Thanks to the kind folks at Indie Rock Cafe who, along with a very nice article and review, have given us their “Band of the Week” honors.  They’ve got a great site and a nice collection of tunes from some great bands -  click here to visit their page and read the article…

Hope your week is going well so far!

Johnny

Hi all – I hope this note finds you well – it’s been a busy year for us so far and we’re all glad to be back home for a Portland show at Holocene tonight (Friday night)…

We’ve been looking forward to this show from the moment it appeared on the calendar and we hope you can join us for a great night of music. If you are able to make it out, come up and say hi and congrats to Ryan – he and Kelly had a beautiful baby boy a couple of weeks ago and both Mom and baby are happy and healthy.  And speaking of, this show will be Christi’s last show with us for a while as she and I are expecting our first…there most certainly is something in the water around here this winter : )

We’re looking forward to a fun night of music with good friends and a great stage to share it on – the show starts at 9pm and we’re on shortly after that, so come early! Have a great weekend and we hope to see you tonight at Holocene -

Johnny

Just a quick note to say thanks to the kind folks at The Big Takeover magazine who put our new album, The King Can Drink the Harbour Dry, in their top 5 for their latest issue – the very cool music magazine is available at most major bookstores…

Thanks to Jack Rabid and co. at The Big Takeover and we very much hope to make it out to the east coast this summer – hope you all are having a great week and see you soon,

Johnny

ps – If you don’t already have the new album and would like a copy, just CLICK HERE to go to our online store…

(NOTE: if you can’t see the above video, click here)

Hey all – here’s the second of two video blogs from our acoustic rehearsal a few weeks back. Many thanks to our friend Ryan for the camera work on these… (in case you missed it, free to check out the Liberator video blog here).  Both songs will be on our upcoming album, “The King Can Drink the Harbor Dry“, which is due out later in the summer.

I hope your week is going well so far – it’s been a nice one here in Portland, though the sun seems to have left us again today. But it’s supposed to be a great weekend, and one that we’re all looking forward to in the Dimes camp – we’ll be opening for the always fantastic Clumsy Lovers at the Doug Fir Lounge here in Portland on Friday night, and again at the newly reopened Crocodile in Seattle on Saturday night. I’m also excited to say our dear friend Ehren Ebbage will be rejoining us with his lap steel for these shows after a few months on the road. These are going to be fun shows for sure…

Have a great rest of the week y’all – we’ll see you soon -

Johnny

The Dimes – Save Me, Clara (Acoustic Demo)

The lyrics of this one are inspired by a woman named Clara Barton – Clara was a nurse in the Cival War and was often called the “Angel of the Battlefield”. She later went on to found the American Red Cross after working with the International Committee of the Red Cross overseas during and after the Franco-Prussian War – in fact, she was awarded the Iron Cross of Merit by then German Emperor William I in 1873. Ah, Clara…

I hope you have a great week and if you get a chance, forward the song on to a friend or two…maybe they’ll like it and you’ll be the cool friend who turns them on to all that underground indie music : )

Johnny

This weekend marks the start of our short West Coast Tour (see the next blog down for dates!) and we kick things off with a show in Seattle at the Comet Tavern. It’s a special show in it’s own right, being a KEXP Presents show, and oh how we love KEXP.  They’re great people and huge supporters of independent music – they’ve been very kind and supportive to us and we’re always happy to take part in KEXP events.  It should be a great time and what a great way to start the tour…

I’m ready for the road trip, as it’s been quite the busy few weeks here at home…I’ve been a good little history student during the days, and continuing to work on mixing and tweaking the new album at night (gotta love the last minute vocal takes   But I’m excited (and relieved) to say that I sent the final mixes off to mastering last night, and we should have the finished album in hand by the end of the week…well, the music anyway…then we get to play with album art…

Speaking of art…I also had the chance to spend a few hours at the Portland Art Museum last week. A friend of mine told me that the Museum has one of Childe Hassam’s “Isle Of Shoals” paintings, which is mentioned in the song “Celia’s Garden“…and he was right…though it’s not the “Isle Of Shoals” painting mentioned in the song. As it turns out, Hassam painted several different works he titled “Isle Of Shoals” (the one mentioned in “Celia’s Garden” is “Poppies, Isle Of Shoals”).  The Portland Art Museum actually has several other paintings by Childe Hassam on display as well. Incredible stuff.  If you’re in the Portland area, or if you visit the city sometime soon, it’s definitely worth checking out.  They also have works by Van Gogh, Picasso, Monet, and a handful of others I’m sure you’ve heard of.

