It's the end of the music industry as we know it...and we feel fine.

Back when we started this aural adventure, labels mattered. DIY worked up to a point, but not when it stood for Distribute It Yourself. Whether a band signed to a monolithic major label or a homespun indie, getting records (then CDs) into stores was the prime concern. Next on the list was promotion to radio and press. Bands like ours often fell into the cracks. We were unrepentantly unpolished and not malleable enough for the majors and never quite cliqued-in with the well-connected indies.

Instead, we made our merry way along the margins of the music industry, spectators to both its major league and triple-A divisions. It was a great ride, clocking the miles, meeting the people, making the music. But all the while we wondered if the venture could have been a bit more self-sustaining, had we just been able to reach the right sets of ears.

In 2009, five years after our last, fraught CD release and a restorative interim of occasional shows, individual pursuits and creative regeneration, we find ourselves at a time when labels don't matter as much as they used to. Maybe, just maybe, Distribute It Yourself can work. Oddly enough, even at this time in our lives, with 6,800 round trip miles separating us, with families and real jobs and economic struggles and existential questions about the future, we have found ourselves in the best possible moment to share the music that we are most proud of in the entire 15 years we've been at this. Thanks to digital music distribution and the good ol' InterWeb, it just might be possible to ride an inverse economy of scale of sorts to the hallowed land of sustainability.

Thanks to GarageBand (and King Bandwidth) we now collaborate across the miles to bring new ideas to their boiling point. Last May, a week-long meeting of the flesh at a gem of a recording studio (JV's Tiny Telephone) with a crackerjack engineer (the mighty Aaron Prellwitz) was all it took to get this soufflé just right. Now, after a few rounds of remote mixing and mastering (dialing in to Portland, Oregon and Los Angeles, respectively), it's ready to serve. Without further ado, we are pleased to dollop the confection right here on the slackserver for your delectation.

And should you judge the table service worth a gratuity, your kind download-accompanying donation will help us to do it all again next year. And the year after that. And so on...

~ Marty Kelly
Waterville, Maine
January 27, 2009

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