art cred: keith johnson

The Pharmacy are notoriously haunted by bad luck; on past tours they've been arrested, injured, broken down, robbed, and stranded. But our fearless local dance-punk quartet is hitting the highway yet again, courting disaster on a marathon tour (80 shows in all!) with a couple of new recruits, Ryan Thompson and Stefan Rubicz.

"This is the biggest tour we've done," says the band's drummer, Brendhan Bowers. "This one is almost three months long and with two new members. Hopefully Ryan and Stefan do really well on the road. They've been good friends of ours for a long time, but we've never toured with them before."

To be on the safe side, the Pharmacy are leaving local fans with something to remember them by in case they're besieged by a swarm of locusts in Nebraska and don't make it home. On Saturday, March 10, they play the Vera Project with the Intelligence and Wallpaper to celebrate the release of their new 7-inch single, Abominable. The record is being pressed on white vinyl by Chicago's fantastically named Tic Tac Totally Records (www.tictactotally.com).

Featuring two tracks, "Tropical Yeti Song" and "Plastic Bugs," Abominable is a little lighter than the band's previous material. Scottie Yoder sings more (instead of ranting or screaming), and there's a lot more melody coming through in the songwriting. Even though they may be new to you, the songs were recorded with the band's old keyboardist, Joey Seward, almost a year ago.

They have new material with the new members already in the works, too. In a few months, when they get back from tour, the Pharmacy will put finishing touches on the full-length they started recording a couple weeks ago.

"It's gonna be called Choose Your Own Adventure," says Bowers. "Our plan was to have our insert be like the Choose Your Own Adventure books, but it might be kind of hard to come up with something like that."

In the meantime, Bowers is using his creative energy to work on the band's "Tropical Yeti Song" music video, which Bowers filmed as a school project while attending Evergreen. He shot the video himself on 16-mm film.

"We shot it in my garage, and my garage is kind of like a giant studio, and there's shots of us playing, and a lot of masks and monsters, and a lot of stop-motion animation in it, too," he says. "There's no story line; it'll just be us doing things."

Bowers plans to take his camera on the road to film the three-month trip, so if the Pharmacy do survive the expedition, his footage should make for a good disaster flick.

Saturday's show starts at 7:30 p.m. and costs six bucks at the door ($5 with a Vera club card).

See today's all ages shows.