Most of the songs on this record are about feeling dysfunctional, isolated, and lonely. Trying to find a way to connect to people and be happy. We’ve been a band for over 30 years. We almost never see each other. Two in NY, one in Florida, two in California. We live so far apart it’s hard to get everyone together to do anything. If we’re lucky someone will fly us all in to a city to play a show and we can get there a day early to rehearse the songs we want to play. I don’t know how we made this record. I put it off for so long because I was afraid to try. Guys would send me songs they were working on to come up with something and I’d say, “Thanks! I’ll get right on it!” But I didn’t really know where to start. We don’t have band practice ever. I’m a shitty guitar player so everything sounds terrible when I play it and doing “new song karaoke” over garage band recordings alone in my shed somehow made me feel self conscious. When you’re in a room with other people playing music together there’s a connection. You see and hear each other and you’re making something together. Being alone it felt silly. It was hard to pull myself away from work, my kids, and all the stuff happening around me that was real, to work on something that was just a complicated dream cloud. But I liked the songs a lot. As parts of ideas popped into my head it began to feel less impossible. It was awkward, like trying to write with my foot, but little bits at a time came together. I started to get excited and wanted to get in the studio and get it down before I forgot it all. I’m pretty stoked with how it came out. Kind of shocked really. Lights Out is about becoming emotionally detached and creating obstacles to keep people from being close to you. Wanting to be loved but forgetting how to show it. Knowing that what you have is important, but too afraid to let it to be.FFO: Jawbreaker, Hot Water Music, Lifetime, Alkaline Trio, Drug Church, Menzingers, Flatliners, Lagawagon.
