Tuesday the 31st, Halloween will be our last show, or at least our last with this lineup. Launchpad $5.

Well, it isn't all totally figured out, so don't start lining up at my door or anything, but: Looks like we will be in the market for a new guitar player soon here. Scheduling with our current lineup has become impossible and the lack of practice, commitment and communication has been hurting our performance and straining personal relations. Luckily this seems like it will go down with a minimum of bad feelings or hassle.

Rachel will probably be moving to lead on our old stuff and we might be a four or three piece for a while. Current lineup will play Tuesday and we will probably do some kind of big send off or something so there are no set dates. We'll be keeping some of our old songs but looking to write new stuff.

What we have: a new, really good cd coming out, a stack of merch, lots of press, the goodwill of audiences/venues/bands in this town, openness in regard to songwriting and styles.

What we need: someone with a flexible schedule, their own equipment and transportation, reliablity, email/cell phone that gets answered, ideally some harmonizing or even more vocals, enthusiasm, etc.

Drug and or alcohol problems a must (within reason- no meth).

In other news, my other band, The Dead Electric, is also looking for a guitar player and singer or guitar player/singer.

Holy crap!! So Rexx is cutting loose, eh? Good luck to all of you. I hope in my heart of hearts RGTH isn't going away, though. You are supurb, and it'd be a shame to lose all those wonderful songs and performances. But, you know, you've got to so what you've got to do. (And, most likely, I'll try to steal Rachel for that penultimate girl band I've been fantisizing about. Through my tears, of course.)

And happy birthday, Levi! Your complimentary drink on me is redeemable until you turn 31.

Yeah, we'll still be playing.. I hope. We still have a cd to put out, so we are kinda on the hook. We haven't been able to practice in fucking months though, and barely remember our songs (even though we are still sick of them anyway and haven't been able to write new stuff in even longer since we spent months recording before we all drifted away).

It's really hard to be a five-piece. How the fuck can anyone get every member on the same page for practices, shows, etc? It's hard enought to get two people to agree on anything/everything, and I've been tired of whip-cracking for a long time now. Hopefully a leaner machine will help us pick it up some.

And thanks!

Man, I know how that is. It's a miracle if Jeff doesn't cancel practice more than once in a fortnight. (Sorry, Jeff. You do bail out of practice a lot.) In fact, we could probably stand to tighten up on the whip-cracking.

Hey, are you going to be home this afternoon? Ash and I would love to come get our delicious shirts and buttons from you if it's cool!

We are playing tonight. In fact we will be a four piece already. Rachel learned all of Rexx's parts IN ONE NIGHT.

Caustic Lye and The Riptorn! $5 gets you a pass to 15 venues! Costume contest!

Have you thought of just having one guitarist?

Yes. That's what we will be doing tonight and for the near future. We may just stick with it. I personally like to write for more instruments: most of the music I listen too is stripped down, but like most songwriters I have a lot of ideas and compose in my head elaborate five-part harmonies and interplays between instruments. Since we've never really pulled that off anyway I think simpler will at least work. I've been in plenty of power trios, and it's more work on stage to pull off a full sound. Stage isn't really our problem though, except where not practicing and writing and not being able to find a schedule to actually play the damn shows comes in. And that's the big issue right now. Honestly at this point I'd rather just be able to get more DONE and get it done faster. Also, our direction with the bigger band was getting a little indie rock-ish, and while I don't think we'll be going back to straight punk I'm looking forward to tighter, faster, cleaner material without all the bells and whistle bullshit.