“Golden Ballroom” is a song that literally came to me in a dream. I woke up one morning around 5:00 AM, and the song and imagery were so vivid all I had to do was stumble downstairs and grab a guitar, tune it to the key in my memory, and the song just fell out. I’ve had ideas come to me in dreams before, but this was the most complete song I’ve ever received while unconscious. I even had most of the lyrics the moment I woke up. In my dream, the space I was in looked a lot like the old Century Ballroom on Capitol Hill. And I wasn’t singing; I was standing in a circle around the middle of the ballroom floor, while a woman sang the song for all of us. I’ve always been a pretty good dreamer, but this one was a doozy--one of the best I’ve ever had. Have you ever had that feeling after a really intense dream where you wake up, and you need a few minutes to convince yourself that you’re not still asleep? That *this* is real, and the other stuff you were just experiencing in the unreal part? That’s what “Golden Ballroom” felt like.

We were working at Avast! for the recording, ain their cavernous Studio A tracking room. Shawn and I decided to use the space for effect, so I put my Fender Vibroverb on one side of the room, and put Shawn’s Fender Deluxe on the other side. We set the tremolo effect on each amp to a slightly different speed, which when combined with the space in the room created a kind of trippy, disorienting effect. Honestly, it was making me a little dizzy when we tracked the song but I got through it and it sounded killer.

I knew I wanted strings on the song, and my old friend Stephen Cavit came through with a stellar arrangement. He even conducted the string session, translating my dream-induced song into a written score for a quartet.

So there you go: the new Explone video for “Golden Ballroom.” Dreams do come true, once in a while.

--Patrick

Golden Ballroom

Deep in a dream I climbed the stairs, to a golden ballroom where
strange music hung like smoke
I met a silent woman there in a diamond wheelchair
I touched her shoulder, with her eyes she spoke

She said “never be too far from me
now don’t you worry you will see
my heart will always find you”

I opened my arms and pulled her near, and my eyes gave up their tears
and a singer started singing
Nobody moved or took a breath, still and beautiful as death
as the steeple bells kept ringing

Saying “don’t forget the things you learned
the joy you feel your tears have earned
my heart will always find you”

The singer’s voice was a perfect sound
as the golden ballroom spun around
my heart will always find you

      1. My band wasn't as good as we thought we were.

      2. I had never felt so hungry to practice in my entire life.

And sure enough, our band practiced furiously after that night. See, up to that point, I had never known anyone in a really good band. You went and saw your friends play, and you expected it to be what it always was: a good-natured amateur hour. No one really talked about it, probably because no one wanted to confront it. It was easier to just pal around and pretend you were all great. But then Life Ring came along and fucked it all up for us. Suddenly people we actually knew had a band that was actually awesome, and we had to face the facts—especially if we were ever going to share a stage with them. And pretty soon we did share the stage with them, as well as inhabiting the rehearsal room next door, swapping jokes, bumming cigarettes, and getting to know all of them as friends while having the deepest respect for them as musicians and artists. My pal Tommy and I even got to sing with them at Bumbershoot one year, when they needed some sexy backup vocalists. (Tom provided the “sexy.”) I never stopped believing in that band, and those guys. They just inspired the shit out of me.

Life Ring, unfortunately, went the way of a lot of really good bands, which is to say not very far. It was a shame and an injustice, except life isn’t fair and there’s no such thing as justice when it comes to the complicated, ugly marriage of art and commerce. But all of us stayed friends, and we’ve periodically kept up with each other as we’ve all gotten older and moved along through life. Bands, jobs, marriages, kids, etc. etc. All of us have kept some connection to the music world, and a few of us have stayed neck deep. This includes Wanz, who has somehow always had multiple bands, been a prolific songwriter, a musician and singer on many other artists’ records, and managed to keep a pretty great sense of humor throughout. We all had our ups and downs, but as I got older and somehow never lost my desire to write songs and make records, it felt good to have other friends who just kept going. We’ve never talked about it, but I wonder if Wanz (and Deep, and Roger, and Fish, and the rest) all feel the same way I do: why stop? And furthermore, how would I even stop if I wanted to?



