2006 was an interesting year for The English Department. We got off to a fast start with the release of our debut EP entitled, “Stick Figures”. We’d recorded it in the summer/fall of ’05 with producer
Jon Kaplan. “Stick Figures” was our first real attempt at committing our sound to tape. It’s a pretty good snap-shot of our live show at that time. We made it our mission to record an EP that we could replicate live. That meant lots of rehearsing, very few overdubs and all the recording was done live in the studio. It was released in March and the packaging featured the artwork of the amazing Daria Tessler.
We had a CD release party on April 18th at the Knitting Factory in NY with two of our favorite bands,
Mellowdrone and
Lola Ray. It was one of our best shows ever – and was captured on film by
Haystack.com. We love playing the Knitting Factory. It’s one of the few all ages clubs in New York – and it always sounds great. If we could change one thing about being a band in New York, it would definitely be the lack of all ages clubs. It seems so stupid to us that at 18 you’re old enough to vote, drive and serve in the military, but still too young to see The English Department.
It was around this time that we were contacted by Kengo Mikami, the head of A&R at
Star Mole Records in Japan. This set in motion an incredible few months, punctuated by the recording of our first full length record, “A History of Doubt” in June. We’d written a few songs since recording “Stick Figures” that we were way stoked on – and we couldn’t wait to record them for our debut album. We also dusted off a couple of songs from our original demo that we’d made at the end of 2004. These songs had never been recorded properly, and we thought it would be a good idea to give them the rock star treatment. So along with newer songs like “Baby Fat”, “The Last Time Ever You Saw My Face” and “On Your Knees”, we brought back some early favorites, “No One Sees The Radio” and “Burn The Learned”.
We spent three amazing days at a recording studio in upstate New York called
Clubhouse Music. We had a blast living and working at the studio for a few days. Though all of the basic tracks were recorded live, we approached this record with a different philosophy than we did with “Stick Figures”. We wanted to make a record that sounded HUGE. Not that we weren’t happy with the EP, it’s just that we didn’t get the chance to flesh those songs out – to give them texture and color. With Jon Kaplan producing and engineering again, we set out to make the best record we could. To say that we’re happy with how “A History of Doubt” turned out would be an understatement.
In July we suffered a set back when our long time drummer and friend Dan Mintzer left the band. We played our last show together on July 5th at Club Midway in the East Village. This show was memorable for a few reasons:
1) Haystack.com aired some of the footage they’d shot of us at our CD release party back in April
2) It was our last show with Dan ☹
3) I got food poisoned a mere three hours before taking the stage (ugh…salmon)
We played the show regardless – and I managed to make it through the entire set without barfing on anybody (though I promise to indulge any fan who wishes I had).
The summer of ’06 was a frustrating one for us. Without a drummer, there wasn’t much we could do. We moved in with our good friends,
The Rinse, which meant we had a kick ass practice space, but we were of course without a drummer. Justin and I spent as much time as we could at Casa De Rinse y English Department – some of it productive, much of it hair splitting. We auditioned fifteen potential drummers. It went from the sublime to the ridiculous. A couple of guys were good, but the wrong fit – a few guys were bad, but most were terrible. There’s nothing quite so infuriating as playing the same three songs over and over again with people who are just butchering your music. Justin and I definitely began to lose faith. When playing your own music isn’t fun – it SUCKS. We were freaking out. We had a new record that was going to be released in Japan and some upcoming shows (including the first ever DAM! Festival in Washington, DC in October) and no drummer. Then in late September, we met Brett “Cosmo” Thorngren.
Cosmo pretty much changed everything. Not only is he an amazing drummer – he’s also a good dude, one who loves to play drums, and one who loves to play our music. From the first minute we played together we knew it was going to work. We got together a few more times and started to put a set together for our debut show with the new dude at Union Pool with
Falcon. It was a great night – and the first of a few memorable shows to close out the year.
