Cheevyjames’ Musical Roundhouse

also see Bryan Douglas Show Fliers – Other Fliers – Press/Ticket Stubs/Setlists

First lineup of the band (known as Christine Ely & Free Thoreau / Catholic Fallout) live at the Planet Theater in 1994

David Cloyd – bass, Wiley Koepp – drums, Christine Ely – voice/guitar, Bryan Dunn – guitar

band logo

1st press photo

2nd Press kit, photo 2-A

2-B (not as good, which is why we went with the above one)

proofs from photo shoots for 1st press kit 1 2 3

cover of first tape, Killing Zoë (rec. live in Dunn’s living room 5/3/95)

whole foldout

similar artwork, “Echo Juliet” demo 1995 (rec. at Music Lane, Austin, 9/17/95)

proofs of demo, front & back

an alternate view of the cover (artwork by Bryan Douglas)

all relevant CD pics are here

band photo from Coffee Plantation (Guadalupe) 8/23/96 as printed in XLent (full story here)

pics from our gig at the Delta Upsilon “Swamp Party” 9/21/96

(in order of their live debuts, or when learned if not played live)

We Are Each Other – Beautiful South

Wow, here we go.  This one and Not Too Soon were enormous staples of the EJ Live Experience, much to the detriment of the bassist, guitarist and drummer.  I think we played either (or often both) of these songs at every single EJ gig we ever did.  There might be 1 or 2 where they didn’t pop up, but that was so rare I can’t recall it (and I don’t feel like scouring the setlists right now).  I have to admit it, but EJ’s Zoë is a total and absolute rip off of this.  Oh well!  This was an OK song to do for a while, but I especially got so damn sick of it that I felt I was just going through the motions every time we played it.  Not a bad song, but having to do it so often really made me despise it.

Eat For Two – 10,000 Maniacs

Christine had a huge thing for 10,000 Maniacs so naturally we did a few of their songs.  I liked doing this one and though it was a staple at the beginning, eventually we stopped playing it all together.  It’s in F so that was a bit different and I liked parts of the bassline.  I thought we did a good version of it.

American Music – Violent Femmes

Ugh, gag me.  They forced me to do this one, otherwise I never would have done it.  As a song it’s only decent and I still don’t see the attraction to it, even though the audience always loved it when we did it.  I guess it was the sing-a-long section or something.  We did a fine version of it, and I’m sure if you were in the audience for this you clapped along with everybody else.

Not Too Soon – Throwing Muses

See above comments for We Are Each Other.  Only notable thing in this is that I loved to insert Rush licks into it whenever I could.  We did a good job of it and this (like We Are Each Other) was usually placed either at the beginning or end of the set.

Hey Jealousy – Gin Blossoms

Another stupid pop cover that I could care less about.  We did a fine job it (like it wouldn’t be hard to).  I think Gin Blossoms were a pretty boring band, so it didn’t exactly please me to have to do this one.

Walking on Sunshine – Katrina & the Waves

At least with this one we rocked it out a bit more and we all knew it was a stupid 3 chord, I-IV-V song.  This is really a ridiculous song and every time I hear it I just think “I used to play this on stage!”.

Just Like Heaven – The Cure

I don’t think we played it anywhere near as good as The Cure do it, but it was passable.  I got the spotlight for a few seconds so that’s always nice.  We liked to do our best Robert Smith impressions on this; that always gave us a good laugh.

So Lonely – The Police

I think we only played this live once or twice, and even then it was never at an ‘official’ gig.  Christine’s no Sting, and neither am I on my respective instrument.  I couldn’t play this anywhere near correctly and back in the early days none of us had any concept of how reggae was supposed to sound.  I admit it, we really sucked on this one and thankfully very few people got to hear it.

Happy Birthday – Concrete Blond

I’m not incredibly fond of the song itself so my memories of playing this don’t go either way.  We sounded fine on it, but it wasn’t one of our better covers.  Always the obligatory song whenever someone (either band or audience) had a birthday that day.

Breakfast at Tiffany’s – Deep Blue Something

I hate this song.  I hated this song when it first came out and I still have a burning hatred for it.  And I hated playing this in front of people.  Most of the time in this group I kept my mouth shut when it came to covers, but they had a pretty good idea that I didn’t quite like doing dumb pop songs as covers.  Thankfully we didn’t do this too often but it popped up occasionally.  True to the original as always.

Desire – U2

Now this is one I really like.  I loved playing this one since we just pushed it to the farthest point it can go.  You can’t get much simpler of a song, and for my part I could play it with my left hand behind my back.  Still, it was a fun song to do and we always got a good reaction when we did it.

