June was very fun indeed. First we played the show in Airfield which ended up being something very beautiful. We now only play in bay windows in grand rooms that look out over farmlands. It was the sweatiest show of our ‘career’ and The Ambience Affair lads played a great set.

Next up was our show opening for ‘The Middle East’. This was a whole bag of fun (ta fin), the band were oh so lovely to us from the second they arrived. Played to some new visual trickery that Slipdraft cooked up (talented shits that they are). We got up and joined TME for a song of theirs we’d never even heard before- 12 bodies on the stage, ace times. Afterwards had a good few pints with a lovely group of friends and showed them aussies how we roll (and paul drew a moustache on his face and the words ‘baby spice’ on his stomach). Dunno why.

Last up: we were invited to go to Galway to film for an upcoming music show on TG4. After some mild bus confusion we got there and basked at our swanky hotel (they gave us all triple rooms?!). Had a unplanned binge in the roisin dubh which ended with all of us on the beach: elis reenacting the beach level from ‘streets of rage’ and paul (nude) reenacting the opening scene of terminator 2. We learn that the choice of adult films in the rooms consists of ‘field of teens’ (costner spoof?) and ‘mucky mums’. Thankfully we didnt partake. Filmed two songs from the album which you will see later in the year. The make-up lady informs us they have cctv on the beach….ermmm.

All this activity has gotten us hungry for touring which we are currently sorting. Oh yes

but for now you can look forward to this (well we are looking forward to it)

http://www.kilkennyarts.ie/events/details/halves/

exciting.

Til next month folks – new shows to be announced.

For now- Cover Versions which are nice.

Wednesday:
We fly first to Chicago and get greeted by an American dressed as a leprechaun as we disembark the plane – it was of course St. Patricks day. We have many hours to kill until our flight to Austin, so the very first port of call is to get a photo with the Japanese Army (they also were lads on tour). American Airlines very kindly dont rape us on baggage costs, but then do delay our biggest bit of equipment by a day – saved us getting a taxi with it I guess. Speaking of taxis: Myself (brian), Paul and James get the most hiphop taxi driver who plays us some insane music which covers the topics of both rimming and pre-rimming inspection. Arrive at our hotel in Austin and we attempt to find beer for about 10 minutes then give up.

Thursday:
Start our day with a trip to the Denny’s, which is a stone’s throw from our hotel (which is quite fancy for a band of our scruffy demeanour). Our breakfasts arrive which of course are insane in size – learn not to order ‘grits’ again as they look like a bathroom tile. We take a very sunny walk down to the convention centre and learnt this is where we get free stuff – most importantly free beer. It begins.

First show of this trip (well I say ‘show’ but…) was a wee slot in a rather scenic TGI fridays which overlooked the famous bat bridge. This show consisted of Tim and a laptop with either Paul, Frankie or myself getting up to do some ‘solidarity brother’ glock. We miss the thousands of bats flying up from the bridge out the window as this happens during Tim’s Portishead cover. We then eat in said eatery and get a bit drunk and decide to go and bring the gear to the hotel so we can go party. Outside I (jokingly) dare Paul to ask two guys who were in a pickup truck for a lift back to our hotel. Paul drops the ‘We’re Irish we’ve never seen one of these‘, and happy days – they agree. So Paul, Frankie, James & Myself jump in the open back part with boyish/drunken glee and begin our journey. The first 10 minutes were us giggling away at being driven through the great city of Austin, open-aired (and also highly illegal), “Lads on tour!” etc. Then we see the driver is passing our hotel. Oh.

They must be waiting for the correct turn (as we were now bombing on the interstate) they must be?!. 5 confused minutes pass, then the fear creeps in…..where are we going?? “Ok…if they turn left here we’re not getting raped”. “James you bang on the window..go on”. It was getting darker as we were very much leaving the city and we were still going full speed. Just before we could put our “if this truck stops we fucking run” plan into motion they pull into a hotel. This is the problem with franchising folks…it leads to 15 minutes of rape fear. We said ‘The Double Tree Hotel by the Denny’s” – they kindly drove us, albeit to the wrong one. Safe as. They drove us back to our actual hotel, the whole while laughing at us thinking they were the cast of deliverance. End up going drinking with them in the hotel bar…funny thing is the driver was a rep from fender, nice bloke. Lads on Tour.

