We met our fundraising goal for our Kickstarter campaign! After 59 days of a 60 day run to raise $10,000 for our new album, we now have $10,175 with 24 hours to go. I am so proud to represent this crowd and am completely humbled that this band has the kind of support that we can count on when we are in need. In 6 years of this music adventure, we have never asked for anything more than your presence at a show and to stay connected to what we’ve been doing as a band. I am so glad that when we did ask, you all came through in a big way.

Remember, a pledge campaign on Kickstarter can be backed well over 100%. So, if you were planning on donating but you still have yet to pledge and you still want to get in on the incentives, pre-order the album, or if you just want to say that you were a part of this album, PLEASE KEEP PITCHING IN. Plus, any of the extra money we can raise can only make the album that much better. For instance, once we are done recording, we have an opportunity to have our album mixed by Mike Landolt, grammy winner as an engineer for Maroon 5′s Songs about Jane album. That’s an extra chunk of change that we weren’t budgeting for but it’s such a great opportunity that kind of fell into our lap.

Get those last minute pledges in before the campaign closes at 11pm tomorrow night. (Sunday). We will keep sending updates as the recording progresses and are excited for a release late summer/early fall. Here is the link one more time.

A buddy of mine got some information about the needs in Joplin, MO so we jumped in the car to lend a hand. If you forget, about one month ago an F5 tornado about forty city blocks wide cut right through the center of town for over a mile leaving a literal path of destruction, the likes of which I have only seen in movies. I’m quite sure that if Hollywood were to attempt a recreation with realistic set decoration, the whole town would be broke trying to pull it off accurately. It’s a mess. My friend described it as if a giant bomb went off in a war zone but I’ve never seen a war zone. I’ve never really seen anything like it. I’m sure I’ll be using the adjective “joplin” as a new standard to over-exaggerate the description of anything that looks mangled beyond repair. It was a bit overwhelming and we were only there for a few days.

One of the exciting things to discover is that the people of the town don’t seem too overwhelmed. In fact, there were signs of hope just about everywhere you looked. People painting encouragement with every spray of a can, collecting rubble from their house to transform an old flower garden to a memorial, and making chainsaw carvings of eagles in flight from the uprooted stumps of once giant oak, elm and hickory trees. Many of the signs in town had missing letters and the high school was no exception. The cool thing was, someone replaced the missing “J” and the “lin” with a duct tape “H” and “E” to spell “HOPE High School”. It was pretty inspiring and made the drive around town anything but discouraging as we looked for ways to chip in.

One stop found us at an office building near some woods. We ventured into those woods to see if there would be any unusual items thrown into what would normally be just leaves and trees. We didn’t find too much, but what we did find has made the last few days miserable. There were ticks everywhere. I mean, everywhere. I was freaking out. We didn’t notice until we were back in the car and then, they were all over the car. They were all over our clothes, they were all in our hair and eventually, they were in our skin. (I just reached up and nervously scratched my own head). The tornado had stirred that place up and had apparently done the same thing to the tick population. Needless to say, I bought a ten dollar pair of tweezers with a built in LED, set a fumigating bomb off in my car with all of my clothes in it, and I’m probably going to shave my head tonight. Not fun. Here is me standing on the roof of what once was an office building. In the back ground is the stripped wasteland of Joplin and half of the hospital still standing.

I’m super excited that we’ve already gotten started. I was telling some of our current kickstarter backers that in a perfect world, we would have waited until we had all of the pledges to start recording. But, we are confident in you all that we will make our goal. Plus, we are working under some of the time constraints of the producer Jerry DePizzo and his band O.A.R. They are getting set to release a new disc of their own so Jerry has been busy with that as well as summer touring. We are grateful for the effort he has put toward this project. At the moment, we have spent one weekend tracking the full band versions of these mixtape demos. The six of us got together and had a great time. Jeff, Donnell, Matt, Travis, JP and I worked the tunes out with Jerry before entering the studio. Then, we set up and played those versions while Freddy the engineer hit record. It felt natural and authentic which is what we want you all to hear. Matt and I will go back into the studio on July 5th and 6th to cut vocals and until then, we are compiling takes and recording overdubs at our home studios. For now, here is a quick video I shot on my phone of us listening back to one of the takes of the song California. (as if you couldn’t tell)

Listening back to California

Among the festivals that we are playing this summer with the full band, one of the more exciting crowds will be the college townies of Athens, Ohio who will gather for this year’s 8 Fest. (last year was 7 Fest, next year will be 9 Fest, get it?) We were invited to throw down on the main stage and add our alliterated smooth songs, sinner’s sweat, and soul sounds to the more than 15,000 hipsters expected to flood the downtown area for what has been called “the mini-Woodstock of OU” (Ohio University). In prep for this year’s festivities, theonemic.com posted a promotional page with a web interview that I hope represents us well. You decide.

Check out the story here!