2009 US Spring Tour Schedule

So I got an e-mail today from Musictoday on the 2009 US tour for FotC. Here's the 2009 US tour schedule:

Flight of the Conchords are pleased to announce a 2009 Spring US Tour!

Tickets go on sale to the public on Friday & Saturday, February 6th and 7th, but as a very special Flight of the Conchords fan you have access to the exclusive pre-sale beginning this Monday, February 2nd at 10 AM.

Just find the link to your city's venue and enter the password "sugalumps."

4/06/09 – Tampa, FL – Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center * TICKET INFO
4/07/09 – Coral Gables, FL – University of Miami BankUnited Center * TICKET INFO
4/08/09 – Orlando, FL – UCF Arena * TICKET INFO
4/10/09 – Nashville, TN – Ryman Auditorium * TICKET INFO
4/11/09 – Atlanta, GA – Fox Theatre * TICKET INFO
4/13/09 – Washington, D.C. - Constitution Hall * TICKET INFO
4/14/09 – New York, NY – Radio City Music Hall * TICKET INFO
4/17/09 – Boston, MA – Agganis Arena * TICKET INFO
4/18/09 – Philadelphia, PA – Tower Theatre (2 shows) * Show 1 TICKET INFOTICKET INFO
4/19/09 – Kent, OH – Kent State University * TICKET INFO
4/21/09 – Toronto, ON – Massey Hall ** TICKET INFO
4/22/09 – Toronto, ON – Massey Hall ** TICKET INFO
4/24/09 – Detroit, MI – Fox Theatre ** TICKET INFO
4/25/09 – Bloomington, IN – IU Auditorium ** TICKET INFO
4/26/09 – Madison, WI – Overture Center for the Arts ** TICKET INFO
4/28/09 – Chicago, IL – Aerie Crown ** TICKET INFO
4/30/09 – St. Louis, MO – Fox Theatre ** TICKET INFO
5/02/09 – Milwaukee, WI – Riverside Theatre (2 shows) ** TICKET INFO
5/03/09 – Minneapolis, MN – Northrop Auditorium ** (no listing as yet)
5/05/09 – Dallas, TX – Nokia Theatre ** TICKET INFO
5/06/09 – Houston, TX – Jones Hall ** TICKET INFO
5/07/09 – Austin, TX – Bass Concert Hall ** TICKET INFO
5/10/09 – Vancouver, BC – Center in Vancouver for the Performing Arts *** TICKET INFO
5/11/09 – Seattle, WA – Paramount Theatre *** TICKET INFO
5/12/09 – Seattle, WA – Paramount Theatre *** TICKET INFO
5/14/09 – Portland, OR – Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall *** TICKET INFO
5/16/09 – Denver, CO – Red Rocks Amphitheatre **** TICKET INFO (no listing as yet)
5/17/09 – Salt Lake City, UT – Abravanel, Hall % TICKET INFO
5/19/09 – Phoenix, AZ – Dodge Theatre *** TICKET INFO
5/20/09 – San Diego, CA – RIMAC Arena *** (no listing as yet)
5/22/09 – Santa Barbara, CA – County Bowl *** (no listing as yet)
5/23/09 – Las Vegas, NV – The Joint *** TICKET INFO (no listing as yet)
5/24/09 – Los Angeles, CA – Greek Theatre *** TICKET INFO (no listing as yet)
5/25/09 – Berkeley, CA – Berkeley Community Theatre (2 shows) *** Show 1 TICKET INFO Show 2 TICKET INFO Show 2

CLICK HERE TO BUY TICKETS

Special Guests:

* = Kristen Schaal

** = Eugene Mirman

*** = Arj Barker

**** = First support act= Iron and Wine/ second support act = Arj Barker

Info located from Musictoday

Flights of fancy - NZ Listener article

Here's a nice article from The NZ Listener.

An exclusive interview on the New York set of the second – and could it really be the last – series of Flight of the Conchords.

