Ripe remembers sweating to hell in a basement underneath a Subway sandwich shop, building their very first songs in a concrete cube that smelled like fresh bread. They remember selling their first tickets by hand outside the coffee shop that their friends worked at, holding court like twenty-something impresarios trying to move like 50 tickets to a bar that was willing to let you keep the ticket sales if they kept the bar. In a world where we constantly feel the loving pressure to tell our story, where so many of our friends that have found success as artists have done it alone, Ripe is using their bio to tell you that at the center of everything is collaboration and community, a friendship that has become a bond as strong as family, a constantly spinning object that cannot be properly captured by any single still photograph. This moment, the two songs already out and the new songs coming, catches the band in a moment of intense joyous swelling energy. Working in dream studios, in a city they spent years trying to take a proper chance on, with a producer that had made albums we loved in our formative years, alongside the closest musical relations we've formed. This is our love letter to complicated nostalgia, to relentless empowering change, to realizing that making dreams come true (just like a crisis) only fully makes sense when it is shared. Joy in the wild unknown let us tell you who we were. Bright blues had us ripped apart so we could start again. What comes next is the band swinging for the fences, all in at the table, risking everything for a shot at feeling connected to you. Thank you for being here.