frigid medicine

SXSW again

2007-03-15T08:05:00.001-07:00

why do we never post here? well, thats all going to change, right now.

i'm sitting on our hotel in sunny austin nursing a motherfuck of a cold. this is year two in a row where i was felled with some affliction upon arriving here. why does this occur? last year it was an impacted tooth. this year, the cold i should have had in january. no doubt i would trade the tooth for the cold, but come on, there are tacos to be eaten that i now can't taste, and gigs to be played that i might be croaking through. plus, how can i drink?

oh, i whine. the tour has been going well, though. 4 shows before this that were all realy good, felt good, and the drives, though long, are somehow just fine. i love the rolling plains of texas, and the flowers everywhere. i finished reading Murakami and debating what i will read next. Fitzgerald, maybe. we watched Jesus Camp on the iBook in the van, and the Dixie Chicks movie, both very good. we've been listening to everytthhing under the sun, from King Crimson to Arcade Fire.

i gotta get up and get ready for a radio thing. WOXY. live at noon on the internets. this is our longest day here, with 3 appearances. we arrived last night and did a live on KOOP thing that was really fun though very haphazard, and had some of the best tacos i've ever eaten at a place whose names escapes me.

showertime. -- philip

in the maybe world.

2006-10-12T10:00:00.000-07:00

hi all.
there is plenty of news in winterpills land.

first off, we finished recording our second album!
we are very excited for you to hear what we made.
it is being mastered as we speak in phoenix, az.

we are having a difficult time coming up with a title, but
rest assured that we will find it soon. so far, the
album artwork looks beautiful.
it will be released in late feb, 2007.

we made some strange little vlogs while we were in the studio.
you can view them here:
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=winterpills&search=Search

they start getting really good after day 3.

i want to tell you all about our mini-tour with the
incomparable lisa germano. i've been such a fan of
lisa's for many years now, so it was a thrill to
be able to watch her play for 4 nights in a row.
it was mesmerizing actually. the whole band felt that way.

lisa writes some of the most emotionally raw songs i've
heard. they are also self-deprecating, seethingly sarcastic,
stark, fragile, and lonely. she played with craig ross who
added eerie electronic autoharp, lap pedal steel, and electric guitar
colors each night. it's hard to describe how much her music moves and
affects me. i'm still in a bit of a daze from it all.

please please go see her if she comes to your town.
here are the rest of her tour dates:

Fri 10/13/06 Beachland Tavern Cleveland OH
Sat 10/14/06 Publico Gallery Cincinnati OH
Sun 10/15/06 Little Brothers Columbus OH (8pm early show)
Tue 10/17/06 Buskirk-Chumley Theater Bloomington IN
Thu 10/19/06 Cactus Bar Milwaukee WI
Fri 10/20/06 Turf Club St. Paul MN
Sat 10/21/06 Beat Kitchen Chicago IL
Mon 10/23/06 Stormy Records Space Detroit MI
Tue 10/24/06 Quiet Storm Coffee House Pittsburgh PA
Wed 10/25/06 Gravity Lounge Charlottesville VA
Thu 10/26/06 Iota Cafe Arlington VA
Fri 10/27/06 Barbes Brooklyn NY

her new record is called "in the maybe world".
i want to make a podcast mix of all my favorite lisa g. songs
for you. maybe i will investigate how this is done...

hope you are enjoying the colors and the pumpkins,
~flora

festivities

2006-07-11T11:33:00.000-07:00

Oh, how neglectful we've been of the blog! Bad Winterpills.
But, at least I can tell you that we've been busy- we're gearing up to record number two next month, and we're also excited to play some summer festivals and watch the enthusiastic dancers and lovely kids who always make up a large percentage of these crowds. I can't wait.

I saw an amazing band called Devotchka play at the Iron Horse a few weeks ago. It was one of the best shows I've been to- beautiful instrumentation (bouzouki, tuba, violin, upright bass, drums) and sweeping vocals. Sweeping is such a cliche in many band press kits, but Devotchka really has one of the most sweeping lead singers I've heard... Have a listen for yourself or just take a chance and go see them live. They sound like the most romantic brooding soundtrack to a 1940's film about french gypsies, mixed with a kind of Calexico-ish indie rock sensibility.

