83. not worth reading

steve cooked dinner. our list of crap to do before tour didn't get much shorter. i think i checked off rechargeable batteries. that's about it.

as always, keep checking back for more tour dates... they keep growing... and might get more western.

BYE! sean

82. west siiiiiiide

not to get anybodys hopes up, (and not to boast that we warrant high hopes) but we might find ourselves in the western half of the united states come late march/early april. we might even be hanging out at SXSW this year again. there's a lot of things that are about to happen in the next few months that i have zero clue about...

it seems like throughout my life thus far, i've been smack in the middle of my past and my future. my past was obviously what i had already done in life, and my future was pretty planned out ahead. EXAMPLE: when i was a freshman in college, i knew that my past was my past, and my future (at least for the next 3 years) was going to be more college. NOW it seems like there is no known future... there's just my past and me and i'm on the edge of a cliff... every day the cliff extends a little bit and i see what the ground (my future) looks like. i have no clue what it is until it builds itself the next day. it's interesting and fun and scary and great. here let me draw you a diagram...

old:

| P A S T | me | F U T U R E |

new:

| P A S T | me................

those dots are freaky!

sean

81. SO BAD!!!

we have a new song called "so bad" that many of you have heard on tour and will hear again. we made an acoustic video of the song with the lyrics on the right.

PLEASE CHECK TOUR DATES ON FRONT OF OUR MYSPACE... they are constantly updating.



sean

80. unsocial networking :(

we got a message today from a girl asking about our success via the internet/myspace and if i had any advice for her friend (singer/songwriter). I thought about all of the steps that we took to get to where we are today, and i realized that our outline for success would not work in today's cyber world.

it seems to be a lot harder these days for new bands to spread their music online to mass amounts of people (as opposed to a couple of years back). if you had time and a work ethic 2 years ago, you could get your music to thousands of people every single day without even relying on their word of mouth to kick in.

when facebook first launched, each of us would send out HUNDREDS of messages every single day from our own accounts linking people to our band's purevolume.com page. now there's a cap on how many messages you can send via facebook before they flag you and threaten to delete your account. it's also a lot harder to search people. all we had to do was pick a college and type in a similar music interest as us, and we could go to town on these people. it was an amazing outlet. i think purevolume was a lot more popular back then too. i had a facebook account deleted some time last year for sending out like 15 messages or so.

we also used to add hundreds of myspace friends per day very easily, but that has also gotten a lot more difficult. you have to type in codes every few requests and with all of the spam and porn profiles circulating, everybody has their security options on full protection.

although we put in a lot of effort over the past few years, we also got very lucky that we emerged when we did. the social networking scene has tightened its leash quite a bit. it used to be a free for all, now there's blockade after blockade. you really have to get creative and find new and more powerful ways to promote yourself...

when we had less friends on myspace and less to do, we could also respond to people's messages and comments in no time. it's a lot harder for us recently to get back to every comment and it takes months sometimes for us to clear out our inbox. eventually a band does have to write and practice and fans have to understand that... ESPECIALLY the ones that haven't even bought your music. so if your comment goes unanswered like many do or your message hasn't been responded to in over a month, we're sorry but we still love you immensely! come to a show and you can talk our ear off! we dont even bite most of the time.

sean

79. sorry philly :(

my deepest apologies go out to our many philadelphia residing fans. for reasons beyond our control, the show that we had scheduled for the troc in march has been canceled. this has happened in the past and we've yet to come play for you, and we are sorry. we hope to make an appearance before the end of the year.

we're still waiting on more march tour dates so please keep checking back for them on our myspace so you're not one of the ones asking "why dont you come play in ______" the day after we play there. (i hate that)

"these are the nights" is going through mix madness and still has no radio release date... you will be the first to know when our campaign starts!

if you're an incredible drummer who wants to be in a band, we're a band... make a video and let us check you out!

ps. the warroom (as many have been inquiring) is the room we write, record, get work done, talk to you guys in. it's been under construction and we just got new carpet.

sean

78. touring = lack of snoring

the first batch of our upcoming tour dates...

