Sinaloa

It's been a while since we’ve heard anything from Sinaloa, so I didn't even expect to get any reply when writing on the band's email. To my surprise, I got one and very quickly. Drummer Luke Pearson nicely agreed to take a look back on the band's rich history and to tell a bit about what's going on with the band right now. Result came out as a detailed, inspiring, sometimes funny and almost touching at its conclusion story
  
"Sinaloa is a band rooted in the gradual uncovering of new things.  When we started playing music together in 2001 we all picked up new instruments, pretty much for the first time, and we learned to play them as a unit.  We were writing songs and playing shows on an equal, introductory, footing.  For that reason I don't think most aspects of being in a band have ever come very natural or easy for us, other than an unrelenting unity.  We've had to fight through the process of learning to play and write music.  In that plodding approach, where our instruments were never smooth van halen extensions of ourselves, we found unique ways of doing things.  At the beginning, we had energy and we had ideas.  It took some ad hoc construction to turn that into something. As years went by, and we dedicated thousands of hours to this singular project, we slowly became more comfortable with the processes of making music, and better able to control it – but are still descended from those odd amateurish discoveries that characterizes who we are as noisemakers.  The way we have made records falls in line with that history.

    

 From 2002 into 2003, Brendan and I had moved into an apartment that had a basement in Somerville (a metro suburb of Boston).  With some blankets and foam hung haphazardly over the entrances, we felt we had put enough effort into not bothering the neighbors and proceeded to have full-volume practices there.

    This was a period, as a band, without much of a filter and without much of a plan.  All sparks were songs, and there was no history to worry about repeating or escaping.  It's a great time for a band, and a lot of music gets made very quickly. 

         We fell into a way of writing songs right at the beginning, and have essentially continued with the same methodology through today.  We have never had a solitary songwriter – the whole unit is the songwriter.  From the start, we wrote songs by playing all together.  No one ever brings a fully formed song to the band.  Even if someone did do that, or could do that, the other two people likely wouldn't  be able to play it, as written, and it would turn into something entirely different.  So, someone would come up with one part or idea and would play it until the other two people could fill in their parts before moving on to the next part or idea.  The initial bit could come from any one of us.  It could be a guitar part, a drum part, or just a general parameter.  Pete and Brendan document new parts into a riff book / moleskin – Brendan using the standard tablature style, Pete inventing his own method which involved little drawings of hands on the fretboard.                                                   

Each part usually had a description to help us remember what it was supposed to be or sound like.  For example:

                   MEANDERING

                   DRIVING

                   SHELLAC

                   REGGAETON

                   MEOW

                   OLD STEADY

                   DIANOGAH

                   NOTEY

                   LAME

                   JUST LEARNED TO PLAY

                   RED SCARE

                   TERABITHIA

                   SHOTMAKER

                   CHOPPY

                   NOODLES

                  

   The music has always been written first, with the three of us each bringing lyrics later.    Almost every song has a working title assigned to it, usually a joke, until a real title must be written down with some finality in the album layout.  Many of them had accompanying drawings, in the riff notebook.   I don't think any of these working titles have ever been uttered outside the band, before now:

                   TECHNICAL FOUL

                   CHOPPIN' BROCCOLAY

                   ENCYCLOBRENIA

                   HANGIN' BRAIN

                   PERVERT HOOVER

                   PEEWEE

                   BUTTS NOT BOMBS

                   LUNGWISH

                   FROG TIMES

                   THE COREYS

                   DUNG IN A HOLE

                   9 TILL ?

                   LOOK AT THESE AHOLES

                   MOSHOSHONAH

                   LAME-O

                   KISS MY PHISH

                          

               

                  

