Upcoming J. Robbins live dates 2023, so far:

June 22 Ottobar, Baltimore MD 

Electric duo with Gordon Withers, cello.

Opening for Quattracenta and Live Skull

Full band, featuring Gordon Withers, Brooks Harlan, Peter Moffett:

July 13 Tellus 360, Lancaster PA supporting Braid

July 14 Crossroads, Garwood NJ supporting Braid

July 15 Music Hall of Williamsburg, Brooklyn NY supporting Braid

July 16 The Sinclair, Boston MA supporting Braid

Full band headlining show (bye bye Braid)

July 17 Rejects Beer Co, Middletown RI

Full band, featuring Gordon Withers, Brooks Harlan, Darren Zentek:

July 20 Atlantis Club, Washington DC supporting Clutch

Dec 1, 2022

I get older; the years go faster. This one has been remarkable. So many bucket list experiences - honestly, things I never openly aspired to because who would imagine they’d actually happen? - from touring with Bob Mould to playing at Primavera (and seeing Bauhaus and Einsturzende Neubauten there), and so many great recording and mixing projects - including a Jawbox session, which I didn’t see coming even a year ago). So, I have a lot to be grateful for. And I now have the difficult task of making 2023 plans that even remotely live up to the precedent set by 2022. I’m working on it …

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of going out to Seattle, to record my old friend Vic Bondi’s great band Redshift at The Soundhouse. First time I’ve worked at someone else’s studio in a long long time. A change of context is always educational, and that is a great studio. Hopefully there will be a next time and I can spend a little more time just hanging out in Seattle - beautiful place.

I’m very close to wrapping up all the recording and mixing for J. Robbins solo record 2. Just a couple of  vocals and some mixing to do, and then trying to make a 10-12 song album sequence from the 16 or so pieces I’ve got in the hopper. The band in this recording is Brooks Harlan (bass), Gordon Withers (cello and guitar), and Darren Zentek (drums). Brooks, Darren and I also got together at the end of October to record a Naked Raygun cover (“Got Hurt,” an obscure early offering that only surfaced on the expanded reissue of “Basement Screams”), for a forthcoming tribute record. Incredibly fun (and insanely quick) session that yielded something we’re all pretty excited about.

Top Ten Things of 2022:

Tropical Fuck Storm live at Primavera

Einsturzende Neubauten live at Primavera

Bob Mould live solo electric

Clear Channel live at Ottobar last night (12/1/22)

A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs (podcast)

sE Electronics VR-1 ribbon mic

Men (film)

The Empty Man (film)

Continuals (band)

The Dawn of Everything - David Graeber and David Wengrow (book)

SEATTLE PHOTO DUMP:

Between Barcelona, Dublin, and London was a lot of slogging through airports. I’m not going to complain about something I’m incredibly lucky to be able to do. However, it was a relief to land in Porto and realize all the actual traveling was almost at an end. Having never been to Portugal before, I wish I had had more time to just chill in Porto; it’s a very cool city, easy on the eyes, with a distinctive vibe and a feeling I prize (Baltimore has this too): that it buries its treasures and you’ll have to go digging a bit, but it will be worth it.

Our stage in the pre-soundcheck daytime:

Reverse angle as Squid set up for their soundcheck. The curse of Jawbox, we are always early ...

Beanbags in the wild

The pensive Redenbo

Zach Barocas: A Man And His Espresso

Vegan late lunch with Kim and Jo

Beautiful Brutalism at the Portugese Communist Party HQ, just up the street from our hotel!

Fun fair just a little further up the street - channelling my inner Stanley Cortez

...and Orson Welles

The amazing crowd right at the end of our set at NOS Primavera Porto. So glad I remembered to take this pic!

