What a while it's been! But we have the best kind of reason, and his name is Joash Ames. We had a baby, friends.

Here is his sweet face.

Pregnancy and early parenthood prove challenging to performance. But, we just accomplished our first musical outing since the kid came. Dan was asked to give a speech about what drives him as part of TEDxItaewon (an independently organized TED event), and we played two songs to close out his session. Here is the second song, "You Might Be," written in Seoul sometime last year:


We can't guarantee regular shows, but we can guarantee sporadic ones. Cool!

We are lucky to live both close and far away enough to Hongdae that we easily get to enjoy the perks of a college town and still have a quiet sleep at night. Hongdae artisans host a weekly Free Market (sort of like a flea market) at the Hongdae Playground to promote local art and give people a place to sell their handicrafts. There is an Afternoon Stage at the market to promote local musicians. We got to play at that Afternoon Stage last Saturday, sprinkling rain and all.


Handmade jewelry.


The setting.


The Bell & The Hammer is the second listed band: 벨 엔더 해머. Pretty cool!




Setting up with the aid of Choida Couple (죄다거플), the first act. Photos by Rachel Lee.



Singing. Photos by Rachel Lee.


Under cover. Photos by Rachel Lee.


A tip box filled with 1000s of won! I think it topped out at something like $5.00.


The Sorry People (미안한사람들) played after us.

We look forward to revisiting the Free Market, mostly because I didn't get to buy any cute handmade purses.

-Serenity

We were lucky to participate in the Seoul Fringe Festival. Cafe Soul Underground was one of the venues around Hongdae hosting acts. We got official artist badges and everything, and, with them, we can get into a festival show for free. We have until the end of this weekend to decide which show.

So, I think that because the Fringe Festival is a celebration of art in Seoul, there was an artist in our audience, Minju, who drew this incredible rendering of our faces onto her paper cup. She said that once she cleans it up, she'll send us an image of it, but, for now, we have this video that Dan took, because I didn't have my camera. How much cooler than our real selves do we look here?



-Serenity

So, here we are, still loving our time in Korea. I even saw a discarded Nerds box on our street the other day, so that gives me candy hope. We've been able to play regularly at Cafe Soul Underground, thanks to our friend Shin. We've met excellent musicians and had some great Friday nights. Here are some pictures from our show on June 11, all taken by Luke Shackelford.


We played with Min Woo, who also fronts the band Black Bag. His voice is amazing.


Watching Min Woo's set.



Dan's been working on his Korean stage banter. It usually leads to laughs.




We worked up another cover. This time the Swell Season/Once song "Lies". I'll get that posted soon. And if you need a good vacation land, you should come to Korea. They have beaches and shopping and street food and lovely people.

-Serenity

Coming to Korea put us in an interesting position as musicians. We had been recording and assembling our first CD up until the very day we left Florida for Chicago (and then on to Seoul), and we left most of them with our friend Bonnie in Indiana to mail out as needed, thinking we'd possibly not even get a chance to play here or that our mellow music wouldn't find a place between the hip hop and the K-pop. A lucky demo drop-off (coordinated entirely by Dan and made possible by Facebook), coupled with a Korean affinity for "Once" has happily proved that not so.

On Friday night, we were fortunate enough to play with Miyu and Jang Min Woo, both talented, emotive performers and house artists at Cafe Soul Underground. And I would say that we were even more fortunate to speak and connect with Shin Hyun Yo, the cafe's proprietor. As I said, Dan dropped off a demo to Shin about a month ago after finding out about the cafe on Facebook. We attended an art opening/concert and left a CD with our contact info and a note expressing our desire to play in Seoul. Shin told us on Friday that he kept forgetting to listen to it at first, but then he contacted us on Facebook a week or so later and put us on the schedule for May.

I don't think it's hyperbole to say that Shin is probably the kindest person I've ever met. He implored us to stay after the show for some free Seoul Beer and a chat. And I think what happens sometimes, when we call things surreal, it's just that our brains have no context for what's occurred, nothing at all to relate it to, and it makes life seem realer, sharper, closer. And that's how our conversation went. Just something about the kindness and enthusiasm of this man we'd just met, his encouragement, his desire to help us play in Seoul, even the mention of printing a run of CDs in Korea to sell at the cafe. It was surreal and so lovely, and such a fine introduction to music in Seoul.

Everyone we know in Korea came to see us, and that was quite nice of them. All of Dan's co-teachers came, and some took pictures:


Dan tuning. Photo by Luke Shackelford.


Me watching. Photo by Luke Shackelford.


Playing. Photo by Luke Shackelford.