Why Can’t This Be Love – Van Halen

HAHA!  This is truly funny.  I think we did this once, possibly twice, and it wasn’t done in seriousness.  We did it acoustically, and kinda chilled out, at a coffeehouse and we decided to do the middle section A Capella!  Wiley and I both dig on VH, so this was kinda done for us.  I loved doing it and thought it was a blast even though we weren’t too serious in it.

Our Lips are Sealed – The Go-Go’s

I thought we did a great version of this and I enjoyed playing it.  Yeah, it’s a pop song like most of the rest of our covers, but it’s more fun and bouncy and an unexpected one for us to pull out.  My favorite memory of us doing this was when we played at the stock show for a bunch of rednecks and during this a few of the 10 or so rednecks watching us danced and sang their heads off to this.  In cowboy hats.

D’yer Mak’r – Led Zeppelin

This is absolutely one of my least favorite songs by ANYBODY.  And I’m not alone in hating this, as Led Zep’s bassist John Paul Jones doesn’t like it either.  This is another of those songs that people love for some reason.  I don’t get it.  It is truly an obnoxious song.  As for our performance, it was fine.  I mean, it’s such a stupid song that it’s hard to actually make it sound any worse.  The audiences seemed to enjoy hearing it, so what do I know?

I Wanna Be Sedated – The Ramones

This was a damn fun song to play.  I believe it was Bry’s idea to do this one.  It really kinda sticks out amongst all the pop covers we did, but that’s part of the charm of it.  The original intent (my idea) was for Wiley and I to switch instruments and do something interesting at the shows.  We rehearsed it this way 2 or 3 times, but it never happened because I am an awful drummer.  Yes, even though this is a massively simple song, I STILL couldn’t play the drums to it.  Naturally Wiley had no trouble with the bass part.  Thankfully for the audience we decided to keep to our normal instruments and it sounded SO much better.  This featured Bryan’s greatest guitar solo ever (!).

Now You Can Open Your Eyes – David Garza

Great cover of a great Dah-veed song.  Since all 4 of us were seriously hard core fans, we couldn’t help but play a good version of this.  It did always feel weird playing it in Austin since I always considered Dah-veed a local band and the idea of one local band covering another local band’s songs is kinda strange.  Actually, I think that *I’m* just strange.  As good as we did this one (jammed out like Dah-veed did), we only played it a few times.

Me and Bobby McGee – Janis Joplin

I think we did as good of a version of this as we could at the time, but realistically we didn’t do it any justice…musically or vocally.  We got better at playing it in 3PO, but its time EJ was only decent.

Joey – Concrete Blonde

Simple song, pretty mellow, it’s not bad.  We did just fine on this and it really wasn’t too eventful.  I didn’t hate or love doing it, so it’s pretty forgettable for me.

What’ll I Do – Janet Jackson

Man, this was a strange one in the set.  I think Wiley presented this one and it took me a while to get right, but once we did it sounded really good.  I enjoyed playing this one and I wish we woulda played it more often then we did.

Brown-eyed Girl – Van Morrison

I think it’s impossible not to do a good version of this song.  Even a band with no musicianship could play this at a party and get a good reaction.

Son of a Preacher Man – Dusty Springfield

For some reason I always lump this together with Bobby McGee.  Pretty good version of this, but we played it WAY too much and I got really sick of it.  Besides us playing it all the time, Pulp Fiction was still fresh in everybody’s minds so as a whole it was overplayed.  Good song though.

Time After Time – Cyndi Lauper

I really liked our version of this and I loved playing it.  This song got us one of our few pieces of press when the Statesman showed a pic of us and the caption talked about the reception we got when playing this.  Funny thing is that this one didn’t get any more of a reaction than the rest of the set.  I guess they just needed something to talk about.

Eight Days a Week – The Beatles

Loved playing this one and I’m still surprised this was the only Beatles song we ever did.  We did a good version and it always woke the audience up.

The One I Love – REM

One of two REM songs we did; sometimes I thought we did a good job of it and others I thought we shouldn’t have bothered.  It’s a good song and I absolutely don’t want to play a bad version of a good song.  Most of the time I liked it though.

Wipe Out – Surfaris

I think we only played it once.  It’s a pretty brainless song so any band could whip it out.

Raise Your Hands – Deep Blue Something

Not as hated as Breakfast at Tiff’s, but since I don’t care for DBS (I do admit that their bass player is pretty good though) I preferred to not play it.  Honestly, it’s hard to play these simple pop songs poorly.

These Are Days – 10,000 Maniacs

I believe the times we played this it was done acoustic (Bry and Christine) probably because I never bothered learning it.  I think it’s an OK song, but I thought 3 Maniacs songs were a bit too much.

