California round-up: Eureka.

We played some shows. They were pretty rad.

We started driving at 7 p.m. Thursday night. Wound up at a Motel 6 in Eugene, OR around midnight. Watched some Adult Swim, crashed out. Halfway through the night, a bug or a spider or some shit flew into my mouth and I couldn't sleep anymore.

Friday, we turned up in Eureka, CA. The Lil Red Lion is the kind of place that has shotgun shells and used rubbers strewn across the parking lot, and a sign in the toilet letting you know that you're being videotaped. I chose to shit at the Burger King instead.

Mount Vicious play first. Consummate showmen, I'll tell you what. I don't remember most of what they played that night. I polished off my drink tickets before they even started. That's how rock and roll I am, dude. But they were great. Fantastic band.

We play next, and my amp shits the bed before song number one. I am pissed. Alli of Mount Vicious subs hers in and I start twisting knobs in between songs until it sounds right. I keep forgetting how loud those little Fender DeVille things are. Technical difficulties aside, we put on the best fucking rock show all eight of those people in Eureka have ever seen, and we finish it off with a twelve minute version of "Watching The Hydroplanes," in which I play guitar on top of the bar and get pelted with lemon wedges by the bartender. I'm still not sure if he was doing it in rock and roll fun or if it was because he wanted me to get off the fucking bar. Adam would have gotten in more trouble anyway for crowd surfing onto the pool table.



The Zygoats played last. I forget most of it. I was drunk. Cool dudes, though.

Richy and Alli posed as a couple and rented us a room at the Econolodge a block away. They woke up a very grumpy hotel manager with a very thick accent.

"Yeah, we need a room. But we hate each other, so we need two separate beds."
"I no care, asshole. Meh. Check out time is 11, asshole."

The room, of course, is right above the manager's. I don't think we made a very good impression.





We tried to break into the swimming pool. No dice. Brian, Necklace, Alli, and I went to Taco Bell instead.

"Hello?"
"Hey James, this is Adam. Can you get me two 7 Layers?"
"Um, okay."

(click)

(ring)

"Hello?"
"Hey James, this is Chris. Can you get me a cheese quesadilla?"
"Okay."

(click)

(ring)

"Hello?"
"Hey James, this is Andre. Can you get me a chicken quesadilla?"
"Sure."

(click)

(ring)

"Yeah?"
"Hey James, can you--"

(click.)

The next morning we packed our vans back up. I was supposed to sleep in the van, but Dre was sleeping on top of of my keys and cell phone. 'tevs.

Motel manager was staring at us, as we packed the van. I bet he was thinking something like.

"Ach. You fahging asshole guys! I rent room to two assholes, and I see eight asshole guys and one malnutritioned little girl. Fahging bastard guys! Meh!"

Richy goes into the office, throws the key card on the table, and says "Thanks, dude!" Points to a stack of newspapers and asks "Complimentary?" before taking one. Big, huge, brass balls.

(more to come.)

"Hellovent" = Hell Of Relevant.

That's a new slang term that was invented the last time we played the Sunset. So, here's a bunch of shit that's hellovent right now:

We're getting in the van and doing four dates in Northern California: get into it.











John Graham wrote a nice little thing in the SF Weekly here.

Sorry about neglecting the quality jams. Here are the quality jams:

I'm gonna mispronounce your name all night

So we had ourselves a little weekend trip during the last weekend in April, the 24th and the 25th. This is notable as the first trip we've done that involved two since not in either Seattle or Bellingham.

The morning of Friday the 24th awoke with us finding out that we were actually confirmed for a show at Ray's Golden Lion. We were planning on being in the Tri-Cities anyway that evening to break up the drive to Missoula and stay with Adam's mom.

When we got to Ray's, we found out we were playing with five other metal bands. We sucked it up and asked to play first, as we were pretty sure the kids there wouldn't be too into our post-working class punk. One of the aforementioned metal bands was kind enough to lend me a bass cab, as I hadn't brought one on this trip to size constraints in the van.

