we allow ourselves to grow

For a minute, after a quick stint in Hawai'i, Peters pretended like he was moving to Northern California. He half-assed a bartending gig in Hayward and crashed at my house for a couple months, cuddled up with my dad's air compressor and nail gun hose (pop and I were building a closet in the bedroom at the time).

We cleared a space in my garage to set up our amps and pedals and started messing around with new sounds. When we settled into something that we liked we'd make a rough recording and move on. The jam that eventually turned into the song Unfold stood out among all the recordings we made, and once Peters made his inevitable move back down the coast to San Diego I started working on the lyrics. I'd email him rough recordings of the song as it evolved, subject line "banant banant nant." We played it on the road a few times as a duo then dug into it with the full band.

Once we got in the studio this past summer, Peters, Trent, Dennis and I had our parts locked solid. Then Brooklyn Bill flew in, dropped some Zelda werlitzer synth over the bridge and shifted the song's dimension.

This band used to have my name in it, but then our sound outgrew the simple singer songwriter in me. My conscience wouldn't allow me to attach only my name to this collaboration because what I do alone is a distant cousin of what Peters and I create together. This song and this album are the unfolding of our creative collaboration, and Shady Maples is the new view that we've been climbing over ourselves to find.

-Owen

Peters and a sawsall pillow