SYB ISLAND

Thanks to the giant blue mother nipple of AT&T we have a video of our wilting 110 degree performance at noon at Austin City Limits Festival 2008. Check out our sweet drummer, we call him ’shades’. It’s not embeddable so you’ll need to head over there;

Good Internal Clock Live at Austin City Limits
http://www.attblueroom.com/music/mediaplayer.php?cid=183654

Burnout Babies Live at Austin City Limits
http://www.attblueroom.com/music/mediaplayer.php?cid=183652&tab=&artist=

Hobo Detail Shop Live at Austin City Limits
http://www.attblueroom.com/music/mediaplayer.php?cid=183653&tab=&artist=

Look for live tracks to appear on iTunes in a week or so.

A Decent Animal and an Indecent Sybris
So we met A Decent Animal, who we’re touring with for the next couple weeks. It’s an odd thing to meet a band you’ll be touring with. Will they be jerks, have halitosis or crappy songs? Thankfully not. They’re all above the board and fun chaps; it’s going to be a pleasure watching them every night. The other band on the bill, a Celebrated Working Man, was great too. It would have been perfect except for the sparse attendance, shows like this that make you wonder about the music business.
I woke up snuggling two dogs, Chewbacca and Fig, covered in their hair. On the way to Iowa I heard Angela yell “What you looking at? I’m just draining my corn!” Apparently she doesn’t enjoy being stink-eyed by a soccer mom while draining her can of corn out the window. This is how we live, eating cold cans of ravioli, adding hot sauce we stole from Taco Bell, sleeping on couches spooning strange dogs we met the night before.
That night we played at Grinnell College in the basement of a dorm. It ruled. During ‘Hot Slave’ Eric invited someone on stage to lead the crowd in a new dance. “The Emma”, closely resembled the zombie dance from the Thriller video. It was the type of night where everyone ends up dancing on stage and that’s exactly what happened.
Saturday Liz Phair opened for us. Well not exactly. She played the 1st Ave club, the one that’s in Purple Rain. We played after in the attached mini-club, the 7th Street Entry. It was great to see ‘Exile in Guyville’ in its entirety, it’s been in my top ten since it came out. We slept, well, passed out, at Max’s apartment; he has the greatest hat collection in North America, a yodeling pickle and a talking deer head. What else could you ask for?
Sunday we played Spearfish, South Dakota at an intriguing locale, Horses to Harleys. What is South Dakota known for, the state with the lowest population? Needless to say we did not have high expectations. As it turned out it was a really cool show. We had a jam session at Kevin’s house and woke up to fresh cut pineapple and beautiful hill top view. If people weren’t so nice to touring bands I wonder if I’d do this at all.

phil

Due to a family emergency we’ll be ending our tour in Portland. Our apologies to everyone, we hope to be back out soon.

Sybris losing our minds at ACL

Yes, we once again prove we are idiots. This was after 6 beers, 2 white russians, 4 tequila shots out of hollowed out jalepenos. *Note - It takes 2 people to replace Shawn.

Sybris - ACL Music Festival Coverage
Download Music Video Code at www. roxwel. com..

Critically In Love
We recorded in Norman the day after Austin City Limits with our friend Nathan at the Black Watch studios. Great place, great sounds, and we were in and out in just over two hours. We recorded a song for a Dungeons and Dragons compilation. It’s going to be huge. We’ve been playing it out quite a bit, so if you’re a gamer and you’re at one of our shows yell, “SPOT CHECK!” and maybe we’ll play it for you. Thanks to all the boys at Black Watch for screaming with us and being our orcs.
Another insane drive followed to get to Indianapolis. We officially went van crazy, I don’t think we were even speaking English anymore by the time we got to Birdy’s. Slowly, we regained our wherewithal as we poured booze down our throats in the company of T-Bone and D-Nice and rocked out to the tunes of the Turnbull ACs and The Coke Dares. If you were at that show, all ten of you, thanks for coming out. Y’all missed out, Indy. We had a rockin’ pizza party with my mom the next day that rejuvenated us. Thanks mom.
Off to Champaign/Urbana! The aptly named Void Room at the Canopy Club welcomed us once again. Thanks to Casados for agreeing to play at the last minute, y’all sound amazing for real. Then there was Carney from L.A. who are on the rock the vote tour, so vote! They ruled. Thanks to anyone who came out and rocked with us, we had fun. Then we disappeared into the night, THE VOID!
We got to kick it in Chicago today. We are recharged and riding to Milwaukee now, even as I type. We are excited to meet A Decent Animal, the band we are to travel with for the next two weeks. What will they be like? Do they like pizza? Do they party? Do they like pizza parties? What if they’re lactose intolerant? Then there won’t be any pizza parties, will there? Shit. Let’s hope for the best
OK. Let’s talk soon.

