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Updates & Stuff

Hey there! It’s been awhile since we’ve posted an update. Here’s some news:

-We’ve been working on a new album, on and off, mostly off. It’s slow going but we have a bunch of songs now and I think a lot of them are pretty great. We just need to flesh them out some more and hopefully we’ll have a new record for ya’ll before too long

-I started another band called Partial Traces awhile back. It’s a lot mellower, more indie pop/rock than Banner Pilot, so you might not dig it. Or, you might! You can check out our first album Glass Beach over at our Bandcamp page

-Fest and Pre-Fest a few months ago were our first shows in quite a long time and they ruled. Was super fun being back there and seeing a ton of friends

-We are playing Chicago at the Metro with The Lawrence Arms in April, definitely excited about that one. Tickets on sale this Friday. I bet you can figure out how to find them using Google or whatever.

That’s about it, I think? New shows and new tunes soon*, check back! – Nate

(* “soon” being defined, you know, loosely)

 

Two Videos

Hey, Nick made a couple of super cool videos for songs off of Souvenir. Modern Shakes and Dead Tracks, check ’em out! – Nate

 

 

Tattoos

Have seen a few of these tattoos now— super cool! If you were thinking about getting a tattoo, but weren’t sure what to get, just get one of these. Easy! Thanks to Geffen Refaeli for the rad album art. Check out her other stuff, too; hell, you could tattoo your entire body! It’ll rule! – Nate

 

Europe Tour Recap

We are back from Europe– it was a great time as always, although it got slightly hairy a few days in. I posted a handful of quick things on Facebook while we were over there; they are collected here for your reading pleasure. – Nate

 

April 21
First day in Paris was a blast. Lots of walking around, vaguely jet-lagged, in perfect weather, up along the seine and through the neighborhoods. Kind of a cliche but hanging out under the Eiffel Tower drinking cheap beers we bought from some guy walking around with a bucket was pretty awesome. I think if we had another round we probably would have purchased one of the laser pointer toys he was also encouraging us to pick up. We also spent a stupid amount of time at a random Irish bar next to our AirBNB, where we learned a great game called Guinness Percision. You take a single sip/gulp and try to get the beer line (not the foam line) to rest exactly between the harp and the Guinness text. See attached photo. Took some practice! But Joe got it twice, Jeff once, and Danny once. I was pretty bad at it. On to Lyon! Playing at Ayers Rock Boat, hope to see you there!

April 23
Our first show ever in Italy ruled. Really fun time. I slipped on a lemon peel after the show (really) and totally messed up my knee, so that’s lame. Definitely the worst thing a lemon has ever done to me; usually I like them. But besides that, it’s been awesome here! Had some excellent Pizza and beers next to a lake, and then checked out a castle. Two more shows here, and then on to Slovenia

April 25
Man, Italy was so much fun. Had another great show last night. Such a friendly, enthusiastic crowd. Hung out on the patio until 3am drinking beers and discussing metal records, and I realized the “duh-nuh-nuh-nuh, nuh-nuh-nuh” system of expressing metal riffage is truly universal and transcends language. We were also trying to recall Megadeth lyrics and I only came up with one, “You take a mortal man / and put him in control” (followed by the aforementioned duh nuh nuns) How many can you remember, top of your head, no cheating? The Megadeth Lyric Challenge. Maybe it’s easy and I’m simply not a metalhead. Anyway: Great times! Slovenia is up next – Nate

April 26
In case you weren’t sure, let me confirm it: Slovenia knows how to party! Also a rad looking country; you can almost see the venue from this photo

April 27
Thanks, Budapest! Another great show in another beautiful city. Special shout out to our new friend who drove all the way from Serbia to see us. Walked around for 5+ hours today and it was great. And at the end of the walk, I was able to eat my first taco since leaving home. It wasn’t a bad taco, either. Day off today. Going to check out Off With Their Heads in Vienna. See you there? After that, three shows in Germany. Looking forward to it.

April 29
Yesterday, traffic was at a standstill and a truck bumped into us as we nudged into their lane. Not a big deal, their fault, but minor, and then… These two screaming truckers are running up to the van, ripping open both the driver and passenger doors and waving around wildly like they’re going to start punching us. Lots and lots of screaming in rapid fire German. We shut the doors. They opened them again. Repeat. One of them then ripped the driver mirror down. Broken. Finally we pulled away, assuming they were going to follow us off the exit, but there was a cop car there so they just continued on. We talked to the cop but didn’t get their license so we gotta eat the cost of the mirror repair I guess.

