Part VI: Krystal Cage

Chapter Forty

July 1997. After having left my previous band Candelabra that January, I decided it was time to jam again. Like many musicians do, I put up an ad in Stacy's, a local guitar store here in Charlottesville. "Heavy Metal Guitarist/ Bassist/ Vocalist/ Songwriter looking for people to jam with..." etc. etc. You've seen those ads. Anyway, I had only gotten one call in the two weeks since I had put the ad up. It was this guy named Rick. I can't remember his last name, but he was a very talented guitarist, and we decided we were going to bring good old-fashioned '80s thrash back to the old town. We worked on a few riffs for a couple weeks, but we had a problem. We still had to get a band.

Chapter Forty-One

About two weeks after the call from Rick, I got my second and last call from that ad. It was this guy named Brian Lambert, who was a guitarist, and basically had a band, but no vocalist. He asked me if I'd like to come try out, so I did. I was one of about four or five guys they had called who auditioned, and next to the last.
By this time it was almost mid August. The Saturday before my birthday I auditioned. I went over and met the guys. Brian was the guitarist. And an excellent guitarist at that. Helluva lead player. Kenny was the bassist. A Southern boy, who liked his beer. Pretty solid player too. Jason was the drummer, and he was no slouch either. We just talked for awhile then began setting up the equipment. The first thing I sang for them was "War Pigs" by Black Sabbath. I was just warming up and singing it a cappella. I didn't know they knew the song too. They joined in and we had a ball. We played most of the afternoon, and when we finished, they said they thought I had it. I told them that I basically just wanted to have fun with this, and that I didn't care about the fame or money. Just music. There was still one guy left to try out early in the week, but that they'd call me by Wednesday, the 13th, my birthday to let me know. So my birthday gift that year was a lead vocalist spot in a kick-ass band. Of course, I had to tell Rick about it, which was a bummer, but I was finally gonna be in a full band! I was jazzed.
The following Saturday I went over there again, and we played all day. Brian and I began discussing a second guitar to fill in under lead parts and for flavor. So we decided I'd bring along my guitar the next time. I had always wanted to play guitar in a good band. I was even more jazzed.
The only problem was the next time, Kenny the bassist didn't show up. Sold all his shit and was moving. So I dutifully shined up the ol' bass guitar, fired up the amp and became the band's new bass player. We immediately began working on a few covers and some originals, too. We did covers of "Dirty Deeds" by AC/DC, the aforementioned "War Pigs" and a blues number called "Piece Of My Soul" by the Eric Gales Band. Mind you, I'm not a huge blues fan, but this tune was a scorcher! I used parts of my vocal cords I didn't even know I had!
"Fall" was the first original to get completed. Brian and Jason had all of the music written already. It just needed lyrics and a title. I had ad-libbed lyrics the first time we jammed, titled it on the spot, then almost completely overhauled it. It was originally about preparing to jump off of a building, but then I decided to write about what kept me from jumping off of a building.... Love. But it's not your average 'Ooh, baby let me show you my heart' kinda love song. It's essentially about the beginnings of my relationship with my wife, Kelly, and was also the first and only love song I ever wrote that was put to heavy rock music. This is love with an attitude, musically. It remains one of my favorite Krystal Cage songs to this day.
Over the next few weeks, we worked on some more original material, and added more covers, such as "Monkey Wrench" by Foo Fighters, "Mississippi Queen" by Mountain (once again using those lost vocal cords) and "Sweet Emotion" by Aerosmith. There were others, but those always stood out to me. During this time we still did not have a name. Brian wanted to call it "Rippin' The Bone", which to this day I have no friggin idea what the hell it's supposed to mean! Jason wanted to call it "Gravel". I pushed for two names..."Soul Magician" and "Son Of Sam I Am", which was a twist on the Marilyn Manson idea of putting murder and glamour together, except mine was murder and Dr. Seuss.
Needless to say none of these names flew, so it was decided that Brian's kids names were cool enough to work together. He had a daughter named Crystal and a son named Cage. So that's where Krystal Cage came from.

