Rickshaw!

We're really excited to announce that we'll be headlining an ALL AGES SHOW at The Rickshaw Stop SF on Friday June 11th. It's been a while since we've played The Rickshaw, and it's gonna be great! Joining us on the bill are San Diego's alt-folk rockers Get Back Loretta, and local surf-rockers A B and the Sea. We'll be trying out some new material, slated for our next album, pulling out songs from the vault, and maybe a couple of surprises...?

Here are the details:

Friday, June 11th
The Rickshaw Stop
155 Fell St (@ Van Ness)
San Francisco, CA

Doors: 8:30/ $10/ ALL AGES!

Socal weekend coming up

We will be coming down to LA and San Diego this weekend:

Friday May 28th, 2010
Spaceland - Los Angeles, CA
1717 Silver Lake Blvd
with Parson Redheads, Olin and the Moon, and Whispering Pines
21+ - $7


Saturday May 29th, 2010
Casbah - San Diego, CA
2501 Kettner Blvd

Come on out and see us debut some brand new material!

OTW Twitter

Its a simple concept: 7 days in a week, 7 members in the band, 7 days of different people twittering on the Or, the Whale Twitter page. Check it out!

Tour Diary #2

Thanks for an awesome tour friends.

Updated SXSW schedule

Here is our complete schedule in Austin this week. All shows are free! We will be hanging out all week, so if you're in town look us up for a beer!


Wednesday March 17th, 2010
ZonePerfect live.create lounge - Austin, TX (SXSW)
503 Neches Street
Free - 5pm

Wednesday March 17th, 2010
Dominican Joe's - Austin, TX (SXSW)
515 S. Congress Avenue
Free - 8:30pm

Thursday March 18th, 2010
Brooklyn Vegan/AnSo Party - Austin, TX (SXSW)
2908 Fruth Street
with Thee Oh Sees, A Sunny Day in Glasgow, Slim Cessna's Auto Club, and more!
Free - 1pm

Thursday March 18th, 2010
Bay Area Takeover - Austin, TX (SXSW)
617 E. 7th Street
with Sleepy Sun, Birds and Batteries, Wallpaper., more!
Free - 4:40pm

Friday March 19th, 2010
Mother Hips Party - Austin, TX (SXSW)
2538 Guadalupe Street
with The Mother Hips, Chuck Prophet, and more!
Free - 2pm

Saturday March 20th, 2010
Force Field/Hometapes Party - Austin, TX (SXSW)
815 E. 6th Street
with Bear in Heaven, Pattern is Movement, Bowerbirds, and more!
Free - 3:40pm

Saturday March 20th, 2010
Cheer Up Charlie's Party - Austin, TX (SXSW)
1104 E. 6th Street
with tons of amazing bands!
Free - 6:30pm

Tour Diary Volume One Now Online!

Hey folks! Our tour with the Maldives has been amazing so far. Our shows in the Northwest and San Francisco were awesome in every way. As usual, we are doing blog posts as we go - but this time its a bit different because we are doing a Video Blog (as promised a few posts ago).

So, without further ado - here is volume one. Enjoy, and we'll see you on the road!

Tour is a beautiful thing

Here is our official tour schedule, including SXSW appearances. (note, we are still adding and sorting out some details - I will post and major changes if necessary)

Mar 9 Doug Fir Lounge with The Maldives Portland, Oregon
Mar 10 Tractor Tavern with The Maldives Seattle, Washington
Mar 11 Axe and Fiddle with The Maldives Cottage Grove, Oregon
Mar 12 The Independent with The Maldives San Francisco, California
Mar 13 Hotel Cafe with The Maldives Los Angeles, California
Mar 14 Bar Pink with The Maldives San Diego, California
Mar 15 Club Congress with Delta Spirit and The Maldives Tucson, Arizona

SXSW:

Mar 17 Zone Perfect Live.Create Lounge 5pm
Mar 17 Dominican Joes 7:30pm
Mar 18 Brooklyn Vegan/AnSo Party at Spider House 1pm
Mar 18 Bay Area Takeover at The Beauty Bar 4:40pm
Mar 19 Mother Hips Party at The Hole in the Wall (set time tbd)
Mar 20 Force Field/Hometapes Party at Friend Island 3pm
Mar 20 Cheer Up Charlies 6:30pm (in between 2 events)

See you on the road!

Hitting the Beach

We've had enough rain and wind and are heading south to Solana Beach saturday night to play a show with The Mother Hips and Billy Midnight. Details and tickets can be found here - we hear that the show will sell out, so buy tickets in advance!

Then its a week off until we hit the road for 2 weeks with the Maldives heading down to Texas for the too much fun thing.

Our version of Toxic has been creating quite the stir on the internet - don't believe me? Try Googling it!

Things are insane for us right now - big things are happening, and new music is being created. 2010 is off to a great start.

See you all on the beach next weekend!

Top Secret Toxic Project

Its finally here! Our very own secret project is ready for prime time, courtesy of the Fantasy Covers Project podcast on the blog Coke Machine Glow. They have given us special permission to release the song to our fans early. You can download it free!

Or, the Whale - Toxic

We encourage you to share this with your friends, enemies, family, roommates... whomever you think would want to hear it. Right click to download, distribute, and indulge, compliments of us here at the Whale's Tale.

In other news, Alex has a feature at The Black Harbor as part of their new Auditory Viewing series. These are very good friends of the band, and they also recently did a video feature on Justin.

Immediately after last week's "List of Lists" posting, we discovered about 10 more lists that we were on. I am not going to post them all here - but needless to say we Thank You all for helping us have an awesome 2009. Things are going to get even better in 2010! Our first show of the year is less than a month away, and our awesome tour with The Maldives down to South By Southwest is less than 6 weeks away!

