The McLovins return with their third studio album, Who Knows, since their 2009 inception. The work is smart, confident, dynamic, and filled with the sort of hooks a veteran band would produce. Which is an apt thing to say about a trio that became a quartet at year’s end in 2011, seeing the departure of original McLovins guitarist, Jeffrey Howard, who would be replaced by guitarists Justin Berger and Atticus Kelly. While listening to the new album, one gets a feeling that this is not only a breakout piece with a fresh hook-driven direction, but, although the album features the old lineup, one also gets the impression that the McLovins have transcended their early promise when their cover of Phish’s “You Enjoy Myself” garnered nearly a quarter of a million hits on YouTube.
Jambands.com caught up with drummer/vocalist/songwriter Jake Huffman to get a State of the McLovins Address as we enter the 2012 festival season. Indeed, the quartet has expanded their live touring card, ranging from clubs to outdoor venues, and will be on several fest bills including Strange Creek, Catskill Chill, a recent appearance at the LIFT Festival, and yet another spot on the bill at the Gathering of the Vibes, a return visit for the group, who have transformed from a surprisingly powerful band with its talented members still ensconced in high school to a seemingly veteran quartet, maturing in their early 20s to see how far they can take this fascinating adventure. Huffman is a warm, energetic, insightful, and intelligent young gentleman, who is confident in his abilities, but humble, too. The artist has managed to hone his craft, while expanding on his original drum kit base to become quite the potential singer/songwriter gem, as well.
Doesn’t hurt to have the help of some legendary friends like Tom Marshall and his occasional bandmate/co-songwriter/co-producer, Anthony Krizan, who also both helmed Who Knows as co-producers, while offering co-writing help on three tracks. Marshall has been a unique muse and perfect songwriting partner with Phish’s Trey Anastasio for nearly four decades, of course, but he also has had an inspiring influence on the McLovins, too, as they take another step forward on the often unpredictable path of a group of artists seeking their own collective voice. Marshall has steered the group in a more song-oriented direction, and that bit of leadership and wisdom seems to have been a welcome fit, while inspiring the band to see their songcraft in a whole new way.
“Well, I hope so,” said Marshall to me when asked about his influence on the band’s new songs, “and maybe, it’s already shown because some of those songs that did make the final cut of the album were written after —at least “Cohesive.” Maybe, the impact is already evident on that album. (laughs) Which is great; even if there is none, we had a great time, and we learned from them as much as they learned from us. They are great guys, and I was really sad that Jeff left. Part of me thinks that maybe they’ll meet again sometime, but part of me is also hopeful for Jeff’s new project and Jake and Jason’s new band, the new version of the McLovins.”
RR: Jeff Howard left the McLovins late last year. What prompted his departure? How difficult was it to say, “Should we even continue on?” or, “Do we re-group?” or, “We’re moving forward, everything is working out for us, so let’s keep going.”
JH: Jeffrey…it was a big subject because Jason, Jeff, and I are like brothers. We were best friends for three years, so when Jeff left the band, it was very big, especially for our fans who knew our relationship together, it was a really big hit on the head. Jeff called me one night. I had just booked a show, and I asked him if he could make it. He called me and said, “Yeah, I can do it,” hung up, and then called me right back and said, “You know what, Jake there is something I haven’t really been telling you, and I think I should get it out on the table.” And he pretty much said that he wasn’t feeling it as much as he was before. He wasn’t feeling as inspired, and, maybe, it wasn’t the right direction for him to go in as he wanted to focus more on school. He just wanted to take it a bit easy. It was getting really stressful for him being in the McLovins and in school and it was kind of a balancing act, which is tough when you’re in high school. The band kept growing and growing, and it was a difficult balancing act. In the end, I think he decided that it wasn’t the exact direction that we wanted to go in, which is music life.
RR: Like being on the road and doing what you have to do to get to the next level?
JH: Yeah. One thing he told us was that “as of right now, and in the near future, I don’t plan on announcing myself being a touring musician”—always out on the road and always playing, which when you are a musician, that’s really what you have to do to get to the next level, and he said he didn’t really see himself doing that.
RR: I think touring benefits musicians not only as individual artists, but as a group.
JH: Yeah, definitely, as artists and people, we all have to take our own paths in life, and make the decisions that make us happy, and not just what makes everyone happy. As artists, I think it is very good to re-invent yourself and start over and start fresh. Having Atticus and Justin, the two new guys, is really like a new experience, and like a phoenix burned up and we came out from the flames. (laughs) It’s kind of like that.
