Tonight we are honored to be playing at La Carafe, the bar in the building which inspired our name. La Carafe has always been one of my favorite places in Houston: a reminder that Houston does have history, and some people care about it. La Carafe is located in the Kennedy Bakery building in downtown Houston, right next to Market Square.

Besides playing in our namesake building, this show is important for another reason – most likely, this will be our last show with Justine . She is nearing her due date, and while we are all excited for her, she will be missed.

We’ll be playing upstairs at 7:00. The show is free. We’ve also declared this to be Sequin Night – you are certainly not obligated to sparkle, but I will be.

See you tonight!

love,

erin

First of all, thank you to Adam of Dryvetyme Onlyne for the lovely review of our Historical Fiction EP!

I hope to have photos/video of our CD release show soon – I couldn’t have asked for a better show. The sound was great,  James and Jenny sound tighter every time we play, Rachelle and Justine busted out some jazz vocals, and Stephanie and I tore up the dance floor during Chase Hamblin’s set. Thank you to everyone who made it out (and there were a lot of you, especially for a Sunday night).

We have several more shows in the works, some with the full band and some smaller acoustic sets. I promise to keep you posted once all of the details materialize.

And as a side note, with Justine nearing her due date, our search for a keyboard player is on. If you play keyboard or have any keyboard buddies, please send them our way (male or female). Harmony singing ability is also helpful but not required.

See you soon!

love,

erin

Hi friends,

You may have noticed that it’s been a while since we played a show. We’ve been working on planning an EP release show, so our regular shows have been on hiatus. Don’t worry your pretty heads; we’ve been busy behind the scenes, and are planning a big show in October.

In the meantime, we’ve been going to a lot of other local shows. Most recently, Stephanie and I went to see Two Star Symphony‘s Synesthesia 2 – Electric Boogaloo performance at Rice. As usual, I had mixed emotions – awe for the performance, and anger that my high school didn’t have an orchestra, so I couldn’t grow up to become a brilliant string player, too.  Later that night, I went to Blanco’s to check out Johnny Falstaff. Thank you to everyone who tolerated my feeble attempts at two-stepping. I hate to admit that I can’t two-step because I feel like a failure of a Texan. Maybe it’s time to check out the Leisure Learning dance class schedule…

James and I also made a brief appearance at the Houston Press Music Awards on August 11. We showed up just in time to see ourselves lose, but we’re all still thrilled we were nominated. Congratulations to the Flying Fish Sailors for deservedly winning the Best Folk category, and to all of the other winners, as well.

Stay tuned for more news on our upcoming show. In the meantime, you can usually catch me playing solo at Avant Garden’s open mic night on Tuesdays at 10:00 pm.

love,

erin

Those of you who were at our show at Dean’s last Thursday may have noticed a few changes, and I don’t mean in an after-school-special kind of way.

First of all, you probably recognized Sydney Harkreader, who has shared a bill with us several times. Sydney was gracious enough to fill in for Justine on keys while Justine is out of town. However, you probably also noticed our newest member, backup singer Rachelle Dulany. Rachelle deserves her own post, but this particular post is more about the reason we needed Rachelle in the first place.

So, for those of you who don’t already know – Justine is having a baby! She is going to continue playing with us as long as possible, but eventually she’ll be leaving us to do the whole mom thing. She has decided not to find out if it’s a boy or a girl, but I’ll be sure to let you know the juicy details after the big event this winter. Maybe Justine will even sell me the first photo, paparazzi-style. If the new nursery is any indication, this is going to be one stylish kid.

Congratulations Justine!

love,

erin

Thanks to James’ new camera and a stack of napkins serving as a tripod, we now have videos on the Tubes of You. These videos of “Baker’s Dozen” and “My Dear” are from our last show at Rudyard’s on July 16th. This was a test run; we hope to have better videos in the future (and videos where you can actually see Jenny back there).

The best part of this story, though, involves the camera itself. James purchased it used on ebay, and it came with a tape still in the camera. He wanted to record over it without checking, but I’m too big of a Found fan to let potential finds go to waste. We turned it on to find footage of a tornado tearing through some Midwestern field, which was pretty amazing. I figured that some guy in Illinois was just hanging out in his backyard and got a lucky shot…but after the second or third tornado clip, it became apparent that this camera previously belonged to a tornado chaser.  I kept waiting for Helen Hunt to appear, or Tori Amos to start playing in the background.

Anyway, here are our videos – not nearly as exciting as tornado footage, but I hope you enjoy them nonetheless.

love,

erin

Hey friends,

We just found out that we’re playing this coming Thursday, July 29, at Dean’s (the downtown location). Show starts at 9:45pm and cover is $5. Here is the lineup:

Sheila Swift (9:45pm)

Sydney Harkreader (10:30pm)

Kennedy Bakery (11:15pm)

Adam & Lena (12:00am)

Sydney will also be playing keyboard for us to fill in for Justine, who is in Wisconsin.

See you Thursday!

love,

erin

Voting is now open for the Houston Press Music Awards. You can vote for us here, in the folk category. You can only vote once, but make sure you spread the word. I’m still thrilled just to have made it on the ballot.

We have several other exciting bits of news, but I don’t want to dilute any of them by combining them with others – each is worthy of its own blog post, so you’ll have to wait.

We’ll see you Friday at Rudyard’s!

love,

erin

Don’t forget that we’re playing this Friday, July 16 at Rudyard’s with Melissa Savčić and Stephen Rawlings. The show starts at 10:00. I’ll be there early to make sure I have plenty of time to eat fried zucchini, so feel free to join me. Is it sad that I’m already looking forward to food that I’m not going to get to eat until four days from now? Oh well, it’s the little things, right?

When I was in Austin a couple weeks ago, I tried to take a photo of the lovely full moon. It didn’t work, but I ended up with the photo in this flyer instead. I love lucky photography accidents.

See you Friday!

love,

erin

So, I have good news and bad news. Let’s start with the bad news: unfortunately, we’ll be unable to participate in the Houston Press Music Awards Showcase. We’re disappointed, but it falls right smack in the middle of my long-planned trip to Ohio for my family reunion. I tried to find a way to make both work, but it’s just not going to happen. But, you can still vote for us! We’ll post more information on how to vote once the time comes.

The good news is that the music for the EP is finished! After a really, really long day in the studio this past Sunday, all of the mixing and mastering is done. Thanks again to Mark Younger-Smith for making sure everything sounds fabulous.

And now, I leave you with the reason I am slightly less disappointed about missing the showcase than I was initially – because I will be visiting the world’s largest basket. We’re driving to and from Ohio, and I made my dad promise we could stop – although I think he’s just as excited about it as I am. This basket is actually a seven story office building, which houses the headquarters of the Longaberger Basket Company.

photo credit to errrrrrrrrika

Try not to be TOO jealous.

love,

erin