Cheevyjames’ Musical Roundhouse

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.

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