I didn’t take so many pics in Dublin or London - in Dublin we all sampled half the menu at the Vegan Sandwich Shop, I spent some quality time at the Francis Bacon Studio exhibit at the Hugh Lane Gallery, and I walked around Temple Bar taking in the city energy. I was also nursing a wrecked voice, having unwisely decided to play the Barcelona shows without earplugs. I’ve worn earplugs on stage for years - once I got used to doing it that way, it was an absolute revolution for me. Not only has it been helpful in terms of preserving my hearing, but I learned to hear my voice from inside my body rather than relying on monitors (which always suck), and I think my singing got way way better. Every time I play a show without earplugs, I push my voice way too hard and get myself into trouble. But something about the festival stage at Primavera made me think I’d appreciate the experience more if I went without, and that it would be just fine in the end ... well I did appreciate the experience, but I ended up regretting it. Completely trashed my voice, one of the worst instances ever, so in Dublin I sought out a health food shop, stocked up on Throat Coat tea, lemon juice and honey, and tried not to talk at all. After those first 2 shows, the rest of the tour was a real uphill climb as far as actually singing the sets. One likes to imagine at this point I’ve finally learned my lesson ...?

But let’s accentuate the positive:

Dublin - beautiful day for a walk along the River Liffey

The 400-year-old Capstan Bar, Dublin - good day-off hang with Brooks, Matt R and Matt B

Remembrance Garden, Dublin

Children of Lir, Dublin

Francis Bacon Studio, Dublin: “I feel at home here in this chaos because chaos suggests images to me.”

A regular at Whelan’s

Backline check, Electric Ballroom, London

Got home yesterday. Still processing. But what an amazing trip. Never could have pictured anything like this the first time i picked up a guitar - but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to do it again. And again as much as possible.

#jawboxofficial, #jawbox, #primaverasound, #daddario, #tourlife

Arrival

Wet Leg ... no, look closer, they’re there. You can almost hear the innuendo.

Tropical Fuck Storm - INCREDIBLE

Einsturzende Neubauten - beyond description, so so good. Closest thing to a religion I’ve got.

Bauhaus! Peter Murphy on the jumbotron. Only waited my whole life to see them. Absolutely great.

Bauhaus from afar - you could still hear everything so clearly!

Where’s Nick Cave?

Say hello to my little friend

Awesome Humans of Barcelona: Artur Estrada

Awesome Human of Sant Feliu: Santi Garcia

This picture has layers

Me, Santi and Matt outside Vol before the club show

with Señor Burns

Pau and Matt, with background dude, at Sagrada Familia

So Gaudi

Feet in the Mediterranean

Driving home from Provincetown today, soundtracked by Sonic Youth and Mister Goblin. Writing from the passenger seat while Gordon deals with the shitty I-95 holiday weekend traffic. Provincetown was love at first sight, a real eye-opener for me. I really want to go back - maybe in the off-season though; despite being a utopia of good vibes and openness, it's still a beach town and I'm still crowd-averse. So happy to be heading home, while also a little bit in denial that the tour is over. One of the best tours of my life - a total dream. I'd be quite happy to spend the remainder of my live music "career" opening for Bob Mould in performing arts centers in any town that's got one.

I got a rotten night's sleep last night. It's not entirely the fault of the Air BnB (though like many other well-appointed Air BnBs, this one features some unfamiliar and disconcerting smells - not "where-are-they-hiding-the-bodies" scary, just creepily car-air-freshener-ish - that probably did contribute to my general restlessness).

In fact, I recognize that I always expect AirBnBs to turn out to be a leaky shack behind a garage, no matter how nice they look in pictures. I guess this way I'm never disappointed. This place is actually really nice. I just hope I can shake the smells.

This is the last AirBnB of the tour. Tonight is in fact the last show of the tour, which always brings bittersweet feelings. My initial prediction, that I wouldn't really feel like I had these songs in my hands until the end, has turned out to be more or less correct. Gordon of course always sounds great, and every show has been fun to play, but only for the last 3 or 4 shows have I felt like the set is really second nature. Maybe we should have booked a tour to warm up for this tour.

Last night in East Greenwich RI felt like the best-attended show of the tour, though Philly probably takes that prize. We made it onto the marquee, which was a nice surprise. East Greenwich seems like a sweet little town, and they were having some kind of pre-Memorial Day street festival when we arrived to load in. With Covid numbers rising everywhere, droves of happy (almost entirely maskless) families blithely roaming the streets felt a bit like a scene from Jaws ("I'm familiar with the fact that you are going to go on ignoring this particular problem until it swims up and bites you on the ass"). But you've got to live - certainly that's why we're out here doing this.