RR: How did you decide to go on? What was your thought process at that time?
JH: Jason and I had actually played with Justin a couple of weeks before. He had come over, and we were talking about maybe introducing him to Jeffrey and asking Jeff if he wanted him to be in the band. But we never really got to have that conversation. We were already planning to have another member come in, but when Jeffrey called, when I got home that night, I called Atticus, who I went to high school with, and he’s another guitar player that I always played with, and I told him, “Come to practice this Saturday. There’s a good chance that you’re going to be a new guitar player in the band.” I told him the whole situation, and both Justin and Atticus promised us that they would practice stuff
and do that. We made the decisions really fast. We just ran with our gut instinct about it.
RR: How do you get them involved with being a McLovin? Do you say, “These are the pieces that we have done, this is the new album that is coming out (which they are not featured on), and this is the direction we want to go in”? Were they already pretty aware of what you guys were doing?
JH: Justin more than Atticus was. We invited him over to practice, and I think the first song we played together was “Cohesive.” We told him to learn that. We gave both Atticus and Justin all of our CDs, a bunch of archive recordings, and told them the whole history of it, and how we book shows and how we play shows, and give them the whole overview of everything. We pretty much told them to study up, do your homework on it, and take the songs that we already wrote, and make them your own, make them what feels most comfortable to you to play.
RR: And your first gig with the new lineup was on New Year’s Eve, right?
JH: Yeah. Our last show with Jeffrey was December 30. Our first gig [with Kelly and Berger] was New Year’s Eve. It was like New Year’s Eve into New Years. It was really fun. Because of the Phish shows and all the other New Year’s Eve parties that were going on, it wasn’t the biggest crowd we ever played for, but it was a fun initiation/first type of show. We played at the Arch Street Tavern, which is a cool little place in Hartford, and it turned out really well. We had a good chemistry, and we played live together very well. It was a nice entry—step into the door of starting over again.
RR: Will the band tour more? Hit some festivals? What is the game plan?
JH: We’re actually able to play more because we’re not in high school anymore. We can play a lot more. We’re trying to play almost every weekend, and if we’re not playing every weekend, we’re practicing maybe two or three times a week, or maybe going into the studio, and recording a couple tracks. We’re playing a lot more, and seeing each other more, than back when Jeff and Jason and I were before.
RR: Are you concentrating on the Northeast, and moving on from there?
JH: We were thinking we were going to stay in the Northeast from now until May, and we’re trying to book some shows down south, or out west, during the summer when we are really free—maybe, doing our first little tour that we could never do before. We are playing a lot more festivals. Ken Hays said we are going to be invited back to Gathering of the Vibes, and we’re playing at Strange Creek, and Disc Jam, and Catskill Chill, and a lot of other shows. We got the offers for those shows. We’re still playing the festivals. We’re still on the main stages. We’re still playing the clubs. We still have the same sort of gigs; we’re just able to play them more now.
RR: Tell me about the LIFT Fest.
JH: It’s cool because if you look at that lineup, it is primarily electronic and jamtronica artists, and we were one of the only ones who were not jamtronica. We’re a rock ‘n’ roll jamband who improvises. We were honored that we played there. We feel cool that we stand out as a little bit different.
RR: Let’s follow that line of being different and talk about Who Knows. There is some diversity on the new record. Also, I don’t want to use the word maturity, as well, because of what immediately comes to mind when people hear that word, but I thought there was a lot of maturity on this record. If you closed your eyes, you wouldn’t hear three guys who were just out of high school, or still in high school, you’d hear a band that knew what they were doing. And, yes, genetically, or in some other fashion, you were each individually able to play really well at a young age. The record manages to take the listener on a journey, with numerous hooks, which is what it should do. How did you get the material together?
JH: Who Knows is definitely the step up from the past two albums. I think what we were trying to do—and I guess because we were younger and we had a different mentality when we were playing—for the first two albums, we were writing the songs, we were putting them out there, and we just recorded them live and quick in like two days. I think we were trying to show people that we can play our instruments really, really well, and we can play together really, really well. On almost every song, you’d hear a ripping guitar solo, or something crazy and really fast.
