Greeting Friends, Lovers, and Acquaintances,

It has been a while and we thought you might be interested in a little update, so here you go...

Live Shows: We have been playing lots of shows lately and all of them have been good fun, fantastic turnout, great response, wonderful and enthusiastic friends, families, bands, venues, soundmen, etcetera. We want to thank all of you for your consistent and ongoing advocacy towards this musical gathering, it really means a lot having your support during these humbling, formative, and fetal stages in our career. As far as future shows are concerned, we feel like we need a little break, not wanting to over-saturate the San Francisco Bay Area. We are biting at the heels to play outside our hometown but at this point the lack of a good working van is prohibiting that from happening. This particular deterrent shouldn't be beleaguering us to much longer as the possible acquisition of a 89' Ford is looming exceptionally close to our grasp. There are three upcoming shows and other than those there are no immediate plans to book more. The first of these shows is "Jeremiah Lowe's 1st Annual Weenie Roast Music Festival" on Saturday July, 19th. We are really excited about this one. Our good friend Jeremiah will be graciously sharing his massive country acerage to host an all day debacherous drunken musical festival featuring very talented unsigned bands from myriad spectrums of musical genres. As far as line-up is concerned, Cannons and Clouds, Spider Friends, Build Us Airplanes, and Olive Drive are all concrete and confirmed. There will be several other additions to the bill that will be announced on the days leading up to festival. We will post bulletins during the upcoming week with updates and details pertaining to this particular event. In addition to this we will also be playing Kimo's in SF on Thursday the 24th of July with Liz & The Lifted and on Monday August 4th at The Elbow Room in SF's Mission District with Build Us Airplanes and a soon to be announced headliner. Make sure and come to one of these as it will likely be the last in San Francisco for a while.

Upcoming Full Length: So as many of you know we have been in the studio painstakingly recording our debut record for well over a year and a half with the very talented Michael Winger. After hours and hours of time spent and thousands of dollars directly from our own, at this point, completely depleted working class wallets we are finally approaching the light at the end of this arduously long tunnel. Primary tracking is very close to completion. Embellishments are all that remain. This includes the string quartet and brass trio contributions, grand piano, bagpipes, accordion, and a single gong hit. After embellishments are tracked we will have the hefty and tedious task of mixing this beast of a record down so it can be shipped off and mastered. Our prefered method from the get-go was to track the entire record directly to tape but unfortunately our meager budget wouldn't allow it, so by default we tracked the record digitally and surprisingly, with fantastic results. As a way to find compromise within the artistic limitations of a strict limited budget and our antithetical maiden vision we are opting to master the record on two inch tape, hopefully giving the record a little bit of that analog flavor we were originally envisioning. The album is still untitled but serious ideas are being tossed around. Even in it's current incomplete state we are very pleased with the way the album in shaping up and we cannot wait to share it with you.

Writing and Future Recordings: If you have been to any of our recent shows, then you're aware that we've been playing some new material, primarily two songs; one called "Rinse" and the other tentatively titled "Gung-Fu". This current album has taken such a long time to record that we already have the bulk of material written for our follow-up. We will be demoing most of that material independently on our computers as a means for initial conceptualization. We will be posting some of these demos on Zachary Blizzard's personal myspace page to gage reaction and response, so be sure to check his page for continual musical updates and let us know what you think. Expect a slight stylistic departure and definitely a more raucous full-bodied sound from our future tunes. Our debut was written mainly by Zachary and myself as more of a singer/songwriter outfit and then was subsequently built upon as Cannons and Clouds formed into the band it is now. The new material and album to follow will be the result of a much more communal, collaborative, and rock format discipline. Though different, we feel very optimistic and positive about the direction we're heading in and confident that you will be pleased to. In addition to that, Zachary and myself will be recording a twelve to fourteen song all-acoustic cover record cheekily yet provisionally titled "Cannons, Covers, and Clouds". Our good friend Richy Russell from Build Us Airplanes will be manning the boards for this one which makes us very happy. We plan on keeping the covers very vulnerable, stripped down, and intimate... totally coffee shop rock. We are recording this album purely for fun and will be giving it away completely free of charge as a gift when merch is purchased from us. This is also a selfish evasive way of avoiding royalty fees. There are also talks of a two, three, or even four way split EP with some of our sister bands. So yeah lots of endeavors on the horizon and high hopes and spirits all around the table.

Internet, Promotion, and Merch: So hopefully by the end of the summer our actual webpage will finally be up and running. We have the great Scott Nolan prepped and ready to design and form the page. Should be awesome with him at the helm. As you probably are already aware our myspace page has suffered from serious neglect. In the coming weeks we plan to completely redo the page adding a proper bio, pics, and theme. The music that is currently posted are very old rough mixes that are not very indicative of the sound quality that will follow. Once we have decent mixes we will upload four previously unreleased tracks but until then what's up there will have to suffice. Thanks for your patience. We are in the process of gathering artwork and materials to finally get some merchandise out there. By early fall we plan to have several different t-shirts, posters, stickers, buttons, and hopefully (cross our fucking fingers) an actual record. As far as promotion is concerned, without a label, touring, or merch, the internet is our sole tool to promote. We plan as a band to do everything we can in that realm, but in the meantime we would greatly appreciate all help from anyone who is willing to offer it to us, from artwork, contact connection, venue hookups, to the simple spreading of the word and directing people to our myspace page. It does not and will not go unnoticed. Thanks in advance.

Well, I realize that I'm on the way to writing a novel, so I'll stop now. If you made it to the end of this that is an achievement and you most certainly deserve a gold star. Thanks again to all our friends, fans, and family for your continuing support.

Peace. Love. Comedy. Tragedy

-Josh

Cannons and Clouds

That! my friends is the most packed I have ever seen that bar. With a pretty meagerly promoted show (on my part personally, and other MEN in my band) We all managed to fill that sonbitch! Many thanks to White Hawk & The Magic Mistress whom I'm sure promoted decently judging by the turnout. There is some sense of comfort on a stage that small that goes along with the tangled cables and headstocks in your face. It's almost cozy. Don't get me wrong though I'm more than willing to stretch out my limbs on the Warfield stage, but we gotta earn it, and enjoy our little corners while we can. I'm more than happy to be playing Rock music in this city! and I would love to see everyone attend the next show at our favorite little Sinn Fein bar next door Ireland's 32! Tiocfaidh ar La Y'all! -ZPB