RECON - GRAVES X release 04 Jun 2016

Hi guys. This is John from MAITSUBA, or as some may know me: John from Recon.

We've had the RECON - GRAVES X jackets and the records themselves for a little bit, now. Today, we got the last of the insert material (stickers, download cards, postcards, and the actual inserts), and tomorrow we will be assembling the records and doing the hand-numbering of the jackets. This record represents a huge labor of love, not just over the past year of hunting down old demo recordings and photos, working extra hours to fund the project, etc; but over the years in the mid-2000s when we basically lived and breathed this band. From the original guys (Mike, Tony, Chris, Jeff), to those of us that came a little later (Paul, myself), and even those that came after the Graves era, we spent a lot of time in broken down vans in swamps and deserts (literally) to play our songs across the country - and none of us would trade that for anything. We made so many lifelong friends and experienced so many things that a lot of people never will, and we were able to all because people liked the songs we wrote (or didn't, but thought we were nice kids...I suspect it's a mixture of the two).

We did the types of shows where you drive for six hours, play, drive back home, sleep for twenty minutes and go to work; we did all that shit. We did the types of shows where you drive for twenty minutes, open for Hatebreed, and play in front of 900 people; we did that shit. We did the types of tours where every day is a ten hour drive in the middle of July with the heat on full blast because the van keeps overheating otherwise and none of you have showered in days and there's ten people at every show, and then the van breaks down on a Friday so you can't even get back on the road until Monday and then it breaks down again the following Friday; we did all that shit. We did the types of tours where every drive is just a few hours and the van works fine and the shows are packed and everyone knows all your songs; we did all that shit, too. ALL those shows and ALL those tours were awesome. I am not being facetious when I say I cherish all of those experiences, every single minute. Though we worked hard, we were fortunate to have the opportunities we did, and even when we weren't lucky enough to be around friends (old or new), it was always the five of us on an adventure, together. We all got on each other's nerves, of course - don't get me wrong, take five or six dudes, keep them within smelling distance of each other for almost 24 hours a day for weeks or months on end, and it's going to get weird - but we all wanted to be there and we were all in it together.

I could go on about those times all day, the bands we toured with, the friends we stayed with, the gas stations we ate at, the weird inside jokes we started that we still hold onto... but I'll spare you for now.

I want to thank some of the people whose help and guidance I couldn't have put this record together without: Justin from Closed Casket Activities, Mike D from DarkicoN Design, Brett Portzer, our old singer Chris, our other old singer Jay because he's the only one who actually saved the 2007 version of Thirteen that we put on Side B, Mike Recon for helping me make a lot of important decisions with the release, Kate Neal and everyone else whose photos we used, the people who have fucking actual real life Recon TATTOOS that we used photos of (and if you have a Recon tattoo and we don't know about it: thank you, too!), and everyone who's been buying this record. Thank you.

This project has taken an EXTREME amount of our attention for the past year; it's safe to say that focusing on this record has delayed the process for the next Recon record, with our current lineup (Rob, Mike, Tony, Paul, and myself). But we will get back on that.

Thanks for reading this, thanks for caring about this band and/or this record label... thank you.

-John Torn, 6/4/2016