It seems we barely had a moment to catch our breath before we flew out, up and over to the UK, caught a train to Brussels and met up with our tour shepherd, Stefan, who reliably escorted us from vista to vista in a large Sprinter van. Halfway through, he tagged out and our old chum Kelly Schnetz climbed into the driver seat and sped us off on part deux of our elongated tour. Journeys through the UK, Scotland, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, France, Switzerland, Belgium, Germany and Holland ensued, and though we enjoyed it all, we are now very thoroughly exhausted. Thanks to all the kind ears and smiling faces who consented to join us for all the shows. It was epic, and I'm at a loss to recap all the tidbits of two months spent moving about. Suffice to say, we learned a lot, laughed a little and ate a lot of cheese.

Along with all of this hoo-ha, we now have a new album out of songs not written by me.
It's called "Thing Of The Past" and it looks like this:

It's in stores, on iTunes, all that stuff, and we'll of course have copies with us at shows. Vinyl is out as well and it's a beautiful gate-fold in the states and slim and trim over in the UK and Europe. There was a nice little write up in the NY Times about it. That was a surprise.

We made some inroads into the blogosphere a little while back, with a quick little clip prepared by Naturalismo and a mix I prepped for the site When You Awake. Before all this galavanting began, I had the pleasure of dropping by the offices of Revolver and recording a bit of Q & A with Uli and Potsie. Fun stuff, and apologies for the delay in taking note
of it all.

Below are some assorted pictures courtesy of Sanders and Brent. Thanks guys!

This is the bear tea-party we got invited to. Nice bunch of bears...very civilized.

Plaque on the wall of the BBC studio we tracked our Rob Da Bank session in.

Vetiver and Birds Of Avalon at the end of a lovely night at the Dulcimer in Manchester.

Flat Rachel takes Paris by storm!

Otto gladly reenacts the drunken mugging attempted on Brent upon our return to Lisbon, and
the sight of it's occurrence, two years later. Fun times!

Hanging in the padded VIP room at Porto's lovely
Passos Manuel, with our new friends from Madrid,
Hola a todo el mundo.

Sunset, Stonehenge

Well tonight is the first show of a short tour we're doing with one of America's best songwriters,
Gary Louris. I don't know about you, but his group The Jayhawks, released two albums i used to listen to a whole lot, 'Hollywood Town Hall' and 'Tomorrow The Green Grass'. This tour is in support of his recently released solo debut, 'Vagabonds', a great album featuring many friends of ours, like Jonathan Wilson, Thom Monahan and Chris Robinson. Otto Hauser plays drums on the record and i even managed to swoop by and sing on a couple tunes. We're honored and excited to be invited along!

Anyway, we've been rehearsing for a few days up in Minneapolis, and have learned a ton of Gary's tunes, as we will be both opening these shows AND backing up Gary during his set. Plenty of stuff off the new album alongside classic Jayhawks numbers and a few choice covers. Vetiver will be debuting a bunch of new songs we're trying to work out for the next record. The talented Eric Heywood is also sitting in on pedal steel and guitar during Gary's set, so these shows should be a real treat. Catch us while you can, if you can!

Singing songs at Gary's. Those pretzels have peanut butter in them! Yum!

photos by Sanders Trippe

Greetings and happy new year everybody!

Just dropping a note to let you know that along with the patch of Pine Spikes we have growing in our backyard, we also have a new 12" in stores, available from Gnomonsong and FatCat, featuring remixes by Neighbors of two songs from our last album, To Find Me Gone. Don't let the fact that it took so damn long for the thing to come out dissuade you from hunting it down and allowing it to boggle your mind a little bit.

I have just approved the master and am finishing up the cover art for the next Vetiver
full-length album, which should see the light of day on Gnomonsong sometime in May.
It is an album of covers, some songs we've been performing live, and others that we just
admire and wanted to try our hand at. I think it came out pretty well.

At some point soon we'll be giving this website a bit of shine and polish and debuting
a couple of songs from the album. I find the whole enterprise of maintaining this site
a bit more than i can handle, so i'll need to enlist the aid of a few friends to get us there,
but at least we're on our way.

Lastly, we'll be posting some tour dates soon. It wasn't looking like we had plans for
playing live right away, but that may be changing. More to come...

We also just did a short run with our friends The Shins. Those guys are the best! Thanks for taking us along with you, having us share the stage with you at Merriweather and Terminal 5 and also sharing hot tubs and mechanical bulls with us as well. Good times. Thanks as always to the lovely Alissa Anderson for the photos and moving the merch. You rule! And another big hug to Eric Johnson, who gave us the Johnson guarantee: night after night of complete and total amazingness. Thanks Eric!

