Mailing List Archive/2025-01-31
From This Might Be A Wiki
🕺🏻Vinyl sale! Nashville + Asheville selling out! 🕺🏻Plus Q+A w/ JF.. and JL! 🕺🏻[edit]
BIG DEAL VINYL SALE!
Folks—we have a 20%-off sale on ALL vinyl (of which there is plenty) and downloads (and there is plenty of that too)!
ON THE ROAD AGAIN
AND PLEASE TELL ALL YOUR FRIENDS!
People—Night 1 of Nashville has SOLD OUT and both Asheville shows are VERY CLOSE. Of course we are also playing Chattanooga (!!), St. Petersburg, and we have added a second show in Atlanta.
In May we hit the west coast, but only Los Angeles, San Diego, and PortlandOR are still available. Third Portland show added!
www.TMBG.com is where the best, street-priced tickets are. (Don’t go with resellers. Half are rip offs, the other half are scams!)
NEW LEVELS IN SHORT ATTENTION CHALLENGES
Human beings—our TikTok page is up at TMBGOfficial and you can follow it now because it’s FUN not to think about this terrible new administration sometimes! Thank you China!
TOO LONG. READ.
Y’all!—Our Tumblr page at TMBGareOK is blowing up, but if going to the MySpace of the 21st century feels too weird, we are including a long long list of Q&As from that site at the end of this email blast.
3.21 Chattanooga https://bit.ly/TMBG032125
3.22 Nashville SOLD OUT
3.23 Nashville https://bit.ly/TMBG032325
3.25 Asheville https://bit.ly/TMBG032525
3.26 Asheville https://bit.ly/TMBG032625
3.28 Atlanta SOLD OUT
3.29 Atlanta https://bit.ly/TMBG032925
5.9 San Francisco SOLD OUT
5.10 San Francisco SOLD OUT
5.11 San Francisco SOLD OUT
3.29 Atlanta https://bit.ly/TMBG032925
5.9 San Francisco SOLD OUT
5.10 San Francisco SOLD OUT
5.11 San Francisco SOLD OUT
5.13 San Diego https://livemu.sc/4eG7YHQ
6.8 Portland https://bit.ly/TMBG060825
6.10 Salt Lake City SOLD OUT
6.11 Salt Lake City SOLD OUT
6.13 Seattle SOLD OUT
6.14 Seattle SOLD OUT
6.15 Seattle SOLD OUT
6.10 Salt Lake City SOLD OUT
6.11 Salt Lake City SOLD OUT
6.13 Seattle SOLD OUT
6.14 Seattle SOLD OUT
6.15 Seattle SOLD OUT
MOST of our upcoming shows are sold out, and all of the shows above are on track to selling out. Avoid disappointment and resellers!
TODAY and TOMORROW: ALL VINYL TITLES AND DOWNLOADS ARE 20% OFF
All these titles and more www.TMBGshop.com
JF: As exciting as it is speaking truth to power, it seems like our days on X might be numbered. A lot of X folk don’t seem to like “our kind” there, which is people who aren’t into Nazi stuff.
Please join us on Bluesky at https://bsky.app/profile/tmbg.bsky.social
TMBG is on Instagram at https://instagram.com/tmbgofficial
TMBG's TikTok feed is unique and is growing rapidly at https://tiktok.com/@tmbgofficial
And as mentioned before, TMBGareOK on Tumblr is cookin’ with images, videos, and contributions for all y’all. Here is just a small selection of recently answered questions.
Q from daneweeezer:
I've been asked this already, but what's your favourite tmbg song?
JF: I like Everything Right is Wrong Again.
Q from lucymtork:
My new band consists of two strange girls, and we are thinking of playing to a pre-recorded tape machine rhythm track. Do you have any advice or thoughts about the format?
JF: Well, it’s your project, so the general things I would say is do what is interesting to you and is the boldest expression of your ideas. Pay more attention to what you do well and less to what is happening on the immediate scene. People might say they are into some trend or sound, but as a friend of mine once said, “people don’t know they want to be surprised.” Take advantage of all the ways you can approach stuff (and as I will explain––don’t fear getting really small)...
Okay, on to the specifics of working with a track or drum machine.
We had an advantage in that we both sang and we both played instruments that could be rhythm or melody instruments, and contrasting the possibilities there really helped keep things dynamic.
Our evolution as a band working with tape was pretty simple. We started with pretty elaborate tracks with a lot of varied sounds thinking the sonic range would drive the audiences experience, but over time found it was more effective to just have bass and drums on tape––really pare things down as to not take away from the stuff we were doing live. (There were irresistible exceptions of course, but it did really get pretty spare.)
Although it never felt too too close, I think our approach even from the beginning was always kinda negatively informed by “track acts” (the promo shows in nightclubs and discos where singers would jump on stage or by the DJ and sing over––or in some cases along––with their record or some remixed version of their record). Although this was all before Milli Vanilli, there was a general notion that these performances were too canned, so we were informed by that and tried to keep as much action going in our own playing as possible.
