To celebrate their 10-year anniversary this summer, Explosions In The Sky will be playing four shows with dates in Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago as well as a rare hometown performance in Austin. Speical guests scheduled to play the anniversary shows are: No Age (Los Angeles), Jason Lytle of Grandaddy (New York), The Octopus Project (Austin), Eluvium (Los Angeles), Constantines (New York), and The Wooden Birds (Austin). Following these dates, EITS will be occupy the special guest slot themselves, playing Broken Social Scene annual Toronto Island festival on 7/11, before heading to Europe in September.
In February 1999, three longtime friends from West Texas went to a pizza place in Austin, Texas, for a prearranged meeting with a young man from Illinois. The Illinoisan had just moved to Austin, and he had put up a flyer that caught the interest of the others. They ate pizza and discussed movies and arcana. They also decided to meet the next day with their various instruments (two guitars, bass, and drums). This happened, and over the coming months they picked a band name, then picked a better band name, then wrote and recorded an album. That album, called How Strange, Innocence, was largely out of tune, but the band members didn’t really notice at the time. They optimistically printed 300 copies, and gave most of them away. It turned out they really liked playing together, so they kept doing so.
EITS drummer Chris Hrasky says of one of their first live performances: “In the summer of 1999, Michael (James, bass player) and I were working for the Gallup poll, manning the phones. They announced an employee talent show. We signed up. We shared the stage with a Michael Jackson impersonator, an interpretive dancer and, I think, a magician. I remember that my drumset sort of fell apart about halfway through our show. After it was over, someone came up to us and said ‘that was the best heavy metal I’ve ever heard.’â€
A friend of theirs (in the American Analog Set) sent a recording of one of their live shows to a record label in Baltimore (Temporary Residence, Ltd.), and that label offered to put out albums for the band. The band agreed. A year later they put out a second album (2001’s Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Die, Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Live Forever). They began to tour often, all over the world. In 2003 another album came (The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place), and in 2007 they put out their most recent, All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone. They are shocked to see their 10-year anniversary on the horizon.
TOUR DATES AND SPECIAL GUESTS
6/27 Los Angeles, CA @ Hollywood Palladium with No Age and Eluvium
http://www.myspace.com/nonoage
http://www.myspace.com/eluviumtaken
6/30 New York, NY @ Central Park Summer Stage with Constantines
http://www.myspace.com/constantines
7/2 Chicago, IL @ Congress Theatre with Jason Lytle (of Grandaddy)
http://www.myspace.com/jasonlytle
7/4 Austin, TX @ Stubb’s Waller Creek with The Octopus Project and The Wooden Birds
http://www.myspace.com/theoctopusproject
http://www.myspace.com/thewoodenbirds
7/11 Toronto, ON @ Toronto Olympic Island with Broken Social Scene, Apostle of Hustle and Beach House, and more
http://www.ticketmaster.ca/event/10004289D17094F5?artistid=875957&majorcatid=10001&minorcatid=1
http://www.myspace.com/brokensocialscene
9/9 Antwerp, Belgium @ Ampitheatre Riviernhof
9/11 Dorset, UK @ End of the Road Festival
For ticket information, visit these EITS links: http://www.explosionsinthesky.com / http://www.myspace.com/explosionsinthesky