Photos by Korrine Byrnes.

Oh, I haven't gotten to mention the open mic we played on Thursday night. We played the closing spot after four acts of experimental music, some of it extremely so. And we survived! Actually, everyone we met Thursday was also wonderful, and I particularly enjoyed how sciency it seemed. Several of the musicians were able to infuse such musicality, basically, into machinery. I think we will continue on with our ordinary folk tunes, though.

-Serenity

I can't figure out how I forgot to post this here. In our second installment of "Cover Songs from Korea" or something cleverer, we covered "Sleep's Dark and Silent Gate" by Jackson Browne, Serenity's favorite singing person ever (read: Serenity's only favorite singing person). Here it is if you haven't seen it already. We're working on another cover, but we got derailed by brief bouts of illness.

the Bell & the Hammer - "Sleep's Dark and Silent Gate" (Cover) from Dan Johnson on Vimeo.

Hey everybody. Have we mentioned that we live in Korea right now? We do. We are in Seoul for a year while Dan teaches English. It's pretty amazing. We are blogging about it. Dan had the idea of recording some covers while we're gone since we can't play shows. So listen, view, enjoy, and check out Brad Hoshaw on Facebook, because he writes good songs and has a beard.

the Bell and the Hammer - "Gone in a Minute" (Cover) from Dan Johnson on Vimeo.

We are finished recording our album. We've actually been finished for a little while now, but Dan and I have been busy. Have we mentioned here how we're moving to South Korea for a year? We are. To Seoul. Dan is going to teach English to grammar school kids, and I am going to do awesome things like, such as: nothing and sitting around and maybe watching the Olympics on the TV and rooting for Kim Yu-Na. Right now we are in Florida hanging out with my parents until we fly out. I am sitting in a coffee shop, a patron of which has placed non-stop complaint calls to various of his bill companies since I arrived. Right now he is working something out with Paypal and his mother's maiden name. I hate Paypal as much as the next guy, but I would not throw down with them in a public place. Dan just said to me, "He does not get how third place works". Well said, Dan.

So, we finished recording. Dan even added some bass and percussion (after I pretty much forced him to do so, though he may now claim otherwise). There is no official release date, but we hope to mail these things out on Friday. We designed the packaging ourselves and had it printed through Uprinting.com, through which we also printed our stickers. We've been very pleased with Uprinting. Also pleased with Custom Band Buttons who printed our custom band buttons. We were less pleased with UPS who left our print order in a box in a plastic bag nestled in the palm shrubs at the end of my parents' paved driveway (their house sits quite a distance from the road and the rest of the driveway is twisty and gravelly). At least now we know where to check for future packages.

I spent six hours of my Tuesday watching "Straight Talk" with Dolly Parton and then some Laguna Beach while assembling the outer sleeve for the CD, scoring, cutting, glue-dotting. I thought my fingers would never work again, and I'm meant to do it all again tomorrow for the inside sleeve.

What started as this:


Turned into this:

And that was very gratifying.

Pre-orderers, be on the lookout for your discs. We're super excited. Thanks for participating.

-Serenity

So, last Saturday we had the chance to play a show with Daniel Martin Moore. It was supposed to be at the Centennial Barn, which is being renovated into a really cool community center (to come in 2010: pilates, acupuncture, a community garden, all sorts of other good communal stuff because people were meant to commune). The barn wasn't quite ready, so instead it was held inside, so now we are totally looking forward to checking out the barn once it's ready.

Since it's December we covered a Christmas song and even played all of our songs about snow/winter. I think there are three of those (The Sound Of, Reading You to Sleep, maybe another? I can't think of it now). We played "Darlin' (Christmas is Coming)" by Over the Rhine, and I forgot the words to the second verse...twice. I thought I could get it, so I told Dan to play it again and told everyone that I thought I had it, but I didn't have it. The best part is how we played the song last Christmas season and I forgot the same words then. The bester part is how I remembered everything during soundcheck and every time I sing along to the CD in my car. Dumb.

It's okay, though, because I'm pretty sure Richie Sambora just now didn't know any of the words he was supposed to be singing, and that was on SNL. It's okay that I don't like Bon Jovi, right? (Jon Bovi is a different story. We will not make it, I do not swear makes me laugh too much. Also the tunnel under peaceful fire.)

We have two days of recording set up for next week! EP 3 of 4. We're going to try to do all the easy songs and then have a longer, most intense fourth recording session, hopefully adding percussion and bass and all those things that make songs sound super songy. Would you pre-orderers be averse to the inclusion of something shrinky-dinked in your pre-order packs? It would probably be something cool or at least crafty.