      FATHERS AND SONS

       In February of 2003 we drove out to Dead Air Studios in Amherst, MA – carrying all of the early songs we had written as a band – to record Fathers and Sons.  It was the coldest weekend in the history of ever.  Like I presume most first albums feel for most bands, this felt big and important.  It maybe even felt a little bit beyond what we thought we were ready to accomplish, but we were excited and determined to throw everything we had into it.  Brendan and I had been in studios with an earlier band (Ettil Vrye), playing other instruments, and Sinaloa had recorded a demo (with friend Mike Law) and various home 4-track trials – but this was something new, and felt like a solidification of this band as a valid undertaking.  A friend of ours (Zach Baron) had asked us about making a record, which also lent it some credibility.  So it wasn't JUST US that thought this jumble of noise was worthwhile?  The freezing temperatures ranged from arctic outside to permafrost in the live room to frigid in the control room, which added to the sense of adventure. 

         Will Killingsworth was, and continues to be, a great friend.  His Dead Air Studios were a perfect place for us to make a record without intimidation or embarrassment.  I think at any other studio, at that time, we would have made a scared record with muted ideas and apologetic playing.  This was a good place to make the earnest, frantic, guileless record we made.  An honest record, for what the band was at that moment.  At that time the studio was still at the Montague St. house - which was filled with other friends, adding to the feeling of comfort and community.  From Will we learned about shootouts to find the right instrument or microphone (emphasized with a loud SHOOT-OUT!), and the concept of “LB” - ie pretending to turn a knob a “little bit” to trick someone into thinking their request for more guitar/treble/bass/cowbell was being accommodated, when actually it wasn't - so please just stop whining so we can get this done already.   

         We came with our own studio “tricks”, too.  Brendan (I think from reading recording books) wanted to try building a tunnel of blankets from the kick drum out to a microphone a few feet away.  We brought a 5 foot piece of metal piping to record vocals through. Both were done with minor eye rolling, to minimal effect – but they were done.  We brought a trumpet, slide whistle, metallophone, and melodica – all of which made it on the record.  The kids living at the house contributed yelling on An Aberration and snapping on Order by Border.  Without a bass player, we took turns with bass for each song.  Our friend AJ played bass on Night Noise.  Will played bass on Silenced Through Justice.  One song even included a bass “handoff” with consecutive parts being played by different people.  Hello to Goodnight had the pedals of an organ played as the bass.  It takes a village to play bass on a Sinaloa record.

    We've always written mostly about things that mattered to us, personally, and specifically.  We have always included explanations of each song with the lyrics - something we carried on from our friends in the band Anton Bordman.  I've seen some criticism of that over the years.  For some it takes away the ability of the listener to create their own meaning in a song.  I can understand that, and the value of that open-endedness. However, what we write is not necessarily designed for subjective interpretations or to mean different things to different people.  We have ideas we want to get across.  We want the freedom to write about them abstractly, sometimes, but still want to explain what the abstraction intended to convey.  It's possible that we are limiting the scope or the impact of certain songs, but we think it's important to share things that are particular, personal, and clearly identified.  Someone listening who can relate to it will be relating to something that isn't vague.  They aren't Springsteen singing Born to Run, eliciting feelings that almost everyone shares.  They aren't songs meant to be universal or timeless.  They are songs that look to make connections that are tangible.

          Up until recently I thought of this record as a stepping stone more than a fully realized album.  There were always songs and moments I continued to love, but the hazy general feeling I had about it was that it was clumsy and rough.  Our learning phase, maybe documented a little too early.  Now, though, I think of everything as a learning phase.  Revisiting that record, I'm still excited about our excitement then.  I'm still passionate about our passion.  Songs like Night Noise, which I remember as angry from start to finish, have moments of sweetness that I had forgotten.  We weren't trying to make any specific type of record, but rather were documenting the ideas we had at the time, and the best expression of those ideas we could come up with.  I see the value in what we made.

