Click here to see it ——> http://www.youtube.com/user/dnabass/search?query=green+grocer&view=u

This was an epic show, and I hear it is legendary in some circles. This show also featured a brutal 7 minute set by Yohimbe, a typically manic performance by Three Brained Robot, a beautiful meditation by Invisible Circle, and an eye opening vocal workout by Bethany Dinsick. Good memories. Sounds like we played well too.

http://soundcloud.com/michael-hurder

The first set I’ve uploaded is a demo I made for a program called Musician’s On Call.  They arrange for volunteers such as myself to play bedside concerts for people who are stuck in the hospital for whatever reason.  I’m doing more of this kind of performing as I search for my calling as a performer.

If you would like me to perform some of these songs or others in a similar style for any reason, reach out and I’ll be there.  I’ll also keep adding tunes to the repertoire as I am moved to record.

I also have accumulated a number of cassette tapes with interesting performances on them.  Soundcloud will also be a good format for these new jams.  Stay tuned.

Check it out here – http://greengrocer.bandcamp.com/album/centering

Max and I have been working on mixing the tracks that I started recording last July, and I think they are finally coalescing into a coherent whole. Keep an eye on the myspace page for new developments.

While I’ve been working on that, unrelated words and music have been pouring out.

Squishy Face

Take a listen!

6/11/10

It’s 1:30 AM and we’re speeding north on i-95 through Virginia. With a little luck and a lot of coffee, we’ll be in DC by 4 AM. Strawberry Jam is blasting, and life is good.

I believe it was the once-pretty-decent songwriter Ryan Adams who wrote, “Oh my sweet Carolina, what compels me to go?” Well, we’re beginning to understand just what compelled us to go on this crazy adventure in the first place, something we never could have guessed during all those months of sending out countless e-mails to put this tour together; at it was those sweet Carolinas (South and North, in chronological order) that have helped us to understand.

We rolled into Charleston at 2 PM on Tuesday and immediately met up with two of my favorite human beings on Planet Earth, my old friend Jodi and her boyfriend Andrew. We parked across the street from Andrew’s apartment and went out to lunch at Five Loaves, an incredible café with eight different soup specials on any given day. If you’re ever in Charleston, go there. Following lunch, Jodi – a former tour guide who now works for the Historical Preservation Society – took us on an epic walking tour of the city.

It’s important to note that Jodi might love Charleston more than any other person in the world loves any other city in the world. We had each gotten between two and four hours of sleep the previous night, and then spent 5 hours in the car, and we thought nothing of going on a five-mile walk on a rather warm day (you are not allowed to describe the weather in Charleston as “hot” until mid-July; the locals will not take you seriously), because it’s really just that cool to hear her talk about the city that she has called home for the past half-decade. We learned about architecture, Civil War history, the fact that Charleston is the most polite city in the country, the fact that Charleston is home to the oldest Reform Synagogue in the country, and way more other topics than I could recount here. To be honest, there were times that exhaustion took over and her ecstatic history lesson sort of droned out into a blur of giddy excitement, but it was such a pleasure just to be in the company of old friends who I hadn’t seen in years that the exhaustion didn’t even bother me.

We stopped for some truly incredible coffee on the way back to Andrew before heading over to Race St. for a house show that my friend Sean had set up less than 48 hours in advance. As of when we left Chicago, we were planning on borrowing acoustic instruments and playing a “show” in Hampton Park. It wasn’t until we got to Nashville that I got the message that he could hook us up with a house show. And let me tell you, he HOOKED us UP.

We rolled up to the house and met a dreadlocked teenager with stitches in his eyebrow skateboarding outside. His name was Kelsey, and he was just as friendly as everyone else in Charleston. He said he didn’t know Sean, but he pointed us into the house and we met up with Sean and the other bands, Cabbage and Know Nothing Party. The house was a small, filthy Charleston Single with a PA in the kitchen. The backyard had a fire pit and a tire swing and graffiti on the walls behind the garden. This was gonna be awesome.

