two HUGE announcements
Some of our biggest announcements yet
Hi guys, good morning, hope you’re -
TAA TAAAA
almost forgot.
ANNOUNCEMENT #1:
We have a song out for the first time as a band! It’s called 23, and you can stream here.
Huge thanks to:
Sam Genualdi for his patience and brilliance and talent on banjo and slide guitar. He recorded and mixed it all and we wouldn’t have any of this project without him.
Esther Garcia Eder (my grandma) for the cover art. It’s a print of hers that we all really love. You can find her work here.
The story of the song! (TW: suicidal thoughts)
Mak and I wrote this song around this time last year, mid/late October, when we were just starting to .. um . date. The guitar part had been sort of just stagnantly soaking in brine in my voice memos for a few months, and there was a simple vocal melody just following the chords. Life was breathed back into the song when I played it for Mak on the beach one evening, and she was like, “that bangs.” She made the melody clearer, more precise, and we were off.
The direct inspiration for where we went from there was “Chosen to Deserve,” by Wednesday - a song we’ve played at a lot of our shows. We loved - still love - the way Karly Hartzman starts the song just basically saying, “I’m gonna tell you some things that have happened to me,” and then she tells us some things that have happened to her. No frills, nothing especially abstract. Listening to it feels like getting closer to someone you already love. It’s life being worth singing about, just because we’ve lived it.
So I wrote about jumping around with some old friends in Sleeping Village (Chicago venue) to a band I’d never heard of; Mak wrote about talking to her dad on the phone and to her ex in her dorm room, about waiting for the summer to come back, feeling homesick. And I wrote about the time, not last winter but the winter before, when I was commuting home from a meeting downtown. I split an Uber with my friend to her apartment, and had planned to take the train the last few stops to my apartment. But by the time we got to her place, it was a full-on blizzard. I walked to the train, but it had shut down, and my phone was dead. I decided to walk the rest of the way home, which would take about an hour. It was surreal, walking through the empty streets, through a giant graveyard, eventually along the lake; snow was whipping around in big fat flakes, piling up quickly. I climbed the rock barrier between the graveyard and the lake, and went down to the beach. The lake was huge and pitch black. I decided to go pee, of all things. I felt so far away from the rest of my life, the slow, painful breakup I was in the middle of, the papers I had due. The thought crossed my mind that I could just walk out into the water, how easy it would be. My big puffy coat would saturate with water, my boots would fill up, oblivion.
As soon as I thought it, I snapped away from it; that’s not me. What people call an intrusive thought. I was spooked. I climbed back over the rocks, back through the graveyard, towards my apartment. I started singing as I walked, can’t remember what, just to keep me going. Then I pulled out my phone; while I was peeing and thinking about drowning, I’d gotten a text from my friend from high school. His baby daughter had just been born, and she was 7 lbs., healthy, and adorable. I got chills; I was grateful to be here, to be alive, to be feeling so much.
So anyway, I wrote about that night. And it was cathartic and good and only a little bit melodramatic. We called it “Wednesday,” cause it was our version of a Wednesday song. We arranged it with bass and drums once Lily and Levi joined the band, and we play it first at every show.
We’re really excited to put this one out. And just to be on Spotify as a band.
Our EP comes out on November 22! There will be one more single coming out before that, so stay tuned. As in, keep your radios tuned. Don’t turn the dial to a different radio station.
ANNOUNCEMENT #2:
We’re playing our EP release show at Evanston SPACE on Friday, December 6! We played SPACE in the spring, opening for our friends Tavern, and it was one of the most awesome places we’ve ever played. We’ll be joined by The Midwest Blender Company and Sleeper’s Bell, both up-and-coming Chicago-based indie bands.
Tickets go on sale at 10am today, October 4. Cheap! only $10! (plus fees!) Wow!
Purchase them here.
Anyway. We are also happy because yesterday was Levi’s birthday, and we like to celebrate him, as he is an icon and a good friend. Annnd we’re playing a basement show tomorrow night, which are so fun. Check instagram for details, I think. Or text Mak. Music will start at 9; we’re going on at like 9:30-10 range.
Ok, much love, and have a good and happy Friday.
Jamie and Mak and Lily and Levi