Tell All Your Friends
Tell All Your Friends is the debut studio album by American rock band Taking Back Sunday. The group had several lineup changes before settling on vocalist Adam Lazzara, guitarist and vocalist John Nolan, guitarist Eddie Reyes, bassist Shaun Cooper, and drummer Mark O'Connell. Taking Back Sunday released a five-song demo in early 2001, after which, they toured for most of the year. They rented a room in Lindenhurst, New York, where they wrote and demoed songs. In December 2001, the band signed with Victory Records and began recording Tell All Your Friends. The album, produced by Sal Villanueva, was recorded at Big Blue Meenie Recording Studio in New Jersey.
In early March 2002, a music video was released for "Great Romances of the 20th Century" and the song was distributed to radio stations. Tell All Your Friends was released on March 26. It sold 2,000 copies its first week, charting at number 183 on the Billboard 200 chart. That summer, Taking Back Sunday toured with Brand New and Rufio. In December, a Fight Club-inspired music video was released for "Cute Without the 'E' ". The group spent the early part of 2003 touring with The Used and The Blood Brothers before headlining their own tour. After the tour, Nolan and Cooper left the band and were replaced by Fred Mascherino and Matt Rubano. In September, "You're So Last Summer" was distributed to radio stations and the band began co-headlining a tour with Saves the Day which lasted until November. In November 2003, a music video was released for "You're So Last Summer".
Tell All Your Friends has received mostly positive reviews from critics. In September 2005, the album was certified gold in the U.S. for having sold 500,000 copies. With sales of 790,000 copies, Tell All Your Friends is Taking Back Sunday's best-selling album. It is Victory Records' longest-running release on the Billboard Heatseekers and Independent album charts, charting for 68 weeks on the former and 78 on the latter. In 2012, the band went on tour to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Tell All Your Friends. The band played an acoustic set on the anniversary tour, which was later released in 2013 as the live album TAYF10 Acoustic.
Background
Guitarist Eddie Reyes became a staple of the Long Island, New York hardcore scene, performing in Mind Over Matter, Inside, Clockwise and the Movielife. After leaving the Movielife, he started a new project Runner-Up, which lasted briefly. He then contacted friends Antonio Longo and Steven DeJoseph; Longo suggested John Nolan, who he grew up with, as a second guitarist. Longo treated Nolan as family and was adamant about his inclusion. Following a series of several bassists, Longo and Nolan brought Jesse Lacey, who the pair grew up with, into the fold. This resulted in the formation of Taking Back Sunday in Amityville, New York in November 1999. DeJoseph was unable to do extensive touring due to personal issues and was waiting until they had another drummer in tow before leaving the group. At a party, Nolan reportedly romanced Lacey's girlfriend, after which Lacey left the band after being a member for three–four months and formed Brand New sometime after. DeJoseph's final show was in North Carolina, near the hometown of Adam Lazzara.Guitarist Phil Hanratty of, who had previously played with Reyes in Clockwise, was standing-in on bass temporarily. Hanratty was friends with Lazzara, who he introduced to the rest of the band after the performance. Lazzara inquired if they need a permanent bassist. He drove to Long Island, had a practice session with the group and returned home. A month later, Reyes called Lazzara, asking him to join the band and move in with him. Mark O'Connell was told from his friend Terry, who worked with Longo at a restaurant, that the band didn't have a drummer. Terry told Reyes about O'Connell, who Reyes was already friends with. O'Connell has a practice session with them, after which Reyes and Longo ask him to join. After recording their self-titled EP, Longo left the band and subsequently played with Guilt Like Gravity and the Mirror. Reyes stated the main complaint for Longo's removal was his lack of ability as a singer and a lyricist. In December 2000, Lazzara switched from bass to lead vocals. By this point, Lazzara had been doing backing vocals, but never thought he would become the group's singer: "I remember getting into Windstar with that and just driving around singing those songs, just to make myself actually do it."
O'Connell suggested that the group needed a bassist, and brought in Shaun Cooper. Though the rest of the band needed convincing since they didn't know him. In February 2001, Taking Back Sunday released a five-track demo The Tell All Your Friends Demo; copies were given to anyone with an association to a record label. Following this, the group spent the year touring, during which they received offers from labels that ultimately mounted to nothing. Among these offers were Triple Crown Records, who was apprehensive as they had just signed Brand New, and Drive-Thru Records, whose co-owner Richard Reines had mistaken Nolan for Lacey. Eventually, the band's friend Michele Logo was in a car with Victory Records sales/A&R representative Angel Juarbe. She had the band's demo playing during the journey, before Juarbe inquired who it was. He sent a copy to Victory founder Tony Brummel, who requested to see how the group's live performances were. Within two weeks of seeing them live, a contract was written up, and the band signed to Victory in December.
