Peter and The Wolf, Castanets Tour By Sea!

With national gas prices soaring past that dreadful $3-per-gallon mark, most of us at Austinist have had to rework our upcoming roadtrip plans. But what about our city's vast legions of musicians? Summer's a great opportunity for bands to get out for a bit of stateside touring, but it's hard enough for most indepedent artists simply break even -- especially when you've rented a jalopy of a gas-guzzling touring van to house all those damned instruments.

Austin's own "wandering moon howler"* Red Hunter, aka Peter and the Wolf, figured out a nifty cost-cutting solution that's also something of a stealthy PR coup as well: he's chartering a sailboat to take him and fellow intrepid musician Jana Hunter and The Castanets along the East Coast's Intracoastal Waterway, from Cape Cod to Miami. Also onboard will be subject-of-many-a-pirate-joke OCDJ from WFMU, who sports a genuine eye patch from an July 4th "accident" from years back, as well as the filmmaker who made the Invisible Children documentary.

Amazingly, (since we only found out about the tour from Red on Saturday) he's already managed to get the attention of MTV News, Good Morning America, and ABC World News Tonight -- the latter which he'll be appearing on tonight tomorrow night (Thursday).

Red's mammoth two-month tour, which might involve "a barn, a burned-down house, and a crashed boxcar," kicks off in late June with a CD release show in Austin, heading west in a clockwise fashion around the US and into parts of Canada before finally arriving in Norfolk, Virginia on August 21st, when his Sailboat Tour officially begins. No further dates have been announced, but his interview with ABC Money Matters yesterday claims anywhere from 12 to 14 shows over a two-week period.

And, in somewhat related news, the gorgeous promo shot above by Austin photographer Aubrey Edwards was taken just last Sunday. Look closely and you can spot Voxtrot's newly-bald Jared Van Fleet, Austinist resident DJ Jess Sauer, The Interest Kills' Diego Garcia-Olano, and whole bunch of other folks we love and occasionally drink booze with.

Upcoming dates for Peter and the Wolf and/or Red:
May 4th - Beerland, Tonewheel Collective
May 7th - The Peacock, with Hello Lovers
May 11th - Emo's, with Sunburned Hand of the Man
June 23rd - TBA, CD Release Show

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[mp3] Peter and the Wolf - People of Night (demo)
[mp3] Peter and the Wolf - Strange Eyes (demo)
[mp3] Peter and the Wolf - Paint the Town
[mp3] Castanets - Three Days Four Nights
[mp3] Castanets - All That I Know

* his words

** promo photo by Aubrey Edwards