for late 1997 but, at the request of the parent label A&M, which had many of its major artists releasing albums for the Christmas season that year, the release date for the next Badlees album was moved back to February 1998. During the break from touring, some of the band members started families, and Bret Alexander set up a studio in his basement in Wapwallopen, Pennsylvania. In Autumn of 1997 when the band entered the Bearsville Recording Studio near Woodstock, New York to record material for the album that would be titled Up There, Down Here. After working in a world class studio, Alexander and Smith, both former audio engineers, used Alexander's home studio for final overdubs and mixing of the album. However, once again, the date of release for Up There, Down Here was pushed back, this time from February to June, 1998. Then, in May 1998, Polygram, the parent company of A&M and Polydor/Atlas, was sold to Seagram's, a Canadian beverage company, for about $10.4 billion. Seagram's, which already had a large stake in entertainment by owning MCA Records and Universal Studios, now also owned the vast array of labels that fell under the Polygram umbrella they decided to consolidate all of these vast operations into one new central entertainment company called The Universal Music Group (UMG). As a result of the restructuring, there would be yet another delay in the release of the now finished Up There, Down Here album, this time from fall 1998 to "date uncertain" and there were no marketing or tour support plans coming from Universal for the foreseeable future. But the band was still under contract and therefore restricted in the actions that they could take to further their career. The Badlees quickly produced and released an EP of “unplugged” songs called The Day's Parade in July 1998, released on Rite-Off Records. As the corporate limbo persisted into 1999, the band became more and more convinced that they wanted out of their major label contract. They opted to make their own full-length album independently and without consent from the label. The band members realized that this action would probably mean the death of Up There, Down Here, as Universal owned the rights to that recording. The new album, Amazing Grace, was recorded, mixed, mastered, and pressed in two months at Bret Alexander's home studio. The album features four different Badlees singing lead