I would also say, make your track or computer setup small, simple, and as completely bullet-proof as possible. Although home computing and MIDI were just emerging when we started, there were sequencing boxes in the world and other musicians did suggest we would benefit from diving into those formats for our live show, but sync issues and general instability just made the tapes seem more reliable/durable.
You also should have a Plan B and maybe even a Plan C for when you have the inevitable technical issue (like a shiny a cappella or other unaccompanied number you might be saving for a second encore but is available to pull out that really shines). When the Fates pull the rug on your act, the audience will be forever grateful that you anticipated this and can keep your show moving forward. (In fact, meeting this kind of challenge is inevitably the highlight of this kind of show––because, ultimately folks are always rooting for YOU, not the track!)
Finally, while working with tape or MIDI is easy and reliable and wonderfully affordable, and certainly a charming kind of show in a small venue, it might not scale! So when your act blows up and you are playing theaters, don’t let the format define you––get a great backing band!
Q from resentfulappendage:
What should I name my cat?
JF: I'm thinking "Maestro”. Two reasons––orchestra conductors seem COOL, and this cat seems cool in a zoomie, "untameable" kind of way. 2nd, and this is lesser but part of why it is front of mind for me––Maestro was a Gibson guitar-affiliated brand in the 50s and 60s that made very cool things including the Maestro Fuzztone (as heard on The Rolling Stones' Satisfaction) and, as this critter's clearly a celebration of fuzz, Maestro seems right. Of course, if you reject this name––that's you're prerogative. But if you are asking ME, I say MAESTRO.
Q from leoblooms:
Do you have any favorite Phil Ochs songs?
JF: There are a lot of good ones. Chords of Fame. There But for Fortune. When I’m Gone. Changes. I’m Going to Say It Now.
SO POLITICAL. IT BURNSSSSS.
Q from the-gondola-man:
Are there any venues that you guys didn’t like playing and if so why?
JF: Doing a show with a big technical obstacle is something that we can get past for the evening, but coming back year after year to the same unaddressed problem gets kind of wearisome. Sometimes the PA was too crappy, or the stage/sightlines are weird, or the electricity is so dodgy you are listening to a loud buzz for the whole show. I know there were some spots we just asked not to return to and sometimes our wishes were respected.
Q from nickyflowers:
Hey Flansy: of all the drum machines you guys have used, which one was your favorite?
JF: The Alesis HR-16 would be my choice just for the lower key sounds and the ability to tune the sounds in an extreme way. They go for peanuts on Reverb!
Q from siclesocool:
Hey Flansy: of all the drum machines you guys have used, which one was your favorite?
JF: The Alesis HR-16 would be my choice just for the lower key sounds and the ability to tune the sounds in an extreme way. They go for peanuts on Reverb!
Q from siclesocool:
What is your mom’s favorite TMBG song?
JF: I think Mammal.
Q from manikin-archive:
I know it's a little silly but I had a dream last night after being so anxious about the elections. I was at one of your concerts, and afterwards the whole band gave everyone letters about how things are going to be alright. You don't have to publish this, but I just wanted you to know you all are such a positive force that it even came through in a dream. We'll get through this.
JF: I better get to writing those letters.
Q from floridaflamingogirl:
I know it's a little silly but I had a dream last night after being so anxious about the elections. I was at one of your concerts, and afterwards the whole band gave everyone letters about how things are going to be alright. You don't have to publish this, but I just wanted you to know you all are such a positive force that it even came through in a dream. We'll get through this.
JF: I better get to writing those letters.
Q from floridaflamingogirl:
What was it like to prep for the Birdhouse video? I imagine coordinating those dance moves with all the extras must have taken a couple days.
JF: Our video choreography, which I guess really started with the Puppet Head video, was always cooked up spontaneously minutes if not moments before the camera rolled. Adam Bernstein was very encouraging of our highly personal moves, and did a great job in the edit making it look very intentional!
Q from coffeeallaloneandlord:
Any tour plans for the northeast/New England?
JF: I… we…
Q from bard-o-lator:
Q from bard-o-lator:
Could you talk about your relationship with Bob Dylan?
JF: Bob is currently not returning my calls.
Q from ekulhenn:
Is the distorted sounding lead in “You Probably Get That A Lot” really a fuzzed up Fender Rhodes as the video version suggests?
JL: No, although it was a keyboard-controlled sound. Just a patch on the Roland synth with a ton of fuzz. We were all miming along to the track. Dan Miller was assigned the role of the keyboard player.
Q from floridaflamingogirl:
A question for Mr. Linnell: the overlapping melody lines in Dinner Bell have always amazed me, what kind of music theory brainstorming went into crafting that?
JL: Somebody else once asked me about the rambling modulations in Dinner Bell (starts out in G, then F, then A minor, then Bb and so on) and I struggled to come up with a good explanation. Thinking about it now, my sense is that the answer to both questions (yours and his) is the same: Any idea that seems original is the product of intuition. The ideas that are cleverly calculated generally smell kind of stale. Which is why it’s so hard to come up with new, good ideas. Intuition is an elusive butterfly!