It wasn’t long before Andrew and Jodi showed up with a 12-pack of PBR bottles, for which Andrew absolutely refused to let us pay. Thanks Andrew! We hung out watching the first two bands, who were both skronky and awesome, and I found myself getting intensely hungry. I walked to the nearest corner store and came back with a Snickers and a Four Loko – a beverage illegal in many states that’s basically a combination of red wine and Red Bull and comes in a can only slightly smaller than a pony keg. Everyone helped me out by sipping off my drink, ensuring that I wouldn’t have to drink the whole thing myself. I was both excited to try something new and certain I’d never touch the stuff again.

Then it was time to go on. We set up in a hurry, and then I shouted to the 20-30 people in the back yard that the show was about to begin. People filtered in and we started the set with “Hungry.” It’s difficult to put into words what happened over the next 45 minutes. The kitchen was unthinkably hot and we were all a little delirious (band and audience alike). To put it succinctly, something magical happened. The heavens parted, the stars aligned, and we rocked the house. The crowd was packed shoulder to shoulder. I nearly decapitated someone with each cymbal crash. And even as I dripped sweat and strained to hear the beat through my headphones, the dancing NEVER stopped. I ended up playing shirtless for the first time ever (that much body heat has a way of trumping modesty), and half the crowd was naked to the waist by the time we finished. All those friendly faces – Liz, Becky, Ben, Sean, Andrew, Jodi – and all those dancing strangers made me feel like I was in the Greatest Band in the World. I will never forget it and I will never stop being grateful.

After our set ended, the party went on for hours. We hung out in the back yard around a bonfire, talking to friends and strangers and falling in love with life. We gave some guy $13 of our hard earned band money to pick up an extra case of beer so the party could continue into the night. People came and went, and hours later, after we had counted our donations, it was time to call it a night.

We woke up late the next morning and made our way back to Andrew’s apartment. Time for Charleston brunch. Michael and Elliott had chicken and waffles. I had peanut butter banana pancakes. It was awesome. On the way out of town, we stopped briefly at Charleston’s legendary Communications Museum, where Andrew recently started a volunteer position. Rick, the caretaker, played us hundred-year-old wax cylinders of Hawaiian music. We got a $20 parking ticket while we were there, but Jodi offered to pay it in exchange for three CDs. I love Charleston.

They say a homerun every time would get boring after a while, and I suppose the same could be said about shows like that magical night in Charleston. It’s not a treat if you get it all the time, etc. We drove to Chapel Hill knowing that there was no way we could improve on the previous night, and we were basically okay with that, or at least too tired to care. Chapel Hill is a sleepy college town, significantly preppier than I expected it to be, and pretty much dead during the summer. The Nightlight was still locked when we first rolled up, so we went and got pizza before returning to load in.

We came back and loaded in about 45 minutes later. The bartender, Wiley, left a cooler full of PBR (of course) and bottled water (score!) next to the stage for us. We drank all of the bottled water and the PBRs mostly just sat there. The first act, Secret Boyfriend, holds the remarkable distinction of being probably the strangest set of music I’ve ever seen. He set up with his own PA across the room from the stage with a table full of electronics and a classical guitar. He alternated between harsh noise and droney freak-folk (is that still a term people use?) and ended his set by vomiting on the ground. Rock and roll.

Our set wasn’t met with the same unbridled exuberance that it had been in Charleston, although we played significantly better than we had the previous night. Most of the crowd sat at the bar tapping their toes, and when we asked them to get up and stand in front for the last song, they complied. The headliners were a trio of nice southern boys called Le Weekend, who played knotty, angular rock music in the vein of Capt’n Jazz. They were bashful about having not drawn a crowd, but we assured them that we were cool with what we had. Their stage banter poked fun at our stage banter (“We played in a kitchen in West Virginia last night! Buy our CD!”) and we enjoyed ourselves thoroughly.

That night, we stayed with Michael’s cousin Liesel in Carborro that night. She’s getting her graduate degree in dietary nutrition, and had an incredible spread of fruits, veggies, sandwiches, and almonds out for us when we got to her apartment. It was wonderful. We fell asleep on her floor, woke up late, and had breakfast with her husband Greyson before heading off to Greenville.

