🎉🚨 A new, fun thing one year later
No matter how much my brain wants to tell me that my band didn’t do anything last year, that’s not true at all. Among other things, over the course of 2020, we recorded a whole bunch of covers, and now we’re releasing them as a digital EP on Friday! It’s called The Old Friends EP and it’ll be available on Bandcamp and wherever you stream things, except Amazon, because fuck them.
One year ago, almost to the day, we released our third LP You Or Someone You Know, so it seems fitting to commemorate the rollercoaster of a year with a project that kept me sane through the ups and downs. Being asked to cover songs for other projects was like being given homework and the more time I spent on homework the less time I spent feeling useless and thinking about shows.
Today you can hear one of the songs off the EP: a cover of Rancid’s Old Friend. Yes, that’s right, a ska song. It only took me thirty::mumbles:: years, but we did it!
Over the past year, Worriers was asked to participate in a number of benefit livestreams, comps, and other projects that wouldn't normally be possible for us to do when we were on tour all the time. Living in different cities during quarantine, we took these opportunities to keep making music together - from home. Over the past few years, various arrangements of Worriers have played cover sets of bands like Fleetwood Mac, Minor Threat, Green Day, and The Lemonheads, so covers have always been a fun extracurricular activity for us. This collection brings together songs from some of our favorite and most influential bands.
Quarantine led me to invest in some better home recording equipment and I reimagined our cover of Bleachers’ Rollercoaster as a learning exercise. Letter From An Occupant by The New Pornographers was recorded for the Save Stereogum livestream as our choice of a favorite song from the 00s. Keeping Me Alive by Tom Petty was recorded for benefit livestream celebrating Tom Petty's birthday. We were asked to cover a song off of Rancid's And Out Come The Wolves for an upcoming tribute comp, so of course, we chose Old Friend. Lastly, we were asked to cover a pre-1990 punk song for an unannounced project and I took the opportunity to cover one of my favorites, That's How I Escaped My Certain Fate by Mission of Burma.
Drums were recorded at Russell Street studios, where we recorded much of You Or Someone You Know. Everything else was tracked by each of us individually at home. Sarah Tudzin (Illuminati Hotties) mixed everything except Old Friend, which was mixed by Jack Shirley (Jeff Rosenstock, Deafheaven).
On this EP, Worriers is:
Lauren Denitzio - Guitar, vocals, keys
Mikey Erg - Drums and vocals
Frank Piegaro - Guitar
Nick Psillas - Bass