We've got work to do!!

Dear friends in bands or friends who book shows (especially GRNSTRP alums)....I have a proposal for you!

I'm gonna keep this brief, and please don't take this as a total admonishment because we have done some rad things and formed some important bonds over the last few years. We've had some really great times and made tons of memories to cherish! I just think that things have been slipping and stagnating a little bit since the closure of the GRNSTRP. It's been a slow process to be sure, but I don't think any of us can deny it. I know that lack of venues that actually "get it" has always been a problem, and might always be one. The Kraken has become a fantastic home base that I know we all love playing and having our family gatherings at. I wouldn't trade that place for the world! However, I think that we've been limiting ourselves a bit in the places we play and the audience we play to.

We need to bring in some new bands and new people!! OR THIS SCENE WILL DIE!!!! I've said it before, and again, I don't like harping on or nagging people. I just know that for the most part, this community is made up of nice people. We need to be more welcoming. We need to start booking more all-ages to bring in younger folks and hopefully guide them towards getting their minds right! I don't give a shit how awkward you feel without alchohol, try and relate to these kids without acting like a jaded, old punk fuddy-duddy! Also, we need to make a concerted effort to book more acts featuring women or people of color or LGBTQ folks! Need I remind you that our scene was built from fragmented and disenfranchised people who didn't quite fit into other micro-chasms of independent or punk music? Let's start folding all of our little corners of the independent, punk-influenced music scenes together!! Please!

I urge all of you to just think about this. If you're a part of a different, overlapping piece of this city's huge music scene, and you're reading this, consider it an invite! Drop me a line, let's play a show together! Diversify our D.I.Y. or die!!!

Opening thoughts....

Some conversations I've had lately with very important people, reading a few really well written articles, and trying to help Meg come up with acts (all at least featuring female members) for her derby benefit show has led me to some upsetting conclusions about the way our corner of the scene operates. While I think, for the most part, we're all very respectful of women with our language and lyrics, there are other ways we can let women know that they have an equal stake in our stalwart niche community. This applies to more than just women, of course, but let's start with aiming for a little more diversity when it comes to booking! Let's hear the perspectives of more than just white dudes. In general, we should be trying to involve more people in this community anyway or it will die completely as we all move or go on tour! I know I haven't been as active in that factor as I could be, and certainly not thinking enough about diversifying this community! Let's meet some new people and see some new acts. Let's start some discussions. It's time to get to work! xoxo P.S. Read this!

http://ilivesweat.tumblr.com/post/5586236285/we-fall-woefully-short-in-practice-aaron-scott

Pizza and pop culture emporium!!

Sent this testimonial out in a big ol' email yesterday, figured I'd post it here too. xoxo

I've got an idea! Here's the short(ish) version, bear with me....

I've been thinking a lot lately about the future, my own, my family's, and this fucking rad community that we've been a part of both locally and nation-wide. I think I've come up with a way to marry all these concepts and maintain involvement in said community, while still being around to raise my kids in a loving and awesome environment. And hell, to make sure they are as close to the community as possible. After all, they need as many of their rad aunts and uncles around as they can get.

Basically, what it all comes down to is this......

Within the next 5 to 6 years, we're going to be opening our own pizza place/all-ages venue!!!! ....that also sells comics and collectibles on the side, hehe. I know it seems like a long ways out, but it'll be here quicker than we imagine and we want to get to work on it as soon as possible. Plus I'm really excited about this and I wanted to start telling folks.

Here's what I wanted to ask of you, our friends. It's pretty simple:

Bands and travelers, if you need help booking in Seattle let me know. I will do my best to get you booked! If I'm really that bogged down and can't help you directly, the least I can do is point you in the direction of someone who can. Ive been booking my own bands for over ten years, admittedly less in recent years (props to con), and I want to do more. I would like to run this booking endeavor as professionally as possible without being a fucking shark. TO MAKE SURE THE BANDS ARE TAKEN CARE OF, ABOVE ALL ELSE!

Secondly, LET'S EAT!! I love to feed folks (hence the pizza place part of this glorious plan, not JUST a daytime source of income for the venue) and I'm gonna need to try out some recipes on people, so if you are coming through town and want some free grub and pleasant company, please hit me up. Don't be shy about it ,WE WILL FEED YOU! Likewise local friends, if you know of someone coming through town that I don't know about, hook us up! We'll eat together! Also if you just want to be fed, local friends, hit me up,WE WILL FEED YOU! Don't worry, I worked pizza for 5 years and know what I'm doing in the kitchen. It'll be tasty, I promise.

Finally, small business-owning friends, I will be bugging you a lot in the next few years, I hope that's okay. I would love all the advice you could possibly offer!!! I've already gotten some great resource material from the local chamber of commerce, and signed up for some continuing ed. style business classes, but I want to know what worked for you and what didn't work.

Sorry about the length of this email, there's plenty more to this plan that I'll gladly gab with anybody about. Any help you all could offer would be sooooo appreciated. I want to make this place as much for all of us as it is for myself. We've had a lot of help from folks all over, and I want to start giving more back!

Thank you and I love you all! xoxoRYxoxo

Tobacco Valley (big hat)

The prose that follow are the lyrics to a song we've been playing with TDD for a little while now. Initially, I wrote them during a pretty rough period in my life last year, while I was on a work trip to Montana. The funny thing about Montana is that it's gorgeous and natural landscape can elicit the most powerfully opposite feelings in you, pretty much shifting instantaneously. The beauty of the forests and massive mountains making you feel at peace and happy, while the vastness of the big empty sky, gray in the winter time, can leave you feeling pretty empty and alone. Maybe it's just me. As much as I love Montana, I would suggest you avoid "big sky country," in the winter. Needless to say this is a bummer song, I'm kinda feeling it lately.

