* Bill and Lyle are rocking out full-on in Amish Jihad. 
* Mike moved to Gainesville and has formed a new band called J-Page.
* Matt is scuba diving somewhere where you need to get shots to visit.
 

"Breaking up" sounds overly dramatic.  More accurately, we're playing our last show and then not showing up to band practice anymore.  "No call, no show" is more like it.

People ask why we're playing our last shows.  There is a popular misconception that rock bands stay together forever.  Bands get together, write their songs, release them to the world, and then the members go on to work in restaurants or play in tribute bands.  Maybe while they were together they were lucky enough to come to your town and play live and get drunk and sleep on your local beach.  But nothing lasts forever, which is exactly the reason why after reading this and jacking around on the internet, you should get up and go do everything you keep talking about doing instead of just sitting around and talking about it.  

As for what we'll be doing after this, Bill and Lyle will be continuing their metal instrumental onslaught in Amish Jihad.  Mike will be moving to Gainesville, FL and starting a new band with Jon and Derron from the band Gunmoll.  On top of that, Mike and the guys from Gunmoll will be putting out a split-EP of acoustic versions their own bands' songs on Law of Inertia records sometime in 2004.  And Matt will write for glossy rock magazines and travel to foreign countries that require inoculations. 

We have a lot of people to thank from the last eight years.  Let's start with the entire populations of Orange, Durham, Wake, Burlington, Wayne, and Alamance counties in North Carolina.  That should cover everyone we know around here.  And everybody in the Virginia Beach area, and whoever lived in Harrisonburg, Virginia from 1997-2001, gracias amigos.  Thank you Florida, as somehow we never got a ticket for speeding or indecent exposure in your state.  And thank you Garden City, Kansas and Lincoln, North Dakota for showing up in droves, because otherwise I think we would've committed seppuku out of sheer boredom while driving across the Midwest.  Meanwhile, anybody who drives the speed limit in Connecticut or runs a crooked rock club in California, you can kiss our ass.  You shook our faith in humanity and we hope you all get audited at least once in your lives.

If you heard our songs, you should thank these guys who made sure our records came out:  Fab Del Rey records, Matt Kelley at Route 14 records, and Ross Siegel at Law of Inertia records.  If you guys were waiting for the big MTV breakthrough hit so you could cash in on our back catalog, I'm sorry we let you down.

Thank you Matt Ehlers and Travis Groo for sending a lot of e-mails and making a lot of phone calls for us at one time or another.  

We've played a ridiculous number of shows across three countries and can't remember all the fun places we've played.  But we'd like to especially thank Go, Cat's Cradle, Lizard and Snake, Duke Coffeehouse, and Matt Dauer in Virginia Beach, as they always hooked us up and gave us whatever we wanted like the spoiled children we are.  But the crowded, out-of-control house shows were some of the most memorable and we had some of the best times of our lives at the High Life House in Colorado Springs, the Spaghetti House in Harrisonburg, Tommy's apartment in Morgantown, and whatever that house was in Atlantic, NC where literally the whole town showed up. 

We can't begin to name the bands that we want to thank.  We wish we could play with you all one more time.  If we could get all the bands we wanted to play our farewell show, it would be a three-day outdoor festival with $10 parking and $5 beers.  But for the record, we'd like to say it sucks that The Revolvers, 65 Filmshow, and Gunmoll broke up before we did, and we wish they were waiting for us in band heaven.

And if sometime in the last eight years you came to our show, bought a CD, wore a t-shirt, or downloaded our songs and put them on a mix tape, thanks.  You have no idea how stoked we were when you thought something we did was worth taking home (and likewise, we realized we were going to have gas money to get back home.)    

And to every single person in Japan, thank you!  You're all so nice.

Some people have written us some really kind letters saying all sorts of incredible things.  We'd like to say that you should cheer the hell up and go start your own rock band.  It's a great way to spend seven or more years of your life.  We highly recommend it.

If we have any regrets, it's that we didn't get to finish another album before it was all over.  But we hope somewhere along the line, we did something that made your day better than it would've been if we had just decided to stay home and watch movies.  

If at some point in the last eight years we were some part of your lives, you made the band that was our lives worthwhile for us. For us, it came to an end while it was still fun. And we hope at the end of your days, you can say the same.

Ciao bella!
The Scaries