Enright House / Pushmi-Pullyu Split EP: now available as a free download

I’m pleased to announce that we’ve recouped the costs for pressing the EP (yay!), and that we’ve sold out of almost all of our copies – thank you all. Consequently, we’ve all decided it’s now time to set these songs free!

So yeah, please help spread the word via twitter, email, facebook, and all that other good stuff.

And to all those who have been wanting to get ahold of a CD for themselves or their friends, please note that mam!records is now down to its last 10 copies of the limited-edition EP, so make sure you visit the mam!records shop now to secure yourself a copy before it’s too late.

A public service announcement

So I’ve been hiding a bit, due to some major fluctuations in life planning and general existential conundrums. The Enright House will, of course, continue in the years to come, but it’s quite likely that I will be doing things a bit differently in the future – including the actual music. I can’t go into details yet, but the reason I haven’t been updating, is that I wanted some time to think things through on my own, whilst keeping distractions to a minimum.

What I can say, is that I won’t be touring Europe this year, after all. Instead, I will be moving to New York until early next year, and then – most likely – I will move to Berlin to set up a more permanent base for my music. For those of you in Europe, who had been looking forward to hearing me in concert this fall, please be patient with me for a little while longer. Once in Berlin, I will be in a much better position to tour on a more regular basis.

To all those that have written to me: my sincerest apologies for being so slow to write back – I promise you’ll hear from me soon.

Lastly, please be patient with this website over the next week, I’ll be re-coding some of the site, updating wordpress, installing new plug-ins, and implementing a more professional merch shop that will make it easier for you to get a hold of CDs, vinyl, shirts, and downloads.

US Tour: Dunes – Portland, OR (April 20th, Day 19)

The Dunes in Portland

I had been looking forward to Portland for quite some time now. Everyone I met, who had spent time there, seemed to adore it. It’s liberal, quite pretty, has a great music scene, it’s mellow and bohemian, and yet still metropolitan. When I started booking the tour back in November of last year, I was having a tough time, though, getting anything at all booked. I must have sent out 25 emails and all I got back was deafening silence. You can imagine, then, how stoked I was when my friend Andy from Actors&Actresses suggested I get in touch with a good friend of his, who worked at a cool little club in Portland, called the Dunes.

I got in touch with her, she liked our music, and so we booked the date. Or so we thought…

(Read the rest of this story…)

US Tour: Olympia, WA (April 15th-18th, Day 14-18)

We arrived in Olympia on Wednesday evening, just in time to play a house show at the Finger Complex. Our host, Colleen, from Polka Dot Dot Dot, had added us very last-minute to the bill, and so Evan and I had no idea what to expect.

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US Tour: Nebraska to Washington (April 12th-15, Day 10-13)

After playing in Columbus, Nebraska, Evan and I had a few days to press all the way to the West Coast. It was going to be a ferocious drive, for sure, but we had kept just enough time aside to take in the famous Yellowstone National Park. A pity, then, that once we got within a few hundred miles, that we found out that almost all of the park was still closed, due to snow. Of the many entrances to the park, only one was open, and after talking to a few locals, we decided it wasn’t going to be worth going at all. Aside from the fact that only a small portion of Yellowstone was open at all, the weather was so rainy and foggy, that we wouldn’t have been able to see much of anything, even had we tried.

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Flickr slideshow: Indiana

Evan and I had a few days of rehearsals in Indiana right before and after SXSW. Needless to say, Indiana isn’t much of a happening place, culturally, so we just decided to kick it Indiana-style. You know… just boys being boys, really. A bit of quad-biking, outdoor shops, shooting guns (45’s), going to batting cages. Taking in local flavor, so to speak :). You can view the whole set here on my Flickr page or just click and expand the above slideshow.

US Tour: Micek’s – Columbus, NE (April 11th, Day 9)

Micek’s Shangrila

When we arrived in Columbus, Nebraska, I was already worried. But when we walked into the bar we were meant to play that night, I was petrified. I walk in, look around, everyone stares at me, look around some more, walk out of the bar, and sit down on the curb. “They are going to f’ing lynch us”, I thought.

The crowd that had gathered in the early evening were a rough mix of locals, seemingly in their 40’s, who were listening to an acoustic covers band playing “Knocking on heaven’s door”. Holy shit, dude, seriously? What were we doing here? And were we going to make it out of here without an incident? I could just imagine me singing about sex and love and depression and my mother, and some biker dude stabbing us in the face and calling us fags.

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Getting stuck in New Orleans

All apologies for being so late to post about New Orleans. Evan and I actually stopped there in late March on our way back from SXSW, but, until now, I haven’t found the time to edit the photos and write about our experience there.

After showcasing at SXSW in late March, Evan and I decided we were going to take a bit of a detour back to Indiana. Most of the midwest is ridiculously drab, and so we figured it might be worth roaming through the south before heading up north again. We had decided early on that we wanted to stop in Memphis in order to visit the Gibson Guitar Factory, but once we got on the road and studied the map, we realized we were pretty much passing right through New Orleans, as well, and we were not going to let the opportunity to visit such a legendary town pass us by!

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Cowboys: the cure to anti-culture-shock!

So, poor Evan has, for the most part, been suffering a severe case of anti-culture-shock ever since he arrived here from New Zealand. The States, in many ways, is very similar to New Zealand. Both are fundamentally based on the Anglo-Saxon culture; both are very young countries; have similar landscapes in many parts of the country (Washington, Montana, and Oregon are painfully similar to NZ’s South Island); obviously we share a common language; and so on and so forth. Of course, there are many differences, but compared with countries like Egypt, Spain, Japan, et cetera, New Zealand and the United States definitely feel quite similar.

So when Evan and I drove through Wyoming and passed cowboys and horses, Evan nearly leaped out the window. Finally a genuine piece of Americana!

I guess you can always count on a cowboy to save the day :).

Flickr Slideshow: Glacier National Park, Montana

After our shows in the Midwest, Evan and I had to cut westwards across the country in time to perform in Washington and Oregon. We did, however, have just enough time to cruise around Montana and take in some of its breath-taking scenery and national parks. Most of Glacier park was still closed due to snow (as was Yellowstone), but the main access road was still open and allowed us to see some cute deer and a stunning mountain sunset. You can view the entire photoset here on my Flickr account, or just take a look at the above slideshow.

Flickr Slideshow: Talimena Scenic Drive, Arkansas to Oklahoma

Sorry for being so late about posting these photos. During our trip from Indiana to SXSW, Evan and I decided to take a scenic detour, which ended up being one of the most memorable drives of my life. The views were stunning, the weather perfect, and I ended up having to pour Minutemaid Orange juice over the break pads (see photo) to cool down our breaks, which we managed to smoke out within the first 10 minutes of taking the Talimena Scenic Drive. You can view the whole photos set here on my Flickr page or just use the slideshow above.

US Tour: Mixtapes – East Moline, IL (April 10th, Day 8)

Mixtapes Record Store in East Moline

When we pulled into East Moline, my first thought was… oh dear, this isn’t going to be good. The town is part of the quad cities, and lies right on the shores of the Mississippi river, bordering Illinois and Iowa, but it’s far from a picturesque place.

East Moline, like the rest of the quad cities, struck me as very poor. The houses were small and run down, and the downtown area was more of a ghost town than a flourishing riverside community, with a few small shops flanked by a greater number of boarded up windows and neighborhood bars.

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