On the other hand ... put on a goddamn mask, it's not that hard.

We both felt really good about our set, and it seemed to connect with people. On this tour the promoters have typically been buying dinner for us and on this night we had some really great Indian food, which made me realize it's been too long since the last time I could say that. I'm sad to say I missed the entirety of Bob's set; I spent all of the rest of the night out in the lobby at the merch table. But once again, this gave me a chance to meet a lot of people who told me how much they liked our set despite having no prior knowledge of me or Gordon. And I got to connect with old friends: the always awesome Bill Keough, who put on so many Providence shows for Jawbox back in the day, and Brian Simmons, an old friend and all-around excellent dude from these parts with too many mutual DC connections to even get into here.

By the end of Bob's set, the whole vibe of the night had really taken on a rowdy party aura - through the wall, I could hear people going completely bonkers during Bob's set, so I know it was an exceptionally good one.

I realize I've let this diary lag a little. Part of the problem is that we got in to our AirBnb early yesterday and I actually wrote a lot then but lost it all by forgetting to "save as draft" - a rookie mistake. Yesterday on the whole - until we got to the Greenwich Odeon - felt almost like a lost day in that way. Gordon was working remotely pretty much all day. For my part, it was cool to have a home base to just sit and chill for a while, and try to take care of some business, but it also felt a bit like not being anywhere. If you're reading this and you've been on tour, I trust you know what I'm talking about.

Anyway, we were coming off our only headlining show of this tour, the previous night at City Winery in Boston, which had turned out vastly better than expected. City Winery makes a weird first impression if your touring life has mostly been based on rock clubs and DIY spaces. As a space, it greets you with the sterile upscale food-court aura that seems all-pervasive in new urban development. As usual, it's the people that make the difference. Luckily everyone who worked with us there was great to work with - really enjoyable, engaged people who had their shit totally together. It's been a hallmark of the tour, actually. And as a performance space, the Haymarket Lounge (the smaller room within this vast venue) was a great place to play and it sounded killer in there. HIlken Mancini and Chris Colbourn opened with a too-short set - lovely people, it was great to meet them and I wish I could have heard more of their music. This show was not all that well-attended; I guess "J. Robbins acoustic" just has what Ian Faith would have called "a selective appeal," at least on a Wednesday night in Boston. But everyone who showed up was really there for the show and it felt great to play. We played for about an hour and a quarter - literally every song we had worked up for the tour.

I know I'm going backward; it feels weird to me too but I'm trying to run with it.

Tell you what, let's go back to where we left off before this little break, which was right before the show in Old Saybrook CT. Certain things seem applicable to just about every show on this tour: great old venue that feels far too classy for the likes of me (in this case it was the Katherine Hepburn Cultural Arts Center, another beautiful old theater - the basement is home to the Katherine Hepburn Museum, which Gordon got to see but which I didn't hear about til after we were gone), super pleasant and highly competent staff, nice weather, sweet smallish town. I was happy to see old friend Scott Padden, who grew up in CT and came out from Brooklyn for the show. I was half-expecting some barbed heckling from him during our set, but he was admirably restrained.

We stayed with friend and ally James Tsaptsinos at his house way out in the country not far from Hartford. It was so great to actually stay with a friend, in an actual home, instead of in a hotel or Air BnB. In the morning we went out for the second-best breakfast sandwich of the tour and then James, who is a history buff, took us to check out the site of the first Federal prison in America, Old New Gate Prison, which started out as a mine and was set up as a prison during the Revolutionary War. Prisoners worked at hard labor during the day and were literally shackled together in a giant hole in the ground at night. It's still pretty grim, even in the light of a beautiful 2022 early Summer day.