We decided that on Who Knows, people know we can play our instruments, and people know what type of artists we are. We wanted people to understand the vibe of us, and how people feel at shows, and how we jam. Definitely, “Hesitate,” the first track on there, is a different kind of style than a lot of other songs. It’s more structured, and it has a lot more layers, and there are many more tracks on the album.
Production-wise, we put a lot of time into each track, and we were very finicky, and we’d go back note for note, and listen very carefully, and if we didn’t like one thing, we’d re-do it. We really took the time and refined our art, and refined our songs. It definitely reflects that the songs are a bit slower. I worked a lot on my vocals on the tracks. We thought about harmony more. We recorded it much differently than the other two albums, so that stands out when you listen to Who Knows.
RR: You have material that didn’t fit on the album, which is out there, as well. I’ve caught some tracks, such as one fine piece where you are playing acoustic guitar and supplying the vocals.
JH: Yeah, I’m always writing little folk-y songs. I like to do that. It’s not like a hobby, but I always like to write a lot of songs. I feel the more songs you write, the better you get
at it. I’m always putting songs out there on YouTube. Not all of that is McLovins stuff, but I did put “Love is Purple” on Who Knows, which is the last track on the album.
RR: That’s a memorable song and a really good coda to the album.
JH: That was one of the first guitar songs that I actually really ever played out to anyone.
RR: (laughs) Which you note in the lyric.
JH: Yeah. I really don’t play much guitar. I don’t even call myself a guitar player. I taught myself, and I won’t call myself a guitar player until I have properly taken lessons, and learned how to hold it the right way. But, yeah, that song…I came home one day and I was in a really weird mood. I took a permanent marker and a blank sheet of paper, and I had a chord progression that I was working on in my head, and I wrote down the lyrics in one go. I didn’t even have any cross outs or anything. I still have the sheet of paper that has the lyrics on it. I just wrote it out with permanent marker, and I picked up the guitar, pressed record on my phone, and just played it out. It’s the same way on the album as when I recorded it—it’s the same structure, same length, same words. We added more stuff on the album.
RR: There’s a particularly unique keyboard-like sound on there.
JH: Jeffrey has a Freeze pedal. He played a bunch of different notes, and we mixed those in. It was almost like violin swells. It sounds like a synth, but it’s actually Jeffrey’s guitar, so it is kind of cool.
RR: How did you get the involvement of the legendary Tom Marshall and his formidable guitarist/bandmate/co-producer Anthony Krizan, while also getting to record at Krizan’s Sonic Boom Studios in New Jersey? On Who Knows, three songs are co-written with Tom—“Hesitate,” “Cohesive,” and “Subdivision 2”—and feature that heavy Marshall vibe on the lyrics.
JH: Definitely. Tom has always stayed connected with us since we first posted the “YEM” video when we first started. When we wrote “Cohesive,” which was a year before we really recorded the whole album, we kept in touch afterwards because we all—Anthony, Tom, Jason, Jeff, and myself—loved “Cohesive” so much, and it was getting such good response that we thought we really needed to write a couple more tunes. We had more that we wanted to say, and we had more that we wanted to put out there, and Tom was really excited about “Hesitate” and “Subdivision 2” and he sent me the lyrics, and we got together a bunch of times over the year, last year, and we just talked about life, and being a musician, being a person, and we went to shows together, and we hung out and got to know each other as people.
The last song we wrote together was “Hesitate.” He wrote that one through my perspective, even though he wrote it. It’s really cool because he figured me out very well from the time that we got to know each other and hung out and talked. He did a really incredible job with the lyrics, and it definitely shows. And when I sing the song, it feels like it is coming from my heart and head, even though it is his words. It worked out great.
We have a great relationship with Anthony. He’s an amazing guitar player, and he sat in with us at a couple shows. We have really great chemistry with him. Personality-wise, he’s such an awesome, funny, loving, caring guy, so he really put in a lot of time when he was mixing the album and producing it to a mixture we thought sounded really good. He put so much effort into the album, and it really shows.
RR: How much input did Anthony have on the album, and, to clarify, did he play guitar on those three tracks?
