how tshirts are born (or ’more old tour footage’)

an informative and entirely factual look at the inner workings of the 'no more kings' merchandise sweat-shop.

please to enjoy:

NMK podcast 09 - how tshirts are born from pete mitchell on Vimeo.

-pete

old nmk live footage

hello,
i was cleaning out my hardrive yesterday and i found some old nmk tour footage.
i'll post some more as i get a chance to comb through it.

nmk podcast 08 from pete mitchell on Vimeo.

-pete

thank you linton!

we just got back from playing the linton music festival in indiana. woohoo, it was awesome!
we played there last year and had such a blast. we couldn't wait to play it again this year.
we got a chance to unveil two new songs, from our new album (coming out early next year).

we met some absolutely fantastic fans. i got a supercool gift from karl and meg:



thanks guys! and thanks all of linton. we're already excited about LMF 09.
-pete

john hancock

we've been in the van for two straight days on our way to casper, wyoming for a fourth of july show.
14 hours yesterday and 10 hours today. so of course, the first thing we do when we get to town is go see a movie! woohoo! and already i love this town: there are four movie theatres within 100 feet of each other. next to one of them is an art supply store. and next to that is a commercial space for rent. hmm. i could live there and paint and see movies everyday.

ok, so on to hancock. superb! (that's super with a b). it was waaay better than i expected. it's very funny. of course jason bateman is amazing. i love that guy. i'll see just about anything with him in it (apparently they are making an 'arrested development' movie?).

it's a fun, unique story, with a lot of unexpected moments. the action is exciting. the performances are all great. the effects are sortof stinky. but they are consistent, so it ends up working as a 'look'.

anyway, it was a lot of fun. i'm interested to hear what you all think. tomorrow, i'm going to see 'wanted'. and then apparently we have to play a show? =)

-pete

thank you new hampshire!!!

ahhh! what a blast! we had a great time at the sky show 17 in new hampshire this weekend. rock 101 kicks booty! everyone from the station was super nice! and despite our band name, they treated us like kings. special thanks to the mosh pit. doc, laura, greg, roadkill, and scorch: i love you all and miss you already!
kim, thanks for taking us to the yummy tiny diner. it was a little awkward eating with a row of hungry people behind us waiting for our chairs =)
the fireworks were fantastic! they had their own soundtrack. i want my own soundtrack.
my parents were there. they had a lot of fun, and it was great to be able to hang out with them.

so i can't wait for sky show 18! (cut to: one year later, pete waits by the mail, where no invitation comes.)

we're in pittsburg tonight. sleeping. on our two day trek back to nashville. if you see us on the road, honk.
-pete

me and my LAMA

hello my little cornflowers
we won our first award the other night! it was so fun! neil and i went to the awards ceremony (LAMA- los angeles music awards) dressed in spacesuits. for some reason people kept thinking we were knights of the round table. they asked us if we played dungeons and dragons. but we had fun. i really never expected to win, so that was a pleasant surprise.
last night i saw an excellent improv show at improv olympics in hollywood. i've been seeing a lot of great stuff there these past few weeks. last night's show featured tim meadows, former SNL cast member. he was great, all the performers were.
and also, if you get a chance, please go check out my buddy david martin's new christmas single 'fall la la in love'. its on his myspace page here: http://myspace.com/davidmartin
and its also for sale on itunes, along with his cover of 'the christmas song'. go check em out!
i think that's all i have to say. i still haven't seen 'no country for old men' yet, and it's burnin me up! but i ran into billy zabka last night at dinner, and we decided that we'll go see it next week. on a little date. a forbidden date. i made this awkward didn't i. sorry.
-pete

it worked!!!

holy crap! all of your clickety-clickin' worked! we're in round three!
i'm gonna send a bottle of advil out to everyone! and next time i see you, i will hug and kiss your little clicky fingers! (unless some of you used your feet to vote... then, you're out of luck.)
i really don't know what to say. i know every band thinks they have the best fans, but in my case, i really do.
thanks so so much to everyone who helped get us in round three. rest up, and get ready to start voting again! hehe! it never ends! =)
-pete

boyzeee

woohoo! we had a superfun show in boise tonight. we got to play with a great band, 'mistress and the misters'. we played with them last time we were in town, and we were very excited to learn that we'd be playing with them again tonight.
it was great to see so many people from last time. and people did their homework! more than half the audience knew my lyrics better than i did! it was a very fun time, and i can't wait to come back. such a supportive town.
oh, and i apologize again to anyone who had to hug my sweaty body. next time i'll hire a stunt hugger.

and thanks so much to everyone who voted to get us in round two of the mtv thing! i just found out about all of this tonight, and i'm so grateful/excited that we were able to get over 5000 votes. i'm not sure how far into the contest we'll make it, but it's great to have such supportive fans. with such itchy clicky mouse fingers.

