Then Matt and Pearl from the BLANK TAPES hit the make-shift stage and rocked out some songs for all those gathered and had everyone toe tapping, hand clapping and buzzing with their energy and melodic vocals. Thanks Maki @ Surf Shop BLOOM for putting on the event, Cyrus for the inspiration & Matt and Pearl from the BLANK TAPES for the good times!

The Blank Tapes, a band whose California-sunny, lo-fi sound is typically achieved by LA/SF frontman Matt Adams’ 8-track, are embarking on a spring tour with This Frontier Needs Heroes and Levi Strom. The tour will take them from San Diego to Seattle and then back to San Francisco — including appearances at The New Parish in Oakland on April 3rd and The Make-Out Room in San Francisco on April 15th. The West Coast portion will be followed by stops in Japan and Europe, and then back stateside to New York and New England.

The Blank Tapes have been busy working on a new album, Vacation, which is slated for release thisSummer, and a video for the song “A’bergine.” They’re also releasing a new 7-inch, “I’m Back,” with 20 Sided Records.

Here are April’s tour dates:

1 Sanitarium B&B – 1716 Osos St San Luis Obispo, CA. 7pm $5
2 The Crepe Place w/ Ash Reiter – 1134 Soquel Avenue Santa Cruz, CA *Levi Strom @ Cafe Du Nord, SF
3 (((folkYEAH!))) presents: New Parish – 579 18th St Oakland, CA $8
4 Fernwood – 47200 Highway 1 Big Sur, CA Free
5 Smiley’s – 41 Wharf Rd Bolinas, CA Free
6 Haven Underground -100 N. Pine St. Suite C Nevada City, CA $8
7 Luigi’s – 213 E St Davis CA Free
10 Ella Street Social Club – 714 SW 20th Place Portland, OR $5
11 The Josephine w/ IJI – 608 NW 65th St Seattle, WA
12 The Gulch – 1319 Dickinson Ave NW Olympia, WA
13 Interzone Cafe – 1563 Northwest Monroe Ave Corvalis, OR
14 Little Red Lion – 1506 5th St Eureka, CA
15 Seaweed Sway presents: Makeout Room w/ “A’bergine Music Video” Debut Directed by David McClymonds – 3225 22nd St SF, CA. 7:30pm $8

Coincidently, Coco Heart Records out of Japan used our song, “Why Must I Fall In Love?” for a video!
polaroid crush “why must I fall in love” by the blank tapes (COCO HEART RECORDS, JAPAN)

polaroid crush from wiissa on Vimeo.

Little Videos by Elliot Glass

With a catchy, lo-fi sound and clear appreciation for Gram Parsons, it’s no wonder that The Blank Tapes has seen a spate of success in recent years. The band, led by L.A./S.F.-based multi-instrumentalist Matt Adams, has been featured in commercials, headlined San Fran’s famed Great American Music Hall, toured the world, and even received an endorsement from Rolling Stone. (“Quick, somebody sign them!”).

Part solo project, part loose collaboration with anyone who happens to be around when Adams sets up his 8-track recorder, The Blank Tapes have a Nudie suit-wearing, freewheelin’ aesthetic that makes for a perfectly Californian experience.

The band will soon embark on a West Coast tour, and will play the Tin Can Ale House on March 28 (tomorrow). This Frontier Needs Heroes and Levi Strom will open.

One of our favorite SanFran bands, Blank Tapes, is now one of our favorite L.A. bands, having recently moved back to the Southland. The garage-pop folkies roll into Tin Can Ale House with Brainstorm from PDX, This Frontier Needs Heroes from NYC, and Levi Strom from Big Sur, setting up a hella stacked show at the Bankers Hill bar….
Pic by Karen Knoller

He continues, “I still tour up to the Bay Area at least once a month, so it’s like I never left.”
Keeping his band together has always been a struggle. “It never gets easier,” Adams says. “That’s why I have a different lineup almost every show, and the only constant member is me—although lately, I’ve been playing with a pretty regular cast. Keeping things fresh by playing the songs a little differently, with different players, is part of what keeps it exciting.”

Said freshness might explain why the Blank Tapes have been releasing a steady stream of albums over the years, including 2010′s enjoyable Home Away From Home, a good taste of Adams’ magpie-like ear for the 1960s. He ascribes it to both a learning experience over the years and a willingness to go back and start over.

“Some of my earlier albums felt like mixtapes—with different artists from different genres—because I’ve always been just as into writing mellow acoustic folk ballads as I have been into writing psychedelic riff rock,” Adams says. “[I hope that] whatever I do, my singing, songwriting and playing style are distinct enough.”

After spending years up north, is Adams now wiser? “A lot of my newer songs are more humorous, which is something I used to do when I first started,” he says. “Fairly odd things seem to come to my mind, and before I know it, I’ve written a song about it. That’s how songs such as ‘Puppy Cuddles,’ ‘Brown Chicken Brown Cow’ and ‘The Biggest Blunt In Brazil’ came about. Although funny music is dangerous territory, certain writers such as Ray Davies and Stephen Merritt do it amazingly well!”

Following the Detroit Bar residency, the Blank Tapes will return to the Bay Area, but they’ll soon be back, with Adams all fired up by the change of scenery.

“It seems SoCal has been up to some really cool stuff while I’ve been away, what with all the festivals and shows out in the desert. Also, it seems the lo-fi, ’60s/surf/garage/soul/rock music scene is huge right now, which is great—much bigger than in the Bay Area. Since I’ve been back, momentum has been picking up, and things have been snowballing! I’m spreading the word that I’m back in town and ready to rock!”

