I wrote a letter to Google several months ago, hoping it would meet this criteria. Didn’t hear back, but you Gmail users out there might get a kick out of it.

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Greetings, Google!

We are a band called Good Night, States, and we would be remiss if we failed to credit your products for their assistance in our current and future musical successes.

Steadily flowing waves of interwebstuff have carried Good Night, States demos, songs yet unsung, cradling them gently from a Sent Mail folder in New Jersey to three Inboxes in Pittsburgh and a fourth in Philadelphia, via countless Gmails, neatly strung together as pearls of conversation between friends. Golden stars hang in the heavens of my Inbox each time I remind myself to take action on one of the 7305.100824 emails I have received relating to Good Night, States. I label, I archive, I am at peace with my email.

My publicity spreadsheets are nestled snugly in Google’s Documents, available for perusal anywhere in the WORLD (!) that there is internet, cohabiting with a family of press releases for, not one, but EVERY city in which we perform. AND, Google, let me tell you, The Every Show Checklist is a joy to behold and to share with all five members of Good Night, States, as we attempt to check off the forty-seven tasks that must be performed before, during, and after Every Show.

What can I say about the Calendar, glorious Calendar! At a glance, it brings joy to my misty eyes, sometimes in the form of our lead guitarist’s forthcoming dentist appointment, sometimes the gentle reminder that I missed yet another newspaper’s print deadline and forgot to schedule someone to work for me during our next songwriting session.

I will not omit, however, that there have been dark days. I have, at times, waited not fifteen, nor thirty, but at least forty-five seconds for Gmail to load before finally wandering off in search of some chocolaty snack that would assuage my impatience and despair. However, the care with which you decorate your logo on various holidays and the joy brought to my soul when I recall our drummer falling for your Gprint April Fool’s Day joke mitigate the occasional utter failure to load my precious cargo onto my screen.

And your newest creation: the BARS, the UPLOADING BARS! The ecstasy of watching a file slowly creep its way into my email is second only to the bliss when our van, loaded to the gills with instruments and careening through some unknown crowded megalopolis, screeches to a halt outside the club within MINUTES of Google Maps’ estimated driving time.

Well, what say you, Google? Are you ready to listen? Are your ears saying, “I’m Feeling Lucky”? Get ready for the glorious sounds of Good Night, States, the melodies that have melted the hearts of SPIN online magazine, dozens of bloggers, and show attendees throughout the Northeast. Google us, Google. You’ll see. We’re attempting to take over the internet, thanks, in part, to your glittering portfolio of products.

Your Google Friends Forever (GFFE),
Good Night, States
www.goodnightstates.com

So, any questions?

Megan here, reporting live from the Franktuary kitchen.

This weekend, 2/3 of Team Pittsburgh will head out to New Jersey to learn some new songs and program the newest addition to our gear family, a Roland SH-201 synthesizer, which will replace the Roland Jupiter 6 for live performance. (The other third of Team Pittsburgh will remain in town chillin’ with Baby Jack, the newest addition to our people family, who is just hitting double digits of days old.) The new synth weighs something like 6 pounds - the same as Jack! - and can actually be lifted by my own small self. It also has motion control capacity in a gadget called The D Beam. Wave your hand over The D Beam, and you are manipulating volume and frequency. Or at least space and time. Actually, I’m not really sure how it works. Such modern day wizardry!

Mostly I am excited to no longer travel with the Jupe, a piece of analog synth history that has long desired retirement to the safe haven of a recording studio. Now I will be able to load my own gear, and add even more spastic arm and hand movements to our live show. And soon, Steve will build me a giant keyboard that I play with both feet, sort of like Tom Hanks in that movie I wasn’t allowed to watch as a child.

Speaking of our live show, don’t forget that Good Night, States is playing at the Thunderbird with two great bands, Middle Distance Runner and Eulogies, next weekend: Friday, March 27, 9 pm. The Thunderbird has consistently provided us with a great sound experience, the stage is just the right amount of small without being cramped, and the beer selection is pretty great. Arrive early and you can sit in the balcony and throw things at us!

My garden is slowly dying. It dawned on me yesterday as I harvested a handful of cereal box textured green beans bound straight for the compost bin. There is an invisible enemy wreaking havoc on those beans, the squash pollinated indecisively, the herbs simply refuse to grow, and the tomatoes are all falling off the vine half-blackened underneath.

I want to blame it all on slugs, those nasty leopard print nocturnal villains. At least then I could point the finger at my laziness to simply purchase some cheap beer and set it out in a tin can. I don’t really want to spend any money on cheap beer, and there’s the hope that some hipster friend will invite me to a party where I can wait til everyone gets drunk and then sneak a giant can of PBR out to the car. When it comes to crappy beer, I’d almost rather light some money on fire and see if the flames are a better slug deterrent. It would save me the trouble of finding a tin can.

