12 days later

So it has been enough time for us to write another blog about how things are going here in London. Some cool stuff has been happening since the last time we wrote. Shows are continually going really well, we've got a small but steadily growing fan base here in London. We've been playing at some rad venues lately and have met a lot of cool people. Some really good contacts have developed in the last few weeks in particular. We've learned a lot about the local music scene and where the better spots are, in terms of where to play and the people that hang out there. We mentioned last time that we had finally been able to sit down and start writing again. We finished up a new song since then and have posted a rough recording on our myspace (www.myspace.com/theperennials).
Last week someone from Canada got in contact with us about doing a photo shoot while we are here. It was a little difficult to make it happen because the first date we set up we ended up getting terribly lost, and were 2 hours late and missed it! Sunday we finally met up at Richmond park and spent a couple hours with the photographer. It was a lot of fun and we think we got a lot of good shots. We should be getting them in the next week or so and we will post them for you guys.
As we keep writing we are getting continually more excited about our next record (which we hope to be recording this summer). Currently we are looking to recruit a fourth band member, ideally someone who plays piano and sings (another female voice would be nice) but we are open to anything at this point.
Well that is all we have for you at this point, we look forward to writing again as more happens in the next few weeks!

Pete and Amanda
(the perennials)

London, England

Where to begin, where to begin.
We've survived our first week in London (actually it's ten days now). We're sorry it's taken so long for us to write, but we've had a difficult situation as far as internet goes. We left New York on the 4th of January. When we got to the check in at the airport, they informed us that even though we had tickets returning to the states from Venice, we would not be allowed to enter the U.K. without a proof of tickets showing when we left London. It was a bit of a scare, but everyone was extremely helpful, and it ended up being a quick fix (as we promptly bought two tickets from London to Brussels by train, leaving England on the 5th of February). They even let us skip the long line to go through security at J.F.K. and sent us straight through!
The first flight was about five hours, and went off without a hitch. We got to Iceland around 7am local time. We had a ten hour layover, and had planned to leave the airport and go look around, but it seems it doesn't get light there until around 12pm, and gets dark by 5. Plus we were exhausted, and opted to sleep most of the time.
The next flight was 3.5 hours and we rolled in London (heathrow) at 8pm. They gave us a bit of a hard time at customs. We're still not sure why, but we eventually made it past. We made our way to our hostel (which was in Hyde park), had dinner at a delicious Thai noodle bar, and went to sleep.
The hostel was good as far as hostels go. There was free internet, the location was good, and the beds even had curtains for maximum privacy (Unfortunately, no amount of fancy curtains can shield you from the awkwardness of sharing a room with ten other people). It was a good spot to get our feet on the ground, get our sense of direction for the city, and figure out public transportation, but a week was more than plenty of time to be there.
Two days ago we made the long awaited trip to our next hostel in Streatham. It's about five miles out from the very center of the city, and we're excited to be staying here for the remainder of our stay in London. The place is a charity run music venue/pub/hostel, although it's quite a step up from an average hostel in that we get our own room, a double bed, our own sink and fridge in the room, and 20% off everything in the bar during our stay. Now that we have our own space, we've finally had a chance to sit down and start writing again. I can't say how long it'll be until we have anything to show you guys, but rest assured, some really good sounds are in the works.
We've played four shows so far, and will be playing more frequently from now on (starting tonight). We've been very well received, and even booked a few more shows from the shows we already played. It's pretty inspiring know that we are performing on some of the same stages that Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Cat Stevens, the Who, and the Rolling Stones played on back in the day.
We've also had the opportunity to meet a few music producers and other people in the Business around the city. Nothing happening yet, but we're optimistic about the next three weeks. We've found that if you carry a guitar around long enough, eventually someone starts talking to you about it.
All in all, we couldn't be happier with how the trip is going. We're having a wonderful time being here, just the two of us (although we do have an extra set of bunk beds in our room until February, if anyone wants to come visit :) ). Please continue to pray that everything will continue to go well for us on our trip, and that God will use us for His glory along the way.

Pete and Amanda
(The Perennials)

P.S. we posted some pictures on facebook and there are more to come.

New York, New York

So we have been in NY for 11 days. All in all our first week here was great!  We rolled into town on the 20th (Monday night) and made it to Pete's cousins house around 11:30pm. Tuesday morning we took the ferry into Manhattan where we met Pete's Brother and Sister (Adam and Hannah) for lunch. We spent the day in the city and saw the empire state building, Rockefeller center, times square, and lots of other things. It was awesome, but Manhattan was freezing and ridiculously windy.

Wednesday evening we had our first show, in Brooklyn. We took the bus into Bay ridge earlier in the day and met up with Adam for lunch, visited Pete's uncles carpet store, and saw the house in Brooklyn where he grew up. The show went really well. it was at a little "hole-in-the-wall" coffee shop called "roots cafe". It was small, but a nice evening. We met some cool people, sold some cd's, and found out that the barista was actually from spokane, and knew some of the same people we did!
Thursday was Hannah's birthday so we went to Queens and celebrated at a catering hall with her and her friends and family.
We spent Christmas eve at Pete's aunt and uncles in Staten Island where all the Wells in New York gather every year, and I had the chance to meet all of them in the course of a single evening! After the Party there we made the four hour drive to Baltimore, Maryland to spend Christmas day with the grandparents on the other side of the family. It was a great weekend all in all...until the drive home. A four hour drive quickly changed into a nightmare on the New Jersey turnpike, when we were hit by an insane blizzard (which they say only happens once every three years), and forced to stay over night in a hotel. After three hours of digging the car out of the parking lot the next morning, we finally made it out.
The drive was slightly better the next day, since they were able to plow the freeway, but everything else was a mess. Semi trucks stuck everywhere blocking on and off ramps and the streets were lined with buried cars. Luckily we were kept safe throughout the whole trip and made it back to aunt Sharon's house and spent the next two days inside sleeping.

