The New Deal surprised almost everyone this spring by announcing both a reunion run and new lineup via their social media sites. The news came 15 months after the Toronto-based livetronica pioneers played their last show aboard Jam Cruise in early 2012 and almost two years after the band formally confirmed their plans to retire from the road.
During The New Deal’s downtime, bassist Dan Kurtz continued to record and tour the world with his electro-pop band Dragonette, whose 2010 collaboration with Martin Solveig yielded the international smash hit “Hello.” Meanwhile, drummer Darren Shearer moved to Los Angeles to work in the film and music industry while keyboardist Jamie Shields took part in a variety of film, television and commercial projects in his Toronto studio. After working together on a soundtrack for a friend’s film, Shields and Kurtz started tossing around the idea of an official New Deal reunion. Kurtz also says that he saw Daft Punk’s 2013 smash Random Access Memories, which was released concurrently, as a sign that the electronic world was ready for livetronica and disco-influenced sounds The New Deal helped pioneer in the late ‘90s. The duo approached Shearer about playing some dates but conflicts with the drummer’s current day job ultimately led him to step back from taking part in the band’s upcoming reunion tour. Ultimately, the group filled his seat with Dragonette drummer Joel Stouffer, a longtime New Deal fan who has actually subbed for Shearer in the past. Shortly after confirming their reunion, The New Deal’s three members spoke with Jambands.com about their upcoming dates, first rehearsals after an extended hiatus and why the electronic world is ready for “live” live music.
I was pleasantly surprised when I heard The New Deal were reuniting this summer. Can you start by giving us a little background on when you guys first started talking about playing together again and how the reunion really got into gear?
Jamie: It was kind of a casual thing that came about. It was definitely not a conscious sort of effort or decision. Dan and I have been doing work on some soundtrack stuff for a movie. We always enjoy writing and playing with each other. Dan sort of brought up the idea of doing it and I wasn’t against it. Like I said about two and a half years ago, probably to you, it’s not that I don’t like the guys I’m playing with, it was just kind of the time to stop. It was the right thing to do at that time and this just feels like the right thing to do at this time too.
Dan: I thought this feels like there’s a good energy here between what I’m doing with Jamie, the fact that I really want to play “live” live music again as opposed to, when you play in a pop band, you play along with a track and you’re playing songs that from show to show don’t vary too much. And then just this breath of acoustic air happening as signaled by one of the world’s most influential dance music bands, I was like, this feels about right to come back and do what we started doing a long time ago, which is playing real instruments and making dance music with them. So that’s when the conversation for me left my head and actually went as far as to say to Jamie, “Would you like to play some more shows?” It was also around the time that the new Daft Punk album came out and the focus of electronic music seemed to be shifting back toward instruments and the live performance.
It is interesting you mention that Daft Punk album. Just like Daft Punk’s big breakthrough albums in the ‘90s signaled the beginning of the whole EDM dance craze, I feel like this album kind of brought it back to the livetronica sound that you guys and so many jambands really helped pioneer 15 years ago now, which is interesting. In terms of the plans moving forward, obviously it’s a little bit of a different New Deal lineup, so I was wondering if you could talk about the decision to tour without Darren and also how you got your new drummer, who I know has deep roots with you through Dragonette and also as a fan of the New Deal?
Dan: I was thinking, “Fuck man, there’s some great music here, and it’s really fun to be doing this in this environment and it’s really great to be playing with Jamie,” especially writing stuff because we hadn’t done that together in years. We would just kind of meet up in whatever city when I was living in England, play a bunch of shows and then not see each other again until the next set of shows. On the one hand, musically, it was feeling really great just working with Jamie. And on the other hand, on a personal level, I love playing with Jamie. I think he probably wrestled with it for a while to try and figure out whether it was something he wanted to do, as well as whether it was something he could do. Jamie and I were like, well look, we want to play, and it mightily sucks that Darren can’t do it for whatever reasons.
Joel, was it strange going from playing with Dan in a pop band to rehearsing open-ended jams for The New Deal?