19c Expatriots – David Garza

This is an amazing song.  We only did it a few times, but I liked it when we did and I thought we did it justice.  I still love playing this bass line.  Only 3 chords but it’s brilliant.

Because the Night – Bruce Springsteen/Patty Smith; 10,000 Maniacs version

Bleh.  I could care less for this song so I preferred to not do it.  We only did it when Ed Park guested with us (he was a huge 10,000 Maniacs fan like Christine) so he could do the fancy violin parts that they did on the Unplugged version.  It’s really kind of a stupid song, but we did a fine version of it.

Cannon in D – Pachebel

Another one we only did when Ed was playing with us.  Either Bryan or Ed’s idea, most likely both.  Strange that a pop band would but out with some classical stuff, but we pulled it off beautifully.  I did like doing this and I really loved it when Bryan would come in with the contrapuntal melody.

Sunday Bloody Sunday – U2

I find it surprising we never played this one live.  It’s not on any of the setlists, but I remember playing it a lot once we learned it.  Did we only rehearse it, but never play it live?  I guess so.  We learned this once Ed started guesting with us since he could play the violin part.  We did a good version and it was a fun song to play so I have absolutely no idea why it was never played live.  Ah well.

Anything Anything – Dramarama

We debuted this at a heavy metal bar of all places, so I guess that made sense.  Not a bad song, we did a pretty good version of it.  It was nice to be recklessly heavy on occasion.

It’s the End of the World as We Know It – REM

Yes, Christine actually knows all the words to this; I sure don’t.  Again, this was another fun one to play and it always (the few times we did it) got the crowd going.

Brass in Pocket – The Pretenders

I know we practiced this one a good bit, but I’m not sure if we ever played it live.  Something in my brain says that we did play it live, but I have no setlist proof (and I have all of the setlists).  Maybe we did it at a party?  No clue.  Still, we rehearsed it and I always had a fun time playing it, even though I’m not a fan of The Pretenders.

If This is It – Huey Lewis and the News

This is the one of the few songs we rehearsed that wasn’t ever played live.  We worked up a good version one weekend at Christine’s place in Plano, but it never got any farther than that for some reason.  I still like this song and I wish we could have played it in front of an audience.

(in order of their live debuts)

Zoë – lyrics & music: Ely

I’m willing to bet this was the first of Christine’s songs that any of us learned. I just remember it always being there. We debuted it at the first show and played it at probably every gig until the very end. I don’t think the song really defined us, but it was a constant through it all.

Since it was one of the earliest songs Christine wrote, it’s very simple. 3 chords, E – B – A, repeating for the whole song. The different sections are just the chords played in different ways. But it’s 3 chords all the way through. The simplicity gave us all space to have fun with. I liked to put in a bass lick from Rush’s Spirit of Radio into the intro.

The song really didn’t change too much over the years we played it. We quickly got it down solid, so after that every performance was effortless. The only time it ever changed was one time in practice Christine, just goofing off, started to play the song in 6/8 instead of the usual 4/4. This caught our attention big time and we decided to try the song in 6/8. It sounded pretty cool and really made it into a different thing. We only played it once live in this arrangement and then I guess Christine decided to drop it. I actually preferred it in 6/8, since nearly all of our songs were in 4/4. I guess it wasn’t meant to be. The lyrics are obviously relationship-based, like nearly all Christine’s lyrics are (a few exceptions are out there). It’s an OK song, it was fun to play, but I got really sick of playing it every show. I still like to hear it on occasion, though.

Don’t Be Afraid To Cry – lyrics & music: Ely

Another simple one, almost the exact same thing as Zoë, this time it was a lot slower. We only played it for a few months then Christine decided she didn’t like it and didn’t want to play it anymore. We would always try to convince her to bring it back in the repertoire, but she never would. It’s not that it’s that great of a song, but I think we just wanted to play some different material than the usuals we always did.

I Know You – lyrics & music: Ely

Another staple from the beginning that lasted for the course of the whole thing. Another basic song with a 3 chord intro/verse (D – A – G). Christine added a chord for the chorus (Em) to have just the smallest bit of minor-ness in there. Not much of a change for the solo, only a modification of the main riff.

More relationship lyrics. This song became more fun to play after we recorded it for our demo. Steve, the engineer, suggested the guitars drop out for the verses and leave it just me and Wiley as the backing. That really helped the song out and made it stand out (in our repertoire) a bit.

