Our new album is so close to being done.  And we have a name for it: Mr. Brown.  We’re calling it that partly to honor our venerable and magical sound man, Tom.  Right now Tom is probably in his dark cave surrounded by knobs, buttons and little flashing green lights, mixing the album.  He has to wait for the barometer to drop below 970 before he can do this.  Low atmospheric pressure is better for his ears.

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Mario and Alison are moving to North Dakota to have their baby boy.  Ally’s family is in North Dakota and they wanted to be close to them.  They will be missed by us big time.  This means that Mario won’t be performing with LST for awhile.  Mario is not replaceable, but in order to make up for his absence Nathan is learning to play the harmonica, Sam is buying more drums and Franco is trying not to be so skinny.

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Andrew Chard played his last official LST show on bass last September.  Then he subbed for Milo Mullins, his successor, at a show on October 3rd.  He was an excellent substitute bass player - our best ever in fact.  He moved on for a variety of reasons, one of which was to write a book.  Chard played bass with us from 2007 through most of 2009. 

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Mario is still featured on the new album, as is Andrew Chard.  We will still be performing several of Mario’s songs at live shows.  He gave us his blessing to do this.  The songs will sound a bit different of course, but good songs are good songs and Nathan and I have really been enjoying singing them in rehearsals.