The Old Lonesomes Blog

Tour-day 1 @ Hasenschaukel Hamburg

2006-12-06T22:38:00.000+01:00

The tour begun with a trip to Hamburg, where the Lonesomes played a small venue in the St. Pauli district called Hasenschaukel.

Waiting for the tourbus which failed to arrive.

Cindy ended up buying bus tickets.

Arriving at Hamburg in the evening.

Cindy at the Reeperbahn street.

Pierre sitting at the Hasenschaukel before the show reading Douglas Coupland's Girlfriend in a Coma.

With rumours of the band's show spreading in the city, the Hamburg police was forced to show up in big numbers to control the big crowds who did not have place inside the sold out venue.

They also prohibited us from taking any pictures during the show. After the show the band went drinking with manager Adi Gelbart and singer Yonatan Gat who will be touring with them for the entire tour. Backstage pictures to follow soon!

Tomorrow Magdeburg...

The Blog is back! getting ready for the tour

2006-11-30T21:25:00.000+01:00

The Lonesomes have used their tour budget to replace the old broken camera with a new 5M pixel working one, and so the blog is now back on.

Here are some pictures from the final preperation rehersal before setting off to Hamburg.

Anne Moo, an Arp 2600 and a Jen SX1000

Jeff listening to the others, checking that everything is in place.

Pretty as always

Pierre lost in the moment

Live at Ausland

2006-06-06T18:46:00.000+02:00

Some live show photos from the 22.4.06 at the Ausland (berlin).

(all photos by Becky)

Field recording day

2006-01-23T21:26:00.000+01:00

Being always on the look for new sonic possibilities, the Lonesomes decided to try and incorporate field recordings into their new material. So Cindy and Anne packed the band's Grundig TK745 reel-to-reel tape recorder and took a train to the suburban town of Hönow.

At Alexanderplatz U-Bahn station

On the train. Cindy looks very concentrated. She's making sure they don't miss their station.

After arriving at Hönow they install the recording equipment on the station platform.

Here they are recording the sound of a riding train. How Jean Michel Jarre!

At the gate of the town's church.

Turns out a local highschool indy band was having a rehearsal inside. Sort of a christian Joy-Division with violin. The suburbs.

Anne got to play the church organ.

They were hoping to record cows (which is why they went to the countryside in the first place). But as it turns out, there are no cows in Hönow, so they ended up recording the sounds of the wilderness...

and of McDonald's.

Snowman fuzz

2005-12-26T18:35:00.000+01:00

It's the day after Christmas. Christmas is boring. But it snowed like crazy, so the Lonesomes seized the opportunity and set out to build a snowman. And a crappy snowman they did build. Then they decided to take it to pieces and use it to make a fuzz distortion effect for Jeff's guitar.

"Everybody grab some snow!"

Pierre and Anne hard at work

Snowman's ready! Looks a bit like the Pillsbury dough boy.

"...What if I connected my guitar through the snowman..."

Back in the studio Jeff is connecting a wire between the snowball -

- and a battery.

Connecting the guitar.

The guitar now faces the amp, and an amazing feedback loop feels the room. Pierre joins in to listen. The sound is very fuzzy and snowy, but there's still not enough distortion.

Jeff solves it by adding a distortion level knob.

Visa Extension

2005-12-05T19:55:00.000+01:00

Pierre visited the foreigners office today to extend his visa.

Walking down the corridors of bureaucracy

Second snow in Berlin

2005-11-26T12:40:00.000+01:00

Winter is finally here!
The first Berlin snow of 2005 fell a few days ago, but as the Lonesomes were busy touring the UK they missed it.
Now they have returned to Berlin, and so did the snow, and Cindy and Jeff decided to make the most out of the snowy day and organize a secret street show in a small garden in Torstr. As it turned out, it was too secret and only a few duck fans from the nearby Spree showed up.

The guys enjoying the snow

Cindy making a few calls to set things up

Picking the perfect spot

Showtime!

A passing duck tuning into the action

The duck leaves 50 cents. It turns out he's a big Van Halen fan.

Another duck fan !

Jeff going into a 15 minutes solo. The duck applauds

After the show the duck and Cindy had a long conversation about the future of today's music. They both agree that the Arctic Monkeys are overhyped and are actually shit. Not to mention the Arcade Fire. What's with those haricuts?

Show's over and the guys are picking up the money

Then they lost it all to a slot machine in the nearby Döner joint