Boys and girls, the 6th Annual Noise For Toys Benefit Concert is upon us! I know. It seems like we were just hosting the 5th Annual Noise For Toys Benefit Concert, doesn’t it? But I learned how to read a calendar this year, and sure as shootin,’ the calendar I’m looking at says it’s December again! Man alive, time flies when you spend most of your time blacked out on Sugar Free Red Bull. We tried to have Christmas postponed by a couple weeks so we’d have more time to rehearse our Christmas songs, but Jesus said “No,” and well, quite frankly there’s no arguing with the son of God.

This will be our 3rd year hosting Noise For Toys in Chicago, and believe me when I say it’s going to be wild night. Expect lots of Christmas music, loads of tacky Christmas decorations, an ugly sweater contest, and some special guest performers (including members of a previous Noise For Toys band whose name rhymes with Fartsy Scowl & The Sexports)! All proceeds at the door go to Toys For Tots, an organization that provides children in need with gifts. As always, we’ll be collecting unopened toy donations at the door for a discounted ticket price of ONLY $5! 

Thanks to Midwest Action for sponsoring the event. Check out their preview of the event HERE.

Saturday, December 14, 2013

Midwest Action Presents:

Noise For Toys: A Benefit For Chicago Toys For Tots

Subterranean

2011 W North Ave, Chicago, IL 60647

Featuring: The Noise FM, Blane Fonda, Chasing Mars, Board of Governors

8:30pm 

Ages 17+

Tickets Available HERE

Facebook Event HERE

Poster design by the Mawk Mawk Mawk of Blane Fonda. I’m almost positive that’s a candy cane with eyeballs. Thank god no one under the age of 17 can attend this event because this poster would scare the hell out of the kids. Hell, I’m a grown ass man and it terrifies me.

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We’re returning home on Saturday, December 21 to host Noise For Toys in Kansas City at Riot Room for the first time ever! We’re excited to share the stage with some of our favorite Kansas City bands as well as some very special guests. This is going to be a doozy, I tell ya. Tickets are $8 or ONLY $4 with the donation of an unopened toy.

Saturday, December 21, 2013

Noise For Toys: A Benefit For Kansas City Toys For Tots

Riot Room

4048 Broadway, Kansas City, MO 64111

Featuring: The Noise FM, We Are Voices, Shy Boys, Rooms Without Windows

8:00pm

Ages 21+

TICKETS AVAILABLE HERE

FACEBOOK EVENT HERE

 * I don’t want to say this is the greatest promotional video ever, but…. this is probably the greatest promotional video ever.

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We recently returned to Chicago’s Vocalo.org 90.7 FM for a taping of Live From Studio 10 on Navy Pier. This is truly one of Chicago’s neatest podcasts and performances, and we were honored to be invited into the studio.

We played songs from “Attraction” and were interviewed by Live From Studio 10 host Jesse Menendez in a series of increasingly awkward questions. If you need 51 minutes of background noise (punctuated with uncomfortable silences) while you go about your day, then LISTEN TO THE PODCAST HERE. Also, I realize that “background noise” comment makes for a pretty good pun considering our band name and all. You’re welcome.

Thanks to Live From Studio 10 producer Fyodor Sakhnovski and engineer Adam Yoffe for being great dudes to work with.

YOU CAN GET YOUR HANDS ON HARD COPIES OF “ATTRACTION” NOW AT ANY OF THE FOLLOWING LOCATIONS!

- Vinyl Renaissance, 1415 W 39th Street, Kansas City, Missouri 64111

- Mills Record Company, 314 Westport Road, Kansas City, Missouri 64111

- Love Garden Sounds, 822 Massachusetts, Lawrence, KS 66044

Or order “Attraction” through our STORE and we’ll ship you the record immediately along with a limited edition poster from our Chicago record release show:

Poster designed by Ryan Lynch. Look closely: that’s our cat Mr. Budget (RIP, little guy) destroying a city with his laser eyes. It’s inspired by the true story.

You can pick up a hard copy of “Attraction” now, but the record will not OFFICIALLY be released until Tuesday, January 28, 2014 on the label The Record Machine.

“But wait,” you might be asking, and justifiably so, “Didn’t you just say you can already get the new record?”

Yes. The answer is yes. But not really. Trust us, we’re confused too.

Long story short, a good opportunity came up for the band to do a bigger release than if we just released the record on our own. However, that means pushing the OFFICIAL release back by a couple of months. It’s a lot of behind the scenes stuff you probably don’t want to hear about, ya know, like how Hugh Jackman works out for 9 hours a day on a daily diet of 12,000 calories for 10 months to get in shape as Wolverine but you don’t care about all that prep work because all you want to see is him in a tank top with bulging veins chopping wood along the shores of Japan. Just know that “Attraction” will be released worldwide on January 28 and it’s going to shred your ear drums like a set of adamantium claws. In a good way.

The release of “Attraction” is exactly like Hugh Jackman chopping wood in Japan.

In theory, at exactly 12AM on Tuesday, January 28, you’ll be able to hear “Attraction” on Spotify or Pandora or iTunes or wherever else the internets exist. We’re modeling the online release off the Obamacare Health Insurance website so we have a pretty good feeling that everything is going to work out just fine.