Friday:
Next morning we wake at an ungodly hour and stroll into town to play our first proper show in B.D. Reily’s on 6th – its the MFI showcase gig. Frankie unleashes his hairy ‘V’. We get a nice Irish breakfast in there and see lots of familiar pale Irish faces. Given the frantic change-over times we decide to play only 2 songs which went pretty well save for me clocking Frankie square in the face with the headstock of my guitar. Sorry Frankie.
Catch Conor/Villagers set which is wonderful, the megaloud Butterfly Explosion and the wonderful Lost Brothers. We then leave as Paul dances to/for the Dirty Epics over their shoulders while holding their CD. Next show that day was the 18th floor of the Austin Hilton. Amazing, amazing view and scenery from the stage but not many folk in the crowd. Ah well, time to get drunk so. Four Jaegerbombs in ten minutes to kick it off then down to the artists bar for millions of drinking. Impersonations of Sarah Connor in Terminator 2 lead to Paul getting topless (this will be a reoccurring theme). I steal a tiny Texas flag for no real reason. Back on the streets, and myself and topless Paul go for some arrogant street dancing. The lads go home and myself and two butterfly exploders decide to get on a random schoolbus full of strangers which is going to some party (you think I would have learned something from the pickup truck!). Drive 40 minutes outside of Austin City to the countryside where a hiphop producer called Mr Starcity greets us. Hrmmm. He lives in a mansion and has a cool converted barn. Drink some more and play/lose pool to some nice women. 6am…Time for bed methinks.

Saturday:
The sun has gone in, its cold, so cold. Go to Denny’s for a heartattack breakfast. Load up the gear and get kinda lost whilst trying to find our venue. Today’s show is an unofficial SXSW party at the Austin City Limits in a place called ‘The Hole In The Wall’. If you ever go to Austin, visit this place. The barman Dennis (beard, dungarees, cowboy hat) welcomes us with free drinks (a double whiskey for James) and turns out to be a lovely bloke “ehhh my irish friends!“. It’s great when the barman gets drunk at lunchtime. Bad weather delays our set which isn’t a bad thing as we get our ‘hair of the dog’ on with the jaegerfriends. We get invited to a taping of Austin City Limits across the street and myself and Frankie get as far as the studio door before being summoned back for soundcheck. The show goes well (though for the opener ‘enemies’ my fingers were numb so there was no playing for me in verse 2). Paul ends the set as winner in the volume war. Get food next door in a burger place. Tim’s cup smells funny, he informs an employee, cut to the employee handing Tim a variety of cups for smelling. Smell the cup. Stay in HITW for some more beers then decide some modest ‘last night in Austin’ drinks on 6th would be fun. Since the artist bar wasn’t opening for an hour we went into a few places for some jaeger (went to ‘coyote ugly’, which was surreal in its own way). Meet up with Conor boy in the Artist’s place and abandon all plans for a sensible night and drink like cheap irish bastards. Paul gets topless (again). In this area there is a video booth to record messages and email them to people so this was the perfect place to debut the halves/villagers collaboration we’ve been keeping so secret.  Whitney Houston’s ‘The Bodyguard’, Macy Gray’s ‘I tryyyy and sayyy goodbyyye and I chookkke’, and of course 2Unlimited. Go to bed. Wake up at ridiculous-o-clock and go to the airport. Funtimes in Austin. Thanks to James for his trans-atlantic drumming and drinking, Edel for standing in on some vocals/melodica, and the folks at MFI.

rehearsals are going swimmingly after a seriously rusty few weeks. new songs sound plausable and we’ve added new instruments to the fold. yadayada. i think we’ve now figured out the 4th new rendition of ‘tony hart’s revenge theme’ (methinks the final one). feel weird about that title now he’s gone…sad that. dublin folk should get their bones over to this: http://bit.ly/aNXfF6 as it’ll be fun, enclosed fun at that.

people should join all the groups to petition the closure of bbc’s 6 music, that would be very bad (what will adam & joe do?! I need that podcast for me sanity!)

less than three weeks until we teach the americas how to rock out. we have 4 shows in texas all of which are in highly unusual places (18th floor of a hotel, block party, irish bar and a well known food chain associated which a day of the week).

(i’ll be keeping a diary so expect the next blog to be more entertaining than the last few months).

lads on tour.

