Oh yeah, we're finally shaking off the cold and getting out on the road. Rotten Records has arranged for a handful of it's bands (Ideamen, Polkadot Cadaver, Vampire Mooose and Karen Page) to hit up a South By Southwest show in Austin Texas, and they booked a bunch of shows for us to play. But that just wasn't enough for us, so we booked some more! Here's the list thus far (we'll update this post as the TBA shows fall into place):

Mar 10 2010 8:00P
Tour Kick Off
w/ Zevious (NY), Casual Interruption (Indy) & Cesar Holiday (Indy)
Melody Inn
Indianapolis, Indiana

Mar 11 2010 8:00P
Columbia Street West
Fort Wayne, Indiana

Mar 12 2010 8:00P
Rotten Records Tour
The Breakfast Club (Hi-Fi)
Lakewood, Ohio

Mar 13 2010 9:00P
Rotten Records Tour
17+
Reggie’s Rock Club
Chicago, Illinois

Mar 14 2010 7:00P
Rotten Records Tour
Cicero’s
University City, Missouri

Mar 16 2010 8:00P
Rotten Records Tour
Jerry’s Bait Shop
Lee’s Summit, Missouri

Mar 17 2010 8:00P
Rotten Records Tour
Eagles Lodge
Wichita, Kansas

Mar 18 2010 7:00P
Rotten Records Tour
The Conservatory
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

Mar 20 2010 4:00P
Rotten Records’ SXSW Party
Lucky Lounge
Austin, Texas

Mar 21 2010 8:00P
Rotten Records Tour
The Boiler Room
Denton, Texas

Mar 23 2010 8:00P
Rotten Records Tour
Vino’s
Little Rock, Arkansas

Mar 24 2010 8:00P
Rotten Records Tour
House Of Thor
Memphis, Tennessee

Mar 25 2010 8:00P
Rotten Records Tour
The Muse
Nashville, Tennessee

Mar 26 2010 8:00P
Rotten Records Tour
Bernies Distillery
Columbus, Ohio

Mar 27 2010 8:00P
Rotten Records Tour
Yesterday’s
Wheeling, West Virginia

Mar 28 2010 7:00P
w/ Now Soon Nowhere & TBA
Otto’s Shrunken Head
New York City, New York

Mar 30 2010 8:00P
w/ Now Soon Nowhere
TENTITVE
The Khyber
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Mar 31 2010 8:00P
Tentitive
TBA
Baltimore

Apr 1 2010 8:00P
Tentitive
TBA
Pittsburgh

Apr 2 2010 8:00P
w/ Rosedale (powerpop from Canada) & 12 Track Radio (Michigan acoustic pop)
Old Glory Studios
Canton, Ohio

Apr 3 2010 8:00P
w/ Downtown Brown, Against The Grain & Crotchetcatpause
Small’s Bar (Detroit)
Hamtramck, Michigan

Hey there kids! Thus far all of the posts tagged "News" have been posted through the Ideamen Admin account, but I'm going to make an exception this time because I just can't say this in the third person. The show at J.J. Kelley's could very well have been a disaster for us had it not been for the fans and friends that came out and saved the day. It started out just fine actually, Lights Over Bridgeport opened up with an awesome performance, followed energetically by The Alaya Conscious. It sounded as if one of the speakers was blown, really distorted for how quiet it actually was. Downtown Brown put on a superFunnyFantastic show - but was halted at the second to last song... The PA had simply up and quit. They shouted their way through and finished up with an instrumental.
Needless to say we were shaking in our boots at this point. We set up as the soundGuy fiddled with knobs and looked at wires. We debated doing a sort of 'unplugged' show. We knew we couldn't just not play - you folks were there, still there after a long but entertaining night of waiting. The time came and the only solution available was one microphone plugged directly into a teensy monitor dragged to the front of the stage. OK, let's do this.
We opened with Cavity. I ran around with the single mic and stuck it in the face of whoever I thought should be heard at any given moment. Timmy slammed his fists on the keys as he adjusted to the reality of what we'd just gotten ourselves into. You folks... sang along. If it weren't for that, in that moment where we realized that you understood what was going on up there and that you were ok with it, we may have just felt too silly to continue.
It was awful. Had to be one of the more awkward positions we'd ever been in; a band that pretty much thrives on having somewhere between 2 and 4 dudes singing at once playing for our friends with no PA, one microphone pumped through something no one could hear. But... you still cheered. And you continued to sing along. And we smiled.
We didn't really get the opportunity to thank you all for making us have fun despite the bizarre circumstances (actually I did, but I'm pretty sure no one could hear what I was saying), and I kind of passed out from sheer exhaustion at the end of the last song. So thank you, all of you for making it a night to remember and a story we can laugh about until the alzheimer's sets in.

