We’d gotten into a bad habit of taking a few years between releases of new material for a while there. Sorry about that. If you’re reading this you’ve come upon our second EP of songs this year to be arranged and recorded at Retro City Studios in Philadelphia over the course of just a couple days. It’s called Out There. We were so in love with On Life Support, the process and the product, it seemed obvious to go do something like that again.

It’s funny that I’m the one telling you this. I love the way making records also kind of timestamps our lives - there’s so much I could tell you about what was going on when each was written, then recorded. That said, this one might be the exception. You’re hearing us get older on these things, and what that often means is a weird push and pull in every direction that can really fuck with, or at least re-frame your relationship to music. I felt like I hardly had a minute to contribute to this thing, which I don’t say as a negative necessarily. I had a really great view from the backseat of the others filling that vacuum in a way I’m endlessly proud of.

Mike and Eric do the real heavy lifting on most of these songs. It’s a treat to play with a rhythm section that’s been doing it together for over a decade and when we do things we haven’t before and don’t fall on our faces, it’s really a credit to them. Eric’s always had an ear for reining in the arrangements of our messy songs, and has become the steady-handed backbone and pulse I’m not sure I could have envisioned years ago, when I was watching his hair fly all over the place in basements across America. Mike wrote Fifteen Hours and Out There - the latter is the pop gem I always knew he had in him and the prior’s first verse knocked me flat on my ass the first time he showed it to me. I’m glad Mike brought it so hard this time around because I think in the automobile that is Timeshares, I feel most comfortable when his hands are on the wheel. This is funny, because I don’t feel comfortable at all when his hands are on the wheel of our van.

Where Max was a prominent contributor to OLS, he really has his fingerprints all over almost everything you’re hearing here. He’s been in the band longer than I realize sometimes, and as a fan of everything he does outside of it, I love the way he’s stepped up as the guitar secret weapon and champion of subtle low harmony. He wrote Pull The Stars Down, and was kind enough to trust me to sing it. I’m relieved I was able to finish Bad Hand in time, not only to have a tune among these Stern and Natoli classics, but because Max and I tracked dueling guitar solos face to face for it and it was one of the coolest things I’ve ever gotten to do.

Once again, Kyle Graham played the keys, and we’re very lucky he’s kept agreeing to do so because he really “gets it” more than we could’ve even hoped. There are still a whole bunch of songs that he’s played on with us that we can’t quite show you yet. Ian Farmer mastered it at The Metal Shop, his lovely studio in Philly.

Lastly, all praise be to our old friend Andy Clarke. This was our second go-round under his watchful eye, and I can’t say enough for how he took every hiccup we threw at him in stride and turned it into something beautiful that we’re very proud of. I know bands always say this, but dealing with us can be a real test of one’s patience sometimes, and he somehow had plenty to go around.

Anyway, I hope you like it, and moreso I hope that we can play these songs to you soon, wherever you’re listening to them from. It’s never lost on me how lucky we are to still be doing this.

Baby, we’re on life support.
-jon/ts