        

                                              

                                                 FOOTPRINTS ON FLOORBOARDS

      Over the next few years we bounced around from one leaky practice space in Boston to another.   Pipes burst, it rained inside, and our whole creative world had a vague damp smell.  We recorded songs for some split 7”s and compilations – both at Dead Air and with our first attempts to record ourselves.  It is a little difficult to regroup, with songwriting, after a first record.  Everything you had ever written went on the first record, and it was all used up in one moment.  You then have to start from scratch, again.  Not every spark is a song, because you've now set a mile marker and you'd like to go past it.  So it was again through the incremental creation and notation of one part at a time, in a regular routine, that we built new songs.  

We also played lots and lots of shows, both in the Northeast and across the US.  We toured the US for a month in the summer of 2003, the west coast early in 2004, and the midwest in the summer of 2004.  As we became somewhat better players, we started to be more conscious not just of an idea, but the way the idea was constructed and presented.  We looked for ways to be more impactful, and the newer songs were more deliberate than the frantic quirkiness of the first record.

         By the winter of 2005, we had enough new songs to make a second record and the confidence, that comes from playing a ton, to be more studied in our approach.  We actually had more than enough songs, as Drawing in Dirt and Montgomery Express were recorded during these sessions, but were not included on the album. They would be released on split 7”s with Catena Collapse and Life at These Speeds, respectively. We decided to record in Providence, RI at Machines With Magnets – a studio owned and run by Keith Souza.  We knew Keith through mutual friends, and bands he played in, and liked the work he did.  He's a drummer, and his recordings typically had a powerful drum sound – something we thought was important for the new songs we were bringing.  We include bass on recordings, but the songs are written with just guitar and drums – so having drums bring power under the guitars is important, and something we thought Keith was well suited to enhance. Machines also had a 2” tape machine, which really suits drums more than any other recording medium.  

Mike Viele was the main engineer for the record, and the one forced to be patient with the many takes it took to have our playing satisfy our ambition.  Keith was the sounding board for what could be considered finished, and he did the final mixing.  Ursula was the studio dog, and key to the whole operation.  Nothing happened without her approval.

         Footprints on Floorboards was recorded and mixed over two weekends.  We slept in the control room, and maximized our time the way a band paying for their own recordings, and playing music in between 40 hour work weeks, is required to do.  The accommodations were top notch, though – with a little tv and a dvd (or maybe even vhs) of Napoleon Dynamite.  That definitely led to us annoyingly repeating movie quotes nonstop.  Somehow we didn't get sent home.  We again brought a pile of extra instruments borrowed from the school that Pete taught at – percussion doodads, glockenspiels, metallo/xylophones, and other elementary sound makers.  We found out about guitar intonation, and the fact that our guitars could be simultaneously in tune one fret and woefully out of tune on another.  Failing to completely fix that...we called it “character” or “unique” and moved on.   The artful dodge of applying intent after accidents.

         Our songs were more sophisticated, compared to Fathers and Sons.  We wrote with more

purpose.  We started repeating parts more, but not with any concise verse/chorus structure.  The repeats were either extensions of an immediately prior part, with a break in between, or took a long time to get back to – like a train of thought interrupted by a daydream, but then getting back on track.  The songs kept the linear quality of Fathers – traveling from a start to a finish, rather than building something contained and hooky.  We still played parts for long repetitive stretches – enjoying how the feeling of a part can change as it is drawn out longer and longer.  We liked having our songs be off balance, but on Footprints they were more thoughtfully designed, whereas on the first record we simply tried to just randomly pick weird numbers of times to play parts. 

         In an effort to add some depth to the record that we couldn't produce ourselves, we sought out friends from punk bands that played “non-punk” instruments.  Gus Martin from Tiny Hawks and other bands, a tremendous drummer, played double bass on With Our Ears to the Soil, Polar Bears and Cubs, and Regard to Structure.  Ian Gustafson, an excellent guitar player from Pretty Faces, played trombone on Regard to Structure and Static.  Mike Viele helped us “play junk” at the end of November's Unanswered Questions – where we all hit pots and pans and other assorted crap.  The apex our studio indulgence was probably the “oooh oooh” backup vocals on Static.  I don't know if it happened, but I can picture us looking like the We Are the World music video.

