Virginia Is For Lovers & So Is Ohio

All you need is love... and Algernon Cadwallader. Pouncing at the opportunity to expand our maturing highbrow resume we accepeted our friends' surprising invitation to provide the live music for their wedding. With utmost respect we spent weeks whittling our raw energy into classy pop instrumentals for the event. We hand picked a few of our favorite love songs to cover and learned the Peanuts theme song which was to be the bride's music. With our best t-shirts on we headed to Virginia to create the soundtrack to the joining of Cory & Courtney Bise. These two sure know how to party and we are happy and thankful we were there to celebrate with them. We also couldn't help but throw up a few mics during our wedding band rehearsals to document these re-workings of our songs and some of them turned out alright. We had our friend Francis Quinlan of Hop Along come over to sing on one of them and it will be on a cassette compilation put together by the Long Island kids at Lifeonanisland.org sometime this summer.

We were also privileged enough to be invited to play this year's Berea Fest along with the likes of Delay, The Sidekicks, Good Luck, Tin Armor, Pink Houses, New Creases, and tons of other really amazing bands. Berea Fest was started 5 years ago by the Eilbeck brothers from Delay and friends to celebrate the vibrant scene going on in Berea, OH, a suburb of Cleveland. They no doubt inspired and captured the hearts of everyone who grew up in the scene there with them and when they made the move to Columbus unsurprisingly just about everyone followed. While the excitement continues in Columbus they still return to Berea each year to pay homage to the place where it all began. I shouldn't expect anything less from these guys but I was still overwhelmed at the amount of positivity at this fest. Everyone here was friends even if you'd just met. There were plenty of volunteers helping the fest run smoothly. Free food not only for the bands but for everyone at the show. Wholly a very fun, inspiring, and encouraging get together. Thanks to Ryan, Austin, and Pat!

Last night Tank made a special appearance on stage with one of our favorite bands from Texas. With Fergus & Geronimo already booked to play Philadelphia, and Chris and Daniel visiting for the weekend, it only made sense that we would force Teenage Cool Kids to play a short set as well. Sadly, Bradley couldn't make it but Tank stood up the plate and channeled his energy to give the kids what they want.

This weekend we are looking forward to being in Richmond for the 8th annual Best Friends Day. From what I've heard over the years it's about the closest you can get to being at Camp Nowhere... for punks. We are playing the Saturday afternoon show at Hadad's Palisades Waterpark with Off With Their Heads and Negative Approach. The rest of the weekend we'll be seeing Field Day, Propagandhi, Andrew WK and enjoying the company of best friends. Cool!