Silversun Pickups / Viva Voce tour 'zine

Silversun Signs Off

From vocalist Brian:

the end.
and what a way to go.
just like kevin said, it couldn't have been more grand.

this tour was crazy. it started out with such insanity and instead of winding down, it just got crazier.

here we go.

BOISE ID

we arrived at NEUROLUX just in time for a heavily bearded man to greet us, tell us we made it through mormonville (assuming he meant utah), and skidded away on his bicycle giggling to himself about the rights and wrongs in the human condition. nice. we've never been to boise and i still feel like i haven't. we had to leave immediately after the show so we could do some radio stuff in seattle. lame. i really wanted to hang out for a bit in the town. the show was so much fun. people were dancing all over the place. i also think they were heavily drinking well before any of us got there. nice. did some shots with the lovely bartender ("NOT A DROP") and headed for an overnight drive (thanks todd) to...

SEATTLE WA

well well well. yikes. didn't quite expect it. dang. crazy. played a set on KEXP (where was cheryl? hmmm.) and then i had to seriously rush to THE END so i could do an acoustic song for them. all great people. met the lovely gibson kids who threw down for a new case for me. and now, ladies and gentlemen, THE CROCODILE. i'm gonna have to bring back the HIGHLIGHTS portion of my blog to sum this deal up.

HIGHLIGHTS: getting two japanese kids into the show who came from japan to see us, anita and kevin VOCE coming up and playing LAZY EYE with us, while we were playing i would look over to the side of the stage and see the mayhem that was happening in our backstage room spill out onto the stage, gavin KINGDOM coming up and accepting his MVP award for the tour, gavin then stage diving into the audience, the audience picking gavin back up and setting him back on the stage ever so gently, gavin leaving us a present in our van, gavin, record listening games/ jewlery making/ black out jam sessions in our man dave dupuis' basement, and a partridge in a pear tree. we love seattle.

PORTLAND OR

now here's where i got the shakes from all the unhealthy tour like things one does on tour. i played an in store acoustically and i thought i was going to throw up the whole time. my body was telling me that the tour was done. "but body, just one more, please?". "OK bri, but you owe me". this show was just all class. i love the doug fir. it's just so band friendly. saw a ton of our old friends who hung out with us all night. shared a hug or two with our new fiends from the tour. everyone played great. the crowd was beautiful. it was just a top notch end to a whirlwind of a tour. oh yeah, and i learned that spiderman and the statue of liberty like to make out (halloween, you got me again).

wrap it up sir.
ok.

so now i'm at home here in LA at my desk, gearing up for CMJ and the wolfmother tour. it's hard to really reflect on what has happened because it just becomes your life. this tour and our previous tour just consumed us and it became what we are. we were a family with these bands and those people who came to multiple shows. it's hard for me to look at it all with a clear head. it just was. i'm in the decompression part of the whole coming home scenario. let's just say this, when you're out on the road with two bands for a month, and you watch them every night, it's a good sign that when you're done with it all and you're safe and sound in your comfortable home, you immediately want to listen to their records. which is what i'm doing.

charles, jenna, evan, zach, gavin, kevin, anita, chris, kim, dave, todd, joe, christopher, and nikki.
thank you.

and thank YOU for coming out and making this tour the best and craziest thing we've ever done thus far.

love brian

Silversun Sounds Off

An update from Nikki..

hello. . .

we just finished our last show of the tour. . .  we've had a lovely time with viva voce and the kingdom and coming home will be bitter sweet.

here are some more pictures taken along the way.

love.

nikki.

Voice Of Voce

From drummer Kevin:

1,2,3. Boise, Seattle, and of course...Portland. The rock trifecta. This tour went out with a 3 punch stompbox knockout. Boise set the bar incredibly high...Seattle ended with instruments in piles of ketchup and stage dives from inebriated guitar players & Portland was the icing on the rock fist cake.

