Did we say the digital copy would be ready in June? Sorry, we meant to say "soon." It's taking just a bit longer than we expected. We really want to get those postcards and download codes out to you (not to mention the physical album), but it's not quite ready yet. We are making some changes in the mastering process, so it's very close. Thanks for bearing with us. Yes, we lag.

Dear Sir or Madame,

We are writing to you in order to give you an appraisal of the progress being made by your sponsored children, The Sad Bastard Book Club. It's been just over three months now that you have generously funded their development, and in that time I'm happy to report, we have seen a considerable growth in their activities and general well-being.

You have already received a letter regarding their week long field trip to the California coast side in February where they ate from campfires, learned survival techniques to keep warm in harsh conditions, were taught to identify rabid animals (rats and bats mainly), and role played as "recording artists." This trip brought them immense amounts of joy. They still talk about it.

Since then, we have returned them to their natural city environment where they have been learning other practical skills. First was audio mixing. This went relatively well. One of the boys threw a temper tantrum, but outside of that, they mixed an album all by themselves without much bloodshed or unending feuds. We can't tell you how proud of them we are for that. There were, however, a considerable number of "your mother" jokes that tainted the activity with a juvenile air. But it doesn't show in the work thankfully. It would seem they also learned how to compartmentalize "play time" from "work time," and for that we are glad.

For the past week, we have created a writing workshop for them to construct a book. We are happy to inform you that they have produced 21 pages of text revolving around the theme "Another Family Dinner at the Saturn Residence Ends in Tears." We will admit to finding some of the contents of these stories slightly distasteful, but it is not for us to censor their creativity.

Using that text, we now have them learning the art of book layout and binding. Materials are being delivered as we speak to make the books. The layout is just about finished. Once it is, they will crank up the printer (it's an old model) and start cutting paper until they can't feel their fingers anymore. Which will be the perfect time to hand them a needle and thread to get to work with the binding. With luck, only a few pages here and there will have some bloody fingerprints from a careless needle poke.

One of the boys has been given the task of "engineer allocation." His job is to find a mastering engineer to finish the CD. The hunt is on. He seems to have found some contenders.

Once this is complete, another of the boys will upload the tracks to a website where they will produce download codes of all the songs in their finished state. It's at this point that you will receive the first fruits of your generosity. While the physical CD will yet to be complete (art classes haven't begun due to some scheduling conflicts), you will be able to hear it all the same. These codes will be sent to you, all things going to plan, sometime in June.

It is our hope to perform duplication, art, and letterpress instruction in June. The children are looking forward to sending you a completed project in July. The time line is a bit wonky at the moment, but that's the new goal. We think it's doable, but we will keep you informed of any changes in that plan. They have their little hearts set on it, and we'd hate to disappoint them. They are so looking forward to showing you what they have been doing over the past few months.

Again, thank you for your support. We hope you won't regret your decision.

Sincerely,
The Management of the George Decker House for Emotionally Depressed Orphans of a Bookish Nature.

P.S. Enclosed you will find a picture of the boys at play.

Last night, Mr. Screams and I found ourselves at a bar in the Mission discussing genealogy and the Saturn family. We are exciting like that. Napkins were scribbled on, Heritage Quest was consulted, beer was consumed. In the end, we think we got everyone accounted for with the exception of the LeBrock family. While this is merely the prototype, we’ve created a quick reference family tree to help you keep all the people you will be meeting in the upcoming album straight. Hope it helps.

Hello all,

Today was our first real mixing session for "Another Family Dinner at the Saturn Residence Ends in Tears." By the end of it we all looked like zombies, the kitchen counter was more beer bottles than kitchen counter, and the entire thing was punctuated be lengthy discussion regarding the archaic art of heraldry (I'm not kidding). We also got six out of ten songs finished. Here's one of them. It's called "The Pauper Choir of San Jose, CA." We're pretty fond of it. We hope you might be too.

xoxo,
The SBBC

Hello Everyone,

Things are progressing around here. The apartment smells a little like heaven baked at 350 degrees, there are scraps of paper everywhere with novel ways of killing people jotted down on them (fictionally of course... no need to call the cops), and the sound of latin-y dirges blasting away on speakers with the band yelling over the volume, "Can you turn the tambourine up?! MORE EGG SHAKER!" In other words, we're busy.

