Earlier this week, my band guerrilla monzón put out a new album! Yes, exclamation mark at the end of that sentence! It’s exciting! I went a long time without making or releasing music, and now I find myself in an oddly prolific period. The album is called Make It Home, and you can listen to it on all the streaming platforms or buy it on iTunes or Bandcamp. For what it’s worth, iTunes locks you into a price point and you can pay whatever you want for it on Bandcamp. I don’t really care. I fully expect to make no money off of this album. I’d just be happy if a few people listened to it and liked it enough to share it with their friends.
Here’s what the album looks like:
For standardization reasons, Bandcamp and all the streaming services make you crop your album artwork to a standard square size, but I hate that. This is how I’d like it to be seen, and if I end up doing a limited vinyl run of this album, this is how it’ll look.
One of the downsides to releasing music digitally is you can’t include liner notes with the releases. There are a lot of people to thank for this project coming to life, but I can’t put those thanks in places where people are most likely to see them. I also want to say some things about the album, and the album cover especially, that I just can’t include on Spotify or Apple. I can include this information on Bandcamp though and I did. I’ve reposted it below here.
On the cover of this album is a picture of my favorite bar, the Diamond. When I first moved to New York and was first playing music up there with Eric, Ben, and Evan with Oh No and the Tiger Pit, we had a practice space right around the corner. The Diamond was the closest bar. Like so many relationships, this one was born out of a bit of happenstance. I'd go there before practice, drink a $4 Sly Fox, and read a book. It was so quiet back then. I didn't realize the bar had just opened a short while before we got to town. It just sort of felt like it had always been. It felt like home. I would go to the Diamond more than any place in NYC that wasn't work or my apartment. I got to know Dave and some of the folks behind the bar and some of the regulars and for a while, I too was a regular. For a while, Eric was one of the folks behind the bar.
I had my bachelor party there. Dave poured me a suicide to celebrate the occasion. I had birthdays there and celebrated other people's birthdays there too. All the while, $4 Sly Fox at happy hour, the best little pickle and olive plate too and a sneaky good cheese plate. What sort of down to earth, no frills bar has a cheese plate, let alone a good one? That was the Diamond. Not a dive, not fancy, just right and comfortable.
Well time passes as it always does and life takes you to other places, although not other bars as frequently. I stopped going as much. Oh No stopped practicing and then 56k stopped practicing and then the practice space itself moved to the other side of Greenpoint. Once a week became once a month and then every once in a while, but still I loved the place. Every time I was back, playing at the best kept shuffleboard in Brooklyn or chuckling at the Days of the New cassette in the bathroom wall. One of the things I always wanted to do there but never pulled off was a show. We were close once, I think, and then the pandemic hit. And then of course, the Diamond closed. Everything closes at some point. Such is life. But this one hurt more than most. I was probably always going to leave New York at some point. When the Diamond closed, it felt like the world telling me it was time to move on to, and so I did, back down to Gainesville, Florida, the first place I really felt at home with when I was in college.
So what does all this have to with this album? Well it's called Make It Home with a picture of the Diamond for a reason. It's mostly about looking for something or someone, a grounding, a place where you can feel comfortable, a home. I'm lucky to have that in my life, but I do know the feeling of searching and not even knowing quite what you're searching for. Maybe just a way out of here.
And here are the credits and acknowledgements:
Guitars + Vocals: Jason Sanchez
Bass + Vocals: Eric Gordon
Drums: Rey Sinsay
Pedal steel guitar on "Welcome to the Heartache" and "Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere": Brett Parnell
Backing vocals on "Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere": Joanie Leon Guerrero
Special thanks to Tex for a timely bark on "Welcome to the Heartache"
All songs by guerrilla monzón except "Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere" by Neil Young
Produced, recorded, and mixed by Brett Parnell at Bear in a Barn Studios in Brooklyn, NY.
Mastered by Tommy Harron
Album cover photo by Jason Sanchez
Dedicated to the greatest bar that ever was and our second home in Brooklyn #diamondforever
Special Thanks to: Brett Parnell and Joanie Leon Guerrero for lending their talents to this music; Denise Giraldo-Gordon, Bethany O'Neill, Izzy Sanchez, Amos O'Neill, Keke Woods, Evan Mitchell, Ben Mattison, and Jonathan Gabison for their support; Gabe Stuart, Alice Amy Tam, Jesse Bryan, Arturo Medrano, Conor Mitchell, David Kinniburgh, Elias Blumm, Jerome Scott Umanos, Travis Atria, Eric Atria, Stacie Atria, and Chris Hillman for their musical inspiration; SciLabs for being maybe the only good rehearsal space landlord ever and giving us all a steady home through 3 different bands for more than a decade; The Diamond, Dave, and everyone who worked there or was a regular for all the good times throughout the years; our families and many more friends who have helped us in many ways.
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