Of all the memories of my time in this band, I think the hours of
creating and recording songs was near the top of it all. Of course we
all loved playing live, too, but taking the time to record and the
creative process involved in that is so invigorating, especially when
something comes together. There are a lot of funny memories from those
times, too. There was this song I wrote that was kind of straight hard
rock, and I wanted Pete’s vocals to be raspy and I wanted a sweet guitar
solo in it. Pete tried really hard to meet my expectations, and I think
he ended up losing his voice after giving his best hard rock voice to
appease my tyrannical demands. We recorded another song that was
basically a screaming hard rock song, and Pete went to town for the
recording, giving it his all. I think he puked afterward. He always
poured his heart into everything he did with the band. We all did, but
Pete gave it an extra 10 percent. Oh, and that sweet guitar solo that I
wanted in my song? None of us will ever forget the day we were recording
that part, and Christian whips out this rockin’ solo that none of us
had ever heard and he had never played live before. The heavens opened,
and glory came out of his Ibanez six string. We all just stared in
amazement, wondering where it came from. We kept listening to it over
and over wondering how that had happened. He either pulled out a lucky
take, or he had been practicing a lot, but it was definitely a keeper!
Crazy things happen when you’re really into the moment during a
recording session.
Our band had good chemistry and we actually created some pretty catchy, artistic music, especially toward the end of our band life. We incorporated different sounds, such as our friend Brita on the violin. Andy began using his fretless bass more and Pete and Christian started experimenting with some different pedals and styles on their guitars. Pete wrote a song called “The Evening News” which is still one of my favorites overall and sounds like no other band or style that I’ve heard. I think if we had been able to continue as a band, we would have created a lot more good music, and had a ton of fun times at the very least. But we had to eventually end our time as a band and move on with life, which was hard but necessary. And sadly, we hadn’t finished our recording project, which we were all really excited about.
Shortly after our band broke up, some of our friends from the ska/punk band asked me if I’d fill in as the drummer for a show they had coming up, since their regular drummer couldn’t be at the show. I was pretty stoked to play again! There was a big party that was being held by the brother of the lead singer in the band, and multiple bands were lined up to play. So we practiced a few times and then we headed a couple hours out of town to this guy’s house. I drove my own car, since it had lots of room for all my drum equipment and still had room for passengers. The bass player, Tim, and my soon-to-be wife, Lisa, also rode with me. On the way there, Tim was telling us all kinds of stories, which made us laugh pretty hard. Tim has one of those magnetic personalities and is just hilarious all the time. He told us this one story about getting electrocuted twice by his toaster when he was a kid, because he stuck a knife in it to recover some bread that got stuck. I was laughing so hard I nearly went off the road.
When we arrived at the party, it was a little different than we had anticipated. Everything was jam-packed into the basement. There was literally no room to move down there. And there was lots of beer and crazy people. A little corner had been reserved for the bands to set up and play and the rest of the space was packed person to person, and it was impossible not to be touching somebody. It was a bit uncomfortable being squeezed next to all these strangers. Well, we squeezed through to get some of our stuff down there so we were ready to play, and when the band before us finished, the drummer told me I could just play on his set if I wanted to since it was so packed and moving drums in and out would be a major pain in the butt. I thanked him and agreed. So we got into our set and half-way into the second song, the cops showed up and shut down the party. People scattered pretty quickly and we just started packing up our stuff. I was pretty disappointed after all that prep and driving. It was then that I noticed that one of the tips on my drumsticks had broken off, leaving a sharp little point. Then I looked at the drum heads that weren’t mine, and saw with horror a whole bunch of little dents on these nice, new drum heads. Oops. I felt really bad and wanted to apologize to the guy who let me use his drums, and perhaps give him some money to replace the heads, but he was nowhere to be found. Maybe he ran from the cops, but I’ll bet he wasn’t very happy when he later discovered how beat up his drum heads got in just one and a half songs.
A few years later, I had moved to Ohio and was getting married. I invited the guys to be in my wedding, and I had been working on a gift for them to honor our time together as a band. I created a band label to put on some vinyl records, along with some pictures from our band days, and put it all in a frame to give each of them. It was always a dream for us to get “signed” to a label, so I created the label with the moniker “Silver Dollar Records,” which comes from a funny story where Pete saw Andy with his shirt off, and said, “Whoa! You have big nipples! Those are like silver dollars!” Well, we all thought it was hilarious, except for Andy who got kind of pissed. He was always a little sensitive about it. Anyway, it became this joke that we would try to sneak in “silver dollars” whenever we talked about something big or out of the ordinary. I’m surprised Andy didn’t kill us. So of course, the joke made its way to the name of our supposed record label, and I decided to put it on the gift I made them, which gave us all a good laugh. Even Andy laughed, although underneath it all he may have wanted to beat me up.
What was even more awesome, though, was that after I gave them this gift for being in my wedding, they surprised me with an early gift—they had completed the recording we were working on before the band split up! All of my drum parts had been finished, so they continued to work on the rest of it without me knowing about it. One of the most frustrating things about the recording process was that we could never get a good guitar sound. That’s one of the reasons it took so long to finish. We had started calling the sound “butt guitar,” because it sounded like a combo of bad distortion and farting. Well, what the guys did after I had moved was borrow a friend’s guitar pedal processor, and they had found a sound that actually sounded good on the recording. So they re-recorded all the guitar parts (except for that one awesome solo where the heavens opened) and it sounded way better! No more butt guitar. On top of that, they added in some sweet clips from our favorite movie Tombstone as a sort of theme to the album. We always quoted Tombstone and Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes, because they have such great lines in them. So we had a little mini-reunion back to the glory days as we all sat around and listened to the newly finished CD, made jokes, and laughed. And the fact is, we were all kind of proud of the music we had made together. It was a giant leap of improvement from our first demos.
It amazes me that some people get to do that for a living every day. I sure wanted to, but then again, maybe the dream is way more glamorous than the reality. Most bands barely make enough money to cover costs, and I have heard that long tours in small, uncomfortable, smelly vans with a bunch of band mates, along with setting up and tearing down all the time, gets kind of old. Only the top of the chart rock stars get to hire roadies who do all the sweat and grime work, while the band gets to focus on playing great shows and creating new music, while making great money. We all dreamed of becoming rock stars, but all of us have families now, and traveling on the road for long periods of time would be a lot less ideal than it used to be. But it's hard to let go of a dream, even if there was no chance in Hades. Well, who knows... But at least we have a lot of great memories and a fun story to tell.
