The Year in Junebug (2011)

It was a good year, you guys. And we're glad you were with us for the ride. It was a year of ups and downs, but mostly ups. Here's a brief rundown of the cool and fun things we did in 2011.

We started the year by playing the Sixth Avenue Gallery in Aberdeen, S.D. This was a super cool venue which housed an art gallery, a mattress store, a tattoo shop, an antiques store and more. The shows happened late at night, usually "after hours." Therefore, the bartenders and strippers and other people in town who get off work after 2:00 a.m. could come and party. We had a lot of fun at the Gallery and played there a few times: once in January, once in March and half of once in July. That was a strange occurrence that can be read about in Tony's Show Diaries. Sadly, the Sixth Avenue Gallery closed its doors in December.

We played three great shows in February. We played for the Vulcans at the Winter Carnival. It was a trip. We had a blast. We played a show at the Whiskey: I (tony) was sick and members of my family surprised me by showing up. We played at the Nomad with Pictures of Then and others.

We had a fun summer, playing in Aberdeen for the Bicycle Spectacle, playing at the Driftwood in Minneapolis for the first time, and playing at the Twin Cities Pride Festival for the third year in a row (headliners: The Village People), and we went up to Elk River and played the Chalk It Up event.

In August, a pretty significant thing occurred in Junebug history. We played the Student Run Records A&R showcase at the Fine Line Cafe in Minneapolis. It was an audition of sorts, to be picked up and signed to the label. Something about our performance popped, because they opted to work with us. Which is cool. Just a matter of a few weeks later, we began tracking our upcoming album, Beards.

In September, we played our first show at 7th Street Entry in Minneapolis. Not only was it our first gig at this historic venue, but it was also a turning point in the membership of the band. Bassist Brandon Johnson left the band at this time and we had to find a fill-in for this show.

With the departure of Brandon from Junebug, we picked up a new member pretty quickly. We needed to get in the studio and track basics for the new album, and that would be hard to do without a bassist. We managed to convince Dillon Marchus to jump on board. (It wasn't hard. He's a pretty agreeable dude.) We recorded a bunch of Beards sessions with producers Eddie Ciletti and Brian Jacoby and nearly finished a bunch of those tracks.

We opened the "Show Us Your Beards" contest which is still ongoing!

We made it back to Aberdeen (sans bassist) for the Red Rooster Coffee House's 15th anniversary party, which we were honored to be a part of.  We played again at the Driftwood with our friends the San Haven Chuckle, and we did a couple sessions of TourStop at MasterMix.

2011 also saw a few releases of content. First came a live performance of "Beards," followed by "On the Sidewalk." Next came "Piper" and soon after we saw the release of our performance on TourStop at MasterMix. All can be viewed/heard below.

All in all, it was a great 2011. We look forward to 2012. Because  honestly, who knows what's going to happen. We have to be sure to rock the world and elsewhere before the world burns to a crisp. Will it happen? Stay tuned, 'Buggers. The world doesn't know what's in store.

I hope you're along for the ride. Happy new year!