Cheevyjames’ Musical Roundhouse

This is the list of all the live gigs I’ve ever done. Debuts are subject to my memory and setlists.

THE GO-NADS

?? Fall 93 - Senior Talent Show, Duncanville High School Auditorium - Duncanville, TX

• Setlist: Medley: Cemetery Gates > Smells Like Teen Spirit (?) > Jeremy > No Rain > Just One Fix
• Notes: very first time on stage; ad-hoc band done strictly for the Senior Talent Show. Group: David Cawthon - drums, Brian Forbes - guitar, James Hines - bass, Adam Mollenkopf - guitar, Leslie Sission - vocals

BLIND ANGER

01/16/94 - The Complex - Dallas, TX

UNNAMED DHS VALENTINE’S BAND

02/14/94 (??) - Duncanville High School Auditorium - Duncanville, TX

• Setlist: Easy Come, Easy Go; Every Rose Has Its Thorn; others - I know we played more, but that’s all I can remember
• Notes: another ad-hoc group; we played for some Valentine’s thing at school - it wasn’t a dance, but it was some sort of Valentine’s function. Group: David Cawthon - drums, James Hines - bass, Adam Mollenkopf - guitar (?), David Wilcox - vocals/guitar

MINIVER CHEEVY

06/28/94 - Across the Street Bar - Dallas, TX

• Debuts: Gloria, Wipe Out, Iron Man, Hard Rock Café, Strutter, Earth to Earth?, Matter of Principle, Sunshine?, others

07/31/94 - Club Dada - Dallas, TX

• Debuts: Don’t Let Me Be Alone Tonight

08/05/94 - Across the Street Bar - Dallas, TX

• Debuts: Amen, Brain Damage/Eclipse

01/15/95 - Club Dada - Dallas, TX

• Debuts: Now You Can Open Your Eyes, Hey Hey What Can I Do, Empty, Jay’s Song, Crazy Little Thing Called Love

12/22/95 - Galaxy Club - Dallas, TX

• Debuts: Red, Ascension

06/11/96 - Trees - Dallas, TX [CANCELED]

07/16/96 - Trees - Dallas, TX [CANCELED]

ECHO JULIET

??/??/95 - Pato’s Tacos - Austin, TX

• Debuts: We Are Each Other, Zoe, Don’t Be Afraid To Cry, I Know You, Eat For Two, Confusion, Where We Should Be, Sunshine, American Music, Cricket Song, That’s The Way It Goes, Not Too Soon, Hey Jealousy
• Notes: my first show with the band; we performed as “Catholic Fallout”; exact date is unknown

04/01/95 - Jester Jamfest - Austin, TX

04/28/95 - Moorehillpallooza - Austin, TX

05/06/95 - Pato’s Tacos - Austin, TX

• Debuts: Walking on Sunshine, Just Like Heaven, So Lonely, Happy Birthday, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Desire, Fade Away

08/19/95 - Pato’s Tacos - Austin, TX

08/29/95 - Discovery Incubator - Austin, TX

• Debuts: Why Can’t This Be Love

09/20/95 - Emo’s - Austin, TX

09/23/95 - Duke’s Party - Austin, TX

10/03/95 - UT West Mall - Austin, TX

10/10/95 - UT West Mall - Austin, TX

10/17/95 - UT West Mall - Austin, TX

10/20/95 - Club Mo-Hill - Austin, TX

10/24/95 - UT West Mall - Austin, TX

10/31/95 - UT West Mall - Austin, TX

11/07/95 - UT West Mall - Austin, TX

11/14/95 - UT West Mall - Austin, TX

11/21/95 - UT West Mall - Austin, TX

11/28/95 - UT West Mall - Austin, TX

11/30/95 - Electric Lounge - Austin, TX

12/15/95 - Planet Theatre - Austin, TX

12/18/95 - Steamboat - Austin, TX

• Debuts: College Radio, Perfect, Don’t Let Me Be Alone Tonight

01/17/96 - Steamboat - Austin, TX

• Debuts: Waiting in the Cold, Bill, Adam and Eve, Still

02/06/96 - UT West Mall - Austin, TX

02/13/96 - UT West Mall - Austin, TX

02/20/96 - UT West Mall - Austin, TX

02/27/96 - UT West Mall - Austin, TX

02/27/96 - Steamboat - Austin, TX

• Debuts: Our Lips are Sealed, Imaginary Girlfriend, Her
• Notes: yes, we did 2 shows this day…West Mall from 5-6 and Steamboat a few hours later

03/01/96 - Fat Tuesday - Austin, TX

• Notes: gig was a Battle of the Bands…we didn’t win

03/04/96 - White Rabbit - Austin, TX

03/05/96 - UT West Mall - Austin, TX

03/14/96 - Austin Rodeo - Austin, TX

03/15/96 - Austin Rodeo - Austin, TX

03/19/96 - UT West Mall - Austin, TX

03/26/96 - UT West Mall - Austin, TX

03/30/96 - Duke’s Party - Austin, TX

04/02/96 - Electric Lounge - Austin, TX

04/09/96 - UT West Mall - Austin, TX

04/10/96 - Steamboat - Austin, TX

• Debuts: D’yer Mak’r

04/14/96 - White Rabbit - Austin, TX

• Debuts: I Wanna Be Sedated

04/16/96 - UT West Mall - Austin, TX

04/19/96 - Echo Juliet Fan Appreciation Party - Austin, TX

04/30/96 - UT West Mall - Austin, TX

05/03/96 - UT College of Business Party - Austin, TX

05/04/96 - Delta Chi Island Party - Austin, TX

05/13/96 - Steamboat - Austin, TX

05/25/96 - John Gilmore Party - Austin, TX

05/27/96 - Saxon Pub - Austin, TX

06/22/96 - Coffee Plantation - Austin, TX

06/23/96 - Carlos and Charlie’s - Austin, TX

• Debuts: Nothing, Now You Can Open Your Eyes, Me and Bobby McGee, Joey, What’ll I Do, Brown-eyed Girl, Son of a Preacher Man, Time After Time, Eight Days a Week, The One I Love, Wipe Out, Raise Your Hands

06/28/96 - Stone Pony - Dallas, TX

06/29/96 - Coffee Plantation - Austin, TX

• Debuts: These Are Days, Ascension, Cycle, 19c Expatriots
• Notes: Ascension & Cycle performed by Bryan & James only

07/27/96 - Steamboat - Austin, TX

07/31/96 - Kinsolving Dorm - Austin, TX

• Notes: Tracy filled in on bass for this gig

08/06/96 - Saxon Pub - Austin, TX

• Notes: Tracy filled in on bass for this gig

08/13/96 - Steamboat - Austin, TX

08/14/96 - Trees - Dallas, TX

08/17/96 - Depot - Lubbock, TX [CANCELED]

08/23/96 - Coffee Plantation - Austin, TX

09/07/96 - Maggie’s Party - Austin, TX

• Notes: Bryan and I saw Sting this night, and then we played Maggie’s Party

09/14/96 - Coffee Plantation - Austin, TX

• Debuts: Because the Night, Canon in D
• Notes: Ed Park guested on violin

09/20/96 - Another Cup - Austin, TX

• Notes: Ed Park guested on violin

09/21/96 - Delta Upsilon Swamp Party - Austin, TX

10/01/96 - Babe’s - Austin, TX

10/11/96 - Coffee Plantation - Austin, TX

• Notes: Ed Park guested on violin

10/17/96 - Voodoo Lounge - Austin, TX

• Debuts: Anything Anything

11/05/96 - Babe’s - Austin, TX

11/22/96 - L-Bar Ranch - Austin, TX

• Debuts: It’s the End of the World as We Know It

11/25/96 - Steamboat - Austin, TX

12/12/96 - Babe’s - Austin, TX

12/22/96 - Steamboat - Austin, TX

12/27/96 - Babe’s - Austin, TX

01/10/97 - Babe’s - Austin, TX

• Debuts: Sympathy

01/15/97 - Steamboat - Austin, TX

01/31/97 - Babe’s - Austin, TX

• Debuts: Something About You, Mr. Raleigh’s Dilemma

02/07/97 - Duke’s Party - Austin, TX

02/20/97 - Steamboat - Austin, TX

• Notes: CD release party

03/05/97 - Bob Popular - Austin, TX

• Notes: Battle of the Bands, naturally we didn’t win

03/12/97 - Spirits - Austin, TX

03/13/97 - Spirits - Austin, TX

03/23/97 - Steamboat - Austin, TX

03/28/97 - Babe’s - Austin, TX

04/19/97 - Jester Jamfest - Austin, TX

• Notes: Ed Park guesting on violin

04/25/97 - Babe’s - Austin, TX

05/15/97 - Scruffy Murphy’s - Waco, TX

05/16/97 - Babe’s - Austin, TX

• Notes: final show with this lineup

3 PENNY OPERA

06/08/97 - Steamboat - Austin, TX

• Debuts: Cycle, College Radio, Bethlehem, Mr. Raleigh’s Dilemma, Forgotten Days, When You Comin’ Home Tonight, Virgin, Give Your Love To Me, Last Romantic, Sunshine, Me and Bobby McGee, Don’t Let Me Be Alone Tonight

07/09/97 - Steamboat - Austin, TX

• Debuts: Adam and Eve, Baby Can I Hold You Tonight, Without You, Circle

08/14/97 - Texas Music Café - Waco, TX

08/18/97 - Steamboat - Austin, TX

09/29/97 - Steamboat - Austin, TX

• Debuts: Redemption Song, Electric
• Notes: Cassette release party and first show with Ed

11/01/97 - Capzeyez Studios - Austin, TX

11/13/97 - Steamboat - Austin, TX

• Debuts: Canon in D

11/28/97 - Steamboat - Austin, TX

• Debuts: Imaginary Girlfriend

12/04/97 - Steamboat - Austin, TX

• Debuts: Boatman’s Daughter, She Waits By The Sea

12/18/97 - Steamboat - Austin, TX

• Debuts: Jingle Bell Rock

12/19/97 - Chamber of Commerce - San Antonio, TX

• Debuts: Tennessee Christmas, Margaritaville, Son of a Preacher Man, Time After Time, Blue Christmas, Eight Days a Week, Brown-eyed Girl,Happy X-mas (War is Over), Kiss
• Notes: Amy Mitchell on lead vocals

01/17/98 - Common Grounds - Waco, TX

• Debuts: San Francisco, Romeo and Juliet, Cancion, Alcohol and Nicotine

01/31/98 - Steamboat - Austin, TX

02/04/98 - Steamboat - Austin, TX

02/10/98 - Babe’s - Austin, TX

02/18/98 - Steamboat - Austin, TX

02/21/98 - Common Grounds - Waco, TX

02/27/98 - Steamboat - Austin, TX

02/28/98 - KIND Radio - San Marcos, TX

03/03/98 - Trees - Dallas, TX

03/04/98 - Bob Popular - Austin, TX

03/07/98 - Taco Land - San Antonio, TX

03/14/98 - Across the Street Bar - Dallas, TX

03/17/98 - Steamboat - Austin, TX

• Debuts: Roddy McCorley

03/29/98 - First Presbyterian Church - Duncanville, TX

03/31/98 - Babe’s - Austin, TX

04/04/98 - Common Grounds - Waco, TX

04/10/98 - Babe’s - Austin, TX

• Notes: also on the bill were Echo Juliet

04/19/98 - Steamboat - Austin, TX

04/24/98 - Café on the Square - San Marcos, TX

• Debuts: Diamonds, Blue Margarita, Me
• Notes: Amy Mitchell on lead vocals

04/29/98 - Trees - Dallas, TX

05/07/98 - Liberty Lunch - Austin, TX

05/09/98 - Common Grounds - Waco, TX

05/14/98 - Liberty Lunch - Austin, TX

05/21/98 - Liberty Lunch - Austin, TX

05/23/98 - Nasty’s - Austin, TX

05/24/98 - Cecilia’s graduation party - Dallas, TX

• Notes: Scott Laws on bass

05/28/98 - Liberty Lunch - Austin, TX

06/06/98 - Waterloo Ice House-38th - Austin, TX

• Notes: Scott Laws split bass duties w/ James

06/12/98 - Common Grounds - Waco, TX

• Notes: Scott Laws split bass duties w/ James

06/13/98 - Capzeyez Studios - Austin, TX

• Notes: final show with this lineup

AMY & CHRISTINA

10/02/98 - Common Grounds - Waco, TX

10/16/98 - Common Grounds - Waco, TX

01/26/99 - Shaggy’s - Austin, TX

• Debuts: High on Ham
• Notes: opened for 3 Penny Opera

02/13/99 - Capzeyez Studios - Austin, TX

05/31/99 - Shaggy’s - Austin, TX

FLAT FOOT

11/04/01 - W.B. Yeats Pub - Chapel Hill, NC

• Setlist: Casey Jones, Sunshine of Your Love, Just Add Water, The Weight, One Day, Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except for Me and My Monkey, Buried, Darling of the Underground Press, French Vanilla, Spin, Good Friday, Patpong St., Can’t Use You, Chicken Bones, Hard to Handle, Deal

MASTERMONK

11-06-03 - 7th Haven - Ft. Worth, TX

• Debuts: Intro Jam, City of Gold, Have No Fear, Frozen, Improv-5K, 10K, What I Pray, Empty, There Can Be Only One

02-04-04 - The Aardvark - Ft. Worth, TX

• Debuts: Echo, Improv-Bo’s Funky Cables

SHADES OF WINTER

09/30/07 - DSI Comedy Theater - Carrboro, NC

• Notes: Part of the Carrboro Music Festival; filled in for Elana, who was out of town

PROTEAN MEAN

03/03/07 - Pheasant Creek Coffeehouse - Apex, NC

• Debuts: 10K, Hanging Up the Dream

03/15/07 - MarVell Event Center - Durham, NC

• Debuts: Amnesia, Surrounded By Trees, Abused’s Song, She Waits By the Sea, The Storm

07/14/07 - Pheasant Creek Coffeehouse - Apex, NC

• Debuts: Snow, Lady Pilot

11/16/07 - Pheasant Creek Coffeehouse - Apex, NC

• Debuts: Trapped in Andy Land, Travelers Merchants & Masters

04/05/08 - Cheevyjames House Party - Durham, NC

• Debuts: One

05/07/08 - MarVell Event Center - Durham, NC

06/10/08 - Barnes & Noble (New Hope Commons) - Durham, NC

• Debuts: Matte Kudasai

07/30/08 - MarVell Event Center - Durham, NC

10/29/08 - MarVell Event Center - Durham, NC

• Debuts: August

11/16/08 - The Cave - Chapel Hill, NC

• Debuts: Mr. Raleigh’s Dilemma
• Notes: first show with Matt on drums

The History of 3 Penny Opera (from the bassist’s POV)

The History of 3 Penny Opera is the hardest one for me to write.  This is mostly because of how my tenure with the group ended and the things that followed.  I’ll go into full detail in this, so everything will be covered (from my POV of course).  (as an aside, I think to fully understand what happened in 3PO, you should read the bio for Echo Juliet and probably the one for Miniver Cheevy as well).

I really knew that Echo Juliet was done once Wiley was relieved of his management duties.  After that, I knew that the group couldn’t last.  As documented in the EJ history, once Wiley quit in the spring of 1997 the band soonly fell apart.  Once again, I’ll quote myself here: “I’m saying this right now, and for the record, that there was NEVER any kind of conspiracy for Wiley, Bryan and James to mutiny, kick Christine out of her own group, and form a new one. We all quit at different times, for different personal reasons and with no intention of forming a group within a group. It just kinda happened that way and it really did look like we planned some huge take-over of the band. We didn’t, I swear.”

So, after Wiley’s departure, and Bryan’s due to his impending graduate school in the fall at the University of Colorado, as well as mine…there really wasn’t much left of Echo Juliet.  We had committed to playing the remaining 4 gigs through May, but for all practical purposes, the band was dead and the 3 of us really weren’t a ‘band’ either.

