On Saturday March 14th, Red Collar is celebrating the release of our album Pilgrim, an album we started around November of 2007. Some may wonder:

What the hell took so long?

You are not alone because sometimes I wonder the exact same thing. We officially got the thing done (meaning recorded and mixed and mastered) in October of 2008, ELEVEN MONTHS from start to finish.

One of the biggest reasons it took so long is Red Collar can be very particular in the studio. I know on stage we just kind of let it fly but in the studio…whole ‘nother story. For instance, I found that Eveready Batteries made my Ibanez Digital Delay sound warmer. Strange, huh? I know this is weird, but Duracell Batteries really affected the tone coming out of my Boss Tuner. Believe me, it was hours and hours of trying out different batteries in the pedals. And don’t get me started on strings. Dean Markley .013’s sound way better than Ernie Balls but I prefer Ernie Ball .42’s to D’Addario…

…c’mon folks, you know us better than that (I hope).

I can assure you that we weren’t sitting in some recording studio trying out different batteries (though I heard the guitarist Eric Johnson once did this) or that we were debating whether or not a bassoon or oboe would be more effective for the chorus of Tools. It wasn’t because we just couldn’t get it to sound like the songs in my head, man.

No, it was none of that.

I think over the course of eleven months, we maybe…maybe…recorded for two weeks. So what happened for the other ten months and change?

Pilgrim is produced by a fella named Brian Paulson. We recorded at what was Track & Field Studios in the Reservoir building. We recorded live and finished (as a band) in a day. Mike and I came back the next day and did some guitar stuff. At Paulson’s house throughout the next few months, we did some more guitar stuff and all the vocals. Half of one song was rewritten. One song was done at Casa Kutchma.

When we asked Brian to schedule say the vocals, he would look at his full calendar and say “How about three weeks from now?” and three weeks would pass and sometimes we would get a call that he was running late with some other project and he’d ask “Can we postpone?” He would look at his very full calendar and the next time he would have room was another three weeks away. And then three weeks would pass and maybe he was trying to get a head start on another project in Canada, or maybe I was too sick to sing, or another band he thought he was done working with needed some touch-ups or something. And he’d look at his very full calendar again.

“Three more weeks guys?”

It just took a while. He’s a busy guy and rightfully so, he did a great job with this album. In March 2008, I remember reading in the Indy week after week of reviews of bands that he produced like Kerbloki and Caltrop and at least another one or two. And as much as it would’ve been great to have this out in early 2008, it just wasn’t supposed to come out then. It’s coming out now.

And I’m grateful it didn’t come out a single day earlier.

I think that I’m a little protective of this album because for as long as I’ve been playing music, I’ve never properly released a full-length album. I’ve been in bands where we had enough songs to put on an album but I’ve never really put out anything proper.

And there’s always a temptation by bands to get the album out there as soon as possible because, well shit you spent enough money on the damn thing so better get it out there so you can start getting that money back. And of course you want to ‘shop it around’ which, if you’re a local band, that means you send it to Yep Roc and Merge.

Side Note: No matter who you are, you probably have sent your recordings to Merge and Yep Roc…bless ‘em and the piles and piles of CD’s they must have.

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Were you ever at a party and you meet someone that asks you “So what do you do?” and you answer with “I’m an accountant” or “I’m a teacher” but you never answer with “I garden” or “I make one hell of an apple pie at least once a week”. You don’t answer with those kinds of statements because you know that if you answer with “I fly fish”, after a few minutes of tolerating your talk of tying flies and wearing hip boots, The Inquirer will dismiss all that idle crap that may actually have some fucking meaning to your life and they’ll abruptly interrupt with “Yes but what do you do for a living?” as they double dip their baby carrot…the ignorant prick.

And that doesn’t seem fair.

It doesn’t seem right.

In fact, it seems downright stupid.

Look, I don’t know many people that are happy with “what they do”. Exception: for some people, a lot of people, “what they do” is done to raise their kids properly (not necessarily extravagantly) and that’s all the motivation in the world to do anything, honestly. But then there are the folks who don’t have that paternal motivation (psst, folks like me).