We left CT for Boston in time to make a detour back to Salem and fit in a visit to the Satanic Temple's Salem Art Gallery before load-in at City Winery. I've wanted to see this place ever since I saw Penny Lane's excellent documentary "Hail Satan?" And I was not disappointed. What a great space - an art gallery inside a converted funeral home. I really liked a lot of the work in the featured exhibit, paintings by Caitlin Karolczak. There were also some Durer prints and some Dali watercolors I hadn't seen, and of course the infamous Baphomet statue, surrounded by these mysterious giant encaustic and gold leaf panels by artist Zach Brown. If I were not on tour, I can easily imagine spending a whole day in their library room, which contains, among other treasures, a complete set of the Man, Myth, and Magic encyclopedia, and a beautiful 1940s edition of Baudelaire's Fleurs Du Mal. The visit was too short, but well worth it. Doing these extracurricular things on tour has always been important to me - what is this if not an opportunity to get out in the world and see and do new things?

Time now to pack up and try to get ahead of holiday traffic out to Provincetown, for the last show of the tour.

So we come to the end of another day off. This one's a Monday, so it's understandable that the date was impossible to fill. But filling the spiritual void in my heart that a day off can sometimes leave - well, actually today it was easier than expected.

Gordon and I started the day yesterday with peanut butter sandwiches in our Air BnB in Bristol NH and went for a hike up to Inspiration Point on Little Round Top Mountain. Every building in Bristol cried out to me: "I am your future home/recording studio!" Something about the architecture there - all these giant houses/barns with weird sprawling additions in varying states of livable and charming disrepair ... but a quick look at RedFin brought me back from this fantasy life. Anyway the real point here was the hike, which was steep as hell, but so worth it, particularly once we got to Inspiration Point.

Another day, another humbling yet life-affirming vista of mind-blowing natural beauty.

Then the drive into Western Mass, soundtracked by Ovlov, Swervedriver, Franz Liszt, T-Bone Burnett, Tarnation, and Sam Phillips. Got to our Red Roof Inn, did some laundry, and then drove up the road to Greenfield. When we got to the venue (the Hawks and Reed Performing Arts Center), Bob was already there setting up, and Lou Barlow and his wife were there too, chatting with him. I am a pretty big fan of Lou's music; consequently I was too shy to barge in and say hello.

A pleasant, helpful, professional staff is something that all the venues on this tour seem to have in common. Hawks and Reed was no exception. The dressing room featured an upright piano; Gordon showed remarkable patience and forbearance as I killed time by trying to conjure up the John Cale discography on it.

We got our dinner from a pizza joint across the street, a place called Mag Pie. Seemed like the right thing to do. Luckily, the pizza was fantastic, so it amounted to more than just the fulfillment of an inside joke.

The show itself was another smallish one but really good - one of the most enjoyable to play, for some reason I can't put my finger on.

This morning we got up a little earlier, to get Gordon in to Somerfield MA so he could actually work in one of his company's offices. Then I went in to Salem for a field trip to visit Kurt Ballou, an engineer/producer I greatly admire, at his studio God City, a place I've always wanted to see. I figured Salem would also be a good spot for a day-off stroll around, to try to soak in some witchy vibes and maybe look for Tarot decks to add to the little collection I started just before the pandemic hit.

The witchy bit, as I should really have expected, mostly exuded the aura of a tourist trap. So much Harry Potter Halloween tat everywhere. But it was a gorgeous day to be out, and I found the Witch Trials Memorial quite affecting. And I did like HausWitch, a small and aesthetically lovely shop with its emphasis as much on feminism and intersectional politics as witchcraft. I bought the Small Spells Tarot Deck and Guidebook by Rachel Howe there.

But the real highlight was in getting to see the God City space, and to hang with Kurt and his assistant Zach Weeks for a bit. They were having a tech day, which in this case meant doing some comparison listening to a couple of diffferent pairs of ribbon mics as drum overheads, with and without Cloudlifters in the signal path. I love this kind of thing, so I was pretty psyched about the timing.

Then back to Somerville for dinner and beers with Gordon and some of his work colleagues, and now the day winds to a close.

All told, not bad for a day off. But it does feel like a month since I've played a show. Get me to Connecticut already!

...and here is a photo (taken by Gordon Withers) of the most delicious and satisfying one I have ever eaten. This very morning (May 21, 2022), in Windham NY. Thank you, Windham Local.

