Kickstarter

It's been two months since we've returned to San Francisco, but I am only just starting to feel settled again. After 100+ days of nomadic living, it was quite a jolt returning to the sedentary life. It was not until this week that I finally have my own room, so it's time to get down to business! There are still many of you generous contributors who have yet to receive a Battlehooch "thank you" package. I have a bunch of merchandise piled up, ready to go. I will be sending out individual emails shortly to confirm addresses, etc.

Hopefully you all have been able to follow our antics online on YouTube, Facebook & the Battleblog. Thanks to your generous donations, we were able to successfully film 6 Desolation Videos, live and off-the-grid across the country. As we are releasing one a month around the 18th, we already have three up: Utah, Florida & New York. Later this week we will drop #4: Detroit. New Orleans and Oklahoma are waiting in the wings. Additionally, AJ has been splicing together footage collected by the whole band for webisodes featuring each city/region we passed through. In that chronology, we are still in the midwest, driving toward Detroit Rock City.

Since the next two videos we will put up are based around Detroit, I'll share some anecdotes & photos from our visit there: Upon meeting for the first time, we stayed a whole weekend with our lovely booking agent, Kim Paris. She lives near downtown, which has been utterly devastated economically. There was a girl held up at gunpoint outside our bar show the first night we got there. We were so nervous about our equipment that we lugged everything out of the van into Kim's modest 2nd story apartment, completely filling it up. When it was time for bed, there was no walking room. You would have to roll or leap over AJ & Pat with their massive inflatable mattress. Luckily, our stay happened to coincide with Detroit's largest street festival of the year (Dally in the Alley), so of course we had to scout it out. It was raining, but we decided to busk anyway. I lugged the battery bank through muddy, crowded cobblestone to an alleyway between stages. Forgetting my cymbals like a doofus, I improvised with a 40oz. bottle (see below). Broke a couple in the process, but the crowd was loving it! The next morning, after scouting deserted spots for our music video shoot, I struck gold at an abandoned Packard auto factory. It was so epic that Transformers 3 was being filmed there at the same time, with a full-sized subway train hanging out of a demolished wall! Unfortunately, our shoot was plagued with trouble. Grant dropped his camera into a cinderblock wall, so we lost an angle. After collecting B-roll footage, setting up our gear and coming to terms with the lost camera, we got one full take before getting spooked by a couple of hard-looking dudes. They entered the room, checked out our expensive equipment, then casually exited. At Kim's strong suggestion, we packed up and bailed before they had a chance to return with reinforcement. Grant, Ben and I returned the next day and manually deconstructed the wall to get the missing camera. Lo and behold, it still works! The third photo is us outside Hitsville, USA where Motown got started. This tour certainly widened my view of America. Each area we visited impressed on me a certain distinctive vibe. Detroit stands out to me as being especially gritty, dangerous and epic. What a city!

Lots of love and all the best in 2011,
Hyoobz

P.S. If you have not yet seen, we have a new video of us playing a song live while packed like sardines in the Battlevan, driving through Brooklyn. It's at the top of our Facebook page. Also, there is an extreme sports camera company called GoPro that has been featuring our music in several super rad online videos. Here's one featuring stunt kayaking: http://www.youtube.com/watch...

Arigato! Danke! Grazie! Morale is at an all-tyme high since our project has been successfully funded. We are feeling truly inspired and motivated by all the support. Checking in from my mobile, drivng south sunset style.

Updates:
*3 amazing renegade shows in Portland.
*A hilarious mellow-smooth earthen restaurant show in Corvallis.
*2am busking in Eugene as all the bars are letting out. Failed attempt at playing outside Ringo's all-star show by the river.
*A nostalgic slumber party at the Solar-living center (yurts and strawbale huts).
*Hometown show, Kickin it with our 'homies' at the bizzaro Battlepad.
*new battlerags printed in the basement of Pauls's Hatworks.
*LA shows at a used-instrument shop, a record store and a tricked-out recording studio.
*Soundman, Gabe Armstrong, has joined us all the way till Florida!
*Spent all morning rebuilding the battery bank with Pat's papa. It's gonna be tight!
*Experimenting with 4-camera video shoots.
*Working on wiRing/charging arrangements for our van/home/studio.

So much going on!
Look out for a Kickstarter inquiry about rewards, coming very soon!
We are now at the venue; another show, it's time to roll!

Last night in California and the journey really begins. Leaving our belov'd west coast for the gnarled innards of the nation.

Vegas, I hope you're ready!

Less than a week left and our project is coming along swimmingly! Since reaching our minimum fund-raising target, we have had more pledges come in from some very dear friends of ours. We feel truly blessed! Everyone is in high spirits; having the time of our lives ;)

Last week in Seattle was awesome! We had an exceptional run playing in the park by the entrance to the the Capital Hill Block Party, where MGMT was headlining the night before. Saw some old friends and met a bunch of new ones. Finished a long day of busking with a midnight lake swim and jumps off the high-dive with some locals. Our new batch of tee shirts are selling like hotcakes and we are meeting some serious characters out in the land (I've included one such piecechow below). There's also a pic of us sleeping on the same stage we played on at the Black Lodge in Seattle. Great venue, great hosts.

We now have 4 water-proof Kodak Handycams to capture all the adventures. So much data is rushing in! We are doing lots of experiments, reading manuals, managing files, developing our discerning eyes. It's going to be very interesting organizing this deluge of media!

While in Olympia, we couldn't find a good place to street perform, so we filmed a Desolation Video in the woods. I've been giving myself a crash course in Final Cut Pro, so we will (hopefully) have that online this week.