The drive to Greenville was relatively short (about two hours) and incredibly beautiful, and I finally got to listen to The Slim Shady LP, which I’d been looking forward to all tour. We got to the Tipsy Teapot, an almost unthinkably awesome café full of books and delicious food, with hours to spare, so Elliott and I wandered around town handing out posters and promo CDs. We came back to a free plate of finger sandwiches and pasta salad, which we wolfed down before played to a crowd of about four people. Since there were no local bands on the bill, I opened with a solo Sewing Machines set, which was both fun and kinda awkward. When Green Grocer took the stage, I asked the minuscule crowd if they knew what Greenville’s vagrancy laws were, knowing full well that none of these people would put us up for the night. Nobody said anything, so we assumed it was a bad idea to sleep in the park, and we took off for DC immediately after loading the car.

We made remarkable time getting from Greenville to DC, and we’ll soon be meeting Dave “Invisible Circle” Kadden at the house of fellow Wes alum Howie Lampell. We’ll be playing tomorrow at Stacy’s Coffee with Dave and my old co-worker from the Orchard, Justyn with a Y. The backseat of the Prius feels remarkably spacious and I am painfully aware that this is the last time I will be this comfortable in the car for the duration of the tour. My interactions with Dave up to now have been relatively brief, but I am beyond excited to add another likeminded adventurer to the team. Shit, as the say, is about to get Real.

Sitting on a couch upstairs from a vintage boutique in Athens, GA after an incredible show at the Go Bar. Amazing bar, amazing bands, amazing people. Athens is everything that everyone says it is. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s rewind.

Murfreesboro.

A few important pieces of information about Murfreesboro:
1) Murfreesboro is a suburb of Nashville.
2) Murfreesboro has more churches than schools.
3) Murfreesboro has more chain restaurants than anyplace in the world.
4) Murfreesboro is home to two thirds of Green Grocer.
5) Murfreesboro is home to an organization called Youth Empowerment through Arts and Humanities, or YEAH! for short, a small NPO that teaches teenagers how to be awesome.

We rolled into town in the late afternoon, heading to Michael’s folks’ place for just long enough to shower, assemble some CDs, call my girlfriend and parents, and scarf down some pizza before hauling ass out to the boonies to load in for a YEAH-sponsored house show. Blasting Blonde On Blonde as psych-up music, we drove past a field full of cows and rolled up the driveway to a tiny farmhouse, where Ryan – the head honcho at YEAH and an old friend of the band – and a few other YEAH folks sat on a porch surrounded by citronella torches, drinking beer and waiting for the party to start.

We shot the shit for a good hour before people started showing up, most of them involved with YEAH in some capacity: teachers, administrators, volunteers, all awesome people. The first band was a folk duo named Mel and Hannah (not sure of last names, I’ll check facebook eventually). They played guitar and mandolin and harmonized beautifully. They covered REM and Radiohead and sang a bunch of beautiful originals. I got some videos. Much love, Mel and Hannah.

We played next. Much of the party stayed out on the porch for our set, but there were enough people in the room for us to feel the energy. Mel was visibly elated when we played the first line of “Kiss,” and sang along throughout the song. She later said some incredibly nice things about that song in particular and our band in general, regarding how much she loves 80s music, which pleased and amused me. I never really think of us as an 80s nostalgia act, although we often seem to get pegged that way. Not that I don’t see it. I mean, of course. We’ve got synths and a drum machine and reverby guitars and the same drum setup that Peter Gabriel used to use. But still, there’s more going on, right?

Most Amazing Century of Science (or MAC OS) followed us. They were a Braxtonian freak-out noise jazz (?) band with somewhere between seven and a billion members. It was hard to be sure. I went into the room they were playing in for about five seconds before the crowd and noise forced me back into the front room with the bar.

