When I first heard Farewell Flight’s music, I knew I would have to talk with them before they made their stop in Hamden on April 26. The band’s drummer, Marc Prokopchak, was nice enough to sit down and let me know about the inner workings of how Farewell Flight manages to make and release music despite their lack of a record label, as well as how they manage to tour as often as possible.
Edward Gaug: Next week you’ll be starting nearly two months of touring, starting off in your home state of Pennsylvania, then trav- eling north through Connecticut, then hitting the Midwest down to Oklahoma and traveling back up to Pennsylvania to end it. How do you personally get ready to spend all this time traveling and living in a van with three other people?
Marc Prokopchak: Well, the first part is actually booking the tour. That’s my biggest worry; everything else comes second after that. Booking those dates and getting everything set management-wise as far as the shows and getting all the details, like load-in time and when doors are. Getting that all together is the first step—after that, we all kind of live meagerly because we don’t make much money and any money we do make goes right back into the band. We all pack a duff le bag and we get some groceries, usually stuff that won’t go bad if we keep it in the van, and we go on from there.
EG: With booking a tour, you try to have all your dates planned out; but have you ever come across problems and had to jump on a show or play a house show? Because I seem to hear about that happening more frequently.
MP: We have played all types of shows—we’ve had really good shows and really bad shows. If we get a cancellation and we can fill that date, within a week or two with something like a house show or jump on a show, that’s golden. We’ve done that a few times. We’ve also had a few things go wrong with cancellations due to younger kids running [shows] and not knowing what they’re really doing. When we go on tour, I’ll send them a follow-up message making sure everything is cool with the show, making sure it hasn’t been cancelled because the venue got shut down by the police or something. We’ve definitely run into that; but if that’s the case and we can’t get on something somewhere else, we’ll end up taking the night off and try to make the best of it, hanging out or sleeping in the van.
EG: Farewell Flight has this particular tour going through the month of May; do you guys have any plans from summer, whether it is playing festivals or another tour?
MP: We pretty much have the whole summer mapped out; as festivals, not so much this year. We played a bunch last year, but that’s because we had some label affiliation and they kind of pulled the strings on all that type of stuff. This summer we are completely independent again, so even the festivals we played last year, it was nearly impossible to get back into unless you have a label backing you or someone else going to bat for you. Basically, we’re just going to tour on our own this summer. After the April-May run is over, we’ll be home for like three weeks and then we’ll head out for about three weeks in June, and that stint’s about three-quarters of the way booked. They haven’t been posted yet, but they are in the confirmation stages. Then we’ll be home for another week or two and then back out on the road from mid-July to early August, for what hopefully will be a CD release run. We’re trying to hit up venues that we have played a lot in the recent years and that we can have our album ready. It’s been recorded since last year and people have been wanting it, and we’re finally getting it released by doing it ourselves this summer. Those are the summer plans, but from there on out it will be what we do always: be on the road as much as possible and come home and work a little bit and then head out again.
This is the short version of the interview, for the whole thing you can check here.
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Taking Off With Farewell Flight
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
The Next Two Weeks in Shows
To get a good idea of what’s going on in Connecticut over the next week (month) or so, you can always rely on out calendar to the right, or you can just find out here, for now.
Mark Nussbaum over at Manic Productions is in the middle of a busy week with shows over at the Cherry Street Station in Wallingford. Tomorrow might they’ve got local band Cable and Boston’s Irepress. Something interesting: Wikipedia tells me that Cable’s “lineup changes and delays between recordings may have hindered their notoriety over the years.” It sounds a little more complicated than that – they’ve been around for 14 years… Apparently they are preparing to release their come-back album Variable Speed Drive.
Another show tomorrow night will be Tippy Canoe (and the Paddlemen?) at Cafe Nine (see calendar).
On Saturday, June 28th, the Cherry Street Station is hosting Grails and Nadja, who have been touring together for a little while now. Also present will be duo Lady Lovelace and the Calculator Death Machine. They are interesting.
Saturday is also the date of the Times New Viking show at the Living Room in Providence, R.I. if you feel like spending a little extra cash for the drive, or finding chauffeur friends. Listen to their recent Daytrotter session. Also, they’re playing with Deer Tick, a band that found us at the Not Brooklyn Festival.
Kicking off July on Manic’s calendar will be gothic, country punks (this is accurate) O’Death at New Haven People’s Center on the 11th. There isn’t much more I can say without Mark Rowan getting all flustered and embarrassed that I write for this blog.
