the tour comes to an end...

Alas it is true... Our three week magical mystery tour through the UK has officially come to a close. On Saturday Ben and I parted ways, heading back to our respective states in the Americas. Our final show on the tour was fantastic though, sharing the stage with some great bands and the self proclaimed "most famous venue in the world", The Cavern Club (the place that birthed a little band called the Beatles) The atmosphere was joyous, the crowd was sweaty, and we ended the tour on a high note. Here are a couple photos from the final hoe down...







So... there's not really much to say from this point on. Thank you to everyone who came out to a show, bought a CD, fed us, gave us a floor to sleep on, filled us with drinks, etc. Both Ben and I are really looking forward to our return to the UK! As you know, we both have our own separate projects going in the states which you can check out by clicking the links under our photos on right side of this page. Being that we had so much fun on the tour, we have also planned another show for us (including maestro Ryan Vaughn) ...

Sept. 7th @ Rockwood Music Hall
New York, NY
Friday night, 1am
FREE!!!

This show follows the first night of Ben's band Jukebox the Ghost's residency at Piano's...

Hope to see you all soon!

Be sure to send a hello to either of us at ...

seth@thissideupsounds.com

and

benthornewill@gmail.com

Cheers!

-seth

"This is How it Feels"

To give you a taste of Tom Hingley's awesomeness, I've decided to post the video for "This is How it Feels".

Great tune...



-seth

Hingle-berry

Mein Gott!

we are almost done. how can it be? well, it can be because it is - time is relentless and so are these shows. yet each is, unrelentingly, spectacular and some suprisingly so.

Last night we showed up in Stockport, just outside of manchester, at the Blue Cat Cafe and there was no keyboard. nor any sign of our keyboard arriving. the band we had been in touch with just decided not to show. alas! Seth did a solo set, excellent and entertaining - even covering a sans-piano version of "hold it in" as i twitched in corner the of the room. seth finished (applause, applause) and then our new friend Tom Hingley (of Manchester legends the Inspiral Carpets) appeared in the back of the room like a magical elf, except not elfish in looks...so really, he just appeared magically.

we said in unison: 'why have you come here'
Tom Hingley: to let seth harmonize on one of his favorite songs with me ("This is How it Feels" by the Inspiral Carpets)
*Seth faints*
Ben: That's it? what crap!
Tom Hingley: 'Also, we will drink together (i will slip slowly on this Latte with chocolate sprinkles and you can continue to nurse on that guinness, your fourth no?) Then after, i will give you both a ride home and tell you about how i used to take noel gallagher to home here after shows and play at this famous venue, and spank the misbehaving Gallagher brothers on this street corner whilst the stone roses laughed.'
*Seth faints again*
Ben: Who are the stone roses? wasn't noel gallagher that commedian that smashes watermelons?


Mostly, that is how the night went. could have gone very poorly. ended in what seemed to be a miracle, save for any saviours born or lives bettered.

off to liverpool. final gig! ('a gig a gig!', shouted the Lady Hilaria weeks ago, hopping with each syllable). Can we have been on the road for this long? Can we have really visited this many cities? What a unique form of exaustion and ecstacy, of perserverance and optimism. And soon more of this, professional couch dwellers and rugged travellers.

yours truly,

-ben

Here's some photos...

Seth takes the stage...



Seth breaks a string (as usual), Tom Hingley rescues us, Ben plays some piano (sans sustain pedal)



Tom plays! It is marvelous! Unfortunately Seth's camera was in his pocket when they sang "This is How it Feels" ... so there was no documentation...

Fingal!

We seem to be rotating sleeping on friends couches and beer drenched floors (which of course, we are uber grateful of) and occasionally sleeping at the lovely homes of Ben's family members. So, between Bristol and Manchester we spent a day at the home of Tom & Claire (mum and dad) and spent the day with the 4 most amazing children in the world; Fingal, Hebe, Oscar, and Merlin (yes, like the wizard). We thought we were simply there to get a free meal, comfortable bed, and good 'ol taste of home, but what we did not know was that we were scheduled to perform for a dinner party of 30... with Ben on a toy piano, and I, zombie like and exhausted, strumming my guitar. Amongst these 30 folks were at least 15 energetic children under ten years old.... all smiling, all snapping, all dancing.

But it was Fingal, the 6 year old, who won the award for most awesome and youngest fan.

Meet Fingal.



-seth

MP3s! Horrah!

Finally! Some live recordings (mp3's, not videos) from one of our shows. You can now listen to magical live versions of "Strange Man," "Hold It In" and "Good Day" live from the Halfmoon in Putney.

Strange Man [mp3]

Hold It In [mp3]

Good Day [mp3]

Cynthia Quek!

