Beachwood Sparks are playing in downtown LA on New Year’s Eve! The event, called Bank Run 2009, takes place at The Bank on 401 South Main Street and is hosted by Little Radio. Buy your tickets here.

Beachwood Sparks are not playing this show. See Aaron’s and Chris’ comments below for more info.

If you live in the Tampa area be sure to head over to Kellys Pub on Saturday night as Brent Rademaker and Ben Knight will be playing a special show. Expect “lots of BEACHWOOD SPARKS songs and some other surprises”!

Beachwood Sparks are heading back to California after a short trip to the East Coast (reviews from the shows in Philly and NYC can be found in the forums) for three shows in late October/early November together with Jenny Lewis. This most certainly means that Farmer Dave once again will be in the Beachwood line-up, since he’s currently on tour with Lewis. More details can be found here.

Oh, we’ve also finally been able to track down a descent version of the By Your Side video, which can now be seen in the video player.

This past weekend Farmer Dave joined his (former?) band mates on stage for four California shows and thus completing the classic Beachwood Sparks lineup of Gunst, Rademaker, Scher and Sperske! You can read a short review of the shows in our forum. Thank you Michael!

Also, The Tyde premiered a brand new song, “Banned”, at the Echo on Friday. Check it out here.

It looks like The Sparks are heading to the East Coast! Here’s the dates.

Photos from the shows in Redmond and Big Sur can now be found in the photo album.

Beachwood Sparks performed the following songs on Sunday:

1. The Calming Seas
2. Hearts Mend
3. Ballad of Never Rider
4. Silver Morning After
5. Canyon Ride
6. You Take the Gold
7. Desert Skies
8. Old Manatee
9. Yer Selfish Ways
10. Banjo Press Conference
11. Once We were Trees

This is what it looked like (click thumbnails for larger photos):

Photos by joshc.

By the way, many sources (including Pitchfork) have reported that there is a new Beachwood Sparks album in the makings, slated for a early 2009 release. Keep those fingers crossed…

As most of you probably know the SP20 event is taking place this weekend and that means that the long awaited Beachwood Sparks reunion is tomorrow! Me and Staffan who are responsible for this site will unfortunately not be able to attend since we live and work in Sweden but we hope as many of you Beachwood Sparks fans as possible get the chance to see them. Please send us reviews of the show and photos if you attend it!

In order to help you guys build some hype for the show we have conducted an interview with acclaimed singer/guitarist and Beachwood buddy Neal Casal. He talks about how he came in contact with the group and how he apprehends their music and its importance. In the interview he also shares some intimate memories from his tour with the band. It’s a good read and we hope you’ll appreciate it. We’re really proud to able to post it on this site. Read it here!

If these two items weren’t big enough we’d also like to recommend the new album by the band The Quarter After, “Changes Near”. The Quarter After mainly consists of brothers Dominic and Rob Campanella and plays music in the tradition of inspiring California bands like The Byrds and Buffalo Springfield. Rob Campanella has some connections to Beachwood Sparks since he has produced and played on albums by The Tyde and Frausdots. He’s also a member of The Brian Jonestown Massacre which are on tour now.

Changes Near is the second album from The Quarter After and moves the band more towards the moods and harmonies of west coast country music like the already mentioned Byrds, International Submarine Band and Grateful Dead. The album cover might be the coolest one in 2008…

Chris Gunst, Brent Rademaker and Aaron Sperske will together with guitarist Ben Knight, keyboardist Jen Cohen and steel guitarist Dan Horne form the line-up for this summer’s Beachwood Sparks reunion shows.

Guitar virtuoso Ben Knight is a long time friend of The Sparks and has played on both Once We Were Trees and Make the Robot Cowboys Cry as well as toured with the band. Jen Cohen is the wife of Chris Gunst and together they form Mystic Chords of Memory. Dan Horne has earlier played with Lilys, Ben Kweller and On the Speakers (to name a few).

Yes, it’s true! Beachwood Sparks have been confirmed to perform at the Sub Pop 20th Anniversary Festival that’s gonna take place at Marymoor Park in Redmond, WA on July 12 and 13.

We got in touch with drummer Aaron Sperske to ask him a few questions about this historic event:

How come you guys decided to get back together and play this gig?

- Sub Pop asked us to play a “20 Years o’Sub Pop Festival” and we had been talking about playing off and on for a while so that was the catalyst to make it all go down. We have much respect for them as a label and personally they’re just a bunch of great folks, so it all made sense that this is the time to do it…

What do you think it’s gonna be like to play those old tunes with those guys again?

- We’ve already played together in rehearsal and it went swimmingly! If anything, it’s better now that we’ve all gained a lil’ perspective and experience.

Who will be in the line-up?

- So far the line up is Chris Gunst, Brent Rademaker, myself and if all works logistically Neal Casal with Jen Cohen (of Mystic Chords of Memory) on organ and piano. Unfortunately Farmer Dave’s busy schedule with new new wave sensations Interpol doesn’t permit him to commit to any dates at this time. Hopefully that will change…

Is this a one time deal or are there any further plans for the band?

- We’ve currently said yes to a Folkyeah Fest in Big Sur on July 18th at the Henry Miller Library and the Sunset Junction in L.A. on August 23rd or 24th. That’s about it for now, although god willin’ we can get together later this year and make another record…

Let’s keep our fingers crossed…

We’re very excited to bring to you two new and exclusive Beachwood Sparks live video clips. Click here to watch them!

This wonderful footage of the band circa ‘98 was brought to us from The Pete Kinne Page by Cloyce on Myspace. We would like to send our big thanks to Jackie Hager for letting us distribute these videos and by that making them available to the Beachwood Sparks fan community. That’s you guys.

The first clip is a performance of Midsummer Daydream and Watery Moonlight (a song that was recorded for the band’s unreleased debut album) from Old Town Pub in Pasadena in March 1998. The second clip shows Beachwood Sparks live at Spaceland in August 1998 performing (the 7″ version of) Desert Skies.

We are also very happy to be able to present a clip with Beachwood Sparks percussionist Pete “Sleigher” Kinne and his friends (playing as Gold Winter People) performing one of Pete’s songs at The Chorus Club in September 1998. Watch it here!

If anyone has any other information about the videos or something visible in them, don’t hesitate to speak up in the forums and we’ll post the info so everyone interested will be able to get to it.