Last time I wrote it was last year. What a winter. You all are definitely due for an update as to our band’s world and our progress with the recording many of you so generously supported.

First things first, we have a new band name. Modern Kin. With all the new music, the time for development and with the adjustment from 4 to 3 band members we felt a new season beginning.

I am happy, and actually kind of shocked, to be able to say that our new record will be finished(!!) next week. I’m listening to the mixes now and feel tremendously gratified and happy here in my little basement room where I wrote much of the music and where we elbow-greased it into whatever shape we imagined. It has been a real process getting here, and a surprising one even. I’ve been thinking about it the past couple weeks, and with having grown accustomed to being in the middle of the project I kind-of can’t believe we’re emerging from it/with it? We initially thought we might be in a position to release this record as early as this month, March – 2013. Now we know it will not be this month, not only because of hazards and delays, but also because the songs required it. In the past I have rushed things along, feeling constraints of “momentum” or industry concerns or even my own impatience, but this time I was not willing to be hurried. And I had help not-hurrying. It felt right to let the songs breathe, to give time for the band to grow, and to give time for the myriad of decisions that must be made in making a record. It’s a debut.

I digress. It’s hard to catch you all up on a process that has been this intense and messy without digressing. But I do want to relate some of the gory details to you our world, our friends, and especially you all who supported our kickstarter fundraising last year and made this thing the coming reality it is. I am anxious for you all to hear it, and I wonder what it is. Once we have the finished record in our hands we’ll know more about release and be able to let you kickstarter pre-orders know when you should look in the mailbox.

We’re alive and well. I’ll have more news, and music soon! New is right, next. Keep an eye out for the Modern Kin pages/sites/etc coming your way. Twitter is here already.

Thank you all. More soon,

Click the photo to hear the session

This past March, on the last day of our east coast / midwest tour we stopped off in Rock Island, IL to meet up with the folks at Daytrotter to record a Session. We left early in the morning from St Louis, MO and drove the country roads to get to the Daytrotter Studios by noon. We were late but everything turned out well. The Daytrotter staff is kind and professional – they have a great thing going in this little town, and have become somewhat of a bloggers mecca for finding out about new young bands out on the road.

We are proud to present this session, released today. We recorded four songs: two of them classics from our last album, one titled “Abandon”, and one titled “Groundwire” which should both find their way onto our next record. Listen in here

We’re currently raising funds to make the next record in one of our favorite studios “The Hangar” in Sacramento this August. If you’re interested in helping us pay for it up front, please visit our Kickstarter site – http://kck.st/L5Xbal and we will be sure to send you something in return once the record is finished. As always, thanks for your support and belief.

There will be no advance tickets for any of these shows but if you’d like to hear some of the songs we’ve been working on, head down to Ella St or Sophia’s and catch a glimpse of the new record! We look forward to sharing it.

If you’re interested in pre-ordering the new record and helping us raise funds for our new record you can rally over here: http://kck.st/L5Xbal

Today we enter into the world of raising funds for our next record. Our good friends at Lawrence, KS High School’s Room 125 Productions put together the above video for us and features early versions of a couple of the tracks we plan to record. One titled “Eat” which we recorded in the afternoon earlier this year, and another live version of a song titled “Abandon.” Since returning from our most recent tour, we’ve been plugging away writing, learning, rewriting and relearning the songs for a new full length which we plan to release in the early spring of next year. We are enlisting the help of fundraising website Kickstarter to help us get the funds we need to invest for the recording. Check out the video, and visit the Kickstarter page to see all of the details!

Thanks for being a part of our community.