Last night a neighbor of our practice space (Josh's house) called the cops on us for being "incredibly too loud!!!!!!!"

The cops showed up and asked, "Who's in charge here?"

Zack quickly answered, "Well, he lives here." (Pointing to Josh)

We all put our instruments down and went outside to talk to the cops.

The cops explained this neighbors concern. Apparently, he says he has come over to our space numerous times and each time we were disrespectful and turned our amps even louder after he told us to turn down.

This is not true. The guy has approached us on three separate occasions.

1. About 2 years ago he came over and told us to turn down. We did. End of story.

2. About 5 months ago he came over and told us to turn down because his daughter just got out of the hospital. Okay, that's reasonable. We stopped playing for the night.

This is actually the key time, though. This time we moved all of our stuff from a two room huge barn that is amazing, sounds amazing, looks amazing, feels amazing, to a very small house that used to be the "servant's house" at Josh's. We did this because the barn is about twenty feet from this guy's house, but the slave house is about fifty feet away from the barn.

We practice there a lot. We have gotten numerous compliments from a pizza guy, a Dunkin Donuts manager, and many others who love hearing us play.

3. The final time he approached us was about two weeks ago. Ben and Josh were playing some punk cover songs in the slave house, and he did the whole, "guys, turn it down" deal.

Fine, we "turned it down". End of story.

The cops said to us, "We did not even hear you guys when we pulled up."

I quickly answered, "This is as loud as we ever play."

We all thought it would be a good idea for us to play a song pretty loud and the cops could go over near the guy's house and see how loud we really were playing. We did this. The cops said it wasn't loud at all.

The cops realized there was nothing wrong with what we are doing. We are merely just having fun and playing some music. They told us we should get a permit for events and things so we can play music nearly any time.

We even got a picture with these fine people.

The problem really is that this guy who complains so much is a retired cop. He was trying to tell the cops what to do. They didn't like this. No one wants someone else to tell them how to do their job.

If anyone has any ideas, we would love to hear them.

-John of 100 acres/ Neighbor Slayer