All that is to say that sometimes you think you’re really good at something when, bang, your beans die, or your basil withers, or you hear your musical aptitudes captured on tape in a way that makes you decide they are musical ineptitudes and how on earth did you convince yourself that you should be singing live ever? I won’t be so transparent as to point your web browser to the recording in question, as the assignment for blogging this week was to “Make People Want To Come To Our Show,” but I will mention the unique results of this round of self-awareness which are to a.) quit the amphetamines and b.) conjure up a voice teacher. Lessons start in 2 weeks, but until then I am retraining my ADD tormented cognitive pathways to respond to coffee, which comes with the exciting bonus of restructuring my weak and indecisive digestive plumbing.

It has been a melancholy few days, then, feeling rather dramatically that everything I touch turns into a pile of dust. Or at least a pile of compost. Singing compost, actually. There’s an image for you.

From a very young age I have understood that special bands have albums I can associate with deeply personal, wordless emotions: Margot & the Nuclear So and So’s pack a one-two punch of despair and elation on The Dust of Retreat; Wilco’s Summerteeth is for lying on my back in the dark at the end of a long, loveless day; and Matt Pond PA’s Emblems delicately encapsulates the end of a heartbreakingly perfect summer before fall and grown-upness set in. I’m always amazed, then, when our songs provide enough leverage to pull me out of a deep funk. How many times have I played Long Coats, No Energy over and over and over? “Not nearly enough!” say my bandmates. Yet something in the music of Good Night, States has patched this week’s leaks in my under-filled container of self-assurance.

So whether you’ve been living on the heights, bogged in despondency, or are just surviving a khaki-pants bland sort of existence, I do hope you’ll come see us on Saturday, and that some part of the evening will change, if even for a few minutes, the way you feel about life. And if you can’t make it, well, maybe you should join me in my garden infirmary sometime. We can sing out of tune and watch the slugs get drunk.

We spent the weekend putting finishing touches on our June 1st release and beginning the song you will meet for yourself in July. I had the pleasure of playing a fantastic Baldwin baby grand, thanks to our friends Katie and Martin. This particular piano was perfectly in tune and with an action that I would describe as primly starched collar yet surprisingly easy going, which wasn’t a problem, until we attempted to execute a glissando.

The middle 2 1/2 octaves simply refused to yield to any sideways pressure on the keys.

If you have a piano and a friend at your disposal, you can perform the following exercise to feel as if you were there with us on Friday night: begin at the high end of the keyboard and glissando to the E which is a tenth above middle C. When you reach that E, have your friend depress firmly the sides of your head with the lower part of his palms, at the middle of your skull, to disable your hearing. Meanwhile, you remain glissandoing until the B two octaves below middle C, at which point your friend releases your ears and you continue to ravage your finger down to the very last note on the keyboard. Neat, huh? Anyone who sends footage of themselves performing this act of solidarity with the Good Night, States keyboarding department will certainly receive some great door prize. For example, the piano currently in our living room. If you can get it out the door.

Recording has some significant ups and downs for me, spanning the heights of sheer jubilation that I AM ACTUALLY DOING THIS!! at the age of twenty seven, really playing rock and roll that other people will hear - and maybe even like - perhaps for years and years to come, to the lows of timing my nerve-induced intestinal dysfunction so that it looks like it was Steve’s idea to take a break from the sound board where he has just listened to forty three attempts at the pre-chorus and while he’s having a slug of some hard liquor, I’ll just run to the bathroom, la di da, and be there for twenty minutes attempting to keep my malodorous misfortune to myself so as not to dispatch my compatriots on the other end of the headphones.

I have been in this band just over one year, and it has only recently occurred to me that the constant exposure to the recording process has caught me up on a lot of skills that might normally take much longer to evolve. Were I to play in any other band, any other normal, hard drinking, tattoo laden, good-times-havin’ rock band, instead of our workaholic, long-distance, perfectionist, goal-driven, music mastery focused little family here, I would probably have one album under my belt at this point, and therefore about one week of recording experience to my name. Good Night, States has taught me a phrase on which will.i.am spent a lot of money, but far fewer editing hours than Steve is spending on our upcoming release, to spew, namely: Yes. We. Can.

And. Nearly. Every. Weekend. Too.

My confidence seems to be growing, along with it a distinct sense of hope about my tiny, fragile, late-bloomer musicianship, and also I now take legal amphetamines which certainly make the world extra bright!

Oh Yeah! She Wrote A Blog Post!