You may have noticed there are two Spotify channels: Liz + the Baguettes and Liz & the Baguettes.

There's a not-terribly-interesting history here about how the plus sign wasn't allowed on certain digital platforms when we released our first album, and so we got stuck with the ampersand, but the short version is: Both are us. The plus sign is more recent, and all future digital distribution will use the plus-sign version of the name. Following ButterBean's release of the remastered and expanded Everything I Think I Know Is Wrong this fall, our entire catalogue will be available on the plus-sign channel.

Sorry, that may have been a little bit of lede burial. (All in the service of including a clip from The Commitments, which is one of the greatest music movies of all time and you should totally go watch it now, or at least listen to the soundtrack.) EITIKIW is indeed getting a remaster and rerelease. We're also adding four tracks recorded in the same Workshop Jones sessions: "Candy," "Midway" (with the lyrics we updated last year at Mystery Street), "Half," and "Grace" (never released). Final release date to be announced shortly.

The Highway Gothic CDs have arrived! Can't wait to start sharing these beauties. As great as it is to be able to distribute music digitally, there's still something extremely Official and Exciting about having the physical object.

​Our release show is at the Montrose Saloon on March 29. Look for details soon.

Fwiw, current plans are for the LP to mimic this gatefold design, but the vinyl discs themselves will be the green or blue of highway signs.

First look: here's the cover photo for Highway Gothic. It's from the onramp to I-94 at Lawrence and Cicero; the lozenge for "94" is mysteriously missing, leaving this odd direction to...the frontier? Manifest Destiny? Some other promise betrayed? (If you've been there, you know the arrow is actually pointing north: one must put a lot of trust in this sign.)

This feels about right, for a road album, and specifically an album that begins in the suburbs and ends in the Badlands. I love the color of the sky—a massive lucky break, as I knew I wanted blue, but had no guarantee of getting it until...well, April, probably, the way this winter has been going. The big open negative space is as close as we'll come to duplicating a genuine Western sky in Chicago. I think it asks a question.

The lit geek in me is also pleased by the accidental resemblance to the color scheme Joyce demanded for the cover of Ulysses (the blue was to represent the Mediterranean, the white islands, if I'm recalling correctly). Beyond the idea of wandering, there's no connection between the album and the book—certainly nothing deliberate—but I like the coincidence.

It's the final track list for Highway Gothic!

1. Subourbon
2. Slinky
3. Teflon
4. White Flag
5. Lost in America
6. The Age and the Ache
7. Gen X
8. One Two
9. D.G.A.F.
10. After All
11. Badlands

Weren't there twelve songs before, Liz? Yes, yes, there were. We have decided to cut "Bender" from the download/CD version of the album. It will still be available in some form, and it'll be on side 4 of the longer LP, along with a couple of other songs. But it's always been a bit of an outlier (this is not a relationship album at all, and "Bender" is definitely a relationship song). On test listens to various track orders—especially while driving—it just stuck out more and more.

Anyway. Head over to Soundcloud to hear an unmastered preview of a handful of songs.

ReverbNation really wants me to take out ads to promote the band, and they're telling me this via banner ads using a still image from the "White Flag" video. Hilariously, these banners tend to appear when I'm reading Go Fug Yourself, and some alchemy of browser settings means my face appears at more or less the same scale as the celebs in the GFY slideshows.

At this point in the video I'm singing "You can radio the captain," but it turns out this is a relatively neutral facial expression that acquires a lot of meaning from context.

​For example, here I am awkwardly serenading two legendary women about how much I want a 9 to 5 sequel, and Jane is not having it:

​
​"YOU ARE SO PRETTY HOW ARE YOU SO PRETTY."

​
​"I...have questions about the eyewear."

​
​I freeze, recognizing that this is my last moment of life, as she sprouts wings and transforms into a Creature of the Night.

CELINE: Ne mentionnez pas les jeans.
ME: Okay, but...that's an acid-wash paper-bag waist, right?
CELINE: ...

​
​(incoherent noises of lust-drooling)

Here's the set we played Saturday night, as amended when we discovered we were missing a crucial cable and weighed the lateness of the start time against the snow accumulating outside.

Notes: I thought I had a little more time before we started, so I headed for the bathroom. That turned out to be almost the exact moment that the audience came into our space. And THAT was how we learned that a) the live slow-build intro to "Slinky" is long enough to cover a pee break, and b) I can enter a stage from a bathroom door, pick up a Strat, and start playing. It's not how I would choose to start every show...but it's good to know it can​ work that way.

I haven't even posted a demo of "Lie" yet, but it's likely to be our single for Record Store Day 2019. It will not be a late addition to Highway Gothic--more probably part of an EP with "Windowsill." But one thing at a time.

This was also the live debut of "Subourbon," which we scrapped from its last set after not being able to nail down an arrangement we all liked. Some things don't come together until you're in the studio. ("Get Out" also worked that way.) 

Julie Jurgens sang as a special guest Baguette, as well as playing her super-cool mini trumpet for the horn lines in "White Flag." (She shared a bill with us in 2016, and she's on the album yelling in the background of "One Two"; hopefully we'll get to have her back for more shows.) And I would be HUGELY remiss not to mention that Thomas delayed his return trip to Hawaii so he could play bass for this show. Which is pretty amazing.

Today, I hung nine original paintings on the wall at the eternally cool Logan Parlor space. Each painting is based on a Highway Gothic song (pictured above: "Subourbon," "Teflon," "Badlands"). They'll be on display for the first three months of 2019. 

Each painting is 12" x 12", acrylic on board, and priced at $100, with proceeds going to the first pressing of Highway Gothic; the price includes a CD and download. We'll also have some giclée prints available.

It will not have escaped your attention that the paintings are the same size as LP jackets. Hopefully we can do a vinyl pressing later, with "Badlands" and "Lost in America" inside the gatefold; at nearly an hour, it'll have to be a double album anyway, so we might as well exploit that for graphic design. Side 4 will probably include a handful of newer songs that don't have any other home, like "Lie" and "Windowsill." But that's a few thousand dollars away, so...for now, enjoy the paintings.

ICYMI: the first single from Highway Gothic is now available, with a full video and everything.

As its single art, "White Flag" uses a 12" x 12" acrylic painting on board. I'm painting one of these for each of the tracks on the album, and they'll be available to people who support the vinyl release next year.

In refining album mixes and percussion sounds, Charlie discovered that "Lost in America" had the exact same bpm as Duran Duran's "Girls on Film." He went ahead and created a mashup, using Duran Duran's drums and our everything else. Here's a sample.