Production
Although other labels expressed interest in Taking Back Sunday, Victory encouraged them to record an album. Tell All Your Friends was recorded over a period of two weeks in December 2001 at Big Blue Meenie Recording Studio in New Jersey with producer Sal Villanueva. The band arrived without a drum set, presuming that the studio would have one. Engineer Tim Gilles said, "No major studio in America has their own set. You've gotta be fucking kidding me". The group spent each day driving from Long Island to Jersey City. Cooper collectively recorded his bass parts in four hours, spread over half a day. Villanueva would come up with ideas and suggest them to the band. Towards the end of tracking around Christmas, Lazzara became sick and lost his voice for two days. It resulted in the band having to miss on one-to-two weeks of recording time. The sessions concluded in early January 2002, and ended up costing $10,000. Villanueva had contributed guitar work and co-mixed the recordings with Rumblefish. When the band heard the final mixes, they realised the studio staff had altered the recordings, namely sounds had been manipulated and the guitar tones differed from how they were recorded.The piano intro to "The Blue Channel", which was initially slow, was sped up to match the tempo of the rest of the song, which was four times faster. Cooper said that the band was unhappy with these choices, and mentioned the intro to "Great Romances of the 20th Century" was similarly altered from a piano to a synthesizer. The band wanted to make adjustments but were told they were over time and over budget for these changes to happen. The group wanted to re-record "Your Own Disaster" from their demo, but was unable to due to time and money constraints. Instead, it was re-recorded for their next album, Where You Want to Be. Engineering was handled by Gilles, Erin Farley, and Arun Venkatesh, with mastering by Gilles at Surgical Sound. Neil Rubenstein, who later became the group's tour manager, contributed vocals to "There's No 'I' in Team", "Timberwolves at New Jersey" and "Head Club". Nolan's sister, Michelle, sang on "Bike Scene" and "Ghost Man on Third", and Matt McDannell contributed vocals to "Head Club". Nolan suggested his sister "because I knew she had an amazing voice".
Composition
Overview
Tell All Your Friends sound would later be described as emo, emo pop and post-hardcore, drawing comparisons to Grade, the Movielife and Weezer. The vocals were reminiscent of Saves the Day and the Canterbury Effect, often switching from singing to screaming. Around this time, Taking Back Sunday was influenced by emo bands the Get Up Kids and the Promise Ring. Reyes said that the album was written solely for "fun and the love of music, no expectations." Lazzara and Nolan shared an apartment, often staying up talking until 5:00 am, and began showing each other compositions on which they were working. Rubenstein would often find them composing songs with acoustic guitars. The band started jamming in a rehearsal room that Reyes had in Lindenhurst, New York, where they practiced and composed every night. The first song this line-up had written was "Great Romances of the 20th Century", which the members felt was better than anything they had done before and that it sounded different from other Long Island acts, who were into pop/funk.The band frequently recorded demos. The group wrote music together, while Lazzara and Nolan wrote lyrics. One member would typically come up with a part, which the rest of the group would expand into a song. Nolan wrote a lot of material and had various ideas. He'd cut parts and sections out of one song he'd be working on and it would eventually end up in a Taking Back Sunday song. Many songs feature Lazzara and Nolan use call-and-response vocals – something that Reyes' prior band Clockwise had done with their members Hanratty and George Fullan. When Reyes started Taking Back Sunday, he told Fullan that he wanted to include the dual vocals as it was something he really liked.
Their lyrics were inspired by personal experience. For Nolan, several instances filtered into this lyrics: the falling-out with Lacey who he had known for all of his life, which affected how Nolan felt and what he was trying to working through in his writings; the ending of a five-year long-term relationship since high school, and the subsequent process of figuring who you are and what you want to be as a result; and coming to terms with his born again Christian upbringing and the realization of what he didn't believe in his life up to that point. Nolan and Lazzara had a concept where some of the lyrics could be read "like a play where one line is the boy and the next line is the girl... Sometimes when you read the lyrics it's a little boring and it's more interesting this way". About half their song titles, according to Nolan, came from "sitting around late at night watching TV". The songs followed the structure of: quiet verse, loud bridge, big chorus, repeat, breakdown, chorus, ending. For almost every track, the breakdown consists of Lazzara and Nolan intertwining their vocal parts, crescendoing into screaming.
