Greetings Englanders,
Golfing scarecrows of excitement. Received confirmation from central command. Returning to England’s ultimate annual music gathering End Of the Road!!!!!!!!! This years is extra special, celebrating the 15th birthday of our label (and England’s finest?) Bella Union. Proper fun. See you in Dorset!!!!!!!
~ BJJMT

The band’s cover of “Stories of the Street” is on the covermount tribute CD to Cohen and “The Songs of Leonard Cohen” that comes with this month’s issue of Mojo Magazine.

You can stream it below or get the full CD, “The Songs of Leonard Cohen Covered” with the magazine. It includes covers by Bill Callahan, Cass McCombs, Field Music and more.

Stories Of The Street (The Low Anthem) by MOJOmagazine

all the proceeds will go toward stem cell research.  What is Snake Wagon, again?

A bunch of jokesters, pranksters, parodists, specialty obscurantist antique humorists, and satirical ironical songsmiths who blasted the sheet rock off the Pasta Sauce Factory walls in a quick, but fruitful, session last year.  Listen to it!  It comes highly recommended and it’s worth its price in gold.

Our friends at End of the Road have started a new UK summer festival in Sherwood Forest on the weekend of June 8, 2012, and they have officially asked us headline it. We said yes! So come and check out a new festival with us in the land of Robin Hood! Andrew Bird and Dirty Three have also confirmed which will surely be amazing. Well worth the trip!

Now that we’re leaving the road for a while, we’re especially keen to lose the remaining merch.  Thus we are hosting “The 2nd Annual Black Friday Merch Store 15% Feeding Frenzy Sale!” Be careful so no one gets trampled.  We’ve added new shirts and posters that were previously only at shows, as well as a limited 10″ with outtakes from the Smart Flesh recording sessions AND a version of To Ohio we recorded for and with our sweet-singing friend Emmylou Harris’s last record.  This will be available digitally on December 27th (sans Emmy) but waxically right now.

USE THIS CODE: “blackfriday” to get 15% off everything except the new 10″, stuff that’s already discounted, and the $5(!) posters.  Offer lasts through “Cyber Monday” but watch our Twitter and Facebook where we’ll have some “flash sales” throughout December.

God I hate trying to sell stuff.

Dear friends and fellow conspirators,

Happy Thanksgiving! We are grateful for you all and that you have let us into your ears and hearts over these past few years. We played the last show of the Smart Flesh tour the other night in Berlin.  From Somerville to DC Antwerp LA London and all freakin over, this tour was sublime!  We can never thank you enough. We’re all going home a while to eat, cocoon and start recording again.  Also Jocie is embarking on a short solo tour opening for The Barr Brothers.  Ben is mostly knitting and building an electric moth machine. Jeff is working as a viral marketing liaison for a weird band called Snake Wagon.  More on that later. It’ll be great to be home…

We’ll leave you with some videos from the singalong in Boston here and here.  Thanks for joining.

Love,

Ben, Jeff, Jocie and Mike

The band recently recorded a traditional Irish song called “School Days Over” with the Chieftains for their 50th Anniversary album, Voice of Ages. The song was produced by Paddy Maloney of the Chieftains and T Bone Burnett and the record also includes contributions by Bon Iver, The Decemberists and many more. It will be released February 21st.

Rough Trade will be carrying a very special, limited Black Friday Record Store day 10″ which is now available to pre-order here.  The record include 3 outtakes from the Smart Flesh recording sessions and “To Ohio,” recorded with Emmylou Harris.  It will be released on November 25th.

Smart Flesh (Extras)
Side A
1. Roses in a Mist v.1 (working title) *
2. Old Cedar Tree

Side B
1. Roses in a Mist v.2 (working title) ~
2. To Ohio (For and with Emmylou Harris!)

