Musical Tourniquet: Meeting your bandmate for the first time after lengthy internet collaboration

Heh, sorry Eriq. A quick riff on the title of your excellent series was unavoidable.

As it turns out, the meeting of the minds went quite well. While of course Murphy's Law was in full effect for us (my wife got ill, baby needed watching, my bandmate Shreya lost her wallet and had to use public trans to find it), the only thing that really affected the rock was coffee. Our rehearsal was held in the well-esteemed space known as my mom's living room. I offered to make coffee, got mugs out and water boiling, then when I cracked open the container of Folger's Brazilian Roast on the counter, I discovered it was actually compost. Blargh! Probably for the best, it was Folger's after all, and the word 'Brazilian' has too strong of a butthole-related non-coffee connotation for me anyway.

The big B advises that all component things fall apart, and this is certainly true of music projects in the short term. A number of our s had their electronic parts tracked live, and once we tried them in person we moved them into a more guitar/bass/vocal friendly minimal format. Which is fine for these first upcoming shows, until I can work in the mindbending psychedelic audience participation bits and whatnot. All in all, a good feeling. I hope all the long-distance projects that come to fruition out there get to have positive bandmate experiences like I did. It's important, when you're a man of a certain age, that your band respect the boundaries of your family, but also must balance out on the other end with a healthy dose of sweet occult awesomeness.

Coeur Machant is playing Friday April 10th at Le Voyeur in Olympia, with The Harvey Girls, Cool Scool, Estocar, and Live Action Culturez. Show is free. We continue our short-ass tour with The Harveys at Bob's Java Jive in Tacoma, also with Tune-yards and Quinn. $5.

Simultaneously, so you don't think I only pimp myself, Salem has decided to try and neutralize my high school image of it ("Do you mind if I tax those Docs?" "Yes! NO. Wait... shit. What's the correct answer?") by staging the Cherry City Music Festival that weekend. There is a cubic ass-ton of bands, many of whom are quite good. Check out cherrycitymusic.com for more details.