Tracks
"You Know How I Do" is a mid-tempo track that opens with the sound of feedback, which shifts into Nolan's guitar part before the drums join in. A breakdown is heard later in the song, with bass accompaniment and contrasting vocal lines. "Bike Scene", another mid-tempo song, starts with palm-muted guitar parts. Lazzara and O'Connell came up with the opening riff for "Cute Without the 'E' " while at Lazzara's dad's house in North Carolina. It was expanded into a full song at the suggestion of Nolan after it was brought into practice sessions. The lyrics were the result of a relationship Lazzara had recently gotten out of; an underlying theme of betrayal is present. The title of the track came from the band's friend Mike Duvan when he said the phrase "cut from the team". The track opens with a four-chord guitar intro before shifting into single-note verses.The Nolan–Lacey romancing incident inspired Brand New to include "Seventy Times 7" on their debut album, Your Favorite Weapon. Nolan wrote about the event from his point of view in Taking Back Sunday's "There's No 'I' in Team". The track also includes a reference to Brand New's "Mixtape". "Great Romances of the 20th Century" includes an audio sample from the film Beautiful Girls, and opens with an electronically-made string line. It shifts into mid-tempo, accompanied by flange-effected and distorted electric guitars and backed by frantic drum and bass lines. The lyrics discuss separation between a guy and a girl.
"Ghost Man on Third" is an emo ballad that focuses on Lazzara's difficulty with mental health, specifically coping with depression at an early age. During the song's chorus, Lazzara said he does his "best Daryl Palumbo impression", and electronic strings are heard. "Timberwolves at New Jersey" talks about being a musician in the New Jersey emo/post-hardcore scene. Some of the lyrics take digs at former members of the band. The title for "You're So Last Summer" came from when Lazzara and Nolan went to the movies with their friend Sarah. As the trio was leaving the theatre, someone said something, to which Sarah replied "You're so last summer", meaning late to the party. "The Blue Channel" opens with a piano intro; Lazzara said it and "Head Club" were songs that the band used "to get enough songs to fill a record so we could go on tour". "Head Club" is about Nolan being exhausted with writing about Lacey after the romancing incident. The name of "The Ballad of Sal Villanueva" is a tribute to the album's producer Sal Villanueva.
Release
Initial promotion, and Nolan & Cooper's departures
On February 21, 2002, Tell All Your Friends was announced for release the following month, and "Cute Without the 'E' " was posted online. A music video for "Great Romances of the 20th Century" directed by Christian Winters, a friend of the band, was released on March 4. Winters made the video before the group signed with Victory, and the record company enjoyed it. The song was distributed to radio stations on March 12, and Tell All Your Friends was released on March 26. Its cover art was taken by John Clark. The vinyl version included the bonus track "The Ballad of Sal Villanueva". To promote the album, Brummel targeted people who were familiar with the label and also fans of emo. In Chicago, New York and Los Angeles, Victory gave out 20,000 sampler albums at a cost of about $100,000; Brummel considered this a better investment than attempting to gain radio play. RED Distribution, who handled distribution for Victory, was aware that the group did not have radio play and began posting about the album on emo websites. A Yahoo! Group with over 1,300 Taking Back Sunday fans allowed them to download demos of "Bike Scene" and "Head Club", a tactic which was hoped would increase sales. TV commercials aired on the relatively new channels MTV2 and Fuse.While in Los Angeles, California, Jillian Newman was visited by Midtown frontman Gabe Saporta. He had been sent a package of Victory releases by a friend and was playing them in Newman's office. The only one which grabbed her attention was Tell All Your Friends, which she asked what it was. She subsequently watched the band at SXSW; by June, she started managing them. On December 10, a music video was released for "Cute Without the 'E' " on Launch.com. The video, conceived and directed by Winters, was inspired by the 1999 film Fight Club. Lazzara's original idea for the video had men fighting women, which was rejected by Winters and Victory Records before Lazzara and Winters expanded it in the final version.
