Next move: writing

Our Monday show with Tera Melos, Caddywhompus, and NeckBeard was great.
That Nick Reinhart fella is a pretty photogenic guy. We were able to sneak this photo of him:


We played our asses off to a lot of new faces, which can mean only one thing - you guys have been spreading the word. Keep up the good work, 'cause we're going to need you to continue. We've got some really cool ideas coming up for you guys to chew on. Just you wait 'n' see!

What's next for us, though?
Well, since we've penned two new songs recently, we need to keep it up while we're on a roll. We know you guys aren't quite finished digesting How a Reign Comes to an End, but we've decided to go back into the kitchen to bake up some dessert.

We're playing one last show at Tipitina's with A Living Soundtrack and Antenna Inn (see the flyer below). That show is on May 14th, and it looks to be scrumptious.

After our Tip's show, we're going to be taking a break from the rigorous show schedule we've been keeping to write some new material. Expect to hear something a little faster, a lot thicker, a tad more epic, and a bit more conversational. You'll be in for some tasty digs - trust it, trust it.

Expect our show schedule when we return to be filled with wonderful new ideas and more diverse and exciting lineups.

Before we take this moment to creativise, we'd like to thank our sponsors:
- Every Louisiana and Texas instrumental band that we've met, helped, and been helped by over the past year and a half
- The Music Shed who has been gracious, generous, and enormously crucial in fostering nearly all of our productivity
- Our families and girlfriends who sacrifice quite a bit to help us make this all happen
- Jenny and Smokey for... being dogs... 'cause we love dogs
- And most importantly, You - for showing us unbelievable amounts of love and support, for being open-minded and willing to try new kinds of music, entertainment, and art, and for thinking that our wacky shenanigans are amusing and worth being a part of

We'll be posting more about the Tipitina's show soon. Until then, stay cool.

An episode of MTV's Cribs

We're over here at the SWAK house waiting for Justin to come back from a hunting trip. He's got a caveman-looking club thing that he keeps in his car at all times that he claims is meant for hunting wild boar. Crazy. We're not sure if he uses only that club to hunt these huge beasts, but we're cool with it as long as he comes back with all of his fingers working.

Anyway, once our very own Ted Nugent comes back, we'll be heading off to practice to gear up for our opening set tomorrow. Not just any opening set, though. We're opening for TERA MELOS!

This show is going to be amazing.
Tera Melos puts on an action-packed show. Nick Reinhart's pedal trickery is a finely choreographed rain dance that seems to work every time as bassist Nathan Latona and newest member drummer John Clardy drip-drop syncopation from every pore of their being. Look them up on YouTube to get an idea of how crazy these guys are. They make it rain. Like woah.

With this wonderful opportunity comes a note of sad news, though. Our friends in Good Day for an Air Strike will be hanging their hats up after this show. If you've never seen them before, this will be your last chance to catch it.

This show is all ages and the rock solid lineup is as follows:
Doors at 6:30
Caddywhompus hits at 7p on the stage
NeckBeard barrels through next on the ground
Good Day for an Air Strike takes the stage for their final set
We'll do the pee-pee dance with you on the ground before Tera Melos destroys the stage with a bang and a splash.

In other SWAK news, we're in a bit of a transition phase right now.
As many of you may know, Jared's mother moved out of his house. Then Pat & Volpi moved in.



















Along with Pat came Smokey, the grey Cairne Terrior on the bottom left, and along with Jared stayed Jenny, the red fox-looking Finnish Spitz that Jared is holding. We've got 6 TV's in the house due to varied circumstance, but they've gone greatly ignored because we've had so much fun watching these two characters interact.

Their only beef with each other comes at dinner time or when some owner-dog loyalty issue arises. Other than that, we've seldom had to exercise our conflict resolution skills.

We have a YouTube clip up right now that documents their first encounter with each other. Go check that out if you get a second.

Who wants to see the rest of the house?

Jared only moved 1 room over; however, he's still living in a bit of disarray.

He's the only one with an actual bed, though.

Pat is settled in with his PS3 and direct access to the backyard.

Volpi has also taken the box spring/mattress right-on-the-ground option.

Volpi lives his whole life very simply, though.

With all of the computers, TV's, dogs, and moving, he prefers the backyard and some non-required philosophy reading. Let's take a moment to make fun of him.

How 1880's of you...

Mmm, Nietzsche!
Dork.

Nice water bottle ya got there.
Dork.

Just you wait. We'll have a whole post of Justin's greatest hits: a revue of portraits au la Volpi. He'll be thoroughly made fun of soon enough.

Speaking of Justin and living simply, Justin doesn't pay any rent, but he'll be living HERE quite often, most likely.