The beginning of the whole process for 3 Penny Opera is fuzzy for me now, but I have a pretty good idea.  I’m assuming it was early in April of 1997, I was spending the weekend back home in Dallas and on the Sunday afternoon I got a call from Bryan.  It was very obvious that he was a happy little camper that day. He asked me if I remembered America Alva, the singer for Much Ado.  I remembered her, but I didn’t recall how her voice sounded.  Much Ado was a group that Wiley played with briefly around Spring/Summer of 1995.  The other members of the group were of course America Alva on vocals, David Cloyd (ex-Echo Juliet) on bass, Manuel Gonzales (occasional EJ guest) on percussion and a guy named Robert who played guitar.  I saw one show the band did, at Moore-Hill dorm, and while I really liked hearing what Wiley, Manuel and Dave did, I was specifically annoyed at Robert since it seemed like he had no business being there.   I didn’t have an impression either way of America.

So, back to the phone call between Bryan and myself.  He asked if I remembered her, I did but not her voice, and he said that the day before he and Wiley had got together with her and jammed.  I know that Bryan had been extremely frustrated at his lack of songwriting contributions in EJ (he’s more prolific than Christine) so naturally he wanted to see how his new material sounded.  Since Wiley knew America, the three of them got together and they went through a lot of Bryan’s new and old material.  He expressed to me his absolute joy of hearing America sing his songs and he specifically talked about her performance on Don’t Let Me Be Alone Tonight.  He said that he’d obviously never heard it sound that good and that was how he always envisioned it being sung.  I’ve seen Bryan be happy lots of times, but rarely has he been so glowing as he was that day.  And that was over the phone too.

So Bry told me about The New Plan.  He said that he and Wiley were going to start a new band centered around his songs: some we played in Echo Juliet, some rejected by Christine, and some new stuff.  They wanted me to play bass, America to sing, and we’d also get on board Manuel Gonzales (percussion) and Ed Park (violin), both of whom guested with EJ numerous times.  Knowing the talents of Manuel and Ed, and trusting the guys on America, I thought it was a fantastic idea.  It excited me to not only play with Bry and Wiley some more, but also I got another chance to play Bryan’s songs which I loved (also the latest stuff he’d written was excellent).

I think it was the next weekend that we got together and played.  I’m pretty sure it was just the 4 of us (Wiley, Bry, America and myself) doing another run-through of possible material.  Well, the guys were right: America had a great voice and sang the hell out of Don’t Let Me Be Alone Tonight.  I agreed with Bryan, that’s how the song is supposed to sound.  It was decided at that point that we’d pursue the new band and just have some fun with it for the summer, since Bryan was heading up to Boulder in August.  I was absolutely very impressed with America and I thought the songs were very strong.  Also, it was a great feeling that we could finally do music how we wanted it and play the songs we wanted to.

I’m not sure if we did a full band practice before we really dove into the material or not, but the next step of the process (that I remember) was the material.  Bryan had a big backlog of songs, I had a decent amount, and although we wanted to concentrate on newer material, all of the stuff Bry and I had done up to that point would be considered.  We could (and did) do old Cheevy material, Bry’s songs we did in EJ, and the new stuff as well.  I thought it was wonderful that not only did we have access to all this great material, but also with the talent of the band most anything was possible.  Bryan made us demos of a bunch of his songs for us and we set out to learn them and decide which ones we wanted to do.  I have the first one, but I don’t have the 2nd demo Bryan did (I gave my copy to Manuel to learn songs from) and I really wish I did.  There were some songs he had on there that we didn’t do and have since been forgotten about  (like I said, he’s very prolific).

Through trial and error during rehearsal, the basic set of songs we chose went as follows: Cycle was one that Echo Juliet had attempted but it never gelled right.  We brought it to the new group and it worked very well.  Sunshine grew a percussion jam after my bass solo, DLMBAT became a highlight of the group, College Radio finally began to gel with Wiley and me and started to really sound good.  Adam and Eve was another old EJ song of Bry’s that we did in the new group and the addition of America really helped that out.  Also Mr. Raleigh’s Dilemma finally came into being a great song after not feeling quite right in EJ.  For the new ones, Bethlehem was Heart-like rocker with funkified verses that had been attempted by Cheevy, Virgin and Last Romantic were powerful new ballads, Forgotten Days and Give Your Love to Me were a bit more groove oriented, and then we had the country goodness of When You Comin’ Home and the swing of Without You.  Since we had been doing Me and Bobby McGee in EJ, and America knew it as well, we thought it’d be the perfect cover to do.  While also finishing our duties in Echo Juliet, we practiced as often as we could all the new material (this was mostly as a 5 piece without Ed; he was spending a good bit of the summer in El Paso) for our upcoming gig in June of ’97.

After the experience in Echo Juliet, Wiley once again took over management duties.  In EJ we originally had our ‘home base’ as Steamboat, but eventually we moved to having Babe’s as our primary club.  For 3PO we wanted to get back to Steamboat and Wiley got us booked there for our first gig on June 8, 1997.  The only problem once we got the gig was that we had no name and Steamboat needed something to put in the Chronicle ads.  We were pretty desperate so the group decided to go with something I suggested, Gromit.  I’m a big fan of the British claymation series Wallace & Gromit.  Gromit is a dog, not unlike Snoopy, but where Snoopy is ‘cool’, Gromit is more human like and intelligent.  Gromit frequently reads novels and studies electronics, so he’s a bit more likable than Snoopy.  So, I thought, hey why not, it’s at least something.  The rest of the band agreed even though none of us really cared for it too much.

We had our ‘name’ and we had our first gig, a return to Steamboat.  Naturally all of our friends & families who were fans of Echo Juliet came out to the gig and that was incredibly appreciated.  Man, I was SO NERVOUS before this show.  I usually get really nervous before big shows anyway, or shows in new towns, but the debut of a group that was this important to me is almost too much.  I guess I just wanted to make a good impression on everybody.  It was the Echo Juliet factor.  The breakup of EJ was still very fresh (the last show being only about 3 weeks before) and I knew not only would we be compared to EJ, but also word would probably get back to Christine on how good or bad we sounded.  Even though we didn’t quit EJ to form this group, I still wanted to show that we all made a good decision and I really wanted ‘Gromit’ to blow Echo Juliet out of the water.  We had something to prove.

I have a tape of this show and while it’s nowhere near perfect, it’s still a good debut.  We were all nervous, and that’s evident, but most everything was pulled off well enough.  Starting a tradition that would continue throughout the rest of the band, we opened up with Cycle, one that never got past the rehearsal stages in EJ.  We played all but two of our songs at the show so everyone got a good example of all the new material.  I was given a lap steel guitar a few weeks before this gig and I thought it was be fun to play a lap steel solo on When You Comin’ Home Tonight.  I worked up a stupid little solo and I guess the rest of the group didn’t think it was too horrible so they let me indulge.  I can’t play lap steel worth a damn right now, and I know I couldn’t at only 3 weeks of having the instrument.  We had some major tuning problems before the song.  My lap steel was in tune with my bass (which was in tune) and it was Bryan’s 12-string acoustic that was out.  Well, Bry thought it was me who was out and I thought it was him.  We didn’t have a fight or anything, but it was definitely some nervous tension up there.  I think if it hadn’t of been our first gig it would’ve been no big deal.  Well, we played the song and even though my solo got a massive crowd reaction (probably from the novelty of it) it still sounded so horrible.  I have never been so unmusical in my whole life.

Anyway, the rest of the gig went well with good reactions all the way.  We decided to close our set with Don’t Let Me Be Alone Tonight.  Besides being a showpiece for America’s voice, we thought that ending on more or less calm song would be cool and hopefully distinctive for the first gig.  Bry and I got this idea from Sting who we had seen the previous September.  Sting closed his show (the encore) with Fragile and it really impressed us so we thought we’d give DLMBAT a shot at closing the set.  Once the gig was done we knew that we should’ve closed with a more up-beat song.  Oh well, live and learn.

As for the gig itself, I was so happy when we finished.  I was still a little nervous and jittery, but overall really pleased with the performance.  It was far from perfect, but during the many times when it went right…we sounded great.  Also, a more important reaction than ours was that of the audience.  Most of our audience for that show were our friends who all were also huge Echo Juliet fans.  So the new group had a lot to live up to.  I think we exceeded expectation.  I could be wrong, but that’s the feeling I got.  Steamboat was pleased with the turnout and wanted to book us for a second gig.  We were booked for a Wednesday show on July 9th.

The name of the group got some questions after the gig from quite a few people.  Most of the audience had no idea what Wallace and Gromit was, so our name choice was a bit confusing.  I remember Bryan’s mom saying that she thought the name reminded her of  ‘vomit’.  I know there were a bunch of other people that talked to us after the gig and while it was pretty universal of how good we were, all that mentioned it said the name didn’t fit us (plus the ‘vomit’ comment came up more than once).  So, we agreed to change it.

The new name that came out was Muchado (moo-chaa-doh), an obvious bastardization of Much Ado.  I have to admit, this was my idea.  Wiley’s other band, Megalo, had played a gig earlier in the summer and I heard an announcement for it on the radio.  KLBJ DJ Johnnie Walker mispronounced the band’s name as “Mélago”, which cracked me up.  I told the guys about it and we all laughed about it.  So, using the same dumb logic (except mine was intentional), I changed the old Much Ado into Muchado.  Yeah, it sounds like some new Taco Bell item.  We absolutely did not like the name, but we had a gig and they needed a name for the ads.  ‘Gromit’ was not an option, so we went with Muchado for the time being.  I think it was maybe a week before the gig Ed came up with the name that finally stuck: 3 Penny Opera.  Everyone liked it and I still think it fit the group perfectly.  We liked the obvious classical reference, and we had a violinist so it worked, and also because the initials of the group were “3PO” and how could a group of Star Wars nerds not love being in a band called 3PO?  The name was now set, but we couldn’t get the info to Steamboat in time, so the name on the ad (and marquee in front of the club) was still Muchado.

I know this gig went a bit smoother than the one before; it’s the first one that’s always the hardest.  In the month between shows we had tightened up the material a lot and added two new covers to the repertoire: Tracy Chapman’s Baby Can I Hold You Tonight & Edie Brickell’s Circle.  In addition to playing these two new covers, we debuted our 2 originals that we didn’t have room for on the first gig, Adam & Eve and Without You.  We wanted to make sure the audience knew that we were changing our name so before the first song we made the announcement that, “we have decided to change our name, so we’re going to be called 3 Penny Opera from now on.”  I don’t remember much else from this show other than the name change.  I think it was probably after this second show that Bryan made the decision to defer his entrance into the University of Colorado until the next fall.  Like the rest of us, he loved the new group and thought it was just way too good to stop now.  The band went from ‘fun hobby’ to, “hey, this is some really good stuff…let’s go as far as we can with this.”

Our third gig, coming up on August 14th, was a bit different of an affair.  Bryan had been living in Dallas since the beginning of the year and had been commuting the 3 hours to Austin for all the Echo Juliet and subsequent 3PO practices/gigs.  We tried to get together in Dallas whenever possible to help him out, but that didn’t happen often.  A solution that Wiley came up with was for us all to meet in Waco (halfway).  The first time we did this we ended up practicing in a dance rehearsal studio of all places.  I’m really unclear of how we got together with Texas Music Café, but Wiley knows…

Finding the TMC was a total fluke.  I was web searching and calling around Waco, and it may have even been the booker at Scruffy Murphy’s who helped me out with a couple leads for big empty rooms.  Basically it came down to TMC and the dance place.  TMC was busy that night, but I got to talking with Chris Ermoian, telling him how 3PO came together with great songs, a singer with a beautiful voice, the violin and percussion, and he was sold.  I guess at that point they were really trying to fill their schedule.  I told him we really needed a cheap recording and would probably release what we recorded there.  To date, he was one of the most accepting, encouraging people I’ve met in the music business, especially during that conversation…to book us for a TV gig sight unseen and sound unheard…how crazy is that?

The Texas Music Café was a music show (similar to Austin City Limits) that broadcast on local PBS stations throughout the state of Texas.  The format of each show was an hour of different performances from an extremely eclectic group of Texas bands.  The idea was to promote Texas music to TV viewers across the state, and have it be promotion of *all kinds* of music. Wiley got 3PO and Megalo booked on there, with Megalo actually recording a few weeks before we did.  The guys at TMC (all of them being EXTREMELY cool and supportive people) were very knowledgeable about not only TV production, but audio production as well.  When we played there on 8/14/97 they recorded us on audio and video and the result turned into our first album/music video (never broadcast, made by me for a school project).

For the gig we wanted to boost our sound a bit (Ed was out of town so it was just the five of us) and we recruited my friend Matt Talbert to play lead guitar on Don’t Let Me Be Alone Tonight.  He wrote the song with Bryan, and frequently played it with us in Miniver Cheevy so he was plenty familiar with it.  Since we were being taped for TV and recording our first album we had a nice size audience that night.  Most of our families were there, as were many friends as well. Tom Kruger, a country rock act, played the opening slot and we hit the stage at 9.  I think we played the opening song twice, to get good sound levels, but once we started there was no turning back.  Just like stated on the album, it’s all one take, totally live.  We had hoped to be able to clean up any possible bad notes afterward but something in the recording didn’t go right so we were stuck with what we did.

The set for the show went as follows: Cycle, Bethlehem, Forgotten Days, Virgin, When You Comin’ Home, Give Your Love to Me, DLMBAT, Adam & Eve, Mr. Raleigh’s, Without You & Last Romantic.  We had Sunshine, College Radio & Electric on the setlist just in case we had time for them (they weren’t essentials for the album), but I guess the time expired.  Let’s see, the songs we didn’t use for the album were Cycle (bad sound in general, and lotsa nerves), Virgin (a great take except for a major missed note by America) & we edited Without You after my bass solo (some more bad notes from the singer).  I still think we shoulda had those songs be “warts & all”, but I was out voted.  I know for my part I TOTALLY flubbed Give Your Love to Me and once again I did my out of tune lap steel solo in When You Comin’ Home Tonight.  Bry missed a note on his solo in Raleigh and Matt hit a run of bad notes in DLMBAT.  Did Wiley or Manuel screw up?  I can’t remember.  Regardless of all that stuff, I am still extremely proud of that album (see the review here).  I mean, it was our 3rd gig together and we were recording an album in one take IN FRONT OF CAMERAS.  I think we did wonderfully under the circumstances.

I haven’t seen the video footage in a long time, but I thought it all turned out pretty well.  I’m not sure how many of our songs ended up being broadcast on the show, but the positive effects gained from it were numerous.  Mostly, we recorded an album AND got on TV all across Texas…for free.  Thanks to the Texas Music Café for making what would have been impossible, possible.

The reason that Sunshine, possibly our best song, was left off the recording at TMC was because we used a studio version of the track to kick off the album.  We took the basic track of Sunshine (recorded in November of 1996) and added Manuel’s percussion and substituted Christine’s vocals for America’s.  I have no idea if Christine’s voice is on the master tape or if it was erased.  She was nice enough to give us the Sunshine master after we left Echo Juliet.  We actually went into the studio a few weeks before the TMC show on July 26th.  We went back to the original studio, Planet Dallas, and used the original engineer, Amado Carrasco, to get the best sound possible for our leadoff track.  We went in early on that Saturday morning, Manuel whipped out his percussion part in no time, as did America on her vocal.  The idea was to whip in there, record them both, remix the song and get out (I had a Phish concert in Austin to get to that evening).

Bryan, as wonderful a guy that he is, decided he didn’t like his original solo (the rest of us were happy with it).  So, he started to write a new one while America was recording.  It took him a while to get something he liked (a couple of hours?) so once he got it written (but not perfected) he started to get it recorded.  I swear, America & Manuel’s overdubs didn’t total more than 2 hours.  Bryan’s new solo honestly took the rest of the day.  Literally.  I don’t think he finished until it was dark outside and we started around 10 in the morning.  Bryan didn’t care though; he was paying for the entire thing anyway.  I was pissed about a few things.  First, I was pretty unhappy about my sound on the original recording so I wanted to be sure that I would be there for the mixing of the new version.  Plus, I trust my ears and I’m really particular on how the group should sound.  I wanted to be there for the mixing.  Second, it was totally useless for Bryan to waste an entire day of studio time for one damn guitar solo.  And, as it turned out, the solo never happened the way he wanted so he ended up using the original solo anyway!  Once I heard the finished product I was extremely pissed (I evidently still am) at my inaudible presence on Sunshine.  Unfortunately once I heard it, the master was being duplicated.

