Above is a picture of the basement studio in Charlottesville that we’re arranging. More work to be done!

It has been another wonderful, long summer, with many shows played and many miles travelled. The end of the sunny season always leaves me feeling nostalgic. In part, this must be due to the fact that we perform the most between May and August. Summer is also the time for our Curry family reunion, which has been my favorite time of year ever since I became self-aware. My nostalgia carries added significance this year, however: at this moment, the band is settling into a six-week break from performing, the longest hiatus we have taken since we committed to the project full-time in 2013.

The reason for this, as many of you know, is that Galen is having surgery to remove a polyp on one of his vocal cords. For some time now he has struggled with some vocal fatigue and timbre issues, and after consulting with an ENT surgeon over the past year, he decided to have a corrective procedure. Literally as I write this, the surgeon has put Galen under general anesthesia, and soon he will commence shooting lasers down Galen’s throat to cauterize the blood vessels feeding the polyp. The prognosis is very good; in all likelihood, the polyp will be zapped and Galen will fully recover in about six weeks. He will have to be completely silent for about two weeks and very gentle with his voice for another month: no talking loudly, and especially no singing. But if all goes well, Galen will be back to crooning just in time to sing the first dance at his younger sister’s wedding in the middle of October. What lovely comeback.

It’s been quite a year for us so far. Over the winter we finished and released our third album, This Side of the Glass; the spring saw us mostly run the festival circuit in the Southeast; and lately we have flitted all over creation playing for all of you. Now that we have some time to catch our breath, the three of us will enjoy a little R&R, but we’ll also take some time to consider the band’s next step. Time off the road means time to write, so we’ll be penning and demoing some new material. We’ve got lots of ideas! We’ve been setting up a little home studio in our basement to capture some of those ideas in recorded form. So while you may not hear from us for a while, rest assured that we’re still at it, bit by bit, panning for nuggets of inspiration day by day.

Thank you all for the well-wishes for Galen. We wish you a very happy September!