The band started in January of 2023, to play the parish festival. After six months of practicing, we did that, and decided we wanted to keep going. Now, after a year and a half of playing together, we come to a second round of parish festivals. It's really exciting to have the prospect of playing live again. Just practicing in the basement is a joy. Band nights are one of the highlights of my week. But we're not making music just for us. It becomes real, in a sense, when we play for a crowd. It's probably one of the central facts about art. It's never just about the artist's self-expression. It has to be for an audience. We become musicians when people listen to our music. We became musicians when we did it the first time, last year. And now we're doing it again.

[Check out our calendar for show times!]

It feels very different this time around, though. Joe ordered a drum head with the band logo, and has a wireless in-ear monitor. Austin has a whole swath of new pedals. More than just new stuff, though, I feel like we've really matured as a band. Playing together, learning songs together, figuring out what each person is going to do with their instrument or voice, feels more natural. In the beginning, we had to talk through minute details of what to do in a song, but now the familiarity we've developed means we can just play and get it, intuitively. There's just no shortcut for getting good. Hours of practice together is what makes a band play well together and feel tight. So in the months where we weren't playing for any audiences, we've really become better musicians. I think the show this summer is going to blow last year's out of the water.

A goal leading up to the first festival show July 21st is to have some demos recorded and available on the website here. We do have the Ashes for my Valentine EP live, but I want there to be some of our original songs with the full band available. We'll demo a lot of new music this summer - there are eight original tracks in our setlist, and I think every single one is fantastic. I don't want people to hear those songs once and not be able to revisit them. Even better, it'd be amazing if some of y'all listened ahead of time and sang along. The new USB audio interface that we got should make us able to do some easy demo recordings. We'll do a mini recording session on Wednesday, and then hopefully have the music available next weekend - depending on how quickly I can edit. These won't be heavily produced, and I won't be uploading them to spotify or other streaming services. Just for our fans.

After the last parish festival show August 9th, we'll start working on recording a full album. We've recruited Mark Hingsbergen from The Romans to do our post-production, and I'm super excited to work with him. It will still be a relatively garage rock affair. We don't have a nice recording studio. We do have some incredible songwriting, though, and some really good musicians. I'm hopeful that we can make something really worth listening to.

So, we're musicians, and we're becoming musicians. We're a real band, and we're increasingly becoming a real band. It's an odd, liminal space. Make sure you come along for the ride this summer!