Confusion – lyrics & music: Ely

Getting better here. I like the intro/verses; it’s pretty chilled out. The riff has a nice flow to it. And of course I did some cool bass harmonics and my cool fretless impression; always nice. If we’re going in order with the songs here, we get another instance of some good minor-ness in the verses. Verse chords are Bm – A and then for the chorus Christine threw in another small change and made the riff D – A – Em – A. It’s not much, but it stretched things a bit. The big change came from Bryan to change keys (down to C) for the guitar solo and then back up to D for the rest of the song. Fancy stuff.

I like this song and it was the best one to date. The lyrics are still all about relationships, but the whole thing worked really nicely. I liked playing this one.

Where We Should Be – lyrics & music: Ely

Hey, we’ve gone reggae! It wasn’t ever Christine’s intention to write a reggae song, but it was either Bryan or Wiley who came up with the idea to make this a reggae. I thought (still do) that it was a great idea and it added some much needed eclecticism.

It’s a really simple song with the usual type of lyrics. My favorite part was my bassline. I was pleasantly surprised when I came up with it and it had a wonderful bounce to it. This song was in our repertoire a lot at the beginning but as we had more material it started showing up less and less on setlists. I know some of our fans specifically liked this one, but I guess Christine didn’t like it too much. Too bad, I did.

Sunshine – lyrics & music: Dunn

An excellent Cheevy song gets presented to Echo Juliet and turns into a monster. I think Wiley was the kick that this song really needed. Not only was Wiley from the School of Metal (like myself), but he also had a real good concept of Groove and he threw both parts into this one and helped it be possibly our best song. Obviously it doesn’t hurt that it’s a very well written song to begin with.

For the EJ version of this we rocked it up and turned it into (I think) our only jamming song. My bass solo came into its full self and after my solo Wiley and I did a heavy metal breakdown underneath a modified riff that Bryan created. We didn’t go crazy with this like we would in 3PO; we kept it to a simple guitar solo – bass solo – breakdown – verse. Occasionally, whenever Manuel would sit in with us, we’d do some mild percussion ‘solo’ after mine. We worked up two versions of the song the regular version (solos) and the shortened version (the Cheevy one) where we went back into the 3rd verse after Bry’s solo. We would choose the short version if we had time constraints or wanted to squeeze some other material in. I obviously preferred the long version. Sunshine was absolutely one of the highlights of the Echo Juliet live experience.

Cricket’s Song – lyrics & music: Ely

Written by Christine for her friend Cricket, this was a throwback to the simpler time of 3 chords per song. Since the song was so simple, I decided to ‘make it more interesting’ and do some bass tapping on the verses. I was trying to compensate for the simpleness of the song by (hopefully) taking the audience’s attention away from the song and say “gee, wow, check out that bassist! He’s tapping on his bass, isn’t that cool!” Yeah, that’s what you get when you have a bassist who listens to King Crimson all day long and throw him in a pop band.

This was our most pop song that we had, and the chorus consisted of a bunch of “La’s” repeated over and over. Whee! Even for it’s simplicity, it was a fun song to play and I wish it would’ve stayed around longer than it did.

That’s The Way It Goes – lyrics & music: Ely

Another simple one, using C – F – G. Pretty typical stuff here: slow verse and then upbeat chorus, the bridge was a nice change. I don’t remember if Bryan soloed in it or not. One of the earlier songs and it didn’t stay in the repertoire too long. It’s not that distinctive, so it kinda got buried in with the rest of our stuff and eventually was forgotten about.

Fade Away – lyrics & music: Ely

When Christine first brought it to us, it was the usual stuff. I guess we heard something more in it and almost immediately Wiley and I made the intro & verse pretty pounding. The song eventually evolved into the perfect show opener with Wiley pounding away for a bit before the rest of us came in. I really like the drive this one had, and it had a great feel all the way through.

For some reason, Christine could never play and sing at the same time during the chorus, so she’d always stop playing after the first chord of the chorus. It’s interesting to hear this on the live tapes since her acoustic guitar was a big part of the sound. Later in the band’s life she’d use her electric on this. I really like this one and I always had fun playing it.

College Radio – lyrics & music: Dunn

Brian wrote this one in the fall of ’95 and originally presented it to me as a new Cheevy song. I initially wasn’t too impressed with it, but I was willing to give it a shot with Cheevy. We tried it a few times and it never clicked so Bryan and I agreed that it would be better suited as an EJ song. This one has a strange history in that it never really gelled until we did it in 3 Penny Opera. We played it quite a bit in EJ, but it took Wiley and I a long time until we were satisfied with our parts. I think Wiley never was satisfied with what he did on it.

