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.

The making and release of their latest album, Play The Game, has been an intense, joyous journey of 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 they loved in their formative years, alongside the closest musical relations they had formed. This is their 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 them tell you who they were. Bright Blues had them ripped apart so they 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.