A New Place

Hello!

Its been a while ey?

How have you been holding up this year?

As of writing this, things have been going pretty well. Sold out our first show of the year in Santa Cruz and overfilled a 800 cap room in Pomona just last month. woohoo!!! But now I think I might be getting really lazy. Success, good luck, and all things fantastic have been flowing through this band these past two years like nothing I have ever thought to imagine. So now what?

Most people say, without asking, oh you guys need to do this and that and this and that and THIS AND THAT!!! ....

but its not about THAT. The tiktok reels and endless shameless promo. The songs we should sing in spanish or why we don't play certain songs. Its hard to please anyone, the more eyes that are facing this way. They say once you release a piece of music or your art into the mouth of this public beast, it is no longer yours.

Does that rain true for you fellow artists and people who make things?

I like to think I have so much control, but most of the time with this stuff, I feel it slipping away. What would happen if we stopped playing all the songs off L.A.R.C or Magnum Opus? Would everyone stop showing up?

I'd like to think no, but it would be foolish to not suspect a huge drop or disregard the idea at all. So when I'm out overlooking this sea of eyes, all singing along to songs I wrote when I was 17 in my room, a part of me is eaten by the idea that maybe everything we'll write from here on out won't have the same impact. I don't want to think this way but as an artist surmounting just a taste of "success", this idea has been feeding itself more and more as the year goes on.

In January of this year we set off to record a handful of songs we wrote late last year over the course of a couple days. This is a long and very talked about story amongst us so I'll put it here in simple and direct language: I fucked up. I lost all those amazing recordings and we're picking up the pieces one by one. HUGH SIGH. But now I feel like we're caught in limbo, not playing those old new songs anymore but instead jamming and writing more. Trying to push this envelope. And with this newfound path, I think all those ideas of not surmounting to the success of all of our past material has finally fucked off. Because its still me and Ben, always been him and I jamming and becoming MSR. With Raco, Matt, and Sebastian on-board, I feel like all its done is add more firepower to this unit we call The Band.

So bear with us please, I'd like to say with confidence, these new songs blow everything else out of the water. Its just gonna take some time. See you on the road September - October!!!! We'll be playing these new songs and perhaps writing more and playing them that same night. Cause who gives a fuck?

I'd like to end this tangent blog post by noting something about ping pong players. When that perfect bounce sets your receiving ball up for that perfect smash, in the end you still only score one point.

With love and a genuine weightlessness,

Kevin