Perfect – lyrics: Ely; music: Dunn

Perfect was a pretty simple song, but one we kept in the repertoire for a while. A ballad consisting of only 3 or 4 chords, this was the first instance of an EJ song getting a co-writing credit. Christine had the words, but no music, so Bryan took them and pretty quickly came up with the music for this one. I thought this song was decent and, along with Still, one of our most purely ‘ballad’ songs. I think Bryan had a nice solo spot in this (doing his best Eric Clapton impression). Years after we left EJ, Bryan wrote some new lyrics to this and called it (I think) May the Road Rise to Meet You. After the inaugural play-in for me, I don’t believe he ever did anything else with it. Not the greatest, but decent enough.

Don’t Let Me Be Alone Tonight – lyrics: Dunn; music: Talbert

Look out! It’s a monster! This was a song that was played often by Miniver Cheevy, but it never really clicked with that band. The catalyst was absolutely Wiley. Wiley approached the song with a more bluesy and groove-based feel and it really brought out all the potential in the music. In EJ, we added actual dynamics to this song and pretty quickly it became one of our favorites. I always loved playing it and Bryan always had a great solo in it. I still think that the 2nd half of the solo with the climax and back into the verse is such a spine-tingling event. I love how our little pop band could play the hell out of this pure blues song. I think if this song had more exposure, we could have seen some cover versions of it floating around Austin. I know a lot of the blues singers in town would’ve tore this up. As it happens, we were the only ones who did.

Waiting in the Cold – lyrics: Ely; music: Koepp

Another different collaboration in the band here. Wiley had written the music many years before and evidently the song kept being past from band to band until it found its rightful ‘home’. For all I know, he’s still looking for it. Wiley brought this ballad to the group and Christine wrote the words. It’s been so long since I’ve heard Christine’s version of this; I totally forgot the words. I still remember how to play the music; it’s a pretty simple thing, but still interesting enough to stay in the set for a long time. I’m glad we had a ‘Koepp’ credit in the songwriting, but it really wasn’t the best thing we did. Definitely wasn’t the worst though. It really didn’t move me either way, but I didn’t mind too much playing it.

Bill – lyrics & music: Ely

Wow. I said a lot about this one in the bio but never fear, I always have more to say. This is a great song and my favorite one Christine wrote. This song was not only important to the band, but also important to Christine as a songwriter. Every song before this one that Christine wrote (except for Cricket Song) was about 1 subject: love/relationships/affection whatever. Love songs basically. I do think that pop music favors love songs more than it should and I think that love should just be one of the subjects that is sung about, not just the only one.

So, I was personally very excited when Christine brought this to the band. At the inaugural play-in, she strapped on her electric guitar (a first, as she’d always played every song on her acoustic since the beginning), hit the distortion and sang this song that had nothing to do with love or relationships. The lyrics are about Bill Watterson, the creator of Calvin and Hobbes, and some possible conversations with him in regards to his then announcement of the ending of Calvin and Hobbes cartoons. Christine is a huge C&H fan (like the rest of the band is as well) and it obviously was an important part in her life. She really didn’t know why Watterson wanted to stop doing the cartoon, so she put out some possible theories of why he did it. To me, as a fellow lyricist and songwriter, it’s very refreshing when someone writes about something they feel very passionate about, without having to rely on clichéd subject matter or phrases. Christine really raised the bar for herself and the band with this song.

Musically it was an improvement too. Like I said, this was the first time that Christine ever used her electric on one of the songs and the first one with distortion all over the place. Before Bill, we were just a pop band; with this one we really crossed into that ‘rock’ world and even did some heavy-ish stuff at that. Nearly all of her songs before this were simple 3 or 4 chord things with not much variation. Yes there still are some I-IV-V riffs in here, but from a chordal standpoint the music, esp. the intro and verse riffs are much more advanced than just those 3 chords (E-B-A in this case). It gave us 3 guys more room to work with, it allowed us to do some heavier stuff (and let Wiley use his Tommy Lee influence) and it provided a perfect opening song for our CD. Bill was a fantastic song to play live and I never got tired of it.

Adam and Eve – lyrics & music: Dunn

I’m not totally sure if Bryan wrote this with Christine in mind for the female vocal part, but it was written for a male and female to sing. For the record (since I’m the keeper of such knowledge) this song is not a rip-off of Barenaked Ladies’ Be My Yoko Ono. Both songs are similar, but I can guarantee Bryan had not even heard BNL when this was written.

A&E is a pretty simple song, but it’s very happy and bouncy. This was another tune that brought out a different side to the band. I liked having a song where Bry and Christine would swap vocal lines. I always liked Bryan’s voice (and the more time marches on, the more people get to hear it) and this was really the first glimpse the EJ audience got of it. The best thing about this song is its bounce. I quite miss playing this one.

