Columbus, Ohio rock band Two Cow Garage announced the celebration of their 20th anniversary this year with a blowout concert on Saturday, August 21 at Rumba Cafe. Tickets are available here.

Micah Schnabel and Shane Sweeney are the two faces and songwriters for the group. They write songs for the great big all of us who have to wake up and go to work tomorrow. Established September 4, 2001, they’ve been pushing the boundaries of a rural American public education to its real-world limit for two decades.

“Welcome to the new world my friends, I am your new Norman Rockwell,” Schnabel says. “I’m painting pictures of all of us. I’m hoping to bring us together through our similarities rather than divide us through our differences. I’m a product of our rural slums and yes, it’s taken me much too long to realize this world was laughing at me and not with me but each and every single day I am waking up and trying to be a better human being and I would love to have you on my side.”

Twenty years is a long time to do anything, and sometimes the “rewards” of a long-term artistic pursuit are hard to quantify. Not so for Schnabel.

“While we may not be seen as successful in the capitalistic definition, I would argue that Two Cow Garage has not only allowed me to see more of the world than I could have ever dreamed, it has also given me a career. I met my partner, Vanessa Jean Speckman through this band. My entire world is better because Shane and I followed our hearts, visions, and minds through even the most reckless of times.”

“Having a career in anything for twenty years is an accomplishment, I think,” Sweeney adds. “Especially if it’s what you actually love and enjoy doing. It’s certainly enough time to be able to adequately put a lot of living in perspective. A fair amount of triumphs and a mountain of mistakes. I’ve spent most of my adult life traveling the world with Micah always five feet away, playing songs we wrote. That’s pretty fucking cool. It’s all a triumph, I suppose. Like D. Boon said, ‘Our band could be your life.’”