Yes. Portland. Last nights sold-out homecoming was a proud moment for us. After playing the same batch of tunes for more than a month...there was the final rush of finish-line adrenalin and with a full-tour-entourage-sing-along for "We Do Not Fuck Around"...I must admit I teared up. Watching your hometown people who paid to come see your band raise their hands and sing along can do that to you.

We were eager to get home... happily obliged one encore tune & again, had everyone clap and sing along to "Special Thing".

Everyone left smiling. Including us.

And so it ended.

This tour has been an adventure. I'd be lying if I said it was smooth sailing at every turn - but that's what touring is. Navigating the rough waters is the true test. The S.S.Viva has landed and a successful mission accomplished.

The folks who come to shows...and who are probably reading this blog, are usually (and thankfully) oblivious to the drama, comedy, and horror that happens to bands in the period between stage-time to stage-time. In a 4 week tour like this one...less than 24 hours are actually spent on the stage performing. Not one full day. So there's 3 weeks and 29 days of nothing but trying to keep your head on straight to make that brief 45 minutes, every night, worth every second.

It's a crazy lifestyle - I'll admit. And it's not for everyone, as we discovered on this tour.

However...there is nothing else like it. And we love it. Meeting people every night - leaving a bit of yourself behind to hopefully make things a little brighter.

I hope this tour did that.

I tip my hat to everyone who came.

We couldn't have toured with a sweeter and talented bunch of musicians.

We now share a bond closer than brothers with the Silversun Pickups and The Kingdom and wish them both wild success.

So now....I'll sign off for Viva Voce.

Thank you for coming to our shows. Thanks for shaking our hands and getting us sick. Thanks for buying our records and singing along. Don't fuck around....life is too short.

We love ya'll & see you soon.
Sincerely,
Kevin & Anita Robinson (aka. Viva Voce)

Snow-Globe Universe On Portland

Snow-Globe Universe On Portland:

...Despite this being their last show of a 4-week tour, their energy was through the roof. As they started with "Meletonin," I found myself intrigued by the unique bass stylings of Nikki Monninger. It crackled like distortion through an old amp, really welcoming attention to Nikki's skilled bass lines. "Kick ASS!" was screamed loudly into my ear as lead singer Brian Aubert happily asked us how they sounded...

Kingblind on Seattle

Kingblind reports back from the Seattle show:

...The highlight for me was when Kevin and Anita from Viva Voce came out and played the song "Lazy Eye" with them and Zach from Kingdom did a stage dive into the crowd. The ending of "Lazy Eye" was nearly as long as the song itself but no one cared or even noticed...

Voice Of Voce

From drummer Kevin:

Boise. Boy...see - probably my favorite show of the tour. We do have two more nights...but this will be pretty damn hard to beat. I'm pretty much running out of witty crap to write...so I'll just wrap this one up by saying tonight was nothing short of magic!

cheers & see you next time.

xo - kevin

KGB on Denver

KGB.FM has all the details from the Denver, CO show:

...Silversun Pickups made a memorable first appearance in Denver on Tuesday night with Kingdom and Viva Voce at the Hi-Dive. The set list featured all my faves including Kissing Families, Little Lover So Polite and Lazy Eye. Great crowd. Definitely the show of the year. Let's hope SSPU makes it back here and soon!...

Silversun Sounds Off

From vocalist Brian:

look at this. i'm keeping up.

we are all drinking wine in some odd shaped freezing hotel somewhere in utah. todd, who just joined us on loan from sea level records, in formed me that we are in SALINA. done and done.

we arrived in DENVER yesterday to pick up our before mentioned friend, TODD, at his folks place. we then gorged on that weird honey dipped crust casserole style thing they call a pizza around here. this might've been where my eye got attacked. now... MANIA TV, zach from the KINGDOM's excessive humping, wonderful show at the HIGH DIVE, or a DRESSY BESSY dance party could not help my poor eye. it just got in the way. it itches, hurts and makes me want to peel something. it's fiery red and has a disctinct sulfur like odor. this last part is untrue. but you know who did smell like sulfur...