Days off on tour are just weird. I mean, tour is weird in so many ways, but to have a day off, while certainly necessary from time to time, can be indescribably disorienting. The main factor, I think, is time. Time slows down and gets ... squishy. Simultaneously fast, and very very slow. You are out here to do one thing, but you cant do that thing, so … what?

I spent a pretty enjoyable week in Windham NY between the afternoon of May 19 and the morning of May 21.

OK, to be fair, there was a show in there too, and it was a singular one at that (May 20 at Levon Helm Studios in Woodstock). But the event horizon of that wonderful show ... stretched out like temporal chewing gum. Tell you what though, in itself that was pretty nice!

This part of the world is, to rest on the first cliche at hand, breathtakingly beautiful.

The Air BnB turned out to be great, at the top of a historic building with a decent restaurant downstairs. The apartment was small but comfortable, with a deck that looked up at Windham Mountain. Windham is a very small town that seems like it must only really come to life in the ski season; it was all but deserted in late May. Thursday night after we got in, we walked up the mountain a way, to the bottom of the ski run, through a Ballardian environment of almost entirely deserted ski-lodge accommodations in a weird combination of brutalist and fake Tudor architecture. We came back and ate a delicious (if entirely deep-fried) dinner in the restaurant downstairs from the Air BnB and called it a day. I tried to get in some guitar practice but a gentle rap on the wall from unseen neighbors made me think better of it.

Gordon is working remotely through most of this tour, and he had a 10:30AM work commitment on Friday morning, but being in this incredible mountain landscape, we resolved to get up early and hike, which we did. A little over 4 miles, but over 900 feet elevation, up Windham Mountain but not quite to Windham High Peak. It was awesome to see the environment change as the elevation changed, like there were these really clear demarcation points.

Also, we saw a porcupine.

Most of the rest of the day felt to me like a kind of time vortex. I worked on set lists for the upcoming Jawbox Europe tour, and made friends with a local cat, and also got pretty sunburned, while Gordon worked. And then it was off to Woodstock and Levon Helm Studios.

The drive was pretty nuts. I let Google Maps be my guide and took the most direct way, which turned out to be literally over a mountain. Beautiful, but pretty dicey at points. A little steep for the Kia Soul - but this humble car of mine actually acquitted itself pretty well.

We got into downtown Woodstock, experienced a little mild culture shock, then took a quick driving detour past Dreamland Studio. If I'd had the presence of mind I would have thought of this earlier and arranged to get a tour, but no dice. I love the sound of so many records that were made there. Anyway, we saw it from the road. Guess what, it's a building. From the outside, completely nondescript. Next time for the interior, I hope.

We heard Bob on the radio, hyping the show and also saying nice things about our set and encouraging people to come early to the show. Thanks Bob!

And then we entered a total dream world that honestly is still blowing my mind a little. I kind of hate to be so hyperbolic, but I have to say Levon Helm Studios is one of the most inspiring places I've ever been. It is almost a world unto itself (I suppose you can say that about Woodstock in general for good and for ill, but where LHS is concerned? 100% good).

Some of my favorite shows I've seen in the past few years have happened in a place in Baltimore called Club 603, which is actually the living room of the Veith family. I saw Mark Eitzel there, Jason Narducy, John Vanderslice ... all really intimate shows and each profoundly affecting in its way. Well, Levon Helm Studios has that same feeling, like ... this is personal. You're kind of in someone's home. I mean, we even drove past it initially because there's no sign on the road, just a mailbox. But that home also has the added bonus of being Levon Helm's rehabbed and repurposed barn, with high ceilings, warm acoustics, incredible sound and lights, and capacity for ... I don't know, maybe 100 people? It was like the dream version of a living room show. And you can tell that everyone who works at this place feels they are a part of something special. The whole experience felt almost ... haunted somehow, but by good spirits. Make what sense you will of that.

Gordon played our set sitting on Levon Helm's drum throne.

I'd say my experience was only slightly marred by my constant internal battle with imposter syndrome, which was a little more intense in this setting - how can I possibly deserve to be allowed to play in this place? - but I've been struggling with that demon for a long time and I'm glad I've been able to keep it (mostly) reined in on this trip. Anyway, maybe a little more than the usual nerves, but also enough nice moments and people seemed to like what we did.

