SDRE Cancel Groezrock Performance

Sunny Day Real Estate are forced to cancel their performance on April 23 at Groezrock 2010, due to the volcano ash situation. We are all disappointed by this and appreciate your understanding

SDRE Forced to Re-Schedule Debut UK Show

SUNNY DAY REAL ESTATE have been forced to postpone their highly anticipated debut UK show which was due to take place on 22nd April at London’s Forum. The show has been re-scheduled for 31st May. All tickets purchased for the original show are transferable and remain valid. Tickets for the rescheduled show can be purchased HERE.

Says Nate Mendal, “Yet again Sunny Day Real Estate is compelled to postpone a trip to Europe. Ordinarily this would be due to a failure of initiative on our part; we’ve corrected this shortcoming, only to have an explosive act of god intervene this time. Thankfully we’ve been able to reschedule quickly and we look forward to playing the UK in May.”

Perth.

The Perth show was fucking hot. There was a wading pool (and a hot tub!?) backstage. I saw one guy get in the pool. He was English, I think, and said that he had suffered heatstroke.

It was the last show of the tour and my last opportunity to get a photo with the Anvil guys. Their dressing room was near ours and at one point I leapt up from my plastic chair to ask them for the photo as they were walking by with purpose.

“Can I get a photo real quick, or are you guys on your way somewhere?” I asked.
“No, sorry.”
Oh, no! Dismissed by Anvil!

Anyway, a couple hours later it’s just me and one of the guys sitting around a table in the communal area between the trailers. He’s got a thousand-yard stare, and I’m smoking a cigarette. After ten minutes of this I figure a little harmless chitchat would be appropriate and I ask him how the tour’s been going.

“It’s been great. Good for the band.”
Okay. Hmmm.
“Is it your first time in Australia?”
“Yes.”

Right here I decide that it’s about time to leave this guy the fuck alone; hanging out in the excruciating heat in all that black leather is asking enough of him, without the added displeasure of some dingdong pestering him on top of it.

We have had a truly wonderful time on this tour. We learned a bit about how to play on big stages,  met great people and played with great bands, and had an opportunity to check out Australia. I want to thank the festival’s promoter, AJ, for thinking of us and taking the trouble to cart our asses across the Pacific, and for taking great care of us while we were here (Zok, thank you, too!).

For the last couple days of tour we stayed at a hotel on a beach just South of Perth. It was one of the best beaches, with the clearest most refreshing water, that I’ve ever been to. What a great way to cap the tour.

We’re on our way home now to recover, and then get to work on some new music. See you at Coachella!

Adelaide.

The dressing rooms for the Soundwave show here were prison cells from a decommissioned jail, or gaol, as they called it here. The 147 prisoners executed at the prison were all buried on the grounds. Creepy. Also, I mistook a wombat for a Koala, Dan and Jeremy played some basketball in the prison yard, and William made a funny face.

Melbourne.

Our drum tech, Kep, has been carrying around a card for an Italian restaurant in Melbourne the whole tour. A friend of his had given it to him and swore that the place was not to be missed. Fratelli’s, or something.

It happened to be just around the corner from our side show, so we all went there for dinner after soundcheck. 

The place looked like a diner extracted completely intact and unchanged from the 1950’s; tiny, cramped and worn, with wood-paneled walls covered in faded posters.

There was only one communal table, and it was in a small back room also used as the kitchen. A nice Italian woman came by to ask what we’d like to order. There were no menus, she just sort of described the few items available, and if anyone cared to know more they could just look at what was cooking on the stove a few feet away.

The food was terrible, although I was seemingly the only person to notice, but it was a great funny/weird experience. I also liked that waiter said to me in a strong Italian accent, “strong coffee for a strong man!” as he handed me a long black.

There are two main stages at the festival with bands alternating ping-pong style between the two. We are the first band on our stage and play at about 12:30 in the afternoon. It’s still morning, really, and a completely strange time to be playing.

I’m skipping ahead, though. We’re not really aware of this yet; 12:30 is just information on a sheet of paper at this point.

We leave the hotel at 8:30 am. It’s hot and beautiful and clear in Sydney, and the camp wears a general enthusiasm for the day ahead.

There’s a couple interesting things about playing this early. On a positive note: as the first band on our stage we are allowed a sort of sound check; highly welcome considering the rental gear and the revolving line of guitar techs we’ve had (Sean Cox, who works on Foo Fighters tours graciously volunteered to sub. He suffered two cancelled flights scrambling to make it here and arrived at the hotel just in time to catch the bus to the venue. So Sean: Thank You, you valiant knight… and Sorry!).

Arriving so early to the automobile-racing track serving as the afternoon’s venue also created some problems in that the promoters haven’t had time to really transform the real estate from one purpose to another, or to staff the venue.

Most bands, including ours, are using garages, arranged in a long line next to the “pits,” as dressing rooms.  Ours was furnished with four plastic chairs.

I thought the room could use a little lightening up, and opening the garage door on the far end did bring a welcome cross breeze across the cement floor, and a somewhat less “I might need to hang myself” ambiance.

Not to get too comfortable, though. There were only a couple hours before we were to play, and we needed to break in Sean - and lend a hand considering the shape he must be in. The track was gigantic – not the usual oval-shape, but a sort of meandering cross-country type of thing. We couldn’t see or hear the stage, and, again, it being so early, there was just nobody around to ask directions of.

So, there are two ways to go to find the stage, right? This way, or that way. We go this way, but instead of a stage we come across a heap of gear, and a sweat-soaked Sean picking through it attempting to sort our rental gear from that of everyone else’s. There is now about an hour and a half before set time. We are very far from the stage.

