blog

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2012-02-09T00:17:23Z

The boss lady and her equally rad brother (wearing matching floppy hats, natch) bust out an imprompu cover of Coldplay's Paradise. Just another day at the office, then.

... and back to making stems. I have pretty high hopes for a jam of mine that's about to get the remix treatment.

Are you kidding me

2012-02-08T02:40:53Z

... with this glorious mash-up. This dude is better at this than I will ever be at anything in my entire life.

UK Tour #1

2012-01-25T11:03:16Z

Oh MAN! Three shows into our mini UK tour, so much has already happened it's hard to even know where to start. Aside from a few minor technical difficulties (as well as the fact that we're all keeping pretty weird schedules- the jet lag continues to crush us all daily), the tour has been a smashing success so far. We've also really upped the production of the show, and it's been a huge relief seeing everything, from click tracks to new lighting rigs, work more or less the way they're supposed to. Phew.

We started off our trip in Glasgow, where we had the luxury of an entire day off after landing. Everyone took advantage of our time there- we not only saw quite a bit of Glasgow, but even managed to take a day trip to Edinburgh to see the incredible castle, and, ahem, sample some of the local ales. By the time the day of the show was upon us, everyone was suitably rested and itching to play and get the tour underway. My experience of playing anywhere in Scotland is that crowds are invariably enthusiastic and appreciative, and this was no exception.- we were certainly made to feel very welcome in Glasgow, and it's so fun and exciting to witness Christina's star rising to quickly and steadily even on the other side of the pond.

We followed up our Glasgow show with an equally epic night in Manchester. Since we had the day off in London coming up, we joined forces with our opener Marcus Foster (who, by the way, has some serious pipes himself- I highly recommend checking him out!) and hit the town for some post-show celebratory drinks. Needless to say, our 8am arrival into London-town was far from a pretty sight as we all shuffled, disheveled and still in our pajamas, into our fancy west End Hotel.

The London show of any tour is traditionally the most high-pressure; in keeping with another, less-than-awesome tradition, it was also the one most marred with technical difficulties in the run up to the concert itself. Not only did our monitor engineer discover that my in-ear monitors had been mysteriously left behind in Manchester- luckily to be located just a few stressful hours later- but some general chaos had also resulted in various instruments and interfaces being left onto the tour bus… which was parked a good 25-minute drive away. Undeterred, our crew somehow worked through all the setbacks, all the while miraculously coordinating the filming and recording of the show that night. In spite of everything, showtime itself went off without a hitch, as these things tend to when everyone is working their butts off :) And as evidenced below by Christina's mile-wide grin, I think it's safe to say that the night was a huge success. Hopefully we can keep the momentum going with tonight's show in Brighton- updates forthcoming!

Guess what?!

2012-01-13T12:24:04Z

It's time to get going with 2012 adventures already. I'm starting the year as I mean to go on, which is to say, with ten days of rehearsals with the Christina Perri crew, followed by a little mini-tour of the UK and Ireland. We landed in Glasgow this morning, where we get to chill and adjust to the new timezone for a couple of days, before kicking off the tour with our first show on Sunday. Yay! I'll be updating here and tweeting as we go.

Maximum rehearsal action.

Oh, and did I mention, no big deal, I have blond hair now. BAM!

Christmas videos? I guess so.

2011-12-23T19:24:36Z

Happy Christmas folks! I'm off-grid for a couple of days. Oh, and I can't stop watching this:

I hope everyone has the most peaceful, lovely Christmas and a great start to 2012. Let's do this!!

Ellen, take II

2011-12-15T17:26:06Z

We performed Christina Perri's new single from the the Twilight: Breaking Dawn soundtrack on the Ellen Degeneres show earlier this week! This was our second visit to the show and just as fun as the last time. We all felt pretty honoured to be part of the show's last musical performance of 2011.

Oh, and no big deal, but we also recently played out final radio show of the year, and had a very special guest on stage with us, who goes by the name of Jason Mraz!!! He is pretty much the coolest guy ever- it was a real treat getting to play with him. Talk about ending the year on a high.

Happy Thursday everyone!

