thestatus:

The long and winding road

 We know an update is far overdue..  We’ve been fairly silent for a little more than a year.  Went from touring almost year round from the time STIP was released, to only one tour this whole year.  The truth of it is we just got to the point where we had to let go of all things that had to do with the band to be able to decide what to do.  Here’s what we decided..  We still love music and each other so we’re going to continue to play, make, and record music together.  

 

I’m sure you’ve noticed that the lifespan of bands aren’t as long as they used to be.  Why?  Lots of reasons, and it’s those same reasons that have discouraged our hearts away from the things we were so passionate about since we started playing together back in 2004.  Yeah, 2004.  You may have not even known that about us, but Andy and I started writing songs in Andy’s freshmen year of high school.  We played shows, played bars, did everything we knew how to do to grow our band.  We would sit on his front porch for hours and just write songs, dreaming about going on tour with our favorite bands.  Without making this any longer than it probably is already going to be,  a lot of GREAT things happened since those days on the front porch.  We played hundreds of shows, toured across the country multiple times, with countless memories (good and bad) released a record and EP on one of our favorite labels, saw our record in record stores across the country, toured with some amazing bands, and probably the best part, met so many amazing people.   The tricky part of it is, all of that takes an incredible amount of hard work.  That was never the problem, we loved what we did so it was easy to do the “work” part of it.  Somewhere along the line though, when we probably needed a bigger hand involved, we just never got it.  Maybe that’s fate, maybe that’s the ever-changing age of digital revelation and it’s effects on music and ART.  We accept it for what it is and with a deep breath, and with some time away, we now can continue doing what we love.

 

At the end of the day, after seven years of working towards a goal, (many that we did reach), we just needed a break.  In a lot of cases we just didn’t fit in with a lot of the bands we ended up playing with.  We’re not young “scenesters” anymore, not that we ever were?  We love music, we never care or cared who we played with or saw at a show, but a lot of times we felt the “group” of bands and music we got organized into wasn’t really where we belonged, because sadly sometimes it seemed less about he music, and that took a toll on all of our hearts I believe.  I think that’s one the biggest thing we wanted to break free from.  

 

So a year removed from our last real activity on the road, we spent a lot of time writing and playing more of my solo material with Dan and Mike, and playing shows in the Atlanta area.  This was another breathe of fresh air we needed and    so we started recording a record for this material earlier this spring and it should be finished soon and released early next year.  I guess it is a solo project, but it’s the same people playing and are just as important, just a different sound under my own name.   So don’t let it confuse you! J  We want to create and put out as much music as possible.    That being said, I’ll finally get to the news of new Status material.  We have a huge batch of songs that was intended for our follow up record to STIP.    We’re finally at a point where we can logistically all four (Yes Andy!!) get back together and start rehearsing with the intention of recording these songs.   We also are planning to do most of the recording and releasing ourselves.   We’ll get help here and there, but one of the biggest setbacks is always waiting on other people or things to develop, and in turn we make empty promises.. We don’t want this to be that.. We want this to happen and hope a handful of you do as well.

 

I realize this is long and may feel like the same written description from just another band fallen on hard times.  Thank you for reading it, we felt like we wanted to be as honest and transparent as possible.   We always wanted to be that type of band, maybe we were, maybe we weren’t.  2012 is definitely the start of a new season for the Status.  We have no idea what it will look like or exactly how busy we will be.. but we will release new music.  We have nothing but thanks and excitement for the future.   We’ll keep you updated and let you know when we start rehearsing and preparing to record, until then, we love you and appreciate your support so here’s two of the demos we recorded last year for this record.   These are entirely rough and we have since wrote dozens of songs.. so don’t judge the future too much based solely on these.. There are TWO demos up on our soundcloud page.. (http://soundcloud.com/thestatus/secondchancewvoxruff10).   So please enjoy and help pass them around social arenas.  

 

With nothing but love,

 

Ben, Mike, Andy, and Dan