dear reader,

well, we’re halfway there.

it was about two weeks ago i that posted the announcement of the on-line album release, and we’re now just under two weeks from that magical date, 12.11. now that thanksgiving (i hope you all had good ones!) and its associated baking, socializing, and hallucinating have drawn to a close, i can’t really do much to distract myself from excitement about the album and website. wait ’til you people see it. man.

(one solace, btw, has been writing new material. we here at good night, states are scheming without respite to get you folks new stuff throughout 2008 in a manner that’s, well, fast and furious. stay tuned.)

in fact, i’m so excited, i’ve been considering releasing the early-early bedroom demos of these songs right here on the ‘blog. it feels crazy. (SO CRAZY.) there are, as you might expect, Many Demo Versions of some of the songs on “Short Films On Self-Control”; my itunes is full of them.

…which brings us to the real point of this post: if you want the demos to help you gear up for the record, comment here! let me know that they will lift you to a new spiritual plane and help usher in this season of advent, etc., so on and so forth. or that you might just want to hear them.

anyway i could still change my mind, but i definitely don’t want to flood an unsuspecting internets with an hour+ of various recordings of synth noises, gratuitous harmonies, and acoustic guitar wanderings unless The People Demand It.

let me know. i’ll check back soon.

(promise.)

dear reader,

yesterday morning joe & i worked our way through two pots of coffee and a nice rubber of backgammon as we reviewed the long, long weekend. sunday morning at the hardings’ generally becomes the transition moment, the inhalation before my prolonged sigh of a day spent driving home. yesterday was certainly no exception, and indeed there were a lot of thoughts to be sorted.

thanks to everyone who attended saturday night at club cafe; we spent the evening struggling through what joe accurately described as the worst stage monitoring he has ever experienced, but i certainly felt supported playing our first real set in town to a room full of open ears and hearts.

on the upside, we announced last night that our album will be made available for sale as part of our website launch on december 11 (!). you’ll be able to buy the Good Night, States debut, “Short Films On Self-Control,” for the first time there in digital format, with the release of the CD (and potentially another round medium?) format in early 2008. www.goodnightstates.com will of course be our online home at that point, and it’s a place we plan to fill with art and ourselves. the album’s going to be a great way to kick that off. plus, we just really, really love this record.

i can’t wait for you to hear it.

this friday, steve, dan, and i loaded up the honda with 2 acoustic guitars, an accordion, and about 25% of dan’s drum kit and departed for wooster, oh to open for americana rocker matt hoover at seattle’s. we stopped by notable pittsburgh vietnamese eatery tram’s kitchen for three orders of chicken fried rice to go and hit the road. if you’ve never eaten at tram’s, i highly recommend it the next time you get a hankering for vietnamese cuisine.

before we left, steve had the wherewithal to grab trevor’s gameboy for diversion whilst traveling.

about trevor: what you have to understand is that he is an unabashed empiricist. his see-it-to-believe-it disposition makes descartes look like tertullian. you may recall his last post. if not, take a look at it to see a blend of skepticism and joe-bashing at it’s finest. and then take the time to review the evidence below for yourself.

that’s not imovie magic folks, it’s raw tetris skill. for the record, steve beat tetris earlier that day. and though trevor has undoubtedly made more attempts than the rest of the band put together, he has yet to see 11 dancing russians and a space shuttle with his own eyes. just please remember this the next time we’re in conversation and i share with you an interesting bit of trivia.

having defended my honor, we arrived at the show to find that not only is seattle’s a purveyor of freshly roasted espresso, they also have a full bar, including draught beer by the pint (or tall glass, if you prefer your brews 20 oz. at a time). steve was happy to find in one establishment the only two liquids i have ever seen him consume: coffee and libations. i was happy to drink complimentary guinness from a glass the size of my head. and all three of us were happy to be in wooster playing some of our new material acoustically to a packed house.

thanks to matt hoover, his band, and seattle’s for hosting us. thanks to jillian and tony for coming out and bringing friends to the show. thanks to dan and kyle for introducing yourselves and conversing with us. thanks to everyone who showed up and listened. and special thanks to trevor for giving me yet another opportunity to exonerate myself and display his tendencies towards disbelief in one fell swoop.

Last evening we had the privilege of traveling to State College to perform our new material. During the 3 hour trip, Megan and Joe pulled out a head lamp and a game boy and proceeded to play Tetris. That’s right, you can’t get much more old-school than playing Tetris on car trips, that is unless you have one of those Tiger hand-held LCD games (ah, the memories).

While we were waiting for our ears to pop from the elevation changes on the trip, we discussed the lore behind the game of Tetris. Megan thought that Tetris was based on some sort of physical game; I scoffed at her. Joe claimed that you could actually win at Tetris; I said, “Not possible.” Personally, I have never done it, so I stand firmly on the opinion that you can’t ever win Tetris. Joe gave detailed descriptions of what it was like when you won and from what he says, there are dancing Russian girls and a space shuttle. I don’t believe it.

One thing you must know about Joe is he is a josher. He will say absurd things that sound true with a straight face to try and dupe the gullible in his presence. Joe does this so often that it’s hard to tell when he’s telling you a factiod that is actually true.

So, in light of this evidence, should I believe him, or stand stubbornly on my initial opinion that you can’t win at Tetris?

A super huge thanks to Jesse, Eric, and Shane from Roustabout. We had a great time playing and look forward to coming back soon! Maybe by then I will have played enough Tetris to win or prove Joe wrong!