My Kind of Town, Though Windier Than We Might Like

People who track our touring radius know that the one time we made it to Washington DC was the true anomaly on our appearances. Aside from a few flirtations with NYC and the Catskills, all of our performances have been within New England. Thanks to overtures from the American Writers Museum, we’re gonna try to sneak a bunch of typewriters through TSA and visit Chicago for a couple days.

Our perception of a Chicago Typewriter is more than a mere Thompson submachine gun…
it’s a Thompson supermachine gun outfitted with a daisy wheel!

While the AWM performance is for a fundraiser for them and you may need $5000 for a table to see us open and close the show, we have added a gig on Monday April 8 where we are going to play at the venerable Phyllis’ Musical Inn. If you’re in Chicago, come early, as we are scheduled for a 6pm start time. Or if you see a bunch of Bostonians wandering around the streets carrying typewriters, try to point us in the right direction.

Monday April 8, 2019 6pm
Phyllis’ Musical Inn
1800 W Division St, Chicago IL

Tuesday April 9, 2019
American Writer’s Museum fundraiser <private event>
Chicago, IL

Checking the Inbox

So we went on a Corporate Retreat this fall up to Salem, where we spent a few days at God City Studios under the watch of Converge’s Kurt Ballou. Using his studio and some innovative techniques to their best, he recorded a bunch of our new songs which we begin unveiling today with this wonderfully short teaser of a song that has been animated by Zak Kirwin

Movie Stars: Full Video Extraction

In the movie California Typewriter, out performance is right in the middle of it all. But you also don’t get to see an entire song as we are often overlaid with members of the band talking. Since the director Doug Nichol first made his mark in the music video game (Madonna’s Truth or Dare, Pulp, the Cars, Wet Wet Wet, et al) and even is a 3-time Grammy nominee (Aerosmith’s “Pink”, NKOTB “Hanging Tough”) and winner for his work on Sting’s Ten Summoners Tales , it’s nice to finally be able to show this clip of “Entropy Begins at the Office” the way you might have been able to see it on V66 back in the day…

Westward Ho!

After spending the first half of the year playing surprise shows and private events and then heading into the studio to lay down some tracks, we’re venturing Westward over the fall to play a series of shows along the Mass Pike (or maybe more appropriately Route 20). We’re bound to land a Boston gig to announce soon too, but for now you’ll have to make a bit of a trek to come and see us play, starting Sunday in Worcester…

Sunday, September 16, 2018   12:30pm
stART on the Street : World Music Stage
Park Ave & Elm St
Worcester, MA

Wednesday, October 10, 2018  7:00pm
“Our Triumphant Return”
Charles River Museum of Industry & Innovation
154 Moody Street, Waltham, MA 02453

Sunday, November 4, 2018   2:00pm
Painting, Politics, and Performance: Thomas Hart Benton’s America
Modern & Contemporary Gallery of the D’Amour Museum of Fine Arts
21 Edwards Street, Springfield, MA 01103

Saturday November 17, 2018   3:00pm
in the Rotunda
Wayland Free Public Library
5 Concord Road, Wayland, MA

Vale Richie Madallo

I thought the strangest part about running a band website is the moment when you switch a band members designation from the ‘active’ to ’emeritus’ position, but the truth is having to add ‘memoriam’ to that list is like devastation. Richie Madallo wasn’t an original member of the band and he hadn’t played with us since our first trip to the Burlington VT Book Fest, but his nimble fingers were a treat to add to our mix from the first moment that I met him when he came and subbed in for a show when our numbers were low and Jay implored him just enough. He was a percussion wizard with roots in the Boston punk scene having played drums for the Bones. He grew up in East Boston’s Orient Heights neighborhood, and it was on the public school bus there that he and Jay met and forged a lifelong friendship that was founded on music.

 

BTO recently lost one of it’s own, Richie Maddalo, the guy with the huge grin on his face, Richie was a dear friend and percussionist like no other. He brought creativity and style to anything he performed on, for us he was a maestro on the Remette typewriter. BTO will be performing along with Joe Harvard in Richie’s honor on Saturday, April 28 at the East Boston YMCA on 45 Ashley St., East Boston, a short walk from Orient Heights station on the Blue Line, starting at 7:30PM. Light refreshments will be served. Expect some Bowie throughout the evening Admission is free,

Typing in the Holidays

So we’re expanding the scope of things… Usually December is a winding down of the year, but this year has been crazy and 2018 is already shaping up to be even busier. So instead of merely playing a couple of songs as a lark at the Christmas Cavalcade, we’re also helping the JP branch of the BPL celebrate the holidays, and we’re doing a show with some good pals from Chicago, Bitchin’ Bajas, that will serve as a quasi official record release party for us.

12/7: First up of the three is the trip to Jamaica Plain where we’ll serve the local community with a proper dessert of sound after a potluck at their branch of the Boston Public Library. The room fits only about 100, and I’m not sure if you need to bring food to share to be let in, but this will be the most casual of the shows, with a limited PA, so if it’s not your natural neighborhood, maybe you shouldn’t try to fight your way down to that end of town.

