I want to start this by saying sorry for spelling/grammar errors. I suck….
This will be very random and jump around a lot. It also will probably be too long. That is all.
This past weekend was amazing, we finally had the chance to share "Forever Halloween" with some of you. It was a great feeling to finally share something that only we have heard with more people. From what I could tell everyone enjoyed the music which is a nice bonus, we enjoy the album and I guess that is what is most important. Every single time we make a new album I go through weird phases, I start off loving the album after we finish it and feeling great and like we have done something new for us and pushed the limits on what we can do. I hope that part never ends with an album because then I guess that would mean we didn't do that. After that feeling is over I start to over think everything on the record. Does it suck? Did we change too much? Did we not change enough? Then we release the album into the wild and I feel good again and I know that we did the right thing and made a record I am proud of. This time around I do have some of those same feelings but even before this weekend when we let people hear the album and I am not going to lie it felt amazing to get the responses we did, but that was not the important part. The important part was that I felt good, I felt like even if they hated it I could still be proud of what we did because it was us. It was not us + computer tricks, I am very proud of "Forever Halloween" and for what it represents for us as a band. I was doing an interview last week and the person doing the interview asked me why I felt that our music has evolved so much over the years? This question really got me thinking and I know why we have been able to change so much and grow with each album and that is because of all of you. This might seem strange because we are the ones who record the music and write the songs but you have made us brave enough to evolve. You have shown support for the change and have put us in a headspace where we feel like we owe it to you to be honest and to do what feels right as apposed to what we think would sell more records. For this I thank you. We owe all of this to the fact that you have stuck with us and let us be who we are. I see so many bands every day trying to be something they are not in order to try and have more success and this is just something we have no interest in to be honest. We could not put our name on an album that we wrote for the wrong reasons.
I am not sure what I am trying to get across by writing any of this but I just felt like I needed to tell you guys what has been going on inside my head after this weekend. I like to look back on things we have done as we are getting ready to do something new. It is interesting to see how much has/has not changed over the past 6 years. We just announced a new show on the 8123 tour at Trackside teen center in Wilton, Connecticut. This venue is very special to us, it is kind of where we got our start as a band outside of Arizona. It is where we met our first set of friends from the road and started to have fans come back to shows a few times in a row. Brighten took us on tour and we played this venue and now we are going back with them on our own tour. It is pretty amazing and will be a special day for us. We also just added a free album release show in AZ on June 4th that will feature the same bands from the 8123 tour and I think it is going to be a great way to kick off the summer!
We just got "Roads" in stock and they look amazing and should be on the way to your house as we speak. The wait was well worth it because the books are better than I could have ever imagined and are a billion times better than the original we got. The book really shows our history over the 4 years Dirk has been with us, plus it shows how much I have let my hair go…. This is such an exciting time to be doing this, we have new music, a new tour, a new book, and it all fits together so well. We will be touring a bunch this year and next and we will come and visit all of you around the world and play Forever Halloween for you. Lets make these shows and this album something special, together we can do that I can already feel that this is going to be something we will never forget. Thank you for all the love it really keeps us doing what we do. We are very lucky to be doing what we love and sharing these experiences with all of you who listen. We do not take your support lightly at all and we understand that you could be doing so many other things but you choose to spend your night and your hard earned money to come and watch us play music. That is amazing. It really is.
I love you all and will see you this summer on tour.
Don't miss out not his tour, tell your friends, tell some strangers. Lets have a good time.
Bye.
-Pat
