Convinced two of its members to join

Over the course of the early 2000s, the band continued to tour and shuffle through members. In late 2001, while touring in Milton, Pennsylvania with the band Submerge, they convinced two of its members—bassist Matthew Scott Taylor and drummer Tony Richard Thaxton—to join the band. Thaxton initially took about a year to convince to join the band. Jesse Mack Johnson, a friend and co-worker of Cain’s, joined the band as keyboardist just three weeks before the band recorded their first album. Johnson had never played the keyboard before but Cain taught him the parts that had already been written. After their first attempt at self-recording an album failed, the band culled together $6,000 to record with producer Ed Rose, best known for his work with the Get Up Kids . They recorded much of their debut album, I Am the Movie , in ten days. Initial copies were hand-packaged inside floppy disks , which were sold out of the back of their tour van for a year.