Official Website of JillandKate

We left Nashville last Tuesday at the crack of dawn to make our way over to the great state of Texas…we listened to an audio book called “Beach Road” by James Patterson…it made the drive go by quickly and ba-da-bing, ba-da-boom…we found ourselves in Texas.

Kate was bored in the car so she doodled on her iPhone:

We played 5 house shows, 1 bar & 1 TV station and if you’re counting that’s 7 & we did all of that in 5 days. So, now you understand why we were so tired

But, we had a blast… we met so many wonderful people. And you guys, the people in Texas are some of the sweetest people we’ve ever met. I mean, we knew that already having so many Texan friends, but this week reminded us of that. We received gifts, cupcakes, hugs, handwritten notes..we were blown away by every stop we made.

Part of why we love doing these house shows so much is we get to know the people that are listening to our music. We get to put a face to the twitter handle. It’s fabulous. And by get to know we mean this…in Cypress our host made these unbelievably ridiculously good little party sandwiches…we gushed about how good they were and yesterday SHE EMAILED US THE RECIPE. It’s the little things like this that we love…I mean…yes, love the party sandwiches but love that we have something from Cypress, TX that will stay with us…cause you best believe we are gonna be making these party sandwiches. Let’s party.

In Austin, we got to meet Ryan (a devoted Spur’s fan) and he has this awesome organization called “Inspiration on Wheelz” that you should definitely check out. He is a talented rapper and he even did a little rap for us!

San Antonio was another highlight probably because it was the busiest day for us. We started at 5am in hair & makeup to get ready for “Great Day San Antonio”…the Kens 5 News team was kind enough to have us on their show to promote our album We cannot say enough about how great everyone was on that set. You can tell they all love their jobs and it made the morning super fun. We laughed our way through the morning…Bridget and Eileen were hysterical and SO sweet.

Later that evening we played a house show during some crazy rain accompanied by crazy thunder and lightning! Then, after the house show we headed over to J&O’s Cantina to play a show with Lorita Drive & Nick Gomez. J&O’s is a small but lively bar in Southtown and was a great place to hang & listen to music. Note to self: Singing “Skinny Jeans” in a room full of mostly skinny-jean-wearing boys is highly not recommended Nick played first and had us all tapping our feet and Lorita Drive played after us and wowed us with their catchy tunes and brother/sister harmonies. We loved it!

The next morning we headed towards our next show in Arlington and stopped in Austin for a quick lunch date with our old tour buddies Einar and Jim. We had incredible tacos (as you should when in Texas) and it was so good to catch up with those guys.

That night in Arlington, we had a blast and also had some Gigi’s cupcakes. Can’t complain about that! (We also found out the Texan slang for Skinny Jeans: “STRANGLERS” hahaha!)

Our final show was in Frisco with a great group of high school girls (and guy…Hey Aaron!) celebrating a 16th birthday. How fun is that?!

We can’t tell you how much fun we are having meeting all you great people at your houses and getting to play our music, tell our stories, and hear your stories. It’s an experience we will never forget. Here are some random pics from the road:

We are excited to come to New England in a few weeks! xoxo j&k

’0-Dark-Thirty Drive To The Airport

Last Sunday we hopped on a plane and four hours later arrived in sunny Los Angeles. Well actually it was kind of gloomy Los Angeles because they are experiencing a phenomenon called “June Gloom”…it seems that every morning is pretty overcast & gloomy and then around noon-ish the sun comes out and all is right in the world again.

We were super excited to be out on the West coast for a couple of meetings and for 2 shows. Obviously the first thing we did was go to the Coffee Bean…

After that we headed to visit Kate’s college friend and had some lunch. Traveling for work is such a bonus when you have friends that live far away from you…it was a nice time to catch up & watch her 3 kiddos run around. Later that afternoon we got to spend some time with our courageous friend Will Gray who is battling cancer. It was wonderful just to sit with him, hear him laugh and catch up. He was getting ready to go to a treatment facility in Arizona (which if you are interested in donating to help him financially with his treatment you can find more info & donate here) so we were happy to have some time with him before they left.