Feb 23 2008 5:30P
@ICC Church w/Secondhand Serenade Allston, MA
Feb 24 2008 6:00P
@The Loft w/Secondhand Serenade Poughkeepsie, NY
Feb 25 2008 8:00P
@Jammin’ Java w/Secondhand Serenade Vienna, VA
Feb 26 2008 7:00P
@Knitting Factory w/Secondhand Serenade New York, NY
Feb 28 2008 6:00P
@Mr. Smalls Theatre w/Secondhand Serenade Millvale, PA
Mar 1 2008 6:00P
@Subterranean w/Secondhand Serenade Chicago, IL
Mar 2 2008 6:00P
@The Loft w/Secondhand Serenade Madison, WI
Mar 3 2008 7:00P
@Creepy Crawl w/Secondhand Serenade St. Louis, MO

ALL SHOWS ALL AGES

the first leg of the tour goes from Feb 23 - Mar 16th. so we started ordering a ton of new merch. ~ fresh designs and slick styles... i promise you nothing less ~ ~

adam came over today. we practiced Wide Awake atleast 35 times while he sat and nitpicked at every aspect of our performance in an attempt to achieve perfection. the song sounds amazing; now all we need is a drummer to come on tour with us. i guess we should probably start looking;) if you know any amazing drummers, send them our way.
tomorrow we are getting a plush new carpet installed in the warroom. exciting right?

peace
g

77. jacey em 8 hundy

today was a loooong day. we woke up early and went down to jersey to pick up a new amp head for steve. he bought it from ebay. it's a jcm800. we love that amp... we've heard it doesn't work for our sound... and we disagree. then we had to do hours of design work for merch and tour poster stuff and of course, slap bracelets.

tomorrow is another long day of practice, practice, practice.

it's 6:20 in the morning... i'm dead. bye

sean

76. bag it

thanks for all of the suggested locations for us to tour, but on this tour we have no control of location. we will get a list of tentative dates in the near future and that is where we will be! hopefully it all works out...

today i was at the gym watching "deal or no deal" on the treadmill in closed captioning. one of the shows had 9 million dollar cases. i didn't get to see the ending though... there were a lot of amusing [ AUDIENCE GROANS ] and [ CROWD CHEERS ] subtitles.

somebody is selling an old signed picture of us on ebay... very funny to us...

ebay auction

and steve's girlfriend made us some bags out of our shirts... some are just one shirt and some are two shirt reversible. we're gonna sell em on the road.



das it
sean

75. haha

i had fun battling some of our mid-western fans during the game today, but the giants prevailed, and you all look silly. after the games we jammed out at greg's dad's house. we're practicing up in case we have to be on tour soon. and should we go on tour and we are playing in a venue near you, COME HANG OUT WITH US!!! and if you DO make it to the show, introduce yourselves... we wanna meet you all. and if we didn't play a song you REALLY wanted to hear, we're sorry... but we'll play it acoustically for you after the show if you ask nicely ;) we wanna have fun on the road and who better to have fun with than you guys!

see you in the streets!
sean

74. reeeeeeemix

i'm in the city... had dinner w/ adam and our lawyer at a place that took forever. had red snapper. went out... weak night. we're gonna have "practice" tomorrow cuz we just MIGHT be hitting the road soon... if we can find a drummer in time. i'm chewing on a block of sharp cheddar before bed. "these are the nights" is getting "fixed up" tomorrow. as soon as we're allowed to show you we will.

night night,
sean

73. fruity pebbles

my snack tonight consisted of this picture... name the 5 fruits that are on this plate... first one to comment on this blog (myspace only) the correct answer gets a signed cd sent to them. only one answer per user. GO!



sean

72. stop and stare

so i got this sweet new skinny tie... check it



ebay'd it from hong kong for like 4 bucks.  you can't beat that.  late last night we finished vacuuming the warroom after taking down the wall.  tomorrow we pick out some freshboy carpet as well as a couch.  then later that night we're headed up to a bar in katonah to mingle and make some new friends.

