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Disposable Project: 11/9/2009  

Crocodiles' US Tour

Since signing to Fat Possum early this spring, Crocodiles have been on a never-ending tour supporting their debut LP 'Summer of Hate'.  A few disposable cameras followed Brandon, Charles and Marco from a Detroit warehouse party to a Southern crawdad hut on their first lap around the continental US.



Chuck:
Just your average day, on tour in the states; a power outage shut down the entire city of Dallas, a wicked evil storm rolled in and over-turned some vehicles, we got high as hell and watched the streets flood... These twin brothers latched onto our entourage and offered us a place to stay for the night. Their house was a king size mansion with several massive shrines dedicated to The Residents. 



Brandon: This was a stoned jam in Austin, Texas featuring members of Crocodiles and Woven Bones plus Marco on keys, who was our roadie at the time. He is now our touring bass player. You can't see us in the picture, but we were trading off on guitar, camera and hamburgers. Through a marijuana haze we thought this sounded like La Dusseldorf or Neu! or something but a recording exists that I'm sure would contradict that. This night ended with me sleeping on the floor, using a Whataburger bag as a pillow. 



Chuck: Never had crawfish or crawdads or whatever before, so we stopped off and enjoyed some southern hospitality. This lady came in and ordered the usual; a gigantic Diet Coke and two tubs full of crawfish. Her hair was bright red, and so were her lips, hands and feet. She fed me a few crawfish and allowed me to lick her fingers afterwards. 



Brandon: Marco Gonzalez standing under an overpass outside of Baltimore. We had run out of gas. Marco was driving and I guess he didn't notice the light that said "GAS LOW".  I spent a long time on the phone with the woman from AAA because I had no idea what exit we were near. I climbed up that grass embankment to the left of Marco trying to see if there was any indicator of where we were and I guess I should have been wearing cleats, because I totally slipped and had grass stains on my knees, hands and face. The others found this quite funny. Eventually, a heavily tattooed grandfather in a tow truck drove up and refilled our gas tank.  



Brandon: Crazy shit always goes down in Detroit. We have a good friend there named Justin who keeps us out till 7am and fills us full of alcohol. After our show, he took us to something called 'Funk Night'. We assumed it was going to be a nightclub but it turned out to be this huge abandoned municipal building that had 3 or 4 levels, each with massive sound systems and DJ's. There were a few thousand people there, all dancing, all fucked up and  all from way different walks of life. I hope this wasn't the last time in my life I get the opportunity to dance with crust punks, gangsters, sorority girls and middle aged weirdos while James and Bobby Purify's 'I'm Your Puppet' blasts in my ears. 



Chuck: The Bottletree in Birmingham is one of, if not the best venue in the USA for indie bands to play. The staff is friendly, Brian Teasly is incredibly generous and funny, the god damn place has video games, board games, coffee, tea, magazines, christmas presents, movies, guitars, lawn furniture, a petting zoo, massage chairs, delicious food, delicious booze, and two trailers for the bands to sleep in. Paradise?
 

Chuck: Getting back to Detroit and all of it's madness, in any one of the fifty corners that this boarded up mansion had, you could find eight to ten girls and boys, dancing in their underwear or completely naked! And if you really wanted to, you could go right up to them and dance with them, and watch their genitals gyrate along to the music.
 

Brandon: Crowd shot at the Empty Bottle in Chicago. We were super surprised to get a warm reception being that Chicago is the home of that Pitchfork blog. We figured if the rest of the world treats those bozos as the be-all-end-all of music criticism, then surely Chicagoans must think of Pitchfork as God. Happily, Chicago turned out to be rad and not stupid and boring, like it's flagship website.

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Crocodiles play with Raveonettes and Dum Dum Girls at Belly Up this Thursday, November 12.  Tickets are available here.

View more tour photos in the gallery below.

Tags: Disposable Project, Crocodiles, Fat Possum, Art Fag

1 Comment

Wow, very cool. I've been to The Bottletree a few times back in the ATL days. Good times.
Seth Combs made this post on 11/12/2009 at 10:49 pm

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