First, as a special commemoration of the February tour and the re-release of the vinyl on Sub Pop we’ve put together a super limited edition Box Set called “Feather Bed Whiskey Blanket.” The three studio albums, The Murder City Devils, Empty Bottles Broken Hearts, In Name and Blood and the Thelema EP all will all be pressed on pristine 12″ white vinyl in a limited quantity of 275 sets that will be for sale exclusively on this tour. Unlike the black and white marbled represses, the white vinyl is only available in the box set.

Bundled in a custom made package with a button and string closure, each set will be hand-numbered and contain one of a kind photos, stencils, posters and other pieces unique to each set. Who knows, you might end up with rare promo photos, press stickers, outtake / live photos, studio notes, sketches, old set lists, old backstage passes, Gabe’s electric bill … anything from the massive MCD archives that can fit into a flat 12″ box. Each package will have the four 12″ records on exclusive white vinyl, a totally unique set of bonus items, be hand-numbered and shrink wrapped air tight so nobody but nobody will know what’s in there until you get it home and open it up. (We’ll know, and we’ll be keeping track.)

The second announcement is, because there are so few of these sets to go around, and we’re only going down the west coast on this tour, we wanted to give everyone who can’t make it to the shows a shot at getting one one of these. So we’re hosting an international contest here on the website where the grand prize is a Feather Bed Whiskey Blanket box set, a limited edition silk screened tour poster, and a t-shirt of the new design for this tour.

Other prizes will be two complete sets of the four 12″ black and white marbled vinyl editions of The Murder City Devils, Empty Bottles Broken Hearts, In Name and Blood , and Thelema, and a few t-shirt and poster packages.

To enter, go to the Contest page and sign up.

2009 is shaping up to be a great year, and to help celebrate here is a rare track, not often heard.

Right now we are getting ready for the upcoming tour, which will take us up and down the west coast.  If you don’t live within the I-5 corridor, we are sorry we are going to miss you.

Recent flickr updates include sets of photos from the 3-B in Bellingham, Linda’s Doll Hut in Anaheim,  Bottom of the Hill in San Francisco, Rehearsals for the 2006 performance at the Capital Hill Block Party, and the infamous Vegas Shakedown in Las Vegas.  The Vegas Shakedown came at the end of a long US tour with The Catheters and The Yo-Yo’s.  It had been a long, long tour thru the summer of 2000. Derek still had to wear a cast, because of the leg break that occurred in May when on tour in Glasgow with Zeke.

The Yo-Yo’s played the first night we were there.  I believe it was the second night of The Shakedown, held at The Gold Coast hotel and casino in Las Vegas.  This might be the only casino I have ever seen that had a liquor store in it.  It was right on the route between the two show rooms, and there was ALWAYS A LINE.   Nate is probably holding up a bottle of Southern Comfort here.  I am not sure what I am holding up.

We kept throwing drinks at The Yo-Yo’s all show.  It was fun, and they took it all in stride, only later did we realize they had hatched a plan to get back at us during the show the next night.

Well it seems like their plan was really just focused on Spencer.

They tackled him and were planning on duct taping him up somehow.  Not sure why they thought the rest of us wouldn’t do anything. 

A few beers later and they gave up.

Gabe swung by my house with test pressings for the four lps being reissued on Sub-Pop for my approval. By approval, I mean that his record player isn’t working and my house is in between his house and his mailbox.

They sound real good. We listened to “Thelema” first, six amazing tracks full of venom and promise. It was nice to hear “364 Days” on a snowy Seattle afternoon. We followed that up with “In Name and Blood” which is has some surprises on it toward the end and contains my absolute favorite MCD track “I Drink the Wine”. It also has “Press Gang” and “Rum to Whiskey”, total fucking cuts.

About then Gabe had to take off and I put on the self titled lp and washed some dishes.

That self titled album is built for dishwashing, that is a compliment. I love a good dishwashing record. It takes a certain quality to achieve classic chore jams. Dillinger Four’s “Versus God” record is the perfect album to wash some fucking dishes to, the Filth/Blatz Shit Split is also handy. I had totally forgotten about gems like “Sick of Dreaming” and “Flashbulb” and its always a treat to hear “Get off the Floor” and “Murder City Riot”.

It’s funny, because of my preference for the live album (which is practically perfect in every way) I haven’t listened to these ones all that much. But they stand up, I had fun listening to them again and it got me stoked on hearing some of these tracks live. We’ll have all these fancy new editions as well as some other fun surprises with us.

Now I’m going to put these motherfuckers up on ebay, sorry duders, but I gotta get that money.  I’m kidding, I’ll be trading them for pills, duh.