         The subject matter on this record was an extension of Fathers and Sons in a way similar to the continuation/progression of the music itself.  Songs like My Hands Hold Fire and November's Unanswered Questions continued political discussions that started with Night Noise and Silenced Through Justice on the first record.  The feelings of loss we were coping with on Hello To Goodnight were still being explored in Polar Bears and Cubs and Only In Dreams.  Observing deviations in the structures of our daily environment in An Aberration extends to seeing patterns in Regard to Structure.  I think our three individual characters and natures are shown most specifically in our lyrics, and looking back I see our interests and values remain similar - but evolve.  I see that the repetition of writing allows for similar ideas to be communicated in new ways – perhaps more artfully, or sometimes just more succinctly.  We make music for ourselves first, but our lyric writing is the aspect of our band most obviously seeking connections with others.  We write about things we want to discuss, and we include explanations because we want to be clear in our intent to forge connections and partners in those dialogs.   

        

                                                                      AMPERE SPLIT

        In the summer of 2005 we found ourselves piled into a van with our friends Ampere, on a “Cannonball Run” across the US to tour the west coast, and back, within 2 weeks.  We were already close and like-minded bands, but that tour formed a bond brought by endless flat prairies, ghost towns, painfully beautiful landscapes and forests, and sharing tight spaces for hundreds of hours.  And peanut butter crackers.  And sweaty clothes.  We decided to make it official and become punk blood brothers and sister by recording a split 12” together. 

     In December of 2005, we (just Sinaloa) went back to Machines With Magnets to record our half of the record.  We were still at a similar place, musically, as on Footprints – but we were conscious of the fact that we would be on the other side of a heavy (with a capital H) band, in Ampere.  We wanted to at least try to match firepower as best we could, and attempt to come up with some rippers.  Having only half a record, too, means less space to work with and a different approach than with a full album.  More distilled, but still cohesive and not just songs slapped together. 

         I think we made that recording in one weekend - again with Mike and Keith.  All of the main instruments were recorded live, together.  A big challenge for 3 people who aren't used to playing all of the way through songs, all together, all correctly.  That did add some energy to things, too.  I think it closed the gap between the tempo we play when recording and the much faster tempo when we play shows (I call this phenomenon "when ballads become Bad Brains").  Maybe we just play these songs even faster at shows.  Recording live also led to the age-old struggle of guitar players vs recording engineers.  A battle of volume vs sound-goodedness.  I'm not sure who won.  I think Brendan still wants the guitars on this record to be pushed more - so maybe the engineers won. We did find out, though, that a hiwatt amp turned up to 10 sounds gritty to your vibrating ear drums...but very very clean to a stable/accurate microphone.  It's kind of a bummer. Like a movie with the swearing overdubbed.  You can also hear the snares fluttering with sympathetic vibrations from the guitar amps in many spots on the record.  That may not be acceptable for pop music, but I like it.

         In keeping with the goal of being concise, and more energetic throughout, we didn't bring our usual pile of oddball instruments to add on.  We added to the live takes with more guitar overdubs, and more tracks of guitar feedback, than we had previously done. That added some weight and texture.  The only other extra stuff was at the end of Teeth to Tongue, which had extra drums -  and Mike Viele was the only guest musician, playing glasses and bowls in the studio's kitchen.  We had that part mixed to sound like you were moving from the drumming in the studio to the kitchen - fading mics out and raising the kitchen mic simultaneously. 

