At one point during the making of our new record I said to my bandmates, "hey, you only get the chance to make a first Dream Syndicate album in 30 years once in your life." It's a strange statement but one that's hard to refute (unless we end up making one at some point in our late 80's--which, well, you never know). But that was the attitude we brought to the project. Either the record was going to be great, everything we hoped it would be, or we would just shelve and write it off, both financially and publicly, as a bold experiment that didn't work out.

We felt the odds were in our favor. The 50+ shows we'd played since we reunited back in 2012 had been among the best the band ever played, the perfect mix of agile improvisation, wild abandon and rock solid grooves that had always been the band's hallmark. The only 21st century addition to the band, guitarist Jason Victor who had played with me for years as a member of my solo backing band the Miracle 3, silenced any doubters within minutes of every show. He was the perfect and undisputed heir to the Syndicate axe-slingers who had come before--raw, mercurial, knowing and skilled.