Pick up a copy of “Attraction” now because these make great stocking stuffers for the holiday season. Seriously. We literally designed this CD in the shape of a stocking. We’re probably the first band to ever pull this off. The shape of the record makes it unplayable in almost every CD player, but that’s a sacrifice we had to make to be on the cutting edge of the music business. We’re pioneers of bad ideas.

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Austin and Alex recently sat down for an extended interview with Inside The Machine on Machine.FM.

In a rare attempt at seriousness, we talk about the band’s history, various line-up changes over the years, the development of our sound, the writing process behind all of our previous albums, and why we think “Attraction” is worthy of your time. It’s a long interview, but there’s some solid gold nuggets of truth buried in there. Time to go digging!

CHECK OUT THE PODCAST HERE

It was dubbed the “Attraction Tour,” but there’s really nothing attractive about 4 dudes waking up in a pile of sweat after sleeping overnight on the floor of a van. You might associate the word “tour” with the stereotypical images of sex, drugs, rock & roll and all-around good times. You would be wrong.

“Tour” is driving for 5 hours in a van that smells like farts trying to find coffee shops with free wifi. And then playing a 30 minute set in a city where no one has ever heard of you. Probably Baltimore.

And it’s absolutely awesome. This was without a doubt one of the most fun tours we’ve been on. Thank you so much to all of the new friends and bands we met in Chicago, Cincinnati, Baltimore, NYC, Boston, D.C., Kansas City, St. Louis, Lawrence and beyond. It was also an honor to perform in New York as an official CMJ artist. That’ll look good on the resume.

If you’re on the social medias, you can check out the hashtag #AttractionTour on Instagram to see all of the tour pics.

We brought along our talented friend and photographer Jim Vondruska of DoomsDayRobot to document the shenanigans.

Friends, a word of advice:

If you want to look good even when you haven’t slept in four days or showered in five, bring along a professional photographer. It just makes good sense.

The man, the myth, the legend, Mr. Jim Vondruska of DoomsDayRobot, ladies and gentlemen. (Mostly ladies.)

We kicked things off with the “Attraction” record release show in Chicago on Friday, October 11 at Township in Logan Square. Joining us were our good friends and former Lawrence, Kansas-roommates Cowboy Indian Bear, and Chicago indie-rockers The Kickback.

The Chicago release show was a most memorable night if only because we managed to answer the age-old question, “How many musicians does it take to butcher the classic Rolling Stones hit ‘Miss You?‘”

11. The answer is 11 according to this video:

In retrospect we should NOT have allowed Austin to sing a song. He insisted on being lifted above the crowd for the entire duration.

Joining us onstage for our set was our engineer/mixer/producer and ORIGINAL Party Captain, Mr. Greg Panciera.

Austin milking his moment for everything it’s worth. The other musicians are just trying to keep up.

Prior to the Chicago record release show we met up with our friends at Fearless Radio to talk Halloween costumes, that girl from the “Blurred Lines” video, the government shutdown, and, oh yeah, the new record.

Check out the Fearless Radio podcast HERE if you have 43 minutes and some brain cells to kill.

We also met up with our friend Jaime Black for an interview with Dynasty Podcasts in which we discussed the Chicago music scene, Gravity in Imax 3D (“GO BIG OR GO HOME: GRAVITY IMAX IN 3D”), and, oh yeah, the new record.

HERE’s 23 minutes of semi-coherent thoughts in the Dynasty Podcasts Interview.

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Check out Tankboy’s preview of the Chicago concert over at Chicagoist where the show was labelled one of the Top 3 Chicago Concerts of the weekend:

“…Attraction takes all of their strengths—new wave, power pop and a smidge of soul—and ties them all together in their strongest offering to date…”

The good folks at Midwest Action recommended the show as well saying:

“…Originally from Kansas, the Chicago trio plays fast, fun, indie-rock with pop sensibilities. Album standouts include “Scam Artist”, “Fools”, and the criminally catchy, “Every Other Word”…”

We spent a remarkable amount of time on tour standing in front of walls. Here we found ourselves standing in front of a wall that said “VILLAIN.” You’re not missing any context. It just said “VILLAIN.” And we stood in front of it.

Here’s a shot of us walking into the beautiful sunset over Boston. Moments later we were struck by oncoming traffic after being blinded by the beautiful sunset over Boston.

A fantastic video installation at the Hirschhorn Museum of Art in D.C. that you can’t see because it was projected on to a wall and we like to stand in front of walls.

See, we told you.

Here’s Austin reflected in Alex’s glasses. This is probably like a metaphor or something.

We met up with our friends and Alex’s bandmates in Archie Powell & The Exports in New York and immediately crammed as many of our friends into our van as possible because we wanted them to experience “tour.”

Here’s Austin at the end of the tour. Spend several nights sleeping in a van and eating nothing but McDonald’s snack wraps and your skin would be yellowed with jaundice also.

At one point Austin found a stray dog in Brooklyn and carried him around for 3 hours. We’re not sure what ended up happening to him. Austin, that is. The dog is perfectly fine.
*Nope. We’re not sure why this picture is on its side either.