Angela

I need sleep or I need crank. And I’m not the only one, I’m pretty sure that’s how we all felt when we pulled into Austin City Limit Sunday morning after 2 hours of sleep. As we got ready to play the black painted stage and the temperature rose toward 100 I was wondering who would pass out first.
We had left Chicago late Wednesday night sleeping in East St. Louis, perhaps not the wisest decision but uneventful. Bleary eyed, we arrived in Tulsa Thursday to be greeted by Jonathan from Unwed Sailor’s beautiful bottle of whiskey as well as the Colour Revolt boys. We meet the Neva Dinova chaps for the first time, a swell bunch. Niko made us delicious chorizo taco’s… hmmm…. so good. Not much else occurred until Conor Oberst arrived during Colour Revolt’s set with 4 ladies on his arms (he had only two arms however). I was generally an asshole and a pile, my frustrations culminating in throwing a paper napkin at Shawn, the ultimate pathetic gesture. Shawn strangled Eric. We tried to crash only to stay at a house that was warring with their neighbors. The cops came. Pretty standard stuff.
It was really Friday in Denton at Hailey’s where we began a spiral that would land us squarely sleepless on Sunday morning. Perhaps it was the mind erasers. It may have been the jager bombs. What ever it was I do remember strangling Eric, actually it was a headlock with a pizza slice in the face finish, pepperoni I think.
We woke early-ish to start the 9 hour drive to McAllen. If you are unfamiliar with McAllen it’s at the very bottom of Texas and to drive there you need to go through a lot of what can be best described as nothingness. At one point in a traffic jam outside of Dallas Eric donned a Mexican wrestling mask, howling and greeting our fellow I35 parking lot attendees. He was not strangled. Somewhere in the middle of nowhere we were bee-kakied, that is to say the van hit a swarm of bees that must have been fighting butterflies. They smashed against the window like a hail storm, hundreds of them. Bug guts splattered everywhere, butterfly wings in Shawn’s hair, a bee abdomen on Eric’s forehead, general yellowness and tiny black legs spewed on Angela and I. It was plague-esque, we had to stop at the next gas station to clean the windows just to see. We arrived at the Incubator just in time and thanks to some generous Sparks consumption we were ready to play a half hour later. McAllen’s awesome crowd made it all worthwhile. Alas, after just 2 hours in McAllen we were turned around on our way back to Austin.
We drove through the night, arriving at 5am, sleeping till 7am and then heading to the fest. As you can tell, we obviously needed sleep or crank. We received neither. Imagine our dismay when we couldn’t find beer at 10am. F’n blue laws. We did acquire some Lone Star, which is a bit like crank and sleep in a can. I was pleasantly surprised at the number of people who made it that early to ACL and were actually excited, especially in that heat. Adrenaline carried the first 4 songs; Lone Star took care of the rest.
See You On Tour,
Phil

Everyone’s favorite valley girl did an interview down in McAllen, where love still lives. Check it out…

BAND Q&A: Sybris
Comments 0 | Recommend 0
September 25, 2008 - 2:09PM
Amy Nichol Smith

Sybris, the indie rock band from Chicago, spent some time in McAllen earlier this year when they played at The Incubator. Tomorrow the female-fronted band will return to town with Colour Revolt, and then immediately following their set, jet up to Austin to play at Austin City Limits. Festiva had a chance to talk to bassist Shawn Podgurski about touring, recording their latest album Into the Trees and what “selling out” really means.