And THEN — after being stuck in standstill traffic for a couple hours — the van started making weird noises, died, and suddenly we’re stranded on the side of the damn autobahn! Sun’s going down, cold out, and there are cars zipping by inches from the van at 100+ miles an hour.

Kind of crazy day! But then we called a tow truck, got towed to a mechanic, got picked up by OWTH, got to the venue and played possibly the best show of the tour. Thanks, Nurnberg! Now we’re hanging out waiting to hear from the mechanic. Hope we can make the show tonight, wish us luck! Oh yeah, also breakfast in Vienna was really good yesterday. So that was cool. First guacamole of the tour, nice

April 29 Part Two
Update: the van will not be fixed today. Secured a one-day van rental here in Nurnberg. While we picked it up, the other guys started bringing all our stuff down from the apartment we were staying at to the street. Idea being, we’ll pull up and take off right away for Weisbaden. We show up, and find out that somehow the door closed behind them while taking a load downstairs. The guy’s only key is locked inside. So now we are driving to his grandparents’ house to get the spare key. 40 minutes round trip.

Once we get the key, and get back to his apartment, and get the rest of the stuff, and get on the road, and get to Wiesbaden, and then get back to Nurnberg after the show, and then (hopefully) get our own van fixed tomorrow morning, we will be back on track!

April 30
So, two days later and the mechanic still has not fixed the van. Stranded in Nurnberg again. Looking like we are going to have to rent two mini vans to get to Uncle M Fest tonight, and the hopefully Groezrock from there. I don’t suppose anyone is sitting on an awesome solution here? Like, you live in Nurnberg and have a new touring van you were hoping to break in? You’re the inventor of a tour-by-helicopter system and would like to test it on someone? Let us know!

May 1st
In a 48 hour stretch we had three rental vans, one tow truck ride, three cab rides, three shows that we barely got to, one near fist fight on the highway with some angry truckers, one hour on the side of the autobahn, one stranded box of vinyl records, six or so hours of standstill traffic, one van engine that turns out to be completely destroyed, one key accidentally locked in an apartment, one half-drunk late night conversation about 1970s snare sounds versus 1980s snare sounds, one viewing of Terminator 2, and so much more.

And after all that….. we’re on the road about one hour from Groezrock. Boom. Let’s party!! We play tomorrow but will also be selling merch today. Stop by!

May 4th
Man, Groezrock was so much fun. Had a great show and it was a blast checking out other bands and just wandering around running into people. Never really checked out Refused before, to be honest, but watching them from onstage was pretty unreal. Special shout out to Kate and Alexander for bringing us our missing box of vinyl all the way from outside Nurnberg. Totally saved us.

Eindhoven was also great, despite the fact that all of us felt like we had been awake for 11 years in a row. Nick, the promoter, was an excellent host– showed us around Rotterdam and schooled me in FIFA on XBox 6-0. I was pretty proud of myself for keeping him to single digits.

Now we’re in Paris for the final show of the tour. Despite all the van chaos in the middle, this has been a really really fun tour. Lots of fun shows and great sights and incredibly friendly people.

Oh, also we just paid a parking meter a little bit ago and couldn’t tell if the printed receipt was saying it was successful, or that the transaction failed. So I tried to speak the French into Google Translate and it returned, “It brings ancient beasts. Fear watch is kept on the bird.” Ruh-oh. I pictured placing it on our dash and having a parking attendant start screaming, “N-no! NO! You don’t realize what you have done!” So anyway, apologies if we just unleashed the apocalypse but stoked for the show tonight!

Merch Sale, European Tour, & More

I’m not sure how to double check, but it wouldn’t surprise me if December is National T-Shirt Month. Just in case it is, we’d like to celebrate with a limited time shirt sale over at our Storevny Page! In fact it’s not just shirts– ALL merch is 25% off if you use the code “BP2014.” If that wasn’t enough, we also have two copies of the Fat Music For Fest People comp and 10 koozies that we’ll throw in to random orders. Nice! What do you have to lose, other than money you may have worked hard to accumulate? Nothing! Go check it out now— it’s for a limited time only.

In other news, we are heading back to Europe in the spring of 2015 and we couldn’t be more excited. We’ve already announced Groezrock and Uncle M Fest, and will be announcing the rest of the tour soon. It’ll have some of our favorite spots as well as some countries we haven’t played in before. Check our website and/or Facebook page for additional show announcements.

We’re also stoked that Jeff Matika will be joining us on guitar for this tour! Jeff’s a great dude and is currently the touring guitarist for Green Day. Pretty sure he’ll be able to handle a Banner Pilot show. Welcome aboard, Jeff!