JH: We wanted him to play guitar on “Cohesive,” “Subdivision 2,” and “Hesitate.” We made sure that he was on there because we thought, well, he helped write the chords, and it would be really awesome if we could play with him. It’s cool to tell people that—we played with [Anthony Krizan] on the album. We have a really awesome recording of it. He helped us more production-wise, and how we record our songs. Every once in a while, he’d say, “Hey, Jeff or Jason, how about you try a different chord,” and to me he’d say, “How about you try playing the snare on a different…”—he’d give us more ideas and coach us along, and more than just tell us what to do. We definitely took a lot of what he said in consideration, and both Tom and Anthony have changed the way that we write music and the way that we write lyrics and to really play together live.
RR: I think the permanent marker story is apt; it’s almost like a rite of passage for a writer to be able to believe in the words. I think Tom and Anthony have instilled some confidence in you, and I am wondering where that is going to take you as an individual. I’m not necessarily saying you didn’t have it before.
JH: (laughs) I don’t think I did have it before. They definitely…especially Tom…after reading his lyrics, and going through Phish’s lyrics and Amfibian’s lyrics, and reading them all, and getting how he writes, just really inspired me as an artist and really as a human to think of what I say and what I sing—that’s my words and that’s what is going out to the world—and I think of it as something very, very important. Everything that you say is very important because no one can say something exactly how you can say it because no one can feel exactly how you can feel.
When I write lyrics, personally, I try to write them exactly how I think to myself in my head, like how I self-narrate. When I think of hooks, I try to think of the most concise way to get my idea, and the most catchy way of phrasing it. I try to get maybe three hooks in a song, really memorable things where you’ll be walking down the street the next day and they’ll randomly pop into your head. Even something like calling our previous album Good Catch. We did that because if someone throws something at you, and you catch it—or, it drops—and someone says, “Good catch,” you’ll think of our McLovins album. I mean, something like if someone says, “Oh, man, that was really cohesive,” normally that doesn’t happen, but you could say it, and then think, “Oh, yeah, that’s a McLovins song.” We try to be creative with the words and use a lot of wordplay and try to have fun with it.
RR: Same line of thinking—where did the title Who Knows come from?
JH: Who Knows is really just that. We were always talking about when we finally record an album with a lot put into it like production-wise and stuff like that that it stands out. Like this album, it is almost like it is our first album in a way, stepping through the doors, and having a really highly -produced album, mixed by a Grammy Award-winning mixer, and sent off and mastered in New York City, so we really put Who Knows like we are saying, “We’re going to go out there. We’re going to become musicians. We’re going to start touring and playing. Who knows what happens, but we’re going to do it anyway.”
RR: Let’s follow that thread. One wouldn’t have thought that the McLovins would be able to write such a song like track two, “Close to the Line” in the past.
JH: Jason came to practice one day, and he said, “Man, I’ve got this really cool thing, and it’s really fun to play.” He just played that opening riff, and we were just like “WHOA.” It just really stuck, and we thought it was really cool, and we made the next hook into each other, but that was actually along the same time when we were listening to a lot of electronic music, and listening to a lot of dub step, too, so, especially in that middle jam where Jason takes that solo, it’s almost like a dub step influence, and jazz fusion mixed with a lot of electronic noises. We were trying to get that electronic sound with our instruments without actually having to go to electronic music.
RR: Joining that together with track five, you’ve got a little disco going on there, and I really dug that whole vibe.
JH: “Tetop” is one of our favorite ones. Going back to what you said about the hook, I remember writing that hook to “Tetop” a couple months after “Cohesive.” I told everybody, “That song’s my baby. I love that song. That hook is so much fun to sing.” It always stuck in my head. I was really proud of that. That was my first really, really catchy hook that I would tell people that I wrote. (laughs)
RR: Did the song come together on its own? You didn’t have any shaping, or producing. of its form later on? I was impressed with the feel, and originally thought that Anthony was a primary influence, but I am assuming that may not be the case.
JH: We had already come in the idea of recording it that way, but Anthony did change one chord. His input on that song was that he changed one chord, and it’s the last chord in the chorus. It’s a really soulful, R&B chord, and it really shapes the whole song in the end. He did have that influence on it. Even like with the background vocals and drum track outro in the end with the final breath at the end, we really tried to whip out all the bells and whistles on that one. (laughs)
RR: What about “Mon Ami?” To me, that’s a very slow, intimate tone poem to a friend, or not a friend, or some sort of relationship that requires intimacy, and I felt it had perfect placement right after “Cohesive” on the album. I bring this up all the time, but I am a big fan of the complete album experience, and sequencing is still a very critical aspect of the listening adventure that I seek, so it is important here, too.
