In the past, when seeing bands live, I've always been frustrated if they didn't play the songs I was there to hear and instead played new material that I didn't even know. After some careful consideration in the past five minutes, I've come to the conclusion that I totally understand why. When you're in a band, you like to keep things fresh and exciting, especially when you've been playing the same songs night after night, show after show for the last two years.

We're as guilty of this as anyone. On any given night, we play a set consisting of about eight or nine songs. Since we only have seven songs on our EP, and only six of those really get played on any given night, we tend to mix in some newer tunes. And by newer, I mean songs that have been around for ages but we didn't have the time or budget to fit on our CD. That thing could have been a full length release if we'd had another month to work on it. Some of these "newer" songs such as Send A Letter, Extra Twenty, and They Always Say have become show staples, but sometimes we forget about the tunes we've been playing for a while. We tend to make our setlists about five minutes before we go on stage, so sometimes we accidently neglect some of the tunes. Some nights it's really hit or miss if we'll play something like Window, or substitute something more upbeat and catchy.

Tonight at practice we decided to play through two newer songs since we'd been too busy with shows and holidays to rehearse them. However, I think we completely knocked them out of the park and with another practice they should be ready for public consumption. So do we play these songs at upcoming shows, or do we stick with the stuff on our CD that people actually know?

I guess the main bullet point of this whole presentation is that if you know that you'll be at our show... tell us what we should play!
After all, we're doing these shows for the people who are there. If you want to hear a specific song, then just tell us! We'll be more than happy to oblige. It makes our lives that much easier.

Whenever I check our PureVolume or MySpace pages, I sometimes get heated if a certain song is getting more plays than another. As Doug reminds me on a daily basis... these songs don't belong to me anymore. Once they're on CD, it's out of my hands as far as which one is the "best"... the one song I love playing show after show could be the least favorite of all of our fans. It's weird to think about. I created the children, we've raised them as best we could, and now we've sent them off to school to fend for themselves hoping that they find someone to sit with at lunch, and that they won't get bullied by the big kid who already has secondary hair.

Profound, huh?

Oh hey, we're playing an all ages show at Will's Pub in Orlando come February with some great artists. Life just got way more exciting.

-Wes