The Nuns split in 1979 soon after the band was on tour in New York City. Escovedo had decided to stay behind in New York, living at the Chelsea Hotel, while the rest of the band decided to return to San Francisco. Escovedo soon teamed up with Chip and Tony Kinman from The Dils, which had also recently split, forming cowpunk band Rank and File and relocating to Austin, Texas. The remaining members of the band soon split as well, with Olener and new Bay Area cohorts Brett Valory, with drummer jeff Raphael Danny Machine and Jackson Weir III relocating to Los Angeles to form the rock band 391, and Miro remaining in San Francisco to form The VIP's with Pat Ryan in 1979-1981. Miro later relocated to Los Angeles as well, having a solo career under her own name in 1981-1982. After his first successful experience at Leon Russell's Paradise studio, successful in that master tapes were actually produced, Olener had no trouble persuading Posh Boy Records's Robbie Fields to finance the recording of an album by a group that no longer existed based upon Jennifer Miro's participation. Fields had greater difficulty persuading studio owner Brian Elliot of the merits of recording the band. The band reunited but for a single week in late April 1980 (albeit without Escovedo) and recorded their first LP, using only half of the blocked studio time, despite the replacement of the tracking engineer following Miro's walk out on discovering that second-hand multi-track recording tape was being used. The self-titled "The Nuns" album was released in late 1980 (albeit on BOMP! Records, who licensed it from Posh Boy for the USA).