On Tuesday I (Heather) spent 3 hours on an early voting line where I very slowly made my way around the outside of the Brooklyn Museum twice, before getting inside the building where it took approximately 5 minutes to vote. During my wait I tried to calculate how many times I could listen to distance before I actually voted. lb and I did some bad math later that evening and calculated anywhere between 16 and 30 times. It turns out the real number is probably 18 times, if our math is right, which it probably isn't.

I don't think anyone should ever have to stand in a line for 3 hours to vote, especially not during a global health pandemic. I also know that voting is just one thing that is good to do, but cannot be the only thing we do. Politicians are perennially disappointing. That's why we will be donating all profits from our music to the organizations that are doing the work on the ground to defund the police, combat systematic racism, support undocumented immigrants, provide mutual aid to our communities, and support our LGBTQ siblings. We'll be changing up where we direct these funds based on need, and alternating between our two cities, Chicago and NYC.

We decided to try and make music remotely during the covid-19 shutdown. It was a way of feeling connected during the extreme isolation. In normal times we typically met up once a year and wrote a bunch of music together, generally just shouting whatever was on our minds at the time for lyrics, but never taking the next step to actually write anything down or record the songs.

We used these skeletons of songs we’d created over the past few years as a starting point, and began to write about our experiences during covid times…no plans, too much time inside, missing our friends, missing each other, missing live music, not missing shitty punk scene abusers, and protesting in the streets. We recorded these new songs in our apartments. I recorded in my bedroom closet and on my living room floor, lb in their bathroom (for maximum reverb) screaming into their phone and making vocal takes as voice memos. I was constantly self-conscious my neighbors would hear me shouting in the closet, while lb’s vocals were once mistaken for fighting cats.

We decided to do everything ourselves, the recording, mixing, and mastering. I used the extra time at home to learn how to do these things. A big part of this process was painstakingly aligning vocal recordings that lb sent me, which was intended to go with the with the music I had just recorded. I never got it right on the first try, and a back and forth would ensue as I tried to put their vocals in the correct place. Having previously only ever written together in a room, this new process often resulted in seemingly divergent ideas for the same song. Somehow it all came together in the end through emails, texts, and one zoom chat to listen to the final mixes together.

We are so glad this experiment in remote songwriting and recording worked out, and that we have this EP called distance to share with you. We encourage you to see how many times you can listen to distance while waiting on line to vote. We also encourage you to do more than just vote.

Thanks for listening. We miss you.