Lazzara was suffering from a drinking problem around this time and cheated on Nolan's sister Michelle. The rest of the band members had quit drinking by the end of 2002, which Lazzara resented them for. He was constantly in a bad mood and declined any help with his drinking. Cooper felt this began to drive a wedge between their friendship. Lazzara kept regular contact with Michelle, and told her he was gonna change his ways. After playing Skate & Surf Festival in late April 2003, Lazzara apologised to Nolan later that evening. However, when Lazzara was unaware Nolan was on the bus, he claimed he had joked about the whole thing and didn't care about it seriously. The following day, Nolan told Cooper that he was leaving the band; Cooper had been mulling over the decision too. A day later, the pair told the rest of the band; Lazzara felt terrible about the sitatuion, and O'Connell was in denial about it.
According to Lazzara, Nolan and Cooper were "having trouble because everything was happening so fast. Going from being home... to being gone all the time and having your whole life consumed and almost defined by the band that you’re in is a lot to handle". Though he initially cited exhaustion from touring, Nolan later revealed there was constant fighting within the group with each member feeling they weren't receiving enough credit for the group's success. In addition, he felt him and Lazzara had grown apart as friends. A week after the departures, a meeting was held while Nolan was in the process of moving out of his and Lazzara's place. The members attempted to talk out their problems, but the meeting resulted in Nolan storming out. Nolan and Cooper formed Straylight Run with Michelle, and Breaking Pangaea drummer Will Noon, and subsequently ceased contact with all of the members of Taking Back Sunday bar O'Connell.
New line-up and later promotion
The band underwent a short period where they were unsure what to do next, and even briefly considered breaking up. The group was due to tour the UK with Brand New in May and June, however, all of the shows were cancelled amongst rumours of the band breaking up. The group issued a statement, explaining that "There have been a series of personal events with members of the band... We need very much to take a step back at this time". Reyes moved in with his girlfriend, and toyed with the idea of taking the band name and starting with an all-new line-up. He kept calling Cooper, Nolan and O'Connell in an attempt to reconcile. Two months had passed before O'Connell contacted Lazzara and decided to continue the band. Reyes received a call from Breaking Pangaea frontman Fred Mascherino, who had had known for years, out of the blue. Mascherino subsequently auditioned for Nolan's place; on August 5, it was announced that Mascherino was a member of the band.Bassist Matt Rubano, who grew up with O'Connell, then joined the group. Rubano was asked to audition by O'Connell but was initially hesitant, since he was not a fan of emo music or aware of the band; however, he bought the album and learned Cooper's parts. On September 16, "You're So Last Summer" was released as a radio single. In November, a music video for "You're So Last Summer" was filmed at Fulton State Park in New York. The video, directed by Winters, debuted on MTV on November 24. In the video, the band plays while Public Enemy vocalist Flavor Flav jumps. According to Lazzara, the group was making fun of itself: "We had two guys leave our band and there were two main singers, so we were trying to think of a way to bring the new band members into the video, but not have Fred singing the old guy’s part. And the funniest way to do that was to use Flavor Flav." On December 3, the band appeared on IMX.
Touring
After receiving a $10,000 advance from their label, the band purchased a van and trailer for touring. In January 2002, Taking Back Sunday toured with Rival Schools. For three weeks beginning in mid-March 2002, Taking Back Sunday participated in the Victory Records tour alongside Catch 22, Grade, Student Rick and Reach the Sky. In April and May, the group went on their first full US tour supporting the Lawrence Arms. During the first show, most of the crowd dispersed when the Lawrence Arms came on as Taking Back Sunday became the main draw. The band then toured that summer supporting Brand New alongside Rufio. The tour had been in works since the end of 2001; by that point, Nolan and Lacey hadn't spoken in around a year. Nolan viewed as a sign that Lacey wanted to rebuild their friendship. After a week or two of the tour being underway, Taking Back Sunday would join Brand New onstage during their performances of "Seventy Times 7", and Lacey would return the favour for "There's No 'I' in Team".In addition, shows were often selling out and being upgraded to bigger venues, which in turn would sell out. When this occurred, the group were given bonus money. Nolan said: "And it was the first time we actually came home and had money, like we made money from the tour". Until this point, the members would have gone back to work as soon as tours finished. Nolan said it "was a really big one for me... like, 'Wow, I'm not like just struggling to get by right now, we are actually kind of making a living doing this'". In September, they toured with Midtown and Recover on The Best Revenge Tour. Four shows in, Lazzara fell off the stage and gashed his face in two places and dislocated his hip. The incident forced the group to drop off the tour. In November and December 2002, Taking Back Sunday toured with the Starting Line and Northstar. In January 2003, Taking Back Sunday toured with the Used and the Blood Brothers. They headlined the Takeover Tour in March and April, with support from From Autumn to Ashes and Recover. From June to August 2003, the group performed on the main stage at Warped Tour. From September to November, Taking Back Sunday co-headlined a tour with Saves the Day, supported by Moneen.