The first month of this new decade has been pretty good- rehearsals under way with the new live band, refiguring oldies and trying to learn the new ones- going back to baby steps but we’ll get there in time for Austin. I appears we’ll be doing 3 shows over the pond but dont ask me when or where because I dont know. Irish shows are currently being booked so begin all of your irrepressible excitement now- It think we’ll be playing a few ‘alternative spaces’ as opposed to Whelan’s for a while (more info soon).

The first outsider ears have heard our unnamed record and thankfully its not dreadful so we can all take a minute to exhale. I’m rambling a bit it seems. We joined Twitter (begrudgingly) so search for halvesband (this will basically be an online archive of dumb rehearsal qoutes).  Just watched Tony Blair’s Q&A, though I’m not highly political I am confused at how civil folks can be when judging a vessel of evil. Rant. Anyways not much to report as we’re still in the boring background stages of things- we have brass now so thats exciting….it is, dont question it. Three delightful songs below for you pleasure.

‘big love’

This is where we would do a roundup of our fantastic year- 2009 is a bulletpoint year-

Found Canada & fell in love with her

Said farewell to David for Canada

Returned to Canada to make a record…

Christmas came and went in a flash,  it was nice to have a tiny band break. The album gets mastered in a couple of days (finalfinalfinal step, rejoice). As for when its out? God only knows {though i do love some peoples optimism “so like February yeah?”). This yet-to-be-titled powerhouse will be out when finances rule in our favour. Rehearsals start back the day after mastering- dust off gear & begin playing with new folks {sans davey}. Speaking of album titles I doubt the guys will let me name it ‘Scaffolding of Sadness”…that would surely be an international winner, no? fine then.

Happy New Year Folks….2010 will hopefully be a good one for us.

{songs: husker du punk greatness, carter burwell did a lovely score for that new cohen brothers film full of harp, dont really like the dirty projectors too much but this song is lovely- she should go solo}”“

While many people took the time to hate the french we took the time to forget our soundcard when we travelled to Kilkenny to record a choir. It was kindly retrieved and we recorded the 20+ women singing in a wonderfully hushed way. Last piece of the record done. Oh happy day. So as I write this we have ten days left of mixing before we send the record back to thee mighty hotel2tango for a nice polish. Just need to name the bloody thing (“You’ve been Merrrrrdeddd!!”??  my favourite Elis quote of the month though somehow its Anglo-charm wont translate on paper I reckon). Search goes on I guess.

We’ll be traveling to Austin (TX) in March to play South By Southwest which will indeed be a fun way to kickstart our live gigging. We are also currently plotting some Irish dates but they wont be happening until we’ve figured out these new songs, haven’t a notion how to play them yet. Looking forward to getting people back in the room with some comforting volume…like a loud hug. This sadly will be sans Davey but he left us with a printed list of things he’d usually say hanging in his corner. Anyway the December blog will be a nice one (hopefully with a title and more than likely photos from the halves xmas party involving Tim asleep and Elis being offensive).

Went xmas shopping and put myself in that horrible situation where I could hear the radios playing in shops, all this intentional auto-tune and lyrics about being ‘skanky’ blah blah blah… these people need to rethink so many things that I suggest they just don’t bother leaving their houses- they can find work there as redundant internet strippers if they want. Drivel.

Below are some stills from our little movie about us making this record (the movie could indeed be called “You’ve been Merrrrrdeddd!!”)

I’ve decided I’m going to make this 3 song thing a regular feature so enjoy the below (‘Time Zone- ‘World Destruction’ is such an amazing song its taken me by surprise, hilarious video too, no need for that cape at the end)

Be good and I suppose have a merry xmas

Halves

Ps. RIP to the wonderful Giveamanakick, only got to play with them once when we were in Toronto but brilliant band and very nice gents.

We (thankfully) are coming close to the end of our album making process now. Our good friend Richard recorded the strings last weekend and they sound only lovely (layers and layers and more layers). Thanks to the 3epkano ladies, Fintan and Elaine (who jumped in at the very last second to save us from stressdeath). This weekend we are travelling to Kilkenny to record 22 women  hushing Tim’s words which will be something special.

