THICK AS THIEVES

Wed, 04 Jan 2012 11:33:29 -0500

So here’s how this will work:

Chapter 1: The Basic Facts
Chapter 2: Sentimental Rambling
Chapter 3: A Heartfelt Thank You

Sound good? Ok cool.

…………………………………………….

Chapter 1:
Our March 31st CD release show will also be our final show. We will be releasing our full-length album Practice Resurrection Like The Fox Makes Tracks. We will be sharing the stage with Kingsley Flood, Spirit Kid, and Tallahassee, an immensely talented collection of bands. We’ll drink and dance and play rock & roll until they pull the plug. We can’t wait to see you there.

Chapter 2:
After much discussion, we’ve decided to call it day and go out with a celebratory bang. No drama or scandals, just four friends knowing when to bow out gracefully. We’ve done more in the last 8 years of being a band than any of us could have ever expected or asked for. It’s impossible to list all the bands, people, & places we’ve met and loved. It’s impossible to quantify the happiness we’ve derived from creating and playing this ungodly racket for friends & strangers alike. Maybe some cosmic accountant has the full tally, a neat ledger of every hour spent recording - practicing - playing, every mile spent on the road, every spilled beer & broken string, every drop of blood&sweat left behind, every ringing eardrum, every airwave occupied, and every person who has been kind of enough come out to a show. Even if this record existed, it still wouldn’t capture what Thick As Thieves has meant to us. It’s beyond words and numbers.

Chapter 3:
Thank you for coming out to our shows. Thank you for listening to our songs. Thank you for sharing the stage with us. Thank you for sharing your apartments with us. Thank you for your support and patience and kindness. Thank you for everything. There’s a lot of shit music out there: thank you for believing in rock & roll.

See you on March 31st.

- Tyler & Aaron & Mike & Kellen

Tracking more vocals. Aaron at the helm. Blurry cat on the...

Mon, 14 Nov 2011 13:17:32 -0500

Tracking more vocals. Aaron at the helm. Blurry cat on the floor. All is well in the world.

RECORDING & REPORTING

Mon, 11 Jul 2011 10:19:00 -0400

Thanks to everyone who came out to our It Gets Better show and for supporting such a good cause. Also, kudos to the state of New York for passing a landmark bit of legislation. It’s going to be funny down the line when our kids ask us why gay marriage was even an issue. We’ll say, “well, the turn of the century was a strange time. People were sometimes painfully ignorant and stupid. Now get your Pa another sixer of High Life before the game starts…”

We tracked another round of vocals for the song “Headstones” and we’ll be kicking things into high gear this week.

IN ALL OF THE SOUNDS

Wed, 06 Jul 2011 10:37:00 -0400

For many, the concept of creating a new piece of music is a bit of mystery. This holds true for us (the band) as well. Sometimes I’m baffled by the creative process that results in songs and, eventually, whole albums. I suppose there’s an infinite number of permutations but here are the most common ways in which our songs are born:

The Seedling: Sometimes one of us will have an idea from which a whole song expands. It can be as simple as a few chords or a rough drum beat but ultimately this tiny starting point is what kicks off a whole song. We’re at the stage as a band where we’re all comfortable in bringing in the most half-baked, poorly-formed, shreds of music for consideration. Nine times out of ten, the rest of the band can make something out of these nascent sounds. Bright Keys was a drunken drum beat Mike had stumbled on (perhaps literally) one late night in our practice space.

The Strawberry Jam: It should come as no surprise that we’re not an improvisational jam band. While we all appreciate groups who can creatively expand their songs in live settings (local luminaries Apollo Sunshine) without falling into mindless and boring circles (West Coast hippies and drug aficionados, The Grateful Dead), it’s just not our thing. That being said, some of our best songs have come from free-form messing around. Mars Vigila was basically an instrument swapping end-of-practice jam that later coalesced into a pretty tight rock song.

The In-Flight Entree: We all write on our lonesome. I think all of us have a collection of pretty polished song ideas floating around and every now and then, we decide to deliver a piping hot serving of near-complete music to the rest of the band. Here’s To Waking Up was an old tune Tyler had kicking around that found new life in Thick As Thieves. I Heard A Pin Snap Loose was a more or less finished instrumental piece Aaron had written on acoustic. The nice thing is that even the most complete songs are subject to changes when the whole band takes them on. What you start with is never exactly what comes out at the end.

The Frankenstein Stitch-Up: You write enough songs and you end up with a collection of parts that don’t make it or don’t get used. Sometimes the recombination of these odds & sods can yield far more interesting results than whatever their initial direction was meant to be. This requires a certain level of self-editing; just because two parts are good on their own doesn’t mean slapping them together will create a double-good song.