Critical reception
reviewer Kurt Morris said Taking Back Sunday's "ability... to sound so blatantly" like the Movielife was "almost their undoing". Though he found them "a bit more rockin than the Movielife: "They have cultivated punk, hardcore, emo, and pop and hybridized it better." However, Morris called the album "nowhere near original or creative". Rolling Stones Gil Kaufman wrote that the album "sidesteps many sad-sack emo pitfalls" with "pop-infused hardcore" and "enlightened, dramatic lyrics" describing "heartache that teeter between despondency and dark vengeance". Peter White of Drowned in Sound wrote that the album contained He added that the album featured "Nihilistic, angry pop gems covered in monster riffs" that "screams to rival anything on an Obituary record". Chart Attack reviewer Steve Servos noted that Lazzara's "somewhat raspy voice" was able to switch "with ease from melodic vocals to all-out screams". Kludge writer Ben Rayner said the band took the "emo-punk blueprint and use it to the best of their abilities."CMJ New Music Monthly writer Andrew Bonazelli noted musical similarities to fellow Victory band Thursday. In Tell All Your Friends, "a series of double teams, two guitars butt heads", merging "clean-channel pop melodies" with "chugging metal progressions" to create "cathartic, schizophrenic anthems". Bonazelli called the songs "bombast" and "occasionally dazzling". Stuart Green of Exclaim! wrote that the album was "a spirited and well-produced" work, although noting it arrived "at a time when there's a flood of similar sounding bands. It's not bad, but it just doesn't stand out either." Olli Siebelt wrote for BBC Music that the band brought "a welcome mix of original styles to an overcrowded playing field", with "an interesting mix of southern Californian post-punk, nu-metal and old school hardcore". According to Siebelt, Taking Back Sunday composed "fantastically catchy songs" which were "poppy and fun" and "upbeat and emotionally aggressive." Siebelt compared the album to All and the Descendents, retaining "enough of its own identity" to lift the band above its peers.
Commercial performance
Before its release, Juarbe thought Tell All Your Friends was good but was unsure how it would do commercially. At the time, all of Victory's releases were gauged against Thursday, who had sold around 100,000 copies of their releases. Although it was reported that 15,000 copies had been shipped, only 2,000 copies were sold in the album's first week of release. At the time, this was the biggest opening week for a new artist on Victory. The album spent one week on the Billboard 200, and 68 weeks on the Heatseekers Albums chart, peaking at number 9. It spent 78 weeks on the Independent Albums chart, peaking at number 8, and peaked at number 23 on the Catalog Albums chart. It reached number 10 on the Independent Albums Year-end chart in 2003.Despite little airplay, Tell All Your Friends sold 110,000 copies by March 2003; near the end of the year, sales stood at 252,000. By April 2004 the album had sold nearly 400,000 copies, and by September 2005 it was certified gold by the RIAA. By May 2009, the album had sold 790,000 copies in the US. As of April 2010, the album has sold over one million copies worldwide. Tell All Your Friends is Taking Back Sunday and Victory Records' best-selling release. It would also become Victory's longest-running record on the Billboard Heatseekers and Independent Albums charts. "Great Romances of the 20th Century" charted at number 33 on UK Rock & Metal Singles chart in 2011.
