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It’s a new month, so there’s a new, donor-only TMJ single. This one has three songs:

1. Old Friends Make Me Sad, whish is about what it sounds like.
2. “What Pricks We Were,” commissioned by Jonathan Valeri, for his lifelong friend and brother, Mike Bellofatto.
3. “Rabbi Rosenberg,” which was written for the 50th birthday of the official rabbi of Too Much Joy, Jason Rosenberg. It was commissioned by Deborah Bowen and a crew of the man’s other stans.

If you missed the IndieGoGo campaign but want to hear the songs before they’re released to the general public, you can still get in on the fun by becoming a donor here.

Happy New Year, everybody. We’re celebrating by sending all our IndieGoGo donors the first of the twelve singles they’ll be reciving in 2022. It’s got two songs. The first is “Normal Never Was,” a song about how the better pasts we imagine rarely were. The b-side is “Curse of the Bobblehead,” a true story commissioned by Justin Beland, for his father-in-law Marc Gold. This is probably the last time TMJ will ever sing about sportsball, but you needn’t be a fan of the game (or, even, Too Much Joy) to enjoy this particular song, which has lessons for us all.

Well, the last time did this was so much fun that we’ve decided to do it again: last night we announced a new IndieGoGo campaign for 2022. The end result will be a brand-spanking new TMJ record, but we’re going to be even more ambitious this time round. In addition to giving donors the new album when it’s done (either as digital downloads, a shiny CD, or a limited edition, donor-only colored vinyl LP, depending on how much you pledge), we’re committing to release a brand new, donor-only single every month in 2022.

But wait, there’s more! If you can afford $200, you’ll also get access to the TMJ Music Vault, which comes pre-populated with demos and outtakes from their entire career, and which will have new demos, alternate mixes and other ephemera from the new album’s sessions added throughout the year.

And if you can afford $500, you can buy one of 12 custom B-sides to those donor-only singles, in which the music from the previous month’s A-side will be given brand new lyrcis, written by Tim, about any topic of your choosing. Have TMJ sing the praises of your loved one, or pet, or anything you;ve ever wished they’d write a song about.

And if you have $1000 to splurge, you can commission a custom song for which Tim will not only write the lyrics, but completely new music. Some of those might even wind up on the new LP, which will be coming out on Propeller Sound Recordings, likely sometime in October of 2022.

Even better: all donors at any level will be sent a code that unlocks a new TMJ song called “We Yell at 8.” Contribute here.

Cereal Killers turned 30 today. To celebrate, the Rock & Roll Globe published this very nice piece by Ryan Maffei that sums up the record, its recording and its reception pretty well. We all had a blast chatting with Ryan.

Jim Sullivan covered some of our earliest shows in Boston. He was at T.T. the Bear’s when the band decided to lead the crowd in a parade out of the club, down the street, into the Middle East (where a different band was playing) and back. And he was there many years later at the Paradise, standing next to Tim’s mom and feeling a bit uncomfortable as the band cursed up a storm.

Anyway, we consider him a pal, so it was a treat having an extended discussion about our new album with him, conducted over email and the phone.

Tim says you should read all the way to the end, as Jim got him to explain what the band does and why in the most romantic manner he’s ever managed.

Read the whole thing here.

The Reverend Keith Gordon seems pleased with our new album. You can read what he has to say about it at his site, That Devil Music.

At the end of his article, he has embedded our latest video, “Uncle Watson Wants to Think,” which can only be viewed on his site for now. We’ll release it more widely soon.

“Uncle Watson” features friend of the band Joan Osborne on guest vocals. She fits right in, we think.

 

 

We made a video for “Blinding Light of Love”! And legendary punk/indie magazine/website The Big Takeover is premiering it!

You can read what they have to say about our video here, and/or watch the thing below. It was animated by the very talented Anna Burholt.

 

MXDWN has a nice write-up of the lead track from Mistakes Were Made, “Blinding Light of Love.”

We’re not quite sure what they find so humorous, but any press is good press, right?

You can check it out here.

The new album has been completed. Donors to the IndieGoGo campaign that funded its creation have already received digital downloads for their generosity. Everyone else has to wait till March 19th, when it’s officially released. But you can pre-order it now, as a digital download, or a CD with a lyrics/credit booklet, or a vinyl LP, also with a lyrics/credits insert. There’s even a VERY limited edition version of the LP that comes with an autographed dust sleeve and a bonus download of 8 outtakes from the sessions. All orders unlock three tracks from the album now, and will unlock another single when it comes out in early January. Get yours here.

We’re pretty proud of the results — not quite sure how or why, but something about the rage and frustration engendered by the pandemic and ensuing lockdowns resulted in a flood of new material that we’re pretty sure measures up well with anything we’ve done in the past.

We hope you agree.

We’ve got another set of new/old songs for August’s First Friday event on Bandcamp. It won’t be out till Friday, but you can hear “Pong” right now on BrooklynVegan.

But we’ve also got a more momentous announcement: we’ve been having so much fun recording again, and have found the process of writing one or two new ones for each old one we revisit so inspiring, that we’ve decided to record a complete album that way.

Yup: we’re working on our first album of new material in almost a quarter of a century. It’s tentatively titled Last Century, because half the songs were written in the literal last century, and half the songs are being written in this, which sometimes feels as though it might be humanity’s last.

You can hear the latest fruits of that approach on August 7, when we release “Pong,” a brand new song, backed with the long-overdue studio version of “Hey Merlin!,” a tune we demoed for Cereal Killers but never officially recorded (though the original, live-to-two-track demo has surfaced on the fan-club only single Dr. Seuss is Dead, as well as the Gods and Sods compilation.

We’ve set up an IndieGoGo campaign to help fund the recording, so if you want to pre-order a copy of the album before it officially exists, you can do so there for $10, or you can contribute even more in exchange for various perks.