Joel: As far as locking in, Dan and I, it’s pretty easy. As you said we’ve been playing together live for over 7 years and a lot of those years, there was some pretty heavy touring. So we’ve put in a lot of hours, and it’s pretty tight when we play together. I actually was a little concerned with the improvised thing—that it would take me longer to get back in that head space because the only band I’ve really been touring with in the past few years has been Dragonette, so I haven’t really had a lot of experience playing outside of that, let alone playing improvised music. But I guess it’s like riding a bike—it came back right away, in fact it was fresher than I remember it and I think probably because back when I was playing more improvised music, you kind of start to fall back on some tricks and some things to get you out of a jam, pun intended, when you are jamming. But I had sort of forgotten all that and was just going for it and just trying new shit. It’s just been really exciting for me to be able to play improvised music again. Coming from such a regimented, pop world, which is Dragonette—and which I love—it’s never better or worse, it’s just different. And the fun thing about Dragonette is mastering an arrangement, you know trying to breathe life into the live version of an album track and really tightening the screws on a live set and a live production over a tour—that’s a really exciting thing when it really clicks and the audience is in. But it’s another kind of exciting thing with the improvised music that obviously you can’t have in that world, which is just creating music on the spot. That’s something that I haven’t done in many years and it’s fun to be doing again for sure. It’s very exciting to be doing it again.
In terms of the goals of it, it sounds like it was a pretty casual, natural progression to reunite the band. What are your plans? Are you going to do some select shows this summer and then take it as it is after that?
Jamie: Our decision at the time was merely to just say, “Okay, well we’re going to just stop.” My line always was, “Never say never, but I don’t see it for the foreseeable future.” But now, I think the foreseeable future has passed.
I don’t think it’s a case of only remembering the good things about it because most of it was good. In 2011, The New Deal had started to become a little bit work-like. And if I’m going to do something that’s work-like, I’m going to go and become an accountant or something—that’s not what I became a musician for. I became a musician to play music, play concerts and to go through that grind. And we all went through that grind very much so for a long time. But it started to outweigh the fun stuff. And Dan and I have been playing music together forever—since we were in 10th grade. It’s always fun with Dan. It’s always fun with Darren too, but talking about playing with Dan, it’s always fun with Dan. When we play it’s so easy between the two of us. We talked about it, Dan and I. We’re like, well, we want to do this with Darren, but if he’s not available then he’s not available and it just seemed like he wasn’t ready to do this. And that’s cool. He’s gone and done other stuff, that’s his right and prerogative and I like him as much as I did before. There’s definitely no ill will; I love the guy. But he couldn’t do it, so we were like, well, what do you want to do? We’re not going to go and start auditioning drummers. That doesn’t work for this band. It does not work.
You either kind of get it, or you kind of don’t. First of all, we had decided that if we’re going to try to do this, because there hasn’t been too much blowback about not having Darren. He’ll be missed, but for the most part I think people are excited. I think people trust our ability to pick a musician that would not sort of denigrate the quality of what we do on stage. I sure as hell don’t want to go up there and play music with a drummer that I’m not confident with. You can’t replicate 30 years like I have with Dan of playing music, you can’t replicate that just by sticking a guy on the stool, but you can get pretty close if he’s good, he listens and he knows what’s going on. So we didn’t know anybody like that, but then we realized that we did know somebody like that and that was Joel, right? Because Joel played with us when Darren broke his hand. I’ve known Joel forever, Dan has played with Joel forever and has known Joel even longer than forever. So we were like, “Well, that could work.” And then you realize, yeah, that’s not even “that could work,” that will work. Because he’s done the gig, he’s played with The New Deal. You don’t know what you’re getting into with somebody until you kind of stick them in that hot seat of doing that kind of thing. So we’re like, yeah, well he’s done it, so he’s cool. Let’s go do it. It’s kind of, again, like shambling forward. Like, yeah, he’s good, we trust him. You can’t overthink it. It’s like, well, we’ve done it with him and so he’ll be cool. So then we went ahead and decided okay, we’ll go do this.
