Lincoln & The Insiders

I’ve been tossing this idea around for a while now, but it’s starting to take shape. I know a lot of you have been asking for one for a while, so I’m finally going to record a solo album. Real solo solo this time, with plenty of just me and the guitar, with a few friends helping out here and there. Not entirely sure if it’s going to be a full length album or a long EP yet, so that’s still up in the air, but I’ll look into getting it done in the second half of the year.

There are a few definite tracks already: Hope & Crown will feature, and so will a track I learned from an old busker in Victoria, plus a piano ballad and one of the covers I’ve been tossing around live. If you’ve got any requests of songs to stick on the album, drop a comment and I’ll see how it’ll fit.

Dear friend FMJ has started sketching out some ideas for an album cover, so I’m looking forward to seeing how that comes up. You can see some of her other stuff here.

I’ll be coming to Brisbane next month to play a show at the Troubadour with Ben Salter (The Gin Club, Giants of Science, et al), so come along if you’re up that way. Thursday June 10th, the Troub, with Ben Salter and Tash Parker.

In the meantime, check out the latest on my other band Ride the Tiger. (MySpace here).

Catch you all later,

Linc

I haven’t got around to blogging much lately, but there was just no way I could not tell you all this one.

I’ll set the scene: I was playing a solo show on a hot and humid Hobart night just a few days back. It had been a long day; I had already played an afternoon gig in the sun and I was pretty ruined, but I pulled myself up and on to the stage where two other punks had just finished playing a couple of acoustic sets.

The weird thing is that no matter how shit I feel, it disappears when I start playing a good show, and this one had started well. Halfway through the first track — a cover of Uncle Tupelo’s ‘Still be around’ — I take a quick breath between words and suck out of the microphone a mouthful of what I could only distinguish as seawater. I was more surprised than anything else, not only by the fact that I had a gob full of juice, but that there could be seawater in the microphone.

Before I had time to think about it more, I started to get ready to sing the next line and instinctively swallowed. The instant it went down I thought of Kenny and Pat, the two preceeding sweaty punk rock singers, and realised I had just drank two hours’ worth of their fruitiest spit and sweat.

I drank fucking sweat.

I once knew a girl who liked to pretend her life was a TV show, and all her friends were bit players. I was an A-list friend for a while, but eventually got written off the series. This is an alternative-ending version of the song, which I rewrote specially for my sister’s wedding. I didn’t want to post the video before the wedding, so now that the presents have been opened and the hangover’s almost gone, here it is. Linc.

Apologies that the embedder isn’t working, but here’s the link.
Reruns (apologies to Christina)

So I went and bought a shitty webcam so I could maybe show you some songs I’ve been playing with for a while. This is a track called Still Be Around by Uncle Tupelo that I play live sometimes. I’ll upload some more over the coming weeks as I get a better idea of how the piece of crap works.

We got a few gigs coming up this month, starting with a solo gig this Saturday night, supporting Evan Dando (of The Lemonheads), and with special guest James Dilger (Sole Stickers, The Reactions). I’m a massive fanboy of Dando’s, so I couldn’t be more excited about getting to share the stage with him. Show starts at 10pm at the Republic Bar.

To top that, the next week features a full Lincoln & the Insiders show with young Texan Ben Kweller, also at the Republic Bar. Again, I’m a massive fanboy. As a side note, this will be the Insiders only Hobart show for a while.

Launceston fans, we’re finally coming up to play another show for you. This time on the 18th of April at the Nothern Club with Melbourne swagger rockers The Vandas, and again with James Dilger’s new band Sole Stickers.

In dot point form:

Saturday 4th April
Evan Dando, Linc, James Dilger – Republic Bar, North Hobart (tickets)

Wednesday 15th April
Ben Kweller, Lincoln & the Insiders – Republic Bar, North Hobart (tickets)

Saturday 18th April
The Vandas, Lincoln & the Insiders, Sole Stickers – Hotel New York, Launceston.

Cheers everyone.

See you at a show, and stay tuned.

Linc

It’s not often that I’d post a draft of a song up here, but this one kinda came out all in one go, and I get all excited and energised when that happens, so I wanted to share it with you. Any suggestions welcome, too.