The Sunshine overdubs for our debut album, 90% Live, were done on July 26th with final mixing and sequencing on the 27th.  We had the ‘cassette release party’ (not enough money to put it on CD) on September 29th at our home base of Steamboat.  It was our 5th gig total and finally the debut of Edward Park on violin.  We started the show off with a cover of Bob Marley’s Redemption Song (a duet done by Bry and America) and went into the debut of Electric.  It’s been a while since I’ve heard the tape of this show, but I remember it turning out well enough.  It did take a while before Ed really felt comfortable in the band and on stage, but he was just fine on his first gig.

Our next gig, a month later, was another TV appearance.  This time is was for a local cable access show called Capzeyez.  We got about an hour, with another band interview following the performance.  We happened into the Capzeyez thing from their crew just taping a random date at Steamboat and liking what they saw in us.  The guys at Capzeyez were really good to us.  3PO was on the show a total of 3 times, as well as Megalo and my post-3PO group, Amy & Christina.  I know our songs got a lot of airplay on there and that was wonderful promotion.  It’s always so weird being taped for TV broadcast.  I took a lot of radio/audio/TV production classes in high school and college so it’s totally natural for me to be in that environment.  However, I’m used to being *behind* the camera.  When I’m in front of camera, I am seriously nervous.  I just get so uncomfortable.  I don’t know what it is.  Watching the video of this performance, I am nervous as always, rarely looking into the camera.  For all the sound problems and band problems, it turned out well enough.  Nowhere near perfect, but I like having it.

During the next few months we became a much tighter group and also managed to debut at least one new song every show until the end of January 1998.  Debuts included our rocked-out version of Pachebel’s Canon in D, the old EJ fill-in Imaginary Girlfriend, two *excellent* Bryan Dunn songs, Boatman’s Daughter & She Waits By the Sea (both unveiled on my birthday, that was nice), a shoddy cover of Jingle Bell Rock for our first Xmas gig on Dec. 18th, a plethora of covers for our 2nd Xmas gig on the 19th and 4 new songs on our first show of the new year.  These last two gigs deserve special mention.

December 19th, 1997 we played a gig for the San Antonio Chamber of Commerce and since America was with her family in Corpus Christi we recruited our good friend, Amy Mitchell, to sing with us for this gig.  Amy’s got a great voice and was a big fan of the band so it was easy to bring her in when we needed her.  Chalk it up to Wiley and his connections, but we scored a nice (but strange) gig for the COC.  Since it was a few days before Xmas, we peppered our set with more covers, including some Xmas songs.  Let’s see, besides the aforementioned Jingle Bell Rock, we bashed through Tennessee Christmas, Blue Christmas, Happy Xmas (War is Over), and the regular covers Margaritaville, Son of a Preacher Man, Time After Time, Eight Days a Week, Brown-eyed Girl, & Prince’s Kiss.  Yup, 3 Penny Opera, the perfect band for YOUR Christmas party.

It was such a strange gig.  It just had this odd feeling about it.  Here we were, in a corner of this one conference room playing on some sort of ‘stage’.  Thankfully most people were drinking so they didn’t notice how tight we weren’t.  Especially on the new covers.  A lot of them were known by Wiley, Bry and I from our time in Echo Juliet, but we hadn’t played them in a LONG time and they were pretty rusty.  On my part mostly.  I know I just totally butchered Kiss.  Amy did a fine job, but it still sticks out in my mind as being strange and sloppy.  But hey, we got free Newcastle after we finished so it wasn’t that bad.

Following that show I took a two-week break off and went with my girlfriend (now wife) Julie to visit her parents in Knoxville, Tennessee.  I brought my guitar and recording equipment with the intention of recording a demo of songs for the band.  So far into our 3PO story, Bryan wrote all of the originals.  I contributed the middle section for Boatman’s Daughter, but everything else was his.  We always talked about everyone writing and contributing, but in 6 months we were only still doing Bryan’s material.  I absolutely *love* Bryan’s songs.  I am truly his biggest fan.  Also, the stuff he kept coming up with for the group got better and better with each new song.  However, I felt like George Harrison a bit here; at that time I had a big backlog of songs (around 20) and I of course liked them and wanted the band to play some of them.  I knew that some of them would fit perfectly with the group.  The thing is, 3PO had this guy who was both Lennon AND McCartney (just furthering the reference, not saying we’re the Next Beatles or anything) so naturally we focused on his material.  So yeah, I recorded demos of all my stuff with the idea of the band learning some of my songs.

When I came back in January 1998 I noticed something was different.  We had our first practice at Bryan’s dad’s place in Waco and I saw that in the two weeks since I had left the other 4 (Ed wasn’t there) had become extremely close and had all these inside jokes and it seemed like they had seriously bonded in the previous two weeks.  We went through our usual repertoire and also some new songs (that they all knew and I didn’t): San Francisco, Alcohol & Nicotine and Cancion de America, with a new cover of Mark Knopfler’s Romeo & Juliet.  I knew San Francisco, as it was a re-working of a tune of Wiley’s we did in Echo Juliet called Waiting in the Cold, the main change being America’s words instead of Christine’s.  Alcohol & Nicotine was a new and funky Bryan song and Cancion de America was our first foray into some real Latin shake-your-ass stuff.  The music for Cancion was by Bryan, with America supplying the melody and Manuel writing the words.  Romeo & Juliet was done as a duet between Bryan and America.  So the song credits for the band had indeed expanded in the past two weeks, but they just didn’t yet include me.  Still, when I came back I did feel like an outsider.

Our first gig of the New Year was another show in Waco, at a small coffee house called Common Grounds and we debuted all 4 new songs.  The atmosphere was much more relaxed (barely enough room for a scaled-down version of Wiley’s drumset) with us sitting down and presenting more chilled and acoustic versions of our songs. The band would continue to play at Common Grounds for the remainder of the group.  We were booked for a Battle of the Bands to take place at Steamboat on February 27 with us competing against Holy Moellers, Jez Spencer, Jack Rabbit King and Steamroller.  It annoyed us that the contest was sponsored by Kool cigarettes (all of us non smokers), but it’s not like we were going to protest by not playing it.  The winner of the ‘battle’ (according to numbers of audience who came for each band) would get a spot opening for that summer’s HORDE show in Austin.  We played 2nd on the bill and had a TON of people there.  We had the place packed and that was most definitely the biggest and most enthusiastic audience we had ever played for.  Probably the most enthusiastic audience I’ve ever, in any group, played for.  Stepping back from my role as bassist here, we were absolutely at the top of our game that night and the audience more than let us know.  After dropping our stuff off we came back to see Steamroller’s set.  Being one of the more popular bands in Austin, they naturally had a great and crowd.  Truthfully, I wasn’t too moved by their music.  They had a couple of good songs, but nearly all of the songs sounded exactly alike.  They had great grooves, but after hearing the same song (with different lyrics) for 20 minutes it got old.  Well, things happened the way they were “supposed” to happen and Steamroller won.  3 Penny Opera got second place, losing by a very small number of votes.  It was kind of confessed to us that we actually *did* win, but it was Steamroller’s year to win, as they were one of the biggest bands in Austin and they narrowly lost the previous year.  Stupid politics.

The winner of the Battle of the Bands not only got to play at HORDE, but also got a song on a compilation CD that was handed out at the HORDE concert.  We recorded something “just in case” and decided to do a good studio version of When You Comin’ Home Tonight.  Thankfully, that semester I was doing an internship at a recording studio, Stinson Studios in North Austin, so everything worked out perfectly.  We went into the studio on February 19th and finished everything up the next evening.  John Stinson, the owner, helped me set up the drum mics and then left me on my own to do everything else.  I was pretty comfortable there and we had a great time recording the song.  Since Ed had been in the band my awful lap steel solo had been forever replaced by Ed’s violin, which made it a million times better.  We got good performances from everyone and even though we lost the Battle of the Bands, the track ended up on the band’s second album, 10 Pieces for Voice, Strings & Percussion.

The rest of the spring saw the band getting tighter, playing a lot more gigs, and traveling outside of our Austin and occasional Waco haunts.  We played again in San Antonio (signing our first autographs for people in the audience), debuted in Dallas at Trees, played live on a pirate radio station in San Marcos (KIND), played a show for the youth group of a church in Bryan’s and my hometown of Duncanville, as well as covering some new clubs in Austin.  We didn’t debut any new material until April, and that was with Amy Mitchell once again guesting with us at a café in San Marcos.

It’s funny, in typing this bio I currently find myself in that typical place of band bios where a bunch of time is just glossed over because not much of major importance happens.  Besides all the aforementioned gigs, one important one took place on 4/10/98 where we played at Babe’s in Austin with Megalo opening up and Echo Juliet closing.  We had been out of EJ for almost a year, but tensions were still strong so it was a bit weird sharing a bill with them.  We knew they still played Waiting in the Cold at nearly every show so logically we shouldn’t have included San Francisco in the set.  I mean, they’re the same song only with different words.  Well, instead of talking this problem out with Christine or just dropping it from our set (my idea), Wiley wanted us to play it.  I remember while playing it just looking over at Christine watching and seeing the look on her face.  I felt awful about it and it really pissed me off that I was essentially out-voted on this not very good song just so certain members of the band could gloat and show Christine up.  We played a good show, but that’s the thing that always sticks out about this one.  Unfortunately I didn’t get to stay for Echo Juliet’s set since I was (for some dumb reason) moving across town after that gig.  Hopefully Christine didn’t see it as a dis on her.

So yeah, in the spring we played in different cities and had more great gigs, but this was definitely the period of just chugging along.  The only difference is that the slight bit of “outsider-ness” I felt starting back in January continued to get bigger during the spring and summer.  Little things started to happen, and then kept happening, that made it more frustrating for me.  None of my songs were being played by the band (only a reggae song called Larry was half-assed attempted at one rehearsal, because I forced it) and no one in the band had expressed any interest in any of my songs; not even to say, “hey, you write some good stuff, but it’s not right for the group”.  The four main members of the group (Bryan, Wiley, America and Manuel) hung out all the time and it seemed like 90% of the time I wasn’t invited.  Frequently we’d be in rehearsal (which was becoming extremely infrequent) or at a gig and they’d talk about how much fun they had the other day at the movies or wherever.  I’m sitting there going, why wasn’t I ever called?  I tried to book us rehearsal space in classrooms at UT, but most of the band was rarely ever able to do it.  I’d hear about practices the band would do without me, specifically “rhythm section” practices that I wasn’t invited to (I believe bass is supposed to be part of that rhythm section…).  Yeah, I was occasionally invited to hang out and once I did do a Rhythm Section practice with Manuel and Wiley, but I know they happened a lot more than I was invited to.

Like you probably, I’m wondering where Ed was in all this.  It wasn’t like Ed was part of their clique (it was a clique), or it was Us against Them; the grouping was definitely me alone, Ed alone, and then the 4 of them.  Honestly, I wasn’t ever very close with Ed.  He was a source of frustration because he’d often never have written parts for the songs and would just play around in the key most of the time.  He was often late to rehearsal (if he even came in) and a lot of times wasn’t able to make it to the gigs.  We played as a 5 piece it seemed more often than as a 6 piece.  Both Ed and I were still in college and I think we both were in our last semesters.  Ed was a Pharmacy major, so that took up a lot of his time.  My school wasn’t too difficult, but I was doing an internship at the recording studio and I lived with Julie at the farthest end of town than the rest of everyone else.  Bryan, Wiley, Manuel & America were all single and out of college, while Ed and myself both had girlfriends and were still in school.  It’s easy to see how a rift could develop, if we let it.

One day in the spring, Bryan mentioned that he had to drive up to Dallas get his car back from the shop and wanted to know if I felt like going.  I didn’t have school that day so said hell yeah and we took off.  At that point, Bryan and I had played together for almost 6 years and were naturally very close.  The previous months had seen some space come between us so any chance I got to hang out, just the two of us, I jumped at.  We spent most of the day in the car listening to a bunch of music and having a great time.  We talked about how I felt about things and I got to air my frustrations about the group.  He noticed the separation too and he said the four of them had been feeling that my playing and tightness with the band, esp. the rhythm section, had deteriorated over the past few months.  Of course, how can I be tight with the group when we never practiced, they sometimes practiced without me and specifically Wiley and Manuel would work out stuff together and I wouldn’t even be invited.  I clearly saw his point of view, and somewhat agreed with him on my playing.  All in all we had a really positive conversation about it all and we agreed that it wasn’t solely one side’s problem and not the other’s; all of us had to work it out and fix it as a band.  That made me feel a million times better about everything, the band, me, our friendship, all of it.

Since I was graduating in the spring and Julie was going to finish up that December, we wanted to take part of the summer off and go backpacking in Europe since it’d be harder to do that kind of stuff once we started working.  Once I decided that I was going, I let the band know and we discussed our options.  There was the thought of the band just going on hold for 6 weeks, but they wanted to keep playing and I felt that the band could still do some good stuff while I was gone.  Besides, it was only 6 weeks at the end of the summer.  So, who to get to fill my shoes while I was out?  Tracy, who filled in with Echo Juliet once, was an option, but they couldn’t get a hold of him.  Another option was a friend of the band’s, Scott Laws, who played with Situation Wilson, a band that Echo Juliet frequently played shows with.  Scott was a good bassist and played somewhat similarly to me so the fit worked, and we knew him and got along with him so that was important too.  Scott wanted to do the fill in work, and we wanted him there so it was decided.

3PO had become friends with a pop group called Dizzybloom and we decided to start up some sort of Pop Music Night where the two of us and other Austin pop-ish bands would play together.  This eventually involved the club Liberty Lunch, local radio and charities and we decided to call it Spinning Penny Thursdays and do weekly shows at Liberty Lunch.  The text of the flyer:

Austin’s MIX 94.7, Liberty Lunch, the Texas Musicians Network and the SIMS Foundation have joined together with dizzybloom and 3 Penny Opera to present Spinning Penny Thursdays.  These weekly shows, starting in May, will feature Austin’s best up-and-coming pop bands.  Admission is $4, doors open at 7:45pm, shows start at 8pm, and ALL AGES are welcome.  Featured acts include Michelle Solberg, Lisa Tingle, Megalo, and many more.  See the complete schedule inside this program.

Dizzybloom was a good band and we were EXTREMELY excited to play at Liberty Lunch, not just once, but weekly for a month.  In a sense, this was a residency at the club (one of the biggest and most important in Austin) and our second residency so far (the first being back in February at Steamboat).  The event had received some publicity on Mix 94.7 and I know Dizzybloom got some air time, but I don’t think we were ever played on there.  My amp blew out a week before the first show so I had to borrow Scott’s for the shows.  For me, these shows were extremely exciting and I loved playing on that stage.  Like playing at Steamboat, playing at Liberty Lunch had this great feel to it.  I had seen a ton of bands play at the Lunch, so it was a small dream come true for me.  The stage was huge and I got to run around a lot more than normal.  Normally I don’t move around too much, but I guess being up there on that big stage I stepped it up a bit and had some fun.  The shows were important to us as individual players, and it gave us some more name recognition, but attendance wise the shows weren’t too successful.  Both 3PO and Dizzybloom weren’t established enough to bring in crowds to fill a lot of the clubs in town, so of course us trying to fill the biggest club in town wasn’t going to happen.  I remember the second night of the residency we had a group called Big Rig open for us.  They had a pretty big following (they were high school kids, but you wouldn’t know it by how good they were) and we thought it would be a great bill, but that night happened to be the final night of Seinfeld and the club was pretty empty.  I still don’t think 94.7 or SIMS promoted it near enough, but that was outside our control.  It felt like they both just did it as a favor and didn’t put too much effort into it.  Still, while we were doing it, we had a blast.

The last 3 gigs we did before I headed off to Spain were in the first half of June ’98 with us playing in Austin at Waterloo on 38th, again at Common Grounds in Waco and finishing off with another Capzeyez TV appearance on June 13th.  Both the Waterloo and Common Grounds shows had Scott and I splitting bass duties to help get him some extra playing time with the band.  Both were pretty fun shows and great ways to have fun before I set off for this unknown land without my bass.  For the Capzeyez show I was nervous as usual but managed to play pretty well.  I think we all did.  By this time I knew the band wasn’t fully ‘fixed’, but it seemed like we were making progress and I felt I was slowly being accepted back in the group.  Would I have played the gig any different if I had known it was my last one ever with the group?  Probably not, I’m sure it would’ve made it a million times worse for me.  Yes, obviously, it WAS my last gig with 3 Penny Opera, but I wouldn’t find that out until I got back from Europe.

