We've been a bit quiet as of late, but now we have some shows coming up so we wanted to share a bit of news. Richard, our handsome drummer, was recently diagnosed with a brain tumor. He's been in remarkably good spirits, and so far all of his treatment has been going quite well. He begins chemotherapy and radiation treatment in just a week or so, and will be doing that for a while until the tumor is no longer.
At any rate, the doctors have cleared him to play drums, and encouraged him to go for it. We played a few times this week, and he didn't sound cancerous at all! We're all really quite impressed. As such, we're going to go ahead and keep playing shows in town, cause they're all far enough away from his chemo sessions that he has some time to recover. We're probably not going to make it out on the road for a little while, but we have an album to record anyway.
So, please come see us and wish Richard well. The outlook is quite optimistic, but isn't going to be a particularly easy road. Fortunately he's well suited for the challenge! We all agree that richard has an unbelievably positive mindset, so that's not even really an issue. Plus he just got a baby blue mini-cooper, which we all probably would have made much more fun of him about if he didn't, y'know, have a brain tumor. (We have given him quite a bit of gentle ribbing, though.)
In closing, here are a couple of rad photos of richard's brain. One is of his shunt, which is a tube that diverts fluid that accumulates because of the tumor from his brain to his stomach (!). The other is of the tumor itself, which is right in the middle.
Think positive!
-airship