Our set went surprisingly well though. We tore through songs from Real Size, two planned for Fuckin' Totally, and our cover of "Watching the Hydroplanes" that is fast becoming our "Won't Get Fooled Again"/"Sister Ray"/"Diamond Sea". People seemed to like it. Enough that Greg McBride was able to sell some CD's for us.

The rest of the night was spent watching the other bands and drinking to celebrate Richy's birthday eve.

The next day, Adam's mom prepared us a delicious breakfast, we stopped at Adam's dad's and said hello, and then made our way to Missoula. Missoula has always been very good to us, so we were very stoked to be back for the first time in a year-and-a-half.

We got to town and bit early, stopped at the always excellent Ear Candy, then made our way to our friends Ben and Darcy's house for some grubage.

Since it was Richy's birthday, I had asked Ben and Darcy to help me make it special for Mr. Birthday Boyer. They did not disapoint:



After some awesome food, we headed over to the Palace for the night's show with the Victory Smokes and Places.

We had some minor snafus during load-in. Hoight from the Smokes had given us a key card so we could use the elevator. But, there was another code that had to be entered that we kind of blew. James ended up being stuck in an elevator for several minutes while we tried to get everything figured out:



Eventually, we got all the gear down the elevator and waited for the show to start.

The Smokes kicked off the night, and were great as usual, even with some gear issues. Pat may be the most joyful looking drummer EVER. We played pretty well, and got a Missoula-worthy reception from the audience. Ben took the photos below:








Places headlined, and were great as well. Turns out two of the members of son's of Missoula legend Checkers, whom we'd been told to say hi to by some guy on teh internetz.

After the show, we went back to Ben and Darcy's, drank more, ate pizza, and eventually went to sleep.

The next day, we gave ourselves some more time to enjoy Missoula, including a round of sandwiches at the Staggering Ox. Then we made the long drive home.

Of course, a long drive in the van will instill a certain amount of madness. We were no exception, especially since our van is pretty cramped, and we don't have the ability to zone out on the road that we used to have. Suffice to say, things got a little silly, and I made a few videos to document things:







Suffice to say, we had a great, great time on this trip. We all agreed this was about the most fun any of us had had playing out of town shows in a long time.

Next up is our N. CA tour with Mount Fucking Vicious over Memorial Day weekend. Saying we are excited for this trip is putting it far, far too lightly. The MV folks are some of the nicest/funniest people we've had the pleasure of rocking with, and we can't wait to urinate in their beds. Or maybe that's just me. The full dates are on our 'space.

Doggs...

Get into it.

(If you live or happen to be in Missoula that is.)

I can't promise that we'll literally destroy the stage this time, but we'll do our best to throw down.

We played some shows. (OR, expectations are a motherfucker.)

Yeah. So on Wednesday, we played with Fucked Up at Neumo's. It was weird. I really liked playing at Neumo's, all the folks there are rad, but there was just this weird vibe/energy hanging over the show. Like, a thick black cloud of exhaustion and dread. (EDIT: this was probably just me. I am weird.) I think hell of folks were expecting the show to do much better than it did, but there were 75 tickets pre-sold for a venue that holds 800. Eventually about 200 folks trickled in, and it felt almost full with the mezzanine closed off and the main floor cut in half, but at 9:30 we played to about 30 people scowling at us, waiting for Fucked Up to come on, waiting for us to finish.

It is difficult to rock under such circumstances. More accurately, it is frustrating to try to rock an audience that flat out refuses to be rocked. Why not just stay home and watch Lost? Apparently our frustration and uncomfortableness showed as Teh Grandyz panned our performance over at Teh Line Outz. The crowd got riled up a little bit for Fucked Up, but it wasn't the full-scale riot I was hoping for from watching them on YouTube. I guess that's a Wednesday in Seattle for you. Somehow, we still managed to sell 6 CDs. Weird.

Brittany Bush took some pictures and has some nice words about the show over here. I'm glad at least someone liked it!

