Our good friends The Vagrants played the Hard Rock Cafe, Gold Coast on Wed night – and won the night, making it through to the finals to be held next week. So they’ll be back at the Gold Coast Hard Rock next Thursday for the big one. Go for gold guys – we’re rootin’ for ya.

Renata of The Vagrants – live pic from their Facebook gallery.

Back at TOF HQ:
We’re in preparation to shoot an ‘outrageous’ video for the latest single, due for release on the China tour. Filming starts next week. We fly out to Beijing 3 weeks from Monday.

Have a great weekend.
Fires out.

Max posted this article on our Facebook page yesterday. The ‘Banyule Weekly’ photographer was around last Friday taking shots in our living room during vocal recording (vocal mic in the foreground re the pic below).

Click on the pic above to read the full article, recalling the beginnings of Max’s performance career & the birth of TOF. She talks about a melanoma scare while recording the Betrayer album in LA in 2008, and what inspired her in the beginning to start making music.

Checkya later.
Fires out.

Our friends the mighty Vagrants are playing a show tonight on the Gold Coast at the Hard Rock Cafe. They put out a Facebook message yesterday – if you’re in the area, come on down.

The Vagrants live – pic from their website gallery page.

It’s the Vagrants’ first time on the Gold Coast. The press release on their site says they’ve played the Hard Rock in Berlin 7 times – and now they’re bringing it to the Hard Rock, Surfers Paradise. Hellyeah!

We’ve played a lotta shows with the Vagrants – both locally & overseas and I’ve gotta say, It’s been a while. We seem to be in different locations when the opportunity arises. If you haven’t seen em yet, they’re a great, fun, entertaining band with a big classic rock sound. If you’re hanging out in Brisbane or the Gold Coast, looking for something to do tonight – drop in & say hello.

Checkya later.
Fires out.

Official China tour dates landed this morning. 14 shows starting in Shanghai at the Foreign Studies University on the 19th of April, with festivals in Zhenjiang on 29th April & Beijing on 1st of May. Full tour dates on the poster below – soon to be announced on our Shows page.

Checkya later.
Fires out.

Spent this morning in a recording studio with producer Dave Carr. Put down a lead break for one of the new songs & finished off the recording process. Dave takes the sessions off to mixing this week. Nearly there…

Tom (tour promoter in China) emailed earlier today. We’re doing an interview in a Beijing rehearsal studio for Global Times, an English language newspaper in China, the week before the tour starts (next month).

Just finished laughing at this for the 400th time…

Checkya later,
Fires out

Our promoter in China (This Town Touring) sent this through last night. The first official tour poster featuring the first show at Shanghai Foreign Languages University, 19th April.

Might actually finish recording today for the new release – due out for the China tour.

Ukraine On The Blower:
Had a great chat on the phone last night with Sasha Seminova, our friend & tour manager in Ukraine. It’s been a while since we’ve spoken. I called to say hello & see how the Kiev crew were going these days. We have some great fond memories of touring Ukraine, hanging out with Sasha Seminova (drinking too much vodka) & living with local punk icon, Sasha Pipa, friends & family and cats (and drinking too much vodka). Back in 2008, we were on a tour tour bus with Sasha Pipa & his band Atraktor for an intensive 3 week tour of Ukraine. It all started the year before when we did a show in Kiev with Sasha’s band Borshch. Here’s a classic Borshch video below –

We haven’t toured Ukraine since 2009. We’ll get back there one day (soon we hope)…

Have a great weekend.
Fires out.

TOF’s official photographer, Mat Ward, just sent us a link to the video below. Dresden Doll’s Amanda Palmer gives us her take on the future of music and the music industry. Palmer is currently spending a lot of time performing in Australia – Mat was an official photographer at one of the band’s shows last month.

China Tour News:
Things are hotting up at TOF HQ as the China Tour draws closer (kicks off next month). We’ve started doing interviews to appear in China’s on-line media, with new songs scheduled for release before the tour.

Checkya later,
Fires out.

We had a great time at the 3WBC radio studio yesterday afternoon. And it was the first time we’d played one of the new songs live-to-air. We still haven’t quite finished recording yet, so we were feeling our way – but it came out alright (we thought).

Max at Radio 3WBC FM Melbourne, yesterday.

It was really cool to catch up again with Mark Gardner, one of the radio show’s hosts. Mark played trumpet on stage with us in November 2010 at Cherry Bar, Melbourne. He’s always dropping us a line on Facebook & said some really nice things about the Betrayer album during the show.

The guys played a couple of tracks from said album before we played live. We had a few songs to do, so we thought it’d be really cool to do an old one from the first album – it had been bout 6 years since we’d played Adore – but it went off like riding a bike.

Mark Gardiner & Max at 3WBC FM yesterday.

Mark Gardiner will be appearing at the Basin Music Festival later this month.

Checkya later.
Fires out.

We’re doing a radio interview today at 5:30 pm on 3WBC – 94.1 on your FM dial (Melbourne). For those who’d like to stream on the web – http://3wbc.org.au/streaming.html

Show host Mark Gardiner played on stage with us at Cherry Bar, Melbourne in 2010 (he was the trumpet guy). We’ll be talking about the upcoming China tour & playing a song or two live.

Checkya tomorrow.
Fires out.

Got stuck into recording again over the weekend. Had a great time with it. Sometimes it gets a bit tedious & you don’t feel like you’re getting anywhere – particularly at the beginning. But the songs are taking some great shape now. Felt like we got through a heap of work by late yesterday.

Marty X, yesterday at TOF HQ.

I was pretty pumped & went out, down to the Vic Bar with Craigie to wind down over a few quiet ones. Took a few hours for the adrenaline to subside. Dropped in to see Stalk & Kim on the way home & stayed a little longer than anticipated. Staggered home with Scotty.

A slow start to this fine Monday.

Max Harman, yesterday at TOF HQ.

Checkya later.
Fires out.