Come on out and see what all of the buzz is about! We are going to run a special on the calendars for this weekend only!!!!!

First up is our release with The Consortium of Genius! Turns out, there is a really angry trumpet player from the COG with goes back in time to destroy the genre of metal and make everything… SKA!!! That’s right! He hands dear old Ozzy a trumpet and changes the stream of history! You have to show up to see if metal is erased off the planet forever!!!! Here is a teaser trailer of the show below!

The rad flyer (designed by Dr. Pinkerton himself, features none other than one Ashley Shabankareh as her alter-ego, Anne Thrax!

You get yet one more chance to see us play and get your hot little hands on a hot little calendar (18 months this year!) at The Maison on Saturday October 15th! We will be hitting Frenchmen hard to follow up to the incomparable Ingrid Lucia warm it up for The Young Fellaz Brass band, so it is one not to miss!!!

If that isn’t enough excitement for ya, we just might be rolling into your town soon. Below is a preliminary list of tour dates. We will probably be adding more, so be on the lookout!

Hey everyone!

Looks like we will be taking over the east coast yet once again at the end of June and early July, but first we are going to be completing our new calendar and DVD! This is such an exciting task! First, however, we need your help! We are offering some really cool rewards over at our Kickstarter site for donations to help us press our DVD and publish our calendar. The $3500 amount is the bare minimum we need to actually make the physical copies. We are busting our butts gigging to pay the wonderful photographers, editors and assistants that are helping us see these projects to their finish. No good deed goes unpunished, so if you do donate, you can receive all kinds of goodies from signed posters to calendars to the DVD itself. Don’t forget that for a little bit more you can have us play at your private event, be in the calendar yourself or even get a date with Darryl. Who in their right mind wouldn’t want that?!?!?

If you want to donate, you can find our link here! As of today, we are 32% funded, but still have a long way to go!!!! If you would like to donate, please follow this link:

THE LOCAL SKANK’S KICKSTARTER CAMPAIGN

If you want to support us, here are a list of the next venues we will be performing at:

4/16 Hi-Ho Lounge. We’re thrilled to be opening for Bad Beth at her CD-release party!!

4/26 One-Eyed Jack’s. PEELANDER-Z!!! Need we say more? We opened for them last year, and are looking forward to a repeat!

4/28 The Shamrock (it’s the old Mid-City Rock ‘n’ Bowl) They’re letting us play the first Thursday of Jazz Fest, and we’re happy to welcome our friend Adina’s band, and wedding party (yep, she’ll be rockin out onstage in her wedding dress!)

5/16 Dragon’s Den. MUSTARD PLUG. We’re so lucky to get to open for them!!!!

5/20 Banks St. Bar

We also had the honor of working with the fabulous Tonya and NOLAFleur Photography who took some great photos of us at the Shamrock on Carrolton. All of the photography in this blog update is hers! Here are some more highlights from the shoot!

♥

First, we are compiling and creating videos for our upcoming DVD release. We  (assisted by our right hand man, Lewis D’Aubin)  have  filmed live footage at Tipitina’s, The Blue Nile,  and Southport Hall for some segments, and have just completed our first cinematic promotional video for our single “Stalker Ex-Girlfriend.” This video which was filmed partially at Siberia at our Foborg Festival Showcase . This video was shot and directed by Trent Robinson and his amazing team that learned the true meaning of “herding cats.” In a mere 24 hours (it was our time limit for the festival) all live, and directed footage of us and our star, Brad Cashio, was filmed, cut and released! Pretty awesome if you ask us! Well, check it out for yourself!

We are now planning our second east coast tour with our first confirmed date coming in….wait for it…. HEAVY REBEL WEEKENDER! If you haven’t been to this North Carolina Festival, it is certainly one of a kind! Rockabilly, Psychobilly, Punk, Bluegrass and more for three days straight. If that doesn’t get your blood rolling then consider the mud-wrestling, street rods, and beer drinking competitions! WHOA! Burlesque Revues all weekend too!

Check ‘em out here for tickets!

