Happy New Year, now that it’s pretty much February. We’ve been benignly neglecting the website since December, in hopes that it would take the hint and start updating itself, but it hasn’t, so here we are. Chellam seems to have covered all of the bases, vis a vis our turning four and waxing nostalgaic over a recently located tape of our first show ever*, back when the world still kind of liked America and Misha and I were exactly as good at our instruments as we are today, if not better, and gas cost $.35 a gallon and licorice fell from the sky and everything else was made out of either chocolate or gold.

It’s been a great four years, and it’s been a terrible four years, but throughout it all we’ve met some damn good people, and I say with absolutely zero authority that if you’re reading this right now, we’re going to do everything in our power to shake your hand in the next four years and thank you personally for keeping us going, be it financially, nutritionally, emotionally, or some combination thereof.

As for the part you actually care about**, we are hard at work building the band that will take us all the way to Washington, and fleshing out the stable of songs that will propel us into said District like a mighty wind escaping from California’s southern half immediately after a five-course dinner of salad, steak, shallots, cold pie, hot milk, and freedom.

Here’s a picture as proof:

Pay no attention to Jack’s gaping knife wound. The doctor says he’ll have feeling back in that part of his hand as early as April.

* = 1/25/01, Claremont, CA
** = the music, as opposed to our vague, dripping prose interludes