Tuesday we had a great time playing at The Parlor in West Hollywood. We had a bunch of friends and fans come out to see us and it was A BLAST. They even had a photo booth…best place ever. We had a slight delay in our set because we were waiting for the hockey game to wrap up…go KINGS or something like that (…..AHEM….go Bruins)

We loved this shot! Thanks for letting us borrow your pic!

This is Tom Jordan, he played a set after us & killed it!

Wednesday we had a great meeting in the morning and then headed over to the StageIt headquarters…okay with one small stop at SPRINKLES cupcakes (thanks for the gift card Victor!)…we bought so many cupcakes they gave us two free ones to sample from their sugar free line.

OMG. So good….and they had the nicest people working there. We loved visiting the StageIt head quarters…their staff is amazing and we loved being able to play a show right from their offices overlooking LA. Fun fun.

Thanks Joanna for letting us use your pic…she was watching via StageIt.com

We then celebrated the day with flaming margaritas at El Compadre…olé We ended the day with delicious food  & drinks with friends. Lots of laughter. Here are some more random pics from our trip:

Elevator shots posse.

Random snake man on the street.

Random new best friends Dakota & Kelsey serving up smiles & drinks at The Coffee Bean

Best burger at In-n-out

Chello?

Coffee Bean crazy.

It’s a Nico & Robert/Jill & Kate sandwich

Double veto in LA with The Fray.

Kate & Nico smizing.

Favorite flower bushes…they are everywhere in LA & remind Kate of her grandma.

Crispy Rice Spicy Tuna. Crispy Rice Spicy Tuna people. SO GOOD, there are no more words.

Oh my goodness…We have had the best couple of weeks EVER….where to even begin? We finished the US tour with Kelly Clarkson/The Fray/Carolina Liar on Saturday (the 15th) in Nashville, TN. This was especially fun for us since we live in Nashville–nothing like ending a tour on your home turf And for realsies…we have never had more fun on a tour. We have been fans of The Fray since their first record came out, so every night you would see at least one or both of us side stage soaking up their show. Not only is their music heart-felt and catchy as anything–they are such nice, genuine people. Long talks over catering or scheming the next fun outing will be memories that will last. We are pumped to start the Australian leg of the tour with them tonight! Then there is Carolina Liar….these boys are just the sweetest, most fun people you’ll ever meet! They brought such a level of energy & enthusiasm to ANYTHING we did. Whether it was watching them play a show & getting the crowd super pumped or playing basketball in the back of a venue parking lot in the middle of the night…you wanted to be around them cause you’d always be smiling. Seriously…those guys are THE BEST. Love them.

These boys are the greatest.

Okay…so that was the end of tour. The next day we had our album release show, but before the show we showed up at some of our “Thanks To You” contest winners’ new digs & played them some songs…it pretty much was a blast…and they had yummy cookies & birthday cake fudge. Life changing. Later that evening was the show at Rocketown. This was such a HUGE day for us. We have been working on Heart of Stone for over a year and we could not believe that the day had come where we were in our home town, playing our release show! The evening was SO MUCH FUN. So many people came out. It was so nice getting to say hi to each of you who came out…you seriously have no idea how much it means to us that people would spend their time/money to support what we do. It was a magical night.

Release Show. Rocketown. 9.15.12 (photo courtesy of someone on twitter–thank you!)

The next day was the Heart of Stone listening party…this was especially a fun night because so many of our international friends were able to be a part of the evening too…(even if that meant waking up in the middle of the night!!!!)…via Ustream online. Even our parents tuned in The party was complete with GiGi’s cupcakes with our faces on them…cute little popcorn bags and other fun treats. Our friend John hosted the evening and we got to talk about how the record was made, why we wrote certain songs…we even ended the night playing Skinny Jeans live. Woop woop.

Listening party cupcake fun.

Gift bags!

Decorations!

Blurry but excited j&k!

