Hello Madeira friends!
After excitedly looking forward to the Surf Explosion weekend for months, it came and went – and left much exhilaration and exhaustion in its wake! We hope you were able to join us for this unforgettable weekend. Friday night was completely crazy, with Ivan pulling triple-duty, and Patrick and Dane pulling double-duty. But all the bands sounded really great, and we had a fantastic turnout, no doubt heavily aided by the nice press in Nuvo. If you stuck around all the way until the crazy-late end just before 3 am, you witnessed an once-in-a-lifetime event of the Madeira AND the Space Cossacks playing the song “Transylvanian Orbit” AKA “Ricochet” TOGETHER on the small Melody Inn stage! We never tried it before, there was no rehearsal, but we somehow pulled it off – see for yourselves!
The FesTiki festival in Dayton, OH the next day was dogged by a lot of rain throughout the day, but it had all gone away by 6 pm and the sun was shining as soon as the four top bands went on, only slightly behind schedule, the only downside being the astounding humidity! But it just made it feel more like a hot and sticky club show, which is familiar territory for us! We had a total blast playing the big stage with professional lighting and sound, and the audience was very into it! We really hope we can play this event again in the future, as it was truly something special. Even with the rain making things damp, it was simply remarkable to see all the vendors and all the decoration amid the beautiful scenery. We’re very grateful to Surf Ohio and the Fraternal Order of Moai for inviting us to play, we were honored to be there. (You can see some videos here and here, as well as some photos here and here)
Ivan’s summer reunion with the Space Cossacks has come to an end, and it was an unqualified success! They had a total of seven shows (Baltimore, Arlington, VA, San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Indianapolis, Dayton, OH), and it was really wonderful to have the two bands play the last two shows together. Hopefully there will be more chances for that in the future. But now it’s time to get back to work on that next Madeira album! We hope to have that one out sometime next year, and we’ll keep you posted on our progress.
Meanwhile, we do have a couple of shows coming up this Fall: October 2nd in Cleveland, OH, and November 13th in Lafayette, IN (check our gigs page). We hope you’ll be able to join us for those, and who knows, we might break out another brand new song at one or both of these shows (as we did in Indy and Dayton with “Cities of Gold”).
Have a great rest of the Summer, and we hope you enjoy the Fall! Thanks again for coming, if you did, to any of our summer shows, whether in Atlanta, at the IMAX, the Mel or FesTiki!
– The Madeira