Prescott Family

Hey everybody,

The Righteous and Harmonious Fists' Portmanland Tour has finally ended and I think we all feel pretty damn good about the whole thing! It was a long haul for sure and, as expected, a bunch of unexpected happenings involving some car trouble, some vibe control trouble, and backed up mental exhaustion but it was an experience that I'm really glad happened to me and the me I am right now.

Okay here's what's the past-haps:

After Porterville we drove to Atwater, chilled at Julie's lovely house and saw Pirates3....yep...next day we headed west for Santa Cruz where the goodness felt our need for love and got us a show at Caffee Pergolesi. It's this big house turned coffee shop with a maze of rooms and a gigantic outside patio. We played (with drums, yes!) a pretty long set for a varying amount of people-and by this I mean there was a while where we played for the art on the wall and heads peaking around the register. The music seemed to get weirder and weirder as this went on and we also seemed to have more and more fun. Orem(the sink) played a nice set too (virb's got some vids) and a couple of high-schoolers, who were strangely familiar, were way into chilling so we went to a restaurant called the Saturn (cruchy tofu salad!!, local greens!!!!) and then hung out on the beach. We camped off the side of the road and an extreme high5/shoutout! to the ranger for just giving us a warning in the morning.

San Francisco greeted our exhausted minds with a buzz and we spent the afternoon in the Mission District. I took some time to myself that evening for a much needed solo adventure. By this time, we had literally done pretty much everything together and that was trying for me at times and I needed some self wonderment. I walked to Fisherman's Wharf, up to City Lights Bookstore in North Beach (where I found this gem), and took in the mass amounts of public sculpture and nightlife. A video is on the way...

We then clangered on up the MAGICALNIFICENT coast to Arcata to play at the Yellow House of Extraodinaryness and Extremerriment...short tour. This house was really beautiful and had a huge rose bush in the backyard but unfortunately it was probably the worst show of the tour and for a few different reasons: 1) there was a dude soloing on clarinet the entire time, 2) everyone was pretty fucked up, 3) hardly no one listened, and 4) the post-show jamming went on for longer than our show and included a dude lying backdown on the floor and soloing on guitar for hours (not too unfortunately the video of this came out entirely shitty). There was two people, a friendly cute couple, who were visiting colleges and knew a friend of a friend at the house and were very responsive to us. Thank you to you both!!!

Now it was time...time to leave our sunny California bubbles behind and wind into the Oregonial complex that was ever-planned to be overwhelmingly beaut and rich. We headed for Eugene! The show at Sam Bond's Garage (very important sidenote to imagine: passionfruit Heifweizen...hoof) had been approved and went on beat as one of the best acoustic (and altogether) shows of the whole tour.

Here's a (12min) peek of The Fists @ Sam Bond's Garage with introduction by Devon Sproule:

We played between the more-than-fun The Kids on the Couch and the adorable and gifted Devon Sproule who you may or may not know as Paul Curreri's wife. Jon and Chase stopped by on their way back from Sasquatch for a more-than-pleasant surprise. The whole evening was a-more-then-I-could-take. After the show Devon invited us to stay with her friend Tilka outside of Eugene which ended up being incredible. Everything about this night was pure magic. The house was literally, I felt, the most ideal relaxed atmosphere for creativity and it was inhabited by those very type of people. Tilka and her housemates are involved in all kinds of multi-sensory connective arts (she was very in tune with her synesthesia and apparently knew that Caleb was too just from watching the Fists on stage), teaching, painting, inventing, music, friendships, general yet pure love, and also a giant garden of wild and tamed edible veggies and herbs. Tilka gave us a copy of her incredibly creative handmade children's magazine,that you really must see to believe, called All Round Magazine: a radical mag for children 1 to 100+. In our Music issue there's articles about things like listening ("close your eyes. cup your hands behind your ears. try and hear the most distant sound you can ~ find the edge of the sounds you can hear. now make a list of all the sounds you notice; far sounds and near sounds. call it your 'sound symphony'") and eight ways to whistle. Hoooof, I'm getting really excited just talking about it again!!

Not wanting to ever leave we left feeling comfortably high and esteemed with ourselves. We hadn't plans and decided to move the steaming pot of drivingtoportland to the front burner and set the freshly washed mugs of excitement in the cupholders of our cars. On we were!

Oregon is a fairly small state North to South and we made it in remarkable time. It was exciting and confusing to enter our new summerhome and we definitely ended up at the apartment by mistake, as fortunate as it was. We met up with Dave Nuss to drop some some equipment off and check out the venue for the next night, grabbed some food, had a long overdue band meeting, and behat the hay with heavy heads.

The next day I started working at Marriage and met up with Curtis, Flint, Christy, and some of the other people for an introductionary greeting at the studio. Marriage's first issue of their publishing project called Veneer is coming in tomorrow and we started putting together the inserts. I invited them to the show and took off for band practice, got a delicious veggie pita with Nuss at the Basement Pub (where apparently trivia night is a favorite spot of Malkmus), and got zoned in for the show. Bad Money, an APU grad trio supergroup, played and then the Fists went on for a packed crowd (including the Marriage dudes (holy shit!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)) in Nuss' attic and played their softly tendered hearts out!!!!!

We're now getting ready for the Tender Loving Empire store opening on Thursday and catching our collective breaths. Portland has greeted us with an overwhelming sense of extreme coolness we really are excited for the future.

I'm sorry about the lack of updates during the trip - internet couldn't keep up with our schedule all the time - but really appreciate you for reading this and for your support. There are going to be many more videos on the way in the near future and a few more pictures entangled on the web.

We love you and thank you for being you.

Love, Jordan and the Fists!

Talk talk talk talk talk and now we DO!!!

Thanks to everyone who came out to the send-off show last night at Andy's (hope your eyes quickly fell heavy amongst the sound of the party) and thanks ya'll for wishing us the best.

I played long verbal game of hello/goodbye to myself as I drove away from Los Angeles today with many more on the later half. It was sad too think about and I was listening to Brian Eno: 1/1 which just intensified the contemplative feeling I was being gifted and shaky sound of my own voice . I want you to know that I'm sort of really sad that so much time will pass before we see each other again - with some more than others - but still nonetheless, I can't tell you enough that I love you all dearly. Thank you especially to ya'll, who know who you are, for helping us directly and for the support. Finally, I've been thinking about the show last night and couldn't remember if Laura got proper credit for her work with Matthew on the posters which kick some serious ass.

I feel pretty good about the show last night. Fistfight For a Woman's Right and The Sun Song were a lot of fun, some of the new tunes need a bit of rehearsal but I'm stoked about the freedom of playing old and new songs in completely new ways for fresh unadulterated faces and ears. Get ready for costumes too. Weird ones.

We're playing tonight with Alisha's brother's sweet band called Seahag in Santa Barbara at a hip coffee house called Muddy Waters that has some delicious sounding Telegraph Beers on tap and employs a awesome dude named Bill who's got a fowl mouth that said "I don't give a shit what you fuckin' guys play as long as you're called the Righteous and Harmonious Fists". Right on, man.

I'm hoping to get some pictures up as soon as I take some which I have to go do now. But check back soon, I'm not going to do this without you.

Love Jordan