Also another huge, loving thanks to the Franks and their amazing restaurant in Brooklyn, at which you should all go eat. A moonbow in the sky, and time flying by with friends...what more could you ask for?!

Lastly, we never would have looked as good as we did (see photo below) without the fine threadwork and fancypants provided us by the ever-classy folks at Loden Dager. They make great clothes! Thanks Paul, Alex, Oliver, et al. We look better now.

At the moment, I am on the road with Devendra Banhart, Otto is playing and recording with a bunch of folks, and Sanders and Brent are living large in North Carolina, storing up the energy of the sun. I'll be mixing a new record of songs we recorded which were written by other people besides myself (they're calling those "cover" songs these days!) in December which we'll hopefully release sometime in the Spring. Early next year a 12" remix of two songs from our last record will finally be available...better late than never, methinks. I've been told it sounds like Depeche Mode, which makes me very happy.

Hope your end of the year tidies itself up nicely and if anything interesting comes up we'll do our best to make mention of it right here.

All Photos by Alissa Anderson except where noted.

Jivin' at the Five

Riffing "See You Tonight" With The Shins..........Photo by Virgina Morrow

Easy There!

Yes!

How Not To Ride The Bull

Singing Opera, Riding Bull

Passing Along My WristStrong® Bracelet To Someone More Famous Than Me!

And From James To Kim...The Saga Continues!..........Photo by Virginia Morrow

Looking Good In Loden Dager

Eating Gemelli At Frankies

Frank Killing It On Harmonica

photo of Pingvellir by Krummi Bjorgvinsson

Big thanks to Krummi, Frosty, Raven and Benni!
An early arrival in Iceland, and rainy grey day in Reykjavík, eventually gives way to a unbelievable
walk around the grounds of Þingvellir National Park and a soothing soak in the sulfury waters of
the Blue Lagoon. Tonight we play at a new venue in town, Organ, and then off to London for the
Field Day Festival in Victoria Park.

photo by Krummi Bjorgvinsson

If you were to spend many days staring out the windows at the wonderful studio called
the Hangar in Sacramento, as we have and as our great producer and engineer Thom
Monahan does, many weeks out of the year, this would be your view. Alissa snapped this perfectly simple shot of the train tracks and a bluebuilding nearby.

Vetiver holed up at the Hangar for a couple of weeks in March to record some songs by other songwriters that we love. We covered a lot of ground, but still have a ways to go to complete an album. There has been talk of releasing an e.p. of some of the tunes later this fall, along with a couple of remixes of songs from our last album, which Thom and I and Otto have been working on, off and on for a while now. Thom and I finished mixing about 5 tracks and these remixes recently, so we're working to put together this aforementioned e.p. now.

We're also headed down to Buenos Aires to play a festival curated by Juana Molina, Nuevos Aires Folk 07 on June 12. We'll be recording a little with Juana and just enjoying the wonderful hospitality and friendly atmosphere of our kind friends in Buenos Aires. We're all very much looking forward to the journey.

Also, for our friends and fans in the Bay Area, we have a couple of shows coming up in California at the start of July, including a show in San Francisco at the Independent, with our friends the Papercuts and the Dry Spells, on July 3. Don't miss it, as we've no certain plans to play again in the area any time soon.

Our lovely Alissa Anderson has a solo show of her photographs opening
on February 28th at Triple Base Gallery in San Francisco. If you're out that way, don't miss it.

It occurs to me that quite a lot has happened since I last updated
this site. Vetiver toured the UK with Juana Molina, Vashti Bunyan and
Adem, as well as playing with Adem and Vashti again at Carnegie Hall
in New York City, and travelling up and down the east coast with Vashti
in February. We can't say enough good things about everybody we've
been fortunate enough to spend time with, and all the wonderful people
who helped us along the way. Better perhaps to put up a few pictures to
smile upon and see for yourselves.

Open wide!
photo by Mr. Automatic

Vetiver discovers Christmas Crackers at Vashti & Al's
photo by Brent Dunn

Juana wins!
photo by Brent Dunn

Vashti singing with Vetiver in Charlottesville, VA
photo by Alissa Anderson

Vashti and the gang weaving their web
photo by Alissa Anderson

Vetiver dim the 40 Watt in Athens, GA
photo by Alissa Anderson

What a thrill! Andy meets Michael Lachowski of Pylon!
photo by Alissa Anderson

Kevin rocks with the Sound Burger in back room at the Mercy Lounge
photo by Alissa Anderson (for more photos from tour, go here)

Well the end of the year is nigh upon us! Where did the the whole damn thing go?
Vetiver is gearing up for some shows of a different color: a collaborative tour with Vashti Bunyan, Adem and Juana Molina in January, throughout the UK, and a performance at Carnegie Hall in February, which we hear involves Vashti and Adem, as well as Devendra, CocoRosie and Cibelle.

