James

8.16.08

Over the next few months, I’ll be using this page to update the progress of the new record. I’ve been writing since just after recording Ten Thousand Tongues-live we play some of these songs like “Reflected in a Lake,” “Thou art That,” “A City Without Walls,” “Massacres (a working title)” and a couple of others. In actuality, we have about half to two-thirds of a full length written, but it is going to be a very different sound than our EP. The songs are more melodic, but more challenging; more easily entered, but more dense as well. This is the part of the music industry that I like. I hate marketing, worrying about the size of the crowd, live sound–all of the stresses of a band trying to have their music heard. The writing process is why we are the band that we are. Songs carry meaning. They communicate in a way no other art form is capable, in that space in which words meet music and are changed.

7.25.08

After sleeping in the van on the side of the highway, we foolishly felt refreshed enough to make the rest of the drive to Oxford/Tupelo. Brea and Gregg went back to sleep and I was buzzing on Red Bull and listening to Gregg’s iPod with headphones. As we were silently gliding through Nashville, I put on Explosions in the Sky, a band I have a long, nostalgic history with. I needed crescendos to keep me awake.

Being on tour is a strange sensation. We’ve played great shows, great venues to great fans and are a band just beginning to take its steps. Listening to Explosions in the Sky reminded me of when my friend Eric Wolff first took me to see the band in Champaign, IL in a half-full cafe. We nonchalantly sat in front of the stage, two of 35 or 40 in attendance and proceeded to experience one of the best live shows I’ve ever seen. Now, the places have rotated. They were unknown then; unknown bands come and go and only a few passage through it into something more. What was it for them to know they had something special? How confidently did they play then knowing they could fill a small stadium? Was it disconcerting or hopeful to know the road is long and each show you sell a few CD’s to strangers, give out some stickers or pins and hopefully make a connection that lasts, grows, and evolves into the fans that knew us when we played a drummerless tour and still communicated what we do in a dark room, our faces lit up and the crowd in shadow. And the people keep coming up to us, telling us what the songs mean and how much, telling us to come back, telling us of friends of theirs that would love us, telling us to play Birmingham next time, or Carrolltown, or Memphis. And we will. We know we will.