Full Time Smile Stories (The Album)

Unpublished blurbs from 2021

Photo by Violet Teegardin

The Album

Many of the songs on Full Time Smile were 2-3 years old at the the time we recorded them. After recording Friends, we were accumulating so may new tunes, and there were several that we played every night when we toured the year Friends came out. Songs like “Cherry” and “Most Likely Never Going to Die” started to have a character of their own the more the band played together. George joined the band that summer after filling in for Noah on a tour. It was definitely a big period of creativity and comradere, and the songs we were playing during that time just started to sound like the band (ok not The Band, but we wish) and only the band performing all together could convey what the songs meant to us. I think that’s why we waited so long for this one - it was really important for us all to be represented on the record, and for every representation of a song to be conveyed by the same 5 people.

Silverdays contained a bunch of straggler songs that were written around the same time as Full Time Smile, but focused on different themes or differed musically in some way. Originally it was something to keep us busy while Noah, Bryce and I lived together during the pandemic in 2020. We didn’t want to record any of the songs on Full Time Smile without George and Julia in the room, because we knew they wouldn’t be the most honest versions of those songs.

These songs and the time surrounding them felt different than any of the others projects we’ve worked on. We all went through large personal changes at converging times and grew a lot closer because of that. We were writing and playing these songs while experiencing our next phases, and I think it’s reflected in the recordings. It’s rewarding to remember all those things when we hear it.

The original track listing for the album adhered pretty closely to the “beginning, middle, and end” sort of linearity that comes with a story of transition. I guess “before, during, and after” is a more accurate way of describing it. Later on, the songs all got shuffled around to make it more cohesive musically, and we feel like it’s better that way. If you’re told what came first and what came last, everything in the order that it happened, there’s no mystery. When we listen to music we like that mystery. We like to solve that puzzle.