Sam Tremble, of Philly band Hermit Thrushes, is Clogging on tour.

Everyone’s trying to sleep. I’m eating donuts. There are three bands sleeping here at The New Deli in Fayetteville tonight. I’m eating all their donuts.

Before the New Deli show we played the weekly feature show on KXUA radio. Check it out! (click on our sweet promo pic to download a podcast version of the show)

We also had a profile in the Fayetteville Flyer. Sweet! We’ll be back here in exactly week to play at the Smoke and Barrel with hometown heroes Rad Racket and Grandchildren.

Tomorrow we have another long drive to Ft. Worth, Texas, where we play with our buds quiet hooves and This Bike is a Pipe Bomb. Our other buds, Mose Giganticus, won’t make it due to bus problems. Balls, right?

Sam Tremble, of Philly band Hermit Thrushes, is Clogging on tour.

We’re back in Murfreesboro, TN at House Pride’s new location. The new spot has a stage in the living room, a tree fort, and an archery range. Incidentally, we are playing with Bows and Arrows from Nashville tonight, along with Invisible Hand from Virginia.

After the show we’re getting right on the road to make it to Fayetteville, AR by 6 p.m. for an in-studio performance on KXUA 88.3 FM. Tune in!

Sam Tremble, of Philly band Hermit Thrushes, is Clogging on tour.

Finally, it’s cool to care again. Hermit Thrushes are on tour to Texas and back. We just signed to a new label out of Bloomington, IN called Joyful Noise Recordings. We cleaned out the bus. Andrew trimmed his beard a bit. Nick and Yianni are blowing up music after taking a little break. Brian is living clean. I sewed up all the holes in my favorite shirt and pants. Our touring family is a little bit bigger and bright-eyed this time around, too.

We picked up Gater at the Baltimore Travel Plaza on the way to our first show in Blacksburg, VA.  His girlfriend back home in West Virginia dumped him right before he lost his job. He sold his motorcycle to start over in Texas.

Greg is shooting video for his ionlyshoot4money.com. He has a nice hat and doesn’t mind showing it off.

Elizabeth Devlin is playing a few shows at SXSW and filling in for our busted tape deck on the bus.

Cheryl is reading a book I let her borrow 2 months ago and playing Simpsons chess with Jeff from Facepaint.

Laila was visiting a friend and left with her after our first show last night.

I’ll let you know how it goes along the way.

Sincerely,

Sam / Hermit Thrushes

CP contributor Sam Tremble and his band Hermit Thrushes are touring — or at least trying to.

We’re back in Greenville, NC, the magical home of impossible dreams (slathered in BBQ sauce). The Spazzatorium, up until recently, was probably the best place to play on the East Coast, but the authorities shut it down. We’ll miss you, Spazz.

We played at 21:11, a fancy-shmancy beer and wine store. We camped out across the street at the 24-hour Sheetz.

We’ll be home soon and we’re all looking forward to being broke and sedentary. At least we have a few shows coming up: Hermit Thrushes are playing Johnny Brenda’s on Aug. 20th with Panther and Bear is Driving. Roger Martinez from Br’er is also playing at Johnny Brenda’s with his band The Private Sea on August 16th.

myenchantedworld.com

CP contributor Sam Tremble and his band Hermit Thrushes are touring — or at least trying to.

What would you do in this situation?

It’s a hot summer evening and everything around you is melting as you’re having a drink outside on a bar’s patio. A man dressed in full camo with an olive sweater and jacket walks down the sidewalk towards you. As he gets closer, you see he has a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle mask on top of his head. It’s either Raphael or Michaelangelo, but it’s hard to tell under the strange light of the bar and setting sun. He singles you out and reveals an assault rifle under his coat.

“You know anyone who wants this?”

What do you say?

If you’re Luis, the drummer from our tourmates Br’er, you play it cool.

“Naa man, I’m from out of town. Don’t know anyone here — just here to play a show.”

Rock and Roll! We played Athens (apparent home of disgruntled TMNT fans), Atlanta and Macon this weekend. North Carolina is next. It’s about 4:30 a.m. right now and I’m staying at Secret Squirrel, unsure whether I’m dream typing or real-life typing.

CP contributor Sam Tremble and his band Hermit Thrushes are touring — or at least trying to.

We’re in the South by way of Bloomington, Louisville and Nashville. Tonight, we play in Murfreesboro, Tenn. and get back on our original schedule and route. Our little detour down I-65, while financially crippling, has been very productive and educational; we will totally destroy fall tour. We played four shows in Chicago, two in Bloomington, made some contacts in Louisville and played again in Nashville last night, all the while distributing our new CD, Benaki. Not so bad.