*This song has previously been called “The Snake and the Lightning Rod”

~ This song has previously been called “Glitter”

City and Colour from Canada has invited us to tour the icy tundra with them this winter. It’s an offer we can’t refuse, and so we are extending our tour before the hiatus. The northern run hits our favorite venue anywhere, Massey Hall!!! We’ll also be able to play Portland and Seattle. Many thanks to City and Colour for the invite. Pre-sale tickets go on-sale tomorrow here and general on-sale is
Friday. Here are the new dates:

01/16 – Portland, OR – Wonder Ballroom
01/17 – Seattle, WA – Neptune
01/19 – Vancouver, BC – Queen Elizabeth Theatre
01/21 – Kelowna, BC – Kelowna Community Theatre
01/24 – Medicine Hat, AB – Esplanade Arts & Heritage Centre
01/25 – Edmonton, AB – Northern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium
01/28 – Calgary, AB – Jack Singer Concert Hall
01/30 – Banff, AB – Banff Centre – Eric Harvie Theatre
02/01 – Saskatoon, SK – Odeon Event Centre
02/02 – Regina, SK – Conexus Arts Centre
02/03 – Winnipeg, MB – Burton Cummings Theatre
02/06 – Milwaukee, WI – Pabst Theatre
02/08 – Indianapolis, IN – The Amber Room (Old National Centre)
02/10 – Toronto, ON – Massey Hall
02/14 – Kitchener, ON – Centre In The Square
02/15 – London, ON – Centennial Hall
02/18 – Quebec City, QC – Grand Theatre du Quebec
02/20 – Halifax, NS – Rebecca Cohn Auditorium
02/22 – Fredericton, NB – The Playhouse
02/23 – Saint John, NB – Imperial Theatre

We’ve partnered with Paste to give away a pair of tickets, a signed poster and a copy of Smart Flesh for every tour date on the US tour!  Check out the details and enter to win here.

Friends – to clear up any confusion – WE ARE NOT BREAKING UP! We’ve been on the road for three years, and it’s time to go home and cook up new sounds.  This will be our last headliner tour for a while but no no no! not breaking up! More like cocooning.

Dear conspirators, lovers, friends,

It was nearly 3 years ago when we first self-released “Oh My God, Charlie Darwin.” Since then we’ve been pretty lucky. We’ve been signed to two of the finest record labels known to man, toured the globe with world class musicians, and been allowed (paid even) to play hundreds of shows to you. It’s a life we could only have dreamt. From the beginning, we’ve been a local music outfit, nearly oblivious to the avalanche of trending watery bullshit known as indie music. All along, we’ve just wanted to play. Music that was simple. Music that we connected to. With the same spirit we started with as a duo in bars and open mics. We were obsessed with sound and gave ourselves a mission. We’ve been working to perfect our craft, the palette of instruments, rhythm-breath, harmonic saturation, a certain style of writing…mournful, drunk, angrily obsessed with justice, yadda yadda. After 451 shows, we feel we’ve come pretty close to answering our own question. We know the “Darwin / Smart Flesh” material inside and out – better than a prominent birthmark…like swimming in bathwater…It’s really dialed in. Maybe some artists reach this point and become safer more refined imitations of themselves. We’re not interested. So…we’ve decided that this upcoming tour will be the last tour of the chapter. The last tour devoted to this material, this incarnation. A final hurrah. A sweet goodbye. The refined completion of three years of work. It’s anything you want it to be, but it will be the last for a while. It’s not the end. There is no end. But it’s the last one for a while. We have too many unfulfilled ideas in the works to stay out on the road. We’ve got 40+ new songs in the wings. Two very different albums to record. Blueprints for a handful of electro-light sculptures. But it’s going to take some time back home, to turn the page and build a new sound world. To burn the furniture. To decipher the new questions. So with all our hearts and all our thanks, we hereby declare in the words of Nathan Moore, this fall 2011 tour in US and Europe…

This is the last one

The last one ever°

This is the last one

We swear it

This is the last one

How dare it

Keep on giving ’til the end

Here’s the updated tour. We’ll see you out there.

Love love love,

yours,

~Low Anthem

°that’s how the song goes

PS from Buddha: new mixed drink recommendation – Champagne & iChill relaxation shot on the rocks. It’s called the Sleepy BuddhaTM.