Plans for this summer.

Well, I’m finally back to my own blog after a while. It was pretty cool having this thing on Spin.com for a bit. I cant tell you how awesome it was to be able to give the play by play for a pretty small tour on the website for a major music magazine.

I’ve been back in the bay area for a week now and I realized tonight that I haven’t updated this thing in a while, so no one knows what we’re up to (and to be honest, I usually hit up my own blog to remember what I’ve been doing with my life, so I have no idea!).

What I’ve been consumed with is the one thing that can ever keep my attention for weeks and months at a time, the one thing that can keep me from wanting to go out, that will stretch my bedtime to 5 or 6 AM... I’ve been writing our second record.

Now, I’ve been working on this thing for about a year now already but it’s difficult to find time and space where you can be alone and productive on the road. I’ll pull my acoustic out in the van and move to the back bench, press my ear against it and attempt to ignore whatever is blasting on the stereo in the front, or I’ll try to get back to the hotel room alone and sober while the other guys are out, or maybe there is a quiet corner at the club... but inspiration and the necessary environment to write do not always match up. I have about a dozen songs in various states of completion that I’m excited about and I’d like to go into the studio with another five or six.

I don’t like the concept of writing for a record. I feel like songs should be honest and come from a time and place. I’m glad that most of the next record has been written already, that it will be inspired by everything I’ve seen and heard and felt between the ages of 21 and 23, just as Charmingly Awkward was a reflection of my life from 18 to 20. I don’t want to force songs, to write because I have a deadline, so I’ve been taking my time and now I find myself with enough material to fill another album.

I can’t predict how the album will come out. Writing is only part of the process. I’m very excited about it, though I cant say that this has been the happiest time in my life. The songs are not incredibly positive so far, but I haven’t lost my sense of humor.

We’ll be mostly off the road for the next few months. I’ll be crashing with a friend in San Francisco after visiting my brother out in the desert in Utah. Then we’ll be headed to LA to track some stuff. You can expect a couple shows around California and we’ll be playing the Treasure Island Festival in September with Modest Mouse and Spoon and some other cool bands. I’m not sure when we’ll be putting the next record out, but know that we’re busy with it.

More to come very soon…