         I'm Getting Tired is a fun song to re-listen to, because I really haven't heard it in a while. I don't know if we ever played it at shows. If we did, it was only a couple times.  It has a different cadence than our other songs - I think we called it our "Green Day" song...which still makes sense to me, but also seems ridiculous all things considered.  It's more straight forward, and I think that made it more difficult for us since we were more comfortable playing things more weird. That song also includes what is essentially a musical argument.  After the long straight beat it comes back in heavier. Brendan and I argued endlessly about which beat it should come back on.  I think in the end we both stubbornly stuck to our guns, and it comes back in somewhere in between and sounds a little awkward for a fraction of a second.  Expect Delays was a song we originally recorded for a comp put out by a German label - Monocore Records. We re-recorded it for this record to try to make it heavier than the version we recorded ourselves. We also probably felt it was a good fit for a split with Ampere...and we also likely needed another song for the record.   Filler.

         One other unique part of this split was that both bands collaborated on the album artwork. Each was accustomed to designing things themselves, or at least making final decisions - and this would be no different. However in this case all discussions included another whole band.  I remember it taking a long time to work through the different ideas to arrive at something both bands were 100% happy with.  I appreciate the level of care and self-determination, and compromise, in that process.  Like many creative things, I think the collaborative effort helped us all make something that neither band would have done alone - and something that was enhanced by the process of making it.

        

        

                                                         OCEANS OF ISLANDS

   After the release of the Ampere split, we continued to play a lot of shows in the northeast.  Driving long distances and overnights to play fests in Gainesville, Ohio and North Carolina (on weekends – not taking time off from work), and did our first tour in Europe in March of 2006.  Somewhere in 2006 through 2007 we started writing songs for the next record. We consciously approached this period of writing with the most seriousness and self-scrutiny of any other time as a band.  We wrote and rewrote songs and parts many times. We wrote parts that were difficult for us to play – to force ourselves to grow into them, rather than just making them simpler.  Songs or parts that seemed like things we had already done were discarded.  This would be a record with a clear goal – to be better than anything we’d done before.  Oceans of  Islands is the record that came out of this effort.

         Somewhere back around the time of Footprints, Brendan and Pete came up with a riff that was problematic. We all liked it, but had a very hard time linking it to any other part.  In our efforts to build from it, we’d write new parts that we liked but that didn't fit with the original riff.  The new parts would become songs, leaving the first riff as an orphan.   Because of this, it became known as the “idea riff”.  The Idea Riff did a lot of heavy lifting when writing for Oceans. It’s weirdness helped us to create new things that weren't retreads of old ideas, as we legitimately strained to give the riff a home and connect it to other parts.  I can remember the collective groan whenever Brendan would sheepishly play Idea Riff at practice. Oh no. Not again. But each time we’d end up on the path to a new song. This accident of songwriting worked extremely well, although it would be difficult to arrive at purposefully.

         I remember writing songs very methodically, if not quickly, once we got going. We were very consistent with practice schedules, and stayed in the mindset of making music.  The creative bursts that may have been left unedited when writing, before, were now scrutinized and edited or scrapped altogether.  The songs were balancing our desire to be heavy (as we always felt somewhat wimpy compared to a lot of the other bands in our circle) and our natural inclination towards some atonal lulls that somehow remained sweet.  Brendan has a proclivity for big stomping/driving guitar parts, and Pete tends to travel more in the strange and oddly pretty.  Both can do both, but each are more rooted on one side. I think that gives our songs both some anger/guts and some heart, which luckily also coincides nicely with our lyric writing.  I think it also coincides somewhat with their vocals – Pete sounds like he is really telling you something, and Brendan sounds like he is yelling you something.  For Oceans, I think the back and forth flowed more evenly from one to the other, and the balance was less jilted and more unified – songs that forged ahead confidently instead of darting here and there.  Similarly, my drumming had moved from spastic and weird orgins to more simple and straightforward – with some weirdness retained. This developed along with the balance of the new songs – grounding them more, rhythmically, but still venturing out. Not danceable…but maybe a little closer.  Our goal was for the songs to be unrelenting, in energy or at least in seriousness.      

         Keith and Machines With Magnets had moved to a large new space on the other side of Providence by the time we set to work recording Oceans of Islands in November of 2007.  The studio was now in a much larger one-story industrial building, with a big L-shaped live room, isolation rooms, comfortable control room, lounge, and additional spaces used as a gallery or show space. Quite the place. 

