wow. i can’t believe it, but it is finally finished!
it is called The Great Depression.
it has 13 songs.
if all goes well, the CD and LP will be released on (or around) march 20th, 2006 on No Idea records (www.noidearecords.com)
several people have asked us why this record is coming out on a label and not being put out by us. i think it is a very valid question, and one that geoff, i and other members of the band spent many many hours discussing over the last year. the largest answer is fairly straight forward, we couldn’t afford to release this record and continue to press copies of Share What Ya Got. (our first record) at best we break even with every pressing that we do. so, the idea of pressing two records on our own was something we couldn’t consider. at first, we had the idea to stop pressing the first CD and only concentrate on the second. but, for a lot of reasons, i felt that just wouldn’t work. for example, some metal labels that i like personally allow records to go out of press and then the records sell for stupid amounts of money. we like selling the records for cheap and we want to continue to be able to share them on the internet for free. No Idea has agreed to a lot of terms with us about keeping the cost of the record low and promised us an amazing amount of control in how it looks, is produced, sold and advertised (some of these things we felt might not be fair to ask of a smaller label that we didn’t run ourselves). i personally feel really good about the people there and their support of our concerns and reservations about this record and the music business in general. i hope that you do too. another reason for the decision is that we hope to be able to use this time to focus on other issues in the world that are important to us. (instead of spending so much time just keeping up with our own records)and set aside some money and time to help with friend’s projects and causes. i think we realized that running our own record label just wasn’t one of the issues that we felt the strongest about for ourselves, or the place where we could be the most pro-active.
i feel a band has a big responsibility (or any group for that matter) to address the choices that they make. if you have any questions for us about the record or concerns that you think we might not have thought about, please write us and bring them up. it’s not always easy to make the best decisions at any given point, but we try. thanks a lot for taking the time to read this. i hope you like the record when it comes out, everyone in the band really put a lot of themselves into this project in the last year.
xoxo,
ryan and defiance, ohio