TOBACCO VALLEY

Glowing eyes, shining back against my headlights,
reflecting the same shock that's widening my tired own.
Screeching brakes, broken windshield, busted guard-rail.
Gravel burns, grinding in through flesh and bone.

Please, tell me everything is gonna work out fine,
with no if's and's or but's about it.
Please tell me everything is gonna work out fine,
just don't tell me how to go about it.

Falling snow, extinguishes the hottest fires
and chills my broken bones.
Drag myself from under thousands of pounds of flaming wreckage
my final thoughts are of you and home.

If I die upon this mountain top
remember that I love you all.
If I'm overcome by these dark thoughts
remember that I love you.

Remember that I love you all,
oh that I love you.
Remember that I love you all,
I love you.

If I die upon this mountain top,
What legacy will I have left behind?
If I'm overcome by these dark thoughts,
please remember me and mine.

Just please, tell me everything is gonna work out fine,
with no if's and's or but's about it!
Please, Tell me everything is gonna work out fine,
Just don't tell me how to go about it!

xoxoxoxo

Grown up (the punx!) tour

I've been home for a week and still hadn't had the chance to sit down and scribble some thoughts and thank-you's until today. Life just didn't slow down long enough to get it done. Plus, having ten days off of work combined with spending the bulk of those ten days living in a small car, all culminating in a brutal thirty hour drive home, made longer STILL by a huge fucking wild-fire on the grapevine, allows the muscles to atrophy and the operator of said muscles to get wicked lazy. Thus upon returning to work the muscle operator proceeds to have the living shit kicked out of him by the job. Needless to say I've spent much of this week trying to catch up with myself. But enough excuses.....

This was an awesomely successful tour, and the first person I have to thank for that is my brother Kyle. I've told the same thing to everyone I've talked to so far, but Kyle was the wildcard on the tour. At least on the musical side of things, as my brother has calmed down a great deal in recent years, he is no longer the same goddamn nut-bar that we all knew and grew to love oh so many years ago. I have to say the change is refreshing. I digress, you see kyle has focused all his energy and time on the honing of his classical guitar playing and it shows! It was a very different style to showcase in the venues we performed in, and despite that, it was received really really well. I think that is what I'm most thankful for,I'm just so glad that he was able to take this totally new thing he's doing and share it with audiences who have or would've enjoyed his more traditionally punk sounding work with Down We Go. This whole thing has convinced him to continue doing this and writing more originals to share with us dirty classless scoundrels. That makes me happy.

As for my own performance, I haven't felt this confident in playing by myself ever. This was a really scary and daunting task to undertake. Again, I feel like I've already said this to everybody that'll listen, but having no wall of noise to hide behind, after so many years of hiding behind that wall, is fucking unnerving. I did not piss my pants in fear the whole week! I beat the shit out of that guitar, and yelled a lot, and it was good (at least I think it was good). The new record will be up for donation (free, haha) download as soon as I get it finished. I'll keep you posted. In the mean time, go download this compilation to benefit the victims of the nashville flooding. Put together by the great Alex Hudjohn and featuring some of the punk-coustic community's finest badasses... and me.

http://alexanderhudjohn.bandcamp.com/album/a-little-goes-a-long-way-nashville-flood-relief


Before I wrap up, I must make those obligatory thank-you's. To Lisa and The Monkey Grind, to Ryan Remains and Dave and the folks at the zombie house in Portland, to Claire for coming to two shows, to Sean the bastard and Danny Secretion and Shaun Hanna in Sac, to Danny, Leo, Wayne, Trevor, Alexis and Hogarth in San Jose, to Ziggy, happy birthday month brother, and Rev (Aaron, hahaha) and all other Escalera family members in San Diego, to all our friends new and old who came to any show or bought our swag, to the word "and" and to run-on sentences with too many commas, THANK YOU ALL SOOOO MUCH!!!! We had a fucking blast! We'll see ya soon. Until next time kids, keep your heads up and keep moving forward. xoxoxoxo

World War Z!!!!

I listened to the audiobook version of World War Z yesterday. Holy fuckingoddammshit!!!! Soooo good! If you have not read this book yet, go and buy/download it now! It will be well worth the money.

I certainly learned something about myself from it. Thanks to all the random jobs I've held through the years I've acquired a broad and random skill set. Basic plumbing, electrical, building and general mr. fix-it skills from my janitorial and building maintenance gigs, cooking from my pizza gig, people skills from retail gigs, an indepth knowledge of the terrain and highway system of the northwest region, and enhanced physical strength from my gravestone gig. Basically I'll be better suited to surviving and maintaining a fully functional role in the reconstruction after the zombie apocalypse.

Take that white-collar desk jockey!!!!

GRNSTRP!!!!!!!

At this moment, we are the greatest heroes
time has ever told.

In this living room packed with other brave adventurers.
The electricity is crackling in the air.

I wear my heart on my neck and my hate on my hand.
Feet pound the pavement into gravel then to sand.
Feet pound the pavement into gravel then to sand then to dust!

Teeming mass of sweaty dreamers, a silent pledge made to each other
to soil the carpet, put our feet through the ceiling.

Please help our host pay for the broken drywall and wish us well,
we hit the road tomorrow.

Forget about your day job and don't hurt yourself for punk rock.
Let's go tonight we'll make some noisy history.
Oh yeah tonight we'll make the loudest history!

We are a part of something bigger
and this time it isn't bullshit!
We are a part of something bigger, this time it's not just bullshit!