Before leaving my only request for the group was for them to learn just one of my songs.  I had the tapes for them, I typed up lyrics and chord charts and notation and all that so that it would be extremely easy to learn something of mine.  I think there was a gig or two that they played solely with Scott before I left that I watched from the audience.  It should have been obvious to me seeing them up there with him.  I did notice how Bryan specifically had a huge case of man-love toward Scott (think of Beavis and Butthead and their reaction to that guy Todd…yeah, similar to that), but I just refused to think they’d drop me for him.  It was weird, part of me knew it was going to happen, but the other part (the one in control of things) wouldn’t think of it.  So, I nervously went off to this strange continent called Europe thinking I’d come back in late August and everything would pick right back up where I left off.

I did have a wonderful time backpacking through Spain, with some longer stays in Paris and London, and it was actually in a hostel in Paris when I called Wiley to just touch base and all that.  I was ready to come home and get back with the group and I remember I told him about the awesome flamenco I had seen in Seville a few weeks before.  Even when talking to him something seemed really wrong, like he felt weird talking to me.  I was the girlfriend calling up after you’ve decided to break up; it’s just that she hasn’t caught on yet.  Again, I refused to think anything was wrong when it was obviously was.

I arrived back to the States on August 19th, and back home to Austin on August 20th.  After I got in on the 19th (a Wednesday) I called Wiley to catch up get things in motion for my return to the group.  I think they had 2 shows on the Friday, an early morning TV thing and a show at Liberty Lunch that evening.  I know that I hadn’t touched my bass in 6 weeks, but it’s hard to lose enough technique that you’d outright suck in only 6 weeks.  I was fine with not playing the TV thing, but Wiley said they were still going to have Scott play the Liberty Lunch gig.  I wanted to get together with the band the day before the LL show and just see how well I played everything, and if I wasn’t up to snuff I’d happily let Scott play it.  Wiley said something like we’d get together the next day and talk about it.  I was hoping that he and Bryan would come over to my place and we’d play for a while and then hopefully I’d be ready to play the following day.  Instead, Wiley, Bryan and America came over to my place (the first time any of them had come over, and I’d lived there since March) and on my first day back in Austin, they fired me.

Obviously, this isn’t a nice, objective biography.  This is from my point of view so it will always be skewed to my side.  I realize that, but I’m trying my best to be objective in this.  It still hurts to think about all this, much less type it out, but it needs to be done if the story is to be told.

They fired me.  Kicked me out of the band.  I was an original member of the group, had played side by side with Bryan for over 6 years by then, played with Bryan and Wiley for at least 3 ½, gone through a lot of difficult stuff with those guys back in Echo Juliet and there had never been any question of my commitment to the band.  They still found reasons to get rid of me.  Evidently I wasn’t a very good bassist, hadn’t been a good bassist even way back into EJ, wasn’t tight with the rhythm section, I messed up too much and caused everyone else to mess up, and in fact they never wanted me in the band in the first place, but their first choice (Tracy) was nowhere to be found so they settled on me hoping I’d get better.  All of this was news to me.  Yeah, I’m not the greatest bassist, but I’m way better than average and plenty good enough to play in 3 Penny Opera and most definitely in the same league as the others.  Was it my fault that Wiley couldn’t remember how many times we had played through the verse in College Radio and I had to lead him into the chorus?  Was it my fault America frequently messed up the same line in Don’t Let Me Be Alone Tonight?  Was it my fault that a lot of the time Ed was lost because he’d never bothered writing any set parts to any of the songs?  Was it my fault when Bryan hit wrong notes in his solos, or would decide to go walk in the crowd while he soloed (show off, basically) and then would proceed to unplug himself from his amp while in the crowd?  Evidently it all was.

So Scott was their savior and the band got a million times better after he came in.  They told me how hard he worked at getting so many new people to the shows.  I guess they forgot to remember that nearly all of our hard core fans were all *my* friends first (back from early Echo Juliet days) and over the years they became ALL of our friends.  We all basically hung out with all the same people, so I think it was natural that not only would I not be able to bring that many more new people to our shows, but Scott, who definitely did not know anyone we knew, would bring a lot of new people to see his new band.  Of course he brought a lot of new people to the shows in my absence!  And besides Bryan’s obvious Man-crush, he loved it how Scott jumped around on stage.  I don’t jump unless I’m so moved to do it.  With Scott it was part of the show.  (Months later, one gig Scott was jumping up and down and he happened to land right on Ed’s violin, who had the stupid habit of laying it on the ground when he wasn’t needed on that particular song.  So Scott wasn’t paying attention to Ed’s stupidity, which I did…I always took steps back whenever he’d lay it down, and landed smack onto Ed’s really expensive violin.  He destroyed it.)

I still think one of the main reasons that they liked Scott so much was that he was one of them: out of college, single, lived in the same general area and had plenty of time to hang out (and was just someone new in general).  Maybe Scott did have better stage presence than me.  Watching from the audience I never saw a considerable difference.  It’s also true that he sang backup vocals.  Doesn’t mean we couldn’t have worked on them with me.  Yeah, Scott wasn’t as “adventurous” in his bass playing as I was, he didn’t like soloing that I know of and didn’t want to stretch out as much as I did.  And I’m sure he also didn’t write slightly odd songs that were more difficult than Bryan’s to learn.  I really think it was the social aspect that sealed my fate and was the primary reason they just kept him when I went off to Europe.

I don’t hate Scott at all and don’t hate him taking my position in the group.  It wasn’t like he barged in, they offered it to him.  He’s a cool guy and a great bass player and on some of the songs he totally kicked the crap out of what I played.  I have no problem admitting any of that.  My biggest problem is not only how they fired me (like a girlfriend in junior high) but that the friendship didn’t mean enough to them to try to work with me to improve things.  If all that stuff was really how they felt the whole time, why did they never really talk to me about it (expect the one time with Bryan, which I initiated) and try to fix things, rather than just can me?  One of the slimiest things that happened the day they fired me was that Bryan couldn’t even be in the room to do it.  Bryan went outside while America and Wiley went through all this.  I told him to come back in, and he didn’t take his sunglasses off inside.  I told him that if he’s going to fire me, do it to my face and look in my eyes.  He still didn’t do much talking, it was mostly Wiley.

Well, I couldn’t convince them to keep me (they didn’t even want to try to play with me to see how it went) so that was it.  It didn’t matter that even while in Europe I talked up the band and even gave away my copy of our album to a girl from Australia who was very enthusiastic about it.  I tried, but they wouldn’t budge.  Yes, I was angry to say the least.  It didn’t end with me cursing them out and threatening to call the cops or anything, but after it happened I hated all of them more than I have probably hated anyone else in my whole life.  Getting fired was bad, but having that much hatred for people who had been my best friends was truly one of the most awful things I’ve gone through.  After 3 or 4 weeks (I can’t remember exactly, maybe it was 2) of this burning hatred for all 6 of them I determined that I had to do something because I was destroying myself with it.  Leads to the Dark Side, hatred truly does.  So, I called Bryan and said we have to talk, that it was killing me.  We got together a few days later over dinner and just let stuff out.  He pretty much admitted that I was correct in my deductions, but they were happy with Scott (that eventually changed in a big way).  It was tearing both of us up, so I’m very glad that we did finally reconcile.

It took a while, months, years, before everything started to get back to the kind of friendship we had before.  I eventually started going and seeing the band again; it was painful, but I forgave them and was still a huge fan of the music.  A lot of my friends who made up our original group of hard-cores stopped going to the shows after I was gone.  I think slowly, one by one, I rekindled the friendships with the guys and America.  It happened quickest with Bryan; we eventually started playing and writing again together and attempted to revive Miniver Cheevy.  Before Wiley left for New York City in 2000, he and Bryan and I were having lunch at Texadelphia and that was the first time since the firing that I felt that we three were truly back at the place we had been before.  I wasn’t eating great food and drinking Shiner with those guys that fired me, I was doing that with my good friends.  America and I were always polite to each other, but it wasn’t until Wiley’s wedding in 2001 where we really talked and got back to the same place.  With the rest it wasn’t too difficult, mostly because it was America, Wiley and Bryan who did the deed.

It’s been about 10 years now and although it still hurts a bit, I’ve more than forgiven them.  In January of 1999 I was playing with some friends of mine, Amy & Christina, and by dumb luck we ended up opening for 3PO.  They asked me to, so for one of the songs I got up there with Wiley and Bryan and played through The Beatles’ 8 Days a Week.  It wasn’t the best version ever, but it was fun and we had a good time and it felt good to do that again with them.  I still think 3 Penny Opera was a fantastic band with a ton of potential and I do still like listening to the album we made, as well as the album they did with Scott.  The material’s good and I know it always will hold up to my high standards.  I’m thankful that I never lost those guys as friends, because that would have been way worse than being fired from a band.

It’s been over 10 years since I played in Echo Juliet and I know one of the first questions to pop up on your mind is probably, “James, why do you still care about that group?”   Because I liked it, that’s why.  I still like us.   As a musician one of the main criteria for me being in a group is: If I was just a regular person and not in the band, would I like the music?  Yeah, I would.

Also, another big reason for this whole EJ page is that if you, wonderful visitor, were to search for Echo Juliet info on the web, you wouldn’t find any.  With all the different EJ web pages that have been, but no longer are in existence, there was never any indication of any of the past and history of the band.  Obviously, after my time with the group, I’m sure Christine didn’t care too much about the past, she dealt with the present.  I can’t blame her for that, but it was like we as a band didn’t exist.  And then when Bryan, Wiley and I started 3 Penny Opera, on the website it was like our time in Echo Juliet didn’t exist.  I didn’t agree with that because 3PO never would have existed AT ALL without Echo Juliet.  I don’t know why Bry and Wiley do the things they do, I’m only speaking for myself here.  Like I said, this Thing exists because I feel that the group Echo Juliet deserves a little corner of the web to document its existence.  Since no one else is going to do it, it’s up to me.

If I remember correctly, it was originally Dave Cloyd’s idea to start the band.  Dave somehow knew Christine at the University of Texas.  I believe that Wiley and Dave lived in the same dorm and knew each other from there.  Bryan has known Dave since high school, and that’s where I met him as well.  Dave met Christine and found out she was a budding songwriter.  Dave thought the songs had potential and thought that she needed a place to show off her material.  Dave talked to Christine, Wiley and Bryan and all was done.  It was named Christine Ely and Free Thoreau.

The band played their first gig in 1994 at the annual Jester Jamfest, a springtime event where a few UT-based bands would perform for the day out on the volleyball courts next to Jester Dormitory.  I was still a senior in high school and I think I was in Austin that weekend for my College Day.  I havea copy of the videotape from the show and in it you can see me up front bobbing my head to the nice pop music coming from the group.  At the time I thought they were pretty good, but I remember watching the video a few years back and, well, they weren’t.  Bryan’s equipment kept malfunctioning, pretty constantly through the performance.  It was funny.  (Bryan had a bad habit of buying crappy equipment for a LONG time.  He’s since fixed that problem)

I got onto the UT campus in August of 1994 and started my freshman year.  It was probably a month or two later that I was talking to Bryan one day and he asked if I wanted to play in Catholic Fallout (as it was called at the time) since Dave had decided to not do it anymore.  I wasn’t playing with a group, I liked the band, and it was another chance to play with Bryan in a band.  We were good friends and had been connecting very well from our 2 years in Miniver Cheevy.  So I thought, yeah, that’d be cool.

Apart from the first Jamfest gig and a few parties, Catholic Fallout didn’t do too much playing.  I remember the first time I played with them, Wiley was an R.A. at Moore-Hill dorm and we practiced in his little dorm room.  I had hung with Wiley a little bit at the Jamfest gig, but it was around this time that we started to hang a lot and become the Heavy Metal Soul Brothers that we are.

We practiced for a few months and had our first gig at Pato’s Tacos on Manor Rd. in Austin.  I believe Wiley booked this for us.  I think the gig was sometime early in the spring of ‘95.  I still have a copy of the set list, but I did not (for some stupid reason) document the date.  Maybe one day Wiley or Christine will be able to find out exactly what day it was on.  I don’t think we got paid, but we did get a pitcher of beer and a pitcher of margaritas.  I had to stealthily drink them since I was only 18.  It was a fun gig; I had a tough time remembering all the material, but I think I did OK.  I can still remember it, and I was pretty damn nervous.  The setlist consisted of songs that would become Echo Juliet “classics”, songs that we played up until the end.  It was a good mix of covers and originals.

Pretty soon after the gig we decided to change the band name.  Catholic Fallout was good for a nice little laugh, but not a good band name.  And it didn’t fit us.  Christine came up with the idea of Echo Juliet.  It came from her sister, Jennifer, who was in the armed forces and her initials (using the military language: Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo, etc.) were of course Juliet Echo.  Or, as it is in the military, last name first: Echo Juliet.  Christine thought it made a good band name, so we went with it.  I like the name.  I still do.  I think it fits the group really well.  It’s not that serious of a name (like Death, or something) and people recognized and remembered it pretty easily.  I always had people say they’d heard of the band whenever I mentioned I played in “Echo Juliet”.  That’s what a name is supposed to do, stick in people’s heads.

Our next gig was at the 1995 version of Jester Jamfest and our first under the name Echo Juliet.  After another time at Pato’s and a coffeehouse gig, we played our first Real Club Gig at Emo’s in Austin.  Emo’s is known for hardcore punk and alternative type stuff, so how does a pure pop group get in there?  We were doing a benefit for KVR 9, the UT Student TV station.  Skander played with us, it was a fun gig.  It was also my first time to go to Emo’s.

On 9/16/95 we went into the studio to record our demo.  It was recorded at Music Lane Studios in Austin and was engineered by Steve Titley.  Steve and Echo Juliet ‘produced’ it.  We recorded 3 songs that day, the first time in a studio for any of us.  Three of our standards, Zoe, Confusion and I Know You were put on tape.  We were all pretty nervous, that’s evident in Wiley’s time fluctuations in Zoe.  The seperation booths were weird as well, I was used to standing right next to all them and now I’m here in a whole seperate room.  Big time learning experience.  In addition to the four of us, we had Manuel Gonzales play percussion on a few things (he would frequently guest at gigs) and Eve Lewandowski, Christine’s best friend, do some backing vocals.  Steve was a really cool dude, but he didn’t have a ton of experience behind the board.  Regardless, he did a fine job and really helped us with the arrangements of the songs.  We recorded on the 16th and came back early the next day and laid down the vocals (I can’t remember if we did them on the 16th or 17th) and mixed it.  I remember we were in a rush because we were all going to see REM that night.

After recording the demo we started to play at more clubs and on 12/18/95 we played our first gig at Steamboat. Steamboat was THE club on 6th Street.  Everybody has played there.  It was the ‘home’ of Stevie Ray Vaughan and countless other Austin bands.  Steamboat would pretty much serve as our home base for the next 6 or 7 months.  The 12/18 show brought the debut of 2 more of Bryan’s songs: College Radio and Don’t Let Me Be Alone Tonight, an old Cheevy standard.  The next gig, debut-wise, was more important I think.

On 1/17/96 we played our first gig of the new year at Steamboat.  That night we debuted Waiting in the Cold, a collaboration between Wiley and Christine, Adam and Eve, a duel-vocalled chunk of pure pop written by Bry, Still, a slow one by Christine and most importantly Bill, my favorite song Christine ever wrote.  Bill was a watershed for Christine the songwriter.  Before Bill, all of Christine’s songs were very simple, 3 chord I-IV-V things that dealt with the topic of love and were musically just basic pop.  Simple Relationship songs.  We 3 males had been pushing her to write more stuff that was different and a bit more than just 3 chords.  Most of the pressure was from me.  And with Bill, she totally surpassed what I thought was possible from her.  Here is a college aged girl who has been writing acoustic-based love songs for a few years and suddenly she decides to plug in her electric, crank the distortion, and write a song that was lyrically and musically her best, something that was pretty heavy and REALLY catchy at the same time.  I think Bill really did make the most serious change to our sound.  I’m not saying it was like Dylan when he went electric or anything, but for a small band in Austin it was an important moment.