Anyway, fast forward to 2012 and I get my first look at this video, which has by now become pretty ubiquitous, and shows no signs of slowing down. I was already aware of Macklemore (who in Seattle wasn’t?), but I have to admit I was blown away by Wanz’s brilliant contribution to what appears to be the right song, at the right time, in the right place. I would have liked it anyway—it’s a great song, after all—but the fact that Wanz was so clearly instrumental to the particular magic of this track made me shout with joy, jump out of my chair and dance around. (Thankfully no one was there to witness.) And to see the snowball of success and recognition that has come since this song was released feels really joyous for me. In his own way, Mike Wansley is one of my musical heroes, and it’s good to know that a lot of other people out there are finally feeling the way I’ve always felt about him. Wanz is a few years older than me, and to see someone who has worked for so long finally catch a break and enjoy a bit of well-deserved recognition is so, so righteous.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying there needs to be a commercial or popularity payoff for all the years of doing work and making art. Art isn’t banking, and there’s no guaranteed rate of return. That’s not the reason you do it, or at least not the reason I do it. But I am saying it’s okay to feel gratified for one of your friends when they do something great and it catches fire.

My Dad and my Sister are both Macklemore fans, mostly because of “Same Love” and its timely and important message about equality for same-sex couples. But also because of “Thrift Shop” and the singer for Life Ring that they remember from way back when. On Christmas Eve, I had a copy of The Heist wrapped under the tree for my Dad, and so did my Sister. And my Dad had one wrapped for her as well. So somehow we ended up with three copies of the same CD under our family Christmas tree. If that’s not a signifier of cultural relevance, I don’t know what is.

So to sum up my feelings at the tail end of 2012, I’ll give thanks. Thanks to Deep, Jeff Stone, David Nielsen and Michael Wansley for being in the best band I’d ever seen at the time I first saw them. Thanks to Roger, Tommy and Fish for being as inspired and dedicated (and single-minded) as I was during that time. Thanks to all the musicians I’ve played with since for letting me be who I am and sharing their talent with me. And specifically thanks to Macklemore and Ryan Lewis for making a great record and for shining some light on a person who has been long deserving of that chance to shine.

Happy New Year. I love you guys. This is fucking awesome.

Patrick

When I wrote it I was thinking specifically of the “Flash Gordon” theme song by Queen, from their soundtrack to the much-maligned 1980 film.  When I was a kid I LOVED this movie, and I wore out my VHS copy of it.  Looking at it now, I find this childhood obsession a little hard to explain, as the movie itself has lost the magic for me.  But the soundtrack most definitely has not.  This was Queen’s ninth studio album, and they delivered some pretty amazing music for it, most notably the theme song with its pulsing intro and explosive, screaming harmonies.  This was the feel I was trying to emulate with “He’s A Bat,” and I cribbed it as closely as I could.  I hope Freddie would be proud.  I hope Freddie’s lawyers wouldn’t want to drag my ass into court.

I think what we ended up with sounds a little closer to Cheap Trick, probably just because our band sounds more like Cheap Trick.  Also because it’s impossible for anyone else to really sound like Queen; that shit just ain’t happening.  I mean, have you ever noticed the dearth of bands out there that draw Queen comparisons?  Seriously, we’ve had everyone else: “the new Deep Purple” (Wolf Mother), “the new Led Zeppelin” (Black Mountain), “the new Joy Division” (Interpol)…blah blah blah.  No new Queen though, and here’s why: no one else can do it.  There was only one Freddie Mercury, and one was all we needed.  Anyway, I digress.

Getting back to our tune, clearly it’s a lighthearted song, and is obviously not intended to be realistic, scientifically accurate, or in any way a fair portrayal of the current state of American bats.  That being said, bats in North America are in some deep shit, and they really need our help. 

In 2006, researchers first detected a new disease that was killing bats.  This disease, called White Nose Syndrome, is a fungal infection that attacks entire colonies of bats while they hibernate in their winter homes, usually caves.  First observed in New York, White Nose Syndrome has now spread across the eastern US and into Canada. With a mortality rate of around 90%, WNS has already killed more than 5 million bats, and actually threatens some species with total extinction unless we figure out some way to stop it.

