Tour: Closure (📢 Stoop Chat)

🎬 It has come to this 💐

And that’s (just about) a wrap on the SHOW LOBES tour. 🏁 We have a two-lobed cherry🍒 to plop on top this week: Philly tomorrow night (our 352nd show at Johnny Brenda’s), and NYC Friday (at trusty Bowery Ballroom). But the last big contiguous run of North America came to a close in DC a few days ago, and we are now swimming in a sea of relief, disbelief, and pride at what is undeniably a good, solid year of touring. (Form your arguments and share them below — we doubt you’ll be able to convince an impartial third party that 2023’s SHOW LOBES touring wasn’t good, yet solid.)

Here to discuss this is us, Keith and Chris:

A hearty welcome to our newest subscribers…

If you signed up for our “mailing list” while visiting the merch booth at one of our recent shows, this may be your first sense of the repercussions. Welcome to Slow Descent Into Radness. FYI, we often send out songs, as in this recent series of posts that dribbled out an acoustic version of the latest album.

Sometimes we do “stoop chats,” as demonstred above, which are like podcasts but drunker (here’s a nice one we did a couple weeks ago with tour-mate and pro-podcaster Brett Newski).

And occasionally we just type, type, type. But that’s uncommon.

All our posts are free, but if you sign up for a paid subscription, we promise to use your fees to buy beer that we ingest. (Many newsletters make the beer promise but then dump the drinks down the drain 🥺.) (There will also be occasional perks for paid subscribers, such as the ability to download the acoustic Lobes album (coming this Friday🥲✨).)

Please make yourself at home in the comments by sharing thoughts on We Are Scientists, the films of S. Craig Zahler, or whatever topic is drawing your fancy of late. Just please don’t reignite The Great Gollum vs. Jar-Jar Debate — after nearly 500,000 comments in the first half of 2023 alone, the S.D.I.R. community has agreed to table TGGvJJD discussion until Star Wars: Easter On Hoth airs next year.

A couple things of interest…

1. Zeno Pittarelli, who plays bass in the Sean McVerry band (our support on half of the recent tour, and this week’s Philly and NYC shows), has released a bunch of music recently, including a great double-whammy yesterday that you will surely admire.

2. We’ve heard a rumor, over the years, that “Nobody Move” is popular for pole dancers. Like, not strippers, per se, but just people who want to learn to pole dance, and so they pick a song to dance to, and this song is a popular choice. Maybe strippers also like it? Probably, right?? Anyway, we were never sure whether to believe it, but Azealia Banks has put our doubt to rest.

3. Sean McVerry, unsurprisingly a member of the Sean McVerry act, also released a new tune recently, and it’s a beaut. He’s been opening his set with “Covering My Eyes” at our shows, and it’s a wonderful feeling to have it frozen inside our iPads. If you’ve caught it live, you remember it. If you haven’t yet, make a plan.

Warming up is not just a game of drinks.

Thanks, fren. We’ve got a damn good acoustic cover coming to here early next week, so now would be a tragic time to smash your laptop, frisbee your phone, and go off the grid.

Stay sane, stirred, and sorrowful, in appropriate measure.

💖,

Keith & Chris