A list of lists

I know I promised our top secret project for my next Whale's Tale post - hang in there! Its coming soon! Instead, what I have to offer you is a list of lists: The year end top ten lists which we are really proud and psyched to be on.

We have shows coming up! San Diego at the end of Feb with The Mother Hips, and then a 2 week tour in March through the Northwest and into Texas. All March shows are with The Maldives! Top secret project or no, it just doesn't get any better than that! At least for us - we love those guys.

Without further ado - the list of lists:

Tammies.com

Jayelaudio.com

Atomicned.com

Popshifter.com

7x7.com

Thebaybridged.com

OTW goes Belly Up

We've added a show to our calendar. Feb 27th at the Belly Up Tavern in Solana Beach, CA with the Mother Hips. Its going to be an excellent show - a little warmup for our tour starting March 9th in Portland, OR that takes us to SXSW with our good friends The Maldives. We are really looking forward to playing with the Mother Hips again! Those guys kicked a little ass at Great American Music Hall last month and I have a feeling they'll kick a little more next month.

Full show details and tickets can be found here.

We are almost done with our top secret project! I have a feeling the next Whale's Tale post will be about that - so check back soon.

In the meantime - happy new year - this is going to be a good one!

Happy New Year!

And what better way to bring it in than with new videos, new tourdates, and new toys? The above video comes from our CD Release show in SF last month.

Speaking of video, next year The Whale's Tale is making an ambitious leap to video. Thanks to the gadget endorsing family of yours truly, I will be making videos from the road and intermingling them with our regular blog posts. It will probably still all be about food, but at least you get to watch us eat hot dogs so you don't have to bother using your imagination.

Next item of business - March tourdates! We are making a trip back to Texas for South By Southwest again this year, but this time we are tag teaming the first week westcoast tour with the Maldives. The complete list of dates is posted on our myspace page and on our website.

2009 was an excellent year for us, and we are grateful for sharing it with all of you. Looking ahead, 2010 is going to be even better, and we can't wait to get started!

Rusty Gold Music Video sans nudity

Looks like LA weekly likes our video. Can you blame them? Now I wonder what their reaction would have been if they'd seen the cut with the cut. You know, full frontal, old testament style. Luckily our actor has been spared the indecent exposure. I am sure he is regretting not being the forefather of hipster porn. Could happen.

We'll be at the Great American Music Hall saturday night in SF to support the Mother Hips. Should be a night of serene guitar tone. Looks like tickets are still available as of now - we advise getting them in advance because the Hips will sell this show out!

Tickets

Next post is to announce March tour dates. See you soon!

Whales in the News

Did anyone catch this story in the news? Recent data suggets that blue whales are changing their songs for an unknown reason. According to researcher Mark McDonald (probably no relation to Michael) there has been a steep decline in the pitch of their songs since the 1960's. The whales use their songs to create a communication network around the world. This is probably better than what we've got because iPhones can't get wet. Score 1 for the Blue Whales, 0 for the Or, the Whales.

But unlike our giant blue brethren, we are preparing to crank it up a notch in 2010. Nothing to be forlorn about on our end - I can't spill all the beans, but I can say that we have planned a March Tour and will be announcing dates shortly. And maybe some whales in international waters in the not too distant future?

Stay tuned.

December 19th at Great American Music Hall

We are returning to The Great American Music Hall on Saturday December 19th to support The Mother Hips for their holiday show! Its going to be a lot of fun! Full details and tickets can be found by clicking here.

And of course a little plug - if you are doing a little post thanksgiving holiday shopping, don't forget to visit our online store. We've got everything anybody would ever need, and maybe some stuff they don't even need.

Happy Thanksgiving!

From all of us in Or, the Whale - here's to you!

Hopmonk Tavern Saturday

Hey Folks! We're playing up in Sebastopol this Saturday night at the Abbey at Hopmonk Tavern along with Winter's Fall. Should be a fun one! Details

Things have been pretty mellow since we got home from the long Fall tour. Nothing quite like being home, sleeping in the same bed (or just a bed for that matter), showering with hot water, eating vegetables, pooping when you want to - you know, the little things in life. That said, we do have some pretty important things going on before we close out the year. Unfortunately, I'm going to save it for the next blog post so I am not writing about poop two weeks in a row. See you then!

Cafe Du Nord CD Release Saturday

We are having our San Francisco CD release show tomorrow night 11/14 at Cafe Du Nord. Full details can be found on both our website and myspace page. This show will sell out - we highly recommend purchasing tickets in advance. Here is a link for tickets to the show:

tickets

We will be selling Vinyl editions of the new album at the show - these include digital download cards, are awesome, and are limited edition!

At tours end

We've made it to the end of the line. Tonight is our last show at Echo Curio in Echo Park. It's been an amazing 5 weeks! Tomorrow morning we head back home to San Francisco. We have some local bay area shows coming up, and we will be announcing some winter dates soon as well.

We would like to thank everybody who came out to support us this fall. Friends family and fans alike - you are why we do this! It's been such a pleasure to see everyone across the US and we will see you again real soon.

Week 5

We're beat, but we're gonna make it!

Things start late in Albuquerque on a Monday, and it's a haul to Flagstaff tomorrow - but then we come home to California! This is the home stretch folks, and we are gonna finish this thing on a high note.

We survived the meats of Texas, the days off in New Orleans, and the two day trek from Austin to New Mexico. The greener pastures of San Francisco are less then a week away, and they're so close we can taste them. This has been our best tour ever, and we are really grateful to all the awesome people who helped make it possible.