The only truly clean part of our house right now is the backyard:
When we get settled in completely, we'll probably do a lot of video blogs back here.

If you need absolute proof that we're not settled in yet, there's still a lot of crap in our poor kitchen. :( We'll be putting in a lot of time here after practice to clean up, organize, and take tally of what we need to properly operate:

poor kitchen. :(

That's the closest to MTV's Cribs you'll get out of us. We'll try to get back to you on Tuesday with a re-cap of the Tera Melos show. Until then, try to stay cleaner than us and we'll work on the same.

Unwed Sailor Re-cap, other crazy stuff

Last weekend was nuts. We opened up for Unwed Sailor and played in Lafayette... oh, and we played in Rob Landry's above-ground basement for his birthday.

Let's see here...
I've got a video from the Unwed Sailor show for you guys. It's right here:


When we went to Lafayette, A Living Soundtrack came with us. Perhaps it was their "scooby-doo song" floating in the air or the free coffee and cheap beer that Caffe Cottage offers to bands, but there were a lot of biscuits consumed on this outing. Where better for biscuit's than Mel's diner in the heart of Lafayette?


The ALS crew sat right in front of the dishwasher and made his job easy.

Clean plates o-plenty, and a badass shot of the four of them, too!
We ate more biscuits on the way home the next day at Cracker Barrel, but since all Cracker Barrels are the same, we felt no need to show you any pictures.

When we got back in town, we ran over to Rob Landry's for his birthday.
After we played a few of Rob's favorite SWAK songs, he tore the house down with his band NeckBeard. We took this very demon-like photo of him at the party:


By the way, if you haven't heard NeckBeard yet, they're super badass and you need to check them out. They're playing with us at the Tera Melos show (Monday 4/27 @ the HighGround) and at a show that our friends over at Southern Soundscape are putting on Friday at the Dragon's Den.

Speaking of this week at the Dragon's Den, we'll be playing there Thursday with Pumpkin and High in One Eye. That show starts at 7p. Do it.

BIG NEWS! TERA MELOS!!!!

WE'RE OPENING FOR TERA MELOS!!!!
My girlfriend hates them, and understandably so because they're loud, fast, spastic, and make me drive like a maniac. And that's exactly why all of you in the rest of the world out there should love them.
Here's a live performance video with their new drummer, who - by the way - was INCREDIBLE at both shows that we saw at SXSW:


Anyway, March is over and April is now upon us.

Oh, what what... Our show with Unwed Sailor was great. Those guys are always a blast, and we're super stoked about being able to play with a group that we look up to so much. We took some video of that, which we'll be posting soon. Our boys over at Southern Soundscape will probably be posting some video of that soon as well.

Speaking of posting media to this blog, that should get a whole lot more frequent and easy from now on as I (Jared) have an iPhone now. Fancy shmancy pantsy, eh? Yes.

If you're going to be in Lafayette tomorrow (Friday, Apr 3rd), go to Caffe Cottage. We're going to be playing with a Living Soundtrack and Magic Legs. It will be sick, and you'll love it.

EDIT: hmm... i guess it would help to tell you when the Tera Melos show is, right?
all of our shows for April are as follows:

04/03/09 - Friday - 18+ - Lafayette, LA - @ Caffe Cottage w/ Magic Legs and A Living Soundtrack
04/09/09 - Thursday - All ages - New Orleans, LA - @ the Dragon's Den w/ Pumpkin and High in One Eye
04/11/09 - Saturday - 18+ - Mobile, AL - @ the Blind Mule w/ A Living Soundtrack and TBA
04/17/09 - Friday - 18+ - Baton Rouge, LA - @ the Spanish Moon w/ Spring Break Shark Attack and A Living Soundtrack
04/23/09 - Thursday - All Ages - New Orleans, LA - @ Satchmo's in Loyola Underground (FREE!) w/ High in One Eye and NeckBeard
04/25/09 - Saturday - 18+ - Athens, GA - @ the Globe w/ A Living Soundtrack and TBA

And the BIG ONE:

04/27/09 - Monday - All Ages - Metairie, LA - @ the High Ground w/ TERA MELOS!!!!!!!

We love Tera Melos to death. If you have no idea who they are, we hope that you check them out.
We love Tera Melos to death. If you know exactly who they are, then... HOLY CRAP!!! WE'RE PLAYING WITH TERA MELOS

Battle with the Flu

Hello internets world.
Pull out your fruity drinks, kick your feet back, and let us tell you a thing or two...

yes, like that. exactly.

Our story begins in a place not so far away, in Anywhere, USA - a place called Katy, Texas - where the Smiley with a Knife boys stopped in at a Starbucks for some refreshments on their treck to South-by-SouthWest in Austin.

