The Van Burens

The Van Burens are returning to the City That Never Sleeps this Friday night for a BIG, BIG show at Sullivan Hall opening for a supremely awesome band: The Indobox.  This is definitely our biggest show to date in New York, and we’re really excited to debut some new tunes for our NYC crowd and share the stage with such a killer act.  Needless to say, the Patriots fans in the Van Burens want to get the bad taste of the Super Bowl off our collective palates, and what better way than to spend a weekend in Giants country?  Really, though, it’s going to be a big night and we hope to get a good turnout at our favorite New York haunt.  Click the pic of a hard-partying New Yorker for the FB event and more info.

We are big fans of brothers, older and younger. We’ve got a set of bros within the band and are ourselves all brothers in some capacity. Check this Slate article about the Murray brothers dominating family acting.

Sometimes brothers can get you down by being total jerks. But then there are those inevitable moments when they set the ball up on the tee for you to knock out of the park. They allow you to pay them back for their years of idiocy and abuse.

As part of our beanseries we bring you an older brother ringtone.

The Van Burens had a faaaaaaaaaabulous time playing a two-set show in front of our Boston crowd Friday night.  Many thanks to the good people who came out to jam out with us and to Raj, Emily Bogrand, and Mike “The Man with No Shame” Gallagher for being our special guests.  We premiered a new tune in the first set that is huge, proggy, and nameless. Anybody got any ideas?  Here’s the set:

The Rosebud.  Somerville, MA.  1.27.12

Set One:  Stinkoff, Bledsoe, Cantina Song, Pinchback, The New One, Tranceformers, Turducken, Rocky/Raccoon, Killaz*, Arnold Timber*, Martin I*, Use Me*^, Oh Darling*^

Set Two: Let’s Dance, Jeffrey’s World, Swamp, Hardened Heart (Murder One)%, Ten Past Midnight%, Happy Birthday>L.B.$, Shotz in L.A., Gary Don’t, Lee Harvey Oswald*, Try a Little Tenderness*^, Taft Punk*

Also, the VBs have several big shows with bigger acts coming up in February, starting with our triumphant return to NYC’s Sullivan Hall next Friday the 10th, opening for the Indobox.  We also have two Boston shows this month: Thursday the 16th at the Cantab, then Friday the 24th opening up for Zach Deputy (!) at the Middle East Downstairs.  Click the pic of the ex-Prez for the NYC show.

JJ Abrams, creator of the television series Lost, talks about his love of mystery and specifically his love for his unopened mystery box in this Ted talk (it’s 18 minutes long and not the crux of this post so if you don’t have a lot of time, you can skip the video and take it from me that Abrams likes to leave his mystery box unopened because it’s more exciting not to know its contents than it is to reveal some cheap prize kept within).

The development of discipline required not to open such a box is an exciting challenge. The highest form of such a challenge is undoubtedly abstinence, and we take our party hats off to those folks, but there are many little mysteries hidden behind unlocked doors that we can choose to reveal or not. My own mystery involves a blocked number that calls me every day. Once in the morning and once in the evening. We’ve hypothesized that the caller is a process server waiting to subpoena the VBs for any number of copyright infringements we have committed, or perhaps it’s Obama trying to hit me up for some loose cash. Perhaps its a future me calling to warn present me not to move to Mars and become the house band for the first human colony on the red planet. I don’t know who it is, and I’m more excited not knowing who it is.

We have recently been pumping out Van Buren ringtones through our beanseries, and to continue that practice we bring you a ringtone entitled “You Think You Want It.” The tone is a meditation on the joy of man’s desiring. Click the question mark for access…or don’t and imagine what it might be like.

