Well, now, I'm not going to be the first to say that it's a hard thing to make new friends the older you get, and I'm not exactly sure I believe that, BUT the phrase really goes around and I'm going to believe it (or at least lean on it, you know) for the duration of this letter. I'm 33... that's a full grown male, some would say... and I managed to make ten (TEN!) friends over the past six days. Listen... listen... our label thought it would be a good idea to team up three of the bands, us, the Peekers, and Floating Action, for a run through the south. I didn't know what to expect though we've played a little with each before and I knew I liked their songs and I could guess they were all good people too (weird phrase) but I had no idea I was going to fall in love with ten people at once and I'm still al ittle overwhelmed by it. Good God! Every one of them... a golden original creature... no two alike... all ten blessed with full-blown personality (the kind that stretches across one's face... an exact replica mask of the face beneath)... the sort of folks who can't help but be themselves and make you feel like a dick if you don't do the same... the sort of people who love music as much as you do and are just as frustrated with it and excited and lustful and turned on and upset and fucking mad with it... TEN new people who are lifers, aye, in it, aye, for real going to play/write/sing all that forever until their voices fall out their throats, their fingertips erode and the idea of words dissolves into letters and letters into unitelligeible symbols. Fuck, I wouldn't be surprised if all 13 of us ended up in a sanitarium one day, painting canvases solid red or solid purple and showing them off to each other like... look! look! another fucking gem! Another masterpiece square of solid color! And then... food time... dinner time... and all thriteen of us tramp down the hall and eat and talk excitedly about crazy things like believing in yourself as an artist and how there IS an end to it all... a glorious hillside ending where all the songs are so high up in the sky that we can watch them morph into faces we remember well from the tour. The Peekers... Floating Action... I love thee. I say it once here and I hope to St. Francis I say it again a hundred times in person. Jordan, Michael (Peekers), Aubry, Brittany, Jon, Jeremy, Michael (Floating Action), Josh, Seth, Evan... we slipped into something of a summer-camp bubble last week... a place where we didn't care if our parent's sent us a gift-box or if we made any other new friends... we were a gang... a great multi-colored gang whose flag still hangs from the stage of every place we played. Let's do it again, I say. And again. And let's get better with every go-round and let's have new songs every time so that when we do meet up we can watch each other grow and develop as artists and floating minds shackled to the beautiful bodies we were born with. Alas! I'm on fire with it and it'll take me a long time to shake the mania of having made ten new friends in one week. Fuck that ol' saying! I'm 33, man! And I did it and Chad did it and Derek did it too... the road, you see, is one hell of a place with all sorts of nugget-surprises... who would have known? Not me.
I say thank you to the Peekers for their songs and their spirit.
I say thank you to Floating Action for their songs and their spirit.
And i say thank you to Chris Watson for having the foresight of knowing this bizarre yet sensible concoction would work.
Josh Malerman
THE HIGH STRUNG