Dan: It’s still an interesting question. But I do know that when we took the leap, we just decided, we’re going to do these gigs and Joel’s going to do it because his schedule works really well with mine. He lives around the corner, in the sense that he and I have been playing together a lot over the last seven years and I know what Joel’s up to every day. If I’m available for a gig, Joel’s available for a gig. So just from the nuts and bolts perspective we’re like, that meets a pretty important criteria just in terms of being able to service what a band is supposed to do, which is play enough gigs and be able to commit to gigs. And then also just musically I knew that he was going to be able to do the job. But we committed to the idea of making a website. We committed to a couple shows, etc., not even having played together as The New Deal until Monday, where we’re like, “We should probably jam.” It was really great. I think from what I heard I know that Joel has obviously spent some time paying attention to what Darren did in The New Deal because when we were jamming the other day I was like, “Holy shit, it’s like I’m playing with Darren” on one hand. But on the other hand, Joel’s personality is totally different. People’s personalities find their way into their playing and I know him really well, so I’m like, “Oh yeah, there’s this side of Joel that I really enjoy both personally and musically,” and it’s great to be able to be working with that as well. So the exciting thing actually is that I think we’ll probably have to make a bit of a conscious effort to retain the things that were really great about The New Deal with Darren and Joel’s definitely going to meet that expectation. But on the other hand, I’m really excited about the other things that Joel can do. Joel’s an amazing keyboard player, for example, he actually went to the New Jazz School [The New School for Jazz] in New York when he was a teenager. Sometimes I watch Joel sit at the piano, he plays Chet Baker songs and sings along, and I’m like, “Fuck yeah, I totally forgot that Joel’s that guy too.” And in Dragonette, sometimes while he’s playing drums, he’s leaning over and playing keyboard. But I’m just thinking in terms of an evolution, there’s untapped stuff there that I’m excited to see what happens. He doesn’t play didgeridoo and he doesn’t beat box, but he does other things.
When it came time to start rehearsing with the new lineup, were there certain songs you specifically decided to focus on? Or did you first just try to jam and see how the energy felt?
Jamie: We’re not rehearsing anything, we’re just playing together. It’s sort of like what we used to do very early on in The New Deal, which is set the timer for about 60 minutes, go play without stopping, then take a break and do it again.
Dan and I started playing yesterday with Joel, and Kevin was there setting up, getting the stuff ready, making it happen and putting everything in order. And at the end of the first hour, Kevin’s like, “Well that was a New Deal show.” Kevin doesn’t say that. Kevin doesn’t say much. Anything that you ask Kevin is always a problem. It’s like, “Yeah, well, you know, it could have been this, it could have been that, or it was alright,” and he was like, “That was a New Deal show.” And it was. It was ridiculous. It was just ridiculous how good it was. I’m a fairly hard critic myself, but it was great. He just sat down and he did exactly what he was supposed to do, he just opened up his ears and he just played the shit out the drums. It was just unbelievable.
Dan: We’re going to learn some songs, if anything just to have them in our back pocket. I don’t want to consider this version of The New Deal like the current version of Journey, playing the greatest hits of Steve Perry. To be honest, and I know I’m probably not the only person if you include Stan, there are a lot of the kind of older New Deal jams that I think should be put to bed for quite some time. I’ve played them too often and I’m not going to make a point of relearning them again to play with Joel. I would way rather be making music that’s coming out of where our heads are at now. That’s the special thing about The New Deal—grabbing some idea that either you came up with right now or something that has been kind of knocking around in your brain for a week, just being able to play it right now and see how it feels with everybody else. I think that’s what’s cool about playing in this band, for me. I think that’s what New Deal fans like. That’s what makes this band special to people as opposed to us just coming out and fucking playing an album. So, a short answer to that question is of course we’re going to learn the material because there may be times where it’s totally appropriate, you know the right thing to play. And sometimes just structurally in a show—they’re like a life raft. Once you’ve gone way too far into either a really spaced out jam or a shitty jam or whatever, like okay boom, let’s regroup. They have their purpose. But I think among the three of us, we’re going to be able to make some new, at least as interesting, if not more interesting music.
Joel has the unique perspective of being a fan of your band from the beginning and watching it evolve, so he kind of has this outside but also extremely geeky inside perspective on the music and how to drive it in that light, which is great.
Jamie: Right, but I know a lot of people like that, who could never sit down and [feel like a member of the band]. Some of them have become our crew members. A lot of people who are familiar with The New Deal in and out, they have been there from the beginning, they know everything, they dig it, they know the tracks and they know where we’re going to go, but they wouldn’t be able to help lead the set. It was ridiculous, it really was. I mean, we weren’t apprehensive about it because we had played with him before. But it was like, okay, here’s the first jam, let’s just start playing, which is what we did. Somebody started, and away we went. And an hour later, we were like, “Well that was fucking amazing.”
Dan: You’re right about that. And it’ll be really fun to see what happens. He blew me away on Monday when we played together. I didn’t know that side of Joel. It was fucking great, just so cool.