Chapter Forty-Two

We had caught wind of the annual New Year's Eve Battle Of The Bands in Charlottesville, which is part of First Night Virginia, an event where people and their families would walk around on the pedestrian mall downtown, play games for prizes, eat and freeze to death. We had played a couple parties by this time, and had quite a catalog of material, but about three-quarters of it were covers. We were pretty well received at these parties, but that's probably because everyone in attendance was pretty well lit! So we decided to play this thing. Originality was stressed, so we couldn't do our covers. By that time we had more originals, including the Led Zeppelin meets AC/DC tune "Thoughts of Yesterday", "High Road," a song about living high and losing everything but your pride. There was the instrumental called "The Waiting", which we had planned on doing harmonizing guitar solos and stuff before Kenny quit. Then there was "I Don't Wanna Be President," a song about how we destroy the men we vote for, which I had written in November. Two months later on January 18, 1998, President Bill Clinton would be asked about Monica Lewinsky for the first time. The song came true.
So we played. We got forty minutes onstage, playing hard in 12 degree cold. We did only one cover, The Eric Gales tune, because it was pretty obscure, and not many people would know it was a cover. We also played a rather death metal kinda song called "In The Hour Of Darkness" that Jason had brought from his previous band, Which he also sang at the show.
We stayed and listened to every band there, and pretty much felt that we had a good chance of winning. That is, until Catharsis showed up. We had gone to load all the equipment back into the cars during the next to last band, and when we got done we came back to watch the rest of the show. As we neared the stage, we did not like what we heard, because we knew that we had just lost. There were two guitarists...playing harmonies a la Megadeth, and were heavy, and accurate, and sounded great. We still think they paid off the soundman, but that's beside the point. We were blown away. We decided right then and there that I was going to switch back to guitar and we were going to find a new bassist.
That was the last show we played until August of 1998.

Chapter Forty-Three

January 1, 1998-New Year's Resolution: To kick ass. After hearing Catharsis' dual guitar attack, we knew we needed some mad skillz. Brian began practicing scales like crazy, and I learned a few too, but just enough to help him out with practicing harmonizing notes. (I hate agonizing over stuff like that, which is basically why I never practice the things I should, but oh, well...) So we retooled "The Waiting" to accommodate two guitars in harmony with each other, incorporated a little of it into "Fall" and little places elsewhere. It was during this time that I introduced some songs I had worked on a year and a half before. "Alien"-a song about self awareness that came to me in a dream, "Senile"-a forty second long fireball paying homage to premature memory loss...better known as 'CRS', "Mind On The Run"-which is about someone I know...(it's not me! I swear!!) and "Mankind"-about society's manipulation of the mind- helped bulk up our originals catalog. In fact, it never got much bigger than that. We pretty much quit doing covers and worked hard on getting tight. We put an ad up for a bassist, never got any calls. We decided in March or so to go ahead and record a demo of a few songs (which became all of them, basically!) with the revisions to hawk around to clubs, bassist or no bassist.
So we recorded the demo on my Tascam 4 track. It was cool because we got to experiment a little with feedback (There is an excellent example at the end of "The Waiting") and background rhythm parts, which I played, as well as the bass and vocals. Of course, we did the drums first, all in about two hours. Jason's kit was easy to record because of his D-drum triggers. We just combined the synthesized sound with real mics and got a pretty good sound. The rest of the music and vocals took a couple weeks to get. I mixed for weeks! But I'll tell you, we did another one later, but I still love the old one the best. Energy! We never officially titled the thing. I just call it "Orion" or "Album of The Day" as a joke. It also happened to be Brian’s son Cage’s middle name.

Chapter Forty-Four

We still needed a bassist. Enter Bob. Bob was Brian's stepfather, who had moved, with Brian's mom, from New Hampshire into Brian's basement. He was a really good and knowledgeable bass player. He was also 65 years old. He tried, I have to give him that, but his style just wasn't us...maybe if we'd written a few polkas... Anyway, he was a really good guy though, and we all became friends, and he jammed with us for a little while anyway.

Chapter Forty-Five

I had to tell you that story so I could tell you this one. Bob decided that he wanted to find some guys more into country and his kinda stuff, so he put an ad up at Stacy's. (Remember that place?) Well, after a couple weeks, Brian got a call for Bob while he was away, and it was this guy named Homer, who was a guitarist in a country band, and they needed a bassist. So they got to talking, and he talked Homer into coming down and trying out for the band. So he did. He was in the second he started playing. Turns out, he had basically a virtuosic talent for quick playing. In other words, he was awesome. We taught him the songs, dropped "High Road" because he didn't like it (But they never dropped "Thoughts of Yesterday" and I never really liked that one either.... hmmm) so we were down a song. He then brought us one of his songs from the '80s called "Rock 'Till Midnight" which we worked on, with him playing guitar and singing. We never recorded the song or played it live as a band. We also did "Hell's Bells" by AC/DC with him playing guitar too. I sang that one. It was fun.
For awhile.