This advice for hard times comes directly from our trumpet/keyboard/glockenspiel/bodyguard Nick Bronson’s private tour diary, which I guess I’m supposed to KEEP OUT! of:

“When things don’t work out the way you want — fight. Mostly amongst yourselves. Point fingers. Never have a good time. Be broke, but spend money anyway. Hate everyone in secret and aloud. Dissent and mating go hand in hand. Duh!“

CP contributor Sam Tremble and his band Hermit Thrushes are touring — or at least trying to.

I’m gonna give to ya without any trivia: The bus is fixed. Rebuilt transmission. New tires — we all know that a blowout can be fatal. The mechanic ripped out the dangling exhaust pipe like a loose tooth. We’ll be leaving the windows open anyway since there’s no A/C.

We still don’t know how we’re going to get home, but the donations have been helping. We’re changing our route and heading south rather than west, looking for more shows and trying to distribute our new record, Benaki, out on Single Girl, Married Girl Records. We’re sticking around Chicago for the weekend. I set up a show at the lower case collective with Red Delicious for tonight and we’re playing the last show at The Flower Shop along with Philly’s Club Lyfestile, coincidentally. We’re all flyering until 10 minutes before we play tonight, and than after we play we’re starting again for Saturday’s show.

I borrowed a bike yesterday and managed to take a swim in Lake Michigan this morning before picking up the bus from the shop. So good.

This is reposted from the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia listserv:

I had a chilling experience on the 5:14 northbound RiverLINE train this evening.

Per my normal routine I boarded with my bicycle a Cooper St/Rutgers Station in Camden. I board there due to the proximity of the BF Bridge and to avoid the awaiting crowd at Walter Rand Transportation Center where PATCO riders from Philadelphia board.

Approximately 150 passengers including two bicyclists people boarded the train at Walter Rand, amid the crowd I heard that there was a petition circulating to ban bicycles on rush hour RiverLINE trains. About 20 people signed the petition, most of them standees! There the other bicyclist in the car was in the middle of this petition melee, I felt real sorry for him.

Furious and feeling a bit like a target I managed to give the petition author my card. I said “call my office” he said “Oh yeah you know I will”.

I want to lay out the real problem here, its the 5:14 out of Camden and NJ TRANSIT assigns a 2 car train, I am sure this crowd is here every day. Why is this not a 4 car train?

A 4 car train would solve the problem, the petition guy wants outside bike racks which are not permitted by the Federal RR Administration because he feels that NJT would never hook on two more cars.

Banning bikes is a scapegoat solution, let’s head the petition off at the pass, I urge everyone to contact customer service saying that you greatly appreciate bicycle access to the RiverLINE.

https://www.njtransit.com/ContactUs/cu_form.jsp

John Boyle
Advocacy Director
The Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia
215.BICYCLE

CP contributor Sam Tremble and his band Hermit Thrushes are touring — or at least trying to.

Called the mechanic. Everything with the bus transmission is on schedule and budget. Should be ready sometime this afternoon. He also recommends we get new front tires. Can we say no? Either way we’re screwed: a blow-out would mean almost certain death, not to mention being for real for real stranded now that all of our funds are depleted. Dear last four hundred bucks: peace! see ya! wouldn’t wanna be ya!

On the bright side, our Madison WI and Minneapolis MI dates this week were canceled anyway and our St. Louis show informed us that there will be no local bands, but they are seriously, really, really excited to see us.

CP contributor Sam Tremble and his band Hermit Thrushes are touring — or at least trying to.

Luckily we are stranded in one of the best cities in the country (Chicago!) and have a place to stay in Little Village with Roger’s beautiful extended family. Aunt Ana makes the best Mexican food I have had in my entire life.

I slept on the laundry room/office floor wrapped in a towel for a few hours last night. I got up around 7 and haven’t gone back to sleep. I spent the night searching for a place to play and when I came home (2? 3? I don’t know since my phone is dead.) everyone was asleep and had taken all the blankets and floor space.

I’ll admit that I took a few minutes out of the hunt to watch The Odd Couple in Grant park with a friend that I bumped into before our show on Monday. I haven’t seen her in two years since she was my couchsurfing host in Paris.

Chicago has so many places to play, but for some reason none of them answer their myspace messages instantly or their door after 10 p.m.  I knocked on the door of close to a dozen spaces, the bulk of which were either someone’s house or an independent space. So cool. We haven’t gotten any confirmations yet, but there have been a few non-denials. Hopefully something works out today so we can play again while we’re here before leaving town broke.

I need to go find some breakfast. My last meal was a pint of milk that I surreptitiously poured with my coffee at a White Hen last night.