This last Wednesday we played another show in Brooklyn but there wasn't a very good turnout. Aside from a friend that opened for us (and Hannah and Adam) there wasn't an audience. We would like to think of those situations as practice. Thursday(yesterday) we had a show in the city which actually went really well. We had a hard time getting there because our bus never came and we showed up 10 minutes late but were still able to play and had a really good time.

Today is New Years Eve and we are currently hanging out at aunt Sharon's. We walked to dunkin' donuts and got bagels and donuts this morning and now we are just hanging out for the day and probably going over to Pete's cousin Missy and her husband Ben's house tonight.
We have 4 days until we head to London! can't believe it's finally here! we are really looking forward to it and will keep you guys updated and post a lot of pictures!

11

days until we fly off to New york for the holidays! A lot has been happening since our last post, so we thought we should fill you all in.
We have moved in with Amanda's parents to save money during these last couple weeks. It's been really nice to hide out in the woods and take it easy for a while, and spend time with family.

As far as band news goes, we finally got hard copies of our ep! They are being sold at indaba coffee in the west central area of Spokane, and, of course, at our shows. Speaking of shows we played for the first time as a full band last weekend. It was amazing. Thanks again to Aaron Hamel, and Fawn Dasovich, who have both played a huge part in making our band sound more badass. Adding drums, keys, and two more voices has really had a massive impact on the songs, helping them reach their full potential. For anyone who missed last weeks show, we are playing again at calypsos coffee in CDA this Saturday. It's going to be great.
Booking shows in London has gone extremely well. We have 17 confirmed dates in different coffee houses, pubs, and venues around the city. We are super excited about all of them. On the flip side, we may end up canceling a few of the dates booked in NY, to free up some time to visit with people while we are there.

As some of you know, we did a Christmas album last year, and were planning on making it an annual gift idea, however as we get closer to our departure date, we've realized it's probably not going to happen this year. The reason being that with the trip coming up so fast we haven't been able to find the time or the space to pull it off. That's the bad news. The good new is that we are still hoping to play some Christmas songs for you all (at least those of you who live in the Spokane area). The night before we fly out we will be performing at an advent concert, taking place at the Kave in otis orchards. It's going to be a great time to celebrate Christmas, hang out with friends and hear some great music. Also performing will be Betty and the Boy, and Marshall Mclean and the Horse Thieves. It's happening December 19th, and we hope to see you all there and get a chance to say goodbye before we leave.

You can find out more information about it here: http://www.facebook.com/thekavespokane?ref=ts&v=info#!/event.php?eid=168624963171072&index=1


Until next time!

Pete and Amanda
(the perennials)

28

days. It seems like the closer we get to our trip the less money we have have. We are learning that trusting in God to provide is a different thing altogether when you don't have a bank account to fall back on.
The last couple of days have been interesting to say the least. We found out that the people we thought would take our apartment aren't going to and unless we find someone in the next week we are left with having to pay rent for December even though we are moving out before then.

It started snowing yesterday morning and hasn't really stopped since. Tonight we're holding up in our apartment, sleeping on the couch, eating Chinese takeout and watching movies. There's currently about five inches of snow on the ground.
It turns out Brownes Addition is just as pretty as it is in the spring. However with the snow comes more than just picturesque scenery. The roads are icy and just yesterday on the way to church we had the wonderful opportunity to get into an accident. On the flip side we played the Spokane Fall Folk Festival and while it wasn't quite the show we were hoping it would be, it turned out to be a pleasant experience. We played well, hung out with friends and family, and made some new fans. Currently we have two shows left in Spokane, and Spent the last few days trying to book shows in NY and London. Hopefully some good things will come of that. The forecast says there is a high of 11 tomorrow, so we will be spending the day hiding in our apartment (which doubles as our recording studio) and hopefully track the bulk of this years Christmas album!

P.S. If you didn't get last years album and would like it, email us and we will send you the mp3's

33

days until we leave Spokane and head to New York for Christmas and 48 days until we leave New York for London. We have our plane tickets there and back, but not much else. nonetheless things are starting to come together. Our tentative itinerary is as follows:
We fly from Spokane to New York on December 20th. We are in NY for fifteen days (during which time we plan on getting down to Baltimore to visit Pete's family).
On January 4th we leave New York city for London (with a 10 hour layover in Iceland, just to keep things interesting).
When we get to London is when things get hazy. Essentially we are on our own for what we are expecting to be a month and a half. With the exception of a friend in Oxford, who we may try to visit, we don't have any contacts in the UK.
Somewhere in that month and a half we want to get to Scotland for a few weeks and spend some time in Glasgow.
If our funds hold up we are toying with the idea of training down from London and visiting Belgium, France and Germany before heading to Italy where we are going to re-evaluate whether we have enough energy to go anywhere else.
We have flexible tickets back, but as for now it looks like we will fly into Seattle on March 17th.
We will keep you guys updated on what's going on...should be one hell of a trip!