Chapter Forty-Six

During that summer, there was a little turmoil beginning to build in the band. I had almost quit once, because the other guys were beginning to talk seriously about trying to make something out of the band, and I just wanted to play and have fun. It was a hobby for me. A release from the regular pressures of work. But I stayed on, because I was still having fun for the most part. When Jason finally realized that I wasn't going along on any kind of 'road to fame' he began to play with a country rock (an oxymoron, I know) band on the side, and that was taking up his weekends after awhile, because they were recording a CD. (A funny footnote here...they were recording at the same studio with the same producer I had worked with in 1996 for my song on "Homegrown '96"-a collection of local artists. Small world, huh?) Brian actually went and jammed with them once too. I was the only one who remained pure and never played a single country lick the whole time!
Anyway, it got to the point where we decided that Jason had to make a choice, because he was missing practices and losing interest. Brian eventually fired him. Homer said he knew a drummer who would probably fit in nicely with what we were doing. When he told me the guy's name, I almost shit, because it was the same drummer that was in my previous band, Candelabra! So we already knew each other, and he already knew most of the songs I had written. Small world, huh? Aaron, the drummer, also had club connections. He got us our first club gig in August at a place called The Bomb Shelter, a fairly new club at the time. We opened for a punk band called The Counselors. There were a few people there who had seen us at the battle of the bands, remembered us, and when they heard we were playing, came just to see us again! We had a pretty decent crowd, although most of them came to see the Counselors. The crowd seemed to love us, and wanted more, so Aaron did about a five minute drum solo, and then we did "Dirty Deeds". That still wasn't enough, so we played the first song on the set list, the thrasher "Mind On The Run" again for those who hadn't gotten there to hear it the first time. Can you say moshpit? A small one, yes, but a moshpit nonetheless! It was the high point of my career! The funny thing later was to watch the crowd filter out during the Counselors' set. They were a very loud, rowdy band. I did say 'Punk' didn't I? There were probably about fifty people in there while we played. By the time the Counselors got done there were about ten left. Even their bass player left before the last song! It felt good. Real good.

Chapter Forty-Seven

We played a couple more shows there, and I really started to become irritated at our self-appointed manager, (Brian's wife Becky) who basically ignored my wishes to just keep it simple and fun. She wanted another demo, a bank account for the band, was booking shows and then telling us when they were, and blah blah blah. So we recorded the demo with the new lineup. While it was technically better, sound quality-wise, I still didn't like it as much as the first one. As a matter of fact I don't even have a mixed version of the newest one. While we were pretty tight as a unit, I kinda felt uncomfortable with the changes that had taken place, and wanted out. I never did go along with the bank account idea, and what little money I made from the shows I put in my gas tank. My tenure with the band was about to come to an end.
In early October while I was mixing the demo and preparing it to go on CD, I had told the others about midweek that it would be about a week and a half before it would be ready. Our manager decided that was too long and wanted it by that weekend. I told her that she'd get it when I finished. Still not good enough, so she went ahead and made an appointment to have the demo burned onto CD that Sunday. I had two days to do ten days’ worth of work. We also had a Halloween night gig to rehearse for. So I gave it to Brian on that Sunday, as-is, and told him I was going to be picking up my equipment later that day. I also pulled myself out of the Halloween show too. I had quit.

Chapter Forty-Eight

I don't know if they went ahead with the Halloween show. I assume they did. I had heard that Aaron was singing and Jason came back to play drums for awhile. I'm not exactly sure what all happened after that. Aaron has a different band now, and Homer isn't there anymore, so I assume that Krystal Cage is dead. I didn't want to kill it. I just didn't want it to become another job. I haven't talked to Brian or Becky since that day I gave them the tape. I haven't seen Jason in even longer than that. I've seen Homer a couple of times, and have talked to Aaron a few times, too. I have no idea what became of Rick. It's weird to think how one person can make that much of a difference, even if it is really a small difference in the grand scheme of things. I will always remember Krystal Cage's music. That's what it was all about for me, from the start. "Heavy Metal Guitarist/ bassist/ vocalist/ songwriter looking for people to jam with....."

Orion and the Krystal Cage - A Poem
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