tonight we watched Deja Vu.  it's a solid movie, i highly recommend it.  also, we were picked up by a new booking agent.  his name is justin hirschman.  he's got a lot of big bands so i guess we'll be touring a bunch this year on some solid tours.

ok i need to go take my ambien and pass out or else my sleep schedule will flip flop again.  night pals

-g

71. construction begins

we're busy rennovating...

http://www.makingapril.com/wall.jpg

that's it,
sean

70. one million plays!!!

we finally re-enter the million mark for myspace plays today... we had over 5 million when myspace put our entire page back to 0. that was really a great day. we put a friend's music player in our bulletin and without warning, they pulled the trigger hard.

adam's coming over to write songs today.

i saw THE BEST episode of any game show i've ever seen. the show is "1 vs. 100" with bob saget. the show used to suck but they changed the rules and made it more interesting. here's an 8 minute clip of the end of the ep i saw. amazing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4McSpANs4c

69. absolutely nothing

that's right i have nothing to say. when i invented the daily blog, i figured the future of our band would hold noteworthy events and i'd be letting you in on them first hand, but the truth is... activity has never been less. i wake up, i eat food, i write, and i go out sometimes. NOTHING COOL HAPPENS!!! now my hope is that after writing this blog, our lives will somehow just blow the hell up and i will eat these boring words of mine. i feel on the verge of something... like a volcano that's got the shakes. we have a lot of great material stocked up and a song that's going to radio in the coming weeks (no date yet). as always, we'll keep you posted. a package came and i thought it was my pink tie, but it was a "new kids on the block" snap bracelet from 1991 (ask greg about that one). oh yeah and we impulse buy on ebay.

peaceness
sean

68. minnesota called

as i blog about our day of shopping at the outlet center at woodbury commons, greg is talking to some random girl from minnesota on the phone. dont know how she got our number but she talks a million miles an hour and very softly. i think that's a first for that. we're headed to get some groceries, then come back and jam. i got a sick white belt today.

we're hitting nyc tomorrow night... i think we're going to see Holiday Parade at knitting factory at 8pm.

time to make music,
sean

67. no payments 15 months!

greg's back from vacation today. steve comes back tomorrow... it's going to feel nice to become a band again. we haven't created anything new in over a month (and to you guys... a lot longer). we've got a lot of work to do the rest of this month. our single (these are the nights) gets mastered on monday and then there's no looking back. we'll probably end up on tour this year at some point so we'd better see you out there!!!

we're doing some home renovations next week as well. we're knocking down the wall that i'm looking at right now and making our studio room bigger.

i owe Sam Ash 3 grand by the end of next month which i'm not thrilled to pay. i bought my Taylor acoustic 14 months ago... and i didn't have to pay anything for 15 months. that really creeps up on you!

Sean

66. Go get the bone!

couple of things...

if you message us and you're not our friend and you have every piece of myspace security enabled, we can't get back to you! if you send us a message, make sure you friend request us to guarantee a response.

roger clemens is lying.

and if you have 4 minutes that you never ever wanna get back, watch my idiot dogs on thanksgiving. (they live at my mom's house)



sean

65. butterfly effect

i stepped out of bed at 1:44 pm and turned on the game. the giants were down 7-0 and hadn't done a thing. from that moment on they dominated the field and finished victoriously. therefore it's safe to say that i am partly responsible for the win. i will help them next week as well.

going through red lights freaks me out... of course i dont make a habit of this, but when i'm driving late at night in a small town, i tend to just go when i'm not supposed to. but there's something about the power of a red light and my disregard for it at that moment that is kind of scary. maybe i just took 10 years off of my life... or maybe i just added 20. either way i've most likely changed the course of time and i have no idea if it was for better or worse. now, steve brings up a great point in saying that there are routine things in a day that balance out my neglect for the traffic signal. if i worked for a living and punched out at exactly 3:30 every single day, then we're back to where we would be despite the incident. but if some event happened before that balance point that would not have happened had you stayed and waited for green, then you're screwed... or you're saved. if you get home 30 seconds earlier than you would have cuz u said screw the light, and you catch some ad on TV that you wouldn't have seen which prompts you to... um go to ikea the next day? then ur whole world is different. you could say this about any event that you do or dont do, but there's something about red lights that REALLY freak me out. it's like slapping time in the face... i'm too good for time and fate and what it has in store for me. who do i think i am?

and then i was like... i'm a rock star i dont need red lights. so now i speed past them.