Deciding that a caffienated beverages would displease him, Jared decided he'd rather some juice. And so while wearing his girlfriend's sunglasses over his regular glasses and wearing a quite ridiculous Marine Corps shirt with a horrible pun sprawled across it, he thought it a fine idea to order a Large ("We don't have large," said the passive-aggressive Starbucks employee) Strawberries and Cream - under the impression that it was going to be strawberry juice with coffee creamer in it.

Oh, mocking ensued as he looked like the most fabulous log-cabin Republican of them all.

But all joking aside, Smiley with a Knife got back from SXSW earlier this week where we played a New Orleans showcase with our friends Magic Legs, Man Plus Building, Hat Talk, I, Octopus, and Caddywhompus among others. It was great fun. We squeezed ever-so-tightly into Snake Eyes Vinyl on the east side of downtown.

Here's what it looked like:

The rest of the time we spent there, we got to see Tera Melos twice and Maps & Atlases too! Both of those bands are heroes of ours, and we want very badly to be associated with the Sargent House group that they are on. Maybe one day, but it's not entirely necessary for us to chase after.

Aside from that, Volpi and Jared got the chance to see Look Mexico, Constants, and Caspian at Plush, the holiest-in-the-wall-iest venue that any of us saw in downtown Austin. That's kind of sad, because some of the places that we've played make Plush the Austin venue look pretty damn plush.

Oh. It's probably also worth mentioning that we saw one of the worst bands ever in the Pita Pit that we ate at while we were there, too.

Anyway, we were looking forward to playing in Hammond on Saturday night, but both of our guitarists came down with the flu. To all ye Hammond folk, we apologize profusely. We will reschedule and have great times and profound laughter. It was pretty bad, though - neither of them made it to work on Monday and we had to cancel our Sunday show at the Dragon's Den with buzz-machines DD/MM/YYYY as well.

Hopefully Pat and Justin be better by the time our show with Unwed Sailor comes around next week. Speaking of which, that's going to be March 31st at the Dragon's Den, 10p, with NeckBeard.

Bio Post

Smiley with a Knife has the ingredients of a New Orleans institution. Raised in Algiers, childhood friends Michael Volpi, Patrick Bailey, and Justin Vicknair have been romping around the Westbank as or with members of New Orleans’ punk/ska legends Fatter than Albert for years. During Fatter than Albert’s 2005 summer tour just one month before Katrina, the three agreed to an experimental project that for nearly two years hosted a rotating cast of temporary drummers. When the group recorded at Loyola University in the fall of 2007, they recruited the recording session engineer, native New Orleans drummer Jared Marcell, to permanently fill out their lineup. Marcell, a Loyola Music Industry Studies student at the time, graduated the following year with a management position at the Music Shed recording studio and rehearsal facility already in store. Smiley with a Knife as it is today was born, and since then the group has managed to successfully sear its own brand of quirky yet sleek instrumental indie-rock compositions with a uniquely New Orleans flair.

Smiley With A Knife's first full length, How A Reign Comes To An End, debuted in November 2008 and has garnered praise from local and regional press. On their behalf, there has been a tireless effort to unite the instrumental groups of the South East into an organized regional movement. With the beginnings of this instrumental armada, Smiley With A Knife initiated the first annual New Orleans Instrumental Fest in March 2009, a week before their performance at SXSW. Aside from their impressive local allies, SWAK has had the honor of sharing the stage with such traveling talent as Unwed Sailor, Tera Melos, Native, HEALTH, Maserati, Arms & Sleepers and Caspian.

While instrumental rock certainly is not a novelty by any means, it is indeed a refreshing medium that has taken a strong hold in New Orleans, and Smiley with a Knife has lead that charge in recent years. Sans singer, instrumental musicians cannot hide: they can't cheat or "pull a fast one." The sounds that radiate from bare, basic instrumentation will collapse if not buffed and buttressed by true musical ingenuity. Smiley with a Knife has pondered these tenets and faced these challenges head-on. They brew together the classic with the new, lithely striding along with sonic hooks and anchors to keep their fans and “to be” fans captivated. They blend the upbeat, joined-at-the-hip bass and drum combo mastered by bands like the Meters with the chilled demeanor of a definitive modernity established by bands like Explosions in the Sky and Maserati. The skills of Patrick Bailey (guitar), Justin Vicknair (guitar), Michael Volpi (bass), and Jared Marcell (drums) lie in their ability to pay homage to their influences and forbearers without reinventing the wheel. Their innovation stems from their ability to temper their more jocular, tickling tunes with other more eerily emotive numbers.

In August 2010, Smiley With a Knife released their new album, Long Now. People say it's awesome.