Long time, yes, we know. It´s been a while since there´s been news here at sweeder.com. Sorry for the delay.

Sweeder had a great East Coast tour. Many good times were had. It started in Kalamazoo at Stark Industries, by far one of the better evenings due to the great time had by all, at what is not a traditional venue, nor traditional crowd. We found ourselves in some kind of cardboard cutting factory, temporarily cleared for a musical event, which was restored at the end of the night.

People came to this off the beaten path, place to hear the music (period). It was all ages, no booze, and no fighting allowed. I have to say that this was a great audience. Filled with the young, interested and beautiful. A fine band named Monoglot started off the evening, to this dedicated and attentive audience. A band hard to describe but I´ll just stop here to say, I really enjoyed their show and hope to see/hear from them again.

Now, I´d like to write a review of every band and every evening but I just can´t do it. I´m a lazy writer...sorry to say. Anyway, we had a great night in Kalamazoo, and we´ll definitely be going back. People were kind there and they offered up the good word, plus they bought cds to boot.

Every show varied in time, place and crowd all except for one thing, I felt really great for all of them. We especially thank Curtis, Elaine(god i hope i spelled her name right), and Harrison for doing three shows (New York, Baltimore, and New Jersey). They were performing under the name "Curtis Harvey", whom you all should know about. They are a beautiful trio, acoustic guitar, upright bass, and cello. They sing three part harmony and are really, fucking GREAT! Here´s a hint, if you can´t keep your mouth from yapping during their set, you should go somewhere else. I can´t express the frustration we felt in New Jersey, where the crowd insisted upon barking louder than the music onstage. For a place that has multi environments (ie dance club downstairs, several bars, and several rooms) I don´t understand why people have to hang out in the performance room and talk/yell/chortle above the music. People really don´t give a shit, and that was that bad part. Fortunately, there was a core group of listeners who did there best to make the show bearable for the band.

I also have to mention a really great jazz duo that we played with in Philadelphia called Wheatstone Bridge. A great drummer and sax outfit, who will be coming here to record soon. Hopefully they´ll perform as well.

I can´t forget New York and how great Tara Jane O´neil was. Truly great and really nice as well. She and a bunch of other folk protested the issuing of a parking ticket to our van at the end of the night. We received a $50 dollar ticket for loading our van in what was the only physical space possible. I don´t understand how we´re supposed to get our gear out of a venue. We were all just standing there watching as the lady cop wrote it up and wouldn´t even hand the ticket to us. She just popped it under the windshield wiper and took off with no regret. There was no talking my way out of that one, no heckling our way out of that one either.

Baltimore was great too. Here we got to hook up with our label buddies, Jason Foster and Brian Deran. We´d never met Jason in person so that was a real treat. Here we went on at 1:15am on a Thursday night and there were still people there having a good time. Thank god for that.

The tour ended in New Brunswick, NJ. where we had an awesome show in what was a hell of a weird evening and space. Hat´s off to the sound guy for his nice words and offering of a place to crash that night. The last band put on a great show, which I really regret to say that I can´t think of their name (i suck...will follow-up with name soon). After the show was the hell-ride where we proceeded to drive all night to get home to Chicago. Really, really hard to do. It was worth it to have the next day off clean and clear. Unfortunately, I ended up really ill. So, I´m just now recovered from our tiny tour.

This is my best at a brief description... Yes, there was tons of drinking and debauchery, etc., etc... and hopefully next time we tour, people will come on out. Speaking of the next tour. We are likely to be playing at CMJ in New York, which is between Oct. 19th and 22nd. We will be touring East again, there and back. Check back for tour dates to come.

Other news is that at some point you will be able to see our New York - Brownies show at www.digitalclubnetwork.com. I don´t know when it will be available on the site but we´ll let you know when it´s up there for sure. It´s a pretty cool site, you should check it out regardless.

Lately, we´ve heard that you may be able to buy our cd, some point in the future, at insound. The Monitor Records site was updated after quite a lapse in time, you can now mail order our cd from there too.

The first "Swallowed by the Sun" review,that I´ve seen, can be found at www.adequacy.com . It´s overall favorable though not without it´s critic of the album. I think it´s fairly written and I appreciate the effort.

Finally, we´ve set up an official Sweeder Mail Box. To contact us by mail:

Sweeder
1685 N. Milwaukee Ave, PMB 151
Chicago, IL. 60647

That´s all for now.... bye till next time!Chiyoko