If you’ve been dying to see All My Friends Are Funeral Singers but never got the chance to catch the ‘Fone on tour, you may now rejoice! If you did catch the boys on tour but are dying to see the film again (and again and again), you may also rejoice. Everyone else, please rejoice at your own discretion.

All My Friends Are Funeral Singers — Califone’s Sundance-accepted film — is now available for purchase on DVD (LaserDisc coming soon)!

So mosey on over to IndiePix Films or Amazon and get your copy today!

Synopsis:

Zel is a fortune teller. She works out of her century-old house removing clients’ aches and pains, advising gamblers, and channeling cranky spirits for a quick check in with their loved ones. Zel is very good at her chosen profession, but also receives some unique assistance. For as long as she can remember she has shared her home with a group of ghosts — a priest, a bride, a mute child, some washed up vaudevillians and a noisy, sight-impaired group of musicians, who pass on incredible knowledge and abilities from beyond the world of the living.

All goes on at the family homestead as it has for generations, until a mysterious light appears in the woods. The ghosts suddenly realize they are trapped, and forge a rebellion, tormenting Zel with all the aggravation and insanity they can muster. And when Zel uncovers the origins of these spirits, she is forced to choose between her comfortable if strange existence and letting go of the only family she has ever known.

It’s rare to attend a concert where the musicians’ backs face the audience for the duration of the show, and it’s perhaps even rarer when those same faceless musicians skillfully manage to not only engage but captivate the attention of their listeners. But Califone is not like every other band.

Read more at Time Out Chicago

In anticipation of Califone’s March 9 and 10 shows at Lincoln Hall (2424 N. Lincoln Ave.), the website True/Slant has published an interview with Tim Rutili.

Five Questions and Answers with Califone’s Tim Rutili

Chicago experimental rock band Califone has been challenging music lovers with its eclectic, ambitious, enigmatic grooves since 1997. But with its latest undertaking, “All My Friends are Funeral Singers,” the band is challenging itself, going places few bands have gone before.

“Funeral Singers” is the name of Califone’s latest album, out last October on Dead Oceans, and also the title of frontman Tim Rutili’s film directorial debut, about a fortune teller living in a house filled with spirits. The two go very much hand in hand, to the point that Califone is performing the album as essentially a live soundtrack to the film, including a hometown gig at Lincoln Hall March 9. (Those more interested in the back catalog can see a straight up show March 10).

Chicago Beat contacted Rutili to answer five pressing questions via e-mail.

Chicago Beat: So which came first, the album or the film?

Tim Rutili: Songs started first but once it got rolling both the script and the album fed into each other at the same time. We finished the album in March and shot the film in April.

Read the rest of the interview at True/Slant

Tickets for tonight’s show are here (film/music performance). March 10 tickets are here (rock show).

I leave for Park City, Utah in five days. Other than a half-day of skiing and a couple of parties, I’ll mostly be sitting next to other “Press & Industry” inside dark hotel conference rooms converted into movie theaters. Some come for the glamor. We come for the films. Oh, Yarrow Screening Room, next to the Albertson’s parking lot, I’ll be with you soon enough.

But Sundance has also always been a time to experience great music. The ASCAP Cafe and Harry O’s always put on great shows. I—and the world, I think—first heard the duo of Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová, who would later become The Swell Season, perform songs from their film, Once. I first saw Cary Brothers, Meiko and so many others on the Hotel Cafe stage at Sundance. I even got to break bread with Suzanne Vega, Alexi Murdoch, Mary Gauthier and Nickel Creek at an ASCAP dinner. This year, music plays a particularly big role in several films, and these are just eight that I’m going to try to see:

2. All My Friends Are Funeral Singers
As if Tim Rutili, the frontman for Califone, wasn’t accomplished enough, he’s the writer/director behind this film about a fortune teller, Zel, who lives with ghosts. They help her help her clients, but begin to get a little restless, and Zel doesn’t want to see them go. Califone, of course, provides the soundtrack.

Read more at Paste.

Califone’s Sundance dates:
anuary 26, 2010 (9pm) – Park City, UT – New Frontier On Main (live music to film)
January 27, 2010 (9pm) – Park City, UT – Egyptian Theatre (film only)
January 28, 2010 (2pm) – Park City, UT – Holiday Village Cinema II (film only)
January 29, 2010 (7:30pm) – Salt Lake City, UT – Broadway Centre Cinemas IV (film only)
January 30, 2010 (3pm) – Park City, UT Park City – Yarrow Hotel Theatre 1 (film only)

Wilco drummer/virtuoso/all-around handsome nice guy Glenn Kotche recently disclosed to Filter Magazine his Top 10 albums of 2009. Guess what? All My Friends Are Funeral Singers was his number one pick!

Glenn Kotche of Wilco’s Top 10 Albums of 2009

1. Califone – All My Friends Are Funeral Singers
2. Jim O’Rourke – The Visitor
3. Alex Cline – Continuation
4. John Luther Adams – The Place We Began
5. Tortoise – Beacons of Ancestorship
6. Dirty Projectors – Bitte Orca
7. Frank Rosaly – Milkwork
8. Nels Cline – Coward
9. Bobb Bruno – Dreamt On EP
10. Chris Corsano – Another Dull Dawn

For more of Filter‘s end of year Top 10 lists, check out their website.