Bookending these events, we've been invited to join Two Gallants for a pair of shows in San Francisco to close out the year, and a week-long tour of the East Coast in February with Vashti. Hopefully after that, we will be able to rest and regroup for some recordings....but that's getting ahead of ourselves a bit.

Thanks to everyone, everywhere who helped us out along the road this year, and came to our shows. Thanks to Piccadilly Records in the UK for selecting To Find Me Gone as their top album of the year...we'll see you in a few weeks!

And of course, thanks to everyone who keeps writing us comments here and on our MySpace page. It's encouraging to hear what you have to say.

Best Wishes and enjoy the year's end...

well so much for steady blogging!
9 shows left of our European tour, bellies full of squid ink and cerveza, we're about to roll on through Switzerland and Italy, as we make our way to Berlin for the first every SOLID Festival! very excited are we.

a big shout out of love and affection to everyone who has come out to see
us play on this tour. so many smiling faces, special moments....from the humid walls of a Bordeaux wine cellar (yay El Inca!), to the drunken streets of Glasgow on a Saturday night...from the three dimensional poster awaiting us in Paris (thanks Jo!) to a lovely foggy night's view of Porto....a crowded whooping scene at the Spitz (thanks for coming, Bert and Loren!) and truly magical sets at Whelan's in Dublin and Moby Dick in Madrid, it's all been a gas. not a stinker in the bunch. Kelly has been driving like the madman he is....6 hour journeys somehow only seem to take 4 and seemingly untraverseable streets open up for us. how DOES he do it? yet further proof that if it ain't Dutch, it ain't much.

i know i'm forgetting so many things, but i gotta write something to clear the cobwebs off this blog. here's a few photos to complete the picture....and again, really...we've been having such a great time. thanks everyone!

Anyway, Otto and I are in London now, jet-lagged and up at midnight chatting with friends
and getting ready to do a day of radio performances before heading over to Dublin to
meet up with Sanders and Brent and start the tour. Dates are up on the site, so be on the
lookout, and thanks for dropping by....more soon!

Photo: Zach, Otto and Andy on the long road...photo by Alissa

Photo: Oh yeah, karaoke time...drunken, red-eyed conspiring in Charlotte....photo by Carmen

Oh yeah, if you care to see more photos from our U.S. tour, just check out Alissa's Flickr page
here.

Vetiver on KPFA

Photo: Andy and Jason getting blurry at KPFA

at the moment, everyone in Vetiver is just winding down and getting ready to head out again in a few weeks for a tour of some of the states. it's been a while since we've played some of these places, many of which we've never been to before, so...we look forward to it. more to come....

Photo: Alissa and Otto at Limekiln Falls

Vetiver May Europe tour

Wed 10th May London, UK show at 93 Feet East
Thu 11th May Bristol, UK at Trinity Centre w/ Howie Gelb Gospel Singers
Fri 12th May ATP Fest- no show
Sat 13th May ATP Fest- no show
Sun 14th May- Rye, UK -All Tomorrow’s Part Festival
Mon 15th May  off
Tue 16th May Strasbourg, France- La Laterie w/ Devendra Banhart
Wed 17th May Lyon, France – Le Transbourdeur w/ Devendra Banhart
Thu 18th May Toulouse, France- Le Ramier w/ Devendra Banhart
Fri 19th May off
Sat 20th May Paris, France- Le Bataclan w/ Devendra Banhart
Sun 21st May Nijmegen, NL at Merlejin w/ Tom Brosseau
Mon 22nd May Brussels, Belgium at AB Club w/ Tom Brosseau
Tue 23rd May Rotterdam, NL at Rotown w/ Tom Brosseau
Wed 24th May Utrecht, NL at Ekko  w/ Tom Brosseau
Thu 25th May Copenhagen, DK at Loppen w/ Drowsy
Fri 26th May Stockholm, S at Debasew w/ Merz & Drowsy
Sat 27th May Oslo, N at Blaa w/ Drowsy
Sun 28th May Gothenburg, S at Sticky Finger  w/ Drowsy

Hope to see you there! oh and our website is currently undergoing a
redesign, so pardon the lackluster attention we've been giving it.