Our friend Juston Stens as a new EP that will be available for sale sometime soon, but is available for free sometime NOW. You can download Juston Stens & The Get Real Gang’s first EP at www.parkthevan.com/getreal

You can find out more info about Juston and see where he’ll be touring at any of the following internet websites:

Twitter
MySpace
Facebook

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Presale User Name: dr.dog
Presale Password: tickets

Hey folks,

If you haven’t guessed yet, we’re going on tour. We asked you where you wanted to see us, and we’re doing our best to hit as many cities as we can. If we don’t make it around to you this time, don’t fret. We’ll be there soon.

One of the things we pay a lot of attention to is the service fee’s on tickets to our shows. A service charge on a $25 ticket through most ticketing vendors is $10! It’s crazy. We know this, and like many bands, we don’t like it. For the fall tour we have secured a limited amount of tickets for every show and have arranged for a pre-sale through which the service charges on those tickets are WAY cheaper than the standard fees. Fall tour pre-sale surcharges will range from $2.50 to $4.00, depending on the show.

The pre-sale tickets will go onsale TOMORROW, Tuesday July 13th and be available through Thursday July 15th. We will continue to try and find ways to limit and lower ticket surcharges and we’re excited about this step towards giving our fans an option to buy tickets and not pay huge amounts of money in surcharges.

Looking forward to this tour.

See you soon.

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We’ve been working on some plans, some big plans. We’re gonna fill you in on those plans next week but for now, we wanted to let you know about some plans Scott had drawn up all on his own.

Along with our good friend Mike Visser, Scott is going to play a small handful of solo shows in August. Mike will support Scott on the short run and all the money they make will go towards an artistic colobaration whereby our own Scott McMicken will produce a record by our own Mike Vissar.

Mike’s been a long time friend and is an incredibly talented songwriter and we’re looking forward to seeing what the two of them do together. These three shows are the first installment of the project and we expect more to come. Tickets are onsale now and all of the info is handily below and on the website.

Sunday, August 22 – The Rock Shop – Brooklyn, NY – Buy
Monday, August 23 – Tin Angel – Philadelphia, PA – Buy
Tuesday, August 24 – IOTA Club & Cafe – Arlington, VA – Tickets available at the door

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To all y’all who participated in this contest THANK YOU! It was truly inspirational to see what you came up with, in fact you got us thinking and we’re at the drawing board right now working on a video of our very own creation.

Stay tuned!

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Thanks for all your kind words, I’m making some progress. I have simple viral infection and I’ve had to just sweat it away here at home. It’s been pretty exciting. I think I’ll be feeling well enough to make it to Bonarroo, and I’m very much looking forward to playing and feeling normal again.

Thanks again to everyone who called or wrote, I really appreciate it.

Love, Zach

We’re writing with some unfortunate news. The story ends with us saying that we will not be playing our scheduled show at Mountain Jam this afternoon. Zach spent most of yesterday in the hospital with a medical issue. We had hoped that he’d begin feeling better as the day went by and that didn’t end up happening. The good news is that Zach is going to be just fine… we’re just not quite sure how long it will take until he can play a show again.

The folks up at Mountain Jam have been truly amazing and have worked to try to accommodate us in anyway they can, while offering all the support in the world for getting Zach better. They’ve offered to let us play tomorrow afternoon if Zach begins to recover throughout the day today.

So – for the time being, we’re letting you know that we definitely can’t play the show today and we apologize to you and to the Mountain Jam organizers that have worked so hard to make this festival as cool as it is. We’ll talk to them throughout the day and see how Zach is doing. Fingers crossed for a speedy recovery, we’ll miss seeing you today.

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Of course management sometimes thinks a little differently, and prefers that fans not film the shows because the video & audio quality is usually poor, and we want everyone at the show to enjoy the experience as it’s happening & not have their view blocked by a camera.

That’s why Portland was extra special. The day started out well with a smooth load-in & sound-check, with a couple venue dogs roaming the ballroom floor looking for someone to play fetch with.

Scott & Dimitri did their daily art-store run & set up their hat-making operation outside the venue with Frank & Slick while Toby worked on his NY Times crossword & Zach played acoustic guitar.

Doors opened, fans started filing in & the show commenced. As Pepi Ginsberg & Sean Bones played, the crowd swelled with anticipation & the tempature rose inside the venue. Everything was primed for a great show & when the band hit the stage, everything clicked and they knocked it out of the park.

I was so drawn into the show that I even switched my merch lights off to prevent light pollution from interfering with our new light show, which is a spectacle all by itself.

When the band came back for the encore, Toby announced that they needed Brucie on stage. Brucie is our guitar tech, so that usually means something is going wrong, but on this night the band needed another acoustic guitar to play a song they’ve been practicing at sound-check all tour, and they also needed someone to play it, so Brucie got the call.

Toby said, “Brucie has never played this song before, and neither have we, so we’ll see how this goes”

I recognized the melody from the merch-table in the back of the room, and I smiled and involuntarily whooped in happiness, along with 800 other fans. Earlier in the night, I peeked at the set-list and didn’t see “Heart it Races” so this was a surprise to me as well.

As I surveyed the crowd, I didn’t see any LCD displays lighting up to film the song, I just saw a crowd singing and dancing along. On this particular night, as Scott likes to say, “you had to be there.”

See ya on tour,

Forrest

Remember that time we had a contest to see who could make the best video for the song “Stranger” from our album Shame, Shame, and we gave the winning student filmmaker a sweet prize toward his or her tuition?

Of course you don’t. That time is now. Head on over to this website for more info on how to enter.

We’re broadcasting from a small studio, but there’s room for about 4 people. Wanna come? Are you going to be in San Francisco on Sunday? Two winners will each get to bring one friend. The first two people to email myhomemadeshirt@gmail.com and let us know you’re coming will get access to the filming!

If you were at any of the shows, you may have noticed that we have our friend Dimitri (from Golden Boots) on tour with us to add a little extra flavor to the music. Depending on the song, he’ll be shaking a tambourine, playing acoustic guitar or triggering some sound effects. You might have also noticed our new light show (If the strobe lights are too much for you, we also have cheap sun-glasses for sale at merch;) It’s all designed to give you, the crowd, the best concert experience we can imagine.

Since we have a light show for this tour, Scott hasn’t been dressing the stage. In tours past, Scott would literally fill up the trailer with props he found at truck-stops and thrift stores. He needed to channel his creative efforts somewhere, so he’s been decorating the bus and creating one-of-a-kind merchandise. On the first day of tour, the band went shopping in Toronto and found a bunch of bandanas with the three-dot logo and some painter hats and we stenciled Dr. Dog logos on them. These turned out to be really popular, so we made some shirts on our day off in Nebraska. Scott has a knack for creating a menagerie wherever he goes.

The past few months have been a combination of waiting to share music with fans while working to promote the new record. The first week was a payoff for all the hard work the band, management and crew has put in over the past few months to build a stage show to match the potential of the songs. Now is the fun part, when the band gets to go out and play the new tunes live, while dipping into the ever expanding songbook for old favorites, with a light show to match.

The band’s playing a bunch of songs from Shame, Shame and mixing some older songs into the set – they’ve also been sound-checking a fan favorite that has never been played live…yet.

Now, I leave you with a behind-the-scenes look at the band being “creative.” Have a look!

See ya soon.
Love,
Forrest

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