Jamie: It wasn’t bizarre, it was nice. It was a really nice musical conversation. And it was very comfortable in terms of the communication between the three of us. I left that jam very excited. We’re going to jam a couple, once a week, twice a week, for the next three weeks, just because it’s fun to do, and to become really comfortable with each other because we have 1,100 shows with Darren. That’s quite a relationship. And Joel wants to be comfortable. So we’ll do that, and I’m going to enjoy every second of it because you can turn your brain off. I know that if I’m turning my brain off and I can play, then we’re good. Not even think about a thing for an hour.
I think one thing that has changed since The New Deal first formed is that people are a little bit open-minded in terms of what they listen to. Back then people would either listen to pop, jam band, alternative music or rap or whatnot, and these days I feel like people have an open mind to listening to good music across the genres, which is a pretty cool experience.
Joel: Yeah, you see it in festival lineups. We’re playing the Hudson Music Project this summer, and the lineup was just announced today, so of course I went to check it out to see who else was playing. And it’s a classic example of what you’re speaking to, which is that kids are as much into Bassnectar as they are into Modest Mouse. It’s exciting to see that, and I think that in the past there was a lot more segregation between what it was to be a jamband festival and what it was to be a pop music festival or a hip-hop or a rock music festival and it’s not like that anymore. People just like good music. And I think that the Internet’s really helped with that. I think in the past people had to pick a radio station that they were defined by and therefore were only fed that format of music. Whereas now people are just going to blogs, and blogs don’t seem to have the same formatting restrictions that radio stations or TV or the other mainstream outlets have in the past. And that to me is very exciting. And you hear it in the music. You hear a lot more cross-pollination between genres than you used to and that’s where new music is created.
I remember talking to you toward the end of The New Deal’s last run in 2011, and one thing you said is that one of the great things about The New Deal is even in the last few years before you guys took a break, you guys were kind of changing your sound and I remember you mentioned that the way Dan was playing bass kind of drove the band to a different way. How would you say that the stuff you’re doing now with this new lineup relates to that, given that you guys have all done different types of music over those years, and also because Dan and Joel have this amazing musical connection and relationship that’s been developing for 8 years kind of parallel to The New Deal?
Jamie: We’ve done it forever. Joel can do it, and it sounded great at rehearsal. So let’s just do one or two of those a night and not worry about. We never worried about it before. We started worrying about it, well not really worrying about it, but we were conscious of it at the end, like, “Better play this, better play that.” We’re not really going to start going there. We’ll make sure that we know everything in case it comes up and we want to play it. But I don’t think we’re going to feel the need as much to play those things specifically as we kind of fell into in the last couple years.
It’s something that I think will be interesting to see—how that evolves, as festivals get more prominent and blogs expand. I guess shifting to some of the upcoming New Deal plans, for you, how have you been preparing for the shows? Have you been listening back to some old tapes and recordings?
Joel: Yeah, definitely. I’ve been listening back to some of the archived stuff online, because I definitely want to honor Darren’s legacy and stay true to what The New Deal is. And at the same time, I am not Darren, so I’ve got to do my thing with it too. I’m just trying to find the balance and find what I can add to it. But right now it’s mostly figuring out where it came from, which I already know, as I said, having been a fan since the beginning. I followed The New Deal’s evolution since the beginning. I’m definitely familiar with where it’s coming from, but I’m definitely doing my homework to get up to speed.
Joel, I know you already have played a few shows with them back when Darren injured himself. But as you’ve been studying this music, is there anything about Darren’s drumming that has maybe struck you in a different way, now that you’re getting so deep into that head space, versus just being a fan who appreciates the overall feel of the shows?
Joel: The main thing is his stamina. He plays very powerfully for a very long time. And that’s easier said than done. I think he had a lot of stamina. Having done these rehearsals, I’m realizing, “Okay, I’ve got to get the practice pad out a few more days a week and warm up for the rehearsals so that I can see the show through.” Typically, The New Deal does two one-hour to one hour and fifteen minute-sets, which, I mean, Dragonette on its longest show will play an hour and fifteen. So to play two of those sets within our, for the most part, from top to bottom pretty high energy, it’s a lot of work. I think if there was one thing about Darren’s drumming that I am now realizing, trying to fill his shoes, that’s amazing about him—it would be his stamina, if I had to pick one thing. There are many others, but that’s definitely top of the list.
You’ve been playing music over the last few years, but a lot of it’s been studio-based and maybe outside the improvisational setting that you spent so many years developing. How did it feel to get back into that loose, improv space? Is that something that you’ve been kind of doing on your own just for fun, or in a setting that readers might not have known about?