Still – lyrics & music: Ely

This one stayed in the repertoire for a while, but I honestly can’t remember anything about it right now except that Christine used a capo for it. It was another 3 or 4 chord ballad with love-song lyrics, but I remember liking to play it more than some of the other ballads. I think we recorded a studio version of this when we did a session at UT. I never heard those tapes so I unfortunately don’t have a copy of the tape. But like I said, this was a pretty good song that never made it on a recording. I’d love to hear it again to refresh my memory of it.

Imaginary Girlfriend – lyrics & music: Dunn

This was the only song Bryan got to sing on his own during EJ and it’s really only a joke song. OK, I admit it, I really like this song and loved to play it. A very simple 3 or 4 chord song about the best girlfriend Bry’s ever had, the one he made up in his head. The lyrics are very humorous, the music is bouncy, and the crowd always loved hearing it (even requesting it on occasion). Christine never played on it, probably because she never bothered to learn it. For its tenure in EJ we never altered it, so it always sounded the same. I remember the first few times we played it live Bry did a kazoo solo, but that soon got dropped in favor of the more economical guitar solo. I hope Bryan will sometime bring this back out, as I’m a big fan of it.

Her – lyrics & music: Ely

Nice song. It hadn’t been in the repertoire too long before we recorded it, so that probably made it the ‘newest’ song on the CD. I can’t remember if it was begun before Nothing, but we debuted it about 4 months before Nothing. Most likely it was. We’ll have to ask Christine for sure. Anyway, I like this one and I enjoyed playing it live. I love my volume swells at the beginning, as well as Bry’s “Wish You Were Here” lick. There’s honestly not a lot I can say about this. I think the studio version is pretty much definitive. For some fans it was the best song on the CD and it’s easy to see why they think that way; good song.

Nothing – lyrics & music: Ely

This was another attempt at reggae, although less pronounced than Where We Should Be. A much better song than WWSB and another bouncy one in our repertoire. I thought I did a really cool bass line, and I also really dug Bryan’s guitar playing on it. One thing about my bass line I quite enjoy was my insertion of a Yes bass lick in there. Yeah, I like putting prog references into these pop songs. Another thing I love about this was Wiley’s “Tommy Lee” drum part on the pre-chorus, very cool stuff.

This song started to show Christine’s growing confidence in herself and her songs. This is one of her better songs absolutely. Again, I loved playing it live because it had such a great energy. This one goes into the record books as being the only EJ song that had a curse word in the live version. Cracks me up. Cool song.

Ascension – lyrics & music: Dunn

I’m including this since it was played at an Echo Juliet gig, by 2 members of the band, but it’s not really Echo Juliet. Bryan and I did this once, acoustically, at Coffee Plantation on 6-29-96. We did our Coffee Plantation gigs acoustically (well, since I didn’t own an acoustic bass I was electrified) with this and the following Cycle being a small break for the “Bryan and James Show”. This song was originally done by Miniver Cheevy and it was at my insistence that we played it for the one show. I still love this song and wish 3PO could’ve done it, but I guess it wasn’t meant to be. As I recall it was a decent version, but it surely didn’t set the crowd afire and I doubt anyone remembered it after the show.

Cycle – lyrics & music: Dunn

The only live performance of this by Echo Juliet was at the aforementioned gig and this also was played by Bryan and myself only. This isn’t as good of a song as Ascension is, but it probably got a better reaction because it’s upbeat. This was a staple of both Cheevy and 3 Penny Opera, but it never was played in full by Echo Juliet. We tried doing it a few times in practice, but I guess Christine had no interest in it. As played by just Bryan and myself, it’s not that exciting and doesn’t sound anywhere near as good as it does with a full band (esp. Wiley) behind it.

Sympathy – lyrics: Ely; music: Ely, Hines

This was another one that Christine wrote using the electric guitar with distortion and played live that way too. It’s a pretty good song, but it never really got to become as good as it should have been since we only played it for a few months and in that time we didn’t have it under our belts long enough to be able to really nail it. Plus I guess the fact that the band was dissolving and 3 of us didn’t want to be in the band during this time didn’t help it too much.

I purposely wrote a very difficult and busy bass line for this which I loved playing. I had been keeping it more or less simple for the past few songs and I thought a complex one would work on here. I could be wrong, I don’t know. Regardless, I’m not sure if I ever played my part accurately since it was so difficult. For our first few live performances of this someone, either Bry or Wiley, wanted to put into the middle of this the middle section from John Mellencamp’s Pink Houses. I’m not a “Cougar” fan, so I thought it was rather stupid, but the other 3 loved it so I got outvoted. I still think it’s way cheesy and that’s probably why it only lasted a few times and then we went without it. It happened just before the guitar solo and my only writing contribution to the EJ canon. I came up with the riff for the guitar solo. I don’t know if it’s really a true writing contribution, but since I’m doing this (and I always considered it as such) I say I helped out. Anyway, this had the potential to be a really good song but we played it so sloppily and for such a short amount of time that it never came close to its potential.

