Wanted to drop a line and let everyone know that we’ll be performing one last time at the Middle East Downstairs on Saturday, April 18th, 2009.  Please pick up your tickets for the show at http://www.ticketmaster.com/Harris-the-Men-tickets/artist/1300082 .  Scamper will be playing as well, for the first time in over a year.  The Men and Jericho trumpet round out the bill.  We’re going out in style.  We’ll have an extra long set, and a good time will be had by all.

Thanks for all of your support.  We look forward to rocking out for you one last time.

Mike

We spent four days last week at Strangeways Studio in Providence with Mike Poorman.  I knew Mike as a touring musician years ago, and stumbled across some of the projects he’d recorded recently (the Appreciation Post etc…) and really dug them.  I thought that his talents would lend themselves perfectly to some of the songs that we have planned to do for the next album.  I was right, as usual.  Mike is an extremely skilled sound technician, he invests himself completely into the recording process, offers advice, is meticulous about tuning and timing, and is lightning fast with Pro-Tools.  If you’re looking to record an album, this is your guy.  He’s also a hell of a guy to hang out with.  I dare you to leave Strangeways and not feel like you’ve made a new friend in addition to having a kickass new recording.  It just won’t happen.

The four songs are called Lucinda, Comes to Blows, Pole Position, and Drop D (yes- this title will change).  I can’t wait to share them with you.  We’re going to go to Verdant studios in Vermont to track four of our dirtier, more lo-fi stuff, and then we’ll be back to Mike later on in the Fall to wrap up production on our new full length.

This Saturday, we say goodbye to our buddies In The Face- the ONLY ska band that we’ve ever been close to.  These guys are phenomenal, so if you’ve got plans on Saturday, drop them, and come out to the Worthen in Lowell.  Come early- this place will be packed to the gills.

Hope all is well with everyone,

Mike

I know I have a lot of catching up to do here.  You’re going to get things out of order, sort of Pulp Fiction style.  I hope you’re OK with that.

We said goodbye to our friends from Spudgun last night.  It was much harder this time, as we have no plans to see each other again in the near future.  Finding friends like this is a very lucky thing.  The stars must have aligned perfectly for this to work out.  Chou and DV’s Records have given us the gift of friendship with a lot of wonderful people- perhaps one of the nicest things that anyone has ever done for us as a band.

Fredo and Mu-Mu organized a BBQ of epic proportions last night.  We’re talking prawns and duck-breast here people.  A grille on the Garonne River, beautiful fireworks, a nearly ancient but extremely gorgeous city as a backdrop, and laughter erupting from every direction as jokes and stories are told.  Sarcasm- as deep and deliciously evil as us Bostonians can be with their use of this form of humor, the people of Bordeaux give us a run for our money.   Our new friends from the bands Moonstruck and W-Mute were nice enough to join us, along with all of Spudgun and our homies Fabien and Stef.

We are leaving France with too many memories to count, and enough new friends make a person feel whole for an entire lifetime.   Eddie, Manu, Vincent, Steph, Leo, Cyril, Lauren, Freddie, Audrey, Audrey (yes two of them) - such wonderful people- we are so fortunate to have spent time with you.  We wish you all the best, and thank you deeply for your hospitality.

Eric booked a fantastic tour for us, and recounting it here on our blog will be a pleasure to do.  I can’t thank him enough for the work that he did.  I know how hard it can be to book a tour for another band.  It can seem nearly impossible at times.  For pushing through and making it happen, thank you a million times. 

When I left off last I was telling you about our first few days in France, so we’ll go back in time a bit to Fredo (of Spudgun) and Muriel’s home. These are two of the nicest people on Earth, so it is no surprise that we enjoyed ourselves thoroughly. They cooked a great meal for us and we were able to return the favor the next night. Our second show, it turned out, had been canceled. This was a bit sad, but these things happen. Enter Eddie, our driver…

Eddie showed up and found out that the show in Nantes had been canceled, and spoke quite a bit of French to our buddy Fredo. I guess the gist of it was that Eddie “doesn’t like to have a night off.” This spirit was very evident with Eddie right away. He got on the phone to all of his contacts and tried to get a show going for us on Monday night. After literally hours of phone calls to old contacts and cold calls to clubs, Eddie was forced to give up. Nobody would pick up their phone after 2am anyway. He resumed his efforts in the morning. It is rare to have someone do that much work for your band, let alone someone who had never met you before. No show was secured, however we became fast friends with Eddie.