For the next few months, we played a lot of gigs, got a lot better, and increased our small following.  March 1, 1996 was a pretty important day for me individually.  We played a Battle of the Bands that night, and usually a March evening in Austin, Texas is a nice night.  Usually.  This particular night, we were playing outside, my bass had fried itself a few days before so I was using Christine’s bass which only worked when it felt like it, and it was DAMN COLD out there.  It had to have been in the 40’s.  I think I wore shorts, maybe; but I at least know I did wear short sleeves.  Anyway, it was a horrible gig, my equipment didn’t work, it was freezing cold, we played pretty bad (I did at least) and we ended up losing.  But, the whole redeeming event of the night was the meeting of a girl named Julie, who would go on a few years later to become my wife.  So some good did come out of it. [side note here: the contest was won by Bear (thanks Eve), but more importantly we played against a band called Numeralia whose bassist was David Cerequas.  We made friends with them and many years later Bryan and Wiley ended up in NYC, saw David and remembered him and got him to join their new band, Simple Thing.  Funny how things happen.]

Starting in the spring, once the weather got nice, we did weekly gigs on the west mall of the UT campus.  Of course we got the idea from Twang Twang Shock-a-boom, who got their start playing on the west mall.  It was a great place to spread our music and sell tapes, and it was free.  We played from 5-6 every Tuesday evening.  We did it in the spring and then again in the fall of ‘96.  Those shows were really more like fun practices and not so much real gigs.  I guess that’s why I never kept extensive details about the whole thing.

For our entire existence so far, Wiley was our acting manager and did all the booking.  He didn’t request a fee, he just did it because it needed to be done and he took it upon himself.  After a few gigs, we brought on Christine’s best friend and roommate, Eve, to handle the money stuff.  In the summer of ‘96 I had moved back home like I did the summer before.  Since the band wanted to keep going while I was 3 hours away for a few months, we decided to get a guy named Tracy to help us out on bass whenever I couldn’t make a gig.  He only ended up doing 2 shows with the band.  We were playing some real good gigs that summer, including our first one in Dallas at a place called the Stone Pony, formerly Stimpy’s.  For some reason that gig really sticks out in my mind as the time when everything started to slowly head downhill.

As Eve became more involved with the band, she started to take on more responsibilities.  In addition, she started to give Christine more advice about what the band should be doing.  (Side note here, I know it’s starting to sound like Eve Killed The Band.  She didn’t.  We all did.  I love Eve to death and I’m still really good friends with her, so please don’t read too much into what I’m writing.  I just want to tell what happened, m’kay?)  At the Stone Pony gig, the band got into an argument over the setlist.  For (I think) the first time we chose sides: the guys versus the girls.  The more that Eve became our ‘5th member’, the more pull that Christine started to have.  Christine now had an ally, her best friend and roommate, and someone who wasn’t afraid to tell us guys where to stick it.   At the time Christine didn’t have the self-confidence to stand up to us.  She does now.

OK, look at it this way: 3 on 1.  3 strong headed males against 1 kinda weak female.  Even though she wrote 90% of the material and was the ‘leader’ of the group, we still made all the decisions.  It wasn’t something we realized at the time, but we 3 guys pretty much made all the decisions about the group, Christine’s group.  Naturally she didn’t like it and she needed someone on her side to balance everything out.  Eve was that balance.

Anyway, we guys wanted Don’t Let Me Be Alone Tonight in the set and the girls didn’t.  We liked it because it’s not only a great song, but Bryan gets a nice solo in it.  For the girls it was a huge tempo let down and for our debut in Dallas, at a bar near SMU that they frequented a lot, we needed constant energy to go over well.  We argued a lot about this one stupid song and the guys eventually relented.  We ended up having a great gig and of course the girls were right, but that little thing was an important moment.

Near the end of the summer I was at home one day and I got a call from Bryan and Wiley.  They told me that Christine and Eve wanted Eve to take over as manager and booking agent.  It really wasn’t even a “we think Eve would do a great job at this”, but more of a “Eve’s the new manager.”  As Bry and Wiley told me about this, I knew it wouldn’t work.  So did they.  See, Wiley is a great schmoozer.  He knows exactly how to talk to club owners and the people who booked the shows.  He’s so good at this that he’s got his own management and artist consultation company, Coyote Music.  Eve on the other hand, could care less about being great friends with the booking guys.  Eve doesn’t like to put up with a lot of b.s. and when she booked shows for us, the conversation only revolved around securing us a date, time and payment.  It always seemed to me that club owners and booking guys like Wiley-types better than Eve-types.  I also think Eve had a serious disadvantage because she’s a female.

Bryan, Wiley and I discussed all this that day.  We knew that in terms of promotion for the band, Wiley was a better manager.  I wanted to question the girls about this and refuse to allow it, but Wiley and Bry said that if we did then the band would end right then and we didn’t want it to.  I knew they were right, but it still irked me.  We 3 knew that, eventually, this decision would kill the band.  We talked about this.  It came down to, do we want it to end right now when we’re just starting to take off, or keep going with it knowing that one day it would come back to bite us in the ass.  We chose the ass.

It was now official that Wiley was relieved of all his non-drumming duties and now we had Eve as the 5th member of Echo Juliet.  From now on, anytime there was any disagreement (except for once, I’ll talk about it later) it was ALWAYS Guys vs. Girls.

One of the major things that changed once Eve took over the booking was that we pretty much stopped playing Steamboat.  There were a few gigs there, but the guy who booked the shows there didn’t like Eve too much, so instead of fighting a losing battle she smartly chose another club for the band to have as a home base.  It became Babe’s.  We only played Steamboat 4 more times within the next year, and one of those (for our CD release party) was booked by Wiley.

Once the fall semester started back up we started playing occasionally with a violinist named Edward Park.  Ed lived in Wiley’s dorm so Wiley pitched the idea to us and we thought a violin would be a nice touch.  We only played 4 gigs with Ed along, but it was more than enough to make an impression.

We started to talk about our next recording project.  The demo tape was selling pretty well and we had just about run out of the first batch.  The ideas thrown around were record another tape (longer than 3 songs), record a CD, or just press some more copies of the demo.  We didn’t really want to do any more copies of the demo because we felt kinda bad for selling it to the fans.  I think we sold it for like $3 or $5 or something.  But after a while, we didn’t want to keep selling a 3-song tape, we wanted better product.  Since we were only a little college band, the fundage available for recording was limited.  If we did another tape we could put more songs out, but if we did a CD the audience would get something of much better quality.  Honestly, who wants to listen to a damn cassette?  Not me.  However, recording a CD would mean less songs (CDs cost more money, less money to spend on recording means less time spent recording, which means less songs).

Wiley absolutely wanted a CD.  Bryan sided with Wiley.  Christine did not.  Eve did not.  My thinking in this whole thing was that up to that point, Echo Juliet had released 3 songs.  We had about 20 originals in our repertoire with more on the way.  I thought it would be best to do another cassette, record at a better place, get real good quality, make something cohesive and release as many songs as we could.  The more songs that the audience can take home and hear, the more they’ll know the next time they see us.  So I agreed with Christine and Eve and said no to the CD.  We wanted another tape.  Somehow something happened and we did a CD.   I guess that Wiley talked to them and somehow he persuaded them to go the CD route.  Maybe he threatened to quit, I have no idea.  Whatever happened between them, it was decided that we’d do a CD and record it in Dallas this time.

Much research was done and the decision was made to record at Planet Dallas Studios.  A lot of famous Dallas bands had recorded there (Toadies, Tripping Daisy, Reverend Horton Heat, Jackopierce, etc.) and what they recorded there was all of very good quality.

We booked the weekend of November 16/17 for the studio.  I remember it took us a while to find it that Saturday morning, since the studio is a converted house.  The outside looks just like a house, but of course the inside is quite different.  Planet Dallas is a very nice studio with great facilities.  The engineer for the session was Amado Carrasco and he was an extremely cool guy.  I had blown my amp out a few days before the recording so I had to rent an amp for the recording.  I don’t think I had much time to mess around with it and get a good sound…actually I think Wiley was the one who picked it up and brought it to the studio.  But either way, the first time I touched this new amp was in the studio.  I didn’t have much time since we had to worry about setting up mics and getting a good drum sound.  The sound Amado got from the amp was totally horrible, no low end at all.  Ugh, it was just real bad sounding.  I told him I wanted to make it sound right before we started recording.  He said to not worry about it and we’ll fix it in post-production if there were any problems.  I didn’t believe him (let’s get the sound now, not later) but I had no choice but to go along with him since he was the engineer and I wouldn’t get my recording studio experience for another year.  The bass sound never got fixed by the way.

We figured we had enough money to record 4 new songs, so we decided to go with Bill, Nothing, Her and Bryan’s Sunshine, a song that had been on the original Miniver Cheevy demo and one that we had played at nearly every EJ gig since the first one at Pato’s.  Except for the beginning sound problems, once the tape started rolling it was so much fun.  Both Bry and Christine got kick ass guitar sounds for Bill and it rocks so hard.  A great way to kick off the CD.  I do some nice playing throughout the disc.  Hell, everybody played their butts off on the thing.  We did a pretty big production for Sunshine, fancy intro, 3 guitar tracks, Bry’s backing vocals, the whole thing.  It took him a while to nail the solo, but he eventually did and it’s a good one (he wasn’t happy with it).  One of my favorite memories of the whole session was on Saturday when it was time to eat, the three guys pitched in for a big ol’, greasy ass bucket of KFC.  That was some damn good food.

We recorded all the instrumental parts on the Saturday and when we came in on Sunday to start on the vocals we found that most had already been done the night before.  Christine and Eve stayed late the night before and got 90% of the vocals down.  So Sunday was used for the rest of Christine’s vocals, Bry’s backups, mixing and sequencing.  I think we finished around 10 at night or so.  4 tracks really weren’t enough and we wanted to add more to the CD.  We brought along the master DAT from the demo sessions and decided to stick those 3 tracks on the CD as a bonus.  They sounded better than they did on the tape, so it was considered a small gift to our fans.  (yeah, hey fans, we’re giving you something you already have, it just sounds a little better and is easier to play)  The cover of the CD was a picture of Wiley’s bass drum head that a friend of his, Meghan Williams, designed for him.

The next few months were spent getting the CD ready for release.  We had it mastered in L.A., so that made it all seem more ‘official’.  We finally had our CD Release Party at Steamboat (booked by Wiley) on February 20, 1997.  To help get people out there, we cut a deal with Double Dave’s Pizza for them to provide free pizza for the show and we plugged the heck out of them.  I actually had to pick up the pizzas and bring them to the club.  We got a moderate turnout, we were a bit disappointed, but just the fact that the four of us now had a CD, that was a big thing.  Turns out Wiley was right about this one.  Too bad the band didn’t last another three months.

After the CD release party we were all pretty stoked.  We now had nice CDs to put up on our mantles (Christine, in one of our post-break up meetings, angrily told Wiley that the only reason he pushed so hard for the CD was because he wanted something to put up on his mantle…to show off in other words).  Like I’ve said many times before, I still like the thing and I think I do some good stuff on it.

A few weeks after the Steamboat gig we played our first (and my only) South By Southwest gigs.  Now, they weren’t ‘official’ SXSW shows, but they were during that crazy week and on 6th Street.  Somehow, it qualifies.  Wiley knew the guy who ran Spirits, a dance club on 6th, and they figured that for the week instead of the usual dance club thang, they would have bands play.  I believe Dexter Freebish played both shows with us.  The show dates were March 12th and 13th, a Wednesday and Thursday.  These shows were both really fun and we had good crowds for them.  I did do a bit of walking around and got to experience a little bit of the madness of SXSW.

I don’t remember the exact date (shoulda kept a diary back then), but it was a Saturday morning in either March or early April of 1997 when we did our audition for the ‘97 Jester Jamfest (for some reason we skipped ‘96, after doing the previous two).  Being JJ veterans, we snobbishly felt that we shouldn’t have to audition for Jamfest but we did anyway because it was always fun to play.  The audition went well enough, of course we got accepted, but something happened during the course of the 15 or 20-minute audition.  Something between Wiley and the girls.  I remember being outside of the little building and getting ready to load up the equipment and Wiley coming out and telling Bryan and I he just quit the band.  “What?”  A few seconds later Christine and Eve came out and I tried to say something to them but they just hurriedly left the scene, VERY pissed off.  I remember Eve said something particularly nasty to Bryan (of course I don’t remember what it was).

So it was then the three of us, with me being the most dumbfounded about the whole thing.  I knew Wiley had been less and less enthusiastic about the band for a long time.  Yeah, more or less ever since Eve took over as booker and manager.  Coming back to bite us on the ass indeed.  Over the period of that 9 months or so, what used to be a friendship between Wiley and Christine and Eve evolved into an INTENSE dislike between the two sides.  Bryan and I both had our problems with them, but overall they were just regular problems that bands have.  For Wiley though, it was just some serious dislike.  Same for Christine and Eve.

I guess sometime during that audition, it came to a head and he quit.  Bryan and I knew it was coming sometime, but I (foolishly) hoped that putting out the CD A MONTH AND A HALF AGO would keep us together for a lot longer, at least until we fully promoted it and sold out the first pressing.  But Wiley did what he felt he had to do, he couldn’t stand working with either of them any more.  Another crappy thing was that we still had gigs lined up until mid-May, including our first show in Waco and the Jamfest gig we had just got.  It was agreed that Wiley would do the gigs that were already booked and then that would be it for Wiley.

I don’t remember if it was that same day, or a few days after but Bryan was the next to quit.

I’m saying this right now, and for the record, that there was NEVER any kind of conspiracy for Wiley, Bryan and James to mutiny, kick Christine out of her own group, and form a new one.  We all quit at different times, for different personal reasons and with no intention of forming a group within a group.  It just kinda happened that way and it really did look like we planned some huge take-over of the band.  We didn’t, I swear.

A week or 2 before Wiley quit, Bryan had received the letter saying that he was accepted into the Graduate Program for Physics at the University of Colorado for the upcoming fall semester.  Bry had no idea what do to about this, and I know he struggled with the decision.  He really wanted to continue his education (good back-up plan, you know), but also was enjoying the band.  He thought about deferring a year, but he wasn’t sure.  When Wiley made his decision, Bryan then made his.  I guess he thought it was a good time as any to jump ship, since he decided to go to CU in the fall.  Within a few days, half the band had quit and now it was only James and Christine in the band.  Christine and I didn’t discuss my position in the band and she and Eve just assumed I’d stick it out with them.  I didn’t.

Yeah, I know this all sounds really, really bad.  We totally got a bad rap for all leaving the group at about the same time.  Like I said, we didn’t plan it, it just happened that way.

I’m guessing it was maybe a week or so later that our mutual friend and #1 fan Christina was having a party at her place.  Wiley and Bryan stayed away since they knew C & E would be there, but I went because Christina’s my good friend and I didn’t have any major problems with C & E.  I knew that I was going to quit as well, and I had a feeling that it would have to be discussed sometime that night.  “James, we need to talk to you outside”, Eve said.  I thought, “great, here it comes.  I have to go out there and tell them I’m quitting too and totally break up the band.  Wonderful.”  I went out on the balcony and the first thing out of Eve’s mouth was, “Are you going to stay in the band?”  “No, I’m quitting too.”

My decision came like this: at the time I felt that as a musician in Echo Juliet, I would not benefit any more from it.  The music was definitely not going to move into a more ‘progressive’ direction and I also knew that I would never be challenged by the music.  Absolutely nothing bad against Christine here, I think she’s a really good songwriter and I liked nearly all the music in EJ, but musically we’re in different places.  I’m restless and I like having to play at the edge of my abilities.  That’s the thing I loved so much about Cheevy, that Bryan, Dave and I pushed ourselves, each other, and the music to the farthest point it would go, and then kept pushing.  Echo Juliet wasn’t like that.  We were, for good or bad, a pop band.  A fun band to listen to and see live with really good songs, but we would never become a King Crimson or Beatles.  I knew this and I had to admit it to myself, no matter how much fun it was, I wasn’t being pushed or challenged.

