The Spinning Leaves = excited to release their new 7″ inch record called “Head Aglow” on APRIL 27th at Underground Arts! Be the “there for it.”

Playing the night:
+ JULIET HOPE WAYNE – hilarious good flipping gripping stories – she tells them, weaves them, relates them, spanks them, etc. the moth
+ LIGHTNINGING – fun! dance! rock horn party good tasty energy band explosion going on house smash blam blam
+ DIVERS (EmilyAna Zeitlyn and co., former – The Weeds) – oh so good songs and feels inviting mystery passion like needed bread AND buttah
+ THE SPINNING LEAVES – pure release good

We all share in common “good”. This will make for a grand freaking awesome show. Get there early, stay late.

APRIL 27TH, 2012
UNDERGROUND ARTS in the basement of the Wolf Building at
12TH & CALLOWHILL ST.
Philadelphia, PA
9 PM
$10

Underground Arts is new and awesome and underground and so real. They will have a kitchen open for dinner and plenty of delicious local beer and fine spirits.

A little about the record ————-
“Head Aglow” was recorded at Waterfront Studios in Hudson, NY inside a large 19th century church with the renowned producer and engineer Henry Hirsch(Lenny Kravitz, Mick Jagger, Madonna). The Spinning Leaves collaborated on the production of three songs with Hirsch, their long-time friend and sonic trustee Rachel Alina, guitar galaxy genius Ross Bellenoit, and saucy beatist Spencer Cohen. The result is a record with incredible depth, both audibly and emotionally. With access to mics from the 30′s to the present and recording straight to 2 inch tape, the vinyl sounds so so so warm and their voices fly. The songs themselves are ripping and putting back together. “Knife Arms” is a spell of a song, about the beauty and snares of love, the simultaneous gut slices and clear comfort of a partner. “Shades of Red” is like catching fire, an elemental musing on the vigor and mystery of life. “Dulcimer Grove” is a big dream gift, a wonder scene of time and space given from one to another, whole again.

It is being released on Mad Dragon Records.

For the release show, The Spinning Leaves band will consist of Michael Baker, Barbara Gettes, Phil D’Agostino, Ross Bellenoit, Jonas Oesterle, Larry Toft, and Adam Hershberger. And surely some special guests It will be killer!

Poster for the release beautiful – painted by Frank Kolbmann – Francis2Good.com – words art laid on by Angela Miles

Hope everyone can make it! Spread the word!

www.thespinningleaves.com

“like” us on facebook here – www.facebook.com/thespinningleaves

**Alternate $ system in Madison. We love this. Read about it here- www.madisonhours.org/

The Food Co-op had it going on. We loved the seed bomb machine, tinctures in bulk and the diversity of bulk medicinal and nutritional herbs. Perhaps Mariposa will get a bulk tincture distributor at it’s new location— hint, hint!

The land in through the plains felt haunted by the ‘cowboy’ and native spirits of the land. It was long and flat. We stopped off at two spots off of Highway 90. One called Wall Drug, boasting advertisements for a $.05 cup off coffee. The other spot we stopped off at was called 1880 Town.

This is where we got a $.05 cup of coffee. Wall Drug is a few blocks of kitchy tourist stuff. My favorite thing about it was some of the beautiful art work on the walls. Other than that, it was an obvious marketing ploy for the white man to capitolize off of mass produced cowboy and indian ‘relics’.

And here are some pictures of 1880 town;

By the time we got through 1880 town, we had a growing pit in our stomaches about the lack of presence of the Native American perspective. The lack of perspective from women as well.
The land kept opening up wider and wider. We heard about the wild buffalo we would see but saw none.
As we drove we saw our first ghost mountains. They looked like clouds over the plains for miles. As we got closer tears welled up in my eyes. We both wondered what it must have been like to make this journey on horse.. or with a wagon. We wondered what it would be like to know the land. And then- we came to the Black Hills of South Dakota.

