today i'm in Birmingham

Birmingham pales in comparison to Newcastle. By the end of this tour I will have been to every major city in the United Kingdom this year. Leeds, Bristol, Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Plymouth, Norwich, Birmingham, Newcastle, Bournemouth, you name it and we've been there. Dave and I went for a walk yesterday to the river Tyne and were very impressed not only with the sunny fall weather, which did hold over until today, but with the architecture and historical value of Newcastle.

Today we are off. I managed to get the best of both worlds today, group walk to breakfast, then dinner plans for 6:30 which gave me time to get on with my own bit for the afternoon. I picked up the new The Thrills disc and some stationary and pens from a Japanese paper store. Its hard to not get wrapped up in the herd mentality on these days off. Usually we're all hungover and then stumble around all day together not really getting anything accomplished, and then all of a sudden the day is over and we have to get up and go back to work. You always end up spending all of your time making plans to make plans, a very frustrating feeling. We're meeting at 6:30 for curry which is my jam. Why does every English city claim to be the curry capital of the world? Would India not be the curry capital of the world? It seems that because England briefly colonized India for a few hundred years they now claim ownership of curry. All I can conclude from this is a certain amount of typical British snobbery built into titling and alleged ownership. Its nearly 5 and this leaves me enough time to read for a little bit, maybe take a bath, and then wander down to the lobby of our posh hotel.

Our last day off was tough. After closing down an old pub in Dublin we stumbled into bed around 3 in the morning only to be awoken at 7 for the ferry crossing to Scotland. We all deliriously tried to enjoy the trip across the Irish Sea. I took some photographs and some video but when we hit land we all threw ourselves into our bunks for another two hours of shut eye before reaching Glasgow. Dave and I claim that this schedule and lack of sleep led us to be hallucinating when we finally checked into our hotel. Most of that day off was lost to some wandering around with Dan and Joel before meeting up (well technically running into) Ben Hales on the streets of Glasgow. What an unusual but great city full of drunks and blue collar history. Just the type of place that I can agree with.

When I pictured England in the fall I thought of John Steinbeck describing the sky as "wet gray aluminum" and I liked that too. I'll take the sun these past few days. But I'll take the autumn as well.

something old and something new

I found this photograph on my computer and remembered our three wonderful days off in Portland Oregon this summer. Jeff took this in a hotel room there and because there's a chance she's reading this, this is Kari, this rad girl we met there.



Jeff also took this photograph of a potted plant out front of the same hotel. What a great image.



I'm working on a TV show right now, a STARZ concert series, right now 6 episodes, maybe turning into 12. I'm helping create it, shoot it, and edit it. My creative partner in crime, Kelly, captured these photographs from some of the HD footage we've shot at our past two shows. The first is of two members of the Kaiser Chiefs in the subway system of NYC and the second is Sam of the Bravery at an acoustic performance we went to in Los Angeles. The images are so powerful and seeing that they are screen captures from video blows my mind.

two new photographs

from our weekend trip to NYC to film the kaiser chiefs at the beacon theatre.

early morning driving down the west side highway.



nyc subway. it'll always smell the way i'll always remember.