This article appeared in print as “Prodigal Son: Matt Adams’ Blank Tapes are back from Northern California, making another go at it in Orange County.”

It was 2003 when Matt Adams came up with an apt moniker for his band: the Blank Tapes. He and several other musician friends had been playing at various open mic nights in the Newport Beach/Costa Mesa area for a few years, but by 2006 Adams needed a change of scenery. He packed up and moved to San Francisco.

“It made me feel like I had started fresh again, more or less,” he says in a recent phone interview. “I had this breath of fresh air and I let these ideas flow. I was really influenced and excited, so I just started writing all of these new songs; some of them are still songs that I play at every show.

“When I was up there I met a bunch of cool musicians. When I was down in Orange County, I played more solo shows. I did play in some bands, but I never had a real solid band until I moved to San Francisco.”

Adams, second from left, is back in Southern California and living in Los Angeles. It was bandmate and girlfriend Pearl Charles who got him to come back to the area, with S.F. players DA Humphrey and Will Halsey in tow — and now the Blank Tapes are performing as the March Monday residency band at Detroit Bar in Costa Mesa.

For Adams, who grew up in Newport Beach, it truly feels like a homecoming.

[More...] “It has been really fun,” he says of the shows thus far. During the second gig, March 12, Adams also celebrated his 31st birthday. “I’ve never had the opportunity to do a residency with the Blank Tapes anywhere. I did a residency at Detroit Bar about eight years ago with another band called Part the Clouds, but it’s good to be back at Detroit, with my own band.”

Art was Adams’ initial passion. He grew up with a piano in the house, taking lessons during grade school while his older brother turned him on to ’60s jam bands. But the future songwriter still focused on his drawing.

In high school he began seriously listening to the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, he says. That inspired him to pick up a guitar: “Once I realized how to play chords, it was the easiest thing ever. I just went with it and playing guitar has been like a nonstop discovery.”

Yet, though he learned another instrument along the way, Adams still pursued an art career, attending school in Laguna Beach. “I was obsessed with drawing and everyone always knew me as the artist,” he says. “I knew that’s what I wanted to do and I wanted to go to art school and do comics.”

During his art school stint, he tried to balance both, music and art — but after a few semesters he realized a change of course was needed. “(Music) just became more fun for me, especially at that point in my life. More than anything I was obsessing about music, way more than my drawing, so I just decided to do that instead.”

So he started joining open mic nights and playing in friends’ bands to build connections, which led to even more local gigs. Despite being out of the O.C. music scene for a few years, Adams doesn’t feel like he’s lost touch; he’s been back several times to perform since relocating to S.F.

“It wasn’t that long ago that I was down here playing shows with the Growlers and the Japanese Motors,” he says. “There are a lot of really awesome ’60s/garage-sounding bands that are similar to what I’ve been doing. When I grew up here, there wasn’t much of that going on, so seeing a resurgence of that is great.”

The Blank Tapes are also finishing up a full-length album due by late spring or early summer. Adams says that this is the first time he’s recorded with an entire band in an actual studio; he had written, recorded and played all of the instruments himself on previous self-releases.

“It’s very expensive,” he says with a chuckle about doing a professional recording. “It’s great because I didn’t have to focus on engineering. It’s cool to just be able to focus on playing the music, and it’s fun to have all of the microphones and great equipment to use – or to have someone use for me.”

The Blank Tapes play March 19 and 26, 9 p.m. each night, at Detroit Bar, 843 W. 19th St., in Costa Mesa. Free admission, 21-and-up.

March
26 Detroit Bar w/ Indianna Hale & Parker Macy – 843 West 19th St Costa Mesa, CA Free
28 Tin Can Alehouse w/ Brainstorm (PDX) – 1863 5th Ave San Diego, CA $6
29 Pirate Bar w/ Tic Tocs – 4850 Tyler St Riverside, CA Free
30 HM157 w/ Buffalo Electric – 3110 N. Broadway Avenue LA, CA $7
31 BIKO Garage – 6612 Sueno Rd Santa Barbara, CA
April
1 Sanitarium B&B – 1716 Osos St San Luis Obispo, CA. 7pm $5
2 The Crepe Place w/ Ash Reiter – 1134 Soquel Avenue Santa Cruz, CA *Levi Strom @ Cafe Du Nord, SF
3 (((folkYEAH!))) presents: New Parish – 579 18th St Oakland, CA $8
4 Fernwood – 47200 Highway 1 Big Sur, CA Free
5 Smiley’s – 41 Wharf Rd Bolinas, CA Free
6 Haven Underground -100 N. Pine St. Suite C Nevada City, CA $8
7 Luigi’s – 213 E St Davis CA Free
10 Ella Street Social Club – 714 SW 20th Place Portland, OR $5
11 The Josephine w/ IJI – 608 NW 65th St Seattle, WA
12 The Gulch – 1319 Dickinson Ave NW Olympia, WA
13 Interzone Cafe – 1563 Northwest Monroe Ave Corvalis, OR
14 Little Red Lion – 1506 5th St Eureka, CA
15 Seaweed Sway presents: Makeout Room w/ “A’bergine Music Video” Debut Directed by David McClymonds – 3225 22nd St SF, CA. 7:30pm $8
THE BLANK TAPES
“We discovered this lo-fi unsigned band – which somehow evokes Belle and Sebastion, Pavement, and the Black Keys – in a San Fran coffeehouse (just like the old days.) Quick, somebody sign them!” -ROLLING STONE MAGAZINE
LISTEN TO THE ONE video