>>> $3@N >>>

64. playoffs?

that's right... giants vs. buccs. some kid at the bar tonight told me the giants didn't have a shot cuz the buccs dont give up a lot of points at home. what an idiot.

anyway tonight was fun. people in general amused me. no good details to expose...

but i learned that sometimes an arrogant ho just needs to be negged. ya know?

sincerely,
sean

63. poor girl

tonight my friend chris and i did the townie bar hop. a drink at each of 3 local "hot" spots. at one of the bars it was us two and the bartender. it was beyond excitement... however the end of the night held some slight entertainment. we were at a diner w/ some girls in which one of them was passed out on the table. her friends were making onion rings into hair ties and abusing her w/ condiments. being a light weight is very dangerous around here.

now i crave snapple raspberry white tea and we dont have any. so i will sleep it off.

tomorrow's got the same forecast written all over it. see you then!
sean

ps. somebody we know thought up an interesting game called fantasy bar hopping. you draft people from your town who you're most likely to see at the local bar/establishment and get points for them being there and more points for acknowledgments. devise your own custom rules, draft yourself a townie, and go hoppin.

62. it's freezing here

k i've finished up my project for the night. too much music fries my brain... just had some eggs... i'm thinking about hitting the gym before bed. is that crazy?

tried to exchange my ipod today for one that actually works, but of course they were all out. so i got a gift card for that amount and i have to come back and get it when they're in. annoying!!

it's so cold here... it makes everything so difficult. i wanna just go out and go where i need to go without COLD screwing it all up and making it a process. and i dont wanna hear about your warm climate you live in either... unless you're inviting me to come live with you.

thank you all for the phone service suggestions! apparently this is more difficult than i thought.

this day was lame... label prez loves the new version of "these are the nights" though. hope they give it a sweet push. i need a good reason to tour and come see u kids.

night nights
sean

61. carolina's rain

today i used my 100 gift certificate to whole foods and bought a ton of edible crap.

greg left for florida so now i'm officially alone in this house for a week.

my ipod nano is broken and i just got it for christmas... i'll be returning it for another when i wake up.

i just set back up my digital piano to mess around with one of rookie of the year's new songs. i'm in love w/ this demo they have and they're letting me put some fun orchestral sounds in to see if i can enhance what's there. they're recording a new cd in feb and i think and i might go down for a few days to hang.

i felt the urge to buy a skinny pink tie on ebay so i did.

greg thinks we should make neon green snap bracelets for our online store and future shows. i dig...

my nextel contract is over in a month... what's the best phone/plan to get next?

sean

60. so this is the new year...

...and i dont feel any different. no that's not true i feel rejuvenated. i feel ready to take '08 on like the little bitch that it is. i'm gonna own '08... and i'm bringing you all with me.

i've been having songwriter withdrawal for the past couple of weeks. my digital piano hasn't been in my house and my real piano is growing more out of tune every passing day. i haven't even put a musical thought together since i can remember. our studio week(s) and the holidays have drained us all, but i'm psyched to get into the swing again.

steve leaves for utah today for a big snowboarding trip with kurt and company and greg goes to florida in a couple of days. i'm gonna be all alone for like a week! and i pretty much have no other friends so this could get depressing. plus the music industry has been off since before christmas and probably wont start working again till monday. it's been really dead!

but my new years eve was good and i hope all of you had a good time as well...

here's a cool jack's mannequin video... i'm excited for his next work.
http://www.absolutepunk.net/showthread.php?t=285764

sean