Chris here! Merry early Christmas.
Thought I would write a blog post to give everyone a little background on the making of our new album Wordly Wise.
Click here to get it on CD (Check out our shirts while you’re there.)
Click here to download it or hear it digitally.
Worldly Wise is about getting older and finding out what life is really like. As terrible and exciting as that can be.
It took us six years of recording, mixing, remixing, then not being happy with it and recording again in Lynchburg, Virginia and Portland, Oregon.
Here’s a pic of me and Brandon writing early on in 2009: 
We spent several years playing touring, writing, recording 2 ep’s, and working out the songs that would eventually become Worldly Wise.
All the drums were recorded in one 8 hour session and are played by original Rugby drummer Brandon Burneson before me and Millie moved to Oregon.
We recorded the pianos by sneaking into the practice spaces at Lynchburg College. Every song on the record is a different piano. Here’s my friend Michael Blatnik hanging out for a minute.
Lots of synths were involved in making this record. Here’s a picture of my room in the downtown loft apartment I lived in 2011. Lots of crafting.
We recorded a lot at friends and family’s houses as well. Here’s me recording guitars for Bag of Bones at Millie’s parents house:
Towards the end of the Virginia writing sessions, Millie joined the band on synths and vocals to help fill in the gaps in the synth heavy recordings.
Me and Millie moved to Oregon in 2012. Here’s the studio in the living room of our first apartment in Portland:
We put Rugby on the back burner for a couple years while we got settled. I played drums in an orchestral folk group for a while called The Breaking Yard. That was fun.
Here’s a picture of me playing with Breaking Yard on tour in Ireland:
I became a freelance sound engineer at the same time. Here’s a picture I took at a show I did with Jay Leno:
Meanwhile, Millie was working on her photography career and was having quite a bit of success at it. Click to see for yourself.
We restarted Rugby in early 2015. We found a drummer named Max and a guitarist named Sean. We started playing shows again for the first time in 3 years.
Around here at some point we did all the vocals. I did mine with my friend Matt James from the Breaking Yard.
And we did Millie’s at home.
After a billion years, we finished our first single off of Worldly Wise called Breakfast Crew and put out a music video for it that we made ourselves. Sean recorded some stellar guitar on Breakfast Crew.
Here’s all four of us on the set of the Breakfast Crew music video. 
After a while Max ended up moving back to the East Coast and Sean decided he needed more time to work on his solo stuff.
A couple more months went by, we released our 2nd single off the record called Bag of Bones. Me and Millie made a music video for it out of a day trip to Astoria, Oregon.
In 2016 we found drummer Tim Van Cleave and guitarist Johnny Yugoslavia. These guys rock hard and have been playing with us all year.
Here’s a pic from our album release show:
During all of this me and Millie were working very hard on finishing the record.
We had to learn how to mix. It took a lot of work to get things sounding decent. As much time as it takes to write and play the music. Mixing is hard!
We got Johnny to play some synths on Worldly Wise track Treasure Racer.
Here’s a pic of Johnny’s studio:
After many late nights remixing and revising, and on the verge Millie breaking up with me over hearing the same 2 bars of some weird noise repeating over and over all day long, we finally finished it!
Then it was off to mastering:
So it’s been a long road full of and twists and turns making this record. Most of the time while working on it I thought we would never finish it. And now that we are putting it out in the world, I feel very strange because this has been something I’ve been working on for what seem like forever. So please enjoy Worldly Wise and know that what you are listening to is our struggle, our pain, our bliss, our humor, our imperfections. Who we really are.
Thanks so much for reading this far. Your support really means everything to us!
Keep an eye out for us in 2017!
-Chris
Click here to purchase Wordly Wise on CD and maybe a Rugby T-shirt.
Click here to purchase or listen to Worldly Wise.
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