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Guest Blog: Thirty Thousand Miles for What?

In a sentence...  30,000 Miles is special.  We’ve never released anything quite like it.  There’s the fact that it successfully captures sounds and experiences from across the country, and that it spans two years of tour dates, and that it includes a brand new never-before-released song called “Two Left Feet” (track 8, for the curious among you), and that THE ENTIRE DAMN ALBUM IS LIVE.  But even more than all that, this album means a ton to my sister and me because it shows how amazing our team is.

Let me rewind to sometime during fall 2016.  We started hearing mentions of some kind of ‘secret project.’  We got pretty curious, so we decided to investigate.

Now a lot of people don’t realize this, but I’m a pretty sly dude.  I’m really good at getting people to tell me things without realizing it by asking manipulatively sly questions like “Hey David, what’s this ‘secret project’ I keep hearing about?”.  Surprisingly, my reconnaissance attempts were unsuccessful.  All I could get anyone to say was that we’d find out on Christmas.

Fast forward to a December 22nd. We distribute our gifts and accept presents in return.  But one seems a bit different.  It’s a small, squarish box, oddly heavy, with bright red wrapping paper.  David, our manager, tells us to wait and open it on Christmas morning.  We nod in understanding and head out to the driveway, where Jocelyn promptly slips on some ice and drops the box on the pavement.  It seems like anything in there should be broken, but David and Anna tell us that it’s not fragile at all.  Now we’re more curious than ever.

Fast forward again, to Christmas morning.  We’ve eaten the traditional Arndt family Christmas breakfast of bagels with cream cheese and lox, and almost every present from under the tree has been opened.  Only one remains—a small, squarish box, oddly heavy, with bright red wrapping paper.  We have absolutely no idea what could be inside.  Jocelyn and I carry it to the futon and tear off the wrapping paper, revealing… a small, squarish white box.  We open the box.  It makes no sense.  There’s a bunch of copies of an album called 30,000 Miles inside, but they all say Jocelyn and Chris Arndt, as if 30,000 Miles is our release.  We never released anything called 30,000 Miles.  You’d think we’d know, being the artists and al—HOLY SH*T WHAT DID OUR TEAM MAKE US A LIVE ALBUM FOR CHRISTMAS WHAT WHAT WHAAAAAAAAAAT NO WAY

BEST.

CHRISTMAS.

GIFT.

EVER.

Needless to say, we called up David and stumbled through a shocked and awed thank-you and then immediately plugged it in, eager for the first listen.

So, that’s how 30,000 Miles came to be.  We have the greatest team in the world and they rock and are amazing, and we just kinda opened a box and there it was.  But as for what listening to it is like—that’s a whole different can of worms.  Every track brings back different memories of crazy shows and tour stories.  I’m only 20 years old, but listening to our live album makes me feel as nostalgic as Uncle Rico from Napoleon Dynamite. 

Tracks 1 and 2 were both recorded at the CMJ Music Festival in October 2015. We’d played in the city before, but something about this show was different.  It might have had something to do with the fact that CMJ is like your average music festival after a few pounds of cocaine and a mainline of caffeine.  Regardless, that show seems like a dream to me.  Who would’ve imagined that my sister and I would get to do our thing on the stage at Arlene’s Grocery?  It was legendary!

Tracks 3, 8, 11, and 13 came from the Rock n’ Roots Music Festival in Lake George, NY.  We got to play on the same stage as Rick Derringer.  Plus they gave us these awesome aluminum water bottles and pint glasses and had the world’s dopest veggie tray with enough hummus for a small army.  Put that together with a beautiful Adirondack lake, and you’ve got yourself a hella good time.  The Rock n’ Roots show was also special because it marked the beginning of our 2016 summer touring season, which was prolific and busy and just all together amazing.  We had a bunch of short runs throughout the east coast, as well as a month-long run out to Cali and back. 

