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Right now, I'm on the road with my longtime friend, Liz Durrett.  Touring has always been rough stuff.  It's dirty, it's exhausting, it's demoralizing, even.  But these days, it's expensive.  More people lose money on tours than make money.  Even old tried and true venues around the country are dropping the cover charge in favor of just getting folks in to see the band.  (It seems that we, driven by our anxiety over the "economy" are more prone to spontaneous spending than planned purchasing - so ticket sales have gone the way of cassette tapes.)

Broken Letters are one of those bands who are accepting the facts with a bit of grace and savvy.  They're releasing the digital version of their latest effort, an EP named II (yes, of course their first EP was titled I), for free.  "With our new release, we decided that rather than investing money in printing something and trying to get people to show up at a specific place with enough cash to buy it in hopes of selling enough to make back our investment, we'd just eliminate all those barriers and make it available any time anywhere for free."
band member David Hickox says. 

Broken Letters, whose founding members included ex-Plate Six members Hickox and Brad Davis, were joined on II by Matt Whitson.  The band, who began as a continuation on I of the more raucous and raw Plate Six, deconstructed into a more slow, spare arrangement on full-length release Sings the Burning Alphabet.  II finds them finally settled into their original vision, fleshed out by Blanton and Whitson. 

Broken Letters' music, which stems from years-long, deep musical roots between Hickox and Davis, is gorgeously Southern Gothic, winding through long passages of elegant guitar playing and wistful lyrics that sound like a snippet from a diary.  But the songs aren't alienatingly personal, but rather tap into a universal experience, in both music and words, echoing sounds from our past as reinterpreted by one who's traveled afar and found themselves strangely back at home.   

Below you can listen to 2 tracks from the album, but as this is the day of release, lock your ipods into the synch position and go to www.facebook.com/pages/The-Broken-Letters... and download away! 

The Broken Letters, joined onstage by Colin Blanton, will be celebrating their release tonight with a show at Bottletree joined by Necronomikids and Come Up for Air.

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