Devotchka

I've also been listeng to The National non-stop.
Some lyrics of theirs:

Break my arms around the one I love
And be forgiven by the time my lover comes
Break my arms around my love

I don't have any questions
I don't think it's gonna rain
You were right about the end
It didn't make a difference

I'm here to take you now

Out among the missing sons and daughters of the SoHo riots
Out among the missing sons and daughters of the SoHo riots

What else should I be listening to?
Enjoy the sun and the berries,
~flora

re-entry

2006-04-27T08:22:00.000-07:00

hello. slowly re-entering into not on tour life. i'm finally feeling the ability to focus somewhat, so i thought i'd say hello. our little tour was a good one. shared bills with some wonderful people like rosie thomas, the fervor, smallwire and quiet, kentucky. thanks to everyone who came out and said hello, bought our music and t-shirts, and made us feel welcome in these new to us cities. louisville, where have you been all our lives? thank you WFPK for playing our record and a very special thanks to everyone who came out to Uncle Pleasant's...you made it a truly memorable and fantastic night. we felt like such rock stars.

other highlights: meeting rosie thomas and her wonderful band. they had all their instruments and gear stolen in philadelphia the night before our show. despite this, rosie was able to laugh about it and give so much to her audience and was just as generous to us... also, stumbling upon that wonderful cafe in w. va (cathedral cafe, was it?), the beautiful drive from w. va to knoxville, the monkey cup at bob evans, getting giddy and rowdy at the steak and shake, and lastly, the winterpills christmas miracle at the red roof inn in elkhart, indiana. you can ask me about that one anytime..

it has been bright and warmish here in western MA all week.
i hope to play some baseball this sunday and plant some mint and
thai basil in the backyard. i'll also post some tour pictures
here or on our site very soon.

love.
~flora

soon

2006-04-12T10:10:00.000-07:00

we leave early this saturday for a tour that will bring us to pittsburgh, knoxville, louisville, nashville, goshen IN, and chicago. we are renting a very big van. it's pretty exciting to think about the space upgrade...

this will be our 3rd show in pittsburgh, a city of many bridges and friendly people who insist on buying you yuenglings after your show. it's also home to WYEP, which is a great community radio station. their new building was built on "green" design principles so their air conditioning doesn't use freon and their carpets are made from recyled materials. things like that. i'm looking forward to hearing rosie thomas play in pittsburgh. she has a beautiful song called "2 Dollar Shoes" there's an MP3 of it waiting for you here: http://www.rosiethomas.com/albums_when.php

i just discovered a great internet radio station to listen to at work: www.woxy.com. they have a very eclectic mix, without being too indie-er than thou.

this week i will load up the ipod with new songs to explore, make sure i have enough of my favorite hair product to last the tour, pick up our new band t-shirts, and check in with some old college friends who live in chicago. hope to see some of you at a show...

xo, flora

i am home...

2006-03-21T09:17:00.000-08:00

i'm happy to be back. i was only gone for 9 days, but it feels twice that. there's nothing quite like being on tour- it's both very freeing and ultimately repetitive, but i love the feeling of anonymity in different cities, the wandering and exploring before it's time to sound check. then it's usually dinner time... then we play our hearts out. afterwards, we talk to people we'll never see again, or realize what a small world this is as people introduce themselves as a friend of a friend of a friend.

the shows went well. my favorite one was starr hill with rainier maria. what a great live band.. and it's inspiring to see one that has been together for almost ten years, going strong and doing it
with palpable intensity and joy. and pela was awesome as well. i don't think i've ever met a nicer rock band.

this was my second sxsw so i knew what to expect, but it was still overwhelming. it's hard to let yourself relax and take it all in because there's SO much going on and there's the constant nagging feeling that you're missing out on the best show ever.... philip, dennis, and i did manage to get into the secret flaming lips show for a few songs.. other highlights were great north, jose gonzales, lisa germano, mates of state, nada surf, death vessel, and matthew sweet & susannah hoffs who have a new 60's covers album coming out soon. i can tell you that susannah somehow looks even hotter than she did in the 80's. oh my.

our own main showcase had just the right mix of intensity and uncertainty that i like... the sound was a bit murky and distant on-stage, but i think we did well, despite it. even though sxsw is immensely crazy and chaotic, it's still grounding once you realize that everyone is there for a simple love of music. it doesn't matter if you're neil young, or belle and sebastian or a band from Kansas that only a handful of people have ever heard of-- no matter what level you're at it's an honor to
be able to play songs for people. it's a pretty basic thing.

ate some amazing food in austin at a place called Habana. had a truly beautiful tamale with one of the freshest and most intense corn tastes i've ever experienced... i started the dinner with a havanatini, comprised of both silver and gold rum, a fresh mango puree that was shaken over ice and served straight up in a martini glass... perfect. and ironworks barbeque is famous for good reason. separate winterpills food blog coming soon, perhaps.

on our last night, we went to a party hosted by Sauza Tequila so the margaritas were free and flowing on a high-rise rooftop in downtown Austin. Gang of Four played, but by that point our feet were in such pain from all the standing and walking that we left a bit early... Elijah Wood was there. he's tiny and cute and seems to be a true music fan.

jose and philip and still driving back from TX, like the real road dogs that they are.
i miss them... more soon.
love.
~flora

sxsw experienced, showcases played, tooth impacted.

