This Town Needs Guns

Hello everybody,

So this morning I checked our facebook page and found a message from someone who was a bit upset. He’d heard we were abandoning our plans to come to the US in March/April, in favour of going to Japan instead. Here is my response:

Firstly I’d like to thank everyone who helped us out with trying to plan this tour in March/April. The response was pretty overwhelming and I apologise if you sent an email or myspace message and didn’t hear back. I tried to respond to everyone, but there was always going to be a few that would ’slip through the cracks’.

Basically since we announced the tour, things have been changing. We have been getting exciting offers coming in to do lots of different events including SXSW, all of which would have meant changing our March/April tour plans. As it stands it looks like we won’t be doing any of these events, as none of them have offered us the opportunity to do what we want, which is play to as many of our fans as possible. We MIGHT be going to Japan in April/May, but that is because a touring package MIGHT be made available to us that means we can actually afford to do it.

With some help from Sargent House we now hope to come to the US in June and tour with a band we like very much. That being said nothing is confirmed and I would’ve preffered to have waited until things were confirmed before announcing these new plans. We don’t want to let anyone down, but like we’ve said in the past we also don’t want to make ourselves bankrupt and miserable going on a tour where we lose every penny we have. All that would mean is you’ll have to wait a hell of a lot longer for another album. We’d much rather wait for the right opportunity and play as many shows in the US as possible, for as many of our fans as possible and we hope that our potential opportunity in June will allow us to do that. We really are commited to coming over this year. Visa applications are in and we’re doing all that we can to do right by our fans. I’m really sorry if some of you feel let down or dissapointed, but when we do get over there we hope it’ll be the best that it possibly can be.

Stu

…so I suggest you listen to/watch these videos cos they’re pretty great:

Enjoy!

And so, another year has passed. In many ways it feels like nothing has changed and we’re exactly where we were 12 months ago. It’s only when I started thinking about what we’ve done this year, that I appreciated just how far we’ve come.

In February we embarked on our biggest UK tour to date and we played in Ireland for the first time. That tour was by far and away the best headline tour we’ve done. Every night we played to between 80-200+ people. It was great. We made a bunch of new friends and caught up with old ones. I can’t tell you how fortunate we were to have such fantastic local supports every night.

After February’s UK tour, it was back to Europe for two weeks in April (a lot warmer than when we last went in December) and once again everything went really well. Some shows were definitely better than others and I can’t say I’m eager to do another 11 hour non-stop drive through France, but it was worth it. Some nights we played to a handful of people, other nights we played to 300. It was pretty surreal but we were always met with kindness and some of the most gracious hosts we’ve ever been lucky enough to meet.

I think it’s pretty fair to say that one of this years highlights was getting to play 3 nights with ‘Love of Everything’ and ‘Joan of Arc’. Anyone who knows us will know just how excited we were to be playing with some of our favourite musicians of all time. All three gigs were incredible. I only wish we could’ve played more.

Then we found ourselves in summer. Truck Festival was insane. Having found out that we’d be on at the same time as label mates and the most uber zeitgeist band of the summer ‘Pulled Apart By Horses’, our expectations were somewhat low. So when the tent filled and people began queing outside to get in, it came as a bit of a shock. All in all we were told about 300 people were in there and I can’t describe how fun/weird it was when people started crowd surfing. My only regret is that I didn’t join you ;-P

A week or two later and we were on the outskirts of Derby in the muddiest field I have ever seen. Stuck behind Esser’s van (we think it was Esser) for half an hour, leaving us only 15 to walk all our gear 200 metres through rivers of mud. Oh yeah, and I was the only one with wellies. Nice!

When we finally got on stage and all set up, it was another great gig. It was a tent similar to the one at Truck and once again it was full to the brim. Whilst there was a distinct lack of crowd surfing (probably for the best), from the smiles on peoples faces it appeared asthough we brought a bit of sunshine to what was one of the dullest days of the summer.

October came round and we embarked on the last UK tour in support of ‘Animals’. This time we felt brave and took out some of our favourite bands as tour support. We were pretty concerned that everyone was bored of us by now and that most of the gigs would be terrible. We couldn’t have been more wrong. With only a few exceptions this tour was as good (if not better) than our tour in February.

So 2009 was a good year. Whilst we may not have made good on our intentions to get to the US, we still managed to improve as musicians and thanks to a bit of word of mouth, a bunch more people have heard of us. As I’m writing this I noticed on last.fm that we now have over a million scrobbles recorded. A MILLION! How ridiculous is that? I never thought that our music would get listened to so much and that’s only taking account of the tiny percentage of people who use last.fm.

So yeah, thank YOU for listening to us. Thank YOU, for reading our blogs/updates/tweets/whatevers. Thank YOU, for coming to our gigs. Thank YOU for buying records, t-shirts and tab books. Your support is invaluable to us and makes it all worth while.

See you in 2010.

TTFN TTNG

Plans for next year:

1. Play some shows in the US
2. Write and record a new album
3. Crowd surf at one of our gigs at least once

You can now by the US ‘Animals’ t-shirt and ‘Animals’ t-shirt for $20.

Merry Christmas!

…but you can now download the tracks we did for tapes-online.co.uk from our band camp page. You can listen first here, thanks to their handy widgety thing.

This is what happened…

This Town Needs Guns - Panda from Simonwantstoworkforyou on Vimeo.

Haven’t done one of these in a while, so thought I’d give it a bash. Check these bands out, they’re dead good:

Marvins Revolt - I think this is the second time I’ve recommended these guys, but they have a new album coming out and I for one can’t wait to give it a spin. The tracks on their myspace sound sweeeeeeet!

Lisa Papineau - Sargent House’s latest signing I believe. Just gave her a listen this morning. Why bother with Florence and the Machine when this is sooooooo much better?

Tubelord - Just finished playing a bunch of gigs with these chaps and they’re ace!

It was definitely one of the best tours we’ve done. Thanks to everyone who came along to a show and made it possible. It definitely wouldn’t have been the same without you. The last night in Leeds was immense and such a great way to end things.

Just a few more shows to go before we go into hibernation and finish writing some new songs.

10th of November - Bucks Uni SU, High Wycombe. Don’t have many details on this one. Think it’s all a bit last minute.

14th of November - Cafe Saki, Manchester. This is going to be with some sweet bands including Pennines. Come along if you can. It’ll be our last show this year.

Thanks to everyone who came. Hoxton Square Bar is probably the biggest venue we’ve headlined so it was great to see it full of friendly faces, enjoying themselves. Talons and Tropics were both on fine form. Big thanks to both of them for playing. Southampton tonight with Tubelord.

New Song (thanks to whoever it is that recorded it):