It was exactly six years ago today… a seven hour drive, tightly packed among our gear in the Pravda caravan, racing across five states on our way home to Boston… arriving just in time to play a special May Day show at Great Scott.

We had spent the past few days in Pennsylvania, first to play a show across the river from Trenton, and then to record the drum tracks for our first full-length album, which we expected would be finished in early 2007. Ha.

That first full-length album, Burning Bible Diamonds, was released in May 2009. By that time we had scrapped the Pennsylvania drum sessions, rewritten most of the album, and added some new songs. In the process of re-tracking the album, however, several songs were not recorded: "Tora Bora," "Lincoln Lovers," and "Ballerina." The first two songs had been staples of our early sets, but we had stopped playing them live for sometime and barely remembered them. "Ballerina" really should have been on Burning Bible Diamonds, considering the lyrics from 2:02 - 2:06. But we had hit a creative brick wall with "Ballerina" and opted to heed the advice of Homer Simpson: "If something's hard to do, then it's not worth doing."

Fast forward to a few months ago. Surprised by the positive reaction and airplay we had gotten with Burning Bible Diamond's "Dead House," we decided to revamp the song, a la the Star Wars Special Editions (while avoiding unnecessary changes like having Greedo shoot first, and redubbing the Max Rebo Band). Someone brought up the idea of finishing the missing songs that should have been on Burning Bible Diamonds, someone else said "fine," there were some recording sessions, and now here we are.

(It also helped that we needed an excuse to take a break from recording Columbia, our upcoming full-length album, coming out… this summer? That's the goal, anyway.)

The Dead House EP. Closure on songs so old, three of them contain lyrical references to the first half of the Bush Years. Tracked in 2006, released in 2012. It took a while, but we maintained our resolve and steered the course. Mission Accomplished.