Why is this a big deal?  Mostly because bats play a HUGE role in the ecosystem of these regions.  If the bats go away, all of us will feel the impact, starting with farmers and food producers.  Bats eat insects, literally billions of bugs every year.  A lot of these bugs will see a population explosion without their natural bat predators around to thin them out.  And since a lot of these bugs eat plants and food crops, the agricultural industry will be hit hard by the absence of bats.  It stands to reason that this will eventually hit the rest of us, as prices go up and other measures like chemical pesticides are used more heavily on the stuff we eat. 

Now, you might think bats are creepy, bloodsucking, airborne rodents that only appear in your nightmares.  Or (like me) you might think they’re the cutest little guys prowling the night.  But either way, they are an important part of our planetary ecosystem and they could use our help.  Fortunately there are some good organizations that try to help bats (and help people understand these often-misunderstood creatures).  So my appeal to anyone reading this is to take a moment and check out Bat Conservation International, the Organization for Bat Conservation, or just read a little bit about them and learn how cool they are. 

Quick note that our CD Release Show is October 4th at the Sunset.  We’ll be playing with two great bands: Boxcar Rebellion and Spanish for 100, and we are stoked to bring these songs to the stage.  Hope to see you then, and be cool.

Patrick

The Square is the “historic” area of Seattle, which means it has all the old brick buildings which haven’t yet been converted into mixed use/luxury living urban epicenters. Although most of them have already made the switch, there are still a fair number of historic buildings in Pioneer Square hanging on to their dilapidated, original glory. Throw in the cobbled streets and the overall lack of neon and available parking, and Pi Square fits the “historic neighborhood” template fairly well. 

Once the sun goes down, most people probably think of Pioneer Square as the destination for drunken sports fans, and in 2012 that is certainly true. Its location next to all the football/baseball/footballsoccer stadiums makes it the prime spot to find wasted Mariners fans crying over cheap draft beer and puking in filthy alleyways. It’s also the city’s most established host to Amateur Night for clubgoers (although Belltown is gaining fast in this category).

But here’s the thing: Pioneer Square used to be the most vibrant neighborhood in Seattle for live music. When I first got to Seattle proper and was hunting for a scene with other musicians, it was where we went: The Central, The Swan Café, The OK Hotel, and later The Colorbox, The Fenix, and The Velvet Elvis. Even marginal Pioneer Square venues had their own good runs as live music venues: the Old Timer’s, Doc Maynard’s and Dutch Ned’s all hosted a lot of musicians over the years. If you wanted a break from the racket you would go around the corner and grab a drink at the Pioneer Square Hotel Bar, which felt like a big green room for all the bands who just played or were waiting to play at some other joint in the neighborhood. After the show wrapped up you might grab a bite at Trattoria Mitchelli, a decent Italian joint that stayed open all night and served piles of alcohol-absorbing, greasy pasta drenched in tomato sauce and capers.

Every phone pole in town used to be plastered an inch thick with show posters, and most of the shows were happening somewhere in Pi Square. All the grunge bands who eventually got famous and (for better or worse) defined Seattle for the rest of the world played at The Central, while all the later-era bands who came up played at The OK Hotel or The Colorbox. I worked at a music store in the neighborhood for a few years, and many times after work I’d just walk down the block to see a show, play a show, or work at a show doing sound at one of the venues. I worked at and saw so many memorable shows at The Velvet Elvis, it would be difficult to recount them all. And I played the Colorbox so many times, some of the bartenders thought I worked there.

Times change, and neighborhoods change along with them. Seattle built a couple of monstrous new sports arenas, and as Pioneer Square blossomed into a neighborhood of historic sports bars, the music scene moved elsewhere. Belltown went upscale, Capitol Hill grew up and Ballard blew up. But I still have a soft spot in my heart for Pioneer Square, and I must say it feels kind of nice to be heading there for a show one more time. 