America. We opted to take a bit more than a week off from playing shows to explore South Dakota and Wyoming. And, oh man! We’re glad we did! Both Mike and I have never driven cross country before. Although we both wanted to in the past, we are both thankful that this journey did not present itself until now. Now, that we are older.. Now, through music.
Music is the wave that we ride on to penetrate into communities. We designed our tour to spend multiple days in each place that we visit so we can learn about the region and get to know folks. Although making the leap of jumping off for 2 & 1/2 months was equally exciting and scary, we knew we needed to do it.
Somewhere in between Madison, Wisconsin and the Black Hills of South Dakota we felt a drastic change from the East to the West. The land opened up to us and we felt vibrations of the past greet the modern day.

Sooooooo we finally had to leave Michigan. Sad to go but excited to be moving further and further west, to places we’ve never been. But first, we went to Chicago. Had a beautiful drive in. Here’s Bee driving along the lake into the city –

Playing at the Red Line Tap was, honestly, one of those kinds of gigs we’ve been trying to avoid on our tour – a Tuesday night at a drinking bar opening for a band that didn’t even introduce themselves. The best thing about it was the locally raised buffalo burger I had for free. Here’s us making the stage jingle jangle –

And also awesome, we met up with Dan Haefs, the genius behind This is Deer Country. Here he is –

He got up and joined us on mandolin to cover “Bring it on Home to Me” and for “Bridges for Free”. Was awesome!!! We also stayed with him and caught up on some internet and phone calls, cooked a genius Mexican feast, and went to a comedy open mic that whole next night that was hilarious. There we encountered aspiring comic Lou D’Agostino. I took this picture and immediately sent it to our bassist Mr. Phil D’Agostino.

Maybe Phil will one day find his comedy calling?? Maybe

And then….. we didn’t have a gig for Friday night, our gig for saturday night in Lansing started falling apart, and we were already in a real great caravan with Bathgate and our family band. So oh what to do? Felt logical for everyone – we cancelled Lansing for Saturday night and joined the Bathgate band for the Hoxeyville Music Festival up north in the woods! Such good times. This is where our new mandolin and barbara’s drumming ways came in handy. Here we are on upside-down mandolin and drums joining Chris Bathgate and band for “Yes, I’m Cold” at the Hoxeyville Festival – awesomeness -

Hoxeyville was great – situated up in a national park we camped and chilled with all the backstage artist perks and stuff. There was even a glow in the dark disc golf course in the woods!

The music was jam bandy (not our fav) but definitely pretty happening. Some of the headliners were Ivan Neville’s Dumpstaphunk, Umphrey’s McGee, and Micky Hart. We wish we would have gotten to see Micky Hart but he was playing on Sunday night and we had to jet by then. Micky Hart was the one who encouraged Barbara to pursue music and we wanted to hang. But, by far, our favorite set of the fest was by our new friends and latest band crush Breathe Owl Breathe. Wow. Imagine waking up on a Saturday morning in a tent to a slight rain, the rain stopping, getting up, saying good morning to friends, and all walking down to the main stage together to find this playfulness beaming through the morning –

We’re most certainly gonna spread their stuff in Philly and bring them to town for one of the big gigs. Check’em out yo. We’ve been happily blasting them for the whole car ride to Wisconsin. After Hoxeyville, we headed up to Alex Difiglia’s house in Traverse City where we ate, swam, and chilled. Here is Alex making me some Earl Grey tea grown by her friend –

I stuck this picture in Raphael Cutrufello’s face . We both share a love of Michigan, Alex, and Earl Grey tea. We then packed up and drove long in the night back to Bathgate’s lake house with Sam Cooper and heard about square dances in Kalamazoo and all kinds of Michigan wonders. Love it.