Tracks 4, 5, and 14 are from the “Edges” album release party at The Linda in Albany, NY.  I could say that the best thing about the night was the fact that the green room at The Linda is literally an old bank vault, fully equipped with a 4000-lb iron vault door, but honestly, that wouldn’t be true.  The best thing about that night was getting to celebrate the release of our first full-length album with hundreds of people who we love, and who came out exclusively to see us.  That album went on to get spins on more than 200 radio stations across the country, topping out well within the top 150 on both the FMQB AAA and AMA charts.  I don’t know if I’ve ever been as proud as I was that night, with all those people, just having a great time. 

Track 6 is from a live music video series sponsored by the 2015 Move Music Festival and White Lake Music & Post.  Both of those sponsors hold a pretty special place in our hearts.  Move was actually the first music festival my sister and I ever performed at—our high school band managed to snag a slot during the very first year, and we’ve gone back almost every year since!  And White Lake Music & Post… well, if you wanna know why they’re so important to us, go read the second-to-last page of the booklet on your copy of 30,000.   They make our music career possible. 

Track 7 comes from a radio performance we did at the famous independent Woodstock radio station WDST. That was another one of those completely surreal days.  You’d think that the opportunity to play at a station like WDST would pretty much max out someone’s luck quota for at least a few hours, but nope.  We got off stage and almost immediately found out that we’d been picked for a slot at Mountain Jam, upstate New York’s biggest music festival.  You might have heard of some of the other artists on the bill—Grace Potter, Gov’t Mule, the Black Keys, Robert Plant, etc.  Another fun fact about how amazing WDST is: they’re a Jamband station!  That means that they are one of the stations responsible for keeping us on the Relix Jamband radio chart for 6 months in a row, with a top position of 14.  Yeah.  14.  On a national radio chart.  Thank you, WDST.  You just keep on making our lives awesomer and awesomer.

Track 9 was recorded at a BBQ joint called Sugar’s Ribs in Chattanooga, TN.  It was only our second time in town, but a wonderful man named Mark Herndon had seen our previous performance and decided to help us out by booking us a show at one of the best venues in town with an amazing local artist named Jordan Hallquist.  We spent the night eating great food and playing blues music for a crowd of people who loved nothing more than eating great food and listening to blues music.  Needless to say, it was an awesome time.  We visit to Chattanooga every time we’ve got the chance!

Track 10 was recorded live for WEXT, an independent radio station based in Troy, NY.  WEXT is probably my favorite radio station ever.  There’s some serious backstory here.  When I was in 8th grade, Jocelyn and I managed to snag a gig during the intermission at a local concert series called Music on Main Street. The MC for the event was a man named Dave Michaels, who also happened to be a DJ on WEXT.  We were exclusively a cover band at that point, but Dave pulled us aside after the show told us that he would put original recordings on the air, if we ever managed to create any.  That promise was one of the main reasons we started writing music in the first place.  Dave pulled through on his promise (making WEXT the first ever radio station to play Jocelyn and Chris Arndt music), and since then both he and Chris Wienk (one of the other WEXT DJs) have done more kind things for us than you can even imagine.  They are some of the nicest people you will ever hear about, and we love them with all our hearts.  Dave and Chris, if you guys are reading this, you have no idea the impact you’ve had on our musical career.  You guys are heroes. 

Finally, we have track 12.  This one came from our performance at the Viper Room on Sunset Strip in Hollywood, CA.  It was our first ever performance on the west coast.  We’d recently hooked up with an awesome TV network called EdgeTV, and they put together a concert video for the event.  We’d been in the car for weeks, zig-zagging our way from Albany to LA.  We’d recently pulled an all-nighter to get from a Wednesday night show in Phoenix to a morning show appearance in San Diego.  We were exhausted and getting sick and hadn’t seen a laundry machine in longer than we cared to think about, and it was THE BEST NIGHT EVER.  We played the Viper Room on Sunset Strip.  How could it not be that amazing?

As I said before, 30,000 Miles is special.  The album is like a well of great memories—Christmas memories, tour life memories, radio memories, performance memories, and pretty much every other kind of amazing memory a musical artist can have.  Sharing music with the world is our dream, and30,000 Miles is a pretty good sign that things are on the right track.  Here’s to 30,000 more in 2017!