Nakatomi Plaza’s last tour is totally amazing. So many good people, so good to see them play night after night.

Somehow, I’m finding the time to get my new record mastered and finalize the artwork. And I have a couple tour diaries in the works. So much is happening! Ditch The Van tour starts in a few days, I can’t wait! Agh!

Tomorrow, the new Polar Bear Club record will be released. I sing on one of the songs, so make sure you check it out.

Hope to see you on tour!
- Aaron

Bike Tour is now officially renamed “Ditch the Van” Tour, and all necessary preparations are fully underway! This includes the exciting news that I’m putting the finishing touches on a new Attica! Attica! album. I haven’t been talking too much about it because I wasn’t sure if I could pull it off before bike tour (ahem, I mean Ditch The Van Tour), but it looks like it will, in fact, be done in time. It will be available soon for donation as a digital download. There will be no CD. Get down with that. The greatest thing about self-releasing something digitally is that I can release it in a week and I still have no idea what the album title is. Yes, the internet continues to be wonderful to me.

I also neglected to post an interview that I did for Sound Scene Revolution. Rich and Nariman are two great dudes, and they took the time to interview me before my San Francisco show in July. I would say it’s awesome, but it’s mostly just me talking a lot, so it’s weird for me to say it’s awesome. But if you think reading this is worth your time, then listening to that is probably worth your time. You can stream or download the interview here: Sound Scene Revolution. I think you can still win a ton of sweet A!A! swag from their contest, too.

Blake has crafted a Ditch the Van blog to chronicle bike tour, which you can peep here: ditchthevan.blogspot.com Additionally, I’m going to be doing a couple online tour diaries during bike tour. I’ll post the links once I start writing.

BIG NEWS. Here we go:

In the fall, I am riding my bike from Boston to Key West. Attica! Attica! will be playing benefit shows along the way for World Bicycle Relief. Yes, it will take over two months, but I am embarking on a full East Coast Tour with just my bike, my guitar, and my friends Blake and Jon (and whomever else wants to join us!). Many of the details are still getting worked out, so for now, check out the shows page for our itinerary.

I will also be playing part of Nakatomi Plaza’s final tour. No one has influenced the direction of my life more than Oscar, and I can truthfully say that I have seen Nakatomi play more than any other band (I think I have seen them about 75 times over the past ten years). For those reasons, I made sure to be a part of their last hurrah. Keep checking the shows page for updates.

I’m very excited to be playing shows back east soon. I hope to see you then!

I’m finally doing it. After a five year drought (maybe six, but I’m too lazy to figure it out right now), I’m playing shows in California again. It’s nothing epic…in fact, it’s only two shows. But I’m crossing state lines for this, and that alone deserves a standing ovation, I think. I’m hitching a ride with east coast buddies from Rejouissance and Red Tag Rummage Sale. I’m making a good habit of getting rides, which seems to be easy since most everybody is willing to spare a seat these days. I figure that I get the invitations because I talk a lot and I give people a common enemy, thus re-unifying splintered touring machines. Hey, I do what I can. And you know what? It’s happening in a week. Hope you haven’t planned out your summer too far in advance, or you might miss this must-see tour! All the details are on the shows page. See you there!

I now have a hot tub. This seems the height of decadence in the midst of a chilly economic climate, but you know what? I moved into this place because the rent was cheaper. And it has more plants in the yard. Who can turn down a new place that has huge rosemary bushes flanking the front walkway and tons of mint growing in the backyard? And did I mention the landlord left his piano here?!?!?! I’ve wanted a piano in my house for the past twelve years, so this is basically the best thing to happen to me since I was in the hot tub earlier today.

Some of you out there in Internetland have wondered what the hell I’ve been doing lately. I can answer that in two words: HOT TUB. Who can write songs or play shows or return e-mails when there’s a huge bucket filled with hundreds of gallons of hot water constantly calling my name? No one, that’s who. Sure, I’ve been making a lot of food for the yuppies of Portland. And sure I’ve been relocating and hosting a bunch of out-of-towners. And maybe I’m a little too obsessed with Rudy Fernandez and Rip City, but the Blazers need my help, and who am I to deny them my love?

But still, I have been dormant, I admit that. Are you waiting for something new? Are you tired of rhetorical questions in this post? Hmm? A few of my projects are in the bag, just waiting on the shelf. Others have stalled because there’s a lot of sucky work that has to be done to get them to press. Others still are languishing because it’s more fun to feel 106-degree water molecules pulsate against my back than to play my guitar, which does not pulsate and is not hot or tubby. I think you’re getting the point.

And yet…excitement lies on the horizon. Or perhaps it lays on the horizon. Conjugation was never my strong suit, especially in my native language. But excitement is there, and I’ll have good news for all of you soon. And by soon, I mean within the next few months.