Hey, Boston Van Buurens fans.  You’re looking good these days….you been working out?  Ya, we know you’ve been good this year, bringing the noise and funk when we play the Middle East, Brighton Music Hall, and all the other Boston haunts we frequent.  But we always show up, play our one set, and leave you screaming “give us more, VBs, give us more!”  while we’re smoking our post-show cig and showering in the green room (just kidding, Van Burens don’t shower!).  Well, we hear you.  That’s why this Friday night, the VBs are playing an extended two-set full-night show at the Rosebud in Somerville, a really great venue hidden behind a diner of the same name in Davis Square.  It’s our first show at the ‘Bud and we can’t wait to rock out with our hometown crew while going deep into the Van Buren song list and maybe bringing up a few special guests.  Click the pic of 33rd Sexiest VB Fan Ryan Gosling for the FB event and more info.  See you Friday!

The Van Burens are believers in intertextuality, the concept that we derive all of our creative ideas from past experiences, that there are no “new” ideas. We think of the unwitting recurrence of past experiences as rhymes or echoes of the voices and faces we’ve been lucky enough to be surrounded by. Recently I have taken up two discrete hobbies: climbing and beer brewing.

The unlikely combination of a couple craft beers and the urge to pull my body UP seemed all-too-natural an idea to me, as though I didn’t invent the concept, until I remembered that I hadn’t. When VB members lived together with friends in Providence in the summer of 2007, we lived with the avid climber, Buddha. On Tuesday evenings, after work, he would bring home a six pack of Honey Brown Ale and engage in a ritual known as “Drunk Tuesdays.” After two and a quarter beers, Buddha would be ready to climb every doorway and window frame on Power Street, and sometimes even the grad center if he was feeling especially saucy. As part of our beanseries, we bring you the Buddha ringtone: Climbing on a Tuesday. Click on the cowed out Buddha hanging with P Bear to access the tone.

“Climbing slowly and gracefully”

My junior year of college I studied in Cork, Ireland.  I met amazing people and got to play music with a lot of them.  I was lucky enough to become friends with Darren Concannon–a great musician from Galway.  He and I would trade war stories of our childhood bands, and discuss our plans for reuniting with them after college to go for the gold.  That was 5 years ago now, and both of our groups have never been closer.  Allow me to introduce, A Band Called Wanda.

Here is a video of them playing on Balcony TV in Dublin:

The Van Burens will be appearing at one of our favorite bars, Penuche’s in Concord, New Hampshire, this Saturday night. Penuche’s is an underground bar that turns into New Hampshire’s version of Studio 54 on weekend nights; instead of a disco ball, there’s a glowing, spinning cow; instead of scantily-clad cage dancers looking for a good time, there are fully bundled, bearded New Hampshireans looking for a good time….etc. Pretty much the best place on Earth. The show will start a little after 9.

We’ll be joined by Strangers Helping Strangers, which sounds like a great name for a Christian indie hipster rock band or a Doors cover band, but is in a fact a non-profit that conducts food drives at shows around the country to benefit local food banks. It’s a great program and the VBs are proud to be part of it, so if you come to the show, try to bring an item to donate. Click the pic of Jimbo Morrison for FB event and details. For more info about Strangers Helping Strangers, click here.

Few people appreciate the service industry like musicians, and few musicians appreciate those everyday heroes like the Van Burens do.  The VB consider the waitstaff, bartenders, caterers, managers, and hostesses we encounter with the same regard most people give to movie stars and athletes.   In the van on the way to a gig, we’ll get hyper and giggly disuccing our favorite burly bouncers and  barwomen like fourteen year old girls talking about Justin Bieber.  Our reverence comes, perhaps, from the similarity between being a musician and working in a bar or club: you stay up late, you sleep late, and insane tipsy people are your customers.  The only difference is your waiter will never melt your face with a shredding guitar solo and you can’t ask the keyboard player for more ketchup.  Essentially, the professions are identical: service people are the rock stars of our everyday lives, and the Van Burens are like a stage full of bartenders, dispensing foamy beats and riffs.  The VBs are very excited this week to return to the home of one our fave service teams:  The Half Door in Hartford, CT.  We’re playing $2 Guiness night this Wednesday, and it will be great to return to such an awesome spot after several months and hang out with such a great crew.  Come on by if you’re around, we’ll start a bit after 9. Click the ‘shows’ link on the top of the page for more info.

And, in the spirit of teamwork, here’s five people playing one guitar: