Part IV: Remember
Chapter Twenty-Eight
After the M.O.E. breakup, Robert and I were without a drummer, which basically left us both without a band. We tried to find a drummer, but nothing worked out. Time became even scarcer when Robert and his wife became expecting parents again. This would be their third child, and there would be less time to devote to music, much less a band. This also meant I would have to start over.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The fall of 1995 found me in the midst of a Black Sabbath craze, and also on the verge of my own little version of Beatlemania. To satisfy my Beatles craving, I bought just about every CD they put out. I already had all the Black Sabbath CDs. I began playing my acoustic guitar a lot more, and also detuned my electric to match the low heavy sound of Sabbath. There was one drummer named Dwight, who Robert and I had jammed with once. I continued to jam with him in the garage out behind my house. My friend Danny, who would later become my brother-in-law, joined us on bass guitar, and we decided to be a Black Sabbath cover band called Children of the Grave. It didn’t really last long though. Dwight and I ended up playing together for about six months.
Chapter Thirty
I was also trying to learn how to play drums at this point. Now that there was a drum kit in the garage that I had permission to play on whenever I wanted, I finally had the chance. I had started a project I called “Ten Faces” which was to be my ‘solo’ album. It had a bunch of songs that I had written over the course of the previous few years, all of them different styles. There were two songs from Explicit Form, my band prior to M.O.E. I played all of the instruments on these songs, including some terrible drumming in places. The newest songs were the result of my attraction to Danny’s sister Kelly. We had known each other all of my life, but had just started hanging out that fall. She had been a best friend of my aunt when they were kids. A mutual love for Metallica and Janis Joplin was what brought us together. I had gotten into Janis Joplin because of my then girlfriend Misty, who was and still is a fanatic. Our relationship however, was going nowhere. She was only seventeen at the time, and I was twenty-one.
Chapter Thirty-One
On Christmas Day of 1995, I wrote what is probably one of the best songs I ever wrote. It was an acoustic rock song called “Remember”, and it was definitely inspired by my Beatles fixation, and also the kind of peace and love thing I picked up from hanging out with Misty. It also had layered vocal harmonies, which I had never really done much with before. I recorded it the next day, then again two days later. The second version was much better, and that was the one I let all my friends hear.
This song started a short run of four or five songs that I recorded. The second was called “A Place to Hide”, which was a story about a lady who was having memories of childhood sexual abuse, which ended up totally disrupting her life later on.
The next was my tribute to Janis Joplin, and was called “Pearl”. It was the only love song of the bunch. I was basically in love with her at this time and wished I could be with her. Crazy, I know, but it made for a good song anyway.
The last in this run was a little harder than the other three, and was called “A Love Song”. I had become pretty disenchanted with my love life, so I wrote this as a kind of send-off. Besides, I was drunk when I wrote it.
I think it was around mid February when I saw an ad up in a local music store. This guy named David had built a studio, and my Dad actually introduced me to him before, because they had worked together at one point. I had actually done a little playing for him to record before he had the studio. He was looking for ten local artists to put songs on a CD he was producing to promote not only the bands, but also his new studio, Soundstorm. I called him and said I had this song I wanted to record, so I went over there and let him hear it. He really liked it, and said he was looking forward to recording it. It would cost $250 for each band to cover the cost of CD pressings and artwork and whatnot.
I was slated to go in March 9th to lay down basic tracks. I took Dwight in with me to drum, and I would take care of the rest. We made a rough mix of the recording we had done to evaluate. It just wasn’t all there though. The feeling, the tempo, the energy. We scheduled a new session for basic tracks on March 16th with a session drummer named Brian. This guy was basically a pro-type drummer as far as skills go.
He had one hang-up though. He always had to play with a click track to keep tempo. We tried going through the song with both of us on a click track. Didn’t work. One of us would fall behind the other. So we decided to give him the click track and let me go without. Still didn’t work. So we tried giving me the click and letting him go without. Still no real results. We were getting frustrated, because he usually didn’t have this many problems. The one thing I can say about this song is that it has to be just the right tempo or it would either drag or be too fast. We couldn’t hit the right groove with a set tempo timer on us. So we took a break.
We got to talking and when Brian told me he loved the song and asked me what inspired it. I told him I was in kind of a hippie state of mind. He suggested we all recapture that kind of mind-set through an herbal attitude adjustment.
This wasn’t the first time I ever smoked marijuana, so I accepted. After I was able to walk again, we went back to our instruments. When David asked if we wanted to try it with the click track again, we both said ‘Fuck it’ and went without.
We nailed it on the first try.
That was the last time I smoked it. I felt it had finally served some kind of real purpose and decided to leave it at that.
We finished up the basic tracks that day, and all that was left was vocals, which I was to do the following week.
Four days later, on March 20th, the first day of spring, my mother committed suicide in the garage behind the house.
The next week I went back to do the vocals and I took Kelly with me to this session. I dedicated the final recording to Mom. On the inside of the CD jacket, all the other bands had booking information, and I had the dedication and nothing else.
Chapter Thirty-Two
In February, Kelly and Danny had moved to Charlottesville, which is about a forty-five minute drive from Elkton. I had been invited once already to come live with them. I declined, because I was deeply in love with Kelly, and she wasn’t interested in a relationship. I knew I would go crazy living with her if I couldn’t have her. Just before Mom died, we started getting more serious. After that, it got even more serious. I took her up on her second invitation.
I moved out of the house at the end of April and headed for the big city… Well, it’s big compared to Elkton anyway.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Soundstorm Studios’ first compilation CD, “Homegrown ’96” was released on June 29th 1996, and there was a release party thrown for the bands to play live. I still didn’t have a band though, so I asked Robert to come play with me. We would just play two acoustics like our last show together. We played some of my stuff and some of his stuff. It should have been fun, but it wasn’t. I messed up so badly in some places that I sold my acoustic guitar three days later and have never bought another one. On the upside, some DJ liked my song enough that he played it a few times on the radio.
That became basically the final touch of my accomplishments in Elkton. It was time to move on.
To Part V
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