Yeah the Silver Jews are starting to tour, which is indeed good news. They recently joined The Mountain Goats, Yo La Tengo, The National, Spoon and Ted Leo/Pharmacists in the line-up for this year's Pitchfork Festival (www.pitchforkmusicfestival.com).

The Wrens were amazing, I really do think they're the best live band in the world right now; guys that age shouldn't be putting that much into their gigs, jumping off 10 foot speaker stacks while playing the bass should really be the domain of 17 year old punk bands. I got up on stage with them to play percussion on "Boys You Won't" all 3 nights. The first night I got a bit carried away when using Kevin Whelan's chair as a drum and broke a drumstick and wound up with a load of painfull blisters on my right hand, completely worth it though. But I took it easier the other nights. They had to cancel the Aberdeen gig so they want to get back over to Europe to do some more Scottish shows to make up for it and also play here in the next couple of months. They're quite anxious to play the "old country" actually, Kevin lived in Limerick for a while about 10 years ago so he in particular would like to come back and play. The prospect of an Irish gig is a very exciting one for me as I could end up opening for them but I don't want to jinx it.

Cool. Sounds like you had blast. Nay a BLAST!!! Yes, say no more re: future gigs. I'll keep watching the skies in the meantime.

this sounds cool unicron. how did it come about?

The percusion thing? They always get a bunch of people up to play on that song, I asked Jerry (drummer)if I could do it the first night when he was selling merch beforehand and after that he kept an eye out for me on the other nights.