For July 12, Elf Power is playing The Space in Hamden, CT. tThey’re another band hailing from Athens, Ga. and they're on tour supporting the March 25th release In a Cave. If I find myself home that weekend, I’d be down for spending less than $10 on this show.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Dinosaur Jr. Stops in at Daniel Street in Milford
New England’s own Dinosaur Jr. recently embarked on a national tour in late March, kicking it off with a gig at Austin’s South by South West and are passing through Milford,
Conn. tomorrow (Wednesday).
dates.
off the band’s 1987 release You’re Living All Over Me. Tickets are $20 pre-ordered and $20
the day-of.
Thursday, December 6, 2007
Top 20, Middle Distance Runner, Allison Weiss, etc
It has been almost a week since we've last updated this (or should I say since I last updated this--Ed you're lazy!), so I decided to give a quick miscellaneous update.
a. We're working on our Top 20 albums of the year list now. We got up to six and we were hoping to have it all worked out for tomorrow's podcast, but who knows. Maybe we'll do a Top 10 this week and reveal the rest later. Anyways, if you are interesting in giving feedback or suggestions, go wild. Here is the top six we came up with. And, who knows, this will probably change by the time it is 'official.'
1. Kanye West's Graduation
2. Radiohead's In Rainbows
3. Chromeo's Fancy Footwork
4. The National's Boxer
5. Tegan & Sara's The Con
6. White Williams's Smoke
Just a short list of others that are in consideration is: M.I.A., The Shins, Animal Collective, Feist, Amy Winehouse, Ryan Adams, Iron & Wine, Ratatat, LCD Soundsystem, Jamie T, Justice, Bloc Party.
b. For those of you in the area, there is a pretty sweet local hip-hop label by the name of Dekagon Records. They are based out of Newington, Conn. and recently put out a release by Archetype. Anyways, I'm mentioning this because I forgot to link the story I did for the Hartford Advocate a couple weeks ago.
c. To go along with that. Two band(s)/artist(s) I did/doing pieces on are Middle Distance Runner and Allison Weiss. Middle Distance Runner was around a month ago for Shag Frenzy in (I believe) Hartford, but they put out a solid EP this year that can mostly be heard on their MySpace. Their sound is all over from The Strokes to Chin Up Chin Up, so who knows, just enjoy.
My article on Weiss will be online next Wednesday. I spoke to her yesterday and it went rather well. She'll be in Hamden, Conn. on the 19th and I'll sure we'll be hyping the shit out of it when we do another local shows podcast (Ed loves her too). I'll link the piece up here when it is published.
d. I almost forgot. We're not only doing a Top 20 album of the year, but also #1 local release, single, comedy album and mix. I'm not going into detail just yet about all those, but as a quick note I think we found our local winner: A Great Big Pile of Leaves. I don't want to hear, "Brooklyn isn't local." They're CT dudes and one of them lives in New Haven AND it was recorded here--they're CT and they're fun. I'm going to throw Minus the Bear out there as a comparison to the first track on their MySpace.
e. Expect a podcast late tomorrow. Movie releases are pretty dry besides The Golden Compass, so that is almost out of the question. Our podcast, if you haven't heard yet, touches all the way until next week with shows. So who knows. We will have something for you though, so be sure to check back. <3
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Plenty Going on Tonight
After somewhat of a slow weekend, Tuesday brings us plenty of shows to attend. We hope to have a photographer at the Efterklang show at the Space tonight. Ed looks like he's chumping out, so look for Melissa instead. And then look for photos to go up tomorrow.
EfterklangEfterklang seems like they would be a lot of fun live, but if for some reason that not your cup of tea maybe Two Loons for Tea (get it?) is. They will be playing at Cafe Nine in New Haven tonight and Cambridge tomorrow. Last August they released Nine Lucid Dreams on Sarathan Records.
Finally, the last show in the area tonight may be the best one. The Submarines and Headlights will be playing at Iron Horse in Northampton, Mass. The Submarines released Honeysuckle Weeks on the 13th of May. Honeysuckle Weeks has a bit of that same pop-guy/girl duo-etc going on that a band like a the Hush Sound has, or even Rilo Kiley (who will be all over the area this weekend).
So there you have it, plenty to do. We'll definitely be at one of these shows tonight. See you there.