Linc

Hope & Crown

We stumbled on into the bar, and I knew that I’d seen her face before, I think her name was Anne or Anna, and I think that we’d both been to school together the year before. I can’t recall exactly why we went in there at all, but I had never seen that much of any girl before. So Caleb got his cigarettes and grabbed me as he headed for the street. I got one foot out the door when Anne or Anna turned and looked around, then right at me. I can’t recall exactly where I’d seen that look before, like she was crying out for help but they were crying out for more, at the Hope and Crown.

They didn’t have no dancing girls the next time I went by a few months later. They tried to clean the carpet but instead they cleaned out all the clientele, save for a couple sailors with tattoos on their arms of birds to guide them back to land, and secrets in their faces, and in the creases of their hands. They were talking to a kitchenhand that moved to town some twenty years before. She said one night she’d packed a bag, and with her daughter flew for seven hours here from Singapore. She told us that her husband was a killer and a dealer, and all the while her smiling face stared down a margarita at the Hope and Crown.

Through the window, I saw someone’s lady laying down a taxi fare, and the smaller sailor watched her through his empty glass, and I think he knew that she’d find him there. She came in from the corner drunk and looking for a fight, and looking like an ashtray that’s been left out in the rain all night.

She said “I ain’t never fired a gun, but I think that I’d feel like I feel now. I got my finger on the trigger, with the words I gotta give to you, but hear me out.”

He said “I’ll keep you out of trouble if that’s what I gotta do, even if I wind up in the gutter lying next to you, near the Hope and Crown.”

Having a three hour drive to get to Melbourne was a blessing after the previous day’s eleven hour marathon drive. The weather once we got there, however, was not. Forty three degrees, I heard someone say. I have honestly never been in that sort of heat ever. It was bullshit (or boowwshit, as the old guys say it, jowls a’danglin’).

We check in at the FLAGSTAFF MOTOR INN, and make our way to Brunswick to the venue. Nice place too. In fact the whole suburb had a nice je ne sais quoi about it. Actually, that’s a bit of a misnomer in translation, since we knew exactly what it was about Brunswick that gave it a certain charm, and that was the total lack of electricity. Literally. The whole suburb’s power grid was out, due to a whole chunk of Melbourne being blacked out from the heat. Shit was melting fuseboxes all over the place. This blackout also extended to the very pub at which we were to play.

But, since this has been a tour of ‘making the most of it’, we were all ready to do an acoustic show in the dark, just for the hell of it, when the power came back on. Not to worry. But, everyone had already decided to stay at home with their working air conditioners by this stage, so we played a quiet little show to a few very supportive fans.

Where were we staying again? Oh yes, the FLAGSTAFF MOTOR INN. Now, this place had a few things: a working air conditioner, a relatively clean bathroom, a TV, and BEDBUGS. I woke up bitten to shit with, like, a dozen of the little fuckers running around under the bedsheet.

You can't see much, but these are a couple of the little scabs.

We cracked the shits with management and demanded a refund (which is proving difficult for the moment), and hotfooted it to another hotel across town.

At this point, I thought we were in the clear, but I thought it would be wise to double check the bags, and sure enough, the bags were crawling with the little fuckers as well, trying to hitchike along with us. Or last full day of tour, and a Saturday in Melbourne no less, and I spent the day with a can of bug spray, a dozen maxi-sized garbage bags, and a roll of electric tape, trying to suffocate the little shiteaters (or bloodsuckers, technically) in the thrity-degree heat.

In the meantime, Hamish has got an ear infection from one of the scummy hotel pools along the way, and asked for directions for a doctor from last night’s infested hotel (THE FLAGSTAFF MOTOR INN, from memory), only to arrive at an accupuncture clinic. Thanks guys. You’ve been great.

It’s just about time to head to the Public Bar in North Melbourne to play our very last show of tour. Still pissed I couldn’t go and see Ryan Adams last night or tonight. Naw well. Laters.

From now on, whenever someone says “have we got everything” and I say “yeah, I did the double check,” don’t for the love of god believe a word I say. Some guy from one of the other bands comes running out to the van just as I was driving off and asks if anyone has left a a Maton acoustic behind. Clearly it’s not mine, since I don’t own a Maton. I do, however, own a different guitar in a Maton case.

Shit. I was just that close to leaving my guitar at a pub. What a dickhead.

