As most of you are aware, we are in the midst of recording our second full-length album. The as-of-yet untitled project gets a bit closer every day and is already something that we know we will be thrilled to share with the wonderful group of people who have supported us thus far. So, after a few months of living inside of headphones-mixingtrackingmixingandretracking, we’re ready to play out. We have four really cool shows over the next couple of weeks, and we’d love to see everyone again. As a side note, both of these pictures were taken at the studio in January by our dear friend, Alison Pate.

Of all of the great shows coming up, we are particularly honored to have been invited to play this year’s Siren Nation tribute to Billie Holiday on April 21st at the Secret Society Lounge. For those not familiar, Siren Nation is a local arts organization that showcases and creates performance opportunities for women. They also host a phenomenal festival here in Portland every year. Obviously, Billie Holiday is a really special, even sacred, influence for us. This also a wonderful opportunity for the dudes to take pause and reflect on how very lucky we are to play with the beautiful and uniquely gifted Melissa Davaz. As a vocalist and musician, I have learned so much from her over the past five years. Mad Dog picked and arranged our full set list for the evening, and will lead the three Billie Holiday tunes that we’ll be playing.

For more information on Siren Nation: http://www.sirennation.org/

Spent a few frigid hours at our practice space with Nathan Quigley working on a video for a song called “Sitka, AK” off of the upcoming record… There’s some good stuff coming.

We have just one show left in our epic White Eagle Saloon Residency. We’ve had three wonderful Mondays with some amazing bands and great friends. Our deepest gratitude to everyone who has made it out and to the McMenamins crew for hosting us. This has really been a blast.

After Monday we’ll be taking some time off from playing shows to put some hard work into our new record. This week we’ll be playing the whole album, and then we’ll spend the next month fleshing it out in the studio. We’d love for you to come take a first listen to our as-of-yet untitled record.  We’re really proud of it.

Our tentative track/set list is after the jump:

We have just two shows left in our epic White Eagle Residency. Thus far things have been awesome. Great bands, good beer, and some solid Tuesday morning hangovers. This coming week we’ll be bringing back some really old songs, and a few things that most people have never heard. We’ll be joined by Sara Jackson-Holman and Ed and the Red Reds. Both put on really solid shows. Not an evening to be missed! We hope to see you there.

We are so excited to announce our ever first residency at the legendary McMenamins White Eagle Saloon. We will be playing four epic Monday nights in a row with some of our absolute favorite bands in Portland. All the shows are FREE, 21+, and start at 8:30.

This is a really cool month for us. We have a bunch of new songs to debut, and old songs to bring back. We would really love to see you there.

Full lineup and details after the jump.

On June 25th we will be doing our first live recording at the Banana Stand in SE Portland with phenomenal Shaky Hands off-shoot, Death Songs . We are really thrilled to be able to put out an album, which we hope will have the same excitement and energy that we feel whenever we play live. This is a really cool opportunity  for us, and we would love for everyone who has been following us over the past three years to be a part of it. We will be debuting a few songs from our upcoming album, as well as playing some of our favorites from Over Wires. Because of the nature of free basement shows, the address is a secret, if you’d like to come out please send us a note, and we will get you the address. It will be a really fun night with some some really killer local music. If you can’t make it the 25th, stay tuned, we will be releasing the album online in the coming months. In summation:

Junetwenty-fifth.NinePM.Free.All Ages.BYOB.

For more information please visit Banana Stand Media.

The idea and most of the lyrics for this song came to me one night while studying in the library when I was in college.  I realized that I wanted to write a song about a man who is haunted by his dead wife.  However, it was important to me to leave some ambiguity in the lyrics so as to let the listener decide whether the man loved her and killed her or just loved her and has not been able to reconcile the loss.

Stay is a brief sentimental mood at the center an album written generally from less hopeful perspective. The song is dedicated to my dear friend Matthew Hancock (from whom I stole the chords to the song) and my younger brother Benjamin. The lyrics were written while away from both of them for a number of months, and as we were all poised at the edge of new things.

When we approached Over Wires, I was initially hesitant to record the song, as I had been happy with the version that appeared on “The Cardboard EP”, originally titled Stay (for Matt and Ben). After some thought, we decided that was an important song to include primarily because of its significance as a part of our history as a band. We all felt that it was important to leave some memory of the place that we have come from intact on this record.