12/13: Last of the three chronologically is the 13th Annual Christmas Cavalcade. It’s always a crazy time and with Johnny D’s razed last week, it’s gonna be at Once again this year. Proceeds go to benefit the Somerville Homeless Coalition, so that’s a great cause, but if you’re coming just to see us play, well, know that we’ve got a very short set in the early part of the night and that we’ll dust off a popular Christmas ditty that we’ve played out the past few years, let Alex do his twisted interpretation of a Night Before Xmas, and we’ll have a new holiday tune to show off celebrating those that died on the holiday.

12/10: The other show, well, this is our big record release show at a dance studio in Cambridge’s Central Square, and it’s the one that everyone should come to see us play. We’ve been trying to find a good chance to bring our record out to the locals beyond those that supported us on Kickstarter or Bandcamp. When my pal Cooper told me his electronic band Bitchin’ Bajas was coming to town to play Studio @ 550, it seemed a perfectly bizarre fit for our all-analog manual typewriter attack to join forces with their droning melodic swells. This one will have us playing first and we’re planning to play a set designed for the heads who are there for the tunes, so we’ve got a few ideas up our sleeves on just how to shock and awe. Bring some extra cash as we’ll have records and t-shirts for sale and we’ll be around to hang out after you figure out how to reattach your jaw.

Thursday December 7 6pm
JP Branch Annual Holiday Party
Boston Public Library JP Branch
30 South Street, Jamaica Plain, MA 02130

Sunday December 10, 2017 9pm
Record Release Party (FB Event Page)
with Bitchin’ Bajas, Prone, Erika Nesse
Studio @ 550
550 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge MA
$12 advance / $15 at the door

Wednesday December 13 doors at 6pm, music at 7pm
13th Annual Boston Christmas Cavalcade for the Homeless
with Livingston Taylor, The Chandler Travis Philharmonic, Merrie Amsterburg, The Boogaloo Swamis and more!
Once Somerville
160 Highland Ave, Somerville MA 02143
$20.00 in advance, $25.00 at the door, all proceeds go to Somerville Homeless Coalition

Typewriters on Vinyl

Maybe you’re a long time fan who bought a CD from us at a concert back in the digital age. While those songs have circulated around the internet since, even we haven’t had them at shows for more than 5 years. In the meantime we’ve been coming to terms with this streaming era, releasing individual tracks to the world as soon as we hone them to a point where we are no longer wholly embarrassed by them.

We’ve finally figured out that as much as people like hearing our music, there is something about being able to hold our music in their hands which gives them the power as well, so we have released a 10″ vinyl recording with 4 of our most recent tracks on it. It’s up to you what you want to do with it, but we think that even if you don’t have a record player, Brian Dewan‘s cover makes for some great artwork for your wall.

If you want to purchase these tracks follow the links to Bandcamp and for a mere $15 we can get records in the mail to you within days, and digitally Bandcamp will let you download them in moments. If there’s enough furor, we may get more posters and t-shirts printed as well, and Brendan really wants to get this put on a cassette as well…

Not Quite Noble Endeavors

We have certainly done things in our past that have earned us varying degrees of infamy, but this effort might just be the most ignominious of all. Somehow we have been tapped with the opening slot for the Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony Awards. While Folks are filing in to one of the most acoustically sound spaces in Cambridge, we’ll be on stage typing and tapping away in an effort to divert them from being able to decipher seat and row numbers. If you’ve never heard of this before, well, it’s like the scientific equivalent of the Razzies. Certainly not Nobel prize worthy, this awards people for genuine scientific achievement of preposterous premises.

While ticket prices are a bit prohibitive to a casual science dilettante who wants to see us play for 20 minutes, the whole thing will be broadcast on the Improbable Research web site and should be up on their You Tube page after the ceremony for us to share.

Thursday, September 14 5:40pm sharp
The 27th First Annual Ig® Nobel Prize Ceremony & Lectures
Sanders Theater, Harvard University
Cambridge MA

Our Name in Lights

Tonight is the official premiere of California Typewriter. Sure it’s shown at film festivals over the past year and a half, but tonight it begins a weeklong run at the Metrograph in NYC. Next week it’s opening in LA, and after that it should be popping up at screens across the country and we’ll try to keep you in the loop…

Here’s a clip featuring us that they are using to try to get folks to come out to the film… not using the charisma of Tom Hanks or John Mayer, or the recently deceased Sam Shepard, but it’s our mugs… go figure!

Virtual Typing

So sure, unless you’ve got an extreme excess of cardboard, hot glue and time on your hands I’d recommend yardsailing instead, but I guess this is a good way to waste some time and trick someone who’s got no idea about how simple mechanical apparatus work.

We’ve got a full fall coming up and our records are in hand ready to go out to you, so stay tuned for updates galore…