Consider the joys of being Flight of the Conchords. A cultish show filming a second series on a major cable network in the United States, which must be like having a hit anywhere else. (It’s not actually, but we’ll get to that.) Your fans are engaged, artsy-crafty, inclining to spooky. They send you knitted wool animals that look like you. Bret’s Jesus beard and gentle tortured eyes; Jemaine’s vigorous sideburns and primate sensuality.

Fan art, too! Paintings and hand drawings and the like, enough to fill a small room at Te Papa. You write in LA, film in the People’s Socialist Republic of Brooklyn, and sometimes dream of Newtown. You go out dancing with Drew Barrymore; Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins drop by at one of your shows, dragged there by their kids. You used to be broke; now you’re not. People know you. They want to be funny with you. Sometimes, they want to be you. Recently, Rhys Darby, who plays Murray Hewitt in the series, was signing autographs outside a New York comedy club; a man in his 50s blundered through the crowd, shouting: “I’m the real Rhys Darby! I’m the real Rhys Darby!” He was, to use the appropriate phrase, forcibly restrained.

It’s like the theme from Cheers: “Everyone knows your name, everyone’s glad you came.” Put it another way, the Public Enemy way: “Ice Cube is down with the PE/now every single bitch wanna see me.”

“One of the funniest things I saw on tour,” says Jemaine Clement, “was this woman in the front row and she had a T-shirt with a womb on it and a fetus with glasses and sideburns, and my face.”

All of which goes to prove three points that on reflection are self-evident: 1) people are strange; 2) they form intimate attachments with characters on the boob tube; 3) they love a laff.

Flight of the Conchords, contenders for the best comedy album at the 2009 Grammys, are successfully mining the double-act seam of comedy, one that stems not from the tradition of speaking opposites (funny man v straight man – eg, Morecambe and Wise) but the setup in which similarity, and irony, loves company. The Blues Brothers and Cheech and Chong are part of this line, but neither expresses the minimalism, the texture of Conchord humour. Being a nerd. Being broke. Being useless with girls. It’s being and nothingness; some awkwardness but little angst. They’re like life, they’re like us, only they’re … different.

“Jemaine’s more staunch than me,” says Bret McKenzie. Slim and pale, he is slumped inside a large blue Swanndri. Call time for this morning’s filming was 5.30am, which is bad enough, and made rather worse if you’ve spent the night lying awake, worrying about sleeping through the alarm.

“When we deal with other people,” says Clement, “I’d expect Bret to be naturally diplomatic, whereas I wouldn’t like the person.”

“And that’s what we play off on the show,” adds McKenzie.

“It’s like a five-year-old and a three-year-old,” says show co-creator James Bobin, who has also worked with Sacha Baron Cohen, otherwise known as Borat. “Jemaine’s the five-year-old, and Bret’s the three-year-old. They’re both wrong, but the five-year-old thinks he’s right.”

McKenzie continues: “If we didn’t like the way HBO was doing something, even though we’d both agreed we didn’t like it, Jemaine would be the one who would probably say” – his fist thumps the table lightly – “we’re not doing it!”

So, the difference between them is good cop, bad cop?

“Mmmm, more like polite cop, less polite cop.”

Would you like fries with that drollery, sir? We’re sitting at a French joint near their studio. It’s a working lunch, one of these multi-tasking monstrosities that people who haven’t had a day off for four months must endure, as must those who want to talk to them. The Conchords are being served up to the world’s entertainment press: your own reporter, a chap from the Daily Telegraph in London, a woman from Time Out, and a Swede who, in the car coming here, leaned across to me and asked, “Are these guys any good?”

Well, yes, they are. The lunch/interview, filled with badinage, is how one imagines an orgy might be: nervously energetic, special moves being ventured and withdrawn hastily, abrupt changes in partner, some fumbling and groping to get from one sequence to the next. And that’s just the journalists.