We are in Bristol staying with the amazing Cynthia Quek! She is a wonderful singer-songwriter with the voice of an angel. Mothers of Ben and Seth should know, that Cynthia has taken very good care of us.

Here she is! Click the photo to go to her myspace page...



-seth

The Most Massive Meditation Yet

To begin at the beginning of what would logically follow the end of the last plot based blog post:


So, on Thursday we showed up at the Hope & Anchor for our last London gig, and our final show with the talented Mr. Vaughn. Well, they stop us at the door and tell us we shouldn't be the equiptment in, only one of us. Why, we ask kindly? Because the place has lost all power and the show might be cancelled. Also, they say, grab a drink - they are giving them away free until the freezers stop being freezy. Turns out the show was being moved down the street. The headliner Tom Hingley (the voice of The Inspiral Carpets!) was to go on first, us second.





In the meanwhile we ate dinner at a sushi place next door with the following odd and random guests at our table:

1. Seth.
2. Ryan
3. Ben
4. Three Austrian Au Peres
5. A distant relative of mine from Nantucket i hadn't seen in 8 years and her friend from Philadelphia
6. Seth's english friend Claudia
7. A girl Lindsay, who we had met the night before and kindly gave us a ride.
8 the prospect of Tom Hingley showing up
9. two of my friends from Bristol wandering the streets nearby.

The show was a wild success. Tom Hingley set was brilliant... everyone in the club was sort of astonished that the man himself from The Inspiral Carpets was there doing an acoustic set for us. Brilliant. The Austrian Au Peres even left with tshirts.



Then we headed off to Goring town...midway between Reading and Oxford. But we got to reading, intending to transfer trains to go to Goring when we find out that all trains out of Reading have been suspended due to flooding. So we go outside and i play on my melodica as Seth searched feverishly for a route to the land of Goring.

Here I am with a Melodica (not while being stranded, but still a beautiful photo)



And here's Seth lying on the damp cement as we figure out how the hell to get out of Reading...



We do manage to get a train eventualy and land ourselves at a beautiful bed and brekfast run by the kind and maternal Francis, who made us tea and drove us into town to play at the Goring Unplugged. We had been told that afternoon that the Goring festival the next day (the regatta! lord, the regatta!) was cancelled due to a high and dangerous river and because when they put the power generators in the field to power the music...they began to sink. Oh what a damp and soggy country. The earth is reminiscent of life cereal left in milk for too long...bloated and overgrown with excess liquid.

But, goring unplugged was a beautiful event. Hosted in the town hall, which would be home the next day to a shoe sale (inhabitants of goring, now go wild!). The audience was as quiet as you can imagine. Even the listeners breaths seemed to be contained, or atleast timed with the pusles of the music so that they were completely inaudible.

Coughs were taboo,
Sneezes were too.

We made a good number of friends, good friends. Small town friends. The type of friends that you could go out to dinner with and never shift in your chair for lack of conversation. In fact, the next day we went out to dinner with these wonderful new friends and fed ourselves with enough suculant food to kill a small horse. It was wonderful. We went to bed happy.

Since the Regatta was unfortunately cancelled, we decided to have a festival of our own. So, we met up with Dan & Jon Clifton (the two men responsible for introducing us to the Light Years and getting us across the sea) as well as the man behind Goring Unplugged, Chris Hawes, for an afternoon jam session by the river full of folk covers and singalongs.



The next day we high-tailed it to Bristol, it only took us 6 hours (should have taken 2). About half the stations in the country are flooded. So when we took a train to oxford, all subsequent trains in and out were canceled. We then sought out a bus, but only one bus runs to bristol a day and this bus runs at the bitter our of 9am. So we had to take a bus to london, and then from lonon meander on to bristol.

It is like trying to travel from Philadelphia to New York but having to go to Des Moines on the way because New Jersey is under water.

Good lord, have i typed this much? Tonight we play Mr Wolf's in Bristol with the ever-so-awesome Bizali. Hoorah!

-ben

Videos! Hoorah!

So I'm typing this from a bus from Oxford to London (why were we in Oxford? Why are we going back to London? We'll explain later) I have 5 more minutes of free wireless, so.... here's some videos from our London shows! We will have more words to follow later...

"Shiver" live @ the Troubadour, July 18th





"Hold it In" live @ The Acoustic Lounge, July 17th



-seth

we have been lax in our bloggin

but now is not the time to make up for it.

rushed are we, so here is what you have to look forward to:

multiple videos.
pictographs.
stories of:
flooding
thunder.
keyboard carting.
power outages.
busking with a melodica.
Ryan's last show
getting to Goring.
exploring goring.
having it be pouring in goring.

soon soon my children. the aventures abound.

-b

as seth gave instruction...

as i was about to post a blog, seth decided to hint that i could put up photographs.

he said the following

"if you teach a bird to fish,....that fish can fly."

-anon