Made of the Same

The house where we used to practice is now a parking lot. All that’s left of the shows we used to play are bad flyers and embarrassing pictures left over in the scrolling-sideways-wasteland that is Myspace. I don’t think any of the venues we used to play have shows any more and, even if they did, I’d be far too old to go. I still pass the house in Johnston City where we recorded the noisey parts of “Yellow Lights” but I’m pretty sure no one that lives there would know what the hell I’m talking about if I stopped to tell them how important that time was to me.

Though so much has changed in the last fifteen years, the music we made together as Alliswell—up in Chris’s bedroom, t-shirts sticking to our backs with sweat through the summer—still remains close to my heart.

From as far as I can tell, that’s true for Wes, Chris, and Durf too.

So last summer we got together for a weekend at Chris’s house in Evansville. Our plan was to write songs on Saturday and record them all live on Sunday. It seemed like a lofty goal even as we discussed it. Somehow (despite late nights, a lot of mexican food, the NBA playoffs, and oh, god, the hangovers) we pulled it off with many thanks to our friends, Payton Clark (who recorded, mixed, and mastered the whole thing) and Zina Smith (who helped out and provided just continuous positive vibes). As well as forever gratitude owed to Chris’s partner, Shelby, and their dogs, Gene & George, for putting up with all the noise and personalities.

The result is our new 5-song EP, Made of the Same, which is available to stream on AppleMusic, Spotify, and wherever else. Our best friend Major helped us out with the cover art.

Made of the Same is Alliswell’s seventh release, which is weird/cool to think about. I never thought we’d still be doing this, and I never know if one of these will be my last, but I’m so thankful for all that we’ve made and for our friends that still care.

Thanks for reading and listening.

(We used to play so many six band shows back in the day and they always made me so anxious. Stacy once pointed out how odd it was that something that should be cathartic left me so worked up I couldn’t sleep at night. It’s like I couldn’t recover from sharing so much of myself, or there were too many band people that I couldn’t be enough to all of them, or I don’t know. Anyways, I still have those incessant voices in my head. Writing this song helped some.)