-pete

day off: day two

did some more painting today. i'll post soon.
tim and i just got back from seeing 'we own the night'. holy poop what an awesome movie! such a great job of creating tension. wonderful performances by everyone. really good stuff. go see it.

oh, and the new radiohead album kicks booty!

-pete

grape street: take 5

we played our fifth show at grape street in philli last night. it was a lot of fun. lot of familiar faces, lots of new ones. the other day we were on a local philli radio show, preston and steve on wmmr, and the guest after us was jason schwartzman! i got a chance to talk with him for a few minutes. he was really cool.

we have a few days off here in new jersey before our next show in new york. i'm going to try to do some more painting. oh, have you seen the new behind-the-scenes piece on sweeptheleg.com? it rocks! jordan is doing an awesome job putting these together. anyway, check it out and tell me what you think.

bye!
-pete

more broken tires

hello my little loveducks.
sorry i havent posted in so long. we've been pretty busy driving all over this great big country.
in fact, we had two tire blowouts recently. fun. we've done a bunch of teevee and radio stuff, and had some really yummy mexican food. i really need to see the new 'resident evil'. my zombie power meter is empty and needs to be refilled.


the blowout


gas station in texas where they told us they were 'out of gas'

i think i get to sleep in tomorrow! woohoo! and i've already found a theatre nearby playing 'resident evil'. so i think tomorrow should be a good day. oh, and 7 more days until radiohead's new cd!!

-pete

boise noisy

hello crimefighters.

we just had a superfun show in boise. at the bouquet. we really didn't know what to expect. we'd played here a year ago, and i think we played for something like 7 people at that time. so we had our fingers crossed for at least 12 people for tonight. and to our surprise many more people than 12 showed up. it was so great, and energizing, to see people dancing and singing along!

we were on 100.3 the x, a local boise station, this morning. we did a little acoustic action. we had a great time hanging with big j and nic. we owe most of tonight's turnout to them. they took a chance, adding 'sweep the leg' into rotation on their station (rhyme-zilla up in here), and having us in the studio. we really couldn't have asked for a better show. i'm looking forward to coming back around here in a month or so.

oh, and we played with this great band from spokane, called 'mistress and the misters'. they were so fun! really talented, great sound and excellent energy. and they were really cool guys too. i
wish i got to talk to them a little more. we're going to try to get them to play with us again next time too. (again and too in the same sentence? hmm grammar evaporates after midnight i guess).

tomorrow we set sail for washington. roslyn. where northern exposure was filmed. we played ther almost a year ago too. so it'll be fun to go back.

ok. i'm going to bed. thanks for listening.

-pete

red rocks

we had a great show in colorado the other night. we played at red rocks amphitheatre, but not on the awesome outside stage. we play indoors, at a tinier stage downstairs. we still had a great time, and i met some really nice people from esurance. we hung out and watched 'cake' play afterwards. what a show that was! cake was amazing live.


DG getting ready to rock


the big awesome stage that we wished we played on


the rock where simba was born.

thanks for listening. i'll be back soon.
-pete

warm front in indianna with 90% chance of rock!

good grief!! what a weekend i've had! friday morning i got a chance to co-host the morning show in terre haute indianna, and it was sooo much fun! julie and matt, the actual anchors, were so friendly and fun! julie even let me do the weather (which has always been a dream of mine). of course, i did an awful job (i'll post a clip of my meteorological debut). then they let me sit at the desk with them for the whole show. it was such a great time. then i was on julie's radio show in the afternoon, followed by sketch's radio show a little later on. we played acoustic versions of a few songs, and DG played the plastic spoons as accompaniment. then last night we had the linton music festival! this was seriously the best response we've ever had! we sold more tshirts and cds than ever before. i signed stuff for over an hour (usually i'm begging people to let me sign stuff. socks, underwear, napkins. i dont care).

now i'm chillin in louisville with neil for a little bit before i head back to l.a. neil and i are cooking up a little something-something to put on itunes. i'm excited about it.

well that's it for now. i'll post some video stuff soon. thanks for reading!!

-pete

on the road again

we just had our first show back on the road after 5 weeks off. it was great to play again. and even better, it was an astonish showcase. so we got to hear, and hang out with all the other great artists on our label.
but what was funny for me was, after the show, we were hanging out outside, and this guy came by and said 'hey, are you the guy from that 'sweep the leg' video?' i thought he was kidding. like he had just seen the show and was just being funny. but he actually had no idea that we had played. so it was my first time being spotted on the street!