McKenzie, as you’d expect, is the fret-artist; Clement swings casually from riff to riff. They footnote one another’s sentences. Fracturing, rather than cracking each other up, seems to be the MO, although Clement’s laugh can rise to a goofy full-throated bellow. McKenzie seems to like to hang on just a little, to keep something in reserve. But it’s a free-ranging session of target practice, a flurry of bullseyes: America, themselves, their fans, New Zealand. They describe how they created the name for bumbling manager Murray Hewitt, by cross-fertilising the names of former All Blacks Murray Mexted with Norm Hewitt. Then they googled the name, which produced two people who both lived in New Zealand. McKenzie says when he was back home at Christmas time, he actually met someone called Murray Hewitt.

“Good-looking guy, was he?” deadpans Rhys Darby.

This is just from page one, so check out page 2 and 3.

Pre-Order season 2 now on Amazon.com

Amazon.com is usually good for offering pre-orders right away. The price is usually much cheaper than what HBO shop makes you pay. Anyways you can pre-order season 2 here.

I'll keep everyone updated on the pre-order of the second full length CD, but all that we know about it, is that it'll be released on April 14th. Look for a pre-order sometime soon, hopefully.

One new Flight of the Conchords song every week!

Source: Subpop

Yep, it's true. After every new episode, subpop will release the song featured in the show in the iTunes store. Also the new album is scheduled to be released on April 14th. So I'll be ready to pre-order it. That's almost 3 months away, can't wait!

Season 2 of the Flight of the Conchords HBO TV show begins this Sunday night, January 18th! And, in a radical, full-body, immodest embrace of modern technology, we will be releasing, through the iTunes music store, one song from each episode on the Monday morning after that episode airs!

So, for example, on Monday, January 19th, you will be able to purchase the Flight of the Conchords song [spoiler alert!] “Angels,” from the previous night’s Season 2 premiere.

It’s what we’re calling our “See It on Sunday, Buy It on Monday (Please)” promotional ploy. And, we really think it’s possible you might like it.

So, should you want new Flight of the Conchords songs (and who don’t?), please visit the Flight of the Conchords iTunes page right here.

Further info! The entire new Flight of the Conchords album will be released on April 14th. It will include all ten of the songs released through iTunes, plus several more (probably 15 or so tracks total). It will also include an album title, some (we’re confident) very nice and very palpable artwork, and either a large shiny black disc, or a smallish silvery one, depending. On the album’s release date, if you’ve bought some or all of the songs throughout the season on iTunes, you’ll have the option to “Complete the Album” through iTunes, and won’t have to repurchase anything. You could also just buy the complete album from us on or after April 14th. We view that option favorably as well.

In other Flight of the Conchords news, we would still like to sell you their Grammy Award-winning EP The Distant Future and/or their self-titled and currently Grammy-nominated full-length debut Flight of the Conchords. There will also be a humongous Flight of the Conchords North American tour throughout most of April and May of this year.

Entertainment Weekly article

It's a short article, but hey, if it has something to do with FotC, I'll post it.

Flight of the Conchords

Where it left off: Folk-rock duo Jemaine Clement and Bret McKenzie split with hapless, hopeless Murray (Rhys Darby).

What's coming up: In spite of a handful of Emmy nods last year, the single-fanned Conchords haven't suffered the growth or popularity that can ruin a music group. "The success of the Flight of the Conchords' band [in the real world] has no impact whatsoever on the failure of the TV band," assures exec producer James Bobin. (And failure is all but assured when Murray returns as manager.) The 10- episode season features new songs ("Hoping You'll Stick Around," about Jemaine's ex-girlfriends, and "Sugar Lumps," about his teticles),quirky guests (24's Mary Lynn Rajskub and SNL's Kristen Wiig), and new devotion to the Conchords from perpetual quitter Bret. Says Bobin, "Bret is much more faithful to the band this year." Being replaced by a bongos enthusiast will do that to a man. - AW

So the sounds even more awesome. Tomorrow, be ready, we'll all be graced with a new season of FotC. It's going to be a great start for 2009.




Article in January 23rd issue of Entertainment Weekly.