 

Seth Manchester had also taken over as the lead engineer, so he was the one putting up with our bullshit and nonstop jokes.  We are dead serious about the music we make...but real goofy along the way.  Struggling to execute something you care deeply about can produce a dark mood, so having two other bandmates cracking real dumb jokes brings some helpful levity. 

         For previous recordings we simply showed up with our normal gear, and pretty much played as we would at home or at shows. This time, though, we actually spent time selecting different drums to suit the songs and recording environment (as opposed to live) and different amps, cabinets, etc.  We felt more comfortable by this point, both with ourselves and with Keith/Seth, and didn't rush through the early steps of setting up the session as we had in the past.  Machines had a lot of gear to choose from, too.  Piles of drum kits and amplifiers. I remember using a big, deep snare and a bigger floor tom than on my usual kit.  These choices, along with the bigger live room, helped to get a booming drum sound which helped to deliver power to the more simple drum parts – power or energy that had previously come from frantic business.  A flashy Soldano head was the luxury option for guitar.  Our more patient approach extended to overdubbing of guitars - multiple passes and multiple chains were used to thicken everything, and create more varied guitar tones.  If our previous records had a foot in the mid 90s treble noisiness, this record was a step towards a bigger, lower frequency power.

         The pile of elementary school instruments did make a reappearance on Oceans, after taking some time off. 

It was mostly just metallophone that was used, if memory serves.  That's a favorite of ours – bringing rich background tones, without having a loud attack that would push in front of our actual instruments.  We probably should have hired a metallophone player for live shows, after using it so much on recordings.  Watch out for open auditions, if you're in the Boston area.  Your own mallets and pro 'tude required.  The only guest musician for this one was Forbes Graham – a tremendous trumpet player and musician who has played in many bands and projects in Boston and DC.  I think Forbes was living in DC at the time, and it would have been difficult for him to make it up to Providence.  Instead, he recorded trumpet parts for Name Names and What We Could Not Move on his own, and sent us the files.  This led to a moment of simultaneous horror/humor as we initially played back the files at the wrong sample rate – and so the wrong speed.  I remember discussing what the hell we would tell Forbes, after he was so generous to put in so much effort for, when we couldn't use the parts he sent us.  It sounded insane...avant garde is ONE THING, but this...pure chaos!  Keith then figured out the sample rate problem, and Forbes' brilliance locked right onto the songs.  Not only was it usable, now, but certainly elevated things.  Another controversial moment was the backup vocals I did, behind Pete, on Seek Harbor.  I remember Brendan thinking they might have been a little too...slick?  Soft?  Un-hardcore?  Too something.  Sinaloa has a strict policy in which any veto from any one of us is enough to discard an idea, so Pete and I must have lobbied hard to at least get a reluctant thumbs up from Brendan.  Those vocals were kept on the record.  We probably agreed to let him turn his guitar up LB, in exchange.  Or bought him some chocolate milk, as a bribe. 

         Oceans of Islands will probably always be the record that, to me, feels most fully realized.  It was the last time where we had what now seems like endless time to dedicate to playing music and being in a band.  I don't think getting older changed us a whole lot, as people, but it brought new obligations – whether it's sharing our lives with partners, mortgages, more responsibilities at our jobs, kids, etc.  We don't live as close by as we used to.  We don't pay for a leaking mildew infested practice space every month.  I don't think there will ever again be a time where we all can meet up once or twice a week for hours, putting that much energy into this creative outlet.  It wasn't our last record.  It's subjective to say whether it was our best.  But it was the one that required the most work, and a pooled energy that our lives likely won't allow us to find again.  For that reason, it's the record I'm most proud of.  It said what we wanted to say, and sounded as we wanted it to sound, as well as I think we're capable of.  All else won't necessarily be worse, but it won't ever bet as distilled and focused again.