we met up with our goodfriends IRVING somewhere between DENVER and ???, up in the snowy mountains, drinking beer, and throwing balls of whats its today. they just got back from visiting a hot springs. so they stunk a bit. sulfur all over. but we were happ to see 'em. after we sent them off, we drove through a whole lotta different looking, tasting, smelling snowstorms. pretty. scary. and now we're here.

i'm gonna try an make the other sspu's write something right now. trust me... now would be a good time.

love brian

halo.
ich bin nikki.
ich habe etwas fur dich, aber nicht so fast.
kusses.
nikki.

Silversun Sounds Off

From vocalist Brian:

ok ok, sorry.
busy bees and all.
i am writing from a very cold AMES, IA.
awaiting our show.

here's what happened since we last spoke...

WASHINGTON DC

after a days rest, we were back at it. met the camp at IOTA, a really cool little venue. enjoyed the
beautiful drive into DC. met up with some old friends from our previous DC show. that felt nice. we always love seeing familliar faces. stayed up too late, woke up too early.

NEW YORK

nikki and i had to catch a train early (really f'n) so we could do our segment on mtv2's subterranean. weary eyed and a bit blitzy, NYC was a shock to the system. i love it there, but once you are there, it's go time. the MTV2 heads were nice. the fake basement was fun. the mtv radio interview lady was a joy to talk to. menwhile, christopher, joe, and dave dupuis were dealing with heinous traffic, pouring rain, and traffic due to an airborn yankee. we met up at the mercury lounge, slept in the club for 15 minutes, i did an little acoustic in store at the great OTHER MUSIC, met up with our cellist tanya haden for her birthday, played the show, loved it, aand then slep in the van because we were blocked in. nice.

the next day, after we made it to our friends place, we moved around the city a bit here and there. arrived at the bowery ballroom totally excited. i love seeing shows there and felt so lucky we were able to play there. THE KINGDOM killed again. VIVA VOCE sounded excellent as always. we loved playing there. after party at a bar across the way was a bit debaucherous. i danced with some new zealanders, i served drinks, i told the dj what to do, i was a tyrant... a fun loving tyrant. everyone we met was wonderful. and only one of us had to sleep in the van...

PHILADELPHIA

wow. what can we say. what a surprise. we did a Y ROCK session on XPN. it was great playing in george, my favorite bug. johnny brendas is a great new venue. really good looking and great sounding. dave bought a guitar, we bought sandwiches. hmm. the crowd at the show was so enthusiastic, we were just stunned. one of our favorite shows. we look forward to coming back. wooty.

BOSTON

two days in this lovely city. played for some really nice folks at BU. while kevin voce did some hippity hoppity (which we were bummed that we missed), we spent most of the first eve on top of a building in the middle of the city for a friend's oktoberfest party. cold winds, colder beers, warm sausages, hot shots of this that and the other, and hasselhoff. the next morning, we strolled along the city to a once a year art gallery opening thingy. a lot of galleries open all together and have little parties. wine and cheese please. zipped to the MIDDLE EAST, and played another one of our favorite shows. it was great seeing all of you. you know who you are. hotel party followed. poor poor hotel. one of my personal favorite things when we go to boston is all of our non stop awful kennedy impressions. seriously, we can not
stop... you had to be there... and you might have been.

oops. i gotta go. voce just sound checked and we're up...
i'll be back.
more shit happened, i swear.
to be continued...

love brian

Comfort Comes On Chicago

Comfort Comes has all the details on the Chicago, IL show:

..."Kissing Families” melds into the similar “Lazy Eye” that finds Aubert glued with his mouth to the mike. The room is fully moving now, threatening to become a mosh-pit (which in this crowded area means that most of us will certainly die), and is only halted when Aubert falls to the floor for a third time. This time he rolls into the audience, and delivers two minutes of feedback mess from this roost...