Jamie: Honestly, when I’m writing music for film, I’m doing that anyway. I’m just letting the proverbial tape run and I’m just jamming out to see what comes out. But I sat down yesterday, and we were in it and we were on it in half a minute. There was no ramp-up time. It was there. You can develop your chops and you can develop your ability, but you can’t develop the innate sense of communicating with other musicians. It’s either there or it’s not. It’s just kind of what I was referencing back and trying to figure out what kind of drummer to go with. And so it’s either there or it’s not. So if you give me a piano and I sit down with two other guys of a similar mindset, I’ll blend right in. As long as you don’t overthink it, then you should be good. I am. I haven’t played these particular keyboards in three years. They sat in our storage, and I didn’t touch them because I have a whole bunch of other keyboards and I didn’t need to get them. So it was really nice to be able to get back to these and not have these preconceived notions of what I expect myself to do. Throwing a new keyboard in there will very much help in developing new concepts.
I’m not saying we’re going to be going out there sounding like Avicii. Whatever I choose to bring, it won’t be a replica of that. It will be something new. And it will enable us to just further develop what we do. We all feed off each other’s sounds. They hear something and they take it somewhere, and that mostly comes from me. So if they’re hearing new sounds, and they’re taking it somewhere new, then we’ll feed off it again and again and again and again within the context of a show. So whatever I get will be something that is not similar to whatever I get rid of. I don’t know what it is yet. Again, very New Deal, we just kind of meander through the meadows and see what pops up and be like, “Oh, I’ll take that.” And that’s sort of what will help develop what we jokingly call New Deal 2.0. It’s similar in its emotion and it will be similar at times in some of the signature classic stuff. I would always bring the Moog, and I always have that kind of stuff. Keith Richards plays his 1954 Tele wherever he goes. It’s kind of his signature sound. And there are things that are definitely sort of signature sounds for me, and I will have those, but there will be other things that we add to just develop what we’re doing to another level, a higher level, a different level. It will definitely not just be what we did in January 2012.
That being said, given that both you and Dan have spent a lot of time in the studio over the last few years, and you guys want to avoid being on the road as much as you were in the height of The New Deal’s time, would you consider doing another studio album or studio live hybrid?
Jamie: Oh yeah. Maybe not a studio album, but a bunch of tracks, sure—remixes, whatever, absolutely. It’s kind of a one step at a time thing. Not even one step at a time, but just like, “Okay, let’s just focus on this a little bit. Let’s get ourselves back in game shape, make sure Joel feels 100 percent in line with us musically.” He’s certainly got the ability, he’s got the chops, and he’s certainly got the feel and the listening. So it’s just a question of further developing our musical communication. He can bring a lot to the table, and I wasn’t thinking about anything, about music, about anything for an hour. I want him to do the same. The only way you do that is just keep on playing, keep on playing. And once we’re comfortable with that, then we’ll start worrying about what are we going to lay down, what are we going to record and how are we going to present that? But our first and foremost goal was to play live.
Dan: I don’t know. I think something, sure. Something when the identity of this new version of The New Deal, the Newer Deal, feels like it’s on its own two feet. I think that will be the first time we’ll ever talk about that. The issue for me about making records as The New Deal is the minute you get into a situation where you sonically have to compete with production, especially in the pop side of the dance world. The pop side of dance for these purposes would be like a Deadmau5 record, or a Skrillex record, or whatever—something that people have really worked on and honed and whatever else. To some degree, it takes away from what The New Deal’s essence really is. I’m sure that we’ll make some sort of record. I’m sure that we could write a really good track, and with some of the other guys that I work with on all the music that I’m making for Dragonette and some other artists, like there’s definitely a lot of people around that could shape what The New Deal does into something that could compete with an Afrojack record or whatever. But I just don’t know whether that’s what the purpose of The New Deal is, to make tracks.
It was always high energy, there were no lulls, even the slower moments.
Joel: Yeah, exactly, so there are some big shoes to fill there and I hope I don’t let anyone down. We’ve been having so much fun in the rehearsals and we basically just started. I guess I can’t really call them rehearsals—they’re really just jams. I’m so used to calling them rehearsals coming from Dragonette, where it’s like we’re rehearsing a set of songs, sort of a production for the show, versus just showing up and just playing. That’s what we do. We just show up and we play. But yeah, it’s been going really well. We’re all surprised at how easy and how quickly things are progressing, and we’re very excited to see where it will lead.
