It appears that this is it.

Months of songwriting, rehearsing, recording, mixing, re-mixing, mastering, discussions over album art, dealing with CD misprints, more rehearsing, and debt management come to a head tomorrow (well, technically today I suppose).

I don’t know what the hell I’m doing up this late, either. I’m anxious, truth be told (and slightly insomniac).

I feel like I can finally breathe easier. If making Leave Your Light On was like pushing a cart with square wheels up a hill, getting Fan The Fury made can draw parallels to the Apollo 13 mission. In the end, the moments that were supposed to be fun were exceptionally fun, particularly working on these songs. Last summer was absolutely fantastic, and— short of being a kid again and not having to go to work— I’d rank it as one of the best summers of my life.

All in all, I’m pretty goddamn proud with what we’ve got on our hands.

I’d like to do something we probably should do more often and thank Annie, our manager who has the patience of a saint. She’d have to to be busting her ass this hard for us and putting up with our bullshit. A lot of things wouldn’t have happened without her help and (+5,000 points here) her organizational skills. This record is one of many other things that became possible in no small part to her efforts. Annie, you’re the best, and my daily exhortations to the Flying Spaghetti Monster include a wish that you actually start making money off of us soon.

Thanks as well to another unsung hero, Señor Hugh Wyman. He was technically on the sidelines for this album, but he was an enormous help in a lot of ways from the very early stages of the album— before we were even thinking of an album. He recorded and mixed demos for nearly half the songs on the record and a bunch of other shit we didn’t get around to using; he was a voice of reason when it came to listening back to mixes and dissecting a lot of technical aspects; lastly, he has many a time been the provider of BBQ and gallons of vodka. My only regret is that he will leave one kudos for this post, and I’ll feel like that waitress with the bad attitude who acts surprised she got a nickel for a tip.

There are lots of other people deserving of thanks, of course, but I could go on forever and I do need to get some sleep. Gotta be up in a couple of hours, which is unfortunate. Right now, I want nothing more than to sleep in late, then stroll down to Bagel Rising for a bagel and some coffee. But I’ve got work, and I’m fucking broke.

Can’t win ’em all.

We’ll see you all tomorrow, and if we don’t see you then we’ll see you out on the open road.

Cheers,
Henry