Taping/Bootleg/Download Policy
(and a little music industry rant)

1. Taping is allowed at all shows (unless prohibited by the venue), but only if it does not obstruct, interfere, or inconvenience another audience member. Simply put, please use common sense and common decency towards others.

2. All live bootleg shows may only be used for personal use, trade, or free sharing. Absolutely NO money may exchange hands involving live shows! (That's when the lawyers get involved!). And, of course, bootlegging official releases for profit is not cool at all...that's a no-brainer, right? Right?!

3. Downloading and burning...ah, such a wonderful sticky subject! Well, we fall somewhere in the middle - it's not totally a black & white issue. Again, we fall on the side of common sense and common moral values. Downloading and burning can be a great way to share new music, and sometimes 'bring in new fans'. The problem arises when those people who like the music then refuse to pay for it. We totally love the idea of people 'testing' the music before they purchase...we don't want people to lay out $15 and have them hate the music when they get it - we feel kinda guilty about that! Music is subjective, and our music is not for everyone. However, if you download our stuff, or a friend burns you a CD (or selected tracks - preferably!), and you like the music...PLEASE buy it! This is how we make our living...and trust us, it is not extravagant by any means! (You won't be seeing us on 'MTV Cribs' or 'Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous' anytime soon!). If you don't like the music, then, of course, don't buy it...nothing lost! We don't want to speak for other artists, but this is generally how most artists feel. It just comes down to simple honesty, morality and common sense. (Common sense gets lost in almost all legal matters...which is why this is not a black & white issue). Most matters fall within a gray area...that gray area, however, depends on honesty.

We're also sympathetic to the education part of it...we realize some people (honest, decent people) literally have no idea that what they may be doing is illegal. Think of it this way...can you walk into a record store and pick up a CD without paying for it? Of course not - it's shoplifting! So, when you download or receive a burned CD from someone and you're not paying for it, isn't that essentially the same thing as shoplifting? It's just that you're doing it in your own home. And for 'famous' artists, you can't justify it by using the excuse, "Well, they're rich anyway - they don't need the money." Maybe true. However, you're not so much hurting the 'rich artist' as you are killing the jobs/income of all of the people that work within that chain of getting a CD to you...the record store (traditional, or website stores) and all of it's employees (making small wages), the distributors and all of their employees (again, not making large wages), cd manufacturing plants, everyone at the record companies excluding the rich executives - secretaries, etc...these people depend on record sales for their livelihood. Hopefully, that puts it in a better, 'real world' perspective.

Granted there is a little more to it than that - including the consumer mentality and rationalization, which we are also sympathetic to. We realize part of the consumer mentality is a backlash against paying high prices for CD's and only getting 1-3 good songs on the album. This is a large complicated subject which is really the fault of record labels...and a subject that we are not at all happy about either. If the labels would actually start signing more genuine talent (good songwriters), this problem wouldn't exist nearly as much. But as long as they keep signing flavor-of-the-month, plastic, cliched artists, that they can market quickly (and over-saturate, which also kills an artist's career), and make a ton of money in a short amount of time - this problem will continue to exist. They are only interested in marketing 2-3 singles for each album, and they could care less about the quality of the rest of the album. Some newer artists certainly do care about making great, consistent albums, and they will have long careers because of that (John Mayer is one that comes to mind...he's a great pop songwriter...for everyone of him, there are 30 current 'popular' artists that will not be around in 2-3 years). We, too, try to write quality consistent albums, spending attention to detail...every song is treated with the same 'care'. We may not be everyone's cup of tea, but we do have a pretty high standard of what 'makes the final cut'.

So!!...Bottom line - Download and/or burn tracks for your friends as much as you want...but if you/they like what is heard, please purchase it, and/or encourage the friends you burned copies for to buy it if they, too, like it. We're totally cool with downloading and burning if everyone is honest & cool about it.

Thanks.