It started out as a joke. We had been laughing about a band singing about picking cotton in the movie Ghost World for a long time. When Kelly Kerr combined that joke with the three minute history lesson in They Might Be Giants' song, "James K. Polk," to make a song about Eli Whitney, the rest of the band just laughed and mused that it would be funny to make a concept record with songs all about history.

The idea was kicked around alongside many other half joking ideas for a concept record, but as Kelly was taking a college course on the history of medicine, we added two new songs along the lines of history. Suddenly the joke was officially a direction.

When the dust settled, we had 13 songs about mostly American history. They didn't paint a complete picture of American history, but instead gave impressions of various time periods and specific events that, more or less, tap into larger themes of what has shaped some aspect of our culture today.

The songs also began to take on a life of their own, each new song finding a way to be expressed in a different era or sub-genre of rock 'n' roll. The record became more and more diverse as each story was told in the voice of rock 'n' roll that told it best. The result is as diverse an album that can be made by a band that doesn't push too far out from being a four-piece, two guitar rock band.

Popular history in recent years often seems to be a long list of who was oppressing who at what point, and this record was intentionally made to diverge from that trend of "find the oppressor." We also didn't want to over-praise or over-criticize the American system as is often done now, instead focusing on little moments in history and saying, "This is what happened, and this is the way it was," rarely taking a side one way or another in what we are reporting.

We've been accused of writing these songs as a way to show off how smart we are, which couldn't be farther from the truth. Almost every song was more inspired by a sentiment of, "Wouldn't it be funny to write a rock song about THAT?" And it just happened that we were focusing on history, stories we love and love learning about. It is within that grain of salt that we ask you to give us a listen, and we hope you enjoy!