Sooooo we chilled at the lake yesterday and revelled in the fact that we were in one place for a whole day and night – whew!! And this lake was beautiful –

The water was all pearl green and cool and gas motors weren’t allowed on it – unspoiled. In short, we decided we would be better people were we to be near such a lake. Been hanging out with great folks too – Graham parsons, Kayla, Jeremy Quentin, Matt Jones, Kevin Fein, Sam Cooper, Chris Bathgate, Keith Kinnear, to name a few – such a grand crew here in Michigan. Anyways, we drove it over to Grand Rapids and had a great show with Bathgate and our friend Kevin Fein’s group – The Wallace Collective. Kevin is a sure fine guy and we met him when he lived in Philly finishing up his law degree. Tons of folks were there. Music was awesome. Here’s a video of Chris Bathgate and his band doing the song “No Silver” into the song “Levee”. It’s killer. Please excuse the moment where some guy came up and asked me who it was and how all his friends should be there -

Awesome. And finally, we remembered to bring along the camera and put it in someone else’s hands while we were playing. Here we are doing “The Mountain Song”. Yes, that is Barbara stomping the beat on the new stompboard I made her! She forgot her tambo and shakers at the lake house so she borrowed a tambo and a broken shaker with popcorn kernels in it improvised by the ever-genius Matt Jones –

Worrrrrrrd.

The greatest night!!! So good to see our fine Michigan friends again and hear their amazing music. Good greetings. Really really good – here is genius Matt Jones with his genius band doing his genius song “Threadlines” -

Whoah. And then we played, first time with the newly made stompboard and Bee doing plenty percussion! It was great fun. But we forgot to give our cameras to anyone so no pics or videos. To come soon! Chris Bathgate played last and ruled it with the one man loops. It sounded so full for one person. His music and voice are so inviting and warm and his rock outs hard. Amazing. The Magic Stick was awesome as well. Hip. Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks are playing there this month and Shovels and Rope too. These are two of our absolute favorite groups and we wished we could stay around and dig. Did I mention the whole bottom floor is a bowling alley and cafe?? Anyways, we had to keep a movement. Great to see all the Mitten folks(been too long!) and begin our MI trek. We drove out to Chris’ lake house to chill it out – our base for the next week

We drove it straight on over, longly, to Cleveland, the mystical Land of the Cleve, to visit our good friends Smith and Linda. We love them.

I’ve known Smith since the third grade and we were roommates through college, where we were also best buds with Linda. Fun. We got to hang with them so nice and catch up. Their exceedingly sweet dog Sally woke us up like this one morning –

Smith used to work at this really nice restaurant in Cleveland and his friend, the chef, has a big cookout party at his house every year by a lake in some woods. This year he cooked a whole locally sourced lamb on a fire pit. Check it out -

He called it Lamb Jam. It was delicious. And a lot of the people who came were chefs – doubly delicious. There was volleyball, frisbee, pool, lake, cornhole, and a rainy morning that turned into the most beautiful afternoon and night. Smith’s band Pickled Chicken played the garage. We played the bonfire that night to much effect. And strangely after hours of campfire sitting drinking, out of nowhere, Ian, the chef, brought down an old guitar he had that was past fixing, offered up a few words and smoothed out the coals of the fire with it. Wow!

It was the capstone of the night.

Our man Noah is the best baker of bread and one of the coolest guys on the planet. His breadworks, Orchard Hill Breadworks, and the farm, CSA, and school surrounding it have always been our home away from home ever since we first spent a month living up there in a yurt in August of 2008. It was also the place where we first realized our deep separations from our food and the earth – the place where we gained a passion for growing our own food, medicinal herbs, hard work, and good bread. We love it and the community of folks living there.

Sooooo we put in a couple days eating great food, walking through the forest at night barefoot by a full moon, organizing our supplies for our cross-country trek, getting a luggage carrier for the top of the car, playing a concert in their farmhouse, practicing, collecting herbs, swimming, watching the Yankee Male Chorus in concert, visiting dear friends, and playing with the chickens, pigs, ducks, turkeys, and dogs that fill out the population of the farm. Our launch pad!!!

Oh, I also made Barb a stompboard in New Hampshire!!! Stay tuned for some videos of that!!

Soooooooooooo we’re off!!!! On tour – to the west coast and back – south, north, central – these united states – Aug. 9th – Oct. 14th. Check our shows link above for the full listing of dates and places and this blog for periodic updates and pictures from our 2 month sure adventure!! Above, check out our new automobile – oh yeah fine looking sweet riding ~