It's finally here!  Our first release!
      After weeks of writing, rehearsing, preparation, recording, re-recording, note taking, mixing, remixing, and editing- we are finally able to share our new sound with the world.  
It's been a journey.  If you've ever built anything of significance in your life-  yeah, it's like that.  

So why did we call it Horseshoes, Hand Grenades, and Bikinis?  

Well, maybe you've heard the phrase:  Almost only counts in horseshoes, hand grenades and bikinis.  

This is our “almost” album.  We're not exactly where we want to be yet, but we're almost there and it still counts! But how could we be there,  this is just our beginning.  

Six months ago we knew we wanted to record an EP.  From the jump we always agreed we were going to be an all original band, performing only original music with the very occasional cover.  Most of my projects to date have been as a “cover artist”, performing songs made famous by other original artists.  There are a lot of truly amazing tunes out there, written by songwriters and composers with mad skills.  Spinning in their orbit has kept me occupied and entranced for a long time.  But after awhile, I found myself wanting to not just witness the grand conversation of song.  I wanted to join it.  There is, however, a professional leap from cover band to original artist. They are not the same bird.  

Cover artists are paid by bar and other venue owners to entertain their patrons, and ultimately sell more liquor. There's a built in audience for these venues that expects to hear their favorite tunes while partying with their friends.  If it's not fun in a familiar way they'll probably leave and drink elsewhere.  Successful cover bands are usually skilled at playing an enormous catalog of different tunes, and make even the most diverse crowd happy. In this category also falls the stylized band that only plays a specific time frame or subset such as Motown, and also the tribute band that plays only tunes by one specific artist.  

Original artists are their own product.  The focus isn't about the venue's built in crowd.  It isn't about the venue at all. It's about the fans of the artist. Fans drive everything in original music.  The artist only gets paid by the fans. The audience is only made up of the fans.  The drinks served are what the fans want to drink.  The atmosphere is whatever makes the fans want to come back.  Being a fan of original music is being in control of your own economy.  But that's a blog post for another time.  For now it's important to know that we couldn't be original artists without fans, and we couldn't have fans without an EP release.  

So this EP represents the culmination of a professional redirect, a letter to the grand conversation of songwriting and composing, and an invitation to everyone we can find to join us as our fans!  That's why it's so important. There is a deep foundation built into this opus. That's why we worked so long and hard to get it as perfect as we could.  It counts tremendously.  But it's only “almost” there, because we didn't have you with us yet.  Thank God you found us.  Now that you're here….  well, fasten your seat belts.  This @%*#'s about to get wild.    - Written by Amanda