You touched on this a little bit when you were talking about his bass a while ago, but given all the types of music he’s played recently, what have you noticed about Dan’s playing that’s changed since those last New Deal shows? Maybe not so much technically but maybe just the feel that he’s brought given that he has evolved, just as you and Joel have evolved.
Jamie: It’s more in the sound. His playing is always incomparable to anyone else. He’s a fantastic bass player, but he is really a fantastic musician. Like he’s a good bass player, but he’s a really, really good musician. I was thinking about that yesterday, and I was like, Dan, people who know him know that he’s a good bass player and all that, but they don’t understand his sterling musicianship. He can just sit in and come up with anything at any time. He’s amazing. So how has it developed? Well it’s developed that that’s just gotten better. He brings more of a modern kind of electro thing in terms of his sound and in terms of how he plays in relation to those sounds. But The New Deal, the whole time, he was always kind of being himself and just playing kind of what he wanted to play. And so he’s still playing what he wanted to play, but he’s just kind of I don’t want to say modernized the sound, because he’s always had a fairly modern sound, but just added more aggressive stuff into his rig—a lot more synth-based stuff here and there. I mean, he’s playing it all on the bass guitar, but that kind of thing. If you tag yourself onto something that’s popular in modern music right now, you’re just dating yourself. That might have worked for six months in 2002, but it’s not going to work now. So if you just kind of keep your performances as a representation of you as a musician or you as a person, then you really can’t go wrong, which is why a band like us can exist again today and have people be excited about it — as excited, if not more excited, as they were in 2001. You create this kind of musical relationship with the audience. It’s not about the style that’s currently being played that’s popular or about a style that’s nostalgic—it’s just about your own style. And if you do that, and you do it well, then you can do it forever. So what does Dan bring to the table? Well he brings an upgraded version of his musical style. Even in Dragonette, he didn’t play too much bass anymore. He was busy playing keyboard bass, or he was busy triggering samples or whatever it was that he would do with Dragonette, all important stuff, it wasn’t really about the bass playing. So I know that he is super excited to be behind a bass guitar again.
Dan: What’s amazing is I haven’t played bass guitar like I play in The New Deal since the last day that I played with The New Deal however long ago, and I was really fucking anxious that I wasn’t going to be able to remember how to do that. But the one thing I knew that I could rely on, especially reinforced over the last few months of working on that soundtrack with Jamie—that I know Jamie’s next move every single time. And he can say the same thing for me. Like, okay, at least I’ve got that to go on. But it’s Kevin, who has been The New Deal sound guy since the very beginning. When he was at the jam, I remember his jaw dropped after about five minutes, and when we finally took a break 40 minutes later he’s like, “Oh my God, I’m very pleasantly surprised to see that you guys can still do this with the fluidity that you’ve always had and it’s great to see. “It sounds like The New Deal,” is what he said. And Kevin is a pretty dry sense of humor guy and doesn’t swing compliments around us. So like, okay, we passed the hardest test. Kevin has watched everything we’ve ever played. It’s great to know that The New Deal is in my DNA basically, and I think the same thing for Jamie.
As of now, you have lined up a few shows. Do you plan to tour into the early fall or focus on sporadic dates and festivals for the next few months?
Jamie: I’d rather lump it into summer and fall because we’re really not going to start playing anything until July. There were a number of offers but we were keeping it low key. We didn’t want people to start getting hopes up about something that may or may not happen four months ago. But Phil was asking around and there were a lot of offers that were coming up. We were actually going to be doing some stuff in April, but Joel couldn’t swing it because of his sister’s wedding. And it was like, okay, well we’re not going to go get Darren for two shows and then go back to Joel. If we’re going to come back, we’re going to come back, and if it’s going to be with Joel, it’s going to be with Joel, and if it’s going to be with Darren, it’s going to be with Darren but it’s not going to be with both. So it’s one or the other. It just turned out over time that it was going to be Joel. So with that in mind, we’re like, well then we can’t do these awesome shows in April. So then what’s the next good looking spot for us to reintroduce the band? And the next thing we knew it was July. That seemed like the best spot to do it. So that being said, you’ve got a show there, you got a show here, I think a couple in July. I know that we have some in August. I know that we have some in September. And I know that we’re talking about doing some in October and November. So I know that we’re running all the way from the summer into the fall. They won’t be eight-week tours, but it will be certainly more than we’ve played in the past three years.
