Riding the Taker's Thunderbolt

I'm leaving for the UK tuesday; my first show with BC Camplight will be on Halloween Night in New Castle. I am dressing up as Superman. Post-ubermensch, we will be hitting about 8 cities in 12 days, and then cruising back over the puddle on November 10th. A short little jaunt, with longer ones planned for later this winter.

Last night The Silver Ages made its triumphant New York City debut with the Swedish pop star Jens Lekman. Amazingly, the packed crowd (1200+) listened attentively and appreciatively to our set of obscure 60s pop. 1760s pop, specifically. Jens and his band of Swedish beauties were kind, generous and put on one of the most commanding and unassuming performances I've seen in years. The New York Times agrees. For the encore he brought us onstage to back him up on 'Paris, Paris', a bouncy number mostly in French. Super fun. See it. Again. From a different angle. Heresay. The Philly show was great as well. Here is video of that.

Still more self-congratulation: I played a 503-point Scrabble game last week, including a 203 point play. I wouldn't normally toot my own horn so blatantly, but come on, that is a truly planet-aligning move ('belaying', on two triple word scores, with the 'y' on the double letter, plus the 50 point bonus) giving me the best game of my young career. Is it possible to have a scrabble career? What's the tournament circuit like? Are there back-alley scrabble gangs? Imagine 'Hud' only with more dictionaries and a complete lack of hyphenated words.



Late breaking: I'm sitting in with Gianmarco Cilli's wonderful band tonight (10/28) at the Khyber on trumpet and percussion. Mitch Fiction and the Buried Beds are also performing, there will be buckets of love in the room.

Inspiration for all us guilty liberals can be found here. How Orwellian can we possibly get? A new benchmark.

Pennssissippi Valley

I just returned from beautiful Narvon, Pa where I photographed the Wanner family farm for a Sundance Channel documentary called "Big Ideas for a Small Planet". The farm has been passed down from one John-Arthur to the next Arthur-John for 9 generations and has been a successful experiment in sustainable agriculture all along the way. The 600-odd head of dairy cows unknowingly produce enough poo to power a large turbine generator fueled by the resultant methane fumes collected under large white tarps. Who knew what poo could do?

Mrs. Wanner didn't like my city-slicker looks too much at first and kept me on a short leash--when I asked if it was ok to wander the grounds to take some shots, she replied that "no, sir it is not ok". The Wanner's are visionaries and idealists who are understandably wary of outsiders and the increasing amount of media attention their farm has garnered.

Of course, once I showed an interest in their agricultural practices and dropped some rural colloquialisms Mrs. Wanner started to warm to me. After an hour or so she was showing me old family photos and invited me to come stay in one of the guest rooms next summer when they open their bed and breakfast, once again proving that anyone over the age of sixty is utterly susceptible to simple, innocent inquiry. Anyways, I got a lot of sweet shots, many of which will be on my Flickr soon.

Tangentially: Montesano Brother's Catering and Italian Market, food not to be trifled with;
Philadelphia POPPED! Festival, which is white-hot right now; The Plaid Pony, my round-the-corner vintage emporium; and The Tragedy/Hope of Zach Sowers, a high school classmate of mine, one of the all-time sweetest guys and a victim of an utterly senseless act of violence.

Upcoming:

Burned Hands Teach Best

My trip to Maine was a fabulous, revitalizing experience. My days were built thusly: eggs, coffee, fire, recorded music, photographs, books, films.

You can see photos of this trip @ flickr.com/photos/davidjohnhartley/.
I will update this website from now on as regularly as possible with photos of my journeys, both at home and abroad.

Music: I stopped playing with Pepper's Ghost a few months ago. We are still the closest of friends and future-collaborators on a number of planned of endeavors. My energy is now focused on the upcoming, newly-signed-to-Secretly-Canadian War on Drugs record commencing next week (www.myspace.com/thewarondrugs), a short UK tour with BC Camplight (www.myspace.com/bccamplightmusic) from October 30th to November 10th, a live EP with Adam Arcuragi (www.myspace.com/adamarcuragi) and some high-profile Jens Lekman dates with the indie-rock all star Glee Club The Silver Ages (www.myspace.com/thesilverages) @ The FU Church in Philadelphia and Webster Hall in NYC. Lots on the plate, lots of strands to keep in the ol' duder's head, lots of ins and outs.