FREE PBR from 8 to 9.  FREE Admission. Every Monday in February at 9 PM (except February 9th)

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From Jared: You know there’s that cliche saying, “you don’t appreciate what you have until you’re left without it,” and for the last two months, its taken on great meaning for me in the light of good health.  After 7 doctors, 12 different medications, 2 colonoscopies, 2 cat scans, a capsule endoscopy and an MRI, I finally reached a correct diagnosis through a last resort surgical procedure.  Epiploic Appendagitis….huh, what?  Your intestines are lined with lots of tiny fat cells.  Mine became twisted and infected in two areas of my large intestine, and began pressing on nerves, crowding my breathing diaphragm, and started causing all kinds of nasty problems.  The areas were removed yesterday in surgery, and now Im slowly getting myself back to normal.  I made lots of sacrafices for this thing.  I missed a free trip to israel, I spent my birthday in the hospital, I had to cancel our show in Harrisburg, PA.  I might go as far as to say that the past 2 months have been the hardest time, both physically and mentally, I’ve ever endured.    But from every hardship you encounter theres a lesson to be learned…..a percasset a day keeps the deamons away, but 2 every 3 hours is just plain old fun.

From Ryan: I met up with my Portuguese friend, Manuel, in the city the other day.  He introduced me to his two roommates.  One from Morocco and the other from Greece.  All three of them were studying orthodontics. The reason why I mention this is because they spoke about dentistry with such passion.  It really took me by surprise.  I guess I thought that they would come off as more ambitious than passionate. Manuel’s two friends actually performed surgery on him with lit candles and music playing. It seemed very ritualistic when they described it to me. They were in love with what they did, and that to me was far more impressive than what they did (or that they were apparently very good at it).  They didn’t need ambition as far as I could see.  Ambition meant something too closely related to work.  When you love what you do, it’s not work.  You do as much as you want.  Which is usually a little more than you possibly can.

FREE PBR from 8 to 9.  FREE Admission.  Every Monday in February at 9 PM (except February 9th)
Venue Link

From Milo: It’s strange living 20 minutes away from Hoboken and NYC, in the suburbs of NJ, so removed from the hustle and bustle that is the big apple that when I’m at home it feels like a completely different world than the one in which I perform for people.

The city is crazy. After Arlene’s on Monday night (2/2) there was a man in a trench coat standing outside the club looking especially scruffy. He was with his woman, who also wore a coat of the long variety, yelling and swearing at her about how bad she made him look. Some kids were staring at him and he thought he should let them know he had been on that block for 30 years and that he owned that part of town. He threatened their lives and became quite menacing, I could see a mild fear in their demeanor as they moved closer to each other but they decided to stay and hear him out; the entertainment provided by this mans lunacy was worth the threat of a possible beating. I, on the other hand ,decided to go back inside and not get in the middle of things. It looked as if it was about to get bad and I had to get inside anyway to warm my insides with some bourbon.

After an hour I came back outside and oddly enough the trenchcoat man and the kids were still talking. His woman was gone and he was now sitting in between two of them bragging about some other insane life story that he had had on the streets. To top it off, the whole bunch were smoking a wooden pipe filled with cherry tobacco, passing it around from one the next, even including their new friend in the mix.

The city is cooler than the suburbs because you can get away with that there. The suburbs take you and they make you like everyone else, afraid to be yourself and constantly pushed to conform to standards set by whichever little cliqueish village you are stuck in.

The suburbs are cool because there is peace and quiet and space there. You can be removed from everything if you like, there is silence.  I plan on living wherever I can afford to.

FREE PBR from 8 to 9.  FREE Admission.  Every Monday in February at 9 PM (except February 9th)
Venue Link

From Jared: We sat down at practice last Sunday and drew out a calendar from now until SXSW.  Our next goal is to get as many songs as possible from the album that we aren’t playing already (Set I) into a position where they can not just be “pulled off” live but will still leave people’s jaws hanging open.  It’s going to be a lot of work, a lot of trial and error and a shit load of fun.  Eventually we’ll have a second set option for the big night (and/or day) in Austin, and certainly plenty of tunes up our sleeve for an encore.  We tried out an AM practice this week.  8am-11am.  It was kinda nice being in a fresh head space having just woken up, as opposed to our regular 9pm-12am being completely exhausted from a full day’s work.  Residency at Arlene’s starts this coming Monday.  Free entry and free PBR.  Hope to see you there.