You feel the camaraderie that you're all driving around in vans, you know, engaged in musical enterprise. It's pretty much the same for everybody except for the 40 minutes that you're on the stage. Other than that, I do feel like we're off on our own path. It's sort of exciting.

You feel the camaraderie that you're all driving around in vans, you know, engaged in musical enterprise. It's pretty much the same for everybody except for the 40 minutes that you're on the stage. Other than that, I do feel like we're off on our own path. It's sort of exciting.

The nice thing about being a band that nobody knows about is that you can do whatever you want, you know? Without catching hell for it. That's sort of how we felt about the re-recording, too. I thought, "Well, you know a few people noticed this record the first time around but not so many will really protest if we do it again."

One of our very favorite shows of 2008 was our Slowtrain instore. We drove straight from San Francisco, pulled up to the back of the store, dragged our entire setup inside and played our new album, Rook, start-to-finish - and they let us get away with it.

I don't feel [the] excitement you have when you first walk into a recording studio. It now feels like a tool.

I like having some things very clear while other things are obscured... so that it kind of keeps coming into and out of focus.

I get more excited about like, "How nice is the piano?" or "How does the room sound?" I don't really see the gear so much anymore.