I hope you’re having a great week and if you’re in Seattle this Friday night, come out and say hi -

Johnny

For those that stop by our Myspace or Facebook pages from time to time, you may have noticed some upcoming tour dates and cities have been posted recently. We’ll be jumping in the van and hitting the road here in a couple of weeks for a West Coast tour from Seattle to San Diego, and we just got final word on most of the dates and locations from the lovely gents at Pet Marmoset. We thought it wise to post the updated tour dates here on the blog…just in case you were wondering…

4/11/09 – Cherry City Music Festival, Salem OR  |  3pm

4/17/09 – Comet Tavern (KEXP Event), Seattle WA  |  9pm

4/23/09 – Alex’s, Ashland OR  |  9pm

4/24/09 – Monterey Live!, Monterey CA  |  8pm

4/25/09 – Kaleidoscope Festival, Long Beach CA  |  2pm

4/25/09 – The Soda Bar, San Diego CA  |  9pm

4/26/09 – University of San Diego, San Diego CA  |  7pm

4/27/09 – Zoey’s Cafe, Ventura CA  |  7pm

4/28/09 – The Hotel Cafe, Los Angeles CA  |  10pm

4/29/09 – Cal State Univ – East Bay, Hayward CA  |  12pm

4/30/09 – Menlo College, Atherton CA  |  8pm

5/1/09 – The Hotel Utah, San Francisco CA  |  9pm

5/2/09 – Blue Lake Casino, Blue Lake CA  |  9pm

Some of the times may change (ever so slightly) as the dates draw closer, so if you live on the West Coast and are planning on coming out to one of the shows, please call ahead and find out from the venue what time the shows start – (see venue links above for more info). For the specific show locations on college campuses, your guess is as good as ours : )  We’ll post any additional info we get on the college shows…and for the folks in Seattle and Eugene, don’t forget we’ll be in town this weekend (Seattle on Friday, April 3rd and Eugene on Saturday, April 4th)…

We’re looking forward to the tour and we hope to see some of you this month!

Johnny

For over 140 years the Charles Street jail was the last place a person would have wanted to stay the night, much less serve hard time. But over the years, old Charles Street had a number of famous “guests” spend more than a night or two, inlcuding former Boston Mayor James Michael Curley, who remained Mayor while in prison, letting the “clerks and the jerks” run the city until his release. And a former conman called Frank Abagnale, who’s name you might recognize from the movie “Catch Me If You Can“, spent a few nights within the famous walls of the Charles Street Jail.

Those famous walls are still there (most of them), but the place is anything but a prison these days. Less than two years ago, after several years of renovation, the old jail reopened as The Liberty Hotel. The building is an amazing piece of historic architecture, and Boston, being the historic place that it is, doesn’t like to see beautiful old buildings torn down. There are many nods to the Liberty’s historic past, such as the hotel bar, called the “Clink“, and the hotel lobby, which looks like it could have been a movie set from “Jailhouse Rock“.

When I read a story, several months ago now, about the old jail’s reopening as a swanky hotel, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity for a song there – here’s the acoustic demo we’ve been working from for the record version. If and when we get the band to Boston, I’m looking forward to singing this one in the lobby…

The Dimes – Charles Street (Acoustic Demo)

Have a great week and a Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

Johnny

Charles Street Jail, circa 1930

Have a great rest of the week and if you need more nostalgia to lighten the mood…there’s plenty more where these videos came from…just head to youtube and type in “The Beatles“…

If you’re still bored at work and need another excuse to surf the web, come check out our new page on Squidoo! Make sure and say hi if you stop by…

Johnny

It was 239 years ago today…the event that became known as the Boston Massacre was like pouring gasoline on an ever growing fire in Boston. The incident involved the deaths of five civilians at the hands of British troops on March 5, 1770, and it began a series of events that helped spark the rebellion in Boston and eventual revolution in America.

Now I’m no loyalist, but this thing wasn’t as one sided as history would have you believe. In fact, a young lawyer, and a favorite patriot of mine, called John Adams actually served as council in defense for the British troops in the trial that followed the incident…and he was certainly no loyalist either. The fact remains though, for me anyway, that the soldiers shouldn’t have been there in the first place, as the British were basically engaged in a military occupation of Boston. An interesting factoid: the picture above was actually a print made from an engraving by a local blacksmith named Paul Revere. Other variations of Revere’s engraving have been made over the years, such as the one below, which was made shortly before the Cival War and emphasizes Crispus Attucks in the foreground of the picture. Attucks, a black man, was the first one killed in the Boston Massacre and is frequently named as the first martyr of the American Revolution.

We’ve had a demo floating around for the better part of a year about Crispus Attucks and the Boston Massacre…it’s more of a round than a song, but I thought I’d post it given the history of the day…

The Dimes – Crispus Attucks (Demo)

Have a great weekend y’all -

Johnny