Something About You – lyrics & music: Ely

Bass solo! Although barely audible on the tape I’m currently listening to, it’s there dammit. Unless we ever did an extended version of Sunshine, this was my only soloing in the group. I think it was usually in Ab, but I recall I rarely stayed in key for it. Good idea of having a bass solo, but this song wasn’t the right one for it, and I should have played it ‘normal’ anyway besides trying to be atonal and all that.

This one was brought to the band at the same time as Sympathy so I always think of these two songs together. This one is more poppy so that’s why it sounded tighter than Sympathy; it was easier to learn. It’s a pretty good song and another one that no doubt would have improved the more we played it. As it turns out it only came out a few times, so the audience didn’t get much of a chance to appreciate it.

Mr. Raleigh’s Dilemma – lyrics & music: Dunn

The last song we debuted with EJ, and I think we only played it live twice in the group. Of course it’d be a huge song for 3 Penny Opera, but it was just a hiccup in Echo Juliet. It probably was kinda rough, and I don’t think it was the right kind of song for Christine to sing. I guess that Bryan had just recently written it and both he and I wanted to do it in the band. I remember it as being kinda tentative and of course it never had the chance to develop into the great song it became once 3PO got a hold of it.

all text in the press kit written by Wiley Koepp:

Released in 1997, this was the only recording the band ever released.  The first four tracks were new recordings (Fall 1996) and we added our original demo (rec. Fall 1995), the last three tracks, to round it out.

For my thoughts on the album go here.

The front cover is a picture of Wiley’s bass drum head, painted by Meghan Williams

pertinent information

The back cover, with photos by Romain Nayal (right) and Audrey Desrosiers (left, mistakenly uncredited on the CD)

poster for the CD release party.  click for a larger view

photos taken at the band’s first gig, 6/28/94 at Across the Street Bar in Dallas, TX

Bryan & Dave in action

Man, I miss that bass…Bryan and James rock out

James, Dave & Bryan after our public debut

Ad from the Dallas Observer for our 8/5/94 show:

(roughly in the order we learned them)

Who Do You Love – Bo Diddley

The first cover we attempted, we first tried it at our second practice. I didn’t know the song then and I wasn’t a very good bassist anyway, so it didn’t sound so hot. We only played it for about a month or so then forgot all about it. Played like the Doors did it.

Gloria – Van Morrison

The song that will forever haunt Bryan Dunn. We tried it also at our second practice. I eventually learned how to play it right and we went from there. We modeled it after the Doors version, where it got all perverted and stuff. Sean loved doing those lines. We still kept it in the set after Sean left and played it at most of our gigs. I know Bryan never had any interest in singing it, but people always want to hear it so he’ll still get requests for it. We did a very good version of this, even if it was exactly like the Doors version. A basic song, but fun to play.

Iron Man – Black Sabbath

The first sign of the heaviness that we’d have later. I first brought it to the band at our last practice before the initial breakup. After we got back together we learned it and it stayed in our repertoire until the end. I always preferred to play it as a quartet or trio since Matt’s presence always held me back. We took the basic Sabbath version and just suped it up a lot. I think we just ruled on this and it was always an absolute blast to play. We just destroyed everything when playing this one.

Sunshine of your Love – Cream

We did it a good bit when Sean was in the group, but he couldn’t really sing it right and it wasn’t until he was gone that it became a Cheevy staple. This song is Bryan’s blood, so it was only a matter of time before it came out. We raged on this.

White Room – Cream

And of course since we did such a great job with Sunshine, why not another Cream song? We raged on this as well and it was a blast to play. Cream songs always fit perfectly in Miniver Cheevy.

Turn Up the Radio – Autograph

I had originally totally forgotten about us doing this, but then somewhere along the line I heard it and it all came back to me. Yes, I admit it, we did cover this one. When Matt Talbert was in the group I asked for a suggestion of a cover song he wanted to do. Knowing him as well as I do, I should have known he wasn’t entirely serious in suggesting this, but I guess once I pushed for it, then there was no turning back. I know he loved doing it since he got to do all his great Heavy Metal guitar work. We kept this in for a few months, but once he was gone so was Turn Up the Radio. I mean, Sean just *hated* this song and he definitely couldn’t sing it the (cheesy) way it needed to be done. One of our stranger choices, that’s for sure.

