Found At Sea

Found At Sea Xmas Specials! – Last two shows of 09, and the last shows before the album launch sometime in 2010….

Fresh from competing in the Annandale’s Jager Uprising grand final, Found At Sea launch the 2nd (and final) single from their upcoming album at Spectrum on Friday 9th October, with very special guests ASTREETLIGHTSONG & Sierra Fin.

Both tracks from the single, including a rare b-side ‘Lightbulbs’ – unavailable anywhere else – can be heard on the band’s myspace page www.myspace.com/foundatseamusic

‘Salute the summer’ is the 2nd single lifted from the forthcoming self-titled debut album ‘Found At Sea’, set for release early next year. The album was recorded and mixed by ARIA winning producer Paul McKercher (Augie March, Sarah Blasko, You Am I, Midnight Oil) in three Sydney studios over the summer of 2008/09.

We’ll be giving away shiny new copies of the single to the first 30 people on the night, so get in quick!

The full tour dates include:

Friday 9th October – Spectrum (Sydney)

Wednesday 21st October – Phoenix Bar (Canberra)
w/ From The South

Thursday 22nd October – Noise Bar (Brunswick)
supporting The Controls

Friday 23rd October – Public Bar (North Melbourne)
SINGLE LAUNCH! w/Radiant City & Tall Buildings

Wednesday 28th October – Cambridge Hotel (Newcastle)

We won our Jager Uprising quarter final last night at the Annandale and are now in the grand final – with a shot at winning $10K worth of cash and recording!

So come down to the Annandale Hotel this THURSDAY 2nd JULY and help us win!
(17 Parramatta Rd Annandale, NSW)

This will also be our last show until October as Tim is jetting off to the UK for a couple of months

it’d be great to see everyone there showing their support plus it’s FREE entry

We won our Jager Uprising heat a few weeks ago at the Annandale and are now in the semi finals – with a chance of going through to the grand final and winning $10K worth of cash and recording!

So come down to the Annandale Hotel next THURSDAY 25th JUNE and help us win!

We’ll be giving away copies of our single and warm fuzzy feelings to everyone who comes to cheer us

with INDIGO RISING + THE ARCHERBOLDS + THE PRAYER CIRCLE + SEVEN STEADY also playing

Canberra

The tour got off to an eventful start after stopping to pick Nath up and being informed by a kindly delivery man that our brake lights weren’t working and that he almost gave Terry the Tarago an instantly flatter rear end.

After much waiting for NRMA repair guys, and further phone calls, we discovered we needed a part (which was replaced by an obviously dodgy mechanic less than 2 weeks ago…)

In some smiled-on-by-the-gods turn of events, we found the Toyota dealer round the corner could fix it, and quicker than Matthew John’s retirement, we were steaming down the Hume towards that cold, concrete & bush city.

loaded up

After a lightning stop at our luxurious digs for the night, we rush to the venue (Phoenix Bar) to find our tour companions (A Streetlight Song) nowhere to be found, and an empty stage with nothing setup. So we relax and settle into the homely but borderline eccentric (all that’s missing is a few stuffed animals) surrounds of the pub. Eventually, locals From The South turn up to put on a warming set of country-tinged Pavement-ish tunes and ASLS manage to fit all their electronic wizardy onstage and make the room & p.a sound bigger than it is.

The Wednesday night crowd has thinned by the time go on but we have fun anyway on the tiny stage and I give away some cds to three adoring female fans (who are convinced I look like Jason Schwartzman of Phantom Planet/O.C theme-song-writer fame – any takers?). We buy the world’s most expensive six-pack of beer over the bar and head back to our Norman Bates-esque digs for an early(ish) night. (not before an unscheduled stop at a certain purveyor of greasy fast food. These unscheduled visits will become a disturbing trend over the next few days…)

millionare beer

Melbourne

on the hume

The morning greets us cold and windy and we get away from Canberra later then planned which means only a few quick stops (Chiltern, VIC wins the loneliest town award for 2009) before we get into melbourne right on peak hour. After several collective heart attacks and extra grey hairs, Rich manages to navigate us to the back lane off Bourke St where our venue for the night (Ding Dong Lounge) sits above an innocuous, unlit sign. Upon loading in, we find the venue to bigger than expected. Much bigger. The canvernous size puts us all slightly on edge in silent, mutual recognition that we, probably, definatley, won’t get many people showing up to fill it. Hoping and  relying on the pulling power of the local acts on the bill.

