Yes, Loquat is a band (and a fruit)

Everyone has a blog. My grandmother probably has one. For some unknown reason, Loquat never had an official blog. Maybe it's time, considering I (Kylee) am a writer by day and band nerd by night.

I say "band nerd" because that's what we called ourselves in high school. Loquat has a history of having members who were once band nerds: We were in marching band, concert band, jazz band, etc., in high school. (I will not share photos, at least not of me.) Interestingly, our lead guitar players—former guitarist, Earl Otsuka, and current guitarist, Chip Cosby—scoffed at the idea of having to wear a ridiculously hot wool tuxedo, silver overlay with a giant "O" on it, and a plastic hat with a feather plume, marching around a football field in August with a saxophone playing Twisted Sister's "We're Not Gonna Take It."

Anthony and Christopher were in the drum line together, so they were a little bit cooler than me. Coop played clarinet, so we were about the same level of nerd. Maybe one day Coop and I will do a clarinet/saxophone duet. Heh.

At any rate, Loquat has been around for a while now. We're not planning on packing it in anytime soon, so we might as well finally get to know each other, right? There many stories we haven't told. Feel free to share your embarrassing high school stories (past or present) with us, so we can commiserate. We're here for you.

And we'd like to be meet more of you, too. We are dying to get back on the road. Come hell or high water (in which case we'll have to fly), we will. But first, there is the business of recording a new album. We're writing songs, liking some and getting frustrated with others, writing more, working them out in the rehearsal space, writing more, angrily kicking some to the curb and stomping on them, writing more, swearing at my computer, writing more (pretty pissed off now), and writing yet more. And it's still not enough. Making music is both thrilling and insanely aggravating. Sometimes you're inspired; sometimes you think you're a hack, and you think you're going to get found out.

The good news is that we're meeting with our producers the Rondo Brothers—who worked on our last album, Secrets of the Sea—this week to show them what we've been working on. It's good to have some outside perspective to keep us on course. We'll also be doing a tour of a studio in the Bay Area. It's time to make a plan. Otherwise, we'd just keep writing songs forever. We really want to git 'er done. In the meantime, we do have a show coming up for the Noise Pop festival, Saturday, Feb. 27 at Bottom of the Hill in San Francisco. There won't be tickets available for long, but for now, you can get them here: http://www.stubmatic.com/bottomofthehill/event/2754

And if you want to know anything about Loquat, please leave us comments and questions. We don't want to be working on an album in a dark cave by ourselves, so some human contact would be nice.

Love, Loquat