2006-03-17T09:22:00.000-08:00

the whole thing has been lovely, save for the fact that the tooth i ignored for too long decided to go south on me while on tour. ah the timing. have you ever had a toothache? its a pain that completely consumes you. everything else going on around you becomes a shadowy, blurry affair; a world full of dim shadows while you struggle to keep your eyes from watering, your mind on whatever conversation, your eyes on the sidewalk and your feet one in front of the other. it required a call to my dentiist back in massachusetts who, through modern miracles and within 15 minutes, had me with a prescription of antibiotics that should knock this all out within 24 hours. and while i was picking up the pills, there was josh ritter, also picking up some pills at the same pharmacy. small wee world.

sxsw, this being my first, is mayhem of a high order. no way can you do all the things that yiou want to do, see all the bands you want to see. kinda set my sights on about 3 events a day to try for, and then go with the flow. 6th st last night at 2 a.m. was a parade of drunken hipsters on a carless st, every club blasting out strange and familiar musics. after the painkillers kicked in, tacos and whisky were required, whisky only found, tacos to be had later.

its cloudy and a little cool, but lush here. i like it. i would love to ride out to the country some and walk through a cow field. where are the bluebonnets?

blogging is hard.

2006-03-15T07:55:00.000-08:00

i write from texarkana. today we will be in austin for sxsw. the drive has been strangely relaxing and sometimes a lot more beautiful than i expected. i havent been down in this neck of the woods for years.

quickly, the gigs, in stupid brevity:

1. the saint, in NJ. i kinda liked this place more than i thought i would. the crowd was quite appreciative. it took a bit for me to get used to cigarette smoke again though.

2. starr hill w/ pela and rainer maria in charlottesville, VA. great club, great show all around. loved the other bands.

3. jammin java in vienna, va. another really nice show. very loose onstage.

duh, how boring, here is an entry i meant to post the other day:

so we drive past middle lo income houses, and the general; generic strangeness of america. i try to find the home between the lines, and i know its there, but not necessarily for everyone. i'm not sure if its there for me or not. this whole country scares me and comforts me at the same time: what comforts and frightens are not the same. the human element, except for what is close at hand, is not generally comforting at first thought but often ends of being so. nature, which at first seems like a source of eternal solace, can be indifferent and enormous and daunting. i watch the sky above the hours of sameness below and see change after change, and the vapor trails of the jets remind of the human industries that have claimed the skies as well, but they can be ignored. and in fact are largely ignored by the skies themselves. is the universe really indifferent? how do we know? it seems like it wont talk. maybe is a word i use more and more. maybe is the word of the day, the hour, the year and the time.

we have music to succor us. we have our friendships, which change all the time but good will keeps us constant in spite of the strangeness between all beings. it seems willingness, as usual, is the biggest part of success in all things. openness, willingness, and showing up, even if you feel like hell and are scared. be scared, but do it anyway. its kind of the essence of performance -- other people feed off your willingness to put fears aside and be open. art happens in a space of willingness. what art can happen when there is no willingness? it can happen but it ends up being an art of brute force.

what happens when you are willing but tired, or resigned or filled with sadness?

so we listen to cheerful musics, and outside the delaware landscape floats by, the van is loaded painfully full, flora dozes in the back.

who built that bridge? who are the captains of industry? why are they captains? who many places of refuge are there in the world? can every place be a place of refuge if you look at it right? yesterday i thought of the influence that places have on us -- much more profound than we think. every place we have been or visited or had any special connection to we become a part of. i believe the earth has a memory of our footsteps. every one, every uncertain shuffle, every determined army. memorized and linked to the blood spilled, the flesh that became the soil. i only know this, i am not certain of it.

i like our friends.

2006-02-28T12:09:00.000-08:00

thanks to scott and judy for these
amazing drawings.
oh, the hours of hilarity!
why are the winterpills at the zoo?

of depressing ballade in soft-bitter old story.

2006-02-27T07:52:00.000-08:00

i translated these european reviews of our album using the google language tools. maybe they aren't the best ones to use, but the results are pretty funny.

this is from a french magazine called "Liability". I present it wholly unedited.

Elliott Smith died. Live Winterpills! This comment will seem perhaps daring (even moved) for many the fans which still cries the tragic disappearance of the one of the type-setters most endowed with his time. But only one listening of splendid "A Benediction", the title opening this album éponyme, will enable them to better determine my matter and to understand that it does not hide any easy sensationnalism. Because as well vocally as musicalement, it is well the phantom of Elliott Smith which planes on the first effort of this American group; a completely assumed influence since the quartet rather precisely describes its music like "four weeks of rain, two days of sun, and the voice of somebody whom you think of having lost for always". As regards influences, they is also the discographies of Nick Drake, Low or Simon & Garfunkel which this formation of Massachusetts will admit having explored until in its least recesses to assimilate it and withdraw these soft melodies from them, fragile and of an astounding beauty. Of light arpeggio in delicate chorus, of depressing ballade in soft-bitter old story, Winterpills opens to us the doors of an impregnated cottony universe of a severe amount of melancholy and that to perfection a artwork so(m) bre reflects and oneiric. If this disc had been only one pale copy of works magic and upsetting of Elliott Smith, one would have probably shouted with the scandal and intellectual plundering. But here, while signing album quite simply splendid, Winterpills risks extremely to impress very which will want well to give them chance (and God knows if it are too numerous at the present time...) and especially succeeds in evoking with much emotion the memory of an artist as regretted as Petri of talent. Cheer.

