Jacobs Ladder at Churchill’s Pub

Coming off a couple of consecutive East Coast tours, the dudes in Jacobs Ladder — Oren, Sammy, and Brian — were totally tired. After more than a half-thousand shows and countless hours of midnight driving, the road had finally worn them down to cold, hard bone.

“We’ve been doing this for so long now, like, the last eight years,” bass player Sammy Gonzalez says. “And we’ve been touring DIY for three and a half years, you know? We just feel like it’s finally our time to make it and be that next band.”

So they packed all of their exhaustion and optimism into ten lines of emo lyrics (“That pirate ship is going down/We’ll burn it to the ground”) and 250 seconds of poppy prog rock. The result was a surgingly earnest ode to rebirth, titled “Back to Life.” If nothing else, it’s proof that even though the bandmates might have been burned out, they’ll never really be beat.

And another vital sign: “Right now we’re demoing a lot. We just did ten songs, and we’re gonna do, like, ten more,” Gonzalez reveals. “The plan is a new album next year.” Plus, this Saturday’s show kicks off another one of those evil East Coast tours, which means the bone is no longer exposed. Oren, Sammy, and Brian are healed and ready to eat some blacktop.