Saturday, August 09, 2008

we couldn't think of a better way to spend our summer than holed-up at the sunset lodge studio, watching the games of the XXIX Olympiad while finishing our album.

Monday, June 30, 2008

There's some deep shit going on over here.
A week ago, Ariel (featured here) charged through the night, laying down bass lick after bass lick. Who knows what time it is in this picture!



We've been keeping a running record of our achievements. Ariel is represented by the stars of David.


Just got back from a week off where we played a Fool's Gold show

and organized the bass and drum tracks.

Saturday, June 21, 2008

"In the Studio" A BAND IN PROFILE:

Lewis Pesacov, mid-muse, in the seat of power.


Big Search, deep in the night.


Garret Ray, blew a fuse at some point. hasn't moved a muscle in days.


Though we've all lived among them for over a week now, Ariel seems to have some sort of psychic connection to the roto toms..

Thursday, June 19, 2008

The recording of our next album "Person to Person" has commenced!! This past weekend we dug in at New King Sound Studios in the Hollywood hills to gather vibes and swim in the jacuzzi..



The jams are being translated by this thing.. last used by the lead singer of a little band called "Megapuss".


and we're using these.. a lot. (recently purchased at the Rose Bowl Flea Market!)

Wednesday, June 04, 2008

::: 'you gotta move'
we, FB are totally excited to announce that we've officially gone into business with Secretly Canadian! we feel quite lucky to be part of such a dynamic roster of acts and are very much looking forward to our next release, which we've just began to shape:

'Person to Person'
tentative titles in no particular order:

-are you worried now?
-betrayal at the market place
-blood oranges
-can't keep time
-early warnings
-flyer's fall
-keep it in mind
-lion's share
-lookin' for a pad
-lost coming down
-old news
-palace in the wind
-put a lid on your lies
-see us home
-that old sun
-things we'll never be
-wait in this chair
-wander aimlessly
-winter games
-wrong way
-uncertain kind
-vacationing people

Monday, June 02, 2008

Friday, May 23, 2008


'lover, lover, lover' by l. cohen filmed in some hotel in austin texas.


as we near completion of the writing stage for 'person to person' we decided to put our money where our mouths are and unveil some of the new ones live for the first time at the Neighborhood Nursery School Benefit alongside the beautiful Silverlake reservoir- needless to say the children were totally enthralled...

Saturday, April 26, 2008

::: 'loser at the top of his game'
we all went out last night to catch the mudcrutch show at the troubadour to do a little research on what MP is gonna be like in about 30 years...and i gotta say, shit's looking up! through veils of reefage petty's singing never sounded better, not to mention how he killed it on the hofner club bass. campbell reinvented the b-bender for me, benmont tench hit the sweet spots on the b-3 like no one my age can! oh yeah, those other old dudes were tight too! their new tune 'scare easy' could be the best 'single' i've heard in years (does the chorus remind you of a neil young tune?)...

Wednesday, April 09, 2008

"From Boston to Austin: a Photographic Journey"

Well, we've come out the other side of the rabbit hole, other wise known as our "Two Weeks Across America Tour" with St. Vincent, and then some. Much thanks to the St. Vincent crew for the open arms and "champaign campaigns" that raged across the mid-west and northeast. Unfortunately we do not have much photographic evidence that we ever went out on this tour, as, along with any warm articles of clothing, we forgot our cameras upon departure! But I did happen to purchase a new gadget, known as a "disposable digital camera" (what kind of science fiction, year 3,000 bullshit is this?!) at a pharmacy in Virginia. I used this camera to document the week it took Lewis and I to travel to Austin, Texas to meet up with the rest of the band for "you know what" in mid-March.
Much thanks to the Stax Museum, in Memphis, TN, for sending the camera back to me
after I forgot it there!

Our fist stop was in Charlottesville, Virgina with our old college buddy and certified luminary David Baker Benson and his family. With no day off for the boys in FB, we proceeded to be inducted into DBB's band for two nights in a row of open mic performances. We played the material from D.B.B.'s new album in progress, "Cups". The band title? "D.B.B. Plays Cups"! This confused a few open mic hosts when reading from the short list of obscure performers... Also, I must admit that the rhythm section had just emerged from a cloud of weed smoke which had plumed in hiding from a fleet of bicycle police patrolling the campus of U.V.A., on the prowl for delinquents, which
on this night, were we. This was the 2nd night of our 2 night local tour. The 1st night (played to an audience of 4 random and indifferent souls) remains un-captured and legendary.



This is me on our 1st attempt to visit the Stax Museum in Memphis. Memphis is a strange and wildly depressing city, but full of rock history that drew us to its bosom. The museum was closed the day after a huge snow storm shook the state silly, but they forgot to tell FB!


This is me at SUN Studios in Memphis with "The King's" original microphone! nuff said..


Lew and I reminiscing about what could have been had we been of age in the late
50's.


Lew in the backyard of Graceland, listening to the guided tour.. "Elvis this.." "Elvis that.." It was awesome.


There were wells of tears behind those shades..


