So What by Houseboy

So What! is the sound of not waiting.
Of jumping in before anyone says you’re ready.
Sixteen year old Ace Cowden,
still in high school,
wrote songs that felt more urgent than homework ever could.
Brett Friesen was nineteen and already drumming like the floor was collapsing beneath him already carrying the weight of too many basements and too few breaks.
Jessie Cottrell held down the low end,
cool under pressure,
steady in the storm.
They recorded the entire album in one day
September 12, 1994
at Pus Cavern North in Sacramento, California.
Joe Johnston behind the board,
no frills, no polish, no second takes.
Just energy, instinct,
and a growing itch to get the hell out.
Two months later, Ace and Brett would move the band to Chicago.
Everything that came after, bigger shows, louder rooms, chaos with purpose
started with this.
But nothing about that day was smooth.
Midway through tracking,
the studio doors flew open.
Two bikers stormed in with baseball bats
and beat the living shit out of some guy hiding out in the back
a friend of Joe’s, apparently.
No one paused the tape.
No one really knew what was going on.
It was just another part of the atmosphere:
real, unpredictable, and slightly dangerous.
So What! captures all of that.
Not just songs
but a moment.
Young, loud, unsupervised,
and dead serious in the only way teenagers can be.
This wasn’t about making a perfect record.
It was about making something,
before the world told them not to.
This is Houseboy’s first record.
And it already doesn’t care what you think.
So what?

1st press 10/1/94 100 copies on Cassette Tape released on our Loser Dork Productions label
First 10 copies had hand made numbered covers with the original Houseboy logo and were only given to Band members and a close friends at the time.
90 copies with the picture of the baby w/ sticker were sold at shows and through mail-order. The Sticker was same as the original first 10 copies and was supposed to cover up the baby and then when you slid the sticker out it would reveal the baby underneath.

2nd press 2/1/95 100 copies on Cassette Tape
blue cover with the no handed boxer on the front cover
this version also included 5 bonus trax from the "Who? Cares" Sessions.
These were also sold mostly at shows and through mail-order when we lived in Chicago.

Essential 90's Punk band born in ’94 from California roots and raised in Chicago’s grit and noise, Houseboy burned fast, then vanished. Their sound: raw nerves, rusted hooks, and restless hearts. Decades later, the silence breaks. Older, louder, unrepentant, they're back, not to relive the past, but to set it on fire all over again.

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