All that said this ‘thing’ we are making is taking shape and will soon be completed, big drinks on that day. I think we are all getting the itch from not playing live so there is planning going on for 2010, oh 2010 how great you are. So until then here’s some songs for you to listen to that are nice

Muchly

Brian

This will be a quick wee blog as this month hasn’t been insanely exciting (at least not in the sense that we could write about). We’re in the initial mixing stage which is both daunting & exciting. Kinda miss playing live…actually no kinda about it but in the New Year we will be out & about somewhat freshfaced (almost literally). We’re up to our eyes in sheet music as we have the sessions for strings, brass & choir coming up. Then we can hear completed songs, oh yes.

So yes thats about it….Elis is going to see Spandau Ballet tomorrow night so we can’t mix….dunno how to react to that statement.

Brian

So we have returned and I suppose there is need to blog about these adventures just gone (though they will be presented in one jumbled block as I forgot to take a day by day account)

We begin by battling Aer Lingus’ new ‘oh you’re musicians??! cough it up bitchs!!’ policy. We kinda won… On to Heathrow where by we see both members of Sparks sitting having tea (this town aint bigggenuforthebothus). On our flight to Montreal randomly was our other Voices friend Emiliana Torrini (though she doesnt recognise us as our last encounter involved so much booze she sang happy birthday to me 4 months off the mark). Understandable.

We get to thee might hotel2tango and spend our first day bouncing electronics to thee mighty 2″ tape. More importantly we test out dozens of the nicest/oldest amps & organs we’ve ever seen (ones dating back to the 40′s).  We meet Efrim and Radwan who’ll be recording us- nice fellows. I fall in love with an amp made by a guy from the h2t building..its called ‘the tubby’.

The next part is a bit of a blur of many days stuck together- wakeup- breakfast involving eggs- studio-play with dog-petro canada for 1.5 litre bottles of beer-mangle cat -sleep. Mangle cat I should mention was a neigbourhood cat who visited out hotel room every single night without fail- despite her name she was in fact very clean. To explain the dogs – most people who work in h2t and that building in general own big friendly dogs and bring them to work. Emma (efrim’s) and Gus (howard’s) being my favourites. Howard recorded us for one of the days- nice chap.

For each of the 11 songs we end up tracking new parts seem to appear on the day thanks to the mass of lovely gear around us. 4 of us in a glass room banging pockets of change and stamping- theremins- evil looking church organs to an honest banjo. Leave the studio each day with the catch phrase ‘wow….that sounds better than i’d hoped’.Our new friend Amy comes down and has a bit of a sing though forgets her sunglasses after.

On one of a thousand smoke breaks I hear a random sound of someone playing scales on a tuba from a building across the parking lot….‘is that a practise space over there efrim?’ ‘nah thats some guy on the railroad tracks the sound is bouncing off the walls’. Now we figured out Efrim’s sense of humour only a few days previous so I didnt believe a word he said….until he ushered me across the street to the train tracks where sure enough some guy is sitting 1 metre from the tracks (in a bush) practising a tuba with a sheet music stand in front of him. Turns out he’s done this almost every day the last few years…pesky landlords hate brass it seems. Efrim also had me convinced for a good 5 seconds that he was speaking to me (inside my head) 2 octaves down- scary studio trickery.

Towards the end of the session our beloved Davey arrives alongside Elaine our Torontonian harpist friend. This is good because we now go out at night and have food and drink…something we forgot to do the 1st ten days. Track the last 3 songs with Dave which I suppose is a nice way for him to finish up with us…we saved the best song for last too. Oh the noise! Elaine adds wonderful harp to 3 songs (she also punchs me in the stomach in a bar at which point I learn she’s well trained in martial arts- never put a girl in a mock headlock without research first folks). Finally master the art of making espressos on the gaggia (directly above this is a portrait of a young man and a dog painted by a hungarian woman…now I dont know if she meant to but she painted conor ‘villager’ o’brien’s exact face..spooky).

We get 4 hours to see some of Montreal before our flight home..turns out its a gorgeous place (we also learn water filtering plants cannot filter out female hormones…theres a fact for ya). We get on the plane (minus dave, elaine and frankie) and start the long winded journey home (or jetlag birthday in my case).

I’m forgetting about a thousand stories but that’ll do for now… pictures en route and we filmed a lot so some form of mini-making of due.

In summary: we’re happy with the album and Canada in general

All the best

Brian