National Post Article

Check the article out here: National Post

'Thank you, internet': The harmonious hijinks of Flight of the Conchords

Mark Medley, National Post Published: Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Once, many years ago, Flight of the Conchords played a concert at a Vancouver club, for which only a single person showed up. The lights went down and, even with the minuscule audience, the New Zealand musical-comedy duo gamely performed an hour-long set.

"When they turned the lights on," recalls Jemaine Clement, one half of the musical comedy duo, on the phone from Los Angeles, "the person had left."

Certainly more than one person will be watching on Sunday night, when the Conchords' eponymous TV show returns for a second season. In the year and a half since Season One's finale, Clement and partner Bret McKenzie have released a best-selling album, earned four Emmy nominations and garnered a host of critical acclaim for the show, which concerns two New Zealand expats named Jemaine and Bret -only slightly fictionalized versions of the real-life pair - living in New York while trying to find success as a band.

Clement and McKenzie met while attending the Victoria University of Wellington - they were both in a play written by Duncan Sarkies, who now writes for the show - and formed Flight of the Conchords in 1998. The band toured various fringe and comedy festivals before enjoying a short-lived series on BBC Radio 2 in 2004. But the transition to television, says McKenzie, was never a goal.

"When Jemaine and I were flatting in New Zealand, we were both auditioning for New Zealand soap operas and B-grade films, and we weren't doing very well," he says. "We decided to start a band to get out of trying to be on TV."

If the show sounds strange, that's because it is; Flight of the Conchords may be the definition of an acquired taste. But the band's popularity has skyrocketed in the lapse between seasons, propelled at least in part by the band's visibility on the internet. They are a group born of the YouTube age; the songs translate into net-ready clips, which attract millions of views online; the group also boasts over 167,000 MySpace friends, though "165,000 of those are me with aliases," admits McKenzie.

"The internet's really part of the way the show has spread," agrees Clement. "Thank you, internet."

Perhaps as a way of saying thanks, the first episode of the season was leaked online in December. Early Season Two episodes find Clement resorting to prostitution to pay the bills and McKenzie starting up a gang to protect himself from rappers he dissed during a performance at the library. New songs - the musical numbers, interwoven into the plot, are often the highlight of each episode - range from operatic epics to Broadway show tunes to island-tinged calypso, making one wonder what they were listening to while writing this season's music.

"Andrew Lloyd Webber plays Bob Marley," jokes series co-creator James Bobin, the man partly responsible for bringing Da Ali G Show to North America and whom McKenzie has dubbed "the third Conchord" in past interviews.

"We've been listening to a lot of Harry Nillson," says Clement, referring to the American musician behind such odd songs as Coconut. "And he goes from style to style all the time. He goes calypso, a bit of reggae - he never did rap."

The songs will be collected on an untitled new album, due April 14 on Sub Pop Records, and the band will launch a North American tour later this year. There are currently no movie plans - "What have you heard?" asks Clement, though he is starring in Napoleon Dynamite director Jared Hess's next film, Gentlemen Broncos.

The band's popularity has also increased the profile of co-stars Rhys Darby, who plays their manager, Murray, and comic Kristen Schaal, who plays the band's only fan, Mel. Schaal scored a recurring gig on The Daily Show, while Darby - a fellow New Zealand native, who they've known for years - recently appeared in the Jim Carrey comedy, Yes Man.

"That was our plan from the beginning: try and get Rhys into a Jim Carrey film," says McKenzie.

"And we succeeded!" says Clement. "I'm really proud to be involved with those guys, and think they deserve every success."

New Zealand is certainly proud of them; they are the biggest cultural export since Lord of the Rings - in which McKenzie had a small role - which makes them the most visible Kiwis this side of Peter Jackson.

Says McKenzie: "The pride that they have for our success overseas overshadows ..."

"... the embarrassment," says Clement, finishing his partner's sentence.

• Season Two of Flight of the Conchords premieres Sunday, Jan. 18 at 10 p.m. on HBO Canada.