This show is the CD Release bash for my old friend Steve Bergstrom’s band Dapper Jones. Steve and I literally grew up on the same street in Renton, and it’s both wonderful and kind of strange that we’ve floated around the Seattle music scene for all these years, playing in bands—and yet this is the first time we’ve ever shared the stage.

The first video for our new EP is completed and ready to release. All we need now is to actually release the EP itself, which is taking some time while we get the artwork to our liking. In the meantime, we’re stockpiling good content to accompany the songs. But for now: Pioneer Square!

Go Mariners/Sounders/Seahawks!

--Patrick

This week I saw a couple of things that really stuck with me and got me thinking about chemistry in collaborative endeavors.  The first was the new Van Halen video, for the first single from the recently-mostly-reformed lineup.  The song “Tattoo” is a pretty generic stomper, with a hatful of David Lee Roth’s usual vocal gimmicks and prancing, preening stagecraft, and a typically supple and dexterous guitar solo from Eddie.  Although the song didn’t suck quite so suckingly as I expected it to, I was still summarily unimpressed.  But the strangest thing about it was Michael Anthony’s absence.  Anthony, who was unceremoniously dumped and replaced by Eddie’s son Wolfgang in 2007, has apparently been enjoying his retirement from VH, palling around with Sammy Hagar and selling hot sauce.  But seeing and hearing Van Halen without Michael Anthony’s chugging, persistent bass lines and stratospherically high backing vocals was disorienting.  And somehow just wrong.

Not this guy.

The second bizarre moment came on Monday afternoon, when the Oklahoma City Thunder visited the TD Garden to take on the Boston Celtics.  As Celtics fans have been crying about for the last year, Danny Ainge shocked the NBA last February when he traded Kendrick Perkins to the Thunder.  At the time, the Celtics were in first place and looked like they were well on their way to one final run at a championship with their aging core of players.  But after the trade the Celtics fell apart, and without Perkins their toughness evaporated quickly along with their whole identity as a team.  They wound up getting lapped by the Miami Heat in the playoffs, in what will likely turn out to be the last gasp of a proud group of future Hall of Fame players whose careers are presently circling the drain.  Meanwhile, Perkins gave a young Oklahoma City team exactly what they needed: a tough guy who didn’t take any shit, played defense and let the other guys have the spotlight.  OKC wound up losing in the conference finals last season, then came out to start this year’s campaign like a house on fire.  Now they look like real championship contenders, while Boston looks old and washed up. 

On Monday night, Perkins returned to Boston for the first time since the trade.  Celtics fans gave him a long standing ovation, and the team showed a video tribute to his years as a Celtic before the game.  It was touching, and also a little awkward.  There is no rock and roll equivalent; Van Halen isn’t about to show a video montage of Michael Anthony’s best on stage moments as a warm up to their 2012 shows.  Then again, Michael Anthony isn’t about to jump on stage at a VH concert and kick the crap out of Eddie and Dave, which is basically what the Thunder did to the Celtics last Monday. 

We want this guy.

Maybe it’s just me (okay, almost certainly it’s just me), but I found myself struck by the similarities between these guys.  Both Michael Anthony and Kendrick Perkins are support players.  No one is giving Kendrick Perkins any points for graceful offensive execution, just like no one is going to put Michael Anthony on a pedestal for his elegant, artful soloing.  Both of these guys can look brutal out of context, whether you’re looking at Perkins’ stats for offensive efficiency or listening to one of Anthony’s remarkably atonal, blaring, seemingly endless stadium bass solos.  (There’s a reason the term “bass solo” is a much-derided cliché, and we have Michael Anthony to thank for it as much as anyone.)

But this is one area where bands and basketball teams are alike: it’s what they do together that counts.  By playing with a solid pocket, adding brilliant backing vocals and giving the more flamboyant Eddie and Dave plenty of room, Michael Anthony made Van Halen a much better band.  Just like Kendrick Perkins made the Celtics a much better team by adding great interior defense, solid rebounding, setting iron-hard screens and putting the occasional opposing player in a headlock. 

Without Perkins, the Celtics look more like an over the hill team that has lots of bark and little bite.  Without Michael Anthony, Van Halen looks more like a Van Halen tribute band with a scab bassist. 

