I had to step away from blogging for a minute because I needed a mental reset on it.We started this band under a certain tone and since our formation our personalities have changed a lot. I was in a dark place when I started writing Jacob’s Ladder and when this blog started and I struggled a lot with it especially because I had been clean for four years and thought I had done a sufficient amount of work to create a more fulfilling life. I tried my entire life to prove self-sufficiency and figure everything out on my own, and that didn’t stop after I learned it didnt have to be that way and after I comprehended and accepted that on a surface level. It took years for the idea of allowing people into my life on a deeper level to travel from my head to my heart. An “emo” band, at least in our case, can become a very tunnel visioned experience. The word emotional probably shouldn’t just imply negative emotions though, but it has for so long. I’ve already proved myself cool, edgey, and emo enough for one lifetime and it’s all just become so boring. About three years ago I moved to Philly and met some really amazing people who were just like me and it really opened me up to new possibilities and range of emotion. Being from a small, lower income suburb where the highest aspiration is to land a union job and drink away the weekends with fellow townies I just never felt at home. I was clean and felt isolated the same way I had felt that led me to use drugs in the first place. Then I moved and everything changed. Jacob’s Ladder came out and we played a shit ton of fun awesome shows. Attitudes started to change while writing Grace Session soonthereafter but Grace Session kind of just served as a transitional thought on the way out of the gloom of JL. We actually wrote and recorded that album about two years ago despite it just coming out in February, just to give you some context on the time frame. So we released that then things started to really change. Our tastes in music really started to bleed into eachother’s, we started trusting each other more in the writing process, and we started accepting that we might have a lot more potential than just being the most edgey emo band from Philly. Somebody recently referred to us as a band’s band and it was hard to read because it’s half true and it was no longer the thing I want to be. Sure we’ve been writing this totally different styled album for the past year, but nobody knows that. We are currently represented by a pair of EP’s that are just so near-sighted and blind to the colors of life I have accepted the past two years and I just want to reset. So that’s what we’re doing. I’m glad for everything that’s come in the wake of those EP’s, but we have some bigger stuff in mind.
When we started writing again we knew we had zero money to record and that it would take a miracle to record at all and that we didn’t want to lower our standard of quality or even stay at the same level of quality. There were no funds to do that though so we agreed to write as if we would magically find a place that would give us the best possible quality available for a dirt cheap rate. This is what’s called a pipe-dream. Somehow by some miracle a guy reached out to us who has a very very high end studio and wanted to record us for about 1/16 of his normal rate. We demoed a song with him in one day and walked away with a mix that sounds better than most band’s final masters. We’re going from Pop Punk quality to 1975 quality all because we stayed in position, worked hard, and connected with people. And that’s the whole point of everything. The past couple years I’ve just learned thru this band and thru hanging with other great bands and people like my recovery friends and Grayscale that life is all about connection. I don’t need to perfect my life alone in my apartment, I need to go out and embrace the hang and just stay in position to be happy and of service. This life is treating me very well and that’s all I have to report for now. I probably left a bunch of unfinished thoughts in here but there’s time for that. This is way too long and I have to go. Have great holidays.