You rock.
--D.G. Solar

Just want to mention that we were superHappy with the Ballydoyle show. We went in without any idea of what to expect, kind of thinking it would be some teensy empty dive. Boy were we wrong. It's in a really spiffy part of town, and the place was huge. Not only was it huge but it was packed, hard to walk in when we got there. Shiny clean place, good bathrooms (Dave's criterion for determining a good venue has far too much to do with what the bathrooms are like), friendly staff and a goodly sized stage. The crowd was fantastic and they bought a lot of stuff (which makes us smile and make googly faces), Absolutely Perfect was just about that, it's not just a clever name. Thanks guys, for a great show!

Also want to mention that you should be coming to the show at JJ Kelley's. It's gonna be nice to play at 'home' again. Did we mention that Downtown Brown is playing?

See you there!

We made it home! We say this with such excitement because it's been a while since we went out and didn't have something go horribly wrong. So we're all sick, but whatever. If the piggy flu was what we all had, don't believe the hype. It was kind of like a not really all that bad cold.
Sunday sunday sunday - Man are we glad that this was the last show. It left us all feeling really good about ourselves (our fragile egos are so easily damaged), heck it made us forget being sick. Really nice town, good venue, good people (imagine a place where if you want a cup of coffee you have to make some if the pot is empty), good crowd. Wonderful crowd in fact. We're finding ourselves meeting fans that we don't know yet from places that we wouldn't expect. Not that that's out of the ordinary in the grand scheme of things, but we like to know who our fans are, where they're from, how many pets they have and so on. For Science and stuff.

A note to folks who come to our shows:

Please do introduce yourselves at shows, even if we've met already. It's tough for us to tell who's there to see us, and we don't always spot people we've seen before. We're actually very approachable, somewhat shy, quite forgetful, a little deaf, and totally dedicated to performing various scientific experiments on you.

Thank you's to all the fans that made this tour worthwhile! Other thank you's to Downtown Brown, Super 8 Bit Brothers, Screaming Mechanical Brain, and all the other bands we played with for making it all happen.
To SMB, glad that was painless, and good luck to you in the future.

In the days since we got home (and slept and did not update the site) our new website popped up on the Habari communities radar, and we were lucky enough to attract a couple comments from Michael C. Harris and Andy C, members of the Habari community. This is a wonderful thing because we really want to make this web site do all kinds of cool things, and Dave's gonna need all the help he can get. He just got all giddy about the comments and is courageous enough now to start posting questions on the Habari forum and user group.

Until Next time!

Most of us succeeded in shaking off all our piggy flu in Bloomington superthanks to Dave's family in Indianapolis. They came out to the show, and had chicken soup ready for all of us when we got there. Hooboy was that good. Phil had 4 bowls. Thanks Beth and Mike and Dustin and Shannon and Blake and Keanen!

Mark had a toothache at something like 5am and had to run out to get some anesthetic. He seems to be doing ok now. We'll see if he sings like someone who just stepped out of the oral surgeons office.

Tonight we hit the stage at Peabody's in Cleveland. We can't wait to see our friends here again. Just getting settled in here, someone asked Phil if we were going to be on our best behavior. Hah! We're such a bunch of troublemakers. We'll try not to break anything, gotta leave things for the 8 Bit Brothers to break!