Art by Billis Helg
This one is certainly a contender for my favorite track I've done this year. It started off as a different progression altogether, with a swinging rock beat, and eventually evened out into a very cheerful pop-rock track. For lyrics, I took inspiration from Psalm 84, as we...
2025-08-31 17:00:09 +0000 UTC View PostAugust 27, 4 PST: Band's Delight stream with Will, content to be decided!
September 1, 4 PST: Family Dinner stream!
2025-08-21 16:00:14 +0000 UTC View PostTen summers ago, we were tucked into the corners of Fremont, recording Teens of Denial with Steve Fisk. I remember it being a sunny summer, both literally and emotionally. Teens of Style, recorded earlier that year, had been a difficult trek, marred by difficulties in mixing and...
2025-08-01 19:00:11 +0000 UTC View PostHi friends. Ethan here with July's Live Show Archive album. This time it's a little unusual: it's from Primavera, which is a festival we've played multiple times. It's always amazing, maybe the best crowds we've ever played to. This performance, however, has something weird about it: I wasn't the...
2025-07-31 21:37:48 +0000 UTC View Post
Art by Billis Helg
"Palomica" means "dove" in Spanish (I think). A friend of mine passed away last month, who was a lover of St. Francis. There's a story of St. Francis seeing a boy carrying turtledoves to the market, asking the boy for them, and raising and taming them at his monastery. I ...
2025-07-31 20:58:23 +0000 UTC View Post
Art by Billis Helg
The "tempter" is none other than the devil himself, who wants nothing more than for us to believe we can't live without him. Through whatever channel he's caught us up in, whatever toxic relationship you're putting behind you in hopes of a better future, he keeps calling,...
2025-07-31 20:45:51 +0000 UTC View Post
Art by Billis Helg
Lyrics by Amanda Schiano di Cola, who said of it in high school: [the title means] 'safety barrier from the bad things'...if you always think the worse, then when something good happens you'll think it's really good and if the worst happens you'll just be satisfied with k...
2025-07-31 20:37:52 +0000 UTC View Post
today we're running sounds through a variety of tape machines. come explore the warm layered textures and embrace the imperfect nature of analog tape! feel free to sample if we come up with anything cool!
2025-07-29 22:00:09 +0000 UTC View PostOn these days shalt thou see us:
July 29, 3 PST: Join Seth in this month's Band Delight stream for tape experiments!
July 30, 4 PST: Family dinner time with the band.
New music and live show to come.
2025-07-22 22:00:06 +0000 UTC View Post“Whoever does not love abides in death. All who hate a brother are murderers.” (1 John 3:14-15)
That guy I kinda hate is here…
I don’t know why, but hatred and anger found their way into me at a very young age. I was a sensitive kid, physically and mentally, and any e...
2025-07-02 22:00:08 +0000 UTC View PostHello hello, welcome to another live show archive. This time coming from Germany, I believe from the Rolling Stone Weekender fest? If memory--and the hard drive of board mixes I'm looking at--serves, we played two dates at this festival. One was at a big, indoor, carpeted room where we played a b...
2025-07-01 19:01:34 +0000 UTC View PostHey guys! Putting the finishing touches on the show mix, some life business put me just a little shy of the finish line and it'll be about half a day late. Sorry to be pushing the envelope one more time, you're still gonna dig it and thanks again for the support and for waiting all month!
2025-07-01 03:20:54 +0000 UTC View Post
It turns out that if your art is successful, people start looking at it, and oftentimes will start thinking what you thinking at the time, and doing what you were doing. I've had plenty of bad ideas in my time, and I wish I hadn't elevated some of them in my art. It's easy to feel like you're saf...
2025-06-30 22:08:37 +0000 UTC View Post
I wanted to write a song about depression, its oppressive force, and the untrue darkness it casts on the lives of those who suffer from it. The way it's portrayed in this song is strongly influenced by this quote from Martin Luther:
"All glory of victory must be ascribed to God Himself, not...
2025-06-30 21:55:10 +0000 UTC View Post
One of my favorite self-penned ones from the late-middle-school era. There's a lot of Green Day DNA in this.
