“The Battle” – Photo by Riki Feldman

We are on tour with Mates of State. It’s been pretty intense. In 3 days we played in New York, San Francisco and Portland. We’ve been flying everywhere and renting new gear every day. So it’s a little bit different from the car tours we’ve been doing in Judgement Day.

Conan O’Brien was super fun. We all shook Conan’s hand which was pretty sweet. One of the questions that everyone keeps asking me is “is he tall?”. He’s definitely tall but after all of the build up I have to say he really didn’t seem that mind-blowingly tall. I might just say above-average height. La Bamba played trombone on our set too. He’s awesome. He wished us good luck on our tour and told us he missed touring himself.

If you want to see the Conan performance click here.

Lewis and I have been jamming a bunch on our breaks too and coming up with some cool new Judgement Day ideas. It’s been even more productive for us than when we’re home. We’re also thinking about pulling some guerrilla moves at some of the upcoming shows and playing some Judgement Day songs in the crowd before the show or something. We’ll see…

Finally, our good friend Nate Heller from Wendy Darling did a sweet remix of Coda in E Major from Opus 3: Acoustic. I think it sounds great so we’ve got it here for our free download of the week:

Producer Nate Heller
Coda in E major *REMIX* MP3

-anton

Lewis and I have been in Stratford, Connecticut this past week practicing with The Mates of State. We’re joining them for about a month of touring. It’s been totally fun so far. We’re not just playing violin and cello. Lewis is also playing trombone and tambourine and I’m playing guitar, glockenspiel and egg shaker. We’re also both singing… or yelling. Whatever you want to call it.

Mates of State – “Get Better” video

The Practice Space

Check out the Mates of State blog here.

Kori and Jason Hammel (The Mates of State) must be the sweetest couple in rock’n roll. We’ve been staying in the attic at their house and they’ve been taking great care of us, throwing barbecues and letting us clean out their refrigerator. They have two beautiful daughters, Magnolia who is four years old and June who is four months old. On our first day here Magnolia put on a concert for us with tambourine, ukulele, penny whistle and improvised lyrics, mostly about really long walks.

Magnolia Hammel

There’s also this crazy cat here named Rhue. She’s really friendly for the most part but every once in a while she gets possessed and starts running around the room and hissing. It was pretty scary at first but now we’re used to it.

Rhue

The first show is on Friday here in Connecticut and the second show is Conan O’Brien. Yes, that’s right. We’re going to be on Conan next Tuesday night, so you should tune in. Lewis is going to be playing a trombone duet with La Bamba.

After that we’ll be heading to the west coast and then to the rest of the US:

See you there!

-anton

Anton and Lewis in the Kitchen

The new acoustic ep is here.