There is a bit of standing around in a pretty useless imitation of usefulness, before we get word that there is a truck on its way to transfer the gear to the stage. We decide to meet the truck there, and as we’ve now tried one direction, the other is chosen as the next most logical step in an effort to find, what must be, somewhere, a stage.

I really did love this morning. It was just funny and surreal. I hope the photos give a sense of it.

Finally at the stage, we are caressed by a series of reggae-fied Beatles songs bouncing out of the PA while we linger around waiting for the truck (that’s somebody’s reality. “Baby, I can’t make it to dinner at your mom’s tonight. I’ve got rehearsal – we’re just putting the finishing touches on Jahcross the Universe.”) It eventually arrives, we set up, make some noise, and – what was the stress? – wait about a half hour until our set time.

Happy to be in Australia, and to be invited to play the festival. Delighted. However, 12:30, once only a set of innocuous numbers in a tour schedule, has now transformed into a viscous hydra of smoldering heat, dusty fields, and raw indifference. We’ve a lot to learn about how to properly play a festival.

Thankfully, Eagles of Death Metal, AlexisonFire, and Paramore are playing afterward, and provide some inspiration.
On a side note, the bass player from Paramore does some kind of corkscrew 360 degree leap during their set that is hands down the most fucked-up awesome rock and roll stage move I’ve ever seen. Hats off to that guy.

AC/DC have a few moves of their own. And cannons. We went to see them the next night in a football stadium. And, duh, it rocked.

We received some really bad news about our guitar tech just before leaving for Australia (I’ll leave his name out – he may want some privacy right now). He had just been sent to the hospital and wouldn’t be able to make the tour.
If you’re out there EB, know that our love and best wishes are with you and that we’re hoping you are out of the hospital safely very soon!

On behalf of everyone I want to thank Jimmy Eat World and their wonderful backline crew: Timmy, Jesse and Henry. They have really come through for us. They showed up early and have helped get everything together and will be covering the show for us, which is a lifesaver; It’s the first show, we’re on rental gear, our guitars are all out of sorts, if not outright broken, and of course, we don’t have our usual guitar tech with us!

Luckily we are the first band on our stage today so we had some time to linger around and check out the rental gear, etc.

So, here we go, in about half an hour: SDRE Aus take 1.

Tour Diary #1

I bought Esquire magazine at LAX to read on the flight to Australia. Ordinarily I would skip over a men’s magazine and choose something slightly less stupid, but I knew I would be tired, and in coach, where there would be no option to watch a movie, and thought a magazine like this would be perfect as my mind clouded over around hour 12, or so.

The editors of Esquire have perfected this annoying, knowing tone in the front half of the magazine: “Okay, rakish male hovering around the date of your first high school reunion, there’s a right way and a wrong way to play this game, and we’ll grant you access to the former –wink – and direct you on how to slay life while maintaining a shimmer of cool that says you’re not even really trying.”

I get it; really, not a bad angle to take for the demographic, but in practice it’s tough to take. A few of the pages feature a little banner running across the bottom with sort of do’s and don’ts advice: “it’s alright to say ‘and so on,’ and ‘so forth’ but never ‘so on and so forth.’”  Thanks!

This lifestyle hubris may be contagious. On the flight I found myself wanting to communicate my own advice, Esquire-style, to some of the dudes on board: “Put on some fucking pants before boarding an airplane you idiot man-child.” It would go something like that.
Honestly, I shouldn’t really care. I don’t wear shorts on planes, and I suppose that gives me some kind tactical social advantage, with the added bonus of my not even having to try. And I mean actually not having to try, as it is equally simple to step into pants as it is shorts. But then again, maybe not.

I was also reading a biography of George Kennan on the flight, and anyone familiar with his, in my opinion, forgivable sort of conservatism could see another possible inspiration for this petty annoyance.

Someone knocked me on the shoulder just after I found my seat.
“Hey is your name Nick?”
“No.”
I felt like I recognized the guy, but just couldn’t place from where.
A few minutes later I got a text from an acquaintance of mine named Eric: “Hey, what are you doing?”
I knew his band was playing the same festival, and was about to respond, when, I got another tap on the shoulder.
“Hey it’s Eric!”
So the text had given me away. We’ve only hung out once, a couple years ago, so I hadn’t recognized him amid all the boarding chaos, and he explained that he was traveling straight from Mardi Gras, was pretty spent, and that this could account for remembering me as “Nick.” Pretty funny.

I live in LA while the rest of the band is from Washington so we were on separate flights to the first show in Brisbane. Once in Australia the festival promoter provides the transport and lodging for all the bands so we move as a sort of rock-herd from the first show on.
I meet a guy named Zok in baggage claim who is working as a tour manager for the festival, and he directs me into a van with a band called Glassjaw, the New Yorkiest New York band imaginable. Immediately after meeting them one of the guys asks me, “You’re a Jew, right? You’ve got to be with a name like Mendel. And what about your drummer, Goldsmith?” “You’re either a rock band or a law firm.” Etc.
Pretty hilarious guys, actually.

So I’ve got at least one band to check out tomorrow.

SDRE confirmed to play Groezrock

Sunny Day Real Estate just confirmed to play Groezrock 2010

Friday, April 23rd 2010

For tickets and information, visit www.groezrock.be

SDRE Confirm First Ever London Show

22nd April
Forum London
On sale: Friday 29th January at 10am
Tickets available from kililive.com, seetickets.com and 0871 230 5595