Happy Record Store Day!
You can't buy our album in a record store (yet), but you can support a local band by purchasing music on Bandcamp, and you can support your local record store by showing up today.
Here's our digital record:
theallhailhereafter.bandcamp.com/album/friend...
#musicsky
It's sounding So Good - can't wait for the final product. 🤘🏻
Happy Songs was featured on the Feb 15 edition of the @anyanyposi.bsky.social music show, which you can listen to at this link:
www.mixcloud.com/Anything_Any...
Our guest musician on Happy Songs is longtime friend and superfan, Marc Chevalier on mandolin. His playing added texture, enhanced the acoustic vibe, and brought some necessary higher tones that blended in beautifully with the band. (Too bad he's camera shy.)
This song is about when comments or judgements your friends make about your songs (or art) make you self-conscious about sharing them. Obviously, that didn’t hold us back, as we have shared our album anyway!
SONG SPOTLIGHT:
HAPPY SONGS
Track ten on Friends Like These is Happy Songs. Originally intended to be a solo acoustic track, when Joanna played it for her bandmates they insisted on a full band arrangement, and we think that was the correct choice.
theallhailhereafter.bandcamp.com/track/happy-...
Pure gold.
Our statement on the Live Nation verdict.
Bad Company was inducted in the class of 2025, and Jerry Garcia isn't exactly known for his solo work, but yeah... I was also surprised at some of these considering who was nominated. Only one woman of the eight, for example, but happy to see Queen Latifah and Fela Kuti as early influencers. ~Joanna
Early No Doubt and Save Ferris come to mind, but yeah, point taken. (We have a string section, that's always been more my thing.)
~Joanna
Like wind chimes!
If you're in the Chicago area and looking for an acupuncturist who also plays the harp, check out Christine's practice:
MapToWellnessAcupuncture.com
Joanna always heard harp in her head on this song, and recording what turned out to be the final guest track on Friends Like These gave us just about everything we could hope to achieve in the final mix and wrapped recording for the album.
Christine is an acupuncturist who also specializes in herbal medicine, and they used her home office for a very relaxed recording session (massage tables are apparently great for setting up a lot of gear!).
Christine, Joanna, and Kathryn spent many years performing musicals together in a locally touring children’s theatre company, and bringing in Christine was an excellent excuse to reconnect. Christine was unable to come to the studio, so Joanna went out to her house to record the harp part herself.
Joanna used a family heirloom, an antique metal rainstick, for the hand percussion, which she recorded in the music room sound booth previously pictured in our series.
NTIOYAEB features Kathryn’s and Roy’s soaring strings, as well as Christine Barnes on harp.
It’s a ballad about when a friend you’re attracted to wants more, but if you actually imagine it, you realize that’s a terrible idea. The title is meant to be the first, though unspoken, words of the song and help with the meaning of the lyrics, which is how we present NTIOYAEB when we play it live.
SONG SPOTLIGHT: NOT THAT I OWE YOU AN EXPLANATION, BUT...
Track nine on our album Friends Like These is Not That I Owe You an Explanation, But…
(NTIOYAEB for short).
🧵👇🏻
theallhailhereafter.bandcamp.com/track/not-th...
Check out John’s music on Bandcamp:
soundslikejohn.bandcamp.com/track/or-cur...
Catch him live on Monday in Chicago:
facebook.com/events/s/joh...
John is also part of Whiskey Radio Hour:
www.instagram.com/thewhiskeyra...
www.facebook.com/whiskeyradio...
What Love Is features our friend, fast-fingered human juke box John Szymanski, who brought a sensitivity & generosity for when to strum or add licks & when to leave space for the vocals or strings to shine through. He is an absolute professional, & we love how his guitar tone socks into the mix.
This one starts with an intro featuring our rhythm section of Tim on bass and @nirensimt.bsky.social on drums. The rest of the song ebbs and flows around the guitar riff Joanna wrote for the verses, as the strings meander in harmony.
SONG SPOTLIGHT: WHAT LOVE IS
Track eight of Friends Like These is called What Love Is. It’s the most ‘90s-sounding song on the album and is about when your real friend gives you a shoulder to cry on, even when you’re at your worst.
theallhailhereafter.bandcamp.com/track/what-l...
...it swells into a tender sense of self-compassion that there’s always hope and a chance for growth and change, even if the present is difficult.
Oh, and it’s written in D minor, which is really the saddest of all keys.
Sad Song is about when you are having a hard time with life and need to be a friend to yourself. Though it continues themes of introspection over from Ode for My Hero focused on internal sadness...
This is a more orchestral piece to kick off the back half of the album, featuring the grand piano, mournful cello, and soaring violin solo (which was recorded in the isolation booth where we couldn’t get any pictures of Kathryn’s gorgeous playing).
SONG SPOTLIGHT: SAD SONG
Track 7 on Friends Like These is the first song each band member learned as they joined our group & was recorded on day one in the studio. It’s the only song on the album w just the five of us playing the way we play it live.
theallhailhereafter.bandcamp.com/track/sad-song
I think you can appeal if you had already purchased it? The law might be that it has to be displayed, but it might be worth a try. Good luck!
P.S. - Joanna gifted @seantroversy.bsky.social our album, and he became one of our first Bandcamp supporters. We are thrilled and beyond grateful.
Meet your heroes if you can. They’ll either show you that you need new heroes or remind you why they became your heroes in the first place.
We wish we had a photo of the five of us, plus Claire Feeney adding additional backing vocals, in the Studio B isolation booth, singing “Oh Oh Ohhhhhh” in the round. It was so cool. Enjoy the other pictures.
The finished track was a team effort, with credit due to engineer/mixer Sean McKenzie. In a beautiful analogy to life, once Joanna let go of preconceived notions, the result was a combination of the original inspiration while being allowed to grow into an example of the unique sound we developed.