Awesome news to the power of 2

2011-12-09T00:12:39Z

Wowzers. First things first- Christina Perri is the iTunes Breakthrough Artist Of The Year! What great news! This couldn't have come at a better time- after a week of exhausting radio promo shows, and with the entire crew now chilling in LA with the travel sniffles, this is just the kind of rad tidbit that will keep everyone going till the end of the year. CP and her entire team have worked their butts off this year, and there's no-one more deserving of this accolade. I couldn't be more proud to have my bassery all over her debut record.

Yes. And speaking of these radio shows, we still have a bunch more to get through in th next week or so! I'll be excited to hit the road again on Sunday, especially now that my nose isn't pouring out snot anymore. I will indeed be blogging all events of interest, but just so you know =====>>>> my tour blog is once again being hosted by the great folks 'n' ladies over at Girl Rock Nation. I love my on-going collaboration with these peeps, and once again, I'm honoured to be involved. You can read the recap of our week of travels on the GRN blog here.

... and of course, massive thanks to YOU for cruising by and reading this. Love love love.

Here we go!

2011-11-28T18:10:36Z

... and back to work! I'm completely ready for the long Thanksgiving weekend to be over; it felt like it went on forever, and having too much time on my hands means I don't get anything done. I can't believe it's almost December, and I'm excited and relieved at the same time to be rounding out this year on a high note with what should be a fun series of Christmas radio shows with Christina Perri. We have a rehearsal day tomorrow, then we're off to on our mini-tour, starting with the east coast and finishing up back in California in a couple of weeks. I'm excited to hop on the plane to NYC and experience some actual winter weather! I'll be updating here as the shows progress., not to mention tweeting photos of my snacks and random street signs. In the meantime, here's the new lyric video for Christina's song "Distance"- every single word in the video was crafted and sent in by a fan. So cute!

Jxx

Kimmel, again!

2011-11-17T18:26:30Z

This week we got to make our second appearance on the Jimmy Kimmel Show! It's one of the funnest late night shows to guest on (they have a great green room for everyone to hang out in during the taping), AND on top of that we had the extra special treat of backing vocals from the song's co-writer, David Hodges. He is one of the nicest men alive, so getting to hang out with him for the day made it super fun. Here it is:

We have a couple more TV appearances lined up for the rest of the year... including an extra-special one that I'm really, *REALLY* hoping gets confirmed. Fingers crossed till then! Oh, and speaking of TV appearances, the rad folks at Girl Rock Nation blogged about our performance on Dancing With The Stars recently too. Thanks ladies!

Napa//

2011-11-09T00:14:59Z

Our trip to Napa to play at Live In The Vineyard was AWESOME! This event calls itself "an intimate pairing of music, wine and food", giving it potential to be the most pretentious, yuppie-ridden occasion of all time; on top of that, the festival is primarily a networking opportunity for the (drunk) radio industry. On paper, none of this bodes particularly well, but don't let LITV's boring-ass website fool you, because it's actually super duper fun. There were epic meals in killer restaurants, visits to chocolate stores, a great after-party, and expensive champagne all over the place. Normally, you'd fully expect an industry-dominated show in a seated theatre to be a total snoozefest, but I have newfound respect for pop radio programmers after seeing how hard these people were going off. Radio people take their wine-based partying very seriously.

I followed up our Napa booze 'n' food frenzy with a chilled out couple of days with my sister Juulia and her boyfriend Noah in Palo Alto. Juulia and I eat frozen yoghurt (either intentionally or by just randomly ending up at Pinkberry or whatever) roughly 90% of the times we hang out, and that's what happened this time too. The only exception was that instead of actually buying anything, I just ate about seven or eight of the sample cups' worth of yoghurt snacks. Apparently, if you're able to get in and out of there fairly quickly and not draw too much attention to yourself, Yoghurt Land will totally let you get away with this kind of stuff.

The coolest part of the weekend was the Alameda Antiques Fair, where we spent most of Sunday afternoon. It would be a total lie to say that I didn't somewhat lose self-control, but at least I now own a glass wine-decanter shaped like a fish (so badass), and an owl made out of a pinecone. YEAH!

Earlier today, I was reminded about this interview that Angie Correatown and I did a while back. I started filling in the questions, and then realized I'd done the same interview for the same website with Rabbits Rabbits Rabbits even earlier. This is way too much exposure, I need to keep this in check already.