It's been a lot of things, this year.  You can fill in your own adjectives; a few that come to mind to us are challenging, scary, lonely, frustrating, heartbreaking.  As a husband/wife duo, we could at least consider ourselves lucky as a band in that we live together, and could continue (in theory) to churn out music- even more so, being housebound through quarantine.  But it didn't exactly work out to be the creative boon we might have expected.  The shock of a year like this, compounded by the experience of Greg's open heart surgery in January, a followup surgery in March, and a prolonged healing process, set us back a few paces.  And as the cracks in our so-called great country became amplified, it only became harder to write, let alone pick up our instruments.  What could we possibly contribute; what was the point.  A fun little song and video seemed pretty insignificant while protesters were getting their heads bashed in, a shocking number of Americans refused to understand Black Lives Matter, and science, facts, and history have been actively denied by elected leaders of the country we live in.  

We've been cooped up in our house for 10 months now, and are 3 weeks away from a very important election.  There is so much work to be done to fix this broken United States.  The rich are too rich and have way too much power over governance, and the decimation of education has created a vulnerable swath of Americans lacking critical thinking.  On paper it seems too much to overcome.  But humans are resilient creatures, and as Americans, we still live in a country where we can vote.  We have to believe our vote counts, now more than ever.   So, we as Instant Smile have taken that spark and created a call to get out and vote.  Countless other bands have the protest songs covered.  As small as our voice may be, this is our contribution- a reminder to not let them fool you into believing the election is "rigged", or that not voting at all is better than voting for the "lesser of two evils".   What we do need to remember, is that you can't just vote and then forget it, trusting our politicians to keep their promises.  Complacency got us here.  Just because we all have iPhones does not mean we are prosperous.  Please get out and vote for an intelligently led country that cares about ALL it's citizens, and then the healing can begin.