Broken Letters Sing the Burning Alphabet
Now up on all the streaming services.
When I started Broken Letters, I was in a pretty bad place and I wanted to start a band that would be really depressing. But on the first EP, I was so accustomed to filling all the space with notes that it ended up mostly just being a softer rock band. To promote that first EP, we did a 3ish week tour with Brad Davis and Aaron Gemmill as the band. It was on that tour that we finally figured out how to add space and let the notes hang.
Specifically, a show at Niles’s house in Portland (pictured) was where it all clicked for me. I forgot the circumstance—maybe no real PA or something—but we had to play really stripped down for that set, and just hearing the chords hang and decay was a new kind of quiet power that was thrilling and transformative for me.
When we got back, we made STBA, our only full-length record. This one gets maybe the closest to the original intent of the band. Brad and I recorded it mostly in my attic and I really wanted to capture the newness of a new idea, the way an imperfect early demo often contains an unreproducible magic, so we didn’t rehearse any of it. A lot of the takes are the first, second, maybe third time we ever played it. Brad hated that.
Remastered and such. Link in bio. More to come.
Broken Letters II
Now on all the streaming services.
The archival era continues and I’ve been slowly going through the old BL stuff and polishing things a bit. The last couple releases happened when music distribution was “here’s some files to put on your iPod” so mostly haven’t existed in quite a while.
This one was recorded by me and Matt in my living room. It’s a little more restless, trying to stretch the formula a bit. There’s even a guitar solo.
Janet Simpson came through and sang on “All the Time.” I’m pretty sure that was our first time playing music together. Felt like our first time saying complete sentences to each other. That song turned out great and if the band could have kept writing that song forever, we probably should have. But alas, our time was up.
More coming soon. Spotify link in the bio.
In August, we played a show to celebrate the life and music of our friend Dan Sartain. It was the Plate Six crew with Carter on drums. We started practicing for it in May, the longest I’ve worked on anything, and the whole experience was really therapeutic and fun. The APT crew recorded it for us so that we can share it with folks who weren’t able to make the show. I edited the video, which was really fun, and figured out how to do a fake Star Wars crawl, which I think would have made Dan laugh.
Video is up on YouTube. I’ll link in bio.
Excited to announce a release that is very special to me. With the help of Seasick, this record will be available for Record Store Day on black Friday of this year. Limited to 1000 copies with all proceeds benefiting Firehouse community arts center in Dan’s name.
I’ve been working on this for two years now. Starts, stops, failures, reboots, and frustrations. This started as record we recorded for Bent Rail in a terrible sounding room on 24th St N. A few months later, Dan went out to San Diego and recorded serpientes and this recording sat on ADAT tapes in my basement until he died in 2021. Bringing this thing to life is something I’m really proud of and being back in that headspace brought back to mind the Birmingham of two decades ago that I really miss.
The record is me, Dan, and Brad Davis. Recorded in 2002, completed in 2023. Available in November from Seasick.
I’ve spent the last 8 months splitting my time between home and Chattanooga, cleaning up after the mess my dad left and fixing up his house to sell. Finally, finally on my way to closing.
I’ve been making shoyu now for a year and a half or so. It’s a really enjoyable pursuit—seeing how a magical and out-of-bounds ingredient can transform simple grains and beans into something otherworldly.
Growing up at the beginning of the hoverparent age, where everything is sanitized and anti-bacterial, where all meats are overcooked and the expiration date means food could kill you, it feels really punk and against the system to be fooling around with mold and letting foods sit in open air environments for months on end on purpose. That “not doing what you should be doing” idea really resonates with me, and it’s been really fun exploring fermented foods over the past several years.
I’m proud of a lot of what I’ve done, but I think the shoyus I’ve made are the best yet. It’s so frustrating and, again, against our modern way of living, to have to wait for months on end to see what you’ve made. I absolutely hate the waiting, but I love tending to it along the way. And the results always make the wait so worth it.
I’ve got shoyu for sale now @shupantry . You can order it online and I’ll ship or you can pick it up locally. Working on scaling things up now and I have a ton of ideas and exciting things in the works. Hurry up and freaking wait.
I made a kojiban.
It’s a cedar tray used for growing koji. The cedar regulates humidity very well and is porous enough to allow the koji-growing substrate to breathe. In Japan, they make whole rooms out of the stuff, and the koji mold comes to actually live in the walls. For now, I have a single tray.
I took dimensional cedar from the box store, planed it down, did some rabbeting, a little tongue and groove, and made a pretty sturdy box of it all. No screws. No glue.
Just finished my first batch of koji in it and it’s a big improvement over the stainless trays I have been using. Best rice koji I’ve ever made. Working on some new stuff for @shupantry and @shushopbham
#kojibuildscommunity
Another fine build by Flat Earth, LLC. Specializing in building square, plumb, and true on whatever janky-ass land you got.
Need a chicken coop built on a weird slope? We got you. Van loft built on a hill? Uh huh. Single slope fence on like 8 different inclines? Oh yeah.
Currently accepting all reasonable offers.
Made a new thing: Black Eyed Pea Miso.
Made with BEP and barley koji aged over nine months at ambient Alabama temps (real hot then reasonably cold). The result is caramelly, chocolatey, but still earthy. I made Christina Tosi’s burnt miso butterscotch from one of the early @luckypeach (RIP) issues and this has a lot of the same characteristics as that wonderful concoction, but is just peas and time.
