A note from Jed:
In early 2000, looking for projects to fill his post-Ramones days, Arturo Vega called to inform me that we would be working on a musical together - whether I liked it or not. And it was definitely the latter; all I was interested in was making rock records.

But Arty was persistent and persuasive, and I soon found myself in one Lower East Side dive or another, brainstorming a plot, adding backstory to surprisingly robust characters, and wrapping everything in songs - some from my back catalog, dating to the early '90s; others written to fit. I started breaking in the material at CB's Gallery once a month, solo piano style.

By 2004, we realized that we had more of everything than we needed - more story, more characters, more music - but we were thrilled with it all. It was also clear that what we had was too ambitious to audition in a smoky little room with one guy on a piano. So I started putting together a "cast recording" with 18 singers and a band.

There were starts and stops. Recording forty songs is expensive. There were technical glitches, cast and musician defections, and an ever-changing storyline. A wonderful thing about Arturo was that he lived to WORK, tirelessly and with his full being - and after working with the Ramones for 20-plus years, he understood work as a continuum. Albums lead to tours which lead to more albums in an ever-building cycle. In other words, the work is never finished, and that's how he approached this musical; there was always a new direction to try, a new character to squeeze in. But that's the opposite of my approach. I make a thing because it doesn't exist and I think it should. When I start an album, I just want it done already so I can put it on in the car and drive around to it!

So by 2010 we needed a break from Rise And Shine. I moved to upstate NY and worked on other things. Two years later, we reconvened to complete the project once and for all. I dove back into the Pro Tools files, scrubbing and updating. We decided to submit a proposal for a residency at an arts center, where we would workshop the play and ultimately have it performed. Arty was traveling internationally and I never knew where he was - some of his paintings were being shown in Mexico City; others in Berlin. I emailed him the completed proposal; I got back a one-word reply:

BRAVO

That was my last contact with Arturo; he came home, took ill and passed away in June of 2013. All of this apparently happened over the course of two weeks; he was fine, then he wasn't, then he was gone. I was upstate and out of the loop. I learned of his death on Facebook.

Then I did what Arty would do: I got back to work. It's taken another six years to get this far - to complete the vocals, to add horns and strings, to distill one story from all the various versions we had written, and, working on a dayjob budget, to fund the recording and mixing of the thing. As I type this, almost all of the tracking is finished and the next installment - Day 2 of 5 - is getting mixed. So much has changed since we started working on Rise And Shine... music is different; culture is different; our whole society is different. The Broadway we were writing this for probably doesn't exist anymore.

I don't have ambitions of getting Rise And Shine on a stage. I'm just leaving this, our labor of love, here for people to find... so they can hear the music and imagine these weird-ass characters, picture the dingy grandeur of Club Cibola with strobing laser lights and a packed and sweaty dance floor, in a version of New York City that is long long gone. The Twin Towers rise overhead; a few blocks away, Arturo Vega is in his loft, painting.