Heavy Rebel Weekender

Many of you are dismayed at the fact that your calendar has run out of days! Never fear! We are currently conducting photo-shoots with our number one tiki god, Sharky Braden! Hold tight. Itsa coming!

Setting the stage for a fabulous Halloween we were invited to play on the route of the Baton Rouge Zombie crawl at a great little venue called The Red Star! You couldn’t ask for a better crowd to play to, even if they were the undead! One of the highlights of the night spotting an Ash from Evil Dead in the crowd complete with shotgun and chainsaw arm! We felt much better with him there, alas, we fell prey to the walking dead by the end of the night… well most of us… Darryl appeared to survive, for the time being… until we feasted on his brains!!!!!

If you missed the show, don’t fear! Here is a small out-take from the event!

Next up we threw our very own prom at Banks Street Bar! We invited the most romantic bands we knew to join us in the festivities – Prom Date and The Pests! (Well, maybe not The Pests, but every prom needs a crasher to spike the punch and throw up in the corner!) Prom Date is the dreamiest! If you haven’t gotten a chance to check out this Baton Rouge based pop-rock band do so! We decorated the club with streamers, served vodka & punch drinks, wore ugly prom dresses and even took prom pictures! Check it out!

It was then time to take our show on the road again! We took a weekend out and drove to Lake Charles to The Luna Bar! This was certainly a taste of southern hospitality! We had a great sound-man, bartenders, agent and staff that all greeted us with open arms! They even fed us some incredible gourmet food and wined us and dined us! The crowd in Lake Charles was also a blast! They danced, serenaded us with show tunes, bought us continual rounds of drinks (don’t worry… we had designated drivers) and generally partied with us until the bar shut down! We met rockabilly sweethearts, raucous locals and waiters with the best mutton chops in town! If you ever are in Lake Charles and want to get a bite to eat or a cold drink GO TO THE LUNA!!!!! TRUST US!

Next stop was the Shabankareh homestead in Houston!!!! We had quite a day ahead of us as the next night we were playing TWO shows on one night! Luckily we were fortified with kolaches and doughnuts in the morning and a trip to Lonestar Steakhouse in the evening courtesy of Mom & Pop Shabankareh (WE LOVE YOU)!

The night was awesome! We first hit up Dunn Brothers Coffee for an all-ages show! We pretty much blew the roof off as they are used to acoustic acts, but everyone seemed to love the show… even Ashley’s little sis helped us sell merchandise and we had a pack of knee-high skankers dancing like madmen! YAY! It was so cute we could hardly play for the adorableness in the crowd that night!

We hurried up and packed up, making it to the 19th Hole for something completely different! A fabulous rock club with a great metal atmosphere awaited us. We didn’t know how we would go over with the crowd, but they loved us! It is always great to feel like you can play with confidence in front of really diverse crowds and get a positive reaction. We can’t wait to return to Houston. Man we love you guys!!!

Never a band to give up early, we headed to the late night arcade and bar filled up on Lone Star beer (hey, this is Texas! And again, we had a designated driver) to play Dance Dance Revolution and Air Hockey until the place shut down! Ahhhh! What a night! Luckily we had a great place to crash with Ashley’s folks and everyone slept soundly!

We headed out to the Renaissance Faire the next day all dressed in The Local Skank shirts! It was really funny! Out of all of the outrageous costumes (and racy ones) we got the most stares, catcalls, and questions! Talk about free publicity! We feasted again on turkey legs, shot arrows, listened to Irish Folk tunes, boffered each other (look it up, creep) threw axes  and Dani even won a pet dragon! We passed out a ton of CDs to the Ren Folk (too bad they will have to wait hundreds of years before CD technology is invented!) After a fun time, we bid Houston adieu and wearily headed home.

Our big day at VooDoo Festival was fast approaching, so there wasn’t much time to rest! We got straight back and started practicing again for the big day, doing tons of press and generally having excited jitters! We decided it would be hilarious to dress as Disney Princesses for the show. (An excited audience member shouted during our set “IT’S IRONY!”… and, yes it was!) Everyone loved the costumes and really enjoyed our performance!

