Well, it looks like we're going to indefinitely postpone our Canadian tour that we were hoping to do in September. With our schedules being reshuffled recently, it's not going to fit. However, it does mean that we're booking a lot of weekend in-and-out of town shows between now and December. And in December, we hope to get a few weeks of touring in. Thanks to those folks who were ready to help us out in Canada... we'll get there eventually.

It's been a little quiet here for the last few months. We haven't been playing out very much at all, because guitarist Patrick has been out of town. He works as a touring sound engineer, and was on tour a whole freaking ton of 2009. He's mostly back in town-ish, and we're going to be booking some regional shows over the summer and fall. Our planned Canada tour in September is still looking OK, but band member schedules might cause that to be moved or delayed. We'll keep you updated.

We've got a track, "Short of Breath", on the recently released "Half-Assed Chicago" compilation put out by Chicago's Johann's Face Records. It is a 12" vinyl LP and digital download, and contains tracks from... The Arrivals / Sass Dragons / The Brokedowns / M.O.T.O. / Shotbaker / The Yolks / Das Kapital / Hewhocorrupts / The Krunchies / Vacation Bible School / The Catburglars / Days Off / Bread and Bottle / BiFurious / The House That Gloria Vanderbilt / 97-shiki ... "Short of Breath" isn't technically unreleaseded, as it was on out debut Asian Tour cassette released in Malaysia, and is the bonus track on our digital download of our self-titled 7".

Recently, Douglas was interviewed on San Francisco's Pirate Cat Radio by the Rock'n'Roll Nurse on the "punk Prescription show. The interview covered Douglas' past in bands/music, and lead up to 97-shiki's Asian tour. Unfortunately, there were technical problems, and the internet feed wasn't working during the interview. That meant it also didn't get recorded! Nonethelss , if you were in SF and had your radio tuned, you heard it. Thanks to Pirate Cat Radio and the R'n'R Nurse!"

We're going to try and do a tour to eastern Canada in September 2009. Starting in Ontario, then Quebec, into the Maritimes, and hopefully out to St. John's Newfoundland and Labrador, then back down into Maine and New England. Friends Defect Defect from Portland, OR toured in these parts a couple years ago, so we'll be following in their van tracks. If you have any contacts or info, we'd love your help.

We're going to be doing a live radio interview on Pirate Cat Radio, 87.9 FM San Francisco on April 29th at 11AM Pacific Time (1PM Central). We'll be appearing on the Rock'n'Roll Nurse's Punk Prescription show, and the topic will be our recent Asia tour. You can listen live via internet stream http://www.piratecatradio.com/pcr.m3u .

While we were on our tour to Asia last November, we had some people over there help make some merch to support out tour. We sold a lot of it there, but brought some home with us.

Buttons

Talib of Revulsion Records in Kuala Lumpur made us a pile-o-buttons. He made 6 different designs of 1" buttons, and they look great. We got them about 1/2 through the tour when we got to Singapore and met up. We have a lot of these left, and they'll be available at our shows.

Patches

Dolly Patchaos from Indonesia made these for us. These are hand screened, backed, and hemmed -- to quality! Dolly has been doing silkscreening for a long time, and has been doing patches for Hewhocorrupts for years. Not only did we get real Dolly patches, but he came to our show in Jakarta and him and Ryan got to meet face to face for the first time. Very cool.

T-shirts

These are full blown tour T-shirts, complete with a tour itinerary listed on the back. We had about 50 or so made, in various sizes and a few different colors. We brought about 20 or so back with us.

Cassette

Revulsion Records released a tour special cassette -- our first release! It has 7 songs, and dual English Malaysian/Indonesian lyrics. Again, another great job; totally high quality.

We took a little hiatus from our site after returning from tour. We're back on track now. Our to do list:

Flesh out our tour diary with more pictures, video and narrative.

We have a lot of stuff, and we want to catch up on that. Our tour companion/roadie Mark took a ton of photos with a film camera, and we're hoping to get prints of those soon (we got them!).

Update our site with news on the U.S. release of our debut 7", and Asia merch

We received our vinyl the day before we left on tour, and were able to throw together temporary covers and inserts for about 50 copies that we took to Asia. After returning, we've set to silk screening, cutting, folding, and stuffing the U.S. release versions. We also received our digital download dropcards that will do into the records. The tracks are also in the pipeline for digital distribution, so they'll be available in iTunes and all over. A list with links will be posted once we get that info. We also brought back a lot of Asia tour merch, stuff that was made over there for our tour. We have t-shirts, cassettes, patches, and buttons. We brought back the remaining supplies of those, and we'll have them available at shows. We're not sure if we're going to do mailorder/internet ordering of that yet, but we'll keep you posted.

Start our "Help bands from SE Asia tour in the US" project

In short, during our tour, we discussed the difficult but possibly possible project of trying to help some bands from SE Asia to tour in the US. Barriers to overcome: money and visa issues. Look for a page dedicated to that, and a discussion of tactics, resources, and plans. - Thanks for being patient, and stay tuned for more info!

We are home from our Asia Tour 2008. We arrived yesterday (tomorrow? -- errr.. international date line confusion...) and are pretty tired. We'll be posting the last few tour blog posts soon, with updated pics and videos. Before I fall asleep again, we want to THANK EVERYONE who helped us out. This tour was an extraordinary success thanks to all the incredible organization and planning that everyone in South Korea, Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia provided us every step of the way. You set up the shows, met us at airports, bus stops, and train stations, helped up find food, showed us around, helped do merch, took photos and videos, had a place for us to sleep, got us to the departing trains, busses, airports on time or drove us through the night... all while being friendly, fun and positive throughout it all. Your efforts were amazing, and made this tour possible. We are eternally grateful, and thank you for showing everyone what DiY community is all about. ZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzz.........

We rented a van, and a friend drove us up the west coast of Malaysia to Penang. Arwith went with us as well, andit was about a 4 hour ride. We were paranoid we were arriving late, but as the show time was pushed back, we weren't, and after riding the ferry from Penang accross to George Town island, headed for a meal at the much recommended Evergreen vegetarian restaurant. Freaking delicious. We made to to the Soundmaker venue space. The turnout for the show was pretty thin, as it was a Sunday night, and there were exams for students the next morning. Despite that, the people were enthusiastic, and the low number of attendees meant the A/C kept up, and it was the first gig in a loooong while where were weren't drenched in our own sweat afterwards. A rooftop hangout party, with a great view of the straights followed, and we did a taped interview for a music website. (stay tuned for pics and videos!)