Good news is that Joe is feeling a little better after the whole dirty taco fiasco, and we’re all set for a couple days in a row of shows, continuing with tomorrow night’s show in Newcastle.

Tonight’s gig at The Lansdowne in Sydney was as hot as the devil’s underpants, but we played a couple of good shows, and thanks to all those who made it along. The Lazy Flies are a great bunch of guys, and they played a great set of sitting-back rock and roll. Great tunes.

Later mofos.

I was pretty bummed that the one thing i left in Hobart was my pair of cheap sunglasses. Since I’ve been doing most of the driving so far, I’ve had to borrow everyone elses sunnies so as to avoid being blinded and driving up the arse end of some Eurotrash sportscar, of which there seem to be plenty.

So my mission for the day was to buy a new pair of aviators. Ray Bans for $240? Nieehew I don’t think that will be neccesary sirs, given the five dollar peices of crap I found at some shitty souvenir shop in the city. MIssion accomplished, leaving me to spend the rest of the morning drinking coffee on Brunswick Street, before meeting the rest of the band and driving to Geelong.

Now, I thought there was some kind of law about having to be a certain age in order to work at a bar. Maybe things are different in Geelong, but we ate dinner at some pub in the city, and I was greeted at the bar by a kid, who was no word of a lie about thirteen years old. This little squeaky-voiced blond kid with a buzzcut and a purple t-shirt someone had given him for christmas asked me if i preferred my bourbon in a short glass or tall. The little fucker couldn’t even reach across the bar to hand it to me.

There’s this bar called The National (or The Nash) as the locals cleverly refer to it. Cool enough place, which reminded me a bit of The Tote in Melbourne, but the clientele had just finished high school, and were very concerned about looking different to the slappers at the cover band pub down the road. It was essentially as you would expect if you were drinking at a bar somewhere in MySpace.

Good things about Geelong: The Houses (a cool young band that we’re playing with again in a few weeks), Steve from Spinning Half studio, and a couple of cool venues.

Uncool things about Geelong: as far as I can tell, most other things.

Travel Hobart to Melbourne – Bar 303, Northcote.

The trip to Melbourne isn’t worth blogging about, save for the fact that it was only Hamish’s second ever plane trip. Also not worth telling is the story of picking up the tour van and collecting the gear from the freight company, although I did manage to stab myself in the finger with a pocket knife while unpeeling the seven layers of bubble wrap that sheathed every piece of fucking gear we had, which, as it turns out, is not quite enough bubble wrap to stop a keyboard in a case getting broken. We now have an electric piano which is missing a few black keys in the upper octaves, but who the shit plays that high anyway.

Setting up at Bar 303 in Northcote, and the bar manager didn’t seem to give a shit about much. Not necessarily in a bad way, but he certainly wasn’t the most helpful dude in the world. I pointed out that his gig chalkboard had Dom Cooley advertised as ‘Dom Dooley’ and he just kind of grunted at me.

It was about this time that Stan realised that he didn’t have a hi-hat clutch. A small but essential piece of kit that we’d left at the caravan park (that’s right, we’re staying at a fucking caravan park). Once we’d driven halfway back, realised that we’d forgotten the keys to the cabin, driven back to the venue, and hit the road again, I thought I’d try my luck.

The Great Apes (soon to change their names) live not too far from the venue, so I thought I’d have a crack at dropping in to see if Emily or Will were at home. The door opens, and flatmate Callan is standing there looking at me, thinking I know this guy. Who the fuck is this guy, and I just kind of blurt out ‘Don’t have a hi-hat clutch, do you?’ So he disappears into his room, and comes out holding a shiny silver clutch in his hands. We have some awkward conversation where I try to get out exactly how excellent this guy is, but I end up acting like an ungrateful dick, and get back in the van.

So we got our shit sorted, and played a show to around ten people. After selling some discs and taking the fuck all we made on the door, we paid our soundguy and came away with the less than impressive total of seven dollars.

We ate dirty, dirty kebabs from some shifty guy who kept looking at me like he had just wiped the lamb under his stinking armpits, and who insisted on playing some shithouse Euro-doof at a hundred ducking decibels in the shop, and went home. To the caravan.

And what a dirty kebab it was too. Fucker.