We do a loud, empty soundcheck and then find a bite to eat in one of the dodgier estabilishments on little bourke st. We return to find the venue (somehow) emptier than when we left it, and the first band just finishing their set to a smatter of applause. Cue collective ‘hmmmm’ number 2.  Nevertheless, still grapsing onto some shred of belief that people maybe, possibly, could show up yet, we drink and wait.  Second band goes on. They play well and have a cool drone-y sound, but gets a bit lost in the big echoey space. They have four people there to see them.
ASLS sound huge and have bought a few fans, but the overall effect is of a ship slowly receding into the distance.

We go on. The ship’s long gone. Even the melbourne bands leave. We play a loud, trashy set to a HUGE crowd that consists of no more and no less than  8 people ( including the sound guy, and two bar staff).  Rock n Roll.

Our egos slightly bruised and deflated, we load out and manage to navigate to our friendly hosts house in St Kilda  before heading out to the only place (we think) is open. We walk a long way, then turn around. We listen to some questionable music. Rich pulls some questionable dance moves. We eat some very questionable, late night fast food (unscheduled visit #2), before somehow finding our way home, our sorrows suitably drowned.

Ding Dong - biggest small venue in australia

Melbourne 2

After an earlier-than-expected wake up call courtesy of our host’s three lovely but very vocal kids, we slink down to St Kilda for midday breakfast and try and blend in with it’s impossibly cool inhabitants. Tim’s snare had chucked a bit of a tantrum the night before so we set out trying to find a drum shop that will fix it, striking gold early with a place in Richmond.

My role as navigator on this tour has further cemented my conviction that ‘yep, next time we’re definately getting sat nav for the tarago’. Several no through rds and wrong turns later, we find the drum shop and the snare is fixed in less time than it takes Rich to clear the dancefloor. We wander around Fitzroy for a bit, I resist tempation to spend all my money on vintage threads, before heading back to our digs to for a quick change of clothes. We manage to find ourselves in peak hour traffic again, but eventually make it to North Melbourne & Public Bar, without too much drama. The venue proves to be a much more comfortable 150 capacity, and we load in with slightly lifted spirits.

Public Bar

The guys from ASLS show up still buried under last-nights post show haze, and we try to persude them to abandon their (pretty much insane) plan of driving back to Sydney that night after the gig (our jedi-like mind powers must have worked – they ended up staying the extra night). We go and eat (tim and I share the world’s worst pizza) and come back but the sound guy still hasn’t shown up. The headliners (The Controls) arrive, we wait. Still no sound guy. The bar girl assures me he is on his way. The drummer from The Controls offers to mix us, and just as we are contemplating his offer, the engineer arrives and sets everything up in 10 mins flat. We start – miraculously  – on time.

Despite the small room the onstage sound is great and we play well, even after two nights in a row we can feel and hear the difference, extra rock moves and general racousness ensue. We’re told the front of house mix is pretty good too. The night goes on and we take full advantage of the venue’s hospitality. I give away more cds than I should (note to self: make the punters pay!) and things get blurry for some.  We bid farewell to the ASLS guys and head back across the city to St Kilda. Nath – the driver for the night- gets the pleasure of ferrying us home and a trip punctuated by more loud, rude remarks courtesy of one unnamed bass player than I care to mention.

Once Terry the tarago is safely parked, we head out, determinted to find a better venue than the night before to punish our livers in. Somehow, as if the city has conspired against us again, we end up at the same place. Nath and I retire to the corner while Tim and Rich try their luck with the (mostly over 40’s) contingent falling over to such classic hits as “Flashdance” and Farnsey’s “Your the voice” in between the jam band playing in the corner. We leave. We eat bad food (again).
Melbourne remains an enigma.

lights and shade

So the short and sweet Fictions tour ends. We stop over for some good food and r and r courtesy of mum and dad in Tumut, and make it back to Sydney through endless road works and bad jokes.
Thankyou for reading. We will return to (INSERT YOUR CITY NAME HERE) very, very soon.

by Ryan Linnegar

Welcome to the brand spanking new ‘Found At Sea’ website (formerly ‘Helter’).
You’ll find our bio and press kit, as well as music, videos, photos, and more, so take a look around
We have a new single ‘Fictions’, the first lifted from the upcoming album, available to download FREE from the media page.

Check out our Shows page for our upcoming East-Coast tour dates to support the single, with special guests Sydney art-electro rockers ASTREETLIGHTSONG
(check them out at www.myspace.com/astreetlightsong)