Sarge and the Aeromen
Cleared For Takeoff
Tweedtone Recordings

Three Months in the Sand (Daley)
Farmer’s Kitchen (Pack)
Pork Gravy (Arsenault)
Buster’s Bounce (Warren)
Down The Road (Daley)
Get Offa My Ballz (Pack, Warren)
Deployment (Pack)
Dunedin Back Porch (Pack)
Happy Feet (Pack)
Our Fight (Childers, Pack)
Ain’t Be (Pack)
Better Find Jesus (Jordan, Pack)

Produced & engineered by Brian Merrill
Recorded & mixed at Studio Bee
St. Petersburg, FL

Recorded largely in one marathon 10-hour session, Cleared For Takeoff provides a concise 33-minute audio snapshot of one of Tampa Bay’s most buzzed-about roots bands, Sarge and the Aeromen. Recorded by Ditchflowers/Barely Pink frontman Brian Merrill at his studio, it’s a largely uptempo affair, rife with a loosey-goosey live-in-the-studio feel, fittingly so as a number of the tracks are first or second takes. Chris Pack’s punk rock-influnced drumming, Mike Daley’s big band-lovin’ upright basslines, Mark Warren’s twang-happy Telecaster and Ryan Arsenault’s honky-tonk piano stylings meld into a cohesive whole, while still each member’s individual contribution to shine through.

The CD includes songs about food (“Farmer’s Kitchen,” “Pork Gravy,”), an instrumental dedicated to a dearly departed dog (“Buster’s Bounce”), a faux fundamentalist revival rant (“Better Find Jesus”) co-written by original Sarge and the Aeromen guitarist Chris Jordan, and of course, plenty of songs about serving in the military (“Three Months In The Sand,” “Get Offa My Ballz,” “Deployment”).