Last night we played a guerrilla street festival on Alberta Street in Portland that was off-the-chain! Must have been more packed than South By Southwest. Thousands of people in a massive artistic free-for-all. After getting taken over by some nunchuck-wielding break-dancers, we played our sweatiest show of all time at a bar right on the main strip, the Know.

The audio I've included here is a live preview of a new song, "Picking Fields," written by our horn-man, Tombo. It's from our set at Portland State University on Wednesday.

If you feel like keeping track of us, please check out our individual thought streams here: http://twitter.com/odbol/battlehooch

Also, keep checking up on our Facebook page for new stuff. AJ put up interview video #1, and there's a fan-made live video from our Seattle busking session. Plus, Grant has informed me that all our scheduled shows up to this moment are now posted on Myspace, Battlehooch.com and Facebook.

Tonight we play at a warehouse brewery called the Waterheater. Tomorrow we play Corvallis, then Sunday in Eugene. Monday and Tuesday will find us at the Solar Living Institute, spending the night in the intern village that I had a hand in building so many moons ago. It still looks like we will be getting a solar-powered upgrade to our battery bank.

Once again, we love you all!

-Hyoobaloinz and the BATTLELADS

Project update:
Wow, what a rush! Thanks to all your amazing support, this morning we made our initial goal after just nine days! To celebrate, I went with Pat and Ben to Hayden Island at the border of Portland and Vancouver (Washington, that is) to buy our first gear. I picked up a Canon t2i DSLR camera, a Kodak waterproof Playsport pocket camcorder and a replacement bulb for a work-light that we picked up from Ben's mom in Davis. I also sawed the end off a 1/4" bolt so we can use the work-light tripod as a camera tripod as well. The portable studio is coming together in the most awesome way. Lights, camera... ACTION!

Talked with my old friend, Erik Frye, at the Real Goods Store in Hopland this morning. He had some very interesting things to say. He is confident that we can reserve all the electrical components needed to give our battery bank a major upgrade when we pass through Mendocino County on August 2nd. We are currently working on adding a Trimetric electrical gauge (to tell how much juice we got), a charge controller (to control the amount of juice feeding the batteries) and, if all goes according to plan...a couple of solar panels (to collect the juice ourselves, fresh from the sun!). Since our generator is meant to be portable, I was worried about the electrical connections to the panels. Erik eased my fears, informing me that we can get detachable connectors. No big deal! (Now, what about roof mounting and wire-running?!)

It's looking like when all is said and done, we may be going over the amount I initially projected this will all cost. We still want to provide a food stipend for Tyler and Gabe when they join us, and we keep thinking of amazing new things to get: A helmet cam, a busking speaker for Pat's vocals, more pocket camcorders, etc.). Good thing we still have lots of time remaining! I'm going to continue to hype this thing 'till the glorious end. When August 5th comes, we will send out emails to all our patrons asking important questions like: "Piecechow or Self-titled?," "how would you like your tee-shirt?," "is there a particular genre and/or topic you'd prefer for your custom Battlehooch song?," and/or "which member of the band would you like to be the artistic muse for?"

Tour update:
It's our good friend Jim's birthday next door at the Vortex, so we sang him Happy Birthday and gave him a vinyl. We dined on delicious mustard greens from his garden. Check out the chickens on our shoulders. It's hard to tell, but they have amazing feet plumage (their breed, Mille Fleur, means 'thousand flowers.') Last night we busked at MONDAY FUNDAY. Apparently, the cool thing to do on Mondays in Portland is go to Coll Sumner's Park and play all kinds of SPORTS! It was super fun providing the soundtrack for a rousing game of dodge ball. After our set, some officers asked if there was any live music going on? "Not that we know of, Sir, no-sir-EEE!" Tonight we're gonna get our groove on at Burnside Ave. downtown and try out some of our new camera gear. Hallelujah!

Thank you all again for your generous contributions: You are giving me the confidence to truly move forward from the realm of 'pipe-dream' into REALITY!

Love, Hyoobz

For everybody who has asked us to "just jam" during our shows: the audio track at the bottom of this update goes out to you! Recorded at the Oakland Art Murmur first Friday this month on a Telegraph sidewalk near the Stork Club. Let's call it 'Battle-murmur.'

We had a super-fun Exodus show at Bottom of the Hill on Thursday. Thank you to everyone who came and dressed up, we had a ball!

The Northwest prelude to our tour began last night, playing at Luigi's Pizza in Sacramento's version of the Castro, Lavender Heights. Lots of floral dresses and some neon tank tops. Felt great to wear shorts outside at midnight. We are all SUPER EXCITED by the progress of our fund-raising project and we owe it all to YOU! Thank you ALL for the contributions. We are now in the homestretch of our campaign and I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Thanks to some AMAZINGLY GENEROUS pledges, we now have the confidence to purchase our first gear. Any suggestions for specific video/photo equipment we should get? Low-light ability is a major plus. We will be in the fabled tax-free land of Oregon soon, where I plan to get a digital SLR camera (I'm leaning toward the Cannon Rebel series) and some pocket camcorders (most likely a Zoom Q3, a Kodak zi8 and a helmet cam, as requested by Ben).

I am currently working on a potential video shoot in Mendocino County, and we have been communicating with friends in Oklahoma about playing at Red Rock Canyon (LED nighttime shoot?!).

Soundman Gabe Armstrong will be joining us for the first week of August out to Colorado, and projectionist, Tyler Freeman, will meet us in New York down the line.

More immediately, we are planning to busk at some kind of Mutant Festival (?) in Arcada and the Saturday market in Portland.

On a side note, MAJOR kudos to A. Nonymous for his large cash donation. We are giddy as can be to start the adventure with such positive reinforcement. "I'll have extra cheese on that, please!"

Love you all!

-Hyoobaloinz