We love Las Tortugas. Seriously.

OK, we just returned from Las Tortugas V in Yosemite for our 3rd consecutive Halloween in the trees.  In a word, it was AWESOME.  We truly hope this festival continues and that we get asked back for a 4th appearance..  A huge thanks to Adam Haft and Shaun Dolan for putting this party together.  We also would like to thank Jeff Coleman (Izabella), Sean Leahy (Ireland), Derren Nay (The Gramblers), Nat Keefe (Hot Buttered Rum), Eli Jebidiah (Poor Man's Whiskey), Tim Bluhm (Mother Hips) and Lebo (ALO) for sitting in.  Also, a very big thank you to our Dun Four band-mate Nathan Moore for helping get the band back together.

Here are just a few photos from this wonderful weekend....

This video is now featured.. (Vol. 2)

Big Light - Monster (Live MMN Session) from MOGMusicNetwork.com on Vimeo.

"So, how are you doing?"

An interesting question to be asked so often...  Always a well-intended gesture, in reality it's such a loaded question, and unless you are the type of person that is honestly able to answer it every time when asked, you have to keep coming up with canned responses that get the question-asker to reconsider- for just a second, the implications of asking such a question in the first place (Such as "I hate myself and I wanna die", a favorite of the late Kurt Cobain). Not to sound petulant or anything, but it's a really hard question to answer with any consistency or accuracy ...

So, for those of you out there that want to know how we're doing, here's a live version of our song "Cloudsplitter", recorded on our recent tour of the Western states...  Also, please visit this blog with regularity so the next time you see one of us at a show you can just buy us a drink and we can talk about this blog...

Cloudsplitter (live) by Big Light

Happy birthday, Percy Boyd

Back in the infamous summer of 2009, we hit the road with Nathan Moore and had a truly amazing time driving around the west together singing songs and passing around a ukulele. We narrowly survived a flash-flood in Moab, penned and filmed the You Tube hit One Beautiful Girl on the way to Bobolink V, which we narrowly survived in general. The Dun Four were born... Friendships were solidified. These days, we continue to plot and plan (we're lookin' in your direction, Las Tortugas and Cafe Du Nord!) and see Nathan more than we see our own families. Anyways, always a consumate friend and mentor, we salute you Nathan!

In honor of Percy, here's the long-awaited and unrealeased B-side to the hit song One Bautiful Girl :

Man-Ya-Na (The Dun Four) by Big Light

This video is now featured...

Big Light - Good Time Of The Year (Live MMN Session) from MOGMusicNetwork.com on Vimeo.

Hello, welcome to Umphrey's McGee tour

Warming up for an established international touring act is like... shit, we're not sure what to compare it to here, and this actually begs for a good analogy...

Anyway... Three gigs in the bag (AZ, UT, & NV) and three to go (OR, WA, MT this week), we're happy to report that things are going pretty well. Since Umphrey's McGee has a tour bus, we pretty much have the run of the dressing rooms at each venue... We're also are happy to say that heckling has been minimal and that we have gotten off stage on-time at each show. Joel Cummins has been sitting in on keys and his fuck-ups have been minimal, for sure.

We'll share this story from Arizona: The other night in Flagstaff, although the crowd's reaction to our set was encouraging and we played pretty well, we encountered this one guy after the show at the merch table... Apparently this dude's friend had purchased for him (as a gift) one of our CD's thinking that it was an Umphrey's album. After receiving the album from his buddy and realizing that this wasn't an UM album, but instead a record by the opening act that he hated (us), this dude came to the merch table, told Jeremy he thought we sucked, and then asked for either the money back (something we did't want to do) or for it to be exchanged for a Umphrey's disc (something we didn't have the power do).

Well, had the encounter happened with a different band member, perhaps this guy might have actually gotten his money back. Luckily for the band, he approached Jeremy- who promptly let the New Jersey in his blood rip, demanding to know how on earth someone could firstly tell an artist that he thought his band sucked and then secondly ask for money back on A CD HE DIDN'T EVEN PAY FOR, effectively robbing us of our fucking gas money! Anyway, the guy walked away, Big Light CD still in hand, contemplating why on earth he didn't ask one of the little dudes for the refund instead...

Thank god for places like this...

