What a ride it’s been, everyone! When I started this band two years ago, never in my wildest dreams did I see us getting as big as we are now. And when I say big, I don’t mean popular—I mean that I never imagined the band would have so many members. Last count was more than two hundred.

In fact, we have so many members that we can only realistically play shows in sports stadiums. The bad news is we’re not big enough popularity-wise to book shows in sports stadiums. So, it is with deep regret that I inform you of this: I’m going to have to cut a few members of the band.

The Chorus will be taken from fifty members down to fifteen. Also, each member of the chorus will no longer have his or her own individual Sign Language Interpreter. From now on, we will work with only one interpreter in our live arrangements, although we may bring in more for studio recordings.

The Vintage Car Horn Quartet will be cut entirely. To Brad, Tom, Karen, and Richard, I just want to say that this decision has nothing to do with any lack of skill on your parts. It has everything to do with the difficulty in loading four vintage cars into a venue. And, we’re still dealing with the legal ramifications of the near-asphyxiation incident at the show in Austin. If you can remove the car horns from the cars without losing the magic, you are more than welcome to stay.

We did get the attention of a few music critics when we chose to forgo the traditional drummer route, choosing instead to have our percussion supplied by a team of ten chiropractors making adjustments on ten internally-miced patients. But the attention was not enough to get us a solid fan base, so the Bone-Cracks-In-Harmony Percussion Crew will have to be trimmed down. We will now make due with only five chiropractors. The patients will be members of the audience. However, with this new element of audience participation, we will need waiver-hander-outers, if any cut band members would like to transition into a more administrative role.

Speaking of the audience, all twenty-five In-Crowd Rhythmic-Clap-Along Leaders as well as the additional twelve End-Of-Song Cheer Starters, are also going to have to go. Your work has been invaluable, but after speaking to a few friends in other bands, I’ve learned that, if we begin to write songs with rhythm and clear endings, the audience will actually do most of that work on their own.

Friends in other bands have also told me that having sixteen people dressed as nuns and priests come out after the set has ended to lead the audience in prayer for the band’s safe arrival back to the stage to perform an encore is generally seen as egotistical and somewhat offensive. Sorry, Prayer Group. Best of luck to you all!

I want to wrap this up by saying how proud I am that, in our two years of being a band, we have never once encountered an emergency that required the rental and construction of a large tent. Nor have we ever been able to name an emergency that would require the rental and construction of a large ten. In spite of all that, I will not be cutting the twenty band members that make up the Emergency Large Tent Rental/Construction Team at this time, because I know that the minute I let them go, we’ll be up to our ears in tent-requiring emergencies. Not to mention, we’ve been able to pay the rent on our rehearsal warehouse by contracting the Tenters out for high school graduations.

These decisions have not been easy. Maybe someday the world will be ready for a band as big as we are. But for now, these cuts have to be made. In case anyone is unclear after these unfortunate shake-ups, I will email out a list of the revised band roster as soon as I get home this afternoon. Remember, because of the number of recipients, it’ll probably go to your spam folder.