Blessed to have so many friends able to attend my wedding. Blessed to have @davevelocity officiate my wedding. Blessed to have Victor @siveplenior craft beautiful rings for us. Blessed to have @matttskiba as ring bearer and blessed you were more thoughtful than me in organising a bouquet for my wife. Blessed to have @dookiemeno as my videographer, and @michaeldubin as my photographer. It was a once-in-a-lifetime evening for us and we’re grateful for everyone who made it so special. To the friends who were unable to make it, we know that’s the deal with a shot-gun, destination wedding and we will see you all soon. And to my wife, who I owe everything and love endlessly, I am blessed to be your man.
Had to cancel some shows for Covid. Let’s blow out the merch inventory we didn’t have a chance to sell. “Link in bio” is the new “we’ve got merch for sale in the back.” Dehumanizing. But, link in bio. Thanks.
Some of our best work. Shipping now. Shout out to @runforcover for bringing this to the people. Hit the webstore and get a copy. Swirl went in preorder and red is not long for this world. Get to it.
I honestly have no recollection of this session at all. Judging by the lyrical content, I'm putting these at six years ago. I think we had a vague idea of wanting to write a new Deadguy record but ended up sounding like Unsane. This took place in a basement on Long Island, I remember that much. Was the engineer in Sainthood Reps or did I make that up? What tour were we on? Did I do vocals that day or did I record them in a practice space later? Who did the mix? Who even played on this?
I hadn't revisited these tracks in a long time but found on this listen they stand up pretty well. Did we miss our calling by putting out soft records? Is it time to bring back full stacks?
The photo acting as this single's art is curtesy of the very talented @sean.p.campbell and shirt design by @reubensawyer . Hit the selfdefensedfamily bandcamp for a listen.
Update! @brdly engineered this one and @dead_air_studios mastered it.
Being spread across the world, we've gotta make the most of whatever time we get together. So a tour is always also an opportunity to record. On this occasion we were touring the UK and it was natural we reach out to Bob Cooper. At this time he happened to be living in Leeds and working from a home studio built by/formerly belonging to Sisters Of Mercy. It was exactly what one would hope for from that experience. Very British. I remember wet stones and moss. We were on tour with Creative Adult and Mike B from the band (and Spiritual Cramp) played on this record. And the groupchat is currently debating if James from Fearing played on it. Matty of Pretty Matty fame definitely played on it. As did Ian of Regional Justice Center. He's still mad he wasn't allowed to do more with the drums. Vocals were recorded years later in a practice studio in Southern California. Bob's notes that came with his mix included "vocal mic seems to have picked up a thrash band in the next room, but think I got it under control." He did a great job, as did Will Killingsworth on the master. @bobcooperproducer and @dead_air_studios respectively.
The art for this one is our favorite Englishman, @agxpennie . Or Welshman, really. I dunno how sectarian y'all get about these distinctions, so just leave me outta it. This week's shirt art is curtesy of @black_griffel inspired by a Kreator track.
Available on Bandcamp now. Streaming platforms in a couple weeks. Go check it out.
This was recorded in 2011 and my memory doesn't extend back that far, so bear with me. Andrew was working at a studio on the side of a mountain and we would sneak in whenever there was an empty day on the schedule. At this time we were really big into capturing whatever we were feeling in the moment. Some second-takes but very few third-takes. Zach, who went on to play in Maniac, came through to play drums but he wants to rip and this song wanders instead. As it happened, Joe who plays in Defeater was in town and did us the favor of dropping by for this one-take 10min jam session.
It languished because I insisted on making the song lyrics narrative and attempted to detail the life of the historical Jesus. That's never gonna get top priority when we've got 2min songs about my breakups ready to go. So 'Jesus Of Nazareth' became this artifact that would bounce around our hard drives, losing audio stems with each move. The version you hear now is 'mixed' from a single WAV file with vocals recorded by Ian and I last week in a rehearsal space. I gave up on trying to tell a story in a linear fashion and instead just went with as many tactile sensations as I could muster about a homeless guy's life 2000 years ago. Lots of dust and blisters, really. Will Killingsworth did a really impressive job of mastering this rather stepped-on audio file. This is a wild track for fans of our Grateful-Dead-of-DIY era.
This single's art is a photo of our musician friend Nick Fit. This week's shirt design was purchased from Instagram account @creuestudio after we followed each other last night. Life doesn't gotta be complicated. See you next week.
