Firstly i would like to thank everyone who came out to our shows on our Recent southern England tour with our good mates Crocus. The shows were all cool and bar everyone sharing illness towards the end of the tour all in all it was a sick week away. Oh and big thanks to everyone who bought cds, shirts, gave us food, promoted a show, gave us a place to sleep and joined in going nuts. None of us brought a camera though there are pictures out there which i will try my best to get hold of and get up here as soon as i can.
So its reaching the end of 2008 and to be honest as far as Lavotchkin goes we are fucking stoked its over (it wasnt all bad, though a lot of bad stuff did happen). So without meaning to sound like a whinge, heres more a look back and laugh at all the stuff that went wrong for us in 2008: -
+ Wrecking the engine in our van without having any money to replace it
+ Eventually paying for the van to be repaired (£1500), getting it back two weeks before going on tour in Belgium, then finding that they had put the wrong engine in that needed to be taken out or we were stuck with it. Hahah the bastards held the van telling us they would be able to sort it out, then the afternoon before setting off on tour they told us theres no chance its going to be done, forcing us to cancel.
+ We got our van back once again right before going on tour once again (with Crocus + Hitcher) then after the first show our van dies again! We get a guy out and apparently its yet ANOTHER problem, totally different to the last problem and it was going to cost £1000. We did manage to do the tour in a transit we managed to higher last minute, though after spending all the money hiring we found out two months later when coming to fix our van, the part that was broken in the van actually cost just £75 to fix and the guy who looked at it was trying to rip us off. Thank god we took it else where and didnt pay £1000!! Still shit as we could have got our van fixed right then and there and wouldnt have had to spend a lot of extra money hiring.
+ We were forced to drop out of two Scotland tours thanks to firstly extreme weather problems and secondly a bloody fuel crisis. Really fucking sucked but with our luck and meaning we would have risked not making it back for our jobs (that already dislike us all for constantly bugging for time off), so long story cut short we couldnt risk either occasion at the time. What a jip.
+ We recorded for a split with the awesome Attack Vipers in January, though through a heap of set backs looks like its not going to see the light of day till early next year. Not bad news at all really as it is coming in Feb now, though we have been dying for our first 7inch since Lavotchkin first began so its killing us waiting to get it! Its guna be a fucking sweet split though so do check it out :-D
+ Through family problems we had to drop out of our tour with Whitemare in September :-(
+ Us having to drop out of shows with our friends the fair fight as our singer Si got real real sick the week before going and rather than getting better he got worse till the day before tour having to check into hospital.
+ The big ones which wasnt funny at all was we had two real real close brievements to two members of lavotchkin, which i wont go into detail about though were really big blows to members of our band. There both doing ok, though October through to early December has been pretty fucking low periods for them .
So as you can tell, there was a fucking lot of things that went wrong in 2008. Shit happens though!! We are still having a laugh and even though so much bad stuff happend the good things that did happen were pretty good and as cheesey as it sounds it has made us a lot stronger as a result. (I am pretty sure that we have officially had all the bad luck we can have now so that just leaves good luck yeah???? hahaha or fingers crossed anyways.)
Some of the good things that happend in 2008 were:
+ Through all of the problems we have been writing fucking loads for our album. So far since beginning writing for it we have written 13tracks of which 7 or 8 tops out of those tracks will make it on our record. We have let two tracks go to our split with Attack Vipers and another three tracks for our forth coming split with Crocus.
+ We managed to demo a shit load of our new tracks! Its a fuck on though we got it done. We didnt wanna throw em round to much as they are real rough but if you do wanna hear any, drop us a line over myspace or something.
+ We managed to tour with our good friends Crocus twice as well as also good friends Brides, Hitcher and a short tour with Manatees. We did make a shit load of one off shows or weekend dates though they were all mostly northern England due to transport problems. (You bands who can get by in cars are lucky lucky fuckers!).
+ We met the Newest edition to Lavotchkin, our lovely manager Jenna Lee who has managed to turn around our wreck of a band.
+ Although a lot of shit fell through for different reasons, we did still manage to catch up with a lot of our mates round the country. Thats always the real good bit about touring for us.
Anyways, as for 2009. This for Lavotchkin is the turn around year so be expecting to hear a fucking lot more from us. In January we will be recording for our split with Crocus with good fucking friend Jason Sanderson, who as worked with bands such as Rolo Tomassi, Mirimar Disaster, The Plight, The Legacy and fuck loads of other sweet bands. The Track listing for this from ourselves is going to be:
Track 1 - You were dawn
(Heavy, Up Beat, a little rocky with a big fucking ending)
Track 2 - Abandon
(Slower, Heavier and really pissed off)
Track 3 - Clouds
(A little more punkier with some heavy bits with a lil bit of slide guitar)
That split is coming out June 2009 on Small town records and no doubt we will stick up a Track or Two round March.
The big recording planned for next year however will be in May, as at bloody last we are going to be recording our Album. Although recording in May it looks like its release will be October/November 2009 which is ages away, but fuck at least its gunna be coming out. Unfortuately that is as much of the details as i can disclose atm, though i am sure as it comes closer the time i will be telling more about whats going on for it. The current title we have for the record is "This Is Widow Country" and it will be 10/11 tracks long.
As for touring, we have a lot planned and 2009 will see us touring more than we ever have by a long shot. We will be doing some touring before recording our album, though the main bulk of our traveling will be set around after we have finished recording our album. For the minute though! In Late Jan/ early Fed we are doing a short 4 date tour with the mighty Take A Worm For A Walk week which will be suuuuuuuuuuuper sweet. Also Late Feb we are heading out to mainland Europe once again with a super special festival appearance that we cannot disclose yet. hahha trust us though once the line up is 100% you will hear about it as we are totally over the moon to be playing. We will also be coming back to the south in late March with a couple of real real sweet bands though thats all a bit hush at the moment still, though keep an eye out.
I have ranted for fucking ages now so am gunna draw this to a brief conclusion. Fuck 2008, roll fucking on 2009. If we are playing near you and you are free, come down to a show and if you have some time check out our webstore at http://lavotchkin.bigcartel.com as we have some new merch up and any purchase really helps.
Cheers for reading and giving a fuck enough to get to this point in the small essay i seem to have written!
Martin + The Lavotchkins
Ps: Thanks so much to our friend Tom Lacey of Ghost of a thousand fame for propping us as a band to watch for 2009 on the rocksound website. We are definately gunna be one to watch for 2009, not that you'd have thought given the disasters 2008 brought though seriously watch this space and thanks Tom for having some fucking faith in us. Props!
http://www.rocksound.tv/features/article/onestowatch2009pt2
Tom Lacey, Ghost Of A Thousand picks Lavotchkin
''I've been waiting fucking ages for their album and it's finally on it's way. We played a show with these dudes in Middlesborough about two years okay, and even though it was pretty shitty show they tore the place apart. They're just the most fucking ferocious band this country has at the moment, and they really need to be heard by a lot more people. We used to stay at Martin the guitarists house , and his basement has this weird pile of rags that looks just like a body lying down there. Martin denies any wrong-doings, but if that's not fucking hardcore then i don't know what is.''
www.myspace.com/lavotchkin