I was wanting to get back to what I was ’supposed’ to be doing, playing music more like King Crimson; music that was super challenging and absolutely fearless.  I wanted to re-dedicate my life to my bass and start really practicing and taking lessons to be the bassist that I thought I should be.  I told all this to Christine and Eve, and I think they understood.  They knew I was being honest.  It really hurt them, but they knew it was for real.  I stressed to them that it wasn’t a big conspiracy, I’m leaving for my reasons, Bry was leaving for grad school and it was only Wiley who had any personal problems with them.

For the Jamfest show, we brought back Ed Park to play violin with us.  We played a good show and it was fun as always.  I think Wiley has a tape of this show; I don’t.  I have a tape of the 3/28 show at Babes, which is pretty damn good.  After Jamfest we did another show at Babes on April 25.  We had our last 2 gigs lined up for May 15th and 16th.  The 15th was our first show ever in Waco and the 16th one final time at our home, Babes.

The Waco gig (at Scruffy Murphy’s) was a ton of fun.  Even though school was out and most of Waco was deserted, we had a packed house with an extremely drunk Baylor audience.  We played our asses off and I totally tore my fingers up from playing.  The next night was the last one.  Bryan and I did a very immature thing and decided to wear our graduation robes for the show (it was my idea, unfortunately); you know, like we were ‘graduating’ from this little band to something better.  That was really, REALLY stupid of us and I still feel bad for doing it.  Anyway, besides the robes thing, which Christine just rolled her eyes at and ignored, we again played our collective asses off.  We knew it was the last one, 90% of the audience knew it was the last one, so it was something special.  My fingers were still torn up from the night before, but I proceeded to shred them once again, making it so I couldn’t even pick up my bass for a week.  I think there was blood both nights.

Bryan and I told Christine we’d help her audition for a drummer and whatever else she needed.  We were there for the drummer auditions and Bryan even stuck around as a favor for the next gig she did.  She had her new drummer and bassist but hadn’t found a guitarist yet.  It was a nice gesture on Bryan’s part, except he got totally trashed for the performance and played like total crap.  I was very pissed at him for doing that to Christine, it was a very crappy thing to do.  For a long time, each of us three guys were jerks to her at one point or another.  I’m glad we’ve all grown up, but it still bugs me that I did such immature stuff to a friend.

The whole ‘Conspiracy of Bryan, Wiley and James’ thing really started to come out when we started up 3 Penny Opera with us, Ed Park, Manuel Gonzales, and a singer named America Alva.  It wasn’t even a month after the last EJ gig that 3PO had our first gig at our old home of Steamboat.

I still followed Christine’s progress as she got the new band together and would go see them whenever I could.  After a few lineup changes, the band eventually morphed into 100 Days.  I saw the band, at Babes, a few weeks before I left Texas for North Carolina in the summer of 2001.  I wasn’t totally sure how Christine would react to me being there.  I mean, we’d seen each other a lot since the breakup, and each time it became friendlier and we talked more, but I still wasn’t sure how she’d be.  I get there and she gets the biggest smile on her face and runs over and gives me a gigantic hug.  We talked a long time outside about everything that’s happened to us since the band, and the band itself.  It makes me really happy that everything has finally worked itself out.  I thought 100 Days sounded really great and I loved hearing their version of Nothing.  That put a big smile on my face.  In September of 2001 that group morphed into Bag 100 and has since become She Craves.

Like all things on this website, the reason I’m doing this is because I really care about the subject matter and I know that no one else will ever do it. Cheevy was my first band and just massively important to who I am today. I think so fondly of this band that I’m STILL using the handle of “cheevyjames” as my online identifier. It was my email address in college, and now the name of my webpage. I don’t ever want to get away from Miniver Cheevy. I am very proud of the group.

So, is Miniver Cheevy broken up? No. Why not, you’re not doing anything and haven’t since 1996? Well, first I don’t ever want to kill the band and I like keeping the option open for us to get back together. I’m not very big on bands breaking up and then years later having a ‘reunion’ just to make money. If Miniver Cheevy got back together today, we might make 50¢. But I don’t want the band to die. Maybe I’m fooling myself and it all doesn’t really matter. It matters to me, I still give a damn about this band. I think we were excellent and had (have) the potential to be incredible. I still think that. Got it?

I had been playing bass for a few months by the spring of 1992 and I was friends with a guy in my English class named Sean. He was a cool guy, had some strange ideas, but overall was a cool person to have as a friend. One day Sean mentioned to me that he was going to start a band with his friend David Cawthon. I knew Dave from being in my health class, but I had never spoken to him. He was just some dude in the class to me. So Sean goes on to tell me how he’s going to sing and David will play drums and they’ll get a guitarist and keyboardist to complete the band. I said, “You have to have a bassist in your band, you can’t have a band without a bassist!” “The Doors didn’t.” “They had to have had one” “Nope, Ray Manzarek, the keyboardist played the bass notes on his keyboard with his left hand.” That pretty much shut me up.

I of course knew of The Doors, but I had never really heard their music. To me, they were some hippie group from the 60’s that suddenly had become hip and trendy thanks to Oliver Stone’s movie. Sean pretty much laid out that he wanted his band to be just like The Doors. I didn’t get it, but I didn’t really care. All I wanted to do was convince him he needed a bassist in the group. Hell, it’d free the keyboardist up anyway. Journey had a bassist and keyboardist, so why not this band?

After a few days of pestering him he finally gave in and said I could be in the group with him and Dave. Yay! We still needed a keyboardist and guitarist to complete this thing. I was taking bass lessons from a guy named Chuck Pangburn and Sean was taking guitar lessons from him too. We thought that what better of a place to advertise for a guitarist and possible keyboardist than at a music store. Good idea! We put together an ad that said something like “Are You Experienced? Band looking for keys and guitar to complete lineup. Hendrix, Doors, Zeppelin. If interested call David at XXX-XXXX” Maybe one of these days I’ll get a copy of the actual flyer and put it up here. It said something like that.

I have no idea how many calls Dave got, but I think Dave and Sean got together with 2 guys. One of them was never heard from again, and the other was Bryan Dunn (dun dun dunnnnn!!). Chuck had said to his student Bryan, “Check this out, it might be something you’d be interested in.” Again, Dave and Sean played with Bryan and Sean told me that next day about Bryan (I have no idea why I wasn’t there for the ‘tryout’!). He told me that Bryan was a good guitarist, but kinda on the nerdy side and he was graduating as Salutatorian that year. I reminded Sean that he was a nerd too, as were Dave and I. I also told him that it didn’t matter what this dude was, all that mattered to me was if he was a good guitar player. We never got a call for the keyboardist.

It was in the summer of 1992, maybe a week or two after school ended, that we first got together in Dave’s garage. It was an interesting meeting of young musicians. Both Dave and Bry had clearly been playing a lot longer than me and were definitely better. Dave was an excellent drummer even back then. For our influences you had a singer who thought he was Jim Morrison, but was actually a nerd, a drummer who listened to Zeppelin and Pink Floyd (with some Doors thrown in), a guitarist who listened to Clapton and Beatles constantly (Doors too) and a bassist who listened to Iron Maiden and Metallica. How did I fit in there? Back then I didn’t listen to ANY of those groups!

All the songs that the guys presented I didn’t know or had never heard of, so I just kinda fumbled my way along. The only thing we did that sounded coherent was Queen’s Under Pressure since I actually knew the main bass lick. I believe that at this first practice Bryan played a riff that at the next practice would be joined with some lyrics of Sean’s to become our First Song, Good Lookin’ Woman. I remember I wasn’t too hyped with the whole thing, I knew we needed to find some sort of common language for it to even make sense (the practice, not the song).

I think it was before the first practice, but Sean knew a guy that he worked with named Eric Davidson who played guitar and Sean thought would be good for the group. Eric listened to punk and alternative stuff, mostly the Chili Peppers, Ramones and early Nirvana. I guess Eric couldn’t make it to our first practice, or our second. Sean told us about him before the 2nd practice but he never showed up to it. Dave had felt really weird about us practicing in his garage, so we moved to Sean’s garage.

For the second practice we put together Bryan’s riff (a I-IV-V in E) and lyrics Sean wrote called Good Lookin’ Woman. This song came together pretty effortlessly, esp. the music. It totally surprised me that someone could write a song so coherent that quickly. It was a new chord progression for me (Maiden really never use it) and I stumbled through it. After a few run-throughs we got it sounding pretty good and I was really excited. Our first song!! That day we also did some minimal work on The Doors’ version of Gloria and also their version of Who Do You Love.

The third practice Eric finally showed up and we all seemed to mesh pretty well. We worked on Good Lookin’ Woman more (I have a tape of this, I’m listening to it as I type right now. Holy crap was I bad! Bryan was OK. He was perfectly fine at riffs, and his soloing was average. Eric’s soloing, however, was awful. Dave is clearly the most talented of all of us) and also worked on Who Do You Love. Eric might have played with us a few more times after this, but he stopped coming one day. We found out he had done some property damage somewhere and had to do community service for a few months.

We continued as a quartet for a month or so and started to get pretty decent. Dave and Sean, who had been friends for many years, began to get into arguments. Sean didn’t have much use for modern religion, esp. Christianity (of which Bryan, Dave and I belonged). Bry and I ignored all of Sean’s anti-Baptist and anti-Catholic comments, but it pissed Dave off and they got into some pretty big arguments over religion. This wasn’t very fun to sit through.

After Sean’s garage (more noise complaints) we played in Dave’s bedroom. It was during this practice that we came up with the chorus for a song of Sean’s called Earth to Earth. This was a pretty important step, as it was the first indication of our potential to tap into the Doors’ psychedelic thing. I’m pretty sure Sean and Dave got into another argument as well. A few days later Sean told Bry and I that Dave had got a job and couldn’t do the group anymore. I’m sure Sean had more to do with it than the job. Sean knew a guy who played drums and we were going to try to play with him. The next week we went to meet him where he said he’d be, but he never showed up. We went back to Sean’s and got a hold of him and he said he’d forgot and would be right over. He never came. So Sean came up with the brilliant idea that we didn’t need a drummer for the band. We played a song or two as a trio and Sean realized (after we told him) that a band needed a drummer. Since there was no Dave, there was no more band. Bryan and I left.

The fall semester started up and Dave, Sean and I were all back at high school doing our junior years. Bryan got accepted to SMU and was studying Physics. I stayed friends with Sean but didn’t have contact with the other two. I missed the band, but I was more concerned with my ‘girlfriend’ in Amarillo (wisdom from James: long distance relationships suck). My friend Matt Talbert was having a party at his house one weekend and his band was playing it. I don’t think I’d heard his band before and at the party they were really good. The main thing I got from the performance was inspiration. I guess I had forgotten how much fun music was and hearing them made me realize how much I really missed my little nameless band.

The next school day I talked to Sean and told him I wanted to reform the band (I’d date this around the beginning of December 1992). He said that’d be fine, but I would have to talk Dave and Bryan into it. Sean figured he had pissed off Dave enough and wanted me to talk to him. I got their digits and got a hold of them the next few days. Both of them agreed to try it again. This made me very excited. Sean said he’d get a hold of Eric so he could come too.

I’m thinking it was a Tuesday night we got together, this time at my house in my living room. My mom didn’t have a problem with it. As usual, Eric never showed up so we decided to never call him again. We haven’t. We ran through our ‘set’ of Gloria, Good Lookin’ Woman, Who Do You Love, and probably some other stuff. Bryan also presented some lyrics he had written called My Woman’s a Prostitute Blues. It was a really fun practice, probably the best we’d ever had (no arguing!) and we made the commitment to the band, still nameless.

The name thing. During our first few months we had tossed around some ideas for names. Sean wanted either The Hour or The Overmen. We didn’t like either one and only he knew what they meant (probably a Doors rip-off thing, I still don’t know). After we re-formed I brought forth the (admittedly stupid) idea of calling the band Gerbil Geres (named after Richard Gere and his presumed affection for Gerbils). Sean loved the idea, but Dave hated it. Thankfully we couldn’t talk him into it. So we remained nameless.

After the one practice in my living room, Sean wanted to do it somewhere else since he felt embarrassed singing in there. We cleared a space and moved into my gameroom, where we rehearsed for the duration of the group. The next few months we got a lot better and added a bunch of covers and an original to our huge repertoire. Bryan had actually written Cycle before our first practice, but he didn’t think it was very good and thought we’d hate it. It was a full song, not a half-assed thing like Good Lookin’ Woman. Once we learned Cycle we kept it in the set and it stayed around until the very last 3 Penny Opera gig in August of 2000. Go figure. The covers we had in our set in addition to the previous mentioned stuff were Cream’s White Room and Sunshine of Your Love and Black Sabbath’s Iron Man.

I don’t remember when exactly this happened, but it wasn’t too soon after we got back together. Sean pulled me aside one day and said that since I was the one who had re-formed the group and had been so gung-ho about it, that it was now MY group. Sean had always been the ‘leader’ and driving force of the group, and I never thought about taking over or anything, but I know he wanted to officially let me know that he had given up his control and leadership and it was now all mine. I guess it still is (though I like ruling as a triumvirate, and not as some solo dictator).

In the next few weeks or so, we decided we weren’t too happy with Good Lookin’ Woman, so we used some new lyrics Bryan had written about a girl. Bry came up with a new intro, we took the previous GLW riff, sped it up and used it for the chorus. I wrote the verse riff, which is a total rip-off of many, many Iron Maiden riffs. Oh well! The new title we all came up with was Venice. Venice was so much better of a song than GLW ever could be, so that made us happy.

Our material was slowly coming along, but the main problem we had was our lack of a name. Nothing we could come up with was right (my suggestions: Bumz or Dominion…yes, they really do suck that bad). It was sometime during the early part of 1993 and we were at Ci-Ci’s Pizza chowing down on the cheap buffet. We were lamenting all the great bands we’d never seen (Beatles, Zeppelin, Doors, early Floyd, Hendrix, many others) and the phrase popped up (I think by me) that we were “Born Too Late”. I immediately said that’s what we should call the band, they said no, and then Bryan said “Miniver Cheevy.” I, being the ignorant guy I am, had no idea what he was talking about. He said it was this poem by a guy named Edwin Arlington Robinson and it’s about a guy who thinks he was born too late. He wished he was born back in the medieval ages. “Born Too Late” was a phrase used in the poem and since it perfectly described how we were feeling about it all, we could relate to this character named Miniver Cheevy (child of scorn). We liked the name, it fit perfectly, was distinctive, and presented us as an educated bunch of musicians. In some way, calling ourselves Miniver Cheevy, naming the band after poetry, elevated us above ‘regular’ bands and pushed us to strive for excellence, strive to be better than everybody else. (Yes, I know, I read WAY too much into all this crap).

Miniver Cheevy. Still the best name for my band, and a great poem too (“Miniver Cheevy, born too late, Scratched his head and kept on thinking: Miniver coughed, and called it fate, and kept on drinking.”).

My friend Matt was and is still an excellent guitar player. He’s never stopped being a huge inspiration to me. Matt would always be hanging at my house and hearing the band. He never commented on the music, but he got along great with Bryan and Dave. I brought up the idea that maybe we should have Matt in the band. After all, we still kinda wanted to have 2 guitars and Matt was such a great musician that it would be a good benefit for the band. Dave and Bryan emphatically agreed, Sean said no way. I remember he said that Matt was a ‘Loud Person’ and also that if we had 2 guitars in the group we’d ‘sound like Pearl Jam’. Sean was really being adamant about not having Matt in the band, but the three of us outnumbered him and we didn’t give him a choice. Matt said OK; I don’t think he cared either way. He was just so happy that he pissed Sean off so much. I agree, Sean was fun to piss off.

Matt was only in the group a month before Sean demanded that Matt be out (or Sean would go) and since Matt didn’t care he decided to leave. I still say that Matt was the single most important thing to happen to the group outside of starting it in the first place. Matt was a much more experienced musician and songwriter than all of us. Matt’s not a lyrical dude, but he writes some incredible music. Matt really helped us shape all of our big batch of original material and just inspired us to be *great*. In the month Matt was in Cheevy, we came up with 5 original songs (where we only had 2 in the past year). Matt molded the music for Bry’s My Woman’s a Prostitute Blues and totally wrote my part for me, he took a riff that Eric had and wrote the music for Hard Rock Café to Sean’s lyrics. He did the music for Matter of Principle, showed us the whole thing for the ‘Bootie Wrap’, and also wrote a great blues riff that Bryan later wrote lyrics too and called Don’t Let Me Be Alone Tonight. Matt really gave us the push we needed for the band.