-pete

america's got hasselhoff

hey crimefighters.
i met terry fator the other night. he's one of the country's top ventriloquists and all around amazing entertainer. he's currently in the top 20 of america's got talent. and tonight is a very important night for him. so if you are reading this, please please watch the show tonight and vote for terry!

terry invited me to a jamie cullum concert at the hollywood bowl last week. it was incredible. that boy can sing! it was amazing to watch the la philharmonic back him up too. i kept dreaming about how cool that would be, to someday be in that position.

so i guess that's all for today. i finished up the tshirt designs last week, so we should have those on the road with us on our next leg. the next leg of the tour. not that we'll be wearing tshirts on our legs. not like we've never done that before though.
so please please vote for terry tonight. and we'll talk again soon. thanks for listening

-pete

oh, hey, our myspace plays have been crazy high these past few weeks! whats up with that! woohoo!

die hardest

ok, i saw die hard 4 the other night.. ug. you know, i absolutely love bruce willis, and he did a great job, but this movie forgot everything that worked about the first one. they kept trying to outdo the previous stunt. i read a review that i think sums it up perfectly. it said 'in the first movie, john maclane was human. in this one, he's the terminator'.

i'm in la. i get to be here for a while. which is cool. lately i've been zipping in and out of it so quickly that i don't really get to enjoy it. jordan and topher from astonish were here over the weekend to shoot some behind the scenes interview stuff with me and billy zabka. it'll be for the 'sweeptheleg.com' website. that was fun. but even they were like 'man, its beautiful here'. they are right.

in entertainment, it seems like people are either new york folk, or l.a. folk. and whichever they are, they truly identify with. i guess there is a small subset of people who are a bit of both.

oh, here's an adorable drawing my nephew david did:



the little sign says "beware of me". so cute!

-pete

happy fourth

happy fourth of july everybody! i hope you all ate american flag cake until your bellies itched.
i went swimming today. i like swimming. its my favorite. swimming and smiling. my favorites.

oh, our new favorite, over here at no more kings headquarters is the new HBO comedy series called 'flight of the conchords', eponymously named after the new zealand comedy/music duo by the same name. (grammar jokes are tough, because if the joke doesnt work, then smart people just think you're stupid). anyway; check out their stuff here: http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.channel&ChannelID=187189765

mmm.. i've been back in l.a. for two days now, and i've had in-n-out both nights. that's doing it right. doing the life thing, right. living right. we'll see what happens tomorrow.

oh, i watched 'evan almighty' tonight. ug. please don't hate me for saying this: i think i maybe loathed it. i really wished i had seen 'die hard' instead. did you know, in spain, 'die hard' is called 'the concrete jungle'? cool huh. probably because 'die hard' doesn't translate to anything meaningful. not like here in the states. where 'die hard' is a very meaningful proverb. (that was a joke, what the heck does 'die hard' mean here? i thought maybe it meant he was hard to kill, like it was hard for him to die because he was so damned cool. and barefoot. is he barefoot in this new one? why is he hanging around with Mac. is PC in it too, or just Mac? its nice to see that Mac is getting work. i was afraid he would be upstaged by his little brother iPhone.)

goodnight. and happy day of independence.

-pete

gypsy g's and dirt poor robins

whew! i've been a bad bad monkey, not posting in so long! how have you been? how's the family?

so we've had a couple of great shows this run. we played three nights in a row with dirt poor robins, which is always a blast. the other night, we played at gypsy g's in south carolina. it was so fun! we met some super nice people (chris and amy, whats up!) and had a really good time playing.

we brought guitar hero 2 out on the road with us, so the last two nights have been pure guitar hero rockathon. my little fingers are about to fall off. we have today off, and most of tomorrow. tomorrow night at like 2 am, we have a crazy radio thing, and then we have a show in nyc at arlene's grocery. i love playing in new york. we have a boston show coming up, which is exciting for me because my family is going to go to it. it'll be the first time any of them have seen me play with this new band.

soooo all in all, things are going well. thanks for asking.
oh, here's a new raindrop animation. let me know what you think.



-pete

louisville

i just got into to louisville last night. its great to have a chance to work on music with neil for a little while. we have a couple of things we're trying to track before i take off on the next tour leg. we're playing a show together next week, here in town, which is great. i love being able to play with dirt poor robins. as a fan and as a friend, its a great experience.
i did a video shoot with livevideo.com a few weeks ago, which was an absolute blast! anyway, they are starting to put up some of the clips. i think they are going to release two a week for the next few weeks. you can see the first one here: http://livevideo.com/nomorekings
i guess that's it for now. i have been falling quickly behind in my book of face drawings. i'll try to get a few more of those up soon. but i started a series of talking raindrop animations. do i still get a biscuit? no? poo..




-pete