Story:

Hey guys,

I was just sifting through some old pictures, and a few summers ago I was up in alaska workin on a crab fishing boat. On one of our days off, i was wandering around the small down we were in, and i stumbled across this OLD boat wrecked on the rocks of the harbor. Its not an uncommon sight to see, peoples boats break loose in a storm, and its too expensive to fix them, so they just leave them there to rot away. What was weird about this one was that it was named the Peggy Sue (lots of boats up there have names that are two girls first names). Immediately i thought of the ballad of johnny lo. I ran back to the boat we were on to grab a camera and snapped this picture for you guys.

Hope things are well.

-Jimmy

Picture:

Song: The Ballad of Johnny Lo

Secret: We’ve never actually been to Alaska.

Our “Pictures” section kind of sucks right now. Roughly two years’ worth of photos haven’t been uploaded yet, and those that are there are so small you can barely see them on an iPhone. We’re in the process of fixing this, but if you’ve taken any pictures of us that you feel like sharing with the world, please email them to and we’ll add them to the pile, with credits and bylines and everything. You could very well become a huge part of a medium-sized part of an incredibly small part of American musical history.

What a wonderful weekend. What did you do to celebrate? I helped some friends turn 0.5595% of the internet carbon neutral, then watched in horror as the press release blew up on Digg, and wound up pulling my first true all-nighter of the year launching the website a day early.

So it seems only natural that Misha and I should publish our most embarrassing moment at this time. While there’s no shortage of candidates for the title, if you were to put us each in separate rooms and ask us, “What’s the one thing you’ve done as a band that you really never want anyone to know about?” we would each, without hesitation, say: “Granola Morning Goodness.”

A bit of backstory: we have a friend in LA who works for a film licensing company and occasionally asks us for weird, highly-specific concept songs. Sometimes we take them on, just because there’s usually something like a 24 hour deadline and it’s a fun “songwriter’s challenge” kind of thing. For instance, Temporary States was originally written for “a hard PG-13 animated romantic comedy.” (It didn’t make the cut.)

But this was probably the weirdest set of instructions we’ve ever received, for anything, in our lives:

From : The Amazing LG
Sent : Tuesday, February 15, 2005 6:47 PM
To : Speechwriters LLC
Subject : Cereal commercial?

Hi guys,

Please let me know if you have anything you would like me to pitch…see description below:

We’re testing a new campaign that’s a cross between a granola, healthy morning cereal spot and a cosmetic/beauty ad. Looking for a track about beauty, without saying the word ….not too slow, should have some energy, music to make you move/wake up/feel good – nothing moody/chill out.

Key Words:

glowing from the inside
shine
happiness
alive

Please send me ideas by end of day Wed or first thing Thurs morning.

Thank you!

-LG

To this day, we still have no clue what it was for or who wound up getting the contract, but I think you’ll agree: we hit this one out of the park.

Happy Earth Day,
Dave

Wow, we just realized that our online store is woefully understocked. Who knew?

“Stock your damn store who can buy anything when u dont have small t-shirts there.” -Xavior

Answer: Xavior. Anyways, we’ve been meaning to move everything over to our new system for a while now, so I guess this is as good a time as any. In the meantime, click here to buy our CD from CDBaby, and/or click here to play T-shirt roulette over at Awarestore. New links will be up shortly, and they will blow your mind.

Cheers,
Dave

I’m not generally one for astrology, but I know people who are, and some of them live with me. One of them, actually, and today she showed me this. It piqued my interest for two reasons:

1. I am a Gemini.
2. I have had all ten of these careers.

Tonight, I’m going to put on seven of these hats and respond to a message board post by avid fan Dan Pollitt. Why? The reasons are, again, twofold.

1. We have been really, really bad at fostering a sense of community around here since the fall tour ended, and there’s just no excuse for that. Until such time as we can once again stand before you with instruments, it is our responsibility to keep you at least kind of entertained here on the website, and I am leading that charge tonight because that’s what a co-frontman does.
2. This is Dan in the middle here:

So.

On to the questions:

(1) We need new album information!! Progress?? Song titles? Style?? HELP!

Dan, are you familiar with Joel Salatin’s method of seven-stage sustainable farming? Long story short, the man not only alternates his crops but brings cows out onto the corn fields after the harvest, then shuffles his cows off so that a mobile chicken coop can roll in and release the chickens, who will eat the grubs that have been hatching in the cow shit and transform them into chicken shit, which apparently has a whole different set of oxidants than the cow shit, and together they re-fertilize the soil for the next wave of intermediate vegetable crops, and the world actually winds up being a substantially better place because of his additive, rather than subtractive, agricultural methodology.

This is essentially what we of the LLC are doing, even as I type this: we are rolling out the chickens and inviting them to shit on our corn. In the short term, this means that no cows are present and nobody knows where they are. But in the long term, it means that said cows are coming back with a vengeance, just as soon as the intermediate crops have undergone one complete lifecycle and we’re able to relocate the, uh, cows.

Which is to say, we ran out of money and will be back in the studio as soon as we have some again.

(2) Next tour?? We already assume nothing this summer is going to happen...Cross country tours have to be brutal; assumingly fall is the next one...

The summer is, unfortunately, going to be mostly Speechless. (See above farming analogy.) But we are actively scheduling our fall, so we’ll let you know as that comes together, and will definitely be representing most (if not all) American time zones, in one way or another.

(3) If you could pick a Street Fighter II Turbo edition character, who would it be and why??

I think the screenshot speaks for itself.

Cheers,
Dave