Another major and important ‘push’ for the band came from Sean. It was Sean who insisted, very early in the group’s re-existence, that we shouldn’t confine ourselves to one musical style. He wanted us to be different from the music of 1993 (grunge) and have a wide variety of influences for the music. This is something that really never occurred to me until he brought it up and really drilled it in our heads. He really wanted us to be different (use The Doors as an influence, but other stuff as well). I guess once our minds were steered in that direction, we looked to be as eclectic and musically varied as Zeppelin and the Beatles. Not so much the hard rock and pop that they did, but the other stuff that they mixed in with all that stuff. That was pretty much our goal, to have the intensity and improv ability of the Doors mixed with Zep’s power and the Beatles’ melody and the eclecticism of all 3. The bands might have changed over the years, but the overall goal never did.

The first song to emerge from the post-Matt inspiration period was a Miniver Cheevy ‘classic’, Earth To Earth. Bryan came up with the majority of the music (intro, verse, chorus, “Earth2Earth” section) with Dave contributing the middle section (a 9/8 riff over which there was a drum solo for 12 bars). Sean originally had written all the lyrics, but we weren’t too sold on his main stuff so Bryan wrote most of the lyrics with us keeping the “Earth” section with Sean’s lyrics. After writing the first half of the song, the first time we played it through, we got to the drum solo and didn’t know where to go. While Dave was finishing up, I suggested that we pull out that old thing we had tried the year before, that thing Sean had called “Earth to Earth” and put it after the drum solo. We did, and it worked beautifully. The atmosphere of when we hit that last chord in the song was just SO electric. We knew that something huge and important to the band had just happened. We had officially arrived as a band and songwriters.

I still love Earth to Earth. One of my favorite songs I’ve ever played and one so important to Miniver Cheevy. I honestly believe it was our arrival point as players and writers. It’s a very Doors-influenced song, but it still has such intensity to it. I totally had chills the first time we did it. After Earth, we came up with a little comedy song called ‘Barney Must Die’ about the idiotic purple dinosaur.

Sean had always been a cyclist and raced in competitions since before the band started. It wasn’t any sort of a problem for a long time, but as the band started to rehearse more, the less Sean would be around. Sean’s absolute first love was cycling. Music was somewhere after that. Like I said, it wasn’t a problem for quite a while, but I had noticed that after the band broke up and reformed the first time, his interest in the band was significantly less than his cycling. This didn’t bother us at the time, all we asked for from him was to be at the practices and learn the songs.

Our first ‘gig’ came up in the summer of 1993 when Bryan’s friend David Cloyd (make note of that name) asked us to play at a party he was having. We were extremely excited to actually play in front of people other than my mom, brother and Matt. Sean had a race that weekend, but said he’d be home and rested to play the party that Saturday night. In my mind I remember that I really didn’t believe him. Most of the songs he hadn’t memorized yet and he seemed so hesitant about the party. I took the initiative and started to learn the vocals to half of the songs ‘just in case’ he didn’t show.

Saturday comes and Bryan, Dave and I are setting up at Cloyd’s and Sean hasn’t shown up yet. We call Sean and he starts to whine about how he’s tired and he doesn’t want to play the party and besides, he doesn’t know the songs anyway. I tell him we have all the lyrics and nobody will give a crap if he’s singing from a lyric sheet. Thinking about it now, I know that he just didn’t want to perform in front of people. Anyway, we couldn’t talk him into coming over, so we said a few cuss words and proceeded to play the party without him.

We were expecting a HUGE party, but I guess David didn’t know that many people, so it was only like 5 people. My friends came over and doubled the group. Bryan and I split the vocal duties (yes, I actually attempted to sing!) and this was the first time that Bryan was actually ‘out front’ of the group (not counting the songs I did). He had (and has, and always will have) a much better voice than me and is a lot more of a natural singer than I. His songs sounded fine, mine were awful. Let’s see, I think Bry did Venice, Earth, My Woman’s a Prostitute, Sunshine of Your Love, White Room and Gloria. I attempted, and totally butchered Hard Rock Café, Matter of Principle, Iron Man, Iron Maiden’s Wrathchild (now THAT was funny!) and Barney Must Die; on Barney, I sucked so bad that I couldn’t even remotely sing and play at the same time and just ended the song half way through because I couldn’t do it.

It was a very lame attempt at a first gig, but I think Bry’s friends liked it. Mine were too drunk to notice or care. Thanks guys. It was very short, but it showed for the first time that we could be a trio and Bryan did have it in him to be the singer. It also showed that I should NEVER get near a microphone. I still didn’t learn my lesson for a LONG time (Did I ever tell you I wanted to be Steve Perry before I started playing bass? Yeah, I did. Foolishly I thought I could be a singer. How wrong I was.).

Of course we were VERY pissed at Sean for skipping out on our gig. Our first gig, no less. We reamed him pretty hard for that and he acted like he was going to start putting more energy in the band. Our next little gigs a few weeks later were a series of parties for another friend of Bryan’s named John. Sean did show up for these. I think we did a Friday and Saturday night at John’s place, playing to a few more than were at Cloyd’s party. I don’t know, maybe 15 or so. Someone, John maybe, actually taped the second of the 2 shows. I have this; it’s DAMN funny. The highlight STILL is at the end of our set; Bry got on top of his amp for a big ‘jump off’ on the last chord. When he hit the ground his pants fell straight off and right to the ground. I have this moment on tape, it’s great.

Of course we sucked, but it was fun and it also brought us another song. We wrote the music for 1218 the night of the first show and a week or two later Sean and I collaborated on the lyrics. I had written a few songs before this (Niagara Beauty, The Beginning, and the music for The Real You and Fairmont), but this was my first lyrical involvement in the group.

After the triumph at John’s, sometime during the fall of 1993, we set out to record a demo. Bry and I pitched in and bought a 4 track from Guitar Center for $200. I still used the same 4 track until it finally died in 2002. We used our one mic to record Dave’s drums (yes, excellent sound on that drum track, lemme tell ya) and Bry and I just overdubbed our parts. We recorded Hard Rock, Matter of Principle, Earth, MWAPB, 1218 and Venice. Sean laid down his vocals and it was around this time that we started to get reports from many friends who said that his vocals were awful and he shouldn’t be signing. They said that we’d be a good band if it wasn’t for him. This had never really occurred to us, we just automatically thought of him as our natural singer. I guess the more we thought about it, we knew our friends were kinda right. Plus, Sean had recently taken a liking to the Chili Peppers and had insisted on screaming instead of actual singing. (“But Sean, even when you scream, you have to scream IN KEY. You can’t just scream without any concept of the music.”)

We weren’t happy at all with Sean vocals on the demo, so I got the bright idea of singing myself on the demo. I still don’t know what I was thinking with that. Maybe I thought I’d just become the singer or something? I don’t know. After I recorded all the vocals for the tracks I went back and listened to them and nearly got sick at how terrible I was. Very bad idea. I then gave Bryan the 4 track and the master tape and told him to do the vocal and we’d see how it turned out. I hope he just wiped my vocals clean without listening to them. Bryan turned in decent performances and we had our crappy little demo.

We had to figure out what to do with Sean, because he never really tried to keep his enthusiasm for the group after our gig at David Cloyd’s. By the time December of 1993 rolled around, we knew that he was never going to be the singer we needed him to be. He was nearly always late for practices and often didn’t show up, so by default Bryan was singing everything (not me, I stayed clear of the mic). This was a very frustrating time for us, since we couldn’t get together very often (Bry had transferred to the University of Texas at Austin in September) and when we did our singer never showed up. I guess it was somewhere around this time that we just made the decision to get rid of Sean. To be fair to him we wanted to give him a choice in the matter. When we talked to him we gave him the choice of taking vocal lessons, starting back up with his guitar lessons and doing rhythm guitar stuff or leaving the band. We knew he wouldn’t take either of the 2 that would keep him there, but we still wanted it to be his decision. All four of us knew he had no enthusiasm or drive for the band anymore and he hadn’t for a long time. He made his decision pretty quickly and left.

We were relieved, but this still put Bryan in a very awkward position. Bryan was not comfortable AT ALL with his voice, nor was he comfortable with his ability to sing and play guitar for all the songs. The decision was to either get a new singer or a rhythm guitarist. We tried out two singers: a guy I knew named Pat and Bryan’s brother Cavan. Pat was pretty bad, so that was an easy ‘no’, but Cavan actually sounded decent. Cavan was a pretty big fan of the group, so he knew the songs. We liked him, but he wasn’t the right voice for the group. Bryan was, and we all knew it. So, we went the route of rhythm guitarist. We got my best friend Brian Forbes to do the 2nd guitar parts, and he was in for about two weeks that December. One day Brian said to me that we really didn’t need him to play guitar, Bryan was doing just fine. Forbes also knew that the three of us had a really strong connection to each other and to the music and that there really shouldn’t be a 4th or 5th member of the group. We all agreed that he was right and decided to continue as a trio. I mean, a Power Trio (yeah!!).

1994 got off to a good start for us; once we made the commitment to being a trio, we knew that finally everything felt right. Now that Bryan was the singer we could finally do Cycle, as Sean could never get it right and we just had it sitting around for all that time. Bryan also brought forth Sunshine, one that I consider to be a Bryan Dunn Classic. For my part I wrote a thing on the piano which became the basis for my favorite song Miniver Cheevy ever did, Amen. Amen was our first instrumental and the first song we did where we actually stuck in an open-ended improvisation in the middle. I wrote most of it with Bry contributing a riff or two. Amen was another one of those magical songs like Earth to Earth that really defined what we were about.

I tried to get Cheevy to play the Senior Talent Show at D’ville High, but since Bry wasn’t a senior he couldn’t do it. Dave and I did it anyway with Brian Forbes and some other friends (no Cheevy material of course). We managed to get a Spring Break party by a guy at school named Mark. We were going to play 2 sets, but the cops busted the party after the first set. We actually weren’t that loud, so it wasn’t our fault. I was disappointed we didn’t get to finish since we were going to debut a reggae song I had recently written called Larry. Sean had showed up as we were finishing our first set so he was pretty excited about seeing us play. Unfortunately he didn’t get to that night.

Oh, yes of course Sean left the band on good terms. It was kinda hard being in class with him for a few weeks, but eventually we just sucked it up and stayed friends, even going to college together at UT. I do have to thank Sean BIG TIME for not only letting me in the group, but also persuading me to go to college at UT. My original intention was to go to North Texas to get my degree in Radio/TV/Film, but Sean persuaded me to have UT as my first choice and UNT as my 2nd. Sean’s logic was, “If both RTF programs are equally as good, would you rather live in Denton or Austin?” Duh, no brainer. I took my college day at UT and got to catch Bryan’s new group, Echo Juliet, play their first gig. Good stuff.

One of the fun things we did during the spring of 1994 was a video. I was enrolled in the Media Technology class at DHS, and one of the projects we did was a music video. Of course I just HAD to do a video for Cheevy. My friend Jason Gore produced the video with me and he was actually the star of it. We chose Earth to Earth for the song. Since the version we did on the original demo was pretty crappy, we went into the Media Tech studio to record a new track for this. In addition to E2E, we also did takes of Hard Rock Café and 1218. Once again, I sang backup vocals on E2E and HRC and once again, they sounded like crap. I have no idea why I decided to do such things on the spot. So if you ever see the video (you won’t, I promise) you’ll hear my glorious voice all over the choruses.

I think the video was an OK job for a senior in high school, but anything beyond that and it pretty much bites. It’s a confused little thing; half of it is a concept video going along with the lyrics and Jason eventually committing suicide at the end. Interspersed are shots from the recording session. I think if it was just those 2 things, it would be better. But no, I had to mess things up! OK, I admit, they’re not really messed up, but there’s just a bunch of really random stuff in there. For the beginning we did do kind of a tribute to various dead musicians (we somehow forgot Zappa who had just died the previous Dec 4th, my birthday) and I liked that bit. It’s a strange and morbid and confusing video, but it’s OK and something I laugh at now.

After graduation, the summer of 1994 brought some exciting stuff. We weren’t too happy with the demo we had so we decided to record another one. Dave’s cousin, Tom Jordan, had a nice 8 Track recorder and some mics so he came over one night in the beginning of the summer and produced it with us. We spent the whole evening recording and mixing Hard Rock Café, Earth to Earth and Sunshine. The recording turned out pretty good and we used it to get some real gigs. And wouldn’t you know it, the demo actually worked!

A Dallas promoter and booker named Tom Prejean was the guy I talked to about getting us a gig at Club Dada’s Open Mic Night. He wanted to see us at a different club before he brought us in to his main thing at Dada. We got booked at a place off Greenville called the Across the Street Bar. The show happened on June 28, 1994 and all of our families and friends came out to support us. We played with a group called the Baby Clams, a mediocre cover band. A friend of mine Leslie Sisson took a bunch of pictures at the gig. I don’t have a copy of the set list (I know who does, and I’m trying to get a copy from him) but the songs I remember us doing were Gloria, Kiss’ Strutter, Hard Rock Café, Matter of Principle, possibly Earth, possibly Sunshine, an intense show closer of Iron Man and the standard Wipe Out for our encore. Dave played his ass off for Iron Man and when we were unexpectedly called back for an encore, Bry and I wanted to do Wipe Out, but Dave said he was way too exhausted to do it. We did it anyway. A great first gig. I was nervous as hell, but it was fun.

Tom liked us, so he got us booked for Dada on July 31. I think we played at midnight that night. The only song I specifically remember doing that night was our debut of Don’t Let Me Be Alone Tonight. We got Matt to come up and play lead on it, since he helped write it and he was always excellent doing it. The slow blues of MWAPB worked so well that we had a couple making out at the bar for us! Whee! I guess Tom was impressed with us so he got us to play a few days later back at the Across the Street Bar. That show was August 5, but the really cool thing was that it was a Friday night and we had a BIG crowd there. Baby Clams again played with us and they were once again mediocre. We rocked the house and had a fantastic gig, even if all the frat daddies and so-ho’s didn’t get it. We debuted Amen (got a blank stare when we finished!) and Pink Floyd’s Brain Damage/ Eclipse. We did get paid $50 for the gig, but since we rented lighting for the show, we ended up losing $15. Oh well! It was a great gig, our best up to that point.

With that trio of triumphs we gave the band a nice break and I headed down to Austin for college and Dave went to UT Dallas in Richardson. As the story goes, I ended up taking over bass duties in Echo Juliet so I had something to do in Austin. During the semester I had been talking to a bunch of different clubs in Dallas to get some gigs over the Christmas break. We reconvened during the break and rehearsed with a friend of Bryan’s, Jay Staton, doing some rhythm guitar work on a few songs. The gig was January 5, 1995 again at Club Dada. We debuted a few songs that night, Dah-veed’s Now You Can Open Your Eyes, Led Zep’s Hey Hey What Can I Do, Bryan’s Empty, Jay’s Song (I have no idea what it’s called, but that’s how I wrote it on the setlist), and Queen’s Crazy Little Thing Called Love. It was again a fun show with a real good crowd.

For the next few months we’d get together whenever we could and rehearse. We didn’t try to gig during the summer since I was working a lot and also I think Dave was too. By the time that the next Christmas break was happening, we had written a nice group of songs that were continuing to move us in the prog/improv area. Stuff like Forsake Me, Ascension, 1000 Grains of Sand, When Satan Surfs, and a cover of King Crimson’s Red. We got booked at the Galaxy Club in Dallas for a show on December 22, 1995. For this one we didn’t have any guest stars and we played like absolute Mothers. It was by far our best show; we were simply incredible (I so wish I had a tape of this). We opened up with Red and just took off from there. Christine of Echo Juliet and her friend Cricket came out to see us and I think they were pretty surprised at the heaviness of the group. Think King Crimson in ’74 or Sabbath in ’70 and that’s what we were sounding like. I loved it and it was an amazing gig. Great crowd reaction. It turned out to be our last gig.