Before the big day we totally got treated like rockstars for the entire weekend! Playing the fest was great, but just getting to hang out, rub elbows, and enjoy being a VooDoo performer was really special for us! Of course we handled it in traditional “skank” style by giggling for three days straight! We even got VIP seating for Muse where we stood near the actor who played Draco Malfoy in the Harry Potter series! This is the only pic we have below (his head is the spiky one behind us!)

We certainly can’t thank The Bingo Show enough for hosting us. It was a dream realized, and an amazing experience for us. We talked about how these last two years have been so fortunate for us, and how this band has brought together life-long friends from totally different backgrounds to make something that (we feel) is very special. The Bingo Show allowed us to share our vision with an even wider audience than we dreamed! Up And Up Skanks!

The amount of amazing pics taken at this show certainly cannot be contained within this blog, but if you want to see more pictures from the show, visit our gallery on facebook!

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=243606&id=171476307540

For those of you that couldn’t make it to VooDoo Festival we will leave this blog installment with a taste of what we did! Enjoy!  Stay tuned for a brand new website in the works that will appear at this location soon! We have seen the early version and it is amazing! YAY!

With the sense of humor we have, we wanted to immediately visit all of the sites in video. And we did! After groggily getting up and getting ourselves together we headed out to the place where Dani and Moody met! Guitar Center! We met all kinds of cool people like Pants, Chopper, Jay Clark and Jay Anderson! Chopper even offered to sit in with us for our set after Dani’s wedding! Jay Anderson’s band played with us as well!

Before we headed out to see more of Cleveland, Dani and Ashley played DJ! (We will be doing the real thing soon so stay tuned! The Local Skank has new party announcements coming up!)

We spent the rest of the day going to the Rock N Roll Museum (we got to see Joan Jett’s car and Johnny Cash’s tourbus!) going out to the flats, and looking (unsuccessfully) for a wedding candle that was located a few days later before heading back to Dani’s for the wedding rehearsal. Talk about a blast! I don’t think we giggled that hard the whole tour! Even though it was a long day, the party hadn’t even started yet! We all walked down to the beach for a swim in Lake Eerie (which was very beautiful!) We swam and giggled for another 4 hours or so on the beach until we were absolutely worn out and it was well past the midnight hour. (The boys talked about how building bonfires and killing your own food such as yaks gave you more chest hair or something which sent us into even more hysterics.) In an additional note, evidently Darryl and Melissa look really similar by firelight, but that is another story altogether.

Thursday was dedicated to setting up for the big event the next day. We travelled out to a Slovenian community center nestled in a mountainous region outside of Cleveland. It was absolutely breathtaking! Complete with a small, picturesque village, a bacci ball court, and a hall and pavillion that looked like we had been transported to The Black Forest! We set up tables, arranged flowers and got everything ready for the ceremony. We couldn’t wait! We even had our own “Skank” table for the reception!

The black and pink color scheme was absolutely stunning!

That night we all got to bed early! The next day was going to be crazy. We got up and all had our hair done at a local salon. What a relief to get pampered from time to time! We knew that the rest of the tour would involve us trying to fix our make-up in tiny bathrooms in poorly lit mirrors and trying not to immediately sweat it off…

When the makeup was done, we raced back to the house to put on our outfits! We showed some “skank” solidarity by all choosing the same dress to wear to the wedding. This pic was taken right before we left to send Dani off as the first married member of the band!

We all got in the limo, and headed out! The ceremony was absolutely beautiful! All of the brides and groomsmen looked so handsome! Pants (for whom the song is named, with the pink mohawk, decided to dye his hair right before the ceremony, with Melissa finishing it up in the women’s bathroom right before he ran out!)

Ashley, Darryl and Hannah even did a “second-line” afterwards as all of the guests filed out. It was certainly a hit.

Surprises kept coming as we were treated to a dinner of schnitzel, potatoes and vegtables and a full buffet of pastries including strudel! Also passed around was a sweet, Slovenian wine that was accompanied with cheers of “Na zdravje!”

This will give you an idea of the alcohol consumption at the wedding party’s table…. They are no joke.

