Distance by The JV Allstars

Distance was our second visit to Presto Studios and this time we spent a week trying to nail down a full-length. Really, we had enough money to do 5 days, but our inexperience in the studio cost us. We ended up needing an extra two days of 12+ hour work to get everything mixed. A.J. drank some scotch. We tried our best to sing. It was stressful. In the end, the turd was polished and it sounded better than anything we had ever done before. Around this time, the band was really into four piece bands and so a lot of the leads on the record were overdubbed. Nick did at least two guitar tracks on everything, which is why it sounded fuller and bigger than Document The Fall, which was simply bass, guitar, and drums. Shortly after this was released in 2002, Fall Out Boy released "Take This To Your Grave" (or the blue album for old school FOB fans), on Fueled By Ramen Records in 2003, which bummed us out because it was so damn good. It was like they had perfected everything we were trying to do and recorded it. On two of their first tours on that album, FOB came through Omaha and JVA was slated to open for them. At least once, maybe twice we had to close the show and play directly after FOB to ensure some kids stuck around to see them. We obliged of course. No touring band can get anything done playing to an empty house. Still, those dudes were an incredibly tough act to follow, even in 2003. We've always put our guts and soul into our music, but playing after those guys made us feel like we sucked. We hung out with them at Perkins after the show and they seemed to be really nice, kind dudes. We really dug their music, but never thought they would get as big as they did. Our friend Calvin Hughes mastered this album, as he was starting his own recording studio in his house. He did a great job and the record sounds awesome, but there was one small mistake that made for some rare copies of Distance. When the original master was sent away to be pressed, Calvin had printed a CD with the songs out of order -- a simple mistake, but because the print work was already done, the tracks didn't match up to the liner notes. At the release show, that first run of CD's was sold with additional information on the album itself highlighting the actual order of the tracks. Shortly after the release we received "fixed" copies, leaving us with 1000 fully packaged CD's that we weren't going to sell. So we ran them over with my car. Problem solved! The original release of Distance, which could only be purchased at the release parties, could be the only rare or weird (but not valuable) item of ours that is actually out there. Thanks Calvin!

The JV Allstars are a pop-punk band from Lincoln, Nebraska. Established in 2000, they started like any band does, by sucking. In time, they got a little better and had lots of fun and toured a lot and released a bunch of music. Thanks!