Not this guy.

Now, maybe all this won’t matter to fans who want to hear “Hot For Teacher” bad enough to fork over $150 a ticket.  But it matters to me and I’ll bet it matters to most of us who saw the genuine VH article back in the day.  And after watching the Celtics get outplayed on their home floor, I think a lot of us fans suddenly feel like we’re watching the casino circuit version of this team, and not the arena-rocking real deal. 

In the immortal words of Jack Black: “that’s fuckin’ teamwork.”

--Patrick

When I made Crooks, Josh was the only other musician there with me most of the time, and his contributions to Explone—as a drummer, as a singer, and as a voice of (occasional) reason—have been absolutely vital. Josh left and then rejoined the band during the making of Dreamers/Lovers, and then raised his game to a new level during the recording of our new EP Telescope & Satellite. Now that we’re preparing to put out T&S, I was really looking forward to traveling and playing shows with Josh behind the kit once again.

So it is with considerable sadness that we announce Josh’s departure from Explone. Josh and his fantastic wife Catherine are moving to Colorado to pursue new career opportunities (the kind of careers that actually pay bills), and thus he is relinquishing the throne and leaving us with big shoes to fill. There is no drama and nothing but love between us. Kyle, Scott and I all wish Josh the very best and encourage him to stay out of any mandolin-sporting jam bands down in Boulder. On the bright side, Boulder has a lot going for it—including one of the best record stores in the world: Albums On The Hill.

Lucky for us, we share a rehearsal space and most of a lineup with Kyle’s main project Kirby Krackle. Thus it wasn’t a stretch to picture our buddy (and KK drummer) Nelson Estes behind the throne for Explone jams. Fortunately, when I spoke to Nelson and broached the idea he quickly agreed. So while we may be inching ever closer to a band identity crisis, we are a fully operational rock and roll unit once more. Nelson has been learning the songs and getting comfortable with the additional workload. And we’ve been taking the transition as an opportunity to absorb some new influences and hear our songs in a new way. Every combination of musicians contains subtle differences, and I’m certain Nelson will find ways to put his own stamp on Explone.

All that said: we’re gonna miss you, Josh. You’ve been a great friend, and a great source of inspiration, humor and wisdom over the past several years. Seattle’s loss is Boulder’s gain. Be well buddy.

Patrick

So earlier this year, when Kyle started planning his wedding and he asked all of us to jump in the phone booth and emerge as the World’s Greatest Wedding Band for the occasion, I had to take a deep breath. In a bizarre twist of fate, the playlist for Kyle’s 2011 nuptials didn’t look very different from the playlist for my university bands; in other words, LOTS of the 1980’s. He and his fiancée Kristin had selected a slew of hits: Fine Young Cannibals, Cyndee Lauper, Bon Jovi, Journey, etc. Kyle is a decade younger than I am, so it sort of made me wonder what the enduring cultural milestones of his generation were. But on the upside, at least I knew most of the songs.

I swallowed hard and sat down with my guitar to learn the first few songs. Still unsure about how we were going to pull this off, I dutifully comped the changes to “Rock With You” and “Take On Me” (which had the added degree of difficulty of not having any guitar on the original recording). Then I showed up to our first practice.

Part of the challenge of coordinating this event was figuring out how to assign responsibilities across the diverse personnel involved. Since we were effectively combining Explone and Kirby Krackle for the night, it left us with some easy decisions (guitar, bass, keyboards) and some difficult ones (drums, vocals). After a few minutes of thought, this became crystal clear, however: both Josh and Nelson are great drummers, but only one of them is a karaoke all-star and reigning World Champion of Borderline Inappropriate Stage Banter. Josh was born to be our lead vocalist.

As anyone who has seen Explone probably knows, Josh is six-foot-four, bearded, and no one’s idea of “feminine.” But he has some golden, blue-eyed soul pipes of the highest order, and very few living humans can reach the stratospherically high notes he is capable of sailing to. Confronted with the reality of A-Ha’s “Take On Me” and Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” on our setlist, I knew Josh would be our only hope in the vocal department.