Throughout the next spring Bryan and I had most of our energies focused on Echo Juliet’s take-over of Austin. For the summer of ’96 we once again returned to Cheevy. We didn’t rehearse that often since Dave was very busy. We were busy playing shows in EJ, but I really wanted us to gig some more in Dallas. After over a year of trying to get a gig at Trees, arguably the biggest club in Dallas, I finally got the booking guy to get us in there. We were scheduled to play on June 11, 1996, but after I got it booked I found out from Dave that he was going to be out of town that weekend for a business trip or something. I got a hold of the booking guy a few weeks before the gig to cancel it. He wasn’t too happy, but he agreed to get us another date. OK, let’s go with July 16. I call Dave again to let him know about that one and of course he had ANOTHER business trip that night. I was royally pissed. Not only did we lose 2 gigs because of this, but they were at Trees! When I called Trees back and told him we couldn’t do that one either and to just forget it for the summer, the guy was really mad at us for backing out. I told him it was something that wasn’t in my control, but I think we pretty much killed our chances at playing there.

I remember getting off the phone just overwhelmingly pissed off and I just snapped and decided to kill the band. It wasn’t worth it to do a thing that only got together once every few months and when finally did get gigs, our drummer had to cancel them. I worked my ass off for the group and to have someone else in the group start to pull that ‘busy with other stuff’ again just sent me off. Yeah, I know it seems really ridiculous for me to act that way, but you have to understand that Miniver Cheevy was MY band. It was the most important thing for me. It was my absolute favorite thing in the world, and to have someone within the group sabotage it (again) did not make me a happy camper.

I talked to Bryan about it and he talked me out of breaking up the group. Bryan’s a good voice of reason. He understood that it was just some stupid circumstances that prevented us from doing it right then. He was right in saying that it would happen when it was supposed to happen and we should totally keep it going whenever we could. I calmed down and realized he was right about this, we had come too far to just kill it. The summer came and went with some excellent EJ gigs and then back to Austin for the fall. The last time Miniver Cheevy had an official practice was during Spring Break of 1997. Wiley, EJ’s drummer, was there for our last hurrah and I think he enjoyed it. After that, there simply wasn’t time to do it, and Bryan and I were very busy with Echo Juliet and then a few months later with 3 Penny Opera.

I’m not exactly sure of when this was, but I think sometime in that spring of ’97 Brian and I got together with a few of his friends Vince Elliot (guitar) and Troy Messina (drums) and started to form a group. We did a few of the old Cheevy songs and it sounded pretty damn good. I don’t think I necessarily wanted Troy to be Dave’s replacement in the group, but I really had the idea of making the group into an ‘Austin’ version of Miniver Cheevy. The band had the talent and once again we had a 2nd guitarist who could handle the music while Bryan concentrated on singing. We had a few practices and then Vince got a job in Houston and had to move; that killed the group. Oh well!

The last time we gave it another try was during late 1999 to mid 2000. The intent was for Bryan and I to hook up again with Troy (who now the drummer for 3 Penny Opera). Bryan and I got together and worked up material several times. It was really just a big ‘get re-acquainted’ process since we hadn’t played together since summer of 1998. We traded off material that we wanted to do; some mine, some his. The best part of this whole time was writing Rings with Bryan. Musically it’s pretty standard groove/pop stuff, but the lyrics are a nice summation of all the Cheevy/EJ/3PO stuff. This was the first song that we actually wrote together head to head: all music and lyrics. I really like the song and it’s too bad we never got to play it live.

The idea was we’d get our material worked up and then jam with Troy and we’d do our little prog band that would be in the same mold as Cheevy. We only played as a trio once, but it was really great. The thing was, that it REALLY sounded like Miniver Cheevy. The idea that this group might become Cheevy absolutely crossed my mind. I mentioned to Bry that it felt like it was Cheevy and he said, “I know, I’m getting the same feeling too!” We agreed that we wouldn’t know for sure until we attempted Earth to Earth; that would be the deciding factor. We never got the chance. Our sessions became less frequent and in the fall of 2000 Bryan followed Wiley up to New York City and the final Big Red HOLD stamp was put on Miniver Cheevy.

To be honest, the group didn’t seem like it would happen this time anyway. To me it seemed like Bryan and I were going in different directions musically. Now, almost 8 years after the last attempt at Cheevy, it seems like Bryan and I are even further apart when it comes to music. It’s not really a big deal to me. Honestly I’d love to play with Bryan and Dave again, but I’m not worrying about it too much. It’ll happen if and when it’s supposed to happen. Until then, I’ll just think back fondly of my time in Miniver Cheevy.

Released: 1984
Tracks: Hell Hole; Tonight I’m Gonna Rock You Tonight; Heavy Duty; Rock and Roll Creation; America; Cups and Cakes; Big Bottom; Sex Farm; Stonehenge; Gimme Some Money; (Listen to the) Flower People; Christmas With the Devil; Christmas With the Devil (Scratch Mix)
Best track: either Tonight I’m Gonna Rock You Tonight or Big Bottom
Track to skip: America

So, yeah, here we are: Spinal Tap. I first saw this movie when I was pretty young, 12 or 13 I think. I didn’t get all of the jokes then, but it certainly made me laugh. Hell, it’s still one of my favorite movies. What I really like about this music is that the guys (Christopher Guest, Michael McKean & Harry Shearer) expertly captured the music they were parodying. Whether it’s stupid heavy metal (Heavy Duty sounds like a bad Kiss song), 60’s pop (Gimme Some Money), 60’s psychedelic (Flower People) or 70’s stadium rock (like that *perfect* Who-sounding middle section in Rock and Roll Creation) they really know how to craft the songs so that they sound perfect next to the other songs of the era that they’re parodying. They have such a talent for that, and you can see it in their A Mighty Wind stuff too.

Most of these songs are not only really catchy, but they’re also actual “good” songs - even though they’re supposed to be “bad”. They know what they’re doing. Some great choruses about here: Hell Hole, Flower People, Big Bottom…man, especially Big Bottom. That song cracks me up. 3 basses and no guitars on a song called Big Bottom, ah that’s awesome. I laugh all though this, but one of the things that really made me chuckle tonight was their Christmas message at the end of Christmas With the Devil. Absolutely classic. The only song on here that I really don’t care for is America. It’s the only forgettable song here. Was it even in the movie? I don’t think so.

Truthfully, this album isn’t near as good as the movie. The songs, while humorous, are definitely better when heard in the movie itself. I don’t listen to this album straight through too often. I mean, it’s comedy music. It makes me laugh, but the jokes work better in context of the movie. Still, it’s funny and even after hearing it a hundred times, “Tonight I’m Gonna Rock You Tonight” never fails to make me laugh.

Rating: 79

Released: 2002
Tracks: Isla Mujeres (Javier Ruibal); Amanecer En la Sabika (Javier Paxariño); Poble Romani (Companyía Elèctrica Dharma); El Hechizo de Babilonia (Luís Delgado); Fibali (La Sal de la Vida); Siete Modo de Guisar las Berenjenas (María Salgado); Al Niño Miguel (Rafael Riqueni); Mercè (María del Mar Bonet); De Isla a Isla (José Antonio Ramos with Pancho Amat); Yo, Marinero (Diego Carrasco); Seguidillas (Ronda Segoviana); Mirabrás (A Falta de Pan); Neska Soldadua (Hiru Truku); Cantarea (Anubía); ¡Arrempuja!, Que Ya Estamos Aquí las Marujas (La Chirigota del Selu); Jeta (Jorge Pardo)
Best track: it’s hard; either Isla Mujeres, De Isla a Isla or Amanecer En la Sabika
Track to skip: none

Rating: 85

Released: 1992
Tracks: A Kind of Magic; Bohemian Rhapsody; Under Pressure, Hammer to Fall; Stone Cold Crazy; One Year of Love; Radio Ga Ga; I’m Going Slightly Mad; I Want it All; Tie Your Mother Down; The Miracle; These Are the Days of Our Lives; One Vision; Keep Yourself Alive; Headlong; Who Wants to Live Forever; The Show Must Go On
Best track: I have no idea. Given the circumstances of the song itself, I’ll pick The Show Must Go On
Track to skip: none, it’s all pretty solid

I mean, honestly, it’s not like Queen’s 80’s material was bad or anything. The tracks from the Highlander movie & Innuendo are all really great songs. The only “iffy” song on here is One Year of Love. You never really know how serious Freddie Mercury is in these slow songs and I think One Year of Love could go either way. I guess if it’s more tongue in cheek then it’s ok, but taken as a “serious” song it’s just a bit too much. Too many keyboards and orchestration, with Freddie definitely over singing on it. I mean, it’s a sappy ballad and don’t really skip it or anything, but it’s not my favorite track on the CD. The rest of them? They’re all great. I think Classic Queen is a bit more consistent than Greatest Hits, even if GH has some of the band’s best songs. Even with all the decade switching on here, what it shows is that Queen was consistently good in terms of production and songwriting. From everything I’ve heard, they always went full-force into their playing, writing and recording. Like any group there’s gonna be ups and downs, but in overall consistency (esp. in writing singles) very few bands are as solid as Queen were from ’73 – ’91.

A Kind of Magic is a fun way to start the album and the general “happy go lucky” sound Queen is known for. Right off the bat there’s the fantastic guitar work of Brian May & Queen’s trademark layered vocals. It’s a good track and leads nicely into Bohemian Rhapsody. In listening to this song earlier, it just gave me the biggest smile. I like to hear songs that are completely unpredictable and Bohemian Rhapsody never disappoints. It’s definitely one of the most creative and original hit singles in rock history. As we move on through the rest of the disc, the band keeps pushing the boundary of what they can do. Heavy rock songs like Stone Cold Crazy and Headlong, goofier songs like I’m Going Slightly Mad or the fantastic two ending ballads Who Wants to Live Forever & The Show Must Go On prove that Queen didn’t mess around. Man, I LOVE The Show Must Go On. It’s the last song on Queen’s last album before Freddie Mercury died and he really lets it all out. It’s a very moving song and an awesome ending to this collection.

One Year of Love is the only weak spot on the album and the rest is incredible. Just excellent song after excellent song. I really don’t get tired of listening to it and I think it’s a great compilation. I’m not sure about the price differences in getting Greatest Hits & Classic Queen as opposed to the 2 disc Greatest Hits 1 & 2, but looking at the track listing I prefer the two separate ones. Classic Queen is definitely better than the UK version of Greatest Hits 2. Hell, I actually like Class Queen more than Greatest Hits. There are a couple questionable selections on that one, but this one is very solid. Great album.

Rating: 96

Yesterday I finally finished posting the old album reviews.  I did a lot of work on them this weekend so that certainly helped.  I’m happy to be done with it.  In reading through all the reviews and (hopefully) catching all of the grammatical errors, it really made me want to listen to those albums.  The ones I gave good reviews to, I mean.  It’s also really pushing me to start up reviewing again.  I said that I wouldn’t do anymore until I was done posting the old ones, and now that I’m done I can get back to it.  I *really* miss it.  Of course it might be later in the week when I get to it, since last night I recorded a new HML with Don and tonight is band practice.

The main area left to work on for the website is old band stuff.  You know, those Cheevy, EJ & 3PO people.  All the rest too.  That’ll be a big project, especially since there are so many pictures and stuff.  I’m not in too much of a rush to get it done, the old site still exists so I’m fine with that for now.  As always, I’ll keep you updated.

Band stuff: we’re now a trio and I’m really excited about it.  Our myspace has been updated with the info and it will soon have NEW RECORDINGS!  We’re getting together tonight to pick 4 tunes to record and will get on those asap.  Then, new gigs.  This is going to be great.

Here are the rest of the album reviews that I’ve posted:

• Led Zeppelin
• Tony Levin
• Living Colour
• Lyle Lovett
• Yo-Yo Ma
• Mahavishnu Orchestra
• Bob Marley
• Wynton Marsalis
• Dave Matthews Band
• Megadeth
• Megalo
• Metallica
• Steve Miller
• Miniver Cheevy
• The Mongol Beach Party
• Moog Cookbook
• Mötley Crüe
• Mr. Bungle
• The Muppets
• Willie Nelson
• Nirvana
• Ozzy Osbourne
• Jimmy Page & Robert Plant
• Pantera
• Charlie Parker
• Jaco Pastorius
• Pearl Jam
• Steve Perry
• Phantom of the Opera OCR (highlights)
• Phish
• Pink Floyd
• Queen
• Queensrÿche
• Radiohead
• Ratt
• Red Hot Chili Peppers
• Reverend Horton Heat
• Sonny Rollins
• Rush
• Savior Sol
• Neal Schon
• Seal
• Paul Simon
• Simple Thing
• Singles soundtrack
• Soundgarden
• Spin Doctors
• Stereolab
• Strunz & Farah
• Andy Summers & Robert Fripp
• Tears For Fears
• Tripping Daisy
• Twang Twang Shock-a-Boom!
• U2
• Van Halen
• Stevie Ray Vaughan
• Guiseppe Verdi
• Victor
• Stevie Wonder
• XTC
• Yes
• Frank Zappa

Listening: Queen’s Greatest Hits > Chris Cornell - Euphoria Morning

Being the football fan I am, I definitely couldn’t miss tonight’s Super Bowl.  I really don’t like either the Patriots or the Giants, so it was hard to find someone to root for.  I settled on the Giants (as did Julie) since I really didn’t want the Pats to go 19-0 and this whole NFL cheating thing is pissing me off.  Maybe the other 31 teams have cheated too, but so far only the Patriots have been caught.  With the rumors that they possibly cheated a few years ago for their first SB win, I just can’t think of any team right now that disgusts me more than New England.  Yes, Tom Brady’s an awesome quarterback; yes, they have a freaking awesome offensive line; and yes, Wes Welker  is a Texan and even though he played for Tech, I think he’s a great player and I am happy to see him do well.  I still rooted against them, though.  Hell, plus Aaron Ross plays for the Giants, so I have to support one of my own.

Don’t get me wrong, I thoroughly despise the Giants.  I just felt that maybe they were the lesser of the two weevils this time.  It was a good game up until the 4th quarter, and then it became a GREAT game.  Tension, buddy.  It was there.  That 4th quarter was just awesome and I’m happy the Giants won.  Bring that Lombardi trophy back to the NFC.  Now that the Greatest Sport is over, I guess I’ll have to pass my time with hoops (go Horns!  go Mavs!) for the next few months.

Band news: we had a business meeting last night with Eric & Julie participating and it went pretty well.  I think we have a good idea of what we’re looking to accomplish.  Most of the stuff is pretty nebulous, but I’m happy with the way it went.  The “highly rhythmic individual” position is just about set, so I’ll go into that more when we work everything out.  I’m anxious to get us up to speed with everything and get on stage again.  It’s about to be one of those places where we really take a big step forward.  This is really interesting territory for me, as all of my previous bands were intact once we started gigging.  Protean Mean is a bit different in that we did our thing as a duo for a couple of years, and now we’ll have some other parts on stage with us.  Kick ass parts, too!  More to come on this later.

At our practice this past week after going through a few we missed last week, we played through (well, mostly me as the vocals aren’t written yet) all of the songs that are in the next batch of tunes.  Jenn’s got 5 specific ones to write words for and I’ve got 4 that I’m going to do, so that’s some good stuff to look forward to.  I’m really psyched to get those songs “out there” and see what they’ll sound like.  True, not all of the music for all of them is finished yet, but it’s really only 1 or 2 songs that need finishing up.  The rest just need arranging.

On the website updates…I MISS DOING ALBUM REVIEWS!!!  I’ve been working (when time allows) on posting the old ones, and that’s making me really miss doing them.  No, I have to finish posting the old ones first.

There’s a blog mention somewhere in here saying that my album will be finished before the election in November.  I still intend to have it completed by then.  Really.

Here are the groups I’ve posted the album reviews for since last update:

• Peter Gabriel
• Davíd Garza
• Tony Geballe
• Genesis
• George Gershwin
• Bebel Gilberto
• Giles, Giles & Fripp
• Dizzy  Gillespie
• Trey Gunn
• Gypsy Tree
• Halogen
• George Harrison
• Jimi Hendrix
• Gustav Holst
• Iron Maiden
• Sharon Isbin
• Norah Jones
• Journey
• Judas Priest
• Mike Keneally
• King Crimson
• King Diamond
• KISS

listening: King Crimson solid for most of the day.  Currently on People, from Thrak.