The next night, our show in Rennes looked like it was going to suffer the same fate. The opening band had to cancel because of a family emergency and we were left without a PA. Eddie pulled up to the club and began shaking hands with people. This guy seemed to know everybody in France. Within an hour he had rented us a PA system and we experienced our first show away from Bordeaux. It started off a bit shaky. Whenever someone tells us that we can’t play too loud it usually means that we’re going to sound like shit. Somehow, with the help of Eddie, we were able to make it work. The room filled up with people throughout our 2 hour set (which included mostly originals and a couple of Police tunes that we had saved from past performances). Jim crushed Silent Treatment and Roxanne despite his cold (he spent the first week or so under the weather). King Eddie took care of all food/money/beer affairs while we met some cool people in Rennes. We stayed at our friends from Pleyad’s cool pad, which had robot shades.

After that we were off to Paris. We tried to relate to Eddie in English, and he learned very quickly. In almost no time at all he was telling the same juvenile jokes that we always rely on in the back of the van to keep spirits up. Gross sex stuff and farting are universally funny I guess.

We loaded into the Rocher (The Rock) in Malakoff, just outside of Paris, and met the owners who were very nice but spoke no English. Eddie translated for us and organized the load in and the order of the bands. First Part arrived, and brought some great food which the singer’s sister Lauren had made. Cyril, the singer of First Part had organized the show and we stayed with him for two days. He was a very cool guy, and his band ruled. The turnout was pretty good for the show and people seemed to dig the Harris set. We were still getting used to the equipment but we worked out a lot of kinks that night and over all the set felt like it was starting to come together.

Matt and I arrived in Paris and did the tourist thing for a day while we waited for the other dudes to arrive so that we could meet up with them in Bordeaux. We went to the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower and saw President Bush arrive in the city. yay. We bought some sandwiches and pastries and enjoyed them despite the fact that our terrible French earned us some scowls from the shop keepers. We didn’t know how to get to our hotel, so we asked a guy how to get there on the bus and he asked us for 10 euros. Jerk.

We took the TGV to Bordeaux and it was great. The seats were extremely comfortable and it got us to Bordeaux very quickly. I had bought a soda in a supermarket that tasted wonderful, but I think it was intended for women. I could only decipher part of the words on the back of the bottle, but none of them applied to dudes, and I was getting a lot of strange looks from people.

We met Eric at the train station. Our first Spudgun sighting! He took us to his wonderful home and we waited for Jon, Rob and Jim to arrive with Fredo. Seeing the guys from Spudgun in their own country is really something special. A year ago, we were had never met them, and knew them only through each other’s music and on the internet. Last August they became some of our best friends in the world. Every day we broke down language barriers, talked about culture and music, and got to know each other more and more. Our mentalities and work ethics are well matched, and musically, we mesh very well. Its so cool that half of a world away, people are influenced by Burning Airlines, Retisonic, and Hot Snakes.

Soon came our first show at the Heretic Club in Bordeaux. A vast spread of snacks was put out for the bands. Pork Rillettes, baguettes, wine, beer, Jack Daniels, yogurt, etc… were provided. All of this is tradition- I think that we will probably employ this at our shows in the states whenever possible. It created an instant camaraderie amongst the bands that you just don’t see often enough in our country. The Heretic Club is a beautiful dirty rock club in Bordeaux. The backstage area was filled with wonderful people throughout the night, and although my lungs weren’t ready for the cigarette smoke, it felt wonderful to realize that this was the type of rock club that we’d be seeing throughout our trip. We had a great crowd at the club, including a “hardcore hooligan” who danced a lot harder than our music sounds. Looking out and seeing Bud, Lawrence, Eric, Ben, and Fredo was amazing. We also got to watch Spudgun play in their hometown, which instantly made the trip worthwhile. Eric and Fredo’s new band Klimax were amazing as well.

This seems like a lot of info to throw at you at once, so I’ll leave it at that for the moment. I haven’t even begun to tell you about our driver Eddie- a true character- or the trials and tribulations that come with having a show canceled in France, and then the triumphs of having shows added on the fly. We even played an amazing outdoor festival during a head lightening storm which perhaps was one of the best shows that we’ve ever played. I’ll get to all of that during the next couple of days. For now, I need to say thanks to Eric, all of the Spudgun guys, Fabien, and the DVs crew. More details to come in the next few days- I promise.