        

                                                                          S/T EP

     We toured Europe two more times after the release of Oceans – once with our friends Daniel Striped Tiger, and once by ourselves.  Those were great experiences, and allowed us to continue to meet new people from all over and foster the feeling that what we do is small, but connected to so many others doing similar things all over the world.  On the last tour, we met Robert (the Knife) who I think runs a record store in Berlin, and also a record label called Adagio 830.  That meeting led eventually to plans to put out a record, which would be a self-titled EP. 

         This record is a good summation of the direction Sinaloa has taken, and an era we continue to be in.  It was 2-3 years after the last record when we started putting it together, as the available time to give to the band was already eroding.  We decided to record it ourselves – something we had done for one-off compilation songs, and for our own use to prepare for other records, but not for something like this.  It was an exciting direction, since there is freedom in doing things for yourself.  And it was another learning step.  It felt a little like restarting things from scratch, and having to think through brand new problems again.  We wrote songs sporadically, and recorded drums in Brendan's mom's basement – the same basement where we first started playing together back in 2001.  Guitars were done in Brendan's own house's basement in Somerville.  Brendan took the lead in the engineering, as he always filled that role for the band.  

The songs were a little rougher, a little less crafted, and remind me a bit of our earlier / first songs.  The scrutiny wasn't as important to us for this, but the feeling and dedication to the ideas themselves was still there.  I think the recording is rough in a way that, again, reminds me of our earlier efforts – which makes sense, given the home venue and the process of learning on the fly to get and capture sounds.  The lyrics touched on things that were true to our older selves, which I think is no different from our earlier records being reflective of who we were at those times.  The songs were still about specific things, and they were about us and our ideas.

    It's hard for me to fathom how time passes so quickly.  It has now been 6 years since our last release as a band.  We have practiced less and less frequently, for a variety of logistical reasons.  We remain very close friends, which was always the backdrop of anything we did as a band.  That unity predated the band, and remains more important than the band itself.  We never broke up, though.  We have never had a last show.  As practices went from rare to never, and the band largely became dormant, we remained a band – something that still lived, and could pick up again at any time.  We are in contact with each other every day.  I put some of that previous energy into learning more about recording, and building a home studio.  Pete added his unique guitar sound to an amorphous collective of musicians that played sporadically.  Brendan was the first to have kids, and poured creative energy into fixing up mopeds and renovating a new house.  I moved to Illinois for a year, and then came back.  Pete moved further out to the suburbs, and had a kid.  All of that led to a feeling of...not quite upheaval, but the uneasy rumbling of things not being fully settled.  Energy was required to direct things, as adults, and  scheduling things outside of our family lives with any regularity would be difficult.  Recently though, we've started to see a thaw – and signs that our theoretical dormant-but-living band is capable of livening up.  Schedules have allowed for the possibility of practicing, since I moved back to Boston.  I took the lead on recording some new things in Brendan's garage that could turn into the next “record”...likely a more loose collection of home recordings, to be released online.  

        

         It's 2016, now, and I'm changing cat litter and doing dishes while I listen to records we made roughly a decade ago.  I'm trying to remember the mindset we were in when making them.  I'm not feeling very punk as I do chores on a Friday night.  However, reading news of bombings in far off places and election coverage... I feel the same as I did then.  Older, adulter, but still pissed off.  Still ready to make music, and still ready to have it sound like it did when I was in my 20s.  Nothing was finished, nothing went away, and we remain the people we were.  We still care about the same basic things that we did then.  It's probably time for new songs, and a new album.  Like the old ones, but incrementally changed and showing the small discoveries we have continued to make each day since the last one.  Sinaloa remains a band that continues to exist, to slowly move along and gradually change to suit the lives and growth of the three of us.  I think we still have things to say, and ideas to express.  I think people will hear them, again, at some point.

All our music can be listened to and/or downloaded at www.sinaloaisastate.bandcamp.com"