You can learn a lot in a year. While it could be argued that all lessons are valuable, there are certain things I could personally go without ever knowing. For instance, most of the rotten knowledge I’ve acquired on the subject of Lyndsey Buckingham over the past several years has certainly done no service to my fandom. Alas, such is Life, and most of us are attending classes at “The School Of” pretty much daily until we slam into The Great Hereafter somewhere down the line, and the veil gets lifted on any remaining mysteries.

Right now though, the biggest quandary we have on our hands, besides the eternal “Where’s our m#therf#ckin’ movie check?!?”, is just how far did we drive last week, as our beloved Jean Claude Damme Van’s odometer has opted for early retirement. Thankfully, the rest of JCDV is still operating in spirited top form, but we have at present lost the ability to automatically calculate our accumulated miles. Kenny has taken to counting mile markers to make sure our fuel consumption is in line with the projected average for the vehicle.

Sorry, this is what passes for news as the year winds down.

We do have a new email provider finally though, so if you’re reading this via transmission and not the result of perusing our OFFICIAL WEBSITE, it’s obviously doing its job. This new service is considerably more flexible than the last, and allows us to offer free downloads, so look for some interesting stuff to pop up as we dig into 2019 and get back down to work on some things of the creative nature.

Also new to the program is a printed-on-demand product line, available exclusively from our page at STOREFRONTIER. Hoodies, Tees for guys and girls, and kids sizes(including baby onesies), all pressed at the time of order, in various colors and fits. This stuff comes from the good folks at Terminus Tees, who’ve been doing all our apparel for years, so it’s high quality swag, and these are all exclusive designs that you can only get via this portal. We won’t be selling them at our merch table or through our site. Check it out.

We had our annual band meeting the other night, to go over year-end business, before we all scatter for a bit to engage in various holiday-inspired wanderings. Putting 2018 in the rear-view, and looking ahead to 2019 has us considering a few fresh territories to traverse, the resurrection of some long-dormant back-catalog album tracks to spruce up the set, and the possibility of putting a little elbow grease into getting a handful of the new tunes that have been piling up around here in worthy-enough shape to trot out and see what we’re dealing with.

Kenny’s still chipping away at his solo EP, and my work with Joshua Ketchmark has yielded some real gems, but there’s no immediate plan to release any of that stuff just yet. It all remains work in progress, promising but without a finish line in sight. While those efforts continue though, The Great Affairs might sneak into the studio here & there and get some things together to keep it interesting out there on the road.

Speaking of the road, we do have a handful of shows on the books already that kick off in February. We’ll start posting those early in the new year, once we plug in a few gaps. AL, IL, IN, GA, TN, MS for starters…a few solo acoustic dates for me, and a bunch more TGA things that will hopefully culminate in a long-overdue West Coast run. Stay tuned to our BANDSINTOWN page for details on all of that nonsense.

I think that’s about it for now. I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. I know all of us have a lot to be thankful for, including all of you. Here’s to keeping us in the game for going on 10 years now. Cheers.

We’ll see you in 2019,

 Denny(and Patrick, Kenny, & Matt)
 The Great Affairs