tour wrap up.

last night was the final show of the Nothing Matters Anymore tour. 8 weeks long, 40 something shows (or more? I don’t remember…) it was the 7th anniversary of Showbread’s touring career. seven years on the road with an average of traveling around 8 months out of each year.
this summer was another for the books. we made wonderful new friends, we were treated to lots of free chipotle by awesome fans. there were crowds with a hundred and crowds with a dozen. lots of fun shows and hilarity, lots of 100 degree weather making everyone nuts, some of the most patience testing sound guys in history, a lot of late night stops at Wendy’s, lots of floors slept on, etc. etc. all the normal tour things. of course we wrapped it all up with a final stop at Krystal. yum.
it was great having The Gallery and Goodnight Caulfield with us this time around. they were great guys who were kind to put up with all the highs and lows of the tour and have a time with us.
thank you everyone who came to see the show, whether or not you were among a crowd of hundreds or a crowd of five, it is wildly appreciated. thanks to everyone who made an effort to be kind to us, it means more to us than you know. also thanks to everyone who was a jerk to us, stole our uniform shirts or told us our first album was better.
we shot hours upon hours of footage for the upcoming “Nothing Matters Anymore” DVD which we hope to release in time for Christmas.
now that it’s over it’ll be a long while before we hit the road to headline again… in fact next year our mission is to do most or all of our playing overseas.
here we come world.
but for the now, we hit the road on tuesday to begin a small run of dates with Project 86, Children 18:3 and The Wedding. see you soon.

-Josh Dies

a red dot on the pope?

Mike just brought it to my attention that some folks over at indievisionmusic.com are having a “comment debate” about the artwork to our new album. Some people seem to be very upset with the cover, specifically the obscured visage of the pope.

I wanted to try and address this now before it escalates further. First of all let me say that Showbread aren’t graphic designers and we didn’t create the album art, but we do think that it suits the album thematically.

Let me just say now, that Showbread- although a protestant band- did not intend any defamation of the Catholic Church with this album cover, nor the pope as an individual, nor Catholics anywhere. Some folks pointed out that the pope pictured is/was a very good man and we never intended to say that he was or was not. We never intended to make a statement about him as an individual or Catholic at all. I’m not entirely sure why the idea of a red circle over his face has to be insulting in any way, because it isn’t meant to be… I think artistically the red circle acts as a focal point in the art, an “eye” if you will… the pope himself is not meant to be represented so much as a religious figure is. Thus, his face isn’t what’s important in this context.

I asked Ryan Clark (the man behind the art) to create a visual reference to things that we as people associate with God, religion, the church, etc. There is no image of Jesus Himself, only people and things. While everyone might have certain opinion’s about whether each image is good or bad or neutral is the point. Whatever opinions showbread has, we aren’t projecting them on to these images.

Ironically, a red circle covering a man’s face was enough to make some people so angry that they hurled insults at us, called us names and threatened to further slander us to keep people from buying our record, even though we never actually said a single defamatory thing, nor did we intend a red circle to be so offensive. There are people suggesting that the cover “ shows a juvenile understanding of Christ and His Church…” simply because our album cover has an anonymous red dot over a man’s face. Which in a way, gives specific weight to what the artwork is trying to say.

I don’t mention this to insult anyone or single anyone out (to this person who said this along with any other offended Catholics, I hope we can clear this up and keep/gain you as a fan/friend!)

If the central image were C.S. Lewis or Billy Graham with red dots over their faces it would not be our intention to insult either of them, just as we never intended to stir up any negativity with our Catholic friends.

The artwork and the album both deal with the search for God in a miserable world and where God is and isn’t “behind” our humanly comings and goings. I’d like to think that this cover would not offend the pope himself, as there is no disrespect inferred, only an introspective look at the faces of religion, good and bad, and how we find God in all the chaos. Believe me, the message on the record, as with all Showbread records, is in no way subtle. I think the pope would appreciate that.

-Josh dies

we had a good time at cornerstone. a nice family of campers shared a steak dinner with us. a nice family treated us to a pizza dinner with some friends from the Showbread forum. the weather was nice until the last day we were there. our set, the first of the year, was sloppy and chaotic and really fun. we let anyone who asked hear our record at our merch table. we met brian “head” welch at our hotel and enjoyed his set. we saw lots of friends. we hung out with our original drummer marvin all week. we met lots of wonderful people. it was a good time. apparently right after we left the sky opened up and everyone was subject to a torrential downpour. good timing Showbread.

Coolest Horror Movie Endings (According To Josh Dies)

DRAG ME TO HELL

The “Oh, this happy ending is stupid…wait a minute…AAAGGHH!!!” Ending

THE DESCENT (ORIGINAL “NON-US” VERSION)

The “Good grief. Hasn’t she had enough?” Ending.