Earlier in the night, I had noticed an upright piano across from the bar and suggested to Michael that we have a little acoustic jam following the main attractions of the show. My interest in the idea flagged, but as soon as a mentioned the idea to Mai and Mel, it became very clear that it had to happen. I found a 5-string nylon guitar in the attic and started jamming in E while Mel improvised on the piano. Eventually she got (unnecessarily) shy and let Michael take the reins. Elliott plugged in his electric and we ran through “Lost Highway” and “So Slow” as a trio. After that Mel jumped back in and requested that we play “Creep.” I had never played it before, but once she told me the chords (G / B / C / Cm) we ran through it with a force that reminded me why I still love playing acoustic music. We closed it out with “A Little Rain,” and I honestly felt choked up to be playing a song I had written at the tender age of 19 to all these beautiful people who I had just met, but somehow loved deeply. It was that kinda night.

The party tapered out not long after that. We packed up our car and discovered that we were missing a keyboard stand and a guitar stand. Brandon dropped Michael off at his house before meeting Elliott and I at La Casa de Conley to hang out and play with Elliott’s psychotically energetic dog, Cosmo. I passed out feeling awesome, and slept like a baby on Ambien.

The next day, we woke around noon and went back to the Hurder House to meet up with Michael. Ryan, following our set the previous night, had offered to record us at the new and still un-renovated YEAH space. Needless to say we jumped at the opportunity, and began loading our stuff into the giant concrete room around 2 PM. Set up took longer than expected, as is always the case when recording, and we didn’t end up playing a note until around five; but Ryan’s professionalism and know-how were nothing short of staggering, and we managed to bang out two songs – “End of the World” and “Uppity” – before hauling ass up to Nashville for our gig at the 5 Spot.

Of course, after leaving an hour later than planned and panicking that we would be late, we beat the sound guy there by a full hour, so we went and got some pizza around the corner. We eventually meandered back in time to see Rachel Pearl and Robert LaSalle, two incredible opening acts with beautiful melodies and angelic voices. When the time came for us to take the stage, we felt more than warmed up from our whirlwind recording session, and we rocked the house for 45 minutes. It felt good.

After the show, we went to Michael’s friend Seth’s house, a beautiful and enormous old building owned by a church across the street where his rent is so cheap that I don’t feel comfortable repeating it here. Suffice it to say, it made me think moving to Nashville might not be so bad after all. We drank PBR and bullshat for a few hours about transsexuals, church, Nashville, Judaism, record collections, Pink Floyd, and Bonnaroo (in approximately that order) before heading back to M-boro. We listened to two Morphine albums on the way back (Yes and B-Sides and Otherwise), dropped off Elliott, and then Michael and I headed back to his house, where I passed out on his couch. “And She Was” came on the radio right as we pulled up to his street, and we sat in the car to listen to the whole thing. I remembered being a little kid and going to summer BBQs with the other families on my street, and that song would always play and the grownups would always love it. That song always reminds me of a simpler kind of fun and happiness that these days only seems possible when you’re doing something like driving across the country and playing shows in different cities every night. Does that make sense? I hope it does.

Monday morning, we wake up later than we planned, shower, drink coffee, and pack up the car. We need to pick up the mixes Ryan made for us and buy a new keyboard stand. After picking up the stand, we hit the road and put on the CD from Ryan, and it sounded FREAKING AWESOME. Like, screaming in the car as we’re listening kinda awesome. We listen to the CD twice and determine that whatever it takes, we’re coming back to Murfreesboro to record our first full-length. Nobody’s ever made us sound this good before, and we’re still reeling from it.

We have about a six-hour drive today, which means lots of music. It’s important to keep track of what you listen to, because on the road that’s how you measure the passage of time. We started with Blood On the Tracks, moved on to Exile In Guyville, and then, after I had started reading the 33 1/3 on Gilded Palace Of Sin, we put that on. Sticky Fingers followed. I fell asleep toward the end and woke up about halfway through Fun Trick Noise Maker, a fitting welcome to the city of Athens.