However, just the other day our friend from Ascender Descender dropped off a few videos he took from our recording session. The one below (which admittedly is a little dark) is us recording the vocals for "After 20 Years of Pouring Gasoline Into the Soil, the Time to Harvest Has Arrived" with the help of the Pauper Choir of San Gregorio. At one point someone quipped, "This is like the most depressing 'We Are the World' ever." To which someone else responded, "Have you heard the new 'We Are the World?' This isn't even close."

xo,
The SBBC

Hello All,

It is 5 o'clock PM on Tuesday February 23rd. Roughly 24 hours ago we finished breaking down the Saloodio and moving everything back to its right place. Which was no easy task. Over the course of five days we pretty much made the saloon our home. And like anytime one has to move, there is a lot of "did I grab the..." and "where did I put the..." Though instead of "spoons" or "Yadro figurines," it was "glockenspiel" and "100 year old cornet."

I was going to break down the recording experience day by day, but truth be told we kind of lost track of the time. So here is a stream of consciousness version of what happened:

- Mr. Boom and Mr. Sings arrive to the studio and enjoy the absolute silence that occurs out in those parts. As they are commenting on the quiet, an extremely loud "MOO" carries across the valley we are in.

- Cap'n Shap (engineer/ninja) plays the theme for Taxi on a 150 year old pump organ... and it surprisingly sounds good.

- A veggie dog and Boca burger BBQ leads to extreme (and unexpected) lethargy. Though our heart rate is increased when we learn that we are sharing a space with bat who likes to swoop out of the rafters while we are playing "Choir of Knives."

- Rats use Mr. Sings amps as a place to relieve themselves. It was uncalled for and rude, but ultimately forgiven.

- 12 people came down to sing and clap and share food with us. This was by far the highlight of an already spectacular couple of days.

- Mr. Sings and Mr. Thud constantly complain of being cold and dirty while Mr. Boom and Mr. Screams look at each other and scoff, "fucking city kids."

- After five years, female voices are finally heard on a SBBC record. And the beauty of their harmonies make us sound like a bunch of grunting cavemen.

- Lentil Stew!

-Somewhere within the five days we realized that we are absolutely, without a doubt, not a folk band any more. Folk bands don't have 8 minute songs that end in bone crushing distortion.

We could go on and on, but it's probably only interesting to us. What might be interesting to you though is a sneak peak at the song "We Build Ghost Towns from the Ground Up." What you find here is merely a clip of a rough mix (give us a break, we just stopped recording yesterday). But it will give you a sense of what the album will sound like (kind of).

Enjoy!
The SBBC

Hello friends,

It is just about midnight. I am jacked on a number of conflicting cold medicines and just a smidge of wine. You can’t fault me for celebrating though. As of this moment, our Kickstarter project has closed and, thanks to your generosity, it has closed with the word “successful” next to it. That is terrifically exciting to us. To be honest, some of us (I am shamefully raising my hand at the moment) didn’t think this was going to work.

However, it did and now we have work to do (lots of it). On Thursday we will be heading up to the saloodio (saloon/studio) to get this whole recording thing underway. Over the course of five days we will be hammering out the album and hopefully finding some time to get started on your stories while there (Moleskin journals for life!). If it’s okay with all of you, we will be keeping you posted on our progress. Perhaps some early mixes or videos will even come your way if we can break the technological jinx that’s been haunting us lately.

We are really looking forward to creating this record/book and sharing it with you all. There are many facets of it that we are still ironing out (like most of it). Our time line, due to a number of “real life” factors, puts a finished product towards June. Hopefully it will be sooner than that, but at the moment that is a safe assumption. We will have a better idea next month when our graphic designer gets back into town and the interns learn how to type on manual typewriters (one of them actually said “Where’s the monitor?” when looking at the Underwood we sat him in front of… sad, really).

Again, we cannot thank you enough. This is going to sound sappy, but we are honored that you would be willing to help us with this. Seriously. You all deserve big, crushing, awkwardly long hugs, but due to the limitations of the internet, a heartfelt thank you will have to suffice for the time being (unless you live locally, then you get a crushing hug voucher for the next time you see one of us).

We will be in touch,
The SBBC

Hello all,

We just wanted to write a quick note thanking everyone that has backed this project. A few days ago we crossed into the "successfully funded" category. Forgive the delay in writing this, but honestly we were a bit shocked and spent Friday and Saturday pinching ourselves and double (and triple and quadruple) checking the site to make sure we weren't just seeing things. We weren't. Thanks to your generosity and support, this record will be happening.

There are still two days left until the project closes. So if anyone still wants to get in on any of the rewards, the option is open.

We will be writing more soon.