We made a stop at Mystic Hot Springs in Monroe, UT last week... This place is amazing. Mystic Mike, our host, has been putting up traveling bands on their days off for years... He cooks you dinner, gives you a place sleep, lets you soak in the amazing hot springs, tosses you some gas $$... And oh yeah, he also films a cool video of you playing- in this case our esteemed manager is operating Camera #1.. Thank you, Mystic Mike!!!! We love you, dude...

Wookin' back...

This is what's called a flashback...

Oakland, CA - July, 2009

There is something really funny about this picture. Here at Animals of Doom, we aim to bring you the best archival photographs that we have to offer from time-to-time and this one shot by Sir Scott Galbraith, my friends, is prime-time material..

Consider what's happening:

Bradly Bifulco has a "power stripe" of glitter under one eye, huge shit-eating grin on his face... Steve Adams looking a little confused, shaker in hand... Friedman is giving the photographer a sweet fist-pump, while sitting next to him Brad Barr looks at a flask of whiskey like it's the Holy Grail... Nathan's saying something witty and probably being hyper-thoughtful... Jeremy hanging his head in dismay, only having been in the band about a month and half while Fred sniffs out the whiskey- both with guitars in hand, ready to roll.. Marco creeping in the corner wearing his weed shirt... 'Droo Barr sitting off to the side, bearing silent witness to the whole circus, probably just thinking about his wife... Everyone: KEEPING IT WEIRD.

Lip Service?

This past Tuesday, Big Light checked in at Bay Area Tone... a FULLY LOADED recording studio tucked into an apartment building in the inner Richmond. Fully. Loaded. Super sexy Orange heads and cabinets everywhere, Tone Kings, a bitchin' Ludwig Custom with an oystershell finish and 2 enormous floor toms, Neumann and Royer mics up the wazoo. Back into the control room there was even more to gawk at: rack after rack of compressors, processors and other goodies. So, you may be wondering - what were we doing here? Well, an opportunity floated across our desk (note to the reader: none of us really have a desk, perse, it's a proverbial desk) to go into a studio on Gap Jeans' dime, record two songs, and have some video shot of us performing these songs in-studio. So, we did several live takes of "Monster" and "Good Time of the Year," did some vocal overdubs on the selects, and then struck a bunch of the mic stands and extraneous gear from the performace area so that they could shoot video of us "playing." Putting on our bravest faces, we "played" along to the songs we had just finished recording, listening to the takes we liked best on in-ear monitors as 3 cameras rolled. Despite what anyone may tell you about lip-syncing... it's not as easy as it looks - at least it wasn't for us. It's like pretending to be yourself. And you gotta sell it, even tho on the inside you're not even buying it - you're feeling super foolish replicating glissandos on the guitar, singing with gusto into a mic that's not on, and faking your way through a drum solo that's played differently every time you do it. So, this whole production took probably twice as long as anyone expected it to take... and despite the fact that we were a bit punchy and beat by the end, we still tried to cajole the studio peeps (unsuccessfully) into letting us cut a demo of one of our new tracks before we split. The morale of the story? we're more comfortable DOING IT LIVE!

On eating well

Hazlet, NJ, March, 2010

The best part about playing in Asbury Park, NJ (we've been there three times this year) is the fact that we stay at our guitarist Jeremy's parent's house and eat like kings. Home-cooked eight-course Italian meal consisting of amazing fresh pasta ("macaroni") & sauce ("gravy"), as well as fried shrimp, rice balls, chicken parm, sausages, stuffed crab, fresh tomatoes and mozzarella, as well as desert and coffee. Holy shit. We've been living off a combination of In & Out Burger, continental breakfasts (dirty motels), heavy bar food, and whatever-the-fuck the venues or festivals feel like providing us with. It's a full-0n culinary crap shoot.

Not to complain- some of this "regular" food is perfectly edible, and in some cases can be quite tasty (never hesitate to order the Filet if you happen to be playing the Canyons Ski Resort in Park City, UT- the promoter pays for that shit!). However, by-and-large we find ourselves indulging in a somewhat "unhealthy" diet and must constantly look at what is offered to us with the utmost skepticism. Sometimes it's better to not eat at all.. (Have you ever been offered vegan porridge by a hippie at 10am after a night of heavy post-show drinking? I sure hope not...)