Fortunately we had two other aces up our sleeves for this gig: Bryce and Scott. The 80’s, if you recall, were not really about guitar, at least not in the Top 40 radio realm. They were about a lot of synthesizers, a shit-ton of gated reverb on the snare drum samples, and insanely busy bass lines. For example, you might think a song like “Footloose” is a cakewalk—and you would be right, from the perspective of the guitar player, who basically just lamely flails around an A chord for four minutes. But for a bassist, that song is a fucking P90-X, Billy Blanks Tae Bo, Ultimate Cage Match to the Death workout. So many notes, so little time. And something like “Take On Me” can’t even get off the ground without a fire-breathing heathen of a keyboardist who eats 160 BPM arpeggios for breakfast. Fortunately for us, Scott and Bryce are exactly those guys.

The next few weeks of rehearsal were mostly Nelson and I kicking back while we watched Scott, Bryce and Josh work their asses off. As the songs started coming together, I succumbed to the inevitable nostalgic glee of shredding the guitar solo to “Don’t Stop Believin’” and singing “Livin’ On A Prayer” while Josh backed me up with high harmonies and a tambourine. Before I knew it, I was having a great time.

On the day of the wedding, I was stressed out. I was late, my equipment was breaking, and a long week of mishaps had my mind in a whirl. I tried to cool down, and thought about Kyle: one of my dearest friends, about to commit his whole life to another person ‘til death do them part, etc. etc. After a few moments of reflection (and a quick shot of whiskey smuggled into the groomsmen’s area) I regained my balance and got my shit together. The wedding was beautiful, and the reception started off great as well, with happy guests feasting away.

In the back of my mind I had been terrified that we were going to drive all the old people out of the room the second we started playing. I imagined a laborious, arthritic exodus of grandparents fleeing the sound of Bon Jovi like wounded antelope fleeing a hungry pride of lions. But as soon as we dropped the first notes of “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” I could tell things were going to be all right. The dance floor packed, kids and old folks mixed it up deliriously, and for the next hour and a half I had the extremely pleasant experience of playing songs that everyone knew and everyone liked.

As Scott noted afterward, the thing about playing covers is that the concept sounds dreadful until you start, then you realize it’s so much fun. Every song immediately connects, and you don’t need to win anyone over because they’re all on your side from the get go. They want to like you and have a great time, and all you need to do is make it easy for them. Which we did, mostly thanks to Scott and Bryce’s proficiency and Josh’s absolute mastery of the vocals. Josh was fantastic, and if I ever want to start a synth-pop band and tour casinos, he’s the only guy I have in mind.

The next week when we got back to practicing Explone songs, it was a pleasure. But it was also a bit wistful, because we were all pretty high on the fun time we’d had with the wedding band. The concept of trying to blow an audience away with a song they’ve never heard before is a neat challenge. But fresh off the experience of playing a whole set of instantly familiar songs it makes you think differently.

Anyhow, we’re about to revert to form and looking forward to it. Explone plays at The Sunset on 10/20, with our friends Goodbye Heart and Half Acre Day. As many times as I’ve played The Sunset (lots and lots), this will actually be the first time with my own band…so look out.

Our new EP Telescope & Satellite is all mastered and ready to go, just as soon as we devise the ultimate artwork and packaging experience for your enjoyment. And map out the ultimate promotional strategy. And pay off the credit card from the recording. Okay, I’ll be honest: it will take a little while. But we’re gonna drop it as soon as we can, and the music is the best stuff we’ve ever done, we promise.

More news as we create it. Be well.

--Patrick

Ten years ago, I turned off the TV and went on a hike in the mountains. The sun was shining brilliantly, the meadows were alive with wildflowers, and my roommate and I had the trail all to ourselves. After a few miles, the silence became a little eerie. Not a plane in the sky, nor any of their cumulus footprints: the contrails I had come to love for their poetic and fragile linearity. The wind was still, the birds all huddled on low branches as if in some kind of solemn acknowledgement of the sadness that day bore, and still bears. Only on this day, ten years later, my sadness is a little deeper and my hopefulness seems a little more remote.