JH: I thought that was a really good idea to put that right after “Cohesive.” I remember having a bunch of different conversations with Tom, and we would always talk about live shows. He came to see us a couple of times, and what he told us after the show was “Jake, you need to play more slow songs,” and I said, “Tom, when we play slow songs, people go to the bathroom. People talk really loud when we play slower songs.” He told me that “it doesn’t exactly matter, at the time, if people are going to the bathroom or talking because you really need to take people on a journey through the whole thing. You need to have ‘go up the mountain’ and ‘go down the mountain’—go up a peak, and go back down—and take people on a ride.”
We wanted people, when they listen to Who Knows, to listen to it as if it is a little story. It has all of these really high points, but it also has some slow, really mellow points. I think it makes the whole…especially “Mon Ami”…it’s very real. There are not too many overdubs. It is very minimalist. Jason and Jeffrey played the same thing on the track, just in different octaves. Jason wrote the bass part, and Jeffrey played it along with him. It’s a very simple tune, but it has a lot of meaning like the whistling and stuff, and it does stand out because it’s not as ripping as the other tracks, but we still tried to put a lot in it, but still keep it on that really mellow, cool little level.
RR: I think Tom Marshall has been in peak form since at least 2000, if not well beyond that, and I am especially fond of his underrated work with Anthony Krizan. The tracks do take you on that journey we have both described—it is a unique skill that needs to be developed over time, and Tom nails it more than anyone else. When you think how that specific way of writing applies to your own music right now, that ability to take your listener on a unique journey, how are you applying that philosophy to your own current live shows? How do you create that sense of adventure, and that word of mouth, so you can continue to do this work as a musician, and continue to make records like the one you just made, Who Knows ?
JH: I think the biggest thing when we’re writing setlists is that we don’t think of it like the setlist is just for when we’re at the show. We know that, in the day and age that we live in, what we are playing is going to be recorded. What we’re putting out musically is not just going to die when we stop playing because there are recordings, and hundreds of thousands of people are potentially going to download the album and listen to it. And the people that download it at home, listen to it a lot closer than when they’re at the show. When they’re at the show, it’s like in the moment, and it’s almost like going all around them, and it’s big and it’s very intense.
When people go back home and re-listen to it, they listen very carefully to different things than they would at the live show. We always take that into consideration. We never play the same setlist twice. We really don’t do that. We always build the sets differently. Sometimes, we’ll start out at a really, really high point and then, we’ll build it, and sometimes, we’ll start really low, and build it up again. We really take into consideration all the different people who are going to be listening to it. We looked to shows in the past with what people liked, and we try to change it just a little bit, or enough to where people will say, “Oh, that’s cool. They sound different,” and they’ll still be interested, and they’ll keep wanting to go to more shows because they’ll know—“I can see them play the song three nights in a row, but it won’t sound the same each time; It’ll sound completely different.”
RR: I was intrigued by 3 Faces of “Close to the Line,” a feature the McLovins had on your site a while back, in which you presented different performances of the same song from three shows in four days. How do you consciously change a song, so that it is a little different each time? Or, is that more of a subconscious thing to you?
JH: I do think it is more subconscious, and a lot of what we are thinking at the time we are playing is based on how the audience is vibing to us, and what we played in other songs before. Like let’s say we put “Close to the Line” really late in the set. There is a good chance that one of us will play a hook that we played in the beginning of the set in “Close to the Line.” We’ll add these things. We’ll have a little hook that we’ll play in a show, and you’ll hear that same hook in three different songs in the show, and then you won’t hear that at any other show. It is definitely more subconscious, but, you know, we do do little things like that with the hooks. Maybe, we’ll play it a little bit faster, instead of Jason taking a solo, Justin or Atticus will take a solo, or we’ll play it more spacey. We do little things, and different, subtle things, and we’ll tell each other before we play.
RR: On that vein—how a band will expand or contract, or do something unique within various performances—let’s take this full circle. I wrote in my notes that “Who Knows is a mature, well-rounded, solidly-produced, lean and focused work. ” We started out in our conversation talking about Jeffrey Howard and his departure, and what individuals do when they are in a group setting, and how people in that group dynamic need to move forward together as a unit. If they don’t, it causes problems. However, friction is also critical in music. You take obvious examples, say from classic rock, where you had Eddie Van Halen and David Lee Roth, or Jimmy Page and Robert Plant—two opposing forces creating one pristine work of art. Personalities don’t have to be the same, but they need to be on the same path in music. I say all of that because as you go through all of these experiences with the McLovins, are you also looking at your own individual path at the same time?
