Cheevyjames’ Musical Roundhouse

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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