The last decade has given me a wealth of personal benefits: a rich life both professionally and artistically, great memories with friends and family, the chance to fall truly, deeply in love with someone I never knew I’d meet. If I look within my immediate sphere of awareness and influence, I have everything to be thankful for and nothing to complain about. But if I look beyond the comfortable bubble I live in, I see things that break my heart. I see America in 2011.

If you had asked me on September 10^th, 2001 what I thought about America and her place in the world, I would have answered with equal parts ignorance and confidence. You could call this hubris, but to me it’s not the same thing. I think hubris is when you should know better, but you choose to defy reason. As of September 10^th, 2001, I really didn’t know better. Our economy was on top. Our society clearly had, and still has, the greatest surplus of individual liberty anywhere on the planet. In the abstract I knew things were fucked up in other parts of the world, but I hadn’t put any of those issues in context yet, or tried to fit them into my understanding of the world. I had no real grasp of American foreign policy, of the role religion played (and plays) in politics, of how our bottomless need for cheap energy influences everything. And most painfully, I had no clue how adversity sometimes leads not to cogent analysis and improved self-awareness, but to doubling down on xenophobia, nativism, reactionary “patriotism” and magical thinking. By no means am I claiming to be an expert on these topics now, but I’ve certainly received some education on all of them.

As I hiked that trail on the afternoon of September 11, 2001, I felt a lot of things. Anger was certainly one. I was horrified by the things I’d just seen, and I yearned for a blood-for-blood accounting. I wanted restoration through destruction. In a perfect indication of my state of fucked-upedness, I imagined some kind of healing through violence. I went to a dark place, the place that allows people—both individually and as a society—to lose their moral compass. 9/11 poured a lot of poison into my bloodstream. I think it did this to our whole nation. And I think we’re still sick from it.

In the past decade, we’ve had to endure some minor inconveniences to our daily lives: taking off our shoes at airports, trying to memorize the color-coding scheme for terror alerts, knowing implicitly that some government bureaucrat in some dim office somewhere is probably scanning our email and watching our library card. We’ve had to listen to shitty, pseudo-patriotic songs from country artists at sporting events, with lyrics that sounded like rejects from the Hallmark card thinktank. We’ve had to see bald eagles and American flags emblazoned upon every available flat surface, usually with sentimental slogans like “never forget” scrolled across the bumper sticker, or commemorative plate, or t-shirt, or seat cover, or beer cozy, or whatever the fuck it was. We’ve had to listen to a noisy handful of nutjobs who claim over and over that 9/11 was an inside job, who examine the videos frame by frame looking for evidence of holograms or military aircraft or hidden bombs planted in the buildings. What we haven’t seen is any real examination of United States foreign policy, or any real discussion of why we were attacked and what the terrorists hoped to accomplish. Instead we just accepted the bullshit premise that “they hate us for our freedoms” and we screen-printed some bald eagles on our t-shirts and we went on with our lives, as if watching football on Sundays, drinking beer and letting our female population vote was the whole reason for the “War on Terror.” And we were at war, and in fact we were losing it the whole time, and we didn’t even know it.

Ten years later, our military has been overextended and taxed to the breaking point in nation-building efforts that face long odds of ever being even moderately successful. The cost in blood and treasure has been immense, and the end isn’t anywhere in sight. Our brave servicemen and women have given everything they have for little gain and with even less justification. We’ve lost thousands of lives and untold dollars trying to bring Jeffersonian democracy to lands and peoples on the other side of the world, while here at home our hearts have hardened and our rancor intensified to the point that the very same Jeffersonian principles are in danger. Our concept of “American Exceptionalism” has been perverted into a foolhardy pipe dream of divine sanction for our way of life, and the attacks of 2001 have been reframed as a clash of civilizations—or more accurately, of religions—and the preamble to the final confrontation between Christianity and Islam. Many of us have little to no understanding of our actual foreign policy in the Middle East and what its ramifications are; we just want to go about our lives and get by. In the process we’ve pretty easily bought into the fallacy that the War on Terror is a cultural and/or religious conflict and that we’re at war with people who want to kill us because we listen to Kanye West, play video games and eat McRib sandwiches.