Legacy
Accolades, influence and retrospective reviews
Drowned in Sound included the album on their list of top albums of 2002. According to Alternative Press Philip Obenschain, Tell All Your Friends "has remained one of the scene's most celebrated and influential releases". Despite its "not be their best sounding, most mature or highest in ambition... it’s Tell All Your Friends intangible and emotionally charged energy, the uncertainty, the earnestness and the rough edges that make it so special". The album was included in Rock Sounds 101 Modern Classics list at number 13, and the magazine considered it "he Hybrid Theory of emo." They later ranked it at number 35 on the list of best albums in their lifetime. Billboard said "Cute Without the 'E' " "basically helped popularize post-hardcore and emo to the public." Tell All Your Friends has been included on several best-of emo lists by A.Side TV, Alternative Press, Houston Press, NME and Rolling Stone. Brandon McMaster of the Crimson Armada cited the album as an influence.Chris Collum wrote for AbsolutePunk that Tell All Your Friends "grabs the listener’s attention from the start" and the album expressed "feelings that are completely genuine, not contrived, rehearsed or formulaic, without being over-the-top or sappy". Collum called Lazzara and Nolan's vocal delivery "rapid-fire" in a "back-and-forth way, as if they were carrying on a dialogue, allows you to really attach to and get a sense of the raw emotion behind the songs". In a retrospective review for Alternative Press, Brendan Manley wrote that the album "is as close as it gets to a modern masterpiece, capturing not just a band at their apex, but an entire scene". According to Manley, Tell All Your Friends was "the crossover breaking point, finally bringing what had been percolating for years in East Coast VFW Halls to the attention of the masses". Channing Freeman of Sputnikmusic wrote that the album features "power chords and clean strums and palm muting and reverb". About whether this was negative, Freeman said, "With songs this good, it shouldn't be... It's all here, solid and undeniably catchy". Jonathan Bradley wrote for Stylus Magazine that although the album "is notable not so much for being a blueprint as it is a playbook", it would "provide the perfect How-To guide for teenagers with guitars all over the United States and beyond."
Related releases, members' opinions and anniversary celebrations
A CD/DVD version of the album was released in November 2005. The CD included "The Ballad of Sal Villanueva" and an acoustic version of "Cute Without the 'E' " as bonus tracks; live acoustic versions of "You Know How I Do" and "Cute Without the 'E' ", and an interview as enhanced content. The DVD featured the music videos to "Cute Without the 'E' ", "You're So Last Summer", "Great Romances of the 20th Century" and "Timberwolves at New Jersey". Four of the album's tracks would later be included as part of the Notes from the Past compilation in 2007. Tell All Your Friends was performed live in its entirety at Bamboozle 2011. In a 2011 interview with CMJ, Adam Lazzara and John Nolan chose the album's final track as their least-favorite Taking Back Sunday song. In 2015, Lazzara said that he disliked his vocals on the album: "I was just yelling everything hoping it fit in there somehow, trying to paint with some strange color".To celebrate Tell All Your Friends 10th anniversary, the band toured the US in October and November 2012 with support from Bayside. In November the album charted on the Billboard Vinyl Albums chart, peaking at number 8. In June 2013, the band released a live acoustic version of the album and a companion film, TAYF10 Acoustic. The recordings were made in Los Angeles and Chicago. In September, the band performed two electric versions of the album in New Jersey. TAYF10 Acoustic and TAYF10: Live from Starland Ballroom were released as a double-DVD set in December, and TAYF10 Acoustic was released on vinyl. In 2014, Cooper said that Warner Bros. wanted the group to re-record Tell All Your Friends during the Taking Back Sunday sessions; Cooper replied to them, "Are you nuts?" Throughout 2019, the band performed Tell All Your Friends in its entirety for their 20th anniversary world tour. To help promote the tour, a career-spanning compilation Twenty was released, which included "Cute Without the 'E' ", "You're So Last Summer" and "Timberwolves at New Jersey" from Tell All Your Friends. A remastered version of the album is set to be released in October.
Track listing
All music written by Taking Back Sunday. All lyrics written by Adam Lazzara and John Nolan.;Bonus tracks
Personnel
Personnel per booklet and back cover.Taking Back Sunday
- Shaun Cooper – bass guitar
- Adam Lazzara – lead vocals
- John Nolan – lead guitar, keyboard, vocals
- Mark O'Connell – drums, percussion
- Eddie Reyes – rhythm guitar
- Neil Rubenstein – vocals
- Michelle Nolan – vocals
- Matt McDannell – vocals
- Sal Villaneuva – guitar
- Sal Villanueva – producer, mixing
- Michele Logo – photography
- John Clark – front cover artwork
- Adam Lazzara – back tray photo
- Patrick Larson – layout
- Rumblefish – mixing
- Erin Farley – engineer
- Tim Gilles – engineer, mastering
- Arun Venkatesh – engineer
Chart positions
Chart | Peak position |
US Billboard 200 | 183 |
US Billboard Catalog Albums | 23 |
US Billboard Heatseekers Albums | 9 |
US Billboard Independent Albums | 8 |
US Billboard Independent Albums Year-end | 10 |
Reissue
Chart | Peak position |
US Billboard Vinyl Albums | 8 |