I Just Rediscovered My Guitar.

I Can Remember How I Sang - A Little More Nasal-y Back Then. Listening To Those Old Recordings Is Like Seeing A Photograph Of Yourself From 10 Years Ago. You're Wearing What You Thought Looked Cool At The Time. You Had Your Hair Styled The Particular Way You Thought Looked Cool. It's An Accurate Depiction Of Who You Were And What You Looked And Sounded Like At That Point In Your Life. It Doesn't Necessarily Mean That It Aged In A Way That It Feels As Cool Or Sounds As Good To You, Or Says What You Thought It Said, 10 Years Later. That's Just The Nature Of Growing Older.

Everybody Has A Language Or Code That They Use With Their Wife Or Their Girlfriend Or Boyfriend Or What Have You. It's A Language Aside From The Language They Have With Strangers.

Bands Who Are In Their Early 20s Today, They Are Living In Their Own Time And They Have A Series Of Parameters They Have To Work Around. Ten Years Ago, Our Reality Was Spending A Lot More Time In Obscurity Before Anyone Really Knew Who We Were. I Don't Feel Like I Have Any Real Advice To Give Anybody Who Is Starting A Band Today. As Mike Watt Said, "you Know, Not Everyone Has The Ability To Be Born At The Same Time." We Wanted To Be Like R.e.m., But The Reality Is That 15 Years After R.e.m. Was Putting Out Those Records, The Playing Field Had Changed Drastically As Well.

An Ex-girlfriend Once Got Upset When I Told Her That Music Is The Most Important Thing In My Life. It's More Important Than Anyone Else Could Ever Be. I Don't Want To Be Overly Dramatic And Say It's The Only Thing That Gets Me Up And Keeps Me Going. But People In Your Life Come And Go. As You Go Through Your Life, You Make Friendships, You Break Friendships, You Have Relationships. Music Is The One Thing I've Always Been Able To Rely On.

There Were Two Recording Studios In Bellingham. One Was Really Expensive, A "nice Studio." We Were At The Point Where We Were Young And Irreverent. We Would Scoff At The Idea Of A Nice Studio. "why Would You Want To Go To A Nice Studio? Oh Wow, They Have Really Expensive Gear. Ooh, That's Really Fancy. Well We've Got An Eight-track. We've Got It Going On Here." Now That We Have The Resources, We're Like, "oh Wow, A Nice Studio Is Pretty Nice! They Do Have Nice Outboards Here. It's Actually A Pretty Good Place." It's Funny How Much Changes So Quickly.