The following week the three we took our newly fashioned show to DC for the first ever
DAM! Festival. We played at the Velvet Lounge to a pretty good crowd – thanks to the press we got that week in DC (like
this or
this or
this). We debuted a brand new song that night, “How Do You Sleep”, which is the first song we’d written since Cosmo joined the band, and is also the only song ever written about two ex-girlfriends, a US president and Kurt Cobain.
We also began work on the packaging for “A History of Doubt”. This time, we decided that we wanted a provocative image for the cover. We knew we wanted a photograph, but we didn’t have a concept. We spent some time brainstorming with designer extraordinaire
Richard Bloom. We came up with a concept that we all loved. We wanted to combine the album title with the “academic” theme of our band name. It led us to those black and white images from the 50’s of school children sitting under their desks during air raid drills. The idea that a school desk could protect a child from a nuclear bomb is totally absurd. We thought it would be a really striking image to take that concept and put it in a different context. So, we spent an afternoon walking around Brooklyn with a school desk I bought on Craig’s List for $12, our friend
Sarah Bereza (who took both the album cover photos and the band photos) and Eli Krauss – the nephew of Justin’s girlfriend Gabby. We took loads of photos of him sitting under the desk in all sorts of locations. When we stumbled upon a school playground, we knew we’d found the perfect spot. We love the image – it’s absurd and provocative. A child, hiding under a desk outside perfectly captured “A History of Doubt” to us. This is what it looks like:
Sarah had a concept for the new band photos that we also really liked. She knew of a big wall in Williamsburg (Brooklyn, not Colonial…) on a deserted street that we could write all over. We each chose a favorite book and wrote excerpts from it on the wall with huge blocks of charcoal. We then stood in front of the wall and she took pictures of us. It’s hard to see what’s written, but we still love the concept. Here’s a couple of pics:
With all of the packaging created, we began work on our first ever video. Kengo and the Star Mole team had decided that “You Don’t Know Anything About Me” would be the first single in Japan, so that’s what we made the video for. It was directed by our friend Matt Ornstein and shot entirely at our practice space. It’s basically a performance video – but also includes both projected images of a bare light bulb we shot in my apartment and an actual bulb that we hung from the ceiling at the space. We think it looks pretty rad (check it
here )
We figured shooting the video would be enough excitement for one week. That is until we were offered the opportunity to play at an after-party for the Baja 1000 (a 1000 mile off-road race through the desert) in Baja, Mexico. This was definitely the most surreal three days of the year. We were flown to Cabo San Lucas and then met by a pilot named Julio who flew us in a little plane to the resort we were playing/staying at. Here’s us with Julio:
Here’s a good idea of how small the plane was. Check out how much taller Cosmo is than our flying machine:
Here’s us in the plane with Jim who organized the trip (he’s the keyboard player from 90’s Alt-Rock band, Dishwalla):
Damn that shit was small. You can see the top of my guitar just over Justin’s head. All of our gear was on the seat next to me. Good times…
We spent three days eating and drinking for free and were treated like absolute kings. We stayed in a villa right on the Sea of Cortez that is apparently owned by the kicker of the New Orleans Saints. Even the kickers can afford multi-million dollar villas on the Sea of Cortez. Look at this view:
Here’s the outside of the house:
This is one of the trucks from the race:
Here’s us by the beach:
This is the stage we played on:
Here’s The English Department live from the
Bahia De Los Suenos in Baja, Mexico:
We returned from Mexico and took the week off for Thanksgiving. We regrouped in Brooklyn at the beginning of December to work on a new song and to prepare for our final show of the year at The Annex on December 21. We went out with a bang, and a lot of smoke. The smoke machine on stage was out of control. It was so smoky in fact that at times it felt as if we were playing in a swamp that was on fire. It literally made Cosmo cry. But, the crowd dug it, and if this photo is to be believed, we looked like KISS.
It’s been a fantastic year. We thank all of you for your support. It means everything to us. We hope you all have a happy new year – and that you keep up with us in 2007. Our record will be available in Japan on January 24th, details to follow about the US release.
See you all soon.
Love.
-d