and this is from an italian webzine called indiepop.it:

Before Winterpills porge in this heart of screziata autumn like, misconosciuta, lucente it operates folkpop. Sin from first notes hard work not to characterize in the composers Elliott Smith and Paul Simon two verosimili beacons and ispiratori, between those people insomma that for first han covered these impervi viottoli of mountain where, between abandonment and strazio of the body and the spirit, they have traced extreme opposite, inusita fires to you, extolling the life in electrons of voices and music. Sounds like scricchiolanti paths of brughiera, impervi and icy crush to you from beautifulst and colorful the temperatures and ignited it. Places which soon it is assimilated to us and abandoned, us get confused atom for atom ("to benediction ", "cranky"). It interlaces vocal between Philip and Flora like fragile sails, are penetrating perceptive expressions that filter vivido a romantico desire (the cited one "cranky", "threshing machine", "found weekend", "looking down", "portrait"); blessed senses in the presence of intorpiditi auricular pavilions. If therefore the air is to times more than pungente, it is mitigated contaminating with libecci of images of sfolgorante POP, at all acoustic ("laughing ", the mccartneyana "letter to to friend in jail"); ropes that rischiarano the atmosphere, fill up Hush, dispel inclementi hazes. For how much the shape of "Winterpills" joins irreducibly traditional, the indeed elevated compositivo level originates one of pages folk POP in beautiful evidence in 2005, auspicando a future possibly still on these steps, on these paths.

in-between shows.

2006-02-20T07:48:00.000-08:00

we are just waiting in the green room. in a metaphysical sense.

philip here. well this blog is now up and running. everyone in the band can post to it, lets see who is the most diligent. so far, obviously, its me, motherfuckers.

right now there are lots of shows on the horizon, but nothing at the moment. well we got one this thursday feb 23 in NYC at Sin-e but its a one-off. so we wait. a little. and we clean up the lawn and take care of dusting at home (the objects just GLOW back at you!), and try to have some home-cooked meals and catch our breaths a bit. lately, in my home, there's been a fair amount of 'curb your enthusiasm' watching. and chicken dinners. also, i re-read some d.h. lawrence, which held up ok as the last time i read it was in high school. and as usual i waste copious amounts of time on the internet, which i have decided is the most depressing place on earth to 'hang out'. but.. misery likes company. and, apparently, you can CONTROL things on the interent, unlike life itself.

the shot on the left is from the green room at mountain stage in charleston, west virginia, where on feb 5 we played with martha wainwright, chocolate genius, kevin gordon, and a bunch of other great folks. it will air on stations... NPR stations.... not sure when, dunno. it was a blast. kudos to henning, especially for driving us through the blue ridge (poconos? blue hills?) mountains in the middle of the night in a snowstorm without batting an eye or even seemingly getting a crick in his shoulders. i was kind of nervously dozing in the back of the van, startling awake repeatedly when i imagined that we were careening off the road and down one of the many millions of deep ravines that we couldn't even see but i knew they were there. the warm chatter of dave and henning talking, and then henning singing along to most of the beatles catalog on my ipod, made me feel sometimes like i was a little kid at home in my bed with my parents talking in the other room while abbey road played, or something like that. not that i think of dave and henning as my parents.... well, maybe a little.....which one is mom?

in the picture, dave is playing guitar. flora and i were practicing donovans' 'sunshine superman', which was the big finale song at the end, when everyone comes onstage and sings along to a big jam. the version we all ended up doing was a bit 'bluesier' than i might have done it meself, but all the musicians there were such cool hotshots that i could hardly be critical. plus, they had spiked clubs and steel-tipped toe boots. dennis layered in the psychedelic guitar washes as he is wont to do. and really, i guess it is kind of a bluesy progression anyway.

i guess i could write forever about all these exploits of the road, as thats what this blog is for, right? its a road diary. maybe some rants, maybe some politics, mostly not, though, mostly just music and all the film ideas we keep coming up with.

hey lets make a film about a band starting a tour diary on the internet!

mid-january.

2006-01-20T09:51:00.000-08:00

and it still hurts.

last night a solo show. playing one's hometown has become a strange thing, in a way.