One the first times that we played in Houston, TX we were exposed to one of the most incredible bands I’ve ever seen, RUSTED SHUT, a three piece consisting of a husband and wife team (Don – guitar and Sybil – Bass) and a drummer. Don and Sybil were both in their late 40′s or early 50′s. Don, I believe, was a music teacher and Sybil was a librarian or something. They had been a band for almost 20 years and had never really left Houston, and were bitter about it. 

The night before we had played in Austin at SXSW. Because the festival was still going on, most of the local people were down there and since it was one of our first shows in Houston, there was nobody at the club. That’s not quite true, there were maybe 5—10 people there, one of whom we learned was the brother of the guitar player in ZZ Top. He was wearing a patchwork leather, southwest themed, Tweety Bird & Taz jacket and was acting like a real asshole. He was eventually thrown out of the bar for fighting with his wife and was actually yelling something about ZZ Top on the way out. The rest of the people there were the members of Rusted Shut, the bar’s staff and Dave the promoter. (I’m pictured with him below this post.)

Rusted Shut was one of the best/worst things I have ever seen in my life. Don was throwing temper tantrums on stage, berating his wife and the drummer and screaming into the microphone about how they’ve always been ripped off, never got any respect, and how SXSW was keeping their demo tapes and then giving all the shows to bands from Seattle. He hated us, Nirvana, Sub Pop, and anything from the Northwest. The most vivid memories I have of one of his tirades was after stopping in the middle of one song and screaming at the drummer for fucking up, he turned to the room and with his fingers pointed at his temple like a gun  and yelled, ” GYYAAAA WHY DO WE PRACTICE?!?!” They were amazing.

It turns out that Dave intentionally booked us with them as a joke on us because he knew that no one was going to be at the show, and he thought it would be hilarious. He was right. From then on whenever we went to Houston we always put Rusted Shut on the guest list, and they almost always came and were always really nice … at first. Inevitably by the end of the night they would be totally pissed off at us and going crazy. Every time. It ruled.

Anyways, the guy in this photo is Don’s brother, or cousin or some kind of relation, and I’m pretty sure he was wearing a wig. He claimed to have played organ with the Rolling Stones in their touring band or something … it never quite made sense. Now this guy really hated us (not our beer though, he loved our beer) and he was going nuts. You can see in this photo that he is about ready to attack Leslie. I can’t remember exactly what sparked it, or what the details are about what went down, but I think that moments after this photo was taken he totally lost his shit and started to destroy things backstage. I could be wrong, and I beg of anyone else who was there to help me fill in the details, but I think that we had to try to sneak out of the club, run to our van, and peel out of the parking lot with this guy and Rusted Shut running after us, cursing us, throwing bottles and with all of us laughing our asses off. 

I love Rusted Shut.

Silverghost is Marcie from the Von Bondies new band and will be playing with us in LA & SF.

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewProfile&friendID=226704158

A lot of people are asking who is going to be at the shows coming up.  I thought it would be good to not only tell you, but show you.  Click on photo to explore the flickr photostream from a new starting point.

Spencer with a cactus.

Dann returning with a can of gas.

Derek as a sailor at the Halloween 2001 show.

Coady in London, with Danny from The Yo-Yo’s

Leslie at the opening of the EMP in Seattle.

Nate with Dave from Houston, he introduced us to so many things, including RUSTED SHUT.

Gabe drinking beer underwater.

Corey as The Prisoner on Halloween 2001.

Hey everyone!

Gabe asked me to blog something for all of you, so here it is. I am pretty stoked that this tour is going down and everyone else is too. Something I would like people to know about is that the fine folks down at Lucky Horse Industries recently started selling Spencers amazing paintings via thier webstore.

http://www.luckyhorseindustries.com

enjoy and see you in Feb.

xoxo,

Merchbot2000

Hope this first post on the brand new TheMurderCityDevils.com blog finds everyone well. We are very excited to report what is happening over here in Murder City. The first thing is the new website, which you already know about because you’re here. It’s just now coming together, so please check back every few days to find out what is happening. We are going to keep the posts coming, giving you insight not only into the history of the band, but more excitingly insight into what is coming up next for all of us.

One of the historical aspects of the new site is the daunting task we have undertaken of scanning all of the photos we have collected over the years on tour. Many were given to us, but even more were taken by all of us on the road. Take a look at our new flickr page, where there are hundreds up already, and more to follow. Head over to flickr.com/murdercitydevils to check it out. We’ll also be posting select photos here on the blog with more in depth stories and commentary.

We’ve also set up a twitter feed to keep people informed of news and posts. A lot of you may have heard of this site thru signing up on twitter already. If you haven’t signed up, it is a good way to keep informed as to the latest news. Just head over to twitter.com/murdercity.

And finally, I think this is the most exciting news…

The February 2009 Tour Dates