The bride and groom had a Slovenian “unveiling” ceremony where the groom removed the brides’ veil, handed it to her mother and replaced it with a single red carnation to signify their bond as man and wife.

The ceremonial festivities were accompanied by some traditional Polka music from the region, and we were quickly swept up by members of the wedding party to dance. We figured, “Hey, it’s polka. How hard can it be?” Well, if you have never tried to dance the polka before you are in for a surprise! First you spin around in a circle until you are winded. When you think that you can’t go anymore, the music speeds up double time. Now that you are certain you are going to pass out, your partner spins you backwards! At double speed. We looked around us to see couples more than twice our age dancing it with no problem! We are just going to blame it on that Slovenian wine! “Na zdravje!”

The party was only getting started! The featured bands were Cincinnati ska superstars, The Broadview Gutters and The Local Skank, of course! Everyone was really excited to see Dani perform and this was the perfect opportunity for everyone to really let their hair down. The Broadview Gutters got the ball rolling with originals and the most unlikely ska covers – everything from Journey to Iron Maiden – but the highlight of the evening was their rendition of “Africa” by Toto. This was a demand from the bride and groom and boy did they deliver! Everyone was on the dance floor singing their hearts out!

We performed next, and were joined by guitar shredder, Chopper! We had a great time and Dani even wore her wedding dress for the performance!

Estimating that it was well after midnight before we left, and several final cries of “Pants loves The Local Skank!” we made our way groggily to the hotel. We got one heckova night sleep, even though the blankets in the hotel room had a thread-count of roughly four.

The next day was dedicated to getting ready for our show at The Phantasy! We were really excited for the event, and sure enough, the rumors were true! The club had a pirate ship on the inside! YAY!

Though it was hot in the venue (It is not cooler up  north than it is in the South, y’all.) and the drinks were a bit steep (o.k., so we are used to New Orleans pricing which is close to free), the show was awesome, and the sound guy had us in stitches the whole time! It was his birthday, so we even did a rendition of “Happy Birthday” for him! We also got a chance to debut our glorious merch table in it’s full form! (We have a lot of stuff!)

In addition, Moody wore his commemorative “I went all the way to Cleveland to get married and for a honeymoon all I got was to be the merch guy and driver for my wife’s band shirt!”

The other bands that played with us that night were amazing too! Modern Celtic punkers Craic and Ska sweeties, The Shams had us dancing all night long! The Shams even did a ska cover of “Blitzkrieg Bop!”

The next day we said some emotional goodbyes to Dani and Moody’s family who had all been so good to us. They treated us as if we were family too. There can’t be a luckier band on the planet than us to have such great people support us. Thank you guys so much. We can’t wait to take advantage of your hospitality again soon, LOL! We had one more stop to make before we headed out to Michigan…

THE CHRISTMAS STORY HOUSE!!!!!!

YES! The amazing movie that TBS shows every year 24 hours a day during Christmas was filmed right there in Cleveland! We couldn’t wait. We were thrilled to take the tour but had no idea of the wonderland that awaited us! Not only can you touch everything in the house and re-enact all of the scenes in the movie, but our host was none other than Ian Petrella who played Randy Parker! We gave him some swag after finding out that he was a bass player for a rock band too! He was an amazingly nice guy and took a picture with all of us!

If you ever get out to Cleveland, we can’t suggest taking this tour enough!

Moody and Darryl opened a Red Ryder BB Gun…

Dani discovered the infamous “leg lamp”…

Hannah got to wash Darryl’s mouth out with Life Buoy Soap (though it could be argued that several members of our band need it WAY more than he does)…

And Ashley stood on the stairwell with the saddest bunny head ever.

With heavy hearts, we left Cleveland and headed out to our next destination….  The Factory in Rochester!

Day One: Monday July 5th.