Califone’s film, All My Friends Are Funeral Singers is going to Sundance. The band is “shocked and amazed” (and, of course, excited). They’ve been touring behind the film and their acclaimed new album since October.

In addition to Sundance, the band will go northward this February, in support of Wilco’s Trans-Canada tour. It’s gonna be chilly. Dates are below. Woot!

Sundance Film Festival

January 26, 2010 (9pm) – Park City, UT – New Frontier On Main (live music to film)
January 27, 2010 (9pm) – Park City, UT – Egyptian Theatre (film only)
January 28, 2010 (2pm) – Park City, UT – Holiday Village Cinema II (film only)
January 29, 2010 (7:30pm) – Salt Lake City, UT – Broadway Centre Cinemas IV (film only)
January 30, 2010 (3pm) – Park City, UT Park City – Yarrow Hotel Theatre 1 (film only)

With Wilco (no film)

February 07, 2010 – Missoula, MT – Adams Center
February 09, 2010 – Portland, OR – Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall
February 10, 2010 – Seattle, WA – The Paramount Theatre
February 12, 2010 – Victoria, BC – The Royal Theatre
February 13, 2010 – Vancouver, BC – David Lam Park
February 15, 2010 – Edmonton, AB – Northern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium
February 16, 2010 – Calgary, AB – Southern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium
February 17, 2010 – Saskatoon, SK – TCU Place
February 19, 2010 – Duluth, MN – Duluth Entertainment & Convention Center
February 20, 2010 – Madison, WI – Overture Center for the Arts
February 21, 2010 – East Lansing, MI – Wharton Center for the Performing Arts
February 23, 2010 – Hamilton, ON – Hamilton Place Theatre
February 24, 2010 – London, ON – Centennial Hall

Pitchfork:

With Bunny, all of a sudden Red Red Meat seemed artier, more hidden and inscrutable. Rutili has always spoken in riddles, content to braid together phrases or even single words that sound pleasing to the ear, but here the fragmentation became more extreme. Somehow, when the syllables pile up and the flow of vowels and consonants rides the arc of the music, the effect could be sublime. “Mink-eyed, marble-eyed/ In the gauze, in the weeds/ By the drain, red on pale/ There’s a nail by the vent,” goes the chorus of “Gauze”, Bunny Gets Paid’s stone classic and a contender for the best song Rutili has written. Who knows what it means. But if you can picture a scrubby patch of weeds and in it a clump of gauze, possibly soiled, twitching in the breeze, and the disconnected image of decay stirs something in you, you’re on your way to falling in love with Red Red Meat.

Califone is playing at 1:30 p.m. on Saturday. Don’t miss it!

Chicago Tribune, The best bands to see during days 2 and 3 : Few modern sound painters close the gap between studio experimentation and antique art forms such as blues and folk with as much grace and invention as Tim Rutili.

Chicago Sun-Times, Perfect ‘Pitch’: From his days with Friends of Betty through Red Red Meat and on to Califone, Tim Rutili has been one of the most consistently creative forces on the Chicago underground rock scene. Though he is now living on the West Coast, he and Califone MVP Ben Massarella continue to make entrancing and hypnotic sounds based on warping blues and folk roots whenever they reunite onstage or in the studio, as they did for last year’s “Roots & Crowns.”

Time Out Chicago, Pitch Perfect: Local post-rock Americana heroes Califone survived a near breakup only to come out with their best album, last year’s subtle but rich Roots & Crowns, a disc that matches mournful atmosphere with equally spacey and gorgeous musicianship.

Eric Danton writes:

…Bitter Tears singer Alan Scalpone, in the wedding gown, eyes rimmed with red like some cross-dressing Miss Havisham, sang in a deep, slightly unhinged tone, accompanied at various times by guitar, piano, bass, drums, trombone, kazoo and slide whistle. He wasn’€™t the only eccentric on stage: Band mate Greg Norman sported a drawn-on fu-manchu mustache and wore a Chicago Bulls jersey tucked into short, tight jean shorts that didn’t quite close in the front. Bassist Michael McGinley donned a woman-size lavender shirt barely buttoned across his chest…

…Singer Tim Rutili began with a droll promise to send out good vibes to amend for some vaguely remembered slight he might have delivered last time the band played Northampton. Although he couldn’t recall what he may have done to offend, his band’s 70-minute set was absolution enough.

The quartet creates stunning atmospheric soundscapes, using subtle electronic noise and skillfully deployed dissonance to transform roots-inflected rock songs into sonic works of art…

…Three members of the Bitter Tears returned (looking far less maniacal) to play trumpet and trombone on about half of Califone’€™s songs. At times it was as if someone flipped a switch that turned off gravity, sending the elements of tightly structured songs—€”horns, guitar, banjo, drums, percussion—€”drifting into beautiful disarray until an unseen force reasserted itself and pulled them back together into a musical resolution.

Click here for more

Go See ‘Em!

Here is a little love From the venerable Internets site Tiny Mix Tapes:

“Will you be in [Malibu] when Califone is there? Will you take pictures and grin like a fool? That’s what I like to do when I see Califone.”

“…You best get yourself a copy of [Roots & Crowns] and play it until Califone comes near your town cuz it’s a damn good record, yo! It’s all folky and electronicky and staticky. You know that line about shattering when you hit the water? Beautiful.”