We're baaaaaack!

What? Where am I? Did I somehow end up at blogspot? What's blogging...I remember maybe, just maybe, doing it once upon a time. Don't I?

Alright, so, I'm back. Back behind these little plastic keys and my beautiful piece of technology and I'm gonna just get on my soapbox for a real hot tic tock.

NYC: The Tour at Home is finally over. It was a blast! It seemed as if everything was in slow motion. I had to go back to work (and I use that term loosely) at my table waiting job in the city upon returning. Thankfully I was living with my bandmates and two sublets and bills were low (5 people 2 and a 1/2 bedrooms). This allowed me to just be at work as much as I needed to be. I thought going back would be fun. I'd get to see old friends, make some money and maybe even spread word of our band to new people. Really it just ended up being going back, with the feeling of going backwards. After suffering for what you truly love to do it's hard to suffer for anything else.

I made due and it was great to see a few familiar faces. The main gift of returning to NYC was to see my oldest friends in Astoria. They go from 8 years to 12 years of friendship and after being removed for four long months it was like heaven. Easy laughter, easy silence and the strongest support system (besides my family) that you could ask for. We packed our gigs and shared what we had been creating for the past four months. We even made a little bit of money.

The real mountainous task that was ahead of us was mixing/mastering our cd and getting our rewards out to our Affirminators on Kickstarter. This had been a task that had been staring at us since we completed the project in April. We foolishly thought we could get it all done by June 28th and I'll say this. We gave it hell! We started to worry about the mixing process when Dave Stipe, our producer and recording engineer, and his wife gave birth to their first song. We celebrated their first born, but were concerned about everything getting done. Dave went above and beyond our expectations and killed the mixes for us. It amazed me how fast the money went. From paying Dave to paying for mastering it just flew right on out of the ol' band fund. We are now rebuilding our funds to press our first release. Luckily we met a very talented graphic designer, Hannah Lee, who did an amazing job getting together our album art :). We're closing in!

The biggest hurdle has certainly been fulfilling the Kickstarter pledges. We have Skype concerts to give, tees to mail and songs to write. That's right. Songs. We readily admit that we get some cockamamy schemes up in these positively charge minds of ours, but this is a hum dinger. We said we'd right a song commissioned by each Affirminator that pledged $100. It seemed simple enough. We ended up with 13 of them. That's a lot of words, music and harmonies to write, but we're getting there. Over half way and we're about to start sending them out. It's going to be a huge relief to be done with this Kickstarter. Relief and gratitude are two amazing feelings when mixed together :).

So, we finally left NYC after an amazing last show at The Pig and Whistle. It was a great show and the amount of support that we had was amazing. We packed up and headed southeast. Back to the sea. We holed up at my parent's house in Hampton, VA and got our minds at peace and ready for tour. We did this with a new addition...Christine Dunbar! We took TJ's lady away from the complications of that big bad city to give her a taste of what things are like when you step away for a while. She rocks and we are happy to have her energy with us!

We're in Ocracoke now and we're on our 4th day. TJ and Kinnie had warned me about island time and they were right. It feels like we've been here for at least two weeks. It's the most amazing feeling. There's nothing better than watching the world around you slow your pace and bring you down to neutral. Things certainly seem easier here.

We're getting our regiment together, we're making moves and today we start our 5 day a week gig-a-thon! We played our first gig at Teach's, on Hatteras, on July 1st, but as Salty's Fault (and yes, we killed it). Now it's time to show Ocracoke who The Yes Team is.

Tune in next week to hear the full unadulterated story of how I got into a head-on collision (on a bike) my first night on the island!

Until then...