4:30 am – I am furiously trying to get home from North Carolina. I had been to the Heavy Rebel Weekender (a rockabilly convention that hopefully The Local Skank will be part of next year) and I missed my flight check-in by five minutes. Fortunately, they had a flight leaving one hour later that I managed to get a seat on. Unfortunately, the lady at the counter also noticed that my license had expired. Oh, yay. The horrible news about this is that I had to get in my van and drive to Nashville in approximately 6 hours and it was a federal holiday, so there was no way that I was going to get it updated by the time we left. The strange thing about me is that I am generally really meticulous about everything. I had everything fixed on the vehicles, had tour iteneraries for everyone and even had specs and policies for each venue printed out. Ironically, the most obvious of tasks was left undone. Now it was too late. Luckily, I have several responsible drivers with me that I trusted. All of them had experience driving cross-country, often on the road with musicians themselves, so they took over the duties, and very well, I might add.

We packed up around noon, chit-catting in the driveway as usual, putting us behind schedule, but what can you expect from a bunch of giggly, excited girls! Darryl and Moody (Dani’s fiancee’) drove separately to escape some of the chocolate and trashy magazines that were strewn about as we drove. Evidently, boys travel in much more silence than girls do! LOL!

Our goal was to get to Nashville by nightfall so we could enjoy some of the sights, but we took our time stopping for sandwiches half-way (we tried to go to  Rojo’s in Alabama, but it is closed on Monday). We will get there one day! It is one of our band goals!  If you are unfamiliar with the restauraunt check out the video below and tell me you wouldn’t want to go too!

We arrived at our hotel (one of the two nights we got one one the whole journey) around 8pm, hung out at the pool and got a well-earned night’s sleep before the madness began.

The next morning we got up early to go see some Nashville sights! We were told to go check out the Parthenon and the park, so we loaded up to sight-see before we drove to Cincinnati for our first show of the tour.

The Parthenon and it’s grounds are really odd. The actual structure is a replica of the original in Athens that was built for Tennessee’s Centennial Exposition. Therefore the park in which it is held is called Centennial Park. Kay. With me so far? Anyway, it houses a huge statue of Athena and replicas of original statues also from Greece. We started calling Nashville the “City of Replicas” after that. At one point, Moody even doubted the authenticity of P.F. Chang’s but that is another story entirely. They also had really weird statuary like a giant clam that seemed to lead into a cave (insert jokes here) and a pirate ship of sorts. We got several comments under these pics when we posted them to the tune of “WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?!?!?” I researched it and, frankly, I still don’t know. If any of you know the history of “THE CLAM” please let us know. Keep your bawdy humor to yourself.

Here is a pic of us on the ship!

And in front of the Faux-Parthenon:

My personal favorite pic of the day was Dani re-creating a Greek Tragedy on the steps with (what we hope was) spilled Kool-Aid or something.

Dani brainstormed and figured out that if we went downtown we could have a few hours to poke around the city before we had to get back in the van and make it to Cincinnati, so we piled back in and headed out. We looked in all the shops, marveling at the custom boots that we certainly will go back and purchase when we hit the big time, LOL!

I had my eye on some American Flag Patterned cowboy boots but I have to stick with my worn out Motorcycle boots instead!

We visited the Charlie Daniels’ museum where Ashley purchased a t-shirt that read “I have a honky tonk badonkadonk!” The highlight was this little guy, though! How creepy is he?

Darryl had just enough time to mug with Elvis before we had to get going!

Well, that isn’t entirely true. He also had enough time to harass our waitress for more beverages. In his defense, it was a very hot day.

Off to Cincinnati!

We played at a great little bar called The Blue Rock Tavern with a enthusiastic young punk band called No Chance. For a Tuesday night, the crowd was small, but really into it! The staff was great too! They loaded down Hannah with some onion rings and tolerated our habit of trying to walk outside with our beers!

Dani got really frustrated and recorded a video about the whole experience. Although she is from Cleveland, she got really comfortable with New Orleans’ lax drinking laws! The funny thing about this video is that it was evidently watched by several people in Cleveland, including some law officials that asked us about our “getting in trouble” in Cincinnati. Wow! The Skank is notorious! (Well, maybe a little…)

Needless to say, we got out of Cincinnati just fine and headed immediately to Cleveland, arriving at about 5am. The story will pick up here….in a few days…stay tuned!