Category: news

Centro-matic Dispatch – September 6, 2011

I write to you all with a pretty heavy heart this afternoon. On the flight home from New Orleans yesterday, I saw a massive portion of my former home county on fire. I got word of all this after our show on Sunday night, and waited ’til morning to make some calls. I spoke to a friend and former neighbor before I got on the plane to make sure he, his wife and dogs were okay. He told me that the fire came through faster than they could have imagined on Sunday afternoon. They had just enough time to get the dogs into their small car, shut the front door to the house that they’d put years of love, work, and care into, and say goodbye. They lost everything minutes later to a fire that presently spans over 30,000 acres, and has destroyed more than 500 homes. Resources are stretched thin out there. As I write this, the fire is still 0% contained.

My friend’s story is one of many here in Central Texas right now, but it sure hits hard. It comes from a community that I lived in for a good while, and still have immeasurable love for. Bastrop and its surrounding piney woods has inspired the last few years of our songwriting and the releases that have followed. Every ounce of Candidate Waltz was written out there. The Little Raider EP that I released earlier in the year is as close as I could get to out and out writing a love note to that area’s beauty, inhabitants, and uniqueness.

Our band has decided we’d like to help out in a few ways.

We will donate all Centro-matic/South San Gabriel/Will J sales from the Undertow Store on Saturday Sept. 10th and Sunday Sept. 11th to help victims of this fire. It’s a good time to pick up a release (or releases) you may not have, need to replace, or pass along to a friend.

Centro-matic store @ Undertow Music Collective.

I will also auction off two original baseball paintings (Dave Kingman and Richie Hebner) starting Sunday. The auction will be up and running for a week, ending Sunday Sept. 18th. All details on the paintings will be included once the auction begins.

100% of the proceeds will go directly to help victims of this fire get their lives back on track.

Thanks for reading and considering.

-Will J

NEW ORLEANS UPDATE: Attention fans in (and headed to) New Orleans this weekend, the shows are still ON! Your safety is of course very important to us and we will be keeping a close eye on the weather. We will update you if anything changes but as of now the band is planing on playing. If for some reason your travel plans are changing due to tropical storm Lee refunds will be available at point of purchase. We hope to see you all Saturday and Sunday night at Tipitinas.

THANK YOU
Buckets of gratitude go to those who came out and shared in these recent shows with us and our friend, Sarah Jaffe. It’s been an important chapter in our collective creative lives. Seven months ago we confidently decided to streamline and shorten the path to our fans by self-releasing our music. It was the right time to simplify things, and hopefully strengthen our connection with those who continue to support us. Candidate Waltz has been our first step in that direction. Ten Centro-matic records in, this was our most encouraging and enjoyable tour yet. It has also been the best start sales and press-wise for any record that we’ve released.  Thanks to all that have supported our cause, spent some time with our music, come out to the shows, purchased our records, and have therefore enabled us to keep doing this. Can’t wait ’til we see each other again.

DBT + CM = TLA
We are finally reuniting with our longtime, dear friends, Drive-By Truckers for some shows in August and September.

Friday August 12 – Athens, GA – Georgia Theater (sold out).
Saturday August 13 – Athens, GA – Georgia Theater (sold out).
Thursday Sept. 1 – Austin, TX – Stubb’s (outside).
Friday Sept. 2 – Dallas, TX – Granada Theater.
Saturday Sept. 3 – New Orleans, LA – Tipitina’s
Sunday Sept. 4 – New Orleans, LA – Tipitina’s

NORTHWEST WALTZ
We’ll be up for a couple of fly-in dates in September.

Friday Sept. 9/Portland, OR – Musicfest Northwest.
Sunday Sept. 11/Seattle, WA – Tractor Tavern.

We are presently routing and assembling more Western dates for November.  Those will be announced soon.

Salute, and see you around.  -Will J.

The nice people over at Helms Workshop adapted Will’s art from Candidate Waltz into some super cool new T-Shirts. We have sizes ranging from extra-small all the way up to 3x-large. We even have some ladies sizes in stock.

BUY NOW

This summer we’ll be headed out on our first USA tour in a couple of years. We’re real excited to get back on the road and looking forward to seeing old friends and visiting some of our favorite towns. We might even have time to see a baseball game somewhere.

The always amazing Sarah Jaffe will be with us on all the shows and we are joining our old friend, David Bazan for the show in Chapel Hill.

Wednesday 06/22 – The Basement – Nashville, TN
Thursday 06/23 – The Earl – Atlanta, GA
Friday 06/24 – Athfest – (in front of the) 40 Watt Club – Athens, GA
Saturday 06/25 – Local 506 – Chapel Hill, NC
Sunday 06/26 – DC9 – Washington DC
Tuesday 06/28 – North Star Bar – Philadelphia, PA
Wednesday 06/29 – Great Scott – Cambridge, MA
Thursday 06/30 – The Mercury Lounge – New York, NY
Friday 07/01 – Mohawk Place – Buffalo, NY
Saturday 07/02 – Cleveland Beachland Tavern – Cleveland, OH
Sunday 07/03 – Schubas – Chicago, IL
Tuesday 07/05  – Off Broadway – St. Louis, MO
Thursday 07/07 – Dan’s Silverleaf – Denton, TX
Friday 07/08 – Fitzgerald’s – Houston, TX
Saturday 07/09 – Ghost Room – Austin, TX

All shows with Sarah Jaffe
6/25 with  Sarah Jaffe and David Bazan

Centro-matic’s 10th full length offering is mixed, mastered, and scheduled for release on June 21.  Our friend Scott Solter helped us out with these recordings, and we have Christian Helms and Erick Montes (helmsworkshop.com) along for the art direction and layout.  It’s taken a little bit to assemble, but we are extremely proud of this record.

Track listing:
Against The Line
All The Talkers
Iso-Residue
Estimate x 3
Only In My Double Mind
Solid States
Shadow, Follow Me
Mercedes Blast
If They Talk You Down

We’ll be starting pre-orders for CDs, Vinyl and limited edition T-shirt packages on May 24th.

Thu, March 31 : Barcelona @ Sidecar / A Quemarropa
Fri, April 01 :  Madrid @ Circulo de Bellas Artes
Sat, April 02 : A Coruña @ Mardigras