THE EVIL DEAD

The “Well that seemed to end bad, then it got worse, no happy ending” Ending

SE7EN

The “Well I’ll be darned. That was smart. Now I’m depressed” Ending

FRIDAY THE 13TH (1980)

The “That was the coolest part in the movie and now we can make a dozen sequels” Ending

HATCHET

The “This was basically a sillier ‘Friday the 13th’ but still cool” Ending

HELLRAISER

The “Creepiest and most awesome ad libbed line followed by bizarre ‘what in the world?’”     Ending

AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON

The “extremely abrupt scary/funny” Ending

JOHN CARPENTER’S THE THING

The “Well this just sucks” Ending

THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE (1974)

The “Was she better off dead?” Ending

SLEEPAWAY CAMP

The “What the heck?” Ending

NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET

The “Well crap, I guess we’re still screwed” Ending

NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD

The “Thought provoking, losing faith in humanity” Ending

THE MIST

The “Ultimate unhappy miserably bleak twist of fate” Ending

almost done…

tomorrow could be the last day of mixing… if not then, we’ll finish early Tuesday.

it’s kind of surreal. listening to these mixes… this record is so different but so familiar, i think it has been waiting for its time to come. we are very excited. we really believe this is Raw Rock at its purest and best ever.

oh, and if you haven’t seen Terminator Salvation yet you are doing yourself a great disservice. I felt like I was having a flashback to my ten year old self who was obsessed with T2 like nothing else mattered. we were giddy, cheering kids in the theater. it was a wonderful feeling. and if you’re not a huge Terminator nerd, you’ll still enjoy the movie.

we’ll be making some announcements on June 1st about the record.

it’s only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything…

four days of mixing left and then another couple of months before the record comes out. we were sitting around the other night at bible study reliving the insanity that we swam through to get to this point.

-started “official” writing in january, member status became unstable

-canceled a march tour because of the status problems

-lost our footing in february with an unexpected lineup change

-made plans to fill the void with a studio drummer and held auditions

-brought in someone and sent them home within 24 hours, they later went on to slander us on the internet

-started talking to our friend jordan, made a plan

-the plan fell apart when jordan’s schedule became an issue, talks of pushing the studio back several months came up, all kinds of differing thoughts and ideas within the group

-made an insane swiss cheese plan that was terrifying and went for it with nothing but blind faith

and then here we are, months later, listening to the best Showbread album ever made. God is good.

6 days left…

we’re nearing the finish line of tracking with 6 days left before we’ll begin the mixing process.the amount of days we’ve spent tracking has always been pretty varied:

Life, Kisses…: 4 days

No Sir, Nihilism…: 18 days

Age Of Reptiles: 5 weeks

Anorexia Nervosa: 5 1/2 weeks

The Fear Of God: 15 days

we haven’t ever really needed the large amounts of time we’ve spent on some of our records. this time around is the shortest ever tracking period since Life, Kisses… and it’s worked out amazingly. the four of us plus Jordan worked SO well together that we just cruised through everything with amazing ideas and awesome takes…

borrowing from the “In Utero” recording technique, we recorded the entire band live and did minimal overdubs unless we deemed them necessary. and we’re finally making a record we’ve been wanting to make for years.

at this point we’ve only vocals left to track and we’re feeling great. i can’t wait to hear the finished product.

pictures

day five.

we finished drums on thursday. patrick took jordan to the airport in sacramento before we became entrenched in a HUGE ticket mess with continental airlines. jordan finally got out of sacramento at 6am.

his drumming on the record is awesome. he did us a tremendous favor by dropping everything to come play on our album and hang out with us. thanks a lot Tyler Read for letting us borrow your drummer. he rules.

friday was our day off so we drove to medford to see Wolverine. ran into some showbread fans and saw a kid walk by with a showbread shirt… that was pretty cool. everyone really liked the movie for the most part, but of course we were saddened to see Deadpool (one of mine and patrick’s favorite Marvel characters) treated so poorly. at least we got to enjoy him as Wade Wilson. i strongly recommend everyone go see Wolverine as soon as possible so we can get a sequel and a Deadpool spin-off.

today we’re tracking some guitars. we ended up keeping a great deal of live takes from the guitars so that the record has more of a raw, live energy. i’ve wanted to make a record with this sonic vibe since before Age Of Reptiles so it’s really exciting to hear it coming out. never before have all of my favorite elements been combined on our records this way.

showbread loves calzones

showbread has had a great couple of days. we had some calzones that are arguably the best out there. we’ve finished tracking drums and we watched a metallica documentary. right now i’m kind of hungry but all is well because tomorrow wolverine comes out. we’re a little concerned about the whole deadpool thing. jordan is leaving tonight. he is flying home to work on his band darktober. he is very passionate about it and we are very excited to hear the finished product. i reckon i’ll eat a sandwich.

-patrick