CP contributor Sam Tremble and his band Hermit Thrushes are touring — or at least trying to.

For the last few months, my band Hermit Thrushes and our friends Br’er have been planning a tour together. Now we’ve barely begun and already our transmission has jumped ship on us.

While yoyo-ing between Montreal and New England in the beginning of July, I called our tour (and the split that goes with it) “Escape to Freedom.” Heading west through America’s heartland on our sweet and sweaty tour bus, I changed it to “Fresh Off the Bus.” Now that we’re stranded and our transmission is dismantled, I can’t decide between either “Endless Bummer” or “Infinite Bummer.” What do you think? in any case, I hope I can call the next leg “Get in the Bus.”

At some point, I’d like to update you on our travels: elaborate deceit at the Canadian border, international groupies, a greenhouse show space under threat of foreclosure by the mayor of a supposedly “21st century” city, etc.

In the meantime, I think the MySpace bulletin from fellow Hermit Thrush Yianni Kourmadas gets more to the point I’m trying to make:

Hey all, this is so sad but lots of bad stuff is happening to us on tour. Shows cancelled, venues closed, TRANSMISSION DEMOLISHED.

Yeah, I know. Endless bummer. There is good news. We’re all unreasonably happy guys and are keeping a good attitude about everything. We might be able to scratch together enough dough to pay for vehicle repairs (estimated at $2,300+) but will not have the money to pay for gas to get home. We’re going to try to play as many shows as we can to make some extra $$.

But, if you have the extra cashola to spare, we have a donation button on our myspace page (myspace.com/hermitthrushes) and we’d totally be insanely thankful. [ed. note: emphasis added]

Love,
Yianni///Hermit Thrushes

John Boyle and Andy Dyson build Bike Corral at 16th and Chestnut

According to Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia, 60 people rode with Mayor Nutter to work despite the rain this morning on Bike-to-Work Day. This was the last event the BCGP had planned for Bike Week. Earlier in the week, Fuji President Pat Cunnane beat a sports car driver and a SEPTA bus rider to City Hall, and the BCGP released Sarah Clark Stuart’s report on bicycle parking. Read more about it on the BCGP blog. Though Bike Week is over, you can still park your bike at the Bike Corrals on 40th and Walnut and 16th and Chestnut until May 30th. Otherwise, options include the usual parking meters, hand rails, and baby trees until further notice.

Bike Share Philadelphia looks to gain momentum with a public forum.

Sam Tremble

Around Rittenhouse Square, it’s as common to see a bicycle locked and hanging from a tree as it is to see one locked to a U-post. Like most of the city, Rittenhouse Square and its surrounding businesses provide minimal bicycle parking, if any. So when the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia held its annual meeting at the Philadelphia Ethical Society last Sunday, Neighborhood Bike Works provided a free valet service for bicycles only.

Mustafa Abdul-Rashid, a senior instructor and shop manager for NBW, estimated that about 30 people parked their bikes — about a third of the total attendance — which he thought was a good number considering the weather and the number of people coming in from the suburbs in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware.

Taking local non-profit NBW as the first example, the meeting involved players from both the local and national bicycle community working together.

SE Bikes, part of Fuji Advanced Sports (a.k.a. Fuji Bikes), which now has its international headquarters near the NE airport, provided a new single speed model for raffle. Bicycle Revolutions, a local shop in Bella Vista, assembled it.
Russell Meddin, a BCGP member and the organizer of the Bike Share forum in January, stood by the entrance handing out business cards for Bike Share Philadelphia, asking those coming and going (sometimes twice), “Have you written the mayor about Bike Sharing yet?”

City Council has passed a resolution to hold a hearing to investigate the creation of a Public Use Bicycle Program on April 30. January’s forum also gained Philadelphia some recognition at the National Bike Summit in D.C. earlier in March. Representative Babette Josephs, the only Rep. in Harrisburg who doesn’t use a car, presented BCGP with a $5,000 grant for their efforts with Bike Sharing.

“I think this can be done… Look at what we’ve done with Car Share… everybody’s got Car Share, it’s all over the place. We’ll see Bike Share work too, I really believe that,” she says. (more…)

I think the message would be even stronger if after the second play, a mini-van from Jersey came barrelling under the over pass. Moms on-the-go don’t usually expect to see kids in color coordinated (yet still distinctly individual) outfits doing basketball drills. Especially while they’re driving in London for some reason. But really, think of all the things you missed out on driving to work this morning: wildflowers moonwalking in cracked cement, a moonwalking bird carrying a saffron thread that reminds you of home, the smile of children moonwalking to school.