In the meantime, with no tangible enemy to lash out against, we’ve turned the poison in our bloodstreams on each other. We can’t defeat an enemy that doesn’t exist, and since we’re unable or unwilling to acknowledge this, we look for the missing enemy in each other. American Exceptionalism based on tolerance and acceptance of differences has given way to a kind of American Exclusionism, fueled by our desire to stake out the “real” America from our fellow citizens. It doesn’t take too long in any argument about politics for charges of “un-Americanism” to get thrown back and forth. Our national conversation is veneered with intolerance, with derision, with religious prejudice and with xenophobia. I feel like I wake up in an uglier, meaner America now than I did ten years ago, and I don’t like it.

Today I’m not sure if I want my country back, or if I never really knew it before the events of the last decade. I am moved to tears by the stories of the victims and their families on that day, and by the courageous men and women who rushed to help with no thought for their own safety. Their hard, realistic heroism makes this anniversary bittersweet, and their example stands in stark relief against the make-believe world we’ve lived in since. 9/11 broke our moral compass, it sent us into senseless wars based on false premises, hardened us against each other and made us afraid of phony dangers like Sharia Law, while blinding us to real hazards like pretending torture is okay because the bad guys do it too. We’re coming off a bad decade, we’re broke, we’re distrustful of each other and we’re scared of everyone else. And it’s hard for us to console ourselves with the notion that we’ve won just because no one has bombed the Super Bowl yet.

Ten years ago I turned off the TV and went hiking. Maybe today I should have done the same thing. But it’s been ten years, and just like the words on this page, I can’t take them back. So instead I wrote this note. I hope in 2021 I’m still around to play music and write notes, and that it finds me, and all of us, in a better place.

I think my friends and family have gotten used to the idea that I'm a reader, cuz I got an enormous stack of books for my birthday: the new Bob Mould biography, Kristin hersh's "Rat Girl," spy books by Olen Steinhauer and Alan Furst, Michael Shermer's "The Believing Brain," plus a few others. Oh, and I got the first "Game of Thrones" novel. So get ready for more songs about broadsword-wielding, wench-wooing and dragon-slaying.

Also enjoyed a nice visit from the Devil Whale dudes, which they capped off with a live set on KEXP, followed by a triumphant show at the Tractor. The guys even got some pretty favorable local press, and only one fight broke out at the show. Not bad!

Explone gets back on stage this Wednesday, 8/31 with a show at Chop Suey. We'll be playing with a couple of great local bands: Megasapien and Boom City. Both bands feature a lot of familiar faces: Burke Thomas (Vendetta Red, Pris), Lian Light (Magneto), and Eric Howk (The Lashes). It will be fun, and the unfortunate fact that the original headliner had to cancel just means more time for the rest of us to get our rocks off.

Thinking good thoughts for those folks on the east coast, while I get outside to take advantage of this sunshone...be well.

--Patrick

We’ve been celebrating our independence these past few weeks, in a variety of ways. To wit:

Our new EP Telescope & Satellite will be released this fall, just as soon as we free a couple thousand more dollars from the confines of our wallets in order to mix it. Independence! Our hard-earned cash deserves its freedom!

Our video for “St. Yesterday” from the Dreamers/Lovers album is currently playing on Fuse TV On Demand. You can check it out on cable (if you live in this century), or on the web (also available if you live in this century). It’s nice to be selected from hundreds of bands for this distinction, and thanks to Fuse TV for supporting independent music.

We also have a new (independent) video in the works for a song off the new EP: “Golden Ballroom,” directed by none other than our own bassist Scott Andrew. Scott claims he can make a video entirely on his iPhone, which is indie cred for production if there ever was such a thing.

In other news, we blew a lot of shit up for the 4^th of July, and ate a lot of food. Also, the new Kirby Krackle album is finished—Super Powered Love will be everywhere in a couple of weeks, and KK will be celebrating with a release show at the San Diego Comic Con on July 21^st.

Also, Kyle is making beer and it is awesome.

Stay tuned for shows and further updates as we get the new record launched. And thank as ever for your kind attention.

--Patrick