-Serenity

After a morning spent at thrift stores in frantic pursuit of a tweed coat big enough to fit Dan, and then the bulk of the day spent at King's Island riding cool rides and eating Chinese food and then Red Robin (all with the aforementioned Bonnie from Muncie), we were a bit rushed to assemble our Halloween costumes Saturday night for our Happy Halloween with the Happy Maladies show at Corner Bloc Coffee.

And, while our costumes were nothing compared to the commitment and man hours involved here, I think they were a pretty valiant effort given our time frame and my lack of Halloween experience (I can count on one hand and remember my entire life's arsenal of Halloween costumes: Cookie Monster, Snake Eyes with Dan, Carl and Russell from UP with Dan).


Dan photoshopped the UP house in. I should have given him more head space when I took the picture. Oops.



What we were going for.


Dan at the show.



There's a witch behind me!


A little Amish fry pie. Yum! Dan also had a slice of Derby pie.


Scoops! On Dan's iPod. I'm addicted. That is nowhere near my real high score. I'm going to try to get on the international leader board. I gotta get at least 333,000. I'm on it.



The Happy Maladies. They went as the cast of Seinfeld and joked that they were a band about nothing. But just for the night.


So Corner Bloc Coffee is really cute. Live music, quality coffee on the cheap, tasty treats, a three room space with a dedicated game room. You should check it out when you are in Price Hill or go to Price Hill to check it out even (see what I did there?).


-Serenity

We took some new promo pictures this weekend in a big field at the dead end of our street. You can see them all by going to any one of our social networking profiles (Myspace, Facebook, or Flickr, the last of which can also be accessed by clicking on one of the pictures up there at the top of this site). Here are some outtakes.

We make the sweetest faces, he and me.

Our dog, Tater Dog, was there. He's a beagle-lab mix, and he is the world's best dog.

I think this picture is ridiculous. Dan thinks it's funny cause I look so short. I was fake laughing, Dan was real laughing, and he tried to guilt me into real laughing.

So then, to work up to laughing, I jogged in place and stuff, so I think I am real laughing here.

Turns out we are jumping failures. Even Tater has failed, and dogs love to jump.

Dan's actually pretty good here. My favorite part is how Tater is so glad to be running toward us. But why am I doing that with my hands?

And here Dan is giving a half thumbs-up. We suck.

Fall!

-Serenity

Last night we drove to Muncie to play at the Ball State Campus House's Coffee Night. My best friend works there, so I will not negate any suspicions of nepotism. It was a fine October night with just a tiny chill in the air and even then not until after we returned home at 1:00 AM. We had Oreos and Hot or Not popcorn (hot with tobasco, yum). I discovered I was allergic to my new mascara, which is always a treat (knowledge is power). I discovered this after a protracted 12 hour battle with migraine and its aura. The migraine started at 2:30 PM and continued on through the drive so that by the time we arrived in Muncie, I felt high out of my mind on pain and the equivalent of four cups of coffee's worth of Excedrin Migraine. At least we were participating in a coffee house night, so everyone had some caffeine in them, even Dan, who recommended the iced chocolate mocha. I don't know its technical name. I'm pretty sure it was very similar to what celebrities buy their children at Starbucks.

But, you guys, I am not meaning to complain about inflamed blood vessels of the temple (I got really confused about this being the right word just now, like, I couldn't figure out why we have temples on our bodies), because the pain magically ceased its fire for the entirety of our time in Indiana, and I really enjoyed the popcorn and Oreos, and we even pre-sold a couple of albums (which you can do yourself by clicking here, which, I'm pretty sure, means that our album has gone tin foil, as far as metal-based signifiers of album sale success go. Tin foil is exceedingly useful, so we are quite glad at that.

-Serenity

Dan and I are working toward this album goal. If we never write or record songs beyond the twelve we aim to put together at this time of our lives, the completion of this project will be enough for us. We have been trying to record for years, but we are definitely most equipped to do it now. We are recording three songs a month for the next four months, and Dan's cooked up a nice release/pre-order/download deal that, I guess, we will declare officially (in all its interwebular officialness) tomorrow. We spent some time last month working on our album cover(s). It was fun. There are buttons. I hope you like it when it comes out tomorrow.

I've got a tin full of buttons. They figure in prominently.

Dan in flannels.

Knitted letters.

We even worked some knitting needles in.

And this here acorn from our front yard.

Tater felt neglected, only because he so often experiences the extreme opposite.

Buttons.

Babe.

Hoo-rah!

-Serenity