None of us had ever been to Athens before, though we had heard plenty of stories: Elephant 6, “college rock,” record stores and vegan eateries as far as the eye can see. Well, to borrow a phrase I learned from my last tour’s drummer / journal writer, this is one of those rare instances in which discourse matches material reality. We loaded into Go Bar, a tiny little bar with a patio that takes up an entire pie-shaped street corner. With an hour to kill before the show, we went next door to The Grit, an incredible vegetarian café that I will henceforth recommend to anyone who ever goes to Athens. The tofu reuben was a life-saver, and ample compensation for a sub-terrible lunch at Wendy’s.

We opened the show at around 10:30 PM to generous reception. By the time we got off stage, the patio was swimming with all stripes of hipsters, drinking and socializing and making merry on a Monday night. – cut off sleeves — Grape Soda, a drum-and-organ duo who might be my new favorite band, played next. They were rhythmic and textural and catchy as hell, kinda like Beach House-meets-Japanther or something. Really great stuff. DC’s The Ambulators (can’t find their myspace) followed with some catchy pop-punk jams, and local favs Witches closed things out. It was awesome. We still had no idea where we would be staying.

Eventually, Mercer, the show promoter, offered us a spot on his floor. He was working the next morning and said we could stay as long as we promised to be out before he had to work. We assured him that this would not be a problem, and he led us back to his place.

Mercer has a ten-year lease on a three-story building, living and recording on the top floor, building instruments on the bottom, and renting the middle out to a vintage shop. We talked for a while before he retired to record and sleep for the night – he says he likes to record an album every week or so. Turns out Mercer has been everywhere and met everyone in the entire world. We had (it turns out) seen his band Quiet Hooves play at Automatic Collective in Chicago some months ago; he played with Invisible Circle, our soon-to-be tourmate, a while ago and owns his tape; he’s played every venue we have, and every one we plan on playing; he goes up to New York every few months and we cannot wait to see him again.

After Mercer retired and Michael and Elliott entered dreamland on the floor and couch, respectively, I sat at my computer furiously typing to get as much of this down before I forgot it all, eventually giving up around 4:30 AM. It took me at least half an our to fall asleep, and three hours later I woke abruptly to Michael’s cell phone alarm. Time to go to Charleston, play two shows, and go to the beach with one of my oldest and dearest friends in the whole wide world.

Saturday 6/5/10

I’m sitting in the back seat of my car on I-65 South, about an hour north of Nashville. Michael is driving and Elliott is riding shotgun. Born To Run just ended and Satanic Panic in the Attic has just begun. We’re about six hours from playing what I anticipate (though I’m afraid to say it out loud) to be the best house show I’ve ever played. We’re playing a show out in rural Murfreesboro, organized by someone named Ryan, from whom Michael claims to have learned everything he knows about being in a band. We’re playing with two pop-punk bands and a freak-out noise band. There will be old friends who Michael and Elliott haven’t seen in years. Needless to say, spirits are high and so are expectations.

So far the tour is off to a fantastic start. We had our first show on Wednesday, three days ago at Chicago’s legendary Empty Bottle. We’ve wanted to play there for as long as we can remember, and we really couldn’t have hoped for a better way to say “goodbye for three weeks” to the city that has been our home for the past few years. We had our first ever pre-show sound check, during which the sound guy, Kenny – a Woody Allen-meets-Joey Ramone looking dude in vintage Screeching Weasel t-shirt – exchanged jokes with the band. We started safe with drummer jokes, but quickly proceeded to more risqué topics. It was awesome. He made us sound amazing.

Turnout was beautiful – Brad heckled; Sneza and Lyndee danced; we sold two CDs to a British couple who wandered in off the street; and two kids who had seen us play our first show with this lineup a full ten months ago at Locked Out came out and told us we had grown immeasurably as a band since they had seen us last. We finally started a mailing list, and walked away with enough to cover gas for the first several days.

Thursday, our only day without a confirmed show for maybe three weeks, was spent packing, preparing, and trying desperately not to freak out too much. Laundry, oil change, mailing out CDs and posters, updating iPods, seeing friends…there was much to do and little time to do it; but everything worked out in the end, and even though we still have about 100 CD cases to assemble, we hit the road feeling prepared.