So it is with eager appetites that we arrive each time we play in Jersey, knowing that no matter how good or bad the gig is, we will be well-fed rock musicians for that one night... Thank you Tom & Diane!

Sleeping in the Yard

Hunting down a good-night's sleep on the road can only happen with either a bag full of money or a solid friend within a drivable distance in the wee-hours of the morning. All-nighters are generally avoided whenever possible, but let's all be honest here- engaging in the fruitless pursuit of one's boyhood dreams is a life fraught with less-than-ideal sleeping patterns and a general abuse of the body. Getting a proper-evening's rest is even more unlikely playing at a festival- especially if the event is being held at a location that is considered "off-the-grid" or "remote". Unless you're in a band that is fortunate enough to own a tour bus, or you're lucky enough to be an artist of a stature that commands top-tier lodging scenarios (we're talking stand alone trailers the size of small houses and helicopters if you play in Umphrey's McGee), festival accommodations might just consist of something like this:

-A small "artist camping" site. Although this small plot of alloted land is only about the size of two mid-size cars and is situated among 50 similarly tiny camps, you stack 'em in like sardines- inviting a dozen or so friends to set up camp with you in order to ensure that the right attitude prevails for this four-day clusterfuck. Did we mention that Camp Big Light is within earshot of a four-day-in-a-row, white-knuckle kickball game that arrives with every sunrise and where it's very common to see marauding gangs of fur-cad adults both on the field and on the sidelines experimenting with all sorts of weird powders and tinctures until 9AM? Welcome to your life: communal showers, no sleep, tons of furry shit, and a never-ending quest for ice. Earplugs, Tylenol PM, camping chair, and plenty of Jameson are all highly recommended.

The Perils of Gambling (not Grambling)

Rewind to...

Somewhere in Lake Tahoe, April 2010

We booked a run of shows in the Lake Tahoe area last year (Truckee, Incline, South Lake, Nevada City) and found ourselves playing craps, roulette, black jack and, of course, slots. Here are a few things we learned along the way...

1. Tour Manager should not pay band members out directly following the gig if the gig is in a casino.

2. The House always wins.

3. If someone's gonna eventually win it back, it's Chad Galactic (our roadie).

4. Staying up until dawn gambling is a great way to sharpen your senses for the following evening's gig.

5. South Lake Tahoe is a swell place to work on your labor of love, especially when the promoter (Here's looking at you, Nick Catanella) has stacked the deck so nicely: Two luxury suites with lake views and giant hot tubs- check. Meal tickets for the mouth-watering casino buffet- check. "Lagoon" style pool with grotto and waterfalls- check. One bottle of Jameson- check... And one outrageously happy band- CHECKING IN!

Friends in Low Places

Rewind to..

The Starry Plough, Berkeley - June 3rd, 2010:

We've found ourselves at The Plough from time-to-time hanging out with good friends (photographer Josh Miller always seems to be around when we play there...) and playing what feels like an off-the-grid gig awfully close to home. The "green room" is actually a very small room with an extremely low-ceiling buried somewhere under the bar. Our press shot for Animals In Bloom was shot in the boiler room that's just through the wall. Your dressing room will vary venue-to-venue, and the weirdest gigs always seem to materialize when there is no dressing room at all (try preparing for a for a set where you'll playing in super choppy waters aboard a floating dive-bar with 150 people who are battling sea-sickness- without a dressing room. God we love New York!).

Anyway, not to diverge. Often the make or break for a dressing room, or "band room", is not how big it is or what amenities it might have (or in this case, not-have), but instead who is in it... Are we upset that instead of a proper ice-chest and a (1) fresh bottle of Jamie we are given a rusty metal bucket with six (6) warm PBR's? Not really... Is it weighing on our drummer that in the place of a couple (2) of fresh white towels he is pointed towards a filthy dish rag that smells of decay to wipe his sweaty torso with after the gig? No. Has is become an issue that while smoking is generally encouraged with zest around here, breathing the air in our "green room" is quite-literally choking us to death? Not a chance! Why, then, despite these real-life perils- are we acting like a group of school children on their way to the science museum with a huge bag of weed? Because of who's in this little god-awful room with us- that's why...