Our Side Of Their Story

What do you do when you’re a seven person band who hasn’t been able to play together for more than a year? What if you have a penchant for large ensemble arrangements? How do you attempt to pull off a recording when, as a group, you haven't been able to strum an acoustic guitar within the same four walls for a year? When the world has lit on fire and charred you along the way? The answer, for us, was to start from a common, known starting point. To take the songwriting out of the equation. In short. We made a covers EP.

For “Our Side Of Their Story” we enlisted engineering skillsmith, Elliott Smith collaborator, and TapeOp creationer Larry Crane. Larry is a recording legend here in Portland (if you don’t know his catalog look it up) and this was a chance for us to work with someone new that we greatly admired. Plus we wouldn’t have to touch a fader.

We recorded basic tracks for this EP in two days. But not just ANY two days. The two hottest days in recorded history in Portland, OR. A bizarre and terrifying heat dome descended upon us sustaining Mephistophelian temperatures like 116° for these sessions. Reminding us that we hadn’t yet made it out of the proverbial frying pan. As if we needed any reminding.

Cast iron frying pan aside.. We wound up working with one of the greatest harmonica blowers in the world (seriously, look up his credits) Mickey Raphael. You can hear real strings all over this record thanks to string wizardry of Andrew Joslyn. Hell, we also worked with a fella (jazz bassist Todd Sickafoose) who has 1⁄2 of an EGOT.