Bob's set slayed, as usual. There's something I really love about a show with no stage, and it was great to see him in that setting.

After the show, back to the AirBnB the long way around (no mountain drives this time).

Today was maybe the longest drive yet, from Windham to Plymouth NH. Insanely scenic, to the point that I think we both started to get a little numb to it. Gordon DJ'd for a bit which meant I got to hear Taking Meds for the first time - don't know how I've missed out on this band but they're great.

We also listened to some Song Exploder podcasts (when we had signal).

Hans Zimmer on his Dune score: "I didn't fuck it up."

Rick Nielsen on "Surrender": "when you're a teenager, instead of being combative all the time, just lie to your parents."

Stopped at Hogback Mountain overlook. Didn't think I had any breath left to take at this point, but was mistaken. Someone from the staff was walking around with an owl on her arm ("Meet An Owl," a sign said, and so we did).

And eventually we made our way to the Flying Monkey in Plymouth NH, another lovely old restored theater where the staff was super nice and professional, we ate a tasty dinner, and we had a really fun show playing to a small but very energized crowd. About to crash now at another Air BnB 20 minutes down the road from the show.

Off to bed, to contemplate a future without breakfast sandwiches, because I can't see how any future contenders could possibly compete.

Is Starbucks the closest thing we get to public space in this country? Here I sit in a Starbucks in the shadow of the Albany airport, with Cher in the background, her technologically-assisted voice demanding to know if I believe in life after love, knowing that this (and getting caffeinated to the gills) is the price I must pay for a little quiet time and space to concentrate. Today is a day off for the tour - excellent news for Bob, as he will have a chance to rest his voice. He seems to give 120% to every show, and his singing still sounds as tuneful and powerful as day one, but there's no doubt it takes a toll.

For us, on our shoestring budget, a day off (particularly a Thursday, the bleeding edge of the weekend) isn't ideal. I tried with no success to fill the date, then told myself it wasn't a big deal if it didn't happen ... but now that the day is here, it's kind of a drag. We also woke to the complete dissolution of our Woodstock accommodation plans - seems like the hotel I Pricelined has some major maintenance issue and they probably shouldn't have booked our stay in the first place, but they didn't notify us 'til today! They literally called me (from a number my phone deemed "Scam Likely") to say we can't stay there but we could stay at their friend's motel down the road ... I said thanks but no thanks and ended up finding a last-minute deal on a cool-looking AirBnB. So, fingers crossed, we might have actually successfully made lemonade out of this day that started as a bit of a lemon. I'm kind of mentally turning this "off" day into a mini-artist retreat, as I type ... maybe Gordon and I will record a single tomorrow morning in the shadow of the Catskills ...

Sometimes I do get the uncomfortable feeling that everything around us is just running on some combination of wishful thinking and whatever momentum is retained from before the onset of the pandemic. Like society has essentially already collapsed ... but nobody's noticed yet. Welcome to the inside of my head.

The good news is that last night's show was an absolute blast. We got to Albany early enough for Gordon to visit a grand old stone church where his dad had been pastor back in 50s - that was a nice extra-curricular event - and it was quite near the venue. Lark Hall is a wonderful space, everyone who worked the show was a delight to work with, the sound on stage was great ... the whole thing was pretty dreamy. The venue even had a house cello stand! And the dressing room (up a nearly vertical, extremely non-ADA-compliant, horror-movie staircase) was like an apartment I'd be happy to move into. Before the show I got a little excellent advice from Bob re: preparing to play a festival set at Primavera (which Jawbox will do in just a couple weeks from now).

The set was really fun in that awesome-sounding room. Gordon and I brought out our cover of "To Hell With Poverty" for the first time on the tour - so much fun to play, and it went over really well. Extra funny that it was such a good night, because my main memories of Albany are from Jawbox tours and they're not overwhelmingly positive - either playing 5-band hardcore bills that we were just not "hard" enough for, or playing to a venue half-full with unenthusiastic punters when we opened a tour for Nada Surf (a great band of truly lovely people) in the beginning of their post-"Popular" slump. So last night really brought Albany way up the list for me!

Catch you on the flip-flop - J