Blog posts

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  Oct 07 2008, 10:17 AM

  "The Living and the Dead" In Stores Now

  The Living and the Dead is now available in stores. You can pick it up at iTunes, Amazon, or your local record store.

  You can also listen to the album in its entirety, streaming at Spinner. Click Here to listen.

   
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  Oct 01 2008, 11:53 AM

  My First Blog!

  I heart my new band. We just played three songs for some industry event, which I could not explain to anyone very well, even though my manager tried to explain it to me repeatedly. We got to have our first soundcheck! (We played two shows before but you don't get soundchecks at festivals) The new road band is Rachel Blumberg on drums, Dave Depper on bass, and Sean Flinn on guitar.

   

  We flew into San Francisco out of Portland and back in less than 24 hours. That one night we had, Freddi Price, one of my favorite people/musicians in the whole world invited us to his place down by the water in Oakland. Its an incredible "last stronghold of the Bohemians" there on the water. Francine, dearness, whose phone number I had lost, was there. I'd loaned her my two precious baby banjo ukuleles about two years previous, when I'd hit the road for 'Springtime' so I got my little babies back, safe and sound. Francine is a lovely uke player. I didn't get a chance to check out her houseboat, but I hear its amazing. My honey just gave me a copy of an Anais Nin shortstory about a houseboat, so I'd just been imagining that particular kind of life. It was a star studded event--Carla Kihlstedt, Matthias Bossi, Dan Rathbun, and Nils from Faun Fables were there. I didn't expect to see any of them, and it was fantastic. Shoshi Perrey, about whom I wrote the song "honey girl" was there, as well as Zoli Lundy, about whom I wrote one of the songs on "the living..." Nieves showed us her new line of handmade body care--from her little laboratory on the docks. (Beautiful stuff--bynieves.com--I'm really into 'cloud of protection'...smells so fine...she's into all these beautiful wood-derived scents) The piano I used to have in San Francisco, a hundred year old monster, now belongs to Freddi, so I got to have a visit with it. Sigh. We played this version of Buckskin Stallion I've been kicking around for a while. When I had the blues a while back, it kept cheering me up to watch Jimmy Dale Gilmore do his version on youtube.

   

  It was so great to have that sort of warm, homey experience (bonfire, old friends) especially when I wasn't really expecting to see so many people. The bay area was really sweet to us.

  One of my favorite bizarre synchronicities of our 24 hour trip to San Francisco, is that we happened to have lunch in the same place as my Brooklyn friend and neighbor Matt Bauer. Sean, Rachel and I were sitting there at the Jasmine Tea House on Mission, and Matt walked in with his band and SAT RIGHT NEXT TO ME!!!! It took me a few seconds, because I lost my glasses in Portland, but I said "Matt Bauer!" and then I got a big bear hug from him. Matt and I have a band called "the Gentleman Callers" that hasn't performed anywhere yet, unless you count Prospect Park, where we played to audiences of moss, woodpeckers, and robins. Matt is a gorgeous musician. His new record "The Island Moved in the Storm" is ridiculously beautiful and creepy. It contains lots of weird stories written from multiple perspectives about a woman whose body was found in a river in Kentucky near where Matt grew up. Matt happened to say, "Jolie, Jay here wants to get a ukulele, do you have any advice for him?" So I got to lend Jay one of my long lost ukes (he plays guitar in Matt's band.) Its always best to keep instruments with people who will play them. Then Matt and co. came to our weird industry show, where we enjoyed the open bar, the cupcakes, and an actual acoustic set by Sammy Hagar!

   

  Right now I'm sitting on the floor in Jason Leonard's studio. We're listening to Professor Longhair while I'm writing this (my first blog ever) and Jason is printing the stuff he's just carved out to make the animated lettering for my new video for "Mexico City." He's designed it a la Posada--black and red printed lettering with homemade curliques. Its gorgeous. I'm going to head out in a minute to go see GingGang play here in Portland.

   

  And they were mindblowing. GingGang is fronted by Dennis Shaw, with my old friend Stefan Jecusco on bass, an absolutely amazing violinist named Annemarie Hoffman, and Jason Waugaman on the drums. They do this kind of power glam Rembetika Metal, with intensely Goth overtones. Tight leather pants, acrobatic minor classicalish arpeggios on violin and hot shit electic guitar. Excellent songs, like for instance, there is one about being eaten by a tiny magic tiger who lives in your scary goth girlfriends's hair. It was so fun! Stefan was wearing a white tuxedo jacket with tails and ermine fur trim, shiny cop sun glasses (at night) and braids. A good old fashioned freakshow. Halleluiah.

   

  So, about this video we just shot in Joshua Tree...Jason Leonard, Rachel Blumberg, Sarah Nighswander (aka Sarah Gina Jones), Carey Lamprecht, Bobby Dangerously (who is on the cover of "the living...") were all with me on a similar in and out trip to make the video. I just saw the first cut today. Shocking, you know, to check out your first video. Stoney Sharp directed it. A prince among men, really. He's like those great cooks I've met who can whip up Christmas dinner for thirty without looking like they're doing anything. He made me feel like we were out for a walk, talking about our favorite books, and not on a set with a big super talented crew. We didn't plan it this way, but I was wearing the dress I wore on the cover of the new record, and Carey was wearing the dress I was wearing in a photo that's inside the record. It definitely looks better on Carey than on me.

   

  Alright, y'all. That as my first installment of 'tour blog'--I can't believe I'm doing this. Thanks, Nick Jaina, for the inspiration. XXX~jolie
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  Sep 30 2008, 11:26 AM

  "The Living and the Dead" Streaming on MySpace

  

  My upcoming album The Living and the Dead is streaming at MySpace. Click Here to listen!

  You can also Pre-OrderThe Living and the Dead over at Amazon.com. Click Here to check out the pre-order.

  The Living and the Dead in stores 10/7!