Vinyl LP available at immigrantsunrecords.merchnow.com.

The recording session for Joshua’s first EP back in 1996 is sort of a blur. I remember I was playing a Hamer telecaster through a crate amplifier, and was concerned that the guitar would sound “cheap”. We didn’t track to a click, which is painfully apparent. I remember feeling like our drummer Mike (Mathisen) was playing all the songs too fast, but in the end it sort of worked. I kept stopping the takes and asking him to dial down the tempos a bit, but each time we started a new take it was still just as fast as the previous, so I just conceded to his instincts. Our friend Kip Count was sort of in and out of the band at the time. For a portion of this recording, he was “in”. He sang background vocals on the song “Kickstand”, he may have actually made it onto another song or two but I can’t recall. That’s distinctively his voice on the “now I know” harmony in “Kickstand”, and in the bridge as well. He was also the second guitarist for the recording of our first album “A Whole New Theory”, but then decided to leave the band before things got too heavy. Meaning, too committed and serious. I respected his decision at the time but it was difficult to see him go. Back to the EP, well… the obvious thing is that the vocals were mixed incredibly too loud! I can’t remember exactly what our motivation was for making that decision, but I think they ended up being as loud as they were because the engineers at the studio were trying to teach us a lesson. We were young, opinionated, a bit bossy, and probably annoying. And sonically clueless! We thought we knew a lot more than we actually did, like most early 20 somethings. I can say for sure that I was using Oasis as an example when trying to justify all the reverb on the vocals, pointing out how much reverb was on “What’s The Story Morning Glory”. I don’t know if there’s a less relevant reference to what Joshua was doing musically, but it was just something that I wanted to get close to. Speaking of the vocals, I remember learning something critical during that recording session which was, when I wore headphones on both ears while recording vocals, the pitch of the music would go sharp in my head. So I was having a lot of problems initially singing in key. I actually needed to go back to the studio a second day to redo most of the vocals because we weren’t happy with the first pass. I was flat a majority of the time and then I discovered accidentally that when I pulled one side of the headphones off of my ears, the pitch of the music totally changed.

I think that Sean and Pat from Immigrant Sun were initially surprised at how much the band had changed from the demo that earned their interest to this… and were maybe a little concerned? I think Pat’s quote to me was “you guys used to rock, what happened?”. Ultimately though, the CD was a big success for the band, and Immigrant Sun did such a great job getting that record distributed all over the world. The moment of realization came the day I got a letter from somebody in Germany telling me how much that record meant to them, and the difficult time it had helped them through (my home address was included in the insert booklet, it was a different time). That really hit a nerve and opened my eyes to how real this all was, and how we were really taking steps towards being a successful band.

We ultimately fell a little short of what we aspired towards, but there are a multitude of reasons why that is, and thousands of bands who have a similar story. The Immigrant Sun period was an incredible time for us, and Sean and Pat had a huge role in cultivating all of the “life shaping” experiences we subsequently got to have. The obnoxiously loud vocals, the squawky guitar tone, the sped up songs... all these idiosyncrasies compiled and formed one of our favorite recordings in the band’s history. We’re humbled and excited that it’s once again seeing the light of day. We were on the “verge”, and I think that comes to the surface. We hope it will bring back fond feelings for some, and maybe make a few new connections along the way. Thank you for listening, again.

As for the songs from the demo, It's no secret that Quicksand, Jawbox, Shift, and maybe even Into Another were heavy on our minds when we wrote those. This was the second demo we recorded under the name Joshua. The first was a 2 song demo called "Guest" with a fantastic guitarist called Jason Strickland who was the principal creative force behind the band in the early days. At some point after Jay moved away, my friend Jason Horton sat me down and played me Jawbox "Grippe", Shudder To Think "Get Your Goat”, and the first Quicksand seven inch, and I was forever changed. We had found our original drummer Chris Cotter via a "drummer wanted" ad that I placed in the local newspaper. The songs were recorded in one afternoon in Keith's parents basement, that's about all I can remember.

- Dan Coutant