Our host for the evening…our good friend John. Sorry ladies…he’s married to our bestie Jenny.

Then it happened. TUESDAY ARRIVED. SEPTEMBER 18th, 2012. Heart of Stone was officially released to iTunes & other distributors. A really fun surprise for us was that our album reached number 39 on the iTunes Pop charts. That was insane…just absolutely insane. And that is all thanks to YOU for buying the album, tweeting it, telling your friends…we seriously could not have made this record without your support. We played a StageIt show at noon so that we could play/say hi/give lots of love to our international besties. BUT, the very best part of the day was that we got to spend a lot of it Skype chatting with more contest winners (we even got to play a Skype show in a high school class room (#FSHS wooohoooo) & playing another house show that evening with the final “Thanks to you” contest winner…they also had yummy brownie/cookie cake treats for us. So delicious. It was amazing to see some of you & thank you for being awesome & for your support.

Our amazing friend acting manager/does everything and anything we need Will showed up release day morning with these!!!

#39 on the POP charts….WOOHOOO!

So then we had Wednesday at home to pull ourselves together and pack for LA, Australia & the UK. Literally…it looked like a bomb had exploded in our house. Clothes everywhere. Hadn’t even unpacked from the last 6 week tour…hahaha…it was a disaster. But we managed to pull ourselves together…pack & wake up the next morning at 4:30am to fly to LA to meet up with The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf to play a little show at one of their locations in Hollywood. This might have been one of our favorite shows…we were outside, the weather was amazing, a bunch of you showed up (even though the timing couldn’t have been worse in Los Angeles 5:30pm )and we got to drink endless Coffee Bean drinks. YES. It was amazing. We haven’t played a j&k show in LA for a long time so it was so super great to meet you guys and discuss how amazing Coffee Bean truly is. Plus, we got to see some of our SoCal friends & eat sushi…which is ALWAYS a plus.

Leaving Nashville.

Coffee Bean show. Sunset & Argyle. (photo courtesy of someone on twitter–thank you!)

Cannot be in LA without a stop at In-n-Out

Our dear friends & LA loves…Robert & Nico.

Then the next day we flew to the land down under…skipped an ENTIRE day to get here…but we made it & couldn’t be having a better time. The weather has been amazing. Their coffee is killer–they have a precious little drink called a flat white…not sure what’s in it but it rules. Yesterday a few of us went and cuddled with koalas & kangaroos…yes…that statement is true. It was so fun. We play our first show tonight with Kelly & The Fray & soon to be new pal Sarah De Bono. Let the good times roll!!!! (Jill didn’t go on the koala/kangaroo adventure so Kate is not being picture hog…haha)

Kate & a koala–her name was Trace.

Kangaroo was just chilling.

Kangaroo waving!

Feeding a kangaroo!

Stop it will all of the koala cuteness. Baby & mama.

Hope everyone is feeling good today…we are in the future right now…and it’s looking good.

Lots of love…

-j&k-

Here are a few pictures from the last week or so.

Kate warming her hands over a toaster at rehearsals. Inventive, yes?

No caption necessary. <3

Jill’s guitar rack at rehearsals.

From the sky.

Cold rehearsals in New Orleans. Brrr!

“No Errors” on the treadmill screen. Is that a word of encouragement or a threat?

SNL day!!

Group shot right before we went on live!

Kate’s ear pack had Eminem’s name on the back……pretty kick A.

30 Rockefeller Plaza!

Hey everybody…

Thanks for all of the love for the SOT17th. That’s super cool of you guys…we had no idea that it would catch on the way it did Yay.

We are in Canada now–2 normal flights, one weird seat mate, and one prop-plane later…we made it! And this time with all of our luggage Woohoo!!

It’s an exciting week…we get to see our fun work family who we’ve missed…New Moon is coming out…we’ll be in LA which means In-n-Out and Coffee Bean…Thanksgiving is right around the corner which means stellarrrrrrrrr food. Ahhh….the next week is looking swell.

Hugs, love and a sugar buzz…

j&k