Ok, well that's all that's fit to print from my not so great disposable camera.
I unfortunately left it at the Stax Museum when we went there the following day and did not catalogue our time at "the crossroads" (where we made certain "transactions" with "someone"... which turned out to be the cashier at the quickie mart that's there now) or our time in New Orleans which was a filthy orgy of street-drinking and 311 fan dodging! As fate would have it, we were there during the same week 311 was holding it's annual concert on March 11th (3/11)! It was only march 9th and there were mobs in the street with dyed green dread locks blasting their tracks! I didn't even know they were still a band.. yet every bathroom line held a debate about the band's possible set list, or "what's your dream set list?" very surreal, especially after drinking the unearthly local drinks with titles like "hurricane" and "grenade".
Anyway, maybe its better we had no camera. We probably looked awful. Props to the Voodoo Museum!

As for being back in LA, we are hard at work developing schemes for the next album, which we'll start recording in May, playing a show with comedians at the Troubadour and working on our various other projects. Lewis and Luke Top are in the studio as we speak putting down horn arrangements and percussion on the FOOL's GOLD recordings. There is a 7" in the works for FG, and a show with The ENTRANCE BAND at the end of the month @ the ECHO. I am playing some BIG SEARCH shows at the end of the month with PETER MOREN, and also with the new band GLASSER led by Cameron Mesirow.

Hope all is well.

mp

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Monday, February 25, 2008

did you see the total lunar eclipse on feb. 20th? we had the ideal vantage point whilst driving through western wyoming from seattle to minneapolis. we were on a vastly empty, snowy and lonesome highway when the night sky went completely dark. it was like a combination of these:


Monday, February 04, 2008

vote for FOREIGN BORN for 'Artist of the Month' on the deli magazine blog!!

VOTE HERE!

but more importantly...

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Obama is within 2 points of
Senator Hillary Clinton in California in the latest independent Field
Poll. He has won the endorsements of Senators Kerry and Kennedy, labor
unions, environmentalist groups and many others. This election is the
turning point for our generation. Obama is our best chance for
stopping the war and solving the problems that began 8 years ago.

And he can win in California, just like he won in Iowa, when nobody
thought he could. But he can only win if we get out there and vote.

So please, repost this message and tell everyone you know to get out
there and vote for him on Tuesday.

Obama for President!





Friday, February 01, 2008

FB in '08!
hope this note finds everybody well on their way in the new year!
after a bit of a winter hibernation, we, fb, are all rested-up and ready for another year. we've been working on shit tons of new
material and are ready to get back into getting back into the studio
this spring time to sculpt album no. 2 (under the working title
'Person to Person') to be released autumn this year. we're gonna be
kicking around some of these new jams on this upcoming tour, so make
sure not to miss out on the real time coalescent phase...

FOREIGN BORN on tour with ST. VINCENT

Feb. 15- Echoplex- Los Angeles, California
Feb. 16- Velvet Jones- Santa Barbara, California
Feb. 17- Great American Music Hall- San Francisco, California
Feb. 18- Doug Fir Lounge- Portland, Oregon
Feb. 19- Neumo's- Seattle, Washington
Feb. 22- Cedar Cultural Center- Minneapolis, Minnesota
Feb. 23- Schuba's- Chicago, Illinois (early show and late show)
Feb. 24- Ohio State U Wexner Ctr.- Columbus, Ohio
Feb. 25- Andy Warhol Museum- Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Feb. 26- The Rock & Roll Hotel- DC, Washington DC
Feb. 27- The First Unitarian Church- Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Feb. 29- Bowery Ballroom- NYC
Mar. 01- Middle East- Cambridge, Massachusetts

yrs-
-fb
p.s.: wanted to clue you in on the two page photo of FB in the February issue of GQ mag- should be on news stands now...ha.

Thursday, January 03, 2008

:::
In Memoriam Evan Farrell

However counter-intuitive as it may seem, it's usually much harder than one would imagine to foster a positive communal interaction between musicians in bands while on the road together. We've been in the practice of regularly inviting members of the bands we tour with to sing, clap and bang on any bit of percussion along with us on our song "Union Hall" for sometime now. During our US tour with Rogue Wave in the Fall of 2006, then bass player for the group, Evan Farrell joined in with us by about the third show or so- very early on. As the tour progressed Evan ended up writing his own harmonies which I still to sing today. By the middle of the tour, Evan joined us on stage for two songs, 1/3 of our complete set, playing guitar with us on our version of the Townes Van Zandt tune "Waitin' Around to Die." The end of the tour saw us all just jamming backstage at night after every show- for which the final show in Santa Cruz, California saw an extended all night session at one of his friend's near by home.

More than just rising above and beyond our idea of a fellow touring musician, I think it was Evan's humor that really got us. He'd sometimes speak in this loud old-drunken-hobo voice that would really make us all just laugh endlessly. Laughing makes tour live-able. I remember one morning walking back to the van after spending the night on a riverboat casino hotel in the super downtrodden antebellum town of Vicksburg, Mississippi and hearing that voice shout out to us: 'hey you, yous the ugliest bunch of motherfuckers I ever have seen!'. We laughed and shrugged it off as Evan joking about, before realizing that an old, totally shitfaced-by-11-am homeless man was actually very upset, yelling at us and chasing us...
and with this, we remember Evan Farrell, our hearts are with you.