Hold on to your butts!

'You or Someone You Know' comes out tomorrow

I’m currently flying back to the east coast to start tour soon. I said “fuck it” and paid for the wifi. I wanted to work on a tour poster, write this thing to you all and get all my other work done so that tomorrow I can just stare at my phone when our record comes out. I mean, who am I kidding? That’s absolutely 100% what’s going to happen.

At midnight tonight, I picture us breaking through a wall with a perfect outline, like a cartoon character. Or the Kool-Aid man. I feel like I’ve been carrying around a heavy backpack and later tonight I get to throw it down on a counter and say “ok, here you go! It’s yours now!”

‘You or Someone You Know’ is a record I never thought I’d get to make. I didn’t think Mikey Erg and I would be playing music together 10+ years after The Measure. I didn’t anticipate meeting Nick at Fest while he was on tour with Chumped and finding a close friend and one of the most talented bassists I’ve ever worked with. I never thought that Frank, who I adored since those first New Brunswick basement shows seeing him in the Degenerics, would shred so fucking hard in my band.

I didn’t know that my friend Talia from DIY shows in Richmond would turn into such a powerhouse manager for us, I didn’t know what the fuck would happen after we left SideOneDummy and I *truly* never thought we’d make a record with producer John Agnello. And that really only happened because Sean and Joey at 6131 thought that re-pressing Survival Pop mid-record-cycle was a good idea because our next one was going to be worth their time too.

This is all stuff I’ve been thinking about partially because the podcast Dear Young Rocker asked me a bunch of questions about growing up playing music and then turning that into a career. One big thing I talked about is that you have no idea what’s going to happen, or what’s actually possible, so why not go for it? I could list out all of the frustrating, heartbreaking reasons to call it a day, but I try to appreciate all the little things that 13-year-old me wouldn’t believe. If I didn’t think the past year was intense enough, the next few months are going to be completely bonkers.

Thanks in advance to Brian Fallon for taking my loud rock band on his tour, and to Kevin Devine and John K Samson for following through on the “we gotta do a tour together!” promise that most people would forget about.

Sincerely, I am the first one to roll my eyes at bands repeating “I am so honored and grateful and blah blah humble-brag blah” about every little thing. I have shit talked from here till next Tuesday about one band in particular, so feel free to make fun of me about this email. I’ll get over it.

I’m just appreciative of getting at least this far. If we had to stop recording and touring tomorrow, I’d be perfectly happy knowing we were able to make this record. I really hope you like it.