The Way We Found It
recorded at Beltayne Studios, Williamstown, VT in January 2006
Released April 2007

Syd - guitars, vocals
Dylan Allen - bass, guitars, vocals
Sam Smith - drums, keys, vocals

In the winter of 2006 I met with Justin Galenski, who had been around my hometown--he had gear, a cheap studio in a barn out in the woods in Vermont and he had a couple of free weeks to do the basic tracking. So we went for it and in January of 2006--we woke up at 9 AM on a Friday and never looked back.

The sessions were such a rush, it was just a creative...spasm. Everything was up for debate, but in a way that pushed us further ahead, it didn't bog us down. If we heard a guitar part, we sang it until someone could play it, it didn't matter who. If we heard an organ part we sat down and played it. Like kids in a candy shop. But luckily we had overdosed on candy once before and we knew we didn't want to go that far again. That restraint was really useful. Fundamentally, I think the songwriting was really thought through but the rest of it wasn't and that was a good thing. Justin just laid back behind a curtain in the recording booth and let the tape roll. Just what we needed.

The basic idea was spontaneity---"Lady" was written at soundcheck. "All Time High" was originally a guitar song that I remember demoing during a rainstorm in the late winter. Covering Gregory Douglass's song "Sail The Sea" was an idea that came to Sam late one night---he dragged me into a room and said, "check this out, I think this would be really cool." When Sam thinks something is going to be cool, you listen. The interlude pieces ("Interlude" and "Prelude") were interesting too--"Interlude" is something I had played as a wedding march at a couple of friends weddings, really happy to have that one on tape. "It Was You" was one of those magical recording moments. I was in an isolation booth with the guitar and the guys were in the other room playing bass and drums. We couldn't see each other but it didn't matter.

After we left those original sessions and as the mixing process started to drag on and the whole thing started to get really complicated I decided to call the record "The Way We Found It" because I knew it was going to teach me something. It was the first record I felt like 100% of myself was going into, the first time I played electric on record, it was the record Dylan learned to be a guitar player on (while still playing all the bass parts), it was just one lesson after another for all of us. One of those lessons was that sometimes you have to wait for the right time, and you don't get to decide when that's going to be.

We're all incredibly proud of this record and can't wait to see where these songs take us next...