JH: Jason and I have talked about this a lot more than we have with the new guys just because of how long we’ve known each other. We really have felt—especially, Jason and I—how we play together and interact as people is very unique, and it is something that doesn’t happen with many other people. It’s a very unique situation with how we play together, and how we can interact in music. He and I could play with our eyes closed, and we’d know exactly where each other was going in music. If one of us started a fill, we’d almost know what that fill was going to be. We just know.
I think as people, we try to separate ourselves as people, and then, who we are at the show. You have to have a stage personality type of thing, and you have to know who you are outside of an artist’s world. We always take that into consideration.
RR: Let me try this from a different angle, since I brought up the dynamics of a guitarist and a singer, and, you, of course, play drums. When you were growing up, who were some of the drummers that influenced you? How do you approach drumming these days as not only a musician, but as a listener?
JH: Steve Gadd. The first album that I ever had, and that I really remember listening to was The Rhythm of the Saints and Graceland. I started out listening to Paul Simon. When I thought of music when I was younger, that’s what I thought all music was—that kind of sound. When “Boy in a Bubble” came on, and the drums came on, which were Steve Gadd, I knew right away that I wanted to play drums because that was the instrument that I seemed to connect with the most. It definitely shaped how I think about music. When I play music…and I think this goes for all of us when we’re playing; we’re playing notes and rhythms, but in the end, we’re making a feeling, we’re making people feel something, we’re trying to push a feeling on to someone, so they can feel how we’re feeling in the moment, and it turns into this whole collective feeling that everyone is feeling, and it just builds and grows and changes. Each song definitely has a different feeling that reflects the time of when we wrote it; it reflects how we were feeling at the time we wrote it. I feel like the best songs you feel in your heart and your head when you are listening to it. You have an idea of where the artist was, where the person was in their life, and you can only relate to them more if the song was written with the most feeling.
RR: Do you think there will come a time when you’ll segue from drumming to concentrating more on your songwriting? Or, will you continue to combine the two?
JH: I think, in the end, to be the most well-rounded artist, I have to do it all together. There are definitely some days where I’ll just play the drums, and I won’t sing at all. There’s definitely other days where I will just play guitar. I won’t play drums at all. I won’t even think about it. I really think of it as like I’m a musician, so as a drummer, I can’t really play the melodic part of the music, but I understand the melodic part of the music very well. When I sing, I try to put that out there. I have a strong understanding of rhythm, so when I sing, and do the melodic stuff, I really put more rhythm into that.
When I’m playing guitar and singing songs, most of my songs have a rhythm to it that a drummer would think of. A guitarist would not think of the rhythm like I would be because I’m a drummer, so I think they intertwine and it makes me sound like me.
RR: Taken further, in a live context, are you occasionally leading the jams, or are those changes laid out beforehand, and you are all leading each other, and moving forward as one?
JH: It happens in different ways. There are times where one person will take over the jam, and be the definitive leader, and play follow the leader, and follow them for a while. But a lot of the times, it seems to just work out and the jams almost go where they want to go, and we just let them flow in the right direction. Someone will play something, and that’ll spark another interest of another player, and then it will really expand in our heads, and it’ll go in its own direction, especially when we jam. I don’t think I could describe exactly how we do it, but it is kind of like a stream of consciousness throughout all of us.
RR: Which leads to where you think you are heading in the next year or two.
JH: As an artist, my number one goal is to progress, to know more and understand music more than I already do, and I know in a year, I’m going to be thinking about music in a completely different way than I am right now. And I’m excited for that.
As far as the band, I think that more people will accept the fact that Jeffrey isn’t in the band. More people will find out who we are because we’re playing out more. I do feel that when people really start listening, they will hear that we’re putting in our whole heart, and our whole lives into this band. Being a musician is what all four of us want to do, it’s what we are planning on doing, it’s what we’re practicing for, and it’s what we’ve decided that we are going to do. I think that people will really see that, and in the next couple years, I really just plan on working 110%, all the time, on my art, on the shows, and albums. I don’t know exactly where I will be, but I do know that I will be further along than I am now.
