar and Chris Roush on drums (though thanks are due to keyboardist Ben Bernstein, pianist Trevor Wilson, and violist Holly Fulton, who all sat in when they were able to). In hindsight, going north during February may not have been the brightest idea, but other than one really bad snowstorm in Burlington, VT, this tour was nothing but good times. Here is a more or less accurate representation:

Read More »