Look for more show announcements and other stuff soon!

Pre-Fest / Guitar “Jams”

Thanks a ton to everyone who contacted us about playing guitar. The response was great; way more people than we expected. If we’re interested in doing an “audition” (I can’t think of a better way to put that…. “Jam Session”? There, that’s better) with you, expect to hear from us soon (if you haven’t already). For everyone else, thanks a bunch for expressing interest, and best of luck with your own musical projects! (Some of them sounded super cool!)

We actually had our first two auditions/tryouts/jamz earlier this week, and have a few more coming up soon. Cool!

Unrelated (well, kind of related as I suppose we need to find a guitar player in order to do this), we are playing Pre Fest again this year! (As well as “normal” Fest) It was really, really fun last year. I mean, I knew it would fall somewhere under the umbrella of being “fun” but it was a lot cooler than I expected. So don’t sleep on it this year! More info at their site.

-Nate

Yo, Guitarists

Note: this is old news (well, 3 weeks old or so) and I just forgot to post it here when I posted it on Facebook. So, here it is!

——-

We have some crummy news to share— Corey has decided to leave Banner Pilot, and played his final show with us last weekend. It’s been awesome to have him as part of the band for the last few years, and we’re bummed to see him go. Luckily, it’s just because he has other cool stuff going on in his life right now, and not for a bad reason like him being adamant about moving the band in a ska direction.

Luckily for all of you, you can still check him out in his other band, The Manix, and we recommend you do so.

So, what does this mean for the other three sad sacks in Banner Pilot? Well, it means we need a new guitar player! If you’re interested, shoot an email over to bannerpilot@gmail.com. Here is the criteria:

1. You need to be good enough at guitar to play our songs (this is not necessarily the same thing as being “good at guitar”)
2. You need to be able to sing backups and occasional lead vocal parts live
3. You need to not be a piece of shit

Being down for touring, driving a van, etc are also important, but those are the three big ones. Beyond those things, we’re open— for example, don’t feel like you have to have a gruff voice or whatever.

We’re kinda just looking for a live / touring guitarist for now, but if it really works out (and you want to, obviously) it could become a songwriting / recording thing, too.

So wish Corey well on his next adventures and drop us a line if you feel like trying to fill his big shoes

Local Shows Coming Up!

wrestlepalooza_bwexnoiseflyerJUNEwebThanks for everyone who checked out our recent Midwest and East Coast tours; the shows were fun and it was nice being back in a few cities we hadn’t been to in a long time. In some cases it had been so long I really had no idea how the show would go — for example, one of my previous memories about Boston was playing to six people, four of whom were in the other band, one of whom was dressed as a pirate — but they were consistently solid. Best Host award goes to Firehouse Pizza in Normal, IL, hands down.

Now we’re back home and we have a couple of local shows later this month. First up is Wrestlepalooza IV at First Avenue, this Saturday the 14th. I’ve never been but have heard great things. They’re going to bring a wrestling ring into the main room and then we’ll play between matches and possibly throw around some folding chairs and stuff.

One week after that, on June 21st, we’re playing the Extreme Noise 20th anniversary, outdoors at Memory Lanes. With… Cleveland Bound Death Sentence!! And a bunch of other cool bands.

Check out both shows if you can, I hereby predict they will be excellent and well worth your time

-Nate

 

Jawbreaker Lyrics & Shows & Things

I know you probably can’t tell from our music, but believe it or not, we’re big fans of Jawbreaker. So much so that you can read an in-depth discussion of our favorite lyrics by them over at Noisey. Go check it out!

Also: our album Souvenir is now officially out! You can pick it up at iTunes or Spotify, or buy a physical copy from Fat Wreck or Interpunk or a bunch of other different places. Hope you dig it.

On the fence? I encourage you to be more decisive and just buy the damn thing. But maybe some reviews will help. Alternative Press. Already Heard. Kill Your Stereo…. Just to name a few.

Finally, don’t forget that we’re hitting up a bunch of places in the Midwest and East Coast in May; click on Tour up there.

-Nate

Shirts, and stuff

Don’t forget– our new album Souvenir comes out this Tuesday on Fat Wreck! You still have time to pre-order it from Fat or from iTunes. Wouldn’t that be a nice way to start your Tuesday, with a link to some MP3s in your inbox? Come on, it would be awesome.

You can check out an interview I did with Absolute Punk as well.

And we have three new t-shirt designs you can grab– click on Store up there.

Finally– 2nd single comes out tomorrow. Check back!

-Nate