Thank you (a billion times!),
the SBBC

Exactly one week from right this very second, the Sad Bastard Book Club will be arriving at a former bar saloon laden down with guitars, drums, a toy piano, a pump organ, several brass instruments, banjos, noisemakers, accordions, and enough beer to kill an ox. Four days later we'll emerge shaken, anemic, a quivering mass of once proud humanity. But, hopefully, we'll have an album. And for this, we thank you. We have five days left before the funding period is over, and we are so very close. For this, again, we thank you. We hate to bother you anymore than we already have, but if you know of anyone that might like to hear that which we do, please let them know about this project.

We hoped to share some pictures from our long haul practice sessions over the weekend, but technology failed us (Mr. Screams forgot to charge the batteries, but we can totally blame that on technology, right?). This weekend, however, we will once again dive into the (now slightly larger) pit of our practice space and we hope, no, swear, that we will have some pictures to share.

In the meantime, here is a video from a practice a few weeks ago. Forgive the audio quality, most video cameras are just too weak for the sheer amount of doom we bring.

May we present: We Build Ghost Towns from the Ground Up

We are over halfway there, with 11 days left to go. This is awesome, thank you to everyone that has helped so far.

We're going to be practicing all weekend (possibly adding some new instrumentation?) and working on a couple more new songs. Starting now, we're going into full sneak preview mode and we'll be posting snippets of new songs; some pictures of our new, slightly less shitty practice space; and maybe some video. We've got 11 days left before we lock ourselves in the barn/saloon, it's going to be great (great, of course, is a very subjective word).

As always, check out sadbastardbookclub.com for more.

Hello all,

Yesterday we confirmed our renting of a space to record in. While originally the plan was to rent a cabin, we realized that posed a few problems:

1) Proximity. Most cabin/house rentals are in cabin/house rental communities, not the middle of nowhere. So there we would be, making a racket while the Smith family next door starts calling the cops on us as their children cry over a ruined vacation. As much as we don't mind making children cry, we aren't fans of cops banging on the door. Rarely are they polite enough to bang at the proper syncopation to match the song.

2) Atmosphere. The overall design aesthetic to cabin rentals is mid-80's Donner Party Dreadful. While we are not overly concerned about interior design, there are certain types of environments that seem aggressively, even antagonistically shitty. Hang out in a place like this for four days, and there is a good chance one of us might hang ourselves.

3) The high probability that one of us will drive five hours to the mountains and realize we forgot something... like a guitar.

So when we found out about an old hotel saloon in the woods off the coast that we could possibly rent, we all got giddy like schoolgirls. After actually going to check out the place, the giddiness turned to downright spastic joy. The place is perfect. Inside its decaying walls is a large wooden bar room with an out of tune piano, a potbellied stove, and so many possibilities. We have stumbled across an environment that matches what we want the album to sound like perfectly. So without further ado, we would like to introduce to you our "recording studio:"

Hello All,

26%! We are getting there. Thank you all very much for helping us get this far. We've got just shy of a month left to pull together the extra 74%. Cross your fingers and tell your friends. Sidenote: a disproportionate number of you seem to want to die in a story. Perhaps we'll have to include a number to a psychologist on your thank you cards.

So here is what we've been up to since we've started this. Yesterday we created the final song we needed for the record. It is beautiful and depressing and in a really awkward time signature (or at least we think it is since we don't know much about highfalutin' things like "time signatures"). Which in the vernacular of the SBBC translates into "fucking awesome."

Also, the album now has a name: "Another Family Dinner at the Saturn Residence Ends in Tears."

Finally, we think we might have found an interesting location in which to record. We will have more details on that soon.

So for the time being, thank you very much again. To keep you tided over for the moment, here is a rough demo version of a song that will be on the record. Ladies and gentlemen, allow us to introduce to you "This Zombie Problem has Gotten Out of Hand, No?"

xo,
The SBBC

(P.S. See you on the 27th)

Despite all appearances to the contrary, The Sad Bastard Book Club is not a shadowy cabal of sentient robots. Well, not entirely, anyway. And we sometimes play live shows. For example, we're playing one on January 27th in San Jose, at the Blank Club.

It starts at 9pm, and tickets are available for the low low cost of FREE (hey, you get what you pay for).

More information is available at The Blank Club Website and you can RSVP (there is really no point in doing this at all) on Facebook.

We look forward to seeing you there (those of us with real eyes, and not a highly sensitive array of CCTV cameras hooked directly into our core Optical Rendering engines).