Recording:
Track 1: MIDI Drums/Organ/Synth
Track 2: Guitar
Tracks 3-4: Vocals
Lyrics:
When life has got you down
On the ground
And you feel l...
2025-06-30 21:25:18 +0000 UTC View PostJune 25, 4 PM PST: Band's delight - random stream with Andrew!
June 29, 4 PM PST: This month's "Family dinner" will be a true family dinner - a Q&A with Will and his parents, while he's back home in Virginia! Come meet my folks and hear some stories from their perspective.
2025-06-24 16:46:37 +0000 UTC View PostHappy June, subscribers!
It’s stranger to me now to be writing to an audience like this than it used to be. I’ve had the pleasure of talking with many of you one-on-one, but I’ve seen very few of you in person. I used to prefer this level of isolation: I log on, write something that m...
2025-06-01 20:56:23 +0000 UTC View PostGreetings Patreon land! Ethan here for this month's live show archive. Coming once again from the 2018/Naked Giants era, this was right at the time (I think the very day, even) that we released the Twin Fantasy rerecord. I remember this show pretty vividly, as it was pretty late at night, it was ...
2025-05-31 23:33:07 +0000 UTC View Post
Inspired by a dream I had. The idea is that the central figure is a kid who’s been abducted by a robot colony, trapped inside a mechanical fortress, and also placed inside a robot body. The electromagnetic waves inside the colony affect his brain and keep him believing in his waking hours that ...
2025-05-31 21:08:40 +0000 UTC View Post
A pretty straight-up song about repentance. I’ve never been very good at apologizing, but hopefully I’m getting a little better at noticing when it needs to be done.
Recording:
Track 1: Midi Drums, Midi Bass
Track 2: guitars
Tracks 3-4: vocals
Lyrics:
Sorry...
2025-05-31 21:04:58 +0000 UTC View Post
Art by Billis Helg
(Edit: Now with full-rez files attached)
In honor of the month of May - hopefully everyone is done with their finals by now. Lyrics by Amanda Schiano di Cola - each verse (except the first and last) was meant to represent a different subject she was studying for. Ca...
2025-05-31 20:57:49 +0000 UTC View Post
Tonight it's rice, salmon and asparagus. Good job finishing all of your veggies!
2025-05-28 23:01:45 +0000 UTC View PostI hope the month of May is going swimmingly for everyone! Here's where you can catch us in the following week:
Sunday, May 25, at 2 PST: Will will do the Band's Delight stream - another round of poetry analysis!
Wednesday, May 28, at 4 PST: Family Din...
2025-05-23 19:00:10 +0000 UTC View PostHappy Friday, happy May, and happy Scholars release day! Our album is out at last, and I’m so grateful for all the positive words we’ve received on it so far.
I think if there was one primary theme in the building of this album, it was trusting in the music. As I got excited about vario...
2025-05-02 15:00:08 +0000 UTC View Post
At a Passover dinner hosted by our friend Kai, Kai talked about the song “Dayenu”, which means “it would have sufficed”:
If He had brought us out from Egypt,
and had not carried out judgments against them
— it would have sufficed!
If He had carried out judgments agai...
Art by Billis Helg
This month, I was thinking about the theme of “endurance” - what endures throughout the changing of time? Recently, I was spending time at Billis’s house, and kept hearing the chiming of their clock, which rang every quarter-hour. It reminded me of a time years ago ...
2025-04-30 23:11:48 +0000 UTC View PostHey all, Ethan here again with another live show archive mix. This one is from our brief Australia tour in 2018 with Naked Giants. Both tours of Australia have been highlight moments for us, the nice weather and somewhat more relaxed vibe of festival runs there almost feels like a vacation compar...
2025-04-30 19:56:24 +0000 UTC View Post
Art by Billis Helg
Lyrics by Amanda Schiano di Cola
One of my favorites from the high school vault.
Recording:
track 1: electric guitar
track 2: acoustic guitar
tracks 3-4: vocals
Lyrics:
If I could
I would run with the wind ice cold in my fac...
2025-04-30 16:54:13 +0000 UTC View Post