Nick helped us out by doing our dishes before we went wheels up. We had to turn around a few times because our roof rack was too heavy and making dents in the roof every time we went over a speed bump. Eventually we hit the highway (in heavy traffic) to the essential soundtrack of Highway 61 Revisited followed by Loaded. Almost immediately after we started Aquemini, the heavens opened up and unleashed a torrential downpour on our little car. I drove through it, but soon felt the need to nap in the back seat. Michael took the wheel and I passed out almost immediately, waking up about 90 minutes later to side B of A Hard Day’s Night. We were almost in Indianapolis, with moments to spare before our 9 PM load-in.

As we got out of the car in front of Vollrath Tavern, we checked our phones and realized that we had crossed a time zone and were in fact an hour late for load-in, but neither the band, Finer, nor the promoter/bartender, Matt, seemed to care. We loaded in and had a brief sound check (I think I could get used to those) before a few complimentary PBRs. Matt warned us that turnout would probably be slim, but we reassured him that we were happy to play to anyone who made it out.

Due to complete and utter exhaustion, our set was a little on the sloppy side, but the energy was surprisingly high and everyone in the room seemed impressed. Matt told us that the usual crowd at Vollrath (hipsters) would have loved our band, and that we needed to come back and do a show with My Old Kentucky Blog. We were pleased and flattered, despite the fact that we probably wouldn’t get paid. We each got another free PBR and a bottle of water and posted up to watch Finer, a last-minute addition to the bill. Finer play a shockingly infectious brand of 90s revivalism that Michael described as “a combination of Monster-era REM and Primus.” I heard some Jeff Buckley and some other stuff, but that pretty much sums it up. Finer are fronted by Stacy, a ball of energy who reminded me vaguely of a peppy, Jewish Patti Smith. She is married to the bassist, Ethan, a remarkably short (and this is me talking) man with enormous biceps who would sometimes lean on his wife while taking solos on his five-string bass. It was very difficult to stop smiling during their set.

After we loaded up, Matt handed us our spoils – enough for half a tank of gas, and along with the free beer, more than enough to make the night worth our while. We followed Ethan and Stacy back to their house, stopping at Kroger’s on the way for a variety of Amy’s frozen dinners. We went to their house, ate, and promptly fell asleep on the floors of three different rooms. We woke up today around 11 am and were on the road by noon. We left Finer with a copy of our CD, and they left us with Finer t-shirts and a brilliantly timed Princess Bride routine:

Ethan: “Goodbye! Have fun storming the castle!”
Stacy: “Do you think it’ll work?”
Ethan: “It would take a miracle.”

We began the day with Chelsea Girl and McDonald’s coffee. Is This It? And Fall Be Kind followed. Eventually, we stopped at a gas station / Subway about halfway through Born To Run. When there were no paper towels in the bathroom, I had to violently resist the urge to wipe my hands on the Confederate flags that the gas station sold. We are now clearly entering what I have always called “enemy territory,” and what Michael and Elliott have always called “home.” As I type this, we’re rolling up on the Nashville Skyline and listening to Rubber Soul. Waffle House as far as the eye can see. It’s gonna be a good weekend.

Highlights

“…synth-pop, caressed warmly with an understated accompaniment of distant guitars providing a rich backdrop for what we consider to be the overwhelming allure of this music project. Vocals of frontman Michael Hurder are explained as “barks, growls, croons and screams” but our interest was quickly drawn away from the press release as we began listening to his voice. An instant comparison to Grant Hart developed to the point of us having to double-check band photos to be sure this wasn’t a covert resurrection of Nova Mob. Hints of Ian McCulloch’s vocal stylings seem to be an influence as well…Most definitely a darker shade of pretty where late 80s-centered psychedelia is concerned.”

Just Added:

Friday 3/9/10
*Green Grocer*
*Pet Peeve*
*Scarlet Monk and Her Orchestra*

The Horseshoe
4115 N. Lincoln Ave.
Chicago, IL

9 PM

New songs. Cheap beer. Texas BBQ.