Gentleman Auction House Holds Steady On The CMJ Charts At #42 With 127 Stations Playing Songs From Their Euphoric Gem Alphabet Graveyard

The Midwest darlings continue their never ending tour with new dates below! Out on the road with Ya Big Kid Static for the Cannonballs and Catapults Tour CMJ dates announced soon!

It seems only appropriate that youth and maturation are two of the lyrical themes that thread their way through Eric Enger’s songs: His band, Gentleman Auction House, has spent the last year navigating the space where the two words intersect. Formed in the summer of 2005 (with its current lineup solidified in January of 2006), the band itself is still young, with the average age of its seven members hitting just below the quarter-century mark.

GAH spent their first year hitting the stages in St. Louis, MO. As excited performances converted excited fans, the band took its cue and recorded their debut EP The Rules Were Handed Down just in time for their performance at 2006’s Pygmalion Festival in Champaign-Urbana, IL. The self-recorded EP was self-released in October 2006, and had sold out of it’s first pressing by the time the band played their now-annual Christmas show, which happened to score a mention in SPIN magazine’s list of must-attend events in St. Louis that December. TRWHD sold enough copies before the year’s end to make it into the Top 15 best-selling records of 2006 at Vintage Vinyl, St. Louis’ premier independent record store. The EP made the list again a year later, and now has sold over 3,000 total copies to date.

The next year was spent playing local and regional shows in support of TRWHD, and though the feedback was consistently filled with praise, the band’s recipe of boy-girl vocals, dueling drummers, and multi-instrumentation had become standard indie-pop fare. Around every corner loomed a band that bore a resemblance to GAH’s own musical reflection, and every review cited the same touchstone Canadian collectives. Feeling the need to delineate the band’s sound, Enger penned a handful of new pop songs to round out material for what would become Alphabet Graveyard, the band’s full-length debut.

October 2007 found GAH in Washington, D.C., recording at Silver Sonya studios with Chad Clark (Beauty Pill, Smart Went Crazy), Devin Ocampo (Medications, Faraquet), and TJ Lipple (Aloha), who the band hoped would help them audibly infuse the enthusiasm and youthful energy of their live show and contextualize all of the different components of their new record. After two weeks of feverish recording, a robbery at gunpoint, and the unexpected illness of Chad Clark, two records emerged.
May 2008 welcomed The Book of Matches EP, which serves as the thematic and sonic precursor to the band’s new full-length. Due out in August of 2008, Alphabet Graveyard is a record that documents the maturation of a band who has shed the weight of its comparisons and forged a direction all their own to a very new place where solemn folk ballads, epic mood pieces and infectiously danceable pop very naturally find themselves on common ground.

Fresh off of a string of spring tours including a showcase at SXSW and a Daytrotter studio session, the band will spend the remainder of the year touring consistently, including a stop at Diversafest (DFest) in Tulsa, OK, and their third trip to Champaign’s burgeoning Pygmalion Festival.

RCRD LBL: "Get ready to play 'The Book of Matches' on repeat for the rest of the day. Or rather, resist that cause if you think this song is as totally bad ass as it can get, wait til they add bloody horns on 'We Used To Dream About Bridges.' ...if [Alphabet Graveyard] isn't the most jubilant record to tickle your ears all summer, I'm a goddamned monkey's uncle."

Time Out New York: “On Alphabet Graveyard, the young St. Louis band Gentleman Auction House salts it’s pop songs with colorful instrumental touches reminiscent of Mercury Rev."

Tripwire

Click Here To Check Out The Video

Gentleman Auction House’s Alphabet Graveyard On Emergency Umbrella Records on September 9th!

Check Out GAH’s Daytrotter session

Click Here For Daytrotter Feature

Three Song Exclusive Download on RCRD LBL

New Tour Dates:
9.19 - Pygmalion Music Festival @ Red Herring- Urbana, IL
9.20 - Forward Music Fest @ Cafe Montmartre w/ Thao with The Get Down Stay Down- Madison, WI
9.21 - Abbey Pub w/ Yea Big Kid Static - PRESENTED BY MUZZLE OF BEES- Chicago, IL
9.22 - Mid City Grill w/ Yea Big Kid Static - PRESENTED BY WOODEN NICKEL RECORDS- Fort Wayne, IN
9.23 - The Pike Room w/ Yea Big Kid Static & Champions of Breakfast- Pontiac, MI
9.24 - The Elbow Room w/ Yea Big Kid Static & Our Brother The Megazord- Ypsilanti, MI
9.25 - High Five w/ Yea Big Kid Static, Bookmobile, & Thrashers- Columbus, OH
9.26 - Village Green Records w/ Yea Big Kid Static - FREE / ALL AGES!!!- Muncie, IN
9.26 - Mo¹s Tavern w/ Yea Big Kid Static- Muncie, IN
9.27 - The House Cafe w/ Yea Big Kid Static & The Patience- Dekalb, IL
10.18 - Jack¹s Art Show @ Koken Art Factory - St. Louis, MO
10.19 - The Pink Door- Louisville, KY
10.20 - The Buddha Den Presents @ Pearl w/ Blastronauts - Dayton, OH
10.21- House Party!!! - Pittsburgh, PA
10.22 - Cafe Metropolis w/ Yip Yip, An Albatross, & DMBQ- Wilkes-Barre, PA
10.26 - The Talking Head w/ The Payola Reserve- Baltimore, MD
10.28 - The Milestone- Charlotte, NC
10.29 - Village Tavern- Columbia, SC
11.7 - Courtyard Café w/ Headlights- Urbana, IL
11.8- Earlham College w/ Ponytail- Richmond, IN
11.14 - Mojo¹s - Bluebird Music & Arts Festival- Columbia, MO
11.29 - Rock n Roll Craft Show V @ 3rd Degree Glass Factory- St. Louis, MO