Wrathchild – Iron Maiden

I can’t believe we attempted this one. We played it at our first party (vocals by me) and my friends liked it, but it was really pretty bad. We kept it around for a few months but once Sean was gone, so was Wrathchild. It never really came into being a good cover and it outright sucked compared to the original.

Communication Breakdown – Led Zep

Musically we sounded fantastic on this, but Bryan isn’t Robert Plant so the vocals always suffered. We kept it around for a while, faithful to the original, but eventually dropped it because of the vocals.

Love Me Two Times – Doors

A very faithful version to the original, it was always fun to play. We did a good job of it.

Strutter – KISS

One of the songs we debuted at our first gig, we always did a really cool version of this. Of course I always loved playing it, but I seem to remember it didn’t last much after that first gig.

Wipe Out – Surfaris

One of the songs we just learned off the cuff, in 5 minutes. We played it at our first gig, but not much after that. We didn’t change it up that much.

The Ocean – Led Zeppelin

What a fun song to play. We kept totally faithful to the original. The main part of the song came pretty easily, but the ending solo section with the walking bass line never really clicked. I wish we would have tried this more, it was fun to play.

Tequila – The Champs

I brought forward the idea of us doing it. We did change this up a lot, unlike most the covers we did. I decided to play all the lead sax part on bass and have Bry do all the backup work. It sounded pretty strange, but I liked doing it. I think we kept it in our repertoire about 3 weeks.

Brain Damage/Eclipse – Pink Floyd

I love these songs. We played them at our 3rd gig and just nailed them. The part of the audience that was familiar with them loved it. It was pretty faithful to the originals. Originally Dave played keys and drums at the same time (yes, he is that talented) but when we first played it live he decided to not do the keyboard part and from then on it was only guitar-bass-drums. One of the most fun songs we played.

Girlfriend – Matthew Sweet

Bryan really digs Matthew Sweet so he wanted to do this. We played really good versions of this a few times, but it never stuck around. Bryan really ripped it up on the guitar solos.

Hey Hey What Can I Do – Led Zeppelin

Pretty faithful version to the original, but since I’m not John Paul Jones it kinda suffered a bit. I didn’t care for playing it too much, I thought we didn’t do it justice.

Dreamline – Rush

Only played a handful of times, we sounded great on it except for the guitar solo. Bryan just couldn’t get the Alex Lifeson solo down right so we didn’t keep it around more than a few practices. I wish we could’ve got it right, it’s a blast to play.

Fly By Night – Rush

Another Rush one, this one we played a bit longer than Dreamline. Musically it was pretty cool, but Bryan couldn’t do the vocals in a way that sounded good. He never cared for singing in falsetto. Faithful to the original.

Crazy Little Thing Called Love – Queen

We only did this with Jay Staton since he knew all the lead guitar parts and Bry didn’t. Total fun to play, esp. the bass line. Totally faithful to the original.

Now You Can Open Your Eyes – David Garza

More or less faithful to the original, but we’d do the live version Dah-veed did and not the studio version. Bryan and I were well versed in playing this right (since we saw Dah-veed all the time), but Dave was just going off our lead since he never saw the group. A good version and enormous fun to play.

Red – King Crimson

We opened our last show with this and just let loose a killer version. This song was tailor made for us and I knew that the first time I heard it. We played it faithful to the original and as heavy as we could play. A little later we had the idea of combining this with Crimson’s Vrooom Vrooom but we never learned that one in time.

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

10/24/96 – UT West Mall – Austin, TX

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

ANNA ROSE BECK

11/11/10 – Jessee’s Coffee Bar – Carrboro, NC

12/3/10 – Jessee’s Coffee Bar – Carrboro, NC

2/10/11 – The Cave – Chapel Hill, NC

4/9/11 – HINT Benefit Festival, Jessee’s Coffee Bar Main Stage – Carrboro, NC

4/23/11 – WCOM Radio – Carrboro, NC

6/2/11 – Casbah – Durham, NC

• Notes: CD Release show.  Band: ARB, JH, Jim Kremidas, Robert Cantrell, Sabina Barton, Elana Scheiner, Shana Tucker

6/30/11 – Slim’s – Raleigh, NC

7/27/11 – Nightlight – Chapel Hill, NC

8/25/11 – Local 506 – Chapel Hill, NC

9/25/11 – Carrboro Music Festival, Jessee’s Coffee Bar – Carrboro, NC

9/29/11 – The Cave – Chapel Hill, NC

10/27/11 – The Pinhook – Durham, NC

11/20/11 – Durham Artwalk, The Armory – Durham, NC

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.

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