I started writing about working because after a few years post-college, I was confused and the scientist in me said that if you want to try and figure something out, start writing it down. Map it out. And so I wrote. And I wrote. And I mapped. And I mapped. See, I did what I was supposed to. I did okay in school. To my parents, they thought that once you get that college degree, you have it made in the shade with pomade, baby. So I got my degree. I got my job. I went for my version of The American Dream and with every step towards it, the only thing I felt that I really had was a good wife and a good dog and everything else seemed kinda…I don’t know…inconsequential. Maybe that’s all you need, a good wife and a good dog and I guess if we lived during frontier’s time, I’d be a happy man if I just had a good wife and a good dog and maybe a good rifle but alas…

I want to talk about the American Dream for a minute or two. Now, there’s lots of Great Dreams in America. Dreams that got people Rights. Dreams that got people Freedom. Understand that I am not talking about those dreams though there are plenty of pundits and ad men that will mention Our Founding Fathers Great Quest for Liberty and Your Quest for a New Cadillac as if they are the same thing. I am talking about what is considered the Quintessential Classic American Dream for you and I. Houses. Cars. Televisions. Mantles. Vacations. Lawnmowers. Tree Houses. Fireplaces. Gardens. Christmas Trees. Garages. The crap Made in China that fills the boxes that fill that garage.

I was writing and really thinking about all this stuff and ‘what I do’. There are people, including myself, that once thought they could change the world. That was our American Dream. A Great Dream by the way. There are people that thought they could reinvent or revolutionize an Industry. That was their American Dream. Another Great Dream. There are people that once thought they could change a child’s life or save someone’s life. All Great, Great Dreams.

Yet when none of those great acts got fulfilled, we dreamt another dream. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before:

“Maybe I can’t change a child’s life. But I can buy a flat screen!”

The American Dream has become the american dream. Those dreams, those are lowercase american dreams. That is what America is made of nowadays, if you are dreaming at all anymore. Those pathetic dreams aren’t great dreams but they are a hell of a lot easier to fulfill. But that does not mean they are fulfilling. When people say they are working at fulfilling the american dream, they really mean they are working so that they can afford their hefty cable bill. Our dreams used to consist of equality and peace. Now we dream of 600 thread count sheets…for the whole family. The past twenty years or so we collectively changed and dreamt this same American Express dream and the sound that you have heard for the past few months is the sound of that dream’s bubble rightfully and deafeningly exploding.

In putting together this album, I found that there is no fulfilling of these lowercase american dreams. Ever. To dream in America means that whatever lowercase dream you have fulfilled, you have to immediately dream bigger and bigger and bigger. Maybe one day, if I really apply myself, I can have a television in every room of the house. Maybe one day, just maybe, everyone in the family can have their own car.

What do we do now? The weathermen ain’t calling for clear skies any time soon. And if you believe anyone on television or radio then the ‘smart’ thing to do is to get scared and go cower underneath a cover somewhere while tucking every extra dollar I have under the mattress except when it comes time for my dumb ass to pay my dumb ass cable bill so I can listen to these dumb asses tell me to stay terrified.

No. I’m not going to do that.

I’m going to tell you what I am going to do. I am going to ignore the forecasts. I’m going to ignore the commercials that are trying snatch the money I don’t have. I will ignore the Chicken Little News Folk that depend on those XBox commercials to pay their salary. In this uncertain era, no one knows anything and I know even less. But I know this for certain: I am through, absolutely through, trying to fulfill some arbitrary lowercase american dream.

I’m going to very simply try and fulfill My Dream. I’m going to try and forget what I thought I should be. I’m going to ignore what every one else thought I should be. I’m going to try and remember that a long time ago, I made a promise to a very young boy that heard his cousin play a Distorted Guitar and that little boy swore that this must be the sound the Hinges of the Gates of Heaven make when they open. A promise was made when that little boy picked up a guitar for the first time. And I owe him an explanation with exactly what the fuck I have been doing for the past twenty years.

I owe him this album.

On March 14th, I hope you can all join me and Red Collar and that boy. It’s ALL AGES after all. It’s also an earlier show, doors at 7:30 with our tour mates Bones Royal on at 8:30 and then our dear friends The Dry Heathens on soon after. It’s going to be at The Triangle Brewery in downtown Durham on Pearl Street. We’ll be having some special guests.

Bring your dancing shoes.

It won’t be the same without you.

Jason