Hallowed Practice

There's always something about coming back together for practice after not playing together. There was something even more about practicing again after focusing so hard on the new songs and going back last night to bash through some Whimsical tunes and the rocking history songs. It was absolutely cathartic to get together to play last night. There's so much of a release in rocking out to those tunes. We're all excited about returning to the stage on Saturday, and we're glad that this week will yield 3 practices to help prepare us. We certainly need it, and we'll be in fine form if we have two more anywhere near what we did last night.

Saturday will be the first time we play a complete set of only history songs, relegating the older songs to the encore. We're even talking about not playing covers, which is certainly a departure from what we've always done up to now.

Daniel Reekay made a visit to give us a CD with four completed mixes. We once again piled into Daniel's car and listened to "Eli Whitney" and "Dear Abbey" before rocking out to "Commodity" and "Know It All." We are so excited. We're about to lose control, and we think we like it.

We rounded out the night with a few more tunes that needed more rust knocked off of them. There's something other-worldly about playing "Gold Rush." It doesn't sound like it's even our song. It feels like a cover. If we can bring it on Saturday like we did on the second run through, we'll certainly have an instant hit.

I was glad my brother was there to make videos of us hanging out and practicing for the documentary I've been preparing. I've got 3 hours and 45 minutes of footage without that, and I have a feeling I'll shoot some more in the coming weeks.

Practice is good. It was so good last night that even Daniel went home and advertised it on Facebook. It's good to know that we'll be practicing sets again after so long of focusing on new material. I think we needed that kind of low stress setting for a while after working so hard on this new stuff. When was last time we had it so nice? Leading up to the Whimsical release? I'll have plenty of other things to blog about for us other than practice in the near future, but it sure is nice to be through the thick of things in making the record to where we can enjoy the fruits of our earlier labors much more. Back to the stage!