* LISTEN TO THE FULL INTERVIEW HERE.

Did you guys enjoy playing here?

We loved it. It was one of those we didn’t know what to expect type things and then thought it was really cool.

Why did you guys decide to come back?

Uh, our booking agent booked us a show there. But we really liked it! Regardless of that, we wanted to come back.

Are you guys excited about ACL?

Yeah, we are.

Have you played it before?

We never played that. We played Lollapalooza, which is put on by the same people. All these festivals are becoming like the same kinda, you know, it’s like the same bands that play. So they’re really fun to play. Not saying that to be like, “Oh, they’re all the same,” like, most of the festivals are fun.

Would you ever lend, or sell a song, for a commercial?

Yeah, those days are kinda over, because like, you can’t afford not to. You know, I’m a bit older, and I’ve seen the entire like, “Oh, you can’t be a sellout,” to like, “Oh, you gotta be a sellout,” because nobody buys CDs anymore.

Would you guys ever have a clothing line at Wal-Mart?

Have you seen us? (laughs) I don’t think even Wal-Mart … maybe The Salvation Army would let us have a clothing line.

How was it recording your new album Into the Trees?

It was fun, it was great. We wrote a bunch of songs and picked what we thought were the best ones. Then we went to my friend’s who has a studio in Ohio and we spent like a weekend there, recorded it … we recorded a rough draft of it and then we sat and picked that rough draft apart. Then a month later we went to the big studio in Minneapolis and recorded it

I heard that studio, specifically, was haunted. Did you have any experiences with that?

We didn’t, but like, it was around a week before Halloween. It was definitely like, creepy and like, wasn’t really that creepy, but like, you kept expecting stuff.

* WHO: Sybris w/ Colour Revolt, Big League and Hero Made Hollow
* WHERE: The Incubator, McAllen
* WHEN: Tomorrow, 7 p.m.
* COST: $8

Hey sorry to be a nuisance, but we just found out that you’ll be able to see Sybris live from the ACL Music Festival even if your not there.

Check out the whole set on the ACL Music Festival webcast at 11:45AM (Central Time) on Sunday, September 28th.

Watch it Here: http://www.aclfestival.com/webcast

xo,

syb

It’s Austin City Limits time and we’re hitting the road. We’ll be playing with Colour Revolt and Neva Dinova on some of the shows so check the Tours page.
Sept 25 OK, Tulsa The Marquee
Sept 26 TX, Denton Hailey’s
Sept 27 TX, McAllen Incubator
Sept 28 TX, Austin Austin City Limits Festival
Sept 30 IN, Indianapolis Birdy’s

At ACL we’ll be playing the AT&T Blue Stage at 11:45, there’s a rumor going around about free pancakes. Hmmm, pancakes. If your not at ACL you can still catch it on the live webcast, at www.aclfestival.com/webcast

Then we’ll be hitting the west coast with A Decent Animal;

10/01/2008 Urbana, IL at Canopy Club
10/02/2008 Milwaukee, WI at Stonefly Brewery
10/04/2008 Minneapolis, MN at 7th Street Entry
10/07/2008 Seattle, WA at Sunset Tavern
10/08/2008 Portland, OR at White Eagle Cafe & Saloon
10/09/2008 W. Oakland, CA at Lobot Gallery
10/10/2008 Bakersfield, CA at Jerry’s Pizza
10/11/2008 Los Angeles, CA at Spaceland
10/12/2008 Phoenix, AZ at Rhythm Room
10/13/2008 Albuquerque, NM at Moonlight Lounge
10/14/2008 Denver, CO at Larimer Lounge w/ Crystal Antlers
10/15/2008 Lawrence, KS at Replay Lounge

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