PS I need to give absurdly mad props to my boy Jared who maintains this website. I am not web-savvy (I just learned what “pwned” means a couple weeks ago), whereas Jared teaches college kids what html is. So you can tell who the brains of the operation is. If you wanna follow Jared’s soggy hot-tubby blogginess, go here http://tumblr.jaredmoran.com/

My friend Dave runs a fantastic website called If You Make It. He and I made a Pink Couch video this summer at his apartment in Brooklyn, which you can see here. A recording of the song is slated to appear on a benefit comp that will hopefulyl be out sometime this year. I recommend spending hours on the site watching bands mix it up on Dave’s couch. Check out my buddies in Bridge & Tunnel and Rejouissance rockin’ the Pink Couch.

It’s hard for me believe, but despite all the music I’ve put out over the past twelve years, I haven’t released any of my songs on vinyl. UNTIL NOW. Yup, I’m about to send the masters and updated artwork to the pressing plant for a vinyl version of Dead Skin/Dried Blood. I don’t have a release date yet, but it will be soon. Oh yes, it will be soon. For those of you who have been holding out and listening to online streams of the record for the past 18 months, this is for you.

In local Portland news, I’m playing two shows this month, equaling my Portland output for all of last year. More importantly, I recently broke 250,000 in Ms. Pacman. My nemesis, meanwhile, is consistently over 300,000. Dammit.

I have a new nemesis in Portland. He’s a clean-cut looking guy—wears sensible jeans and heather gray t-shirts. He doesn’t know me (yet), but I know him. On a regular basis, I arrive at my favorite arcade to find him playing Ms. Pacman. He consistently posts a high score that is unbeatable under my current skill level. Now, I’m pretty damn good at Ms. Pacman. But just because I’m better than everyone I know doesn’t mean I’m anywhere close to the best in Portland. That’s why this guy is my nemesis, and it’s why he has to go down. I’m going to best his top score some day, and when I do, I’m going to make a public display of glory that will embarrass both of us.

Other than my quest for a better Ms. Pacman score (I’m still wavering just under 200,000), several projects are in the mix at the moment…a split 7″, a new EP, the De La Hoya discography and the Marathon last show video are all on my plate. This means that a lot of other people have these projects on their plates, too…which means we all have a lot of eating to do. In the meantime, I’m back in the Northwest and playing shows in the area. I’m also trying to branch out to Washington and California, so if you’ve got show for me to play, email me and we’ll work it out.

It has been an absolutely incredible summer. I stayed up until 7 AM twice this week—I think the last time I saw the sunrise twice in a week was ten years ago. The first sunrise was at the end of an epic recording session in which we finished off some new De La Hoya songs. Yep, my old band, De La Hoya, threw together some new material this summer and it might be our best stuff yet! We’re going to include the new songs with all of our other releases to make an official discography release, since most of those records are creeping their way to out-of-print status. It won’t be out for a few months, but it is exciting nonetheless.

The other sunrise I saw was on Sunday morning, when my co-worker and I walked across the Brooklyn Bridge after a long night of hanging out. Absolutely stunning. I may not be head-over-heels for NYC, but not many experiences can top that.

As always, check the shows page for updates. I’ll be working on the road for much of August/September, so shows might be kind of sparse for that time. I’ll be trying to put some random shows together along the way, but nothing definite yet.

Attica! Attica! is on tour! Chris Antal is playing with me on the Bridge & Tunnel dates and I’m excited about how the songs sound with him. Should be even better than the average A!A! show. Which is to say it will be pretty good. Check the shows page for info.

I’m presently spending the evening at the Holiday Inn in Portland. I spent four hours at the airport waiting for my flight to get cancelled sometime after midnight. Absurdly, Continental would not pay for my $20 cab fare to get back downtown, so I took them up on their $77 hotel room voucher instead. I have never spent a night in a hotel as nice as the Holiday Inn, and certainly never slept alone in a room with two full-size beds. The room was so calculated and sterile that it seemed the appropriate conclusion to a day that I spent stripping my apartment of all its personality.

Earlier, at the airport, I stood in an unmoving line with over a hundred other groggy red-eye travelers. We had been told the plane would take three hours to fix. I love these moments, when formerly silent strangers have a common problem and we suddenly form a makeshift community. We took care of each other, passing on helpful information and telling of our best stories of travel woes. I find it so invigorating when we deconstruct the bland anonymity of air travel.

For a solid twenty minutes a teenage girl wearing headphones sang country songs at an outrageously loud volume. At first it struck me as a silly attention-getting stunt and I found it somewhat irritating. But then someone near me in line said, “I love that this girl is singing so loud. That never happens in the airport.” And he was right. More than any other place I know, the airport culture is scripted with the heavy burden of travel fears. We have all been reminded that the security level is orange (yikes!), and none of us want to do anything that will set us apart from the mob. As we all know, anyone who doesn’t follow the script here is suspicious…and dangerous.

All of this reminded me to highly recommend checking out the work of two great advocates of individuality within the scripted environment. The first is Timothy “Speed” Levitch, whose ideas are on display in the awesome documentary, “The Cruise”. The other is Reverend Billy, an incredible political street performer. His many antics and those of his followers (The Church of Stop Shopping) can be found at RevBilly.com.

Oh yeah. I’m playing a bunch of shows. Tons of updates on the shows page.