The Sunset was much better. We were sloppy as hell, but all we aspire to be is as good as the Replacements on a good night. It was a triumphant, defiant, confident sloppy. Viking funeral steez. Or something. Highlights include throwing a boxes worth of tampons at the Bismarck when they requested "something to stop the bleeding," and me requesting that someone send Eric Grandy a text saying that we were much better tonight than on Wednesday, and then looking over my shoulder and seeing Seattle Weekly music columnist Hannah Levin doing exactly that. Score one for the Gipper. Or Something.

Jams:

We'll see you in Missoula on Saturday, April 25.

We'll be back in Seattle for an early show at the Sunset on Saturday, May 2 with Born Anchors. It'll also be broadcast on KEXP.

Upcoming release schedule

12.01.09 Fuckin' Totally (CD-EP)
07.13.10 Awesomer Than The Devil (3rd full length)
09.13.11 Sturm Und Drang Forever (4th full length)
11.29.11 Police Teeth's Greatest Hits (2xlp + data cd. Each side programmed by a different band member. Data CD includes MP3s of commentary tracks by the band that you can sync up with each album)
02.28.12 Plays For An Audience (live album. Recorded over three consecutive nights at the Sunset Tavern during the summer of 2011.)
09.04.12 Fuck You, Still Here (5th full length)
01.28.14 Get Off My Lawn (6th full length)
10.28.14 Fuckin' Totally Volume 2 (CD-EP)

We're playing a show with one of our favorite bands.

Pretty rad.


Here: More jams.

Are we a punk band?

I've noticed that when others are discussing our band and our music, the "p" word is dropped quite often. Don't get me wrong, I am in no way offended or perturbed by this, whatsoever. I grew up with with punk rock, and it has either saved or ruined my life depending on how I'm feeling that day. As a band, I think Police Teeth are definitely inspired by punk, but not necessarily of it. Also, if we ever shared a bill with bands with mohawks and bondage pants and shit, they'd tell us to "get off the stage, pussies" while pelting us with bottles.

I digress.

Real Size Monster Series is out, and so far the response has been great. You should be able to purchase it at Everyday Music in Bellingham and at Sonic Boom and Easy Street in Seattle. If you don't live in either of those places, you should PayPal us some money, because my hunch tells me that Touch And Go didn't open the package Blood City sent them looking for a distro deal. Bummer.

We played some shows last weekend.

Friday at the Sunset was great. Not a blockbuster by any means, but the people who did show up were great. A lot of unfamiliar faces, which means that a lot of folks there were probably checking us out for the first time, and judging by how many CDs Nate Bismarck sold at our merch table, I think we left a good impression. Score one for the 'Teeth. Arbitron rocked out some fierce electro-damaged AmRep noise, and we will probably never tire of playing with The Bismarck.

Saturday was at the Cabin Tavern in Bellingham where rock shows have been happening more frequently. It's fun when rock shows happen at non-rock bars so's you can watch the reactions of confused WWU brahs and Vietnam vets. We played Tunnelvision's "Watching The Hydroplanes" at this one, which is slowly but surely becoming a staple, and I wouldn't be surprised if we recorded it at some point. Black Eyes rule, the Russians rule. You already knew that.

Sunday was at the Old Foundry in Bellingham again. We thought an all-ages show on a Sunday would be a bust. Yeah, we were wrong. It was fun playing with Octagon Control again. I really like those guys. Singer dude referred to his sunglasses as his "hipster costume." I told him that it was real "authentic" and "meaningful" and "us AltBros have to stick together." Hee! No Screamers cover this time. Transmography were hell of dank, and the Marmits were at once uplifting and disturbing.

We're going on tour! Well, as close to tour as dudes with grown-up jobs, kids, and serious relationships can get. We're doing northern California and the Bay Area in May with Mount Vicious, and probably the Midwest (MPLS, MKE, CHI, and uh, Bloomington) in September. Both are going to be quick four and